Johnson's net approval with Conservative voters is +63
'Tis but a flesh wound...
That is of 2019 Labour voters though, some 2019 LD voters are now voting Labour and some 2019 Labour voters are now voting Green
Just humour him.
I read your analysis with interest, you confirm the visceral fears of a Tory foot soldier, and sometimes it gives me hope from the other side of the fence. Far more interesting than someone trolling from his student bedsit.
'H' is a good analyst. I don't mind being out on a limb but it was comforting to find him sharing much of my 'new politics new punditry' perspective on Hartlepool and the wider post Brexit political landscape. We both recognize in our opposite but equally shrewd and dispassionate ways that a Labour hold there is not the most likely outcome and should it happen would be a genuine boost for the party's longer term GE24 prospects. Others, meanwhile, either cling to the old mantras and fail to put their thinking cap on, or allow partisanship to drive their punditry and predictions. And that's perfectly ok. There's no shame in that at all.
I think you're overreaching. The Hartlepool debate is really only about what happens to 19GE BXP voters: so they mostly transfer to CON, or LAB, or stay with Farage, or stay at home? Either way, we're all taking the 19GE result as the starting point, which is presumably after (or at least when) your supposed "new politics" started.
Overreaching? Possibly, but I don't think so. Hartlepool is just one event. If the Cons win it - which I expect - I'll be looking for an OTT market reaction on GE24 and Starmer markets and taking advantage.
I disagree btw that everyone is taking GE19 as their start point. That is exactly what lots of people are not doing. One hears much by way of "total DISASTER if they can't hold a rock solid working class northern seat like this!" and "losing Hartlepool spells DOOM!"
If you base your analysis on what happened at GE19 you would not come out with stuff like that.
The market reaction is a very good point. We don’t have anything like so significant a set of elections again until the GE do we? That being the case, it seems quite likely that May will trigger the low point of Starmer’s assessed chances on the market. He’s bound to have some better days ahead to move things around.
Yes. And if you share my confidence that Next PM is a 2 horse race, Johnson or Starmer, because they'll both still be there for GE24 (or 23), then the current Starmer price of 6 is excellent, let alone if it goes any higher. You'll be able to lay it back at half that well before the election.
Blimey, I had lost touch, is he really available at 6? I’ll go and look. Agreed on all counts.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
And us? I can't remember if we were relying on J&J....
We're not. Our programme is reliant on Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax. From now until the end of July. That covers all of the remaining 20m adults under 50 who still need it.
However, we are relying on Pfizer FROM THE EU
If this J&J decision imperils the EU's vax drive, again, then there must be a risk they will seize our Pfizer supplies, even tho that will kill Brits
Leon, you're panicking again. Relax a bit! I don't think we're at any more risk of the EU playing silly buggers than we were yesterday.
I'm really NOT panicking. I'm sipping tea and calmly speculating
Jolly good. Speculate away. Your tone sounded panicky. And you have perhaps the teensiest tendency to swing from euphoria to despair and back again, and seem on the cusp of a downswing. And I'm concerned that that might lead to a) unnecessary sadness, and b) vital artisanal flint products going unknapped. But if it's just calm speculation, speculate calmly away.
In other news, I have just been out for a lunchtime constitutional with my wife, where we discovered two juvenile squirrels which had fallen out of a tree, thirty yards or so apart. Both were unmoving; one seemed (so far as I am any judge) hurt). Along with a small committee of passers-by, we moved them out of the road, then - what do you do next? My wife called the RSPCA - because she is the sort of person who can't simply leave a wounded animal to an uncertain future - and reunited the squirrels, who seemed overjoyed to be reunited; grooming each other furiously then settling down for a cuddle and a snooze. Then the RSPCA arrived, thanked us for getting involved, and announced that they would euthanise the squirrels. I can't help feeling slightly let down. It wasn't the ending of the story that I wanted. Though I'm not sure, realistically, how things might have turned out better.
What a sad story. I would have released them into the wild, giving them a tiny chance. But I see your dilemma
Yes, I think knowing what we now know, we would have done that too. At least, the one which wasn't injured. But I'm not sure we would have been right to do so. Probably best they have a clean quick end at the hands of the RSPCA than a violent one at the hands of a cat or dog, or a long starvation.
There's no good answer. But deciding, even inadvertently, who the winners and losers will be sits uneasy.
I would have thought the uninjured juvenile might have a fighting chance, if it could climb a tree
And if a predator did take it, the death would probably be swift
Something about killing an innocent healthy mammal for no good reason seems wrong: they aren't vermin
Legally they are. Not sure they should be.
Yes, it is in fact illegal to release a Grey squirrel once it has been captured. Once you've picked it up, there's only one legal action. (Well, several I suppose, depending on your method of choice)
I find it absolutely incomprehensible that anyone in the UK could look at the US and the mess of federal and state (not to mention municipal) responsibilities and competencies and say, "yeah, that's the model I want to follow".
It may - it probably won't, but it may - provide a more stable and long-lasting resolution to the constitutional issue. However, it cannot possibly be worth making absolutely every aspect of day-to-day life for everyone in England more complicated. Taxes, healthcare, education, transport - just some of the many areas where having a regional structure sitting below the federal government would need to have some involvement, purely to justify their existence.
And all to solve a problem that essentially boils down to a minority of rabble-rousers in Scotland who lost the argument seven years ago and now need to be put back in their box.
I agree entirely - my proposal (I know you're not addressing me personally) is a cost-free one, that just involves the 'heads' of the UK, England, Scotland, NI and Wales, voting to rubber-stamp the key non-devolved issues, like foreign treaties, war, and perhaps the pivotal finance and defence investments, where such decisions would now simply require a WM vote, or be made using the PM's Royal prerogative.
There would be no change to daily life for anyone. An English Parliament is not a necessary pre-requisite, though an English 'leader' is, but he or she could be elected by English WM MPs.
What a sclerotic nightmare.
So the First Minister's of Wales, NI and Scotland can just veto everything and lead to us never making any decisions?
And even worse these decisions couldn't be settled UK-wide at UK General Elections anymore?
What an absolute nightmare. Sounds even worse than us being in the European Union.
Yes, Wales, NI and Scotland voting together, would be able to vote something down - or to put it another way, the UK PM would need to convince at least one other home nation except England of the wisdom of a decision before it passed. Is that really such a big ask? That one other home nation thinks something isn't a complete crock of shit?
That would be a total nightmare in practice, especially given the current situations in the four nations.
You’d want something like the current HoC, but rebalanced so that English MPs don’t hold a majority. You’d definitely still want some Con and Lab representatives from Scotland, for example.
The four nation Parliaments should have no say at all on UK-wide policy and legislation, just as in the US the state legislatures and governors have no say on federal policy.
Well, so several seem to say, though nobody has offered a remotely persuasive scenario whereby it would prove to be a nightmare. And a nightmare for who exactly? A nightmare for the PM? Heart of stone etc.
Well it's easy to construct specific fake scenarios if you want. Let's say that all 4 nations are agreed that we need to boost naval defence, and that a new battleship is the appropriate requirement. However, you then have an issue that Scotland won't vote Yes unless you commit to building it on the Clyde, NI won't vote Yes unless it's built in Belfast and Wales won't vote Yes unless they get something of commensurate value to whichever of the others actually gets the building contract. And this is for something which, in and of itself, is deemed a 'good thing' by all 4 nations. It's just a recipe for excessive pork-barrelling as means of buying votes.
Fake news. Or fake scenario anyway. No government will want to "boost naval defence". The Conservatives have been slashing the armed forces for decades and now wants to replace ships with drones. Labour wants to disband the armed forces, according to Boris, and why would the Prime Minister lie?
It's interesting to see if Khan takes it on the first round or not. I do pity the counters in case he doesn't - what an absolute waste of their time the second round is.
In the 2013 Maldives election the first round winner had 45% and a 20 point lead over second place, but lost in the second round 51-49. Don't know how honest that was.
I doubt Khan is losing any sleep over the possibilities if he fails to get 50% though.
Spare a thought for Trump bootlicker David Perdue though - 49.73% in November, goes to a runoff and loses.
It's interesting to see if Khan takes it on the first round or not. I do pity the counters in case he doesn't - what an absolute waste of their time the second round is.
In the 2013 Maldives election the first round winner had 45% and a 20 point lead over second place, but lost in the second round 51-49. Don't know how honest that was.
I doubt Khan is losing any sleep over the possibilities if he fails to get 50% though.
Spare a thought for Trump bootlicker David Perdue though - 49.73% in November, goes to a runoff and loses.
Green + SPD + Left doesn't have the votes in most polls.
I think I read on twitter that AFD are now going for an overtly Deuxit policy which will put them even further from discussions of potential coalitions.
Johnson's net approval with Conservative voters is +63
'Tis but a flesh wound...
That is of 2019 Labour voters though, some 2019 LD voters are now voting Labour and some 2019 Labour voters are now voting Green
Just humour him.
I read your analysis with interest, you confirm the visceral fears of a Tory foot soldier, and sometimes it gives me hope from the other side of the fence. Far more interesting than someone trolling from his student bedsit.
'H' is a good analyst. I don't mind being out on a limb but it was comforting to find him sharing much of my 'new politics new punditry' perspective on Hartlepool and the wider post Brexit political landscape. We both recognize in our opposite but equally shrewd and dispassionate ways that a Labour hold there is not the most likely outcome and should it happen would be a genuine boost for the party's longer term GE24 prospects. Others, meanwhile, either cling to the old mantras and fail to put their thinking cap on, or allow partisanship to drive their punditry and predictions. And that's perfectly ok. There's no shame in that at all.
I think you're overreaching. The Hartlepool debate is really only about what happens to 19GE BXP voters: so they mostly transfer to CON, or LAB, or stay with Farage, or stay at home? Either way, we're all taking the 19GE result as the starting point, which is presumably after (or at least when) your supposed "new politics" started.
Overreaching? Possibly, but I don't think so. Hartlepool is just one event. If the Cons win it - which I expect - I'll be looking for an OTT market reaction on GE24 and Starmer markets and taking advantage.
I disagree btw that everyone is taking GE19 as their start point. That is exactly what lots of people are not doing. One hears much by way of "total DISASTER if they can't hold a rock solid working class northern seat like this!" and "losing Hartlepool spells DOOM!"
If you base your analysis on what happened at GE19 you would not come out with stuff like that.
The market reaction is a very good point. We don’t have anything like so significant a set of elections again until the GE do we? That being the case, it seems quite likely that May will trigger the low point of Starmer’s assessed chances on the market. He’s bound to have some better days ahead to move things around.
Alternatively he doesn't have better days ahead and there's a leadership challenge.
Starmer won the leadership in large part because he was considered a potential election winner who could forensically take on Boris. If on the other hand Starmer continues to decline and continues to be disliked even by his own voters then that's got to open up the potential for a challenge.
Labour aren't great at ousting leaders, but there seems to be little actual love for Starmer.
Good point on my Twitter feed... ...It's pretty hard to claim there's a vast conspiracy to suppress secret deaths and side effects when the whole damn system literally stops because it found 6 cases of a thing out of 7 million doses....
Though actually it ought to say that it's pretty hard to justify such a claim....
I'm late to the party on it but glad to see the speed up of some lifting of restrictions in Scotland, even if it feels like the very least that could be done. I will actually be able to meet up with a group of friends outside of my council area now for the first time in a long time, so something to look forward to finally.
Considering that until very recently the Scottish unlock roadmap asserted that even in middle of June you would only be able to have outdoor meetings of 8 people from 3 households, it feels like someone has had a bite of the sensible pill with this change coming for Friday.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
Besides which, 1. EU states can't deploy the Janssen jab, regardless of how eager they are to do so and whether or not they set an age limit for its use, so long as the company itself isn't willing to supply; and 2. if it ends up getting tarred with the same brush as AZ they're going to have trouble getting a lot of people to accept it.
Between this and the Sanofi fail, the Commission has been cursed by bad luck as well as bad judgment.
The issue is that they didn't get a backup for Sanofi. We also have deals with Sanofi, J&J and AZ for 60m, 52m and 100m doses respectively. On a per capita basis our programme is actually more reliant on those three vaccines. However, we also had a backup for Sanofi flopping and did a large deal with Novavax. That's what's missing from the EU scheme, their backup deal is with CureVac which has yet to give a first look at efficacy data. At the time these contracts were signed the Novavax delivery was set for around early Q2 and CureVac around end Q3. That's what will make the difference for us.
At the rate things are going, our Valneva order may come in handy...
I'm late to the party on it but glad to see the speed up of some lifting of restrictions in Scotland, even if it feels like the very least that could be done. I will actually be able to meet up with a group of friends outside of my council area now for the first time in a long time, so something to look forward to finally.
Considering that until very recently the Scottish unlock roadmap asserted that even in middle of June you would only be able to have outdoor meetings of 8 people from 3 households, it feels like someone has had a bite of the sensible pill with this change coming for Friday.
As always, the easiest way to determine what Sturgeon is going to do is look at what England's doing and pick the opposite. A follower not a leader.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
And us? I can't remember if we were relying on J&J....
We're not. Our programme is reliant on Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax. From now until the end of July. That covers all of the remaining 20m adults under 50 who still need it.
However, we are relying on Pfizer FROM THE EU
If this J&J decision imperils the EU's vax drive, again, then there must be a risk they will seize our Pfizer supplies, even tho that will kill Brits
Leon, you're panicking again. Relax a bit! I don't think we're at any more risk of the EU playing silly buggers than we were yesterday.
I'm really NOT panicking. I'm sipping tea and calmly speculating
Jolly good. Speculate away. Your tone sounded panicky. And you have perhaps the teensiest tendency to swing from euphoria to despair and back again, and seem on the cusp of a downswing. And I'm concerned that that might lead to a) unnecessary sadness, and b) vital artisanal flint products going unknapped. But if it's just calm speculation, speculate calmly away.
In other news, I have just been out for a lunchtime constitutional with my wife, where we discovered two juvenile squirrels which had fallen out of a tree, thirty yards or so apart. Both were unmoving; one seemed (so far as I am any judge) hurt). Along with a small committee of passers-by, we moved them out of the road, then - what do you do next? My wife called the RSPCA - because she is the sort of person who can't simply leave a wounded animal to an uncertain future - and reunited the squirrels, who seemed overjoyed to be reunited; grooming each other furiously then settling down for a cuddle and a snooze. Then the RSPCA arrived, thanked us for getting involved, and announced that they would euthanise the squirrels. I can't help feeling slightly let down. It wasn't the ending of the story that I wanted. Though I'm not sure, realistically, how things might have turned out better.
What a sad story. I would have released them into the wild, giving them a tiny chance. But I see your dilemma
Yes, I think knowing what we now know, we would have done that too. At least, the one which wasn't injured. But I'm not sure we would have been right to do so. Probably best they have a clean quick end at the hands of the RSPCA than a violent one at the hands of a cat or dog, or a long starvation.
There's no good answer. But deciding, even inadvertently, who the winners and losers will be sits uneasy.
Btw, thanks for your flattering (!) assessment of my age as 35. That is so much better to hear than Pagan's impression of me as being 85. The truth, as so often in life, lies somewhere in between. Almost exactly so in fact. Odd sort of age really.
I'm late to the party on it but glad to see the speed up of some lifting of restrictions in Scotland, even if it feels like the very least that could be done. I will actually be able to meet up with a group of friends outside of my council area now for the first time in a long time, so something to look forward to finally.
Considering that until very recently the Scottish unlock roadmap asserted that even in middle of June you would only be able to have outdoor meetings of 8 people from 3 households, it feels like someone has had a bite of the sensible pill with this change coming for Friday.
As always, the easiest way to determine what Sturgeon is going to do is look at what England's doing and pick the opposite. A follower not a leader.
She deliberately engineered 2/3s of England's Covid death rate just to be different. Shockingly passive.
Green + SPD + Left doesn't have the votes in most polls.
I think I read on twitter that AFD are now going for an overtly Deuxit policy which will put them even further from discussions of potential coalitions.
Yes, because that it obviously more objectionable than the rest of their views.
Johnson's net approval with Conservative voters is +63
'Tis but a flesh wound...
That is of 2019 Labour voters though, some 2019 LD voters are now voting Labour and some 2019 Labour voters are now voting Green
Just humour him.
I read your analysis with interest, you confirm the visceral fears of a Tory foot soldier, and sometimes it gives me hope from the other side of the fence. Far more interesting than someone trolling from his student bedsit.
'H' is a good analyst. I don't mind being out on a limb but it was comforting to find him sharing much of my 'new politics new punditry' perspective on Hartlepool and the wider post Brexit political landscape. We both recognize in our opposite but equally shrewd and dispassionate ways that a Labour hold there is not the most likely outcome and should it happen would be a genuine boost for the party's longer term GE24 prospects. Others, meanwhile, either cling to the old mantras and fail to put their thinking cap on, or allow partisanship to drive their punditry and predictions. And that's perfectly ok. There's no shame in that at all.
I think you're overreaching. The Hartlepool debate is really only about what happens to 19GE BXP voters: so they mostly transfer to CON, or LAB, or stay with Farage, or stay at home? Either way, we're all taking the 19GE result as the starting point, which is presumably after (or at least when) your supposed "new politics" started.
Overreaching? Possibly, but I don't think so. Hartlepool is just one event. If the Cons win it - which I expect - I'll be looking for an OTT market reaction on GE24 and Starmer markets and taking advantage.
I disagree btw that everyone is taking GE19 as their start point. That is exactly what lots of people are not doing. One hears much by way of "total DISASTER if they can't hold a rock solid working class northern seat like this!" and "losing Hartlepool spells DOOM!"
If you base your analysis on what happened at GE19 you would not come out with stuff like that.
The market reaction is a very good point. We don’t have anything like so significant a set of elections again until the GE do we? That being the case, it seems quite likely that May will trigger the low point of Starmer’s assessed chances on the market. He’s bound to have some better days ahead to move things around.
Yes. And if you share my confidence that Next PM is a 2 horse race, Johnson or Starmer, because they'll both still be there for GE24 (or 23), then the current Starmer price of 6 is excellent, let alone if it goes any higher. You'll be able to lay it back at half that well before the election.
Blimey, I had lost touch, is he really available at 6? I’ll go and look. Agreed on all counts.
Thank you.
Just had a look. It was 6 yesterday but it's shot in to 5.4 now.
I'm late to the party on it but glad to see the speed up of some lifting of restrictions in Scotland, even if it feels like the very least that could be done. I will actually be able to meet up with a group of friends outside of my council area now for the first time in a long time, so something to look forward to finally.
Considering that until very recently the Scottish unlock roadmap asserted that even in middle of June you would only be able to have outdoor meetings of 8 people from 3 households, it feels like someone has had a bite of the sensible pill with this change coming for Friday.
Polling must have been terrible for the SNP.....! 😉
I'm late to the party on it but glad to see the speed up of some lifting of restrictions in Scotland, even if it feels like the very least that could be done. I will actually be able to meet up with a group of friends outside of my council area now for the first time in a long time, so something to look forward to finally.
Considering that until very recently the Scottish unlock roadmap asserted that even in middle of June you would only be able to have outdoor meetings of 8 people from 3 households, it feels like someone has had a bite of the sensible pill with this change coming for Friday.
As always, the easiest way to determine what Sturgeon is going to do is look at what England's doing and pick the opposite. A follower not a leader.
She deliberately engineered 2/3s of England's Covid death rate just to be different. Shockingly passive.
Scotland population density 65 per sq km. England population density 450 per sq km.
Johnson's net approval with Conservative voters is +63
'Tis but a flesh wound...
That is of 2019 Labour voters though, some 2019 LD voters are now voting Labour and some 2019 Labour voters are now voting Green
Just humour him.
I read your analysis with interest, you confirm the visceral fears of a Tory foot soldier, and sometimes it gives me hope from the other side of the fence. Far more interesting than someone trolling from his student bedsit.
'H' is a good analyst. I don't mind being out on a limb but it was comforting to find him sharing much of my 'new politics new punditry' perspective on Hartlepool and the wider post Brexit political landscape. We both recognize in our opposite but equally shrewd and dispassionate ways that a Labour hold there is not the most likely outcome and should it happen would be a genuine boost for the party's longer term GE24 prospects. Others, meanwhile, either cling to the old mantras and fail to put their thinking cap on, or allow partisanship to drive their punditry and predictions. And that's perfectly ok. There's no shame in that at all.
I think you're overreaching. The Hartlepool debate is really only about what happens to 19GE BXP voters: so they mostly transfer to CON, or LAB, or stay with Farage, or stay at home? Either way, we're all taking the 19GE result as the starting point, which is presumably after (or at least when) your supposed "new politics" started.
Overreaching? Possibly, but I don't think so. Hartlepool is just one event. If the Cons win it - which I expect - I'll be looking for an OTT market reaction on GE24 and Starmer markets and taking advantage.
I disagree btw that everyone is taking GE19 as their start point. That is exactly what lots of people are not doing. One hears much by way of "total DISASTER if they can't hold a rock solid working class northern seat like this!" and "losing Hartlepool spells DOOM!"
If you base your analysis on what happened at GE19 you would not come out with stuff like that.
I don't agree. Losing Hartlepool means having gone backwards since the election, and it means Starmer hasn't reversed Labour's fortunes.
Starmer's main job is to win back as many as possible of the Northern working class seats as possible, and if he starts off by losing one even Corbyn won then it doesn't bode well for his chances at the others. That's the argument being made.
I'm late to the party on it but glad to see the speed up of some lifting of restrictions in Scotland, even if it feels like the very least that could be done. I will actually be able to meet up with a group of friends outside of my council area now for the first time in a long time, so something to look forward to finally.
Considering that until very recently the Scottish unlock roadmap asserted that even in middle of June you would only be able to have outdoor meetings of 8 people from 3 households, it feels like someone has had a bite of the sensible pill with this change coming for Friday.
As always, the easiest way to determine what Sturgeon is going to do is look at what England's doing and pick the opposite. A follower not a leader.
She deliberately engineered 2/3s of England's Covid death rate just to be different. Shockingly passive.
England's a big place. Many English regions, with comparable populations/demographics to Scotland - have lower rates, certainly lower than the Central Belt. Struggling to think of anywhere in UK with the low life expectancy and drugs deaths of Glasgow, for instance. The truth is that simple comparisons are misleading.
I'm late to the party on it but glad to see the speed up of some lifting of restrictions in Scotland, even if it feels like the very least that could be done. I will actually be able to meet up with a group of friends outside of my council area now for the first time in a long time, so something to look forward to finally.
Considering that until very recently the Scottish unlock roadmap asserted that even in middle of June you would only be able to have outdoor meetings of 8 people from 3 households, it feels like someone has had a bite of the sensible pill with this change coming for Friday.
As always, the easiest way to determine what Sturgeon is going to do is look at what England's doing and pick the opposite. A follower not a leader.
She deliberately engineered 2/3s of England's Covid death rate just to be different. Shockingly passive.
Scotland population density 65 per sq km. England population density 450 per sq km.
You were blithely stating that the 40 miles between Glasgow and Edinburgh were empty yesterday, not even an F for your level of Scotch expertise I'm afraid.
23 deaths on Murder Tuesday. Why are we still semi locked down?
If it all goes wrong, it will be because of things happening some months in the future, not because of permutations of the situation now, especially with so little foreign travel. Make hay while the sun shines. Unless we really are waiting for Barnsley?
Yoons in the South of Scotland denied the chance to see the silky skills of their man Doogie. They'll be missing the chance of hearing him explain how his party blocking Holyrood legislation in Westminster that his party supported in Holyrood is a good thing.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
Have we actually banned AZ for the U30s, or just said that they have to be offered an alternative? If an U30 is happy to take it, can they do so?
One of the things i was concerned about the change in policy was that lots of people were saying "it's ok because we've got lots of vaccines coming on track". But that's a very risky strategy when we have no idea about the potential safety risks of the new vaccines. If we've set the bar at the extremely low level of AZ, as demonstrated through vaccination of 10s of millions of people, then it isn't surprising that we are going to get issues with the new ones as they come on line.
Johnson's net approval with Conservative voters is +63
'Tis but a flesh wound...
That is of 2019 Labour voters though, some 2019 LD voters are now voting Labour and some 2019 Labour voters are now voting Green
Just humour him.
I read your analysis with interest, you confirm the visceral fears of a Tory foot soldier, and sometimes it gives me hope from the other side of the fence. Far more interesting than someone trolling from his student bedsit.
'H' is a good analyst. I don't mind being out on a limb but it was comforting to find him sharing much of my 'new politics new punditry' perspective on Hartlepool and the wider post Brexit political landscape. We both recognize in our opposite but equally shrewd and dispassionate ways that a Labour hold there is not the most likely outcome and should it happen would be a genuine boost for the party's longer term GE24 prospects. Others, meanwhile, either cling to the old mantras and fail to put their thinking cap on, or allow partisanship to drive their punditry and predictions. And that's perfectly ok. There's no shame in that at all.
I think you're overreaching. The Hartlepool debate is really only about what happens to 19GE BXP voters: so they mostly transfer to CON, or LAB, or stay with Farage, or stay at home? Either way, we're all taking the 19GE result as the starting point, which is presumably after (or at least when) your supposed "new politics" started.
Overreaching? Possibly, but I don't think so. Hartlepool is just one event. If the Cons win it - which I expect - I'll be looking for an OTT market reaction on GE24 and Starmer markets and taking advantage.
I disagree btw that everyone is taking GE19 as their start point. That is exactly what lots of people are not doing. One hears much by way of "total DISASTER if they can't hold a rock solid working class northern seat like this!" and "losing Hartlepool spells DOOM!"
If you base your analysis on what happened at GE19 you would not come out with stuff like that.
I don't agree. Losing Hartlepool means having gone backwards since the election, and it means Starmer hasn't reversed Labour's fortunes.
Starmer's main job is to win back as many as possible of the Northern working class seats as possible, and if he starts off by losing one even Corbyn won then it doesn't bode well for his chances at the others. That's the argument being made.
No Labour leader has ever lost the first by-election after being elected leader where his party were incumbents
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
Have we actually banned AZ for the U30s, or just said that they have to be offered an alternative? If an U30 is happy to take it, can they do so?
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
Have we actually banned AZ for the U30s, or just said that they have to be offered an alternative? If an U30 is happy to take it, can they do so?
They won't get provisioned.
Apologies Max, i don't understand what that means?
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
Have we actually banned AZ for the U30s, or just said that they have to be offered an alternative? If an U30 is happy to take it, can they do so?
They won't get provisioned.
Apologies Max, i don't understand what that means?
I believe that they will be assigned a different vaccine by the booking system.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
I agree with you, however, I'm not convinced that the EU won't fumble from here as well.
On our roll out I think it will be around there when we reach herd immunity and then and 90%+ fully vaccinated by the middle of July.
The worry I have for Europe is that other countries will consider it a hotzone and not allow their citizens to travel there until after the summer which will basically put Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Southern Italy under water. I could see the UK government only selectively reopen to the US, Israel and other high vaccination countries.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
Have we actually banned AZ for the U30s, or just said that they have to be offered an alternative? If an U30 is happy to take it, can they do so?
They won't get provisioned.
Apologies Max, i don't understand what that means?
I believe that they will be assigned a different vaccine by the booking system.
Ah OK. However one under-reported feature of the vaccine rollout is the number of people (ok probably not massive) who have got vaccines "by chance". GP surgeries pretty much grabbing people off the street to avoid vaccine wasteage at the end of the day etc. At the moment U30s cannot book through the website, but they can potentially be grabbed off the street. If this happened would a surgery be allowed to given them a spare AZ vaccine, if they were happy to have it?
I suppose it wouldn't be worth the risk, given that "officially" surgeries aren't supposed to be venturing outside the approved list. Even though everyone knows it's been going on.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
Have we actually banned AZ for the U30s, or just said that they have to be offered an alternative? If an U30 is happy to take it, can they do so?
They won't get provisioned.
Apologies Max, i don't understand what that means?
We have an automated provisioning system so it's actually a really easy change to the code to deprovision under 30s and completely deprovision it from first dose usage after around the end of May when the 12 week necessary gap between doses becomes impractical.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
I agree with you, however, I'm not convinced that the EU won't fumble from here as well.
On our roll out I think it will be around there when we reach herd immunity and then and 90%+ fully vaccinated by the middle of July.
The worry I have for Europe is that other countries will consider it a hotzone and not allow their citizens to travel there until after the summer which will basically put Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Southern Italy under water. I could see the UK government only selectively reopen to the US, Israel and other high vaccination countries.
They still keep making odd decisions. Denmark had a 'stress test' in February to get their system ready to handle an avalanche of vaccines in April, before slowing their rollout down significantly. Now that April is here, they've done another 'stress test' in anticipation of an avalanche of supply to arrive in June.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
The EU will achieve "practical completion" less than three months after the UK. The problem is as follows:
The UK will reach the end of May at 80-90% completion of first doses (maybe slightly higher), will then probably make one final attempt at getting the vaccine refusers to have a jab, and then give up. By the end of the summer, all the second doses will have been given and we'll probably get those to 70-85% of adults.
Israel seems to have maxed out at 60% of the population. That is starting to look like being enough, in conjunction with the people who've already caught the virus and gained some immunity, although there are still questions how long that lasts and how much protection it gives to new variants. It helps that the people who are more likely to refuse the vaccine are also more likely to have caught the virus (either because they're generally thick, or just now think they don't need it).
The US will probably top out around the same level as, maybe a tad higher than, Israel. This will probably also be enough, given that the demographics who won't want one also believe the virus is a hoax, and mostly don't live in the places that matter as far as contagion is concerned (ie cities).
The big question is where the EU will top out. Once the US is done, you're correct that supply won't be an issue, and with a smaller gap between doses they'll probably finish quite soon after us. However, the continued negative press around side effects is going to destroy any hope they have of achieving the UK's take-up rate, and there's a good chance they'll end up well behind the US as well. That may or may not be good enough for herd immunity - my guess would be it won't, especially because the likelihood of refusing a vaccine is likely correlated with likelihood of being at risk, and/or living in populated areas. Or at least it won't be negatively correlated with those things.
The real bad news for the EU today is not the supply issues; it's about the demand side. And this is why they were so unbelievably stupid to denigrate the AstraZeneca vaccine so heavily and so publicly - with a second vaccine now in the spotlight for the same reasons, there is a real risk that EU citizens will no longer trust any vaccine they are to be given. This is a disaster for them.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
I agree with you, however, I'm not convinced that the EU won't fumble from here as well.
On our roll out I think it will be around there when we reach herd immunity and then and 90%+ fully vaccinated by the middle of July.
The worry I have for Europe is that other countries will consider it a hotzone and not allow their citizens to travel there until after the summer which will basically put Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Southern Italy under water. I could see the UK government only selectively reopen to the US, Israel and other high vaccination countries.
They still keep making odd decisions. Denmark had a 'stress test' in February to get their system ready to handle an avalanche of vaccines in April, before slowing their rollout down significantly. Now that April is here, they've done another 'stress test' in anticipation of an avalanche of supply to arrive in June.
That June date is related to J&J and AZ backloading Q2 deliveries to June.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
I agree with you, however, I'm not convinced that the EU won't fumble from here as well.
On our roll out I think it will be around there when we reach herd immunity and then and 90%+ fully vaccinated by the middle of July.
The worry I have for Europe is that other countries will consider it a hotzone and not allow their citizens to travel there until after the summer which will basically put Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Southern Italy under water. I could see the UK government only selectively reopen to the US, Israel and other high vaccination countries.
Sure, I think that's spot on. And that means that the Italian, Spanish, and Greek tourist industries get hammered this year.
I also think you're unduly pessimistic about the UK. Once you start adding some J&J in there, and the Moderna doses, it's hard not to see us back to close to 1m shots a day by early May. Which means practical completion is there by the end of the Month. Sure, we'll still be vaccinating people after that date. But once you get to 60+% of the people fully vaccinated, then, for all intents and purposes, you're done.
The tough one for the US-UK (and I speak as someone directly affected) is that you are seeing rates of vaccine hesitancy in some states that rival France. And I think the solution is simply going to be that travel is going to be largely restricted to double dosed people (and the same applies to travel between the Continent and the UK).
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
Have we actually banned AZ for the U30s, or just said that they have to be offered an alternative? If an U30 is happy to take it, can they do so?
One of the things i was concerned about the change in policy was that lots of people were saying "it's ok because we've got lots of vaccines coming on track". But that's a very risky strategy when we have no idea about the potential safety risks of the new vaccines. If we've set the bar at the extremely low level of AZ, as demonstrated through vaccination of 10s of millions of people, then it isn't surprising that we are going to get issues with the new ones as they come on line.
The largest number of new vaccines coming on stream in the UK is Moderna, and that's been given to tens of millions of Americans already, and there is ample data about side effects.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
Besides which, 1. EU states can't deploy the Janssen jab, regardless of how eager they are to do so and whether or not they set an age limit for its use, so long as the company itself isn't willing to supply; and 2. if it ends up getting tarred with the same brush as AZ they're going to have trouble getting a lot of people to accept it.
Between this and the Sanofi fail, the Commission has been cursed by bad luck as well as bad judgment.
The issue is that they didn't get a backup for Sanofi. We also have deals with Sanofi, J&J and AZ for 60m, 52m and 100m doses respectively. On a per capita basis our programme is actually more reliant on those three vaccines. However, we also had a backup for Sanofi flopping and did a large deal with Novavax. That's what's missing from the EU scheme, their backup deal is with CureVac which has yet to give a first look at efficacy data. At the time these contracts were signed the Novavax delivery was set for around early Q2 and CureVac around end Q3. That's what will make the difference for us.
This, and the other basic equipment delays in vaccine production seem to be quite a large failure of procurement planning. You can understand a new player like Novavax making mistakes, but what were governments and the larger industry doing in not stockpiling such basic kit over the last year ? Compared to the total outlays on vaccines, it would have been a rounding error in cash terms.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
Besides which, 1. EU states can't deploy the Janssen jab, regardless of how eager they are to do so and whether or not they set an age limit for its use, so long as the company itself isn't willing to supply; and 2. if it ends up getting tarred with the same brush as AZ they're going to have trouble getting a lot of people to accept it.
Between this and the Sanofi fail, the Commission has been cursed by bad luck as well as bad judgment.
The issue is that they didn't get a backup for Sanofi. We also have deals with Sanofi, J&J and AZ for 60m, 52m and 100m doses respectively. On a per capita basis our programme is actually more reliant on those three vaccines. However, we also had a backup for Sanofi flopping and did a large deal with Novavax. That's what's missing from the EU scheme, their backup deal is with CureVac which has yet to give a first look at efficacy data. At the time these contracts were signed the Novavax delivery was set for around early Q2 and CureVac around end Q3. That's what will make the difference for us.
This, and the other basic equipment delays in vaccine production seem to be quite a large failure of procurement planning. You can understand a new player like Novavax making mistakes, but what were governments and the larger industry doing in not stockpiling such basic kit over the last year ? Compared to the total outlays on vaccines, it would have been a rounding error in cash terms.
The UK took steps like pre-booking dedicated fill and finish capacity for an 18 month period and the vaccine task force was looking at the whole supply chain.
Johnson's net approval with Conservative voters is +63
'Tis but a flesh wound...
That is of 2019 Labour voters though, some 2019 LD voters are now voting Labour and some 2019 Labour voters are now voting Green
Just humour him.
I read your analysis with interest, you confirm the visceral fears of a Tory foot soldier, and sometimes it gives me hope from the other side of the fence. Far more interesting than someone trolling from his student bedsit.
'H' is a good analyst. I don't mind being out on a limb but it was comforting to find him sharing much of my 'new politics new punditry' perspective on Hartlepool and the wider post Brexit political landscape. We both recognize in our opposite but equally shrewd and dispassionate ways that a Labour hold there is not the most likely outcome and should it happen would be a genuine boost for the party's longer term GE24 prospects. Others, meanwhile, either cling to the old mantras and fail to put their thinking cap on, or allow partisanship to drive their punditry and predictions. And that's perfectly ok. There's no shame in that at all.
I think you're overreaching. The Hartlepool debate is really only about what happens to 19GE BXP voters: so they mostly transfer to CON, or LAB, or stay with Farage, or stay at home? Either way, we're all taking the 19GE result as the starting point, which is presumably after (or at least when) your supposed "new politics" started.
Overreaching? Possibly, but I don't think so. Hartlepool is just one event. If the Cons win it - which I expect - I'll be looking for an OTT market reaction on GE24 and Starmer markets and taking advantage.
I disagree btw that everyone is taking GE19 as their start point. That is exactly what lots of people are not doing. One hears much by way of "total DISASTER if they can't hold a rock solid working class northern seat like this!" and "losing Hartlepool spells DOOM!"
If you base your analysis on what happened at GE19 you would not come out with stuff like that.
The market reaction is a very good point. We don’t have anything like so significant a set of elections again until the GE do we? That being the case, it seems quite likely that May will trigger the low point of Starmer’s assessed chances on the market. He’s bound to have some better days ahead to move things around.
Yes. And if you share my confidence that Next PM is a 2 horse race, Johnson or Starmer, because they'll both still be there for GE24 (or 23), then the current Starmer price of 6 is excellent, let alone if it goes any higher. You'll be able to lay it back at half that well before the election.
Blimey, I had lost touch, is he really available at 6? I’ll go and look. Agreed on all counts.
Thank you.
Just had a look. It was 6 yesterday but it's shot in to 5.4 now.
Our exchange has clearly moved the market.
Next time we need to PM first and fund my house extension.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
The EU will achieve "practical completion" less than three months after the UK. The problem is as follows:
The UK will reach the end of May at 80-90% completion of first doses (maybe slightly higher), will then probably make one final attempt at getting the vaccine refusers to have a jab, and then give up. By the end of the summer, all the second doses will have been given and we'll probably get those to 70-85% of adults.
Israel seems to have maxed out at 60% of the population. That is starting to look like being enough, in conjunction with the people who've already caught the virus and gained some immunity, although there are still questions how long that lasts and how much protection it gives to new variants. It helps that the people who are more likely to refuse the vaccine are also more likely to have caught the virus (either because they're generally thick, or just now think they don't need it).
The US will probably top out around the same level as, maybe a tad higher than, Israel. This will probably also be enough, given that the demographics who won't want one also believe the virus is a hoax, and mostly don't live in the places that matter as far as contagion is concerned (ie cities).
The big question is where the EU will top out. Once the US is done, you're correct that supply won't be an issue, and with a smaller gap between doses they'll probably finish quite soon after us. However, the continued negative press around side effects is going to destroy any hope they have of achieving the UK's take-up rate, and there's a good chance they'll end up well behind the US as well. That may or may not be good enough for herd immunity - my guess would be it won't, especially because the likelihood of refusing a vaccine is likely correlated with likelihood of being at risk, and/or living in populated areas. Or at least it won't be negatively correlated with those things.
The real bad news for the EU today is not the supply issues; it's about the demand side. And this is why they were so unbelievably stupid to denigrate the AstraZeneca vaccine so heavily and so publicly - with a second vaccine now in the spotlight for the same reasons, there is a real risk that EU citizens will no longer trust any vaccine they are to be given. This is a disaster for them.
How about a small wager?
I reckon vaccine take up in the EU this year (as a percent of adult population) will be higher than the US.
Johnson's net approval with Conservative voters is +63
'Tis but a flesh wound...
That is of 2019 Labour voters though, some 2019 LD voters are now voting Labour and some 2019 Labour voters are now voting Green
Just humour him.
I read your analysis with interest, you confirm the visceral fears of a Tory foot soldier, and sometimes it gives me hope from the other side of the fence. Far more interesting than someone trolling from his student bedsit.
'H' is a good analyst. I don't mind being out on a limb but it was comforting to find him sharing much of my 'new politics new punditry' perspective on Hartlepool and the wider post Brexit political landscape. We both recognize in our opposite but equally shrewd and dispassionate ways that a Labour hold there is not the most likely outcome and should it happen would be a genuine boost for the party's longer term GE24 prospects. Others, meanwhile, either cling to the old mantras and fail to put their thinking cap on, or allow partisanship to drive their punditry and predictions. And that's perfectly ok. There's no shame in that at all.
I think you're overreaching. The Hartlepool debate is really only about what happens to 19GE BXP voters: so they mostly transfer to CON, or LAB, or stay with Farage, or stay at home? Either way, we're all taking the 19GE result as the starting point, which is presumably after (or at least when) your supposed "new politics" started.
Overreaching? Possibly, but I don't think so. Hartlepool is just one event. If the Cons win it - which I expect - I'll be looking for an OTT market reaction on GE24 and Starmer markets and taking advantage.
I disagree btw that everyone is taking GE19 as their start point. That is exactly what lots of people are not doing. One hears much by way of "total DISASTER if they can't hold a rock solid working class northern seat like this!" and "losing Hartlepool spells DOOM!"
If you base your analysis on what happened at GE19 you would not come out with stuff like that.
I don't agree. Losing Hartlepool means having gone backwards since the election, and it means Starmer hasn't reversed Labour's fortunes.
Starmer's main job is to win back as many as possible of the Northern working class seats as possible, and if he starts off by losing one even Corbyn won then it doesn't bode well for his chances at the others. That's the argument being made.
But it's an argument that doesn't stack up. Hartlepool would likely have turned blue at GE19 were it not for the BXP putting their leader up there and going hard for the seat. Remove that, and add in the vaccine bounce and a good hard Brexit recently delivered as those BXP voters wanted, and what you've got is a seat that should go Tory.
If it doesn't, if Labour hold it despite everything, which they might and I hope they do, this will bode well for them. It will indicate progress since the election and potential to make more as time passes and both "getting Brexit done" and the pandemic recede into memory to be replaced by the long dreary hangover from both.
Yoons in the South of Scotland denied the chance to see the silky skills of their man Doogie. They'll be missing the chance of hearing him explain how his party blocking Holyrood legislation in Westminster that his party supported in Holyrood is a good thing.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
The EU will achieve "practical completion" less than three months after the UK. The problem is as follows:
The UK will reach the end of May at 80-90% completion of first doses (maybe slightly higher), will then probably make one final attempt at getting the vaccine refusers to have a jab, and then give up. By the end of the summer, all the second doses will have been given and we'll probably get those to 70-85% of adults.
Israel seems to have maxed out at 60% of the population. That is starting to look like being enough, in conjunction with the people who've already caught the virus and gained some immunity, although there are still questions how long that lasts and how much protection it gives to new variants. It helps that the people who are more likely to refuse the vaccine are also more likely to have caught the virus (either because they're generally thick, or just now think they don't need it).
The US will probably top out around the same level as, maybe a tad higher than, Israel. This will probably also be enough, given that the demographics who won't want one also believe the virus is a hoax, and mostly don't live in the places that matter as far as contagion is concerned (ie cities).
The big question is where the EU will top out. Once the US is done, you're correct that supply won't be an issue, and with a smaller gap between doses they'll probably finish quite soon after us. However, the continued negative press around side effects is going to destroy any hope they have of achieving the UK's take-up rate, and there's a good chance they'll end up well behind the US as well. That may or may not be good enough for herd immunity - my guess would be it won't, especially because the likelihood of refusing a vaccine is likely correlated with likelihood of being at risk, and/or living in populated areas. Or at least it won't be negatively correlated with those things.
The real bad news for the EU today is not the supply issues; it's about the demand side. And this is why they were so unbelievably stupid to denigrate the AstraZeneca vaccine so heavily and so publicly - with a second vaccine now in the spotlight for the same reasons, there is a real risk that EU citizens will no longer trust any vaccine they are to be given. This is a disaster for them.
How about a small wager?
I reckon vaccine take up in the EU this year (as a percent of adult population) will be higher than the US.
£100?
The data on historical flu vaccine coverage in the over-65s might be relevant. The equivalent figure for the US is around 65%, which is better than any current EU member state.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
I agree with you, however, I'm not convinced that the EU won't fumble from here as well.
On our roll out I think it will be around there when we reach herd immunity and then and 90%+ fully vaccinated by the middle of July.
The worry I have for Europe is that other countries will consider it a hotzone and not allow their citizens to travel there until after the summer which will basically put Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Southern Italy under water. I could see the UK government only selectively reopen to the US, Israel and other high vaccination countries.
Sure, I think that's spot on. And that means that the Italian, Spanish, and Greek tourist industries get hammered this year.
I also think you're unduly pessimistic about the UK. Once you start adding some J&J in there, and the Moderna doses, it's hard not to see us back to close to 1m shots a day by early May. Which means practical completion is there by the end of the Month. Sure, we'll still be vaccinating people after that date. But once you get to 60+% of the people fully vaccinated, then, for all intents and purposes, you're done.
The tough one for the US-UK (and I speak as someone directly affected) is that you are seeing rates of vaccine hesitancy in some states that rival France. And I think the solution is simply going to be that travel is going to be largely restricted to double dosed people (and the same applies to travel between the Continent and the UK).
I get the feeling we won't use any J&J, we've elected to defer delivery to Q3 or later for it already. I don't think we'd need it anyway. From my research we're set to have capacity of around 2.5m first doses per week in May and June from Novavax, Pfizer and Moderna combined (though Pfizer will drop of necessarily for second doses around the end of May as we'll have hit the wall).
By the end of May that means ~44m people will have had their first doses which around 83% of adults or 64% of the total population. By the end of June we'll have hit 95% of adults and and 75% of the population with first doses and somewhere around 80% of adults fully done.
The unlockdown schedule is going to be exactly right.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
Besides which, 1. EU states can't deploy the Janssen jab, regardless of how eager they are to do so and whether or not they set an age limit for its use, so long as the company itself isn't willing to supply; and 2. if it ends up getting tarred with the same brush as AZ they're going to have trouble getting a lot of people to accept it.
Between this and the Sanofi fail, the Commission has been cursed by bad luck as well as bad judgment.
The issue is that they didn't get a backup for Sanofi. We also have deals with Sanofi, J&J and AZ for 60m, 52m and 100m doses respectively. On a per capita basis our programme is actually more reliant on those three vaccines. However, we also had a backup for Sanofi flopping and did a large deal with Novavax. That's what's missing from the EU scheme, their backup deal is with CureVac which has yet to give a first look at efficacy data. At the time these contracts were signed the Novavax delivery was set for around early Q2 and CureVac around end Q3. That's what will make the difference for us.
This, and the other basic equipment delays in vaccine production seem to be quite a large failure of procurement planning. You can understand a new player like Novavax making mistakes, but what were governments and the larger industry doing in not stockpiling such basic kit over the last year ? Compared to the total outlays on vaccines, it would have been a rounding error in cash terms.
The UK took steps like pre-booking dedicated fill and finish capacity for an 18 month period and the vaccine task force was looking at the whole supply chain.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
The EU will achieve "practical completion" less than three months after the UK. The problem is as follows:
The UK will reach the end of May at 80-90% completion of first doses (maybe slightly higher), will then probably make one final attempt at getting the vaccine refusers to have a jab, and then give up. By the end of the summer, all the second doses will have been given and we'll probably get those to 70-85% of adults.
Israel seems to have maxed out at 60% of the population. That is starting to look like being enough, in conjunction with the people who've already caught the virus and gained some immunity, although there are still questions how long that lasts and how much protection it gives to new variants. It helps that the people who are more likely to refuse the vaccine are also more likely to have caught the virus (either because they're generally thick, or just now think they don't need it).
The US will probably top out around the same level as, maybe a tad higher than, Israel. This will probably also be enough, given that the demographics who won't want one also believe the virus is a hoax, and mostly don't live in the places that matter as far as contagion is concerned (ie cities).
The big question is where the EU will top out. Once the US is done, you're correct that supply won't be an issue, and with a smaller gap between doses they'll probably finish quite soon after us. However, the continued negative press around side effects is going to destroy any hope they have of achieving the UK's take-up rate, and there's a good chance they'll end up well behind the US as well. That may or may not be good enough for herd immunity - my guess would be it won't, especially because the likelihood of refusing a vaccine is likely correlated with likelihood of being at risk, and/or living in populated areas. Or at least it won't be negatively correlated with those things.
The real bad news for the EU today is not the supply issues; it's about the demand side. And this is why they were so unbelievably stupid to denigrate the AstraZeneca vaccine so heavily and so publicly - with a second vaccine now in the spotlight for the same reasons, there is a real risk that EU citizens will no longer trust any vaccine they are to be given. This is a disaster for them.
How about a small wager?
I reckon vaccine take up in the EU this year (as a percent of adult population) will be higher than the US.
£100?
Ooh, I just had another look at the figures, and turns out I hadn't realised how badly the US were doing on first doses (alternatively, how far along they were with second doses). So no thank you to that bet, but it just reduces my estimate of where the US ends up, rather than increasing my estimate for the EU.
On my weekly biosecurity call, the question of whether to take AZN came up. Interesting risk analysis take from the evolutionary virologist:
The thrombosis is a natural part of SARS-type infection, as well as a side effect of the adenovirus vaccines and occurs as a symptom at about the same rate as it appears as a vaccine ADR
Thus the risk calculus is altered to chance of infection x all symptoms risks plus thrombosis, vs risk of thrombosis from vaccine.
I.e. it tilts the calculus much further towards using the AZN vaccine if no other is available, even for those at higher risk of the thrombosis ADR
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
The EU will achieve "practical completion" less than three months after the UK. The problem is as follows:
The UK will reach the end of May at 80-90% completion of first doses (maybe slightly higher), will then probably make one final attempt at getting the vaccine refusers to have a jab, and then give up. By the end of the summer, all the second doses will have been given and we'll probably get those to 70-85% of adults.
Israel seems to have maxed out at 60% of the population. That is starting to look like being enough, in conjunction with the people who've already caught the virus and gained some immunity, although there are still questions how long that lasts and how much protection it gives to new variants. It helps that the people who are more likely to refuse the vaccine are also more likely to have caught the virus (either because they're generally thick, or just now think they don't need it).
The US will probably top out around the same level as, maybe a tad higher than, Israel. This will probably also be enough, given that the demographics who won't want one also believe the virus is a hoax, and mostly don't live in the places that matter as far as contagion is concerned (ie cities).
The big question is where the EU will top out. Once the US is done, you're correct that supply won't be an issue, and with a smaller gap between doses they'll probably finish quite soon after us. However, the continued negative press around side effects is going to destroy any hope they have of achieving the UK's take-up rate, and there's a good chance they'll end up well behind the US as well. That may or may not be good enough for herd immunity - my guess would be it won't, especially because the likelihood of refusing a vaccine is likely correlated with likelihood of being at risk, and/or living in populated areas. Or at least it won't be negatively correlated with those things.
The real bad news for the EU today is not the supply issues; it's about the demand side. And this is why they were so unbelievably stupid to denigrate the AstraZeneca vaccine so heavily and so publicly - with a second vaccine now in the spotlight for the same reasons, there is a real risk that EU citizens will no longer trust any vaccine they are to be given. This is a disaster for them.
How about a small wager?
I reckon vaccine take up in the EU this year (as a percent of adult population) will be higher than the US.
£100?
US hesitancy has been going down a lot because of the success of the rollout. I think J&J is done there though. They will now only use Pfizer, Moderna and maybe Novavax IMO.
Johnson's net approval with Conservative voters is +63
'Tis but a flesh wound...
That is of 2019 Labour voters though, some 2019 LD voters are now voting Labour and some 2019 Labour voters are now voting Green
Just humour him.
I read your analysis with interest, you confirm the visceral fears of a Tory foot soldier, and sometimes it gives me hope from the other side of the fence. Far more interesting than someone trolling from his student bedsit.
'H' is a good analyst. I don't mind being out on a limb but it was comforting to find him sharing much of my 'new politics new punditry' perspective on Hartlepool and the wider post Brexit political landscape. We both recognize in our opposite but equally shrewd and dispassionate ways that a Labour hold there is not the most likely outcome and should it happen would be a genuine boost for the party's longer term GE24 prospects. Others, meanwhile, either cling to the old mantras and fail to put their thinking cap on, or allow partisanship to drive their punditry and predictions. And that's perfectly ok. There's no shame in that at all.
I think you're overreaching. The Hartlepool debate is really only about what happens to 19GE BXP voters: so they mostly transfer to CON, or LAB, or stay with Farage, or stay at home? Either way, we're all taking the 19GE result as the starting point, which is presumably after (or at least when) your supposed "new politics" started.
Overreaching? Possibly, but I don't think so. Hartlepool is just one event. If the Cons win it - which I expect - I'll be looking for an OTT market reaction on GE24 and Starmer markets and taking advantage.
I disagree btw that everyone is taking GE19 as their start point. That is exactly what lots of people are not doing. One hears much by way of "total DISASTER if they can't hold a rock solid working class northern seat like this!" and "losing Hartlepool spells DOOM!"
If you base your analysis on what happened at GE19 you would not come out with stuff like that.
I don't agree. Losing Hartlepool means having gone backwards since the election, and it means Starmer hasn't reversed Labour's fortunes.
Starmer's main job is to win back as many as possible of the Northern working class seats as possible, and if he starts off by losing one even Corbyn won then it doesn't bode well for his chances at the others. That's the argument being made.
But it's an argument that doesn't stack up. Hartlepool would likely have turned blue at GE19 were it not for the BXP putting their leader up there and going hard for the seat. Remove that, and add in the vaccine bounce and a good hard Brexit recently delivered as those BXP voters wanted, and what you've got is a seat that should go Tory.
If it doesn't, if Labour hold it despite everything, which they might and I hope they do, this will bode well for them. It will indicate progress since the election and potential to make more as time passes and both "getting Brexit done" and the pandemic recede into memory to be replaced by the long dreary hangover from both.
Your second sentence is the argument. It's possible that BXP overperforming in Hartlepool in 2019 flattered the Tories' second place, rather than causing it. We don't know who those voters will go for this time, but if they don't pick Labour, it doesn't say much for Starmer's appeal and gives us a clue as to how similar-minded voters will behave in 2024.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
The EU will achieve "practical completion" less than three months after the UK. The problem is as follows:
The UK will reach the end of May at 80-90% completion of first doses (maybe slightly higher), will then probably make one final attempt at getting the vaccine refusers to have a jab, and then give up. By the end of the summer, all the second doses will have been given and we'll probably get those to 70-85% of adults.
Israel seems to have maxed out at 60% of the population. That is starting to look like being enough, in conjunction with the people who've already caught the virus and gained some immunity, although there are still questions how long that lasts and how much protection it gives to new variants. It helps that the people who are more likely to refuse the vaccine are also more likely to have caught the virus (either because they're generally thick, or just now think they don't need it).
The US will probably top out around the same level as, maybe a tad higher than, Israel. This will probably also be enough, given that the demographics who won't want one also believe the virus is a hoax, and mostly don't live in the places that matter as far as contagion is concerned (ie cities).
The big question is where the EU will top out. Once the US is done, you're correct that supply won't be an issue, and with a smaller gap between doses they'll probably finish quite soon after us. However, the continued negative press around side effects is going to destroy any hope they have of achieving the UK's take-up rate, and there's a good chance they'll end up well behind the US as well. That may or may not be good enough for herd immunity - my guess would be it won't, especially because the likelihood of refusing a vaccine is likely correlated with likelihood of being at risk, and/or living in populated areas. Or at least it won't be negatively correlated with those things.
The real bad news for the EU today is not the supply issues; it's about the demand side. And this is why they were so unbelievably stupid to denigrate the AstraZeneca vaccine so heavily and so publicly - with a second vaccine now in the spotlight for the same reasons, there is a real risk that EU citizens will no longer trust any vaccine they are to be given. This is a disaster for them.
How about a small wager?
I reckon vaccine take up in the EU this year (as a percent of adult population) will be higher than the US.
£100?
The data on historical flu vaccine coverage in the over-65s might be relevant. The equivalent figure for the US is around 65%, which is better than any current EU member state.
I think you're wrong, for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, there is much broader concerns in certain communities about the CV19 vaccine than there is about the flu shot.
Secondly, the consequences of not having a CV19 vaccine will be much greater for people in the EU, than those in the US. Most Americans don't travel. So, if you're in Texas what's the incentive to get a CV19 vaccine shot, unless you are genuinely scared about getting the disease. By contrast, if you want to jump on a plane to Tenerife in Europe, you will need to have been vaccinated.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
I agree with you, however, I'm not convinced that the EU won't fumble from here as well.
On our roll out I think it will be around there when we reach herd immunity and then and 90%+ fully vaccinated by the middle of July.
The worry I have for Europe is that other countries will consider it a hotzone and not allow their citizens to travel there until after the summer which will basically put Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Southern Italy under water. I could see the UK government only selectively reopen to the US, Israel and other high vaccination countries.
Sure, I think that's spot on. And that means that the Italian, Spanish, and Greek tourist industries get hammered this year.
I also think you're unduly pessimistic about the UK. Once you start adding some J&J in there, and the Moderna doses, it's hard not to see us back to close to 1m shots a day by early May. Which means practical completion is there by the end of the Month. Sure, we'll still be vaccinating people after that date. But once you get to 60+% of the people fully vaccinated, then, for all intents and purposes, you're done.
The tough one for the US-UK (and I speak as someone directly affected) is that you are seeing rates of vaccine hesitancy in some states that rival France. And I think the solution is simply going to be that travel is going to be largely restricted to double dosed people (and the same applies to travel between the Continent and the UK).
I get the feeling we won't use any J&J, we've elected to defer delivery to Q3 or later for it already. I don't think we'd need it anyway. From my research we're set to have capacity of around 2.5m first doses per week in May and June from Novavax, Pfizer and Moderna combined (though Pfizer will drop of necessarily for second doses around the end of May as we'll have hit the wall).
By the end of May that means ~44m people will have had their first doses which around 83% of adults or 64% of the total population. By the end of June we'll have hit 95% of adults and and 75% of the population with first doses and somewhere around 80% of adults fully done.
The unlockdown schedule is going to be exactly right.
By the end of May, we'll be meaningfully further along than Israel is. Of course, AZ has a slightly longer time to be effective and is probably less efficacious against Saffer Covid, but I see no reason why meaningful restrictions last beyond June in the UK.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
The EU will achieve "practical completion" less than three months after the UK. The problem is as follows:
The UK will reach the end of May at 80-90% completion of first doses (maybe slightly higher), will then probably make one final attempt at getting the vaccine refusers to have a jab, and then give up. By the end of the summer, all the second doses will have been given and we'll probably get those to 70-85% of adults.
Israel seems to have maxed out at 60% of the population. That is starting to look like being enough, in conjunction with the people who've already caught the virus and gained some immunity, although there are still questions how long that lasts and how much protection it gives to new variants. It helps that the people who are more likely to refuse the vaccine are also more likely to have caught the virus (either because they're generally thick, or just now think they don't need it).
The US will probably top out around the same level as, maybe a tad higher than, Israel. This will probably also be enough, given that the demographics who won't want one also believe the virus is a hoax, and mostly don't live in the places that matter as far as contagion is concerned (ie cities).
The big question is where the EU will top out. Once the US is done, you're correct that supply won't be an issue, and with a smaller gap between doses they'll probably finish quite soon after us. However, the continued negative press around side effects is going to destroy any hope they have of achieving the UK's take-up rate, and there's a good chance they'll end up well behind the US as well. That may or may not be good enough for herd immunity - my guess would be it won't, especially because the likelihood of refusing a vaccine is likely correlated with likelihood of being at risk, and/or living in populated areas. Or at least it won't be negatively correlated with those things.
The real bad news for the EU today is not the supply issues; it's about the demand side. And this is why they were so unbelievably stupid to denigrate the AstraZeneca vaccine so heavily and so publicly - with a second vaccine now in the spotlight for the same reasons, there is a real risk that EU citizens will no longer trust any vaccine they are to be given. This is a disaster for them.
How about a small wager?
I reckon vaccine take up in the EU this year (as a percent of adult population) will be higher than the US.
£100?
US hesitancy has been going down a lot because of the success of the rollout. I think J&J is done there though. They will now only use Pfizer, Moderna and maybe Novavax IMO.
It's interesting that *all* the blood clots from J&J in the US were with women, and the vast majority in Europe were too. I wonder if it become the de facto vaccine for men in large parts of the world.
Johnson's net approval with Conservative voters is +63
'Tis but a flesh wound...
That is of 2019 Labour voters though, some 2019 LD voters are now voting Labour and some 2019 Labour voters are now voting Green
Just humour him.
I read your analysis with interest, you confirm the visceral fears of a Tory foot soldier, and sometimes it gives me hope from the other side of the fence. Far more interesting than someone trolling from his student bedsit.
'H' is a good analyst. I don't mind being out on a limb but it was comforting to find him sharing much of my 'new politics new punditry' perspective on Hartlepool and the wider post Brexit political landscape. We both recognize in our opposite but equally shrewd and dispassionate ways that a Labour hold there is not the most likely outcome and should it happen would be a genuine boost for the party's longer term GE24 prospects. Others, meanwhile, either cling to the old mantras and fail to put their thinking cap on, or allow partisanship to drive their punditry and predictions. And that's perfectly ok. There's no shame in that at all.
I think you're overreaching. The Hartlepool debate is really only about what happens to 19GE BXP voters: so they mostly transfer to CON, or LAB, or stay with Farage, or stay at home? Either way, we're all taking the 19GE result as the starting point, which is presumably after (or at least when) your supposed "new politics" started.
Overreaching? Possibly, but I don't think so. Hartlepool is just one event. If the Cons win it - which I expect - I'll be looking for an OTT market reaction on GE24 and Starmer markets and taking advantage.
I disagree btw that everyone is taking GE19 as their start point. That is exactly what lots of people are not doing. One hears much by way of "total DISASTER if they can't hold a rock solid working class northern seat like this!" and "losing Hartlepool spells DOOM!"
If you base your analysis on what happened at GE19 you would not come out with stuff like that.
I don't agree. Losing Hartlepool means having gone backwards since the election, and it means Starmer hasn't reversed Labour's fortunes.
Starmer's main job is to win back as many as possible of the Northern working class seats as possible, and if he starts off by losing one even Corbyn won then it doesn't bode well for his chances at the others. That's the argument being made.
But it's an argument that doesn't stack up. Hartlepool would likely have turned blue at GE19 were it not for the BXP putting their leader up there and going hard for the seat. Remove that, and add in the vaccine bounce and a good hard Brexit recently delivered as those BXP voters wanted, and what you've got is a seat that should go Tory.
If it doesn't, if Labour hold it despite everything, which they might and I hope they do, this will bode well for them. It will indicate progress since the election and potential to make more as time passes and both "getting Brexit done" and the pandemic recede into memory to be replaced by the long dreary hangover from both.
Your second sentence is the argument. It's possible that BXP overperforming in Hartlepool in 2019 flattered the Tories' second place, rather than causing it. We don't know who those voters will go for this time, but if they don't pick Labour, it doesn't say much for Starmer's appeal and gives us a clue as to how similar-minded voters will behave in 2024.
Yes, it's not about the result but how to interpret it. And if Labour can at this time under these circumstances win a big chunk of the hard hard Brexit, Northern working class nationalistic vote, under a London Remainer leader, it will be a good result and will bode well for their longer term prospects.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
The EU will achieve "practical completion" less than three months after the UK. The problem is as follows:
The UK will reach the end of May at 80-90% completion of first doses (maybe slightly higher), will then probably make one final attempt at getting the vaccine refusers to have a jab, and then give up. By the end of the summer, all the second doses will have been given and we'll probably get those to 70-85% of adults.
Israel seems to have maxed out at 60% of the population. That is starting to look like being enough, in conjunction with the people who've already caught the virus and gained some immunity, although there are still questions how long that lasts and how much protection it gives to new variants. It helps that the people who are more likely to refuse the vaccine are also more likely to have caught the virus (either because they're generally thick, or just now think they don't need it).
The US will probably top out around the same level as, maybe a tad higher than, Israel. This will probably also be enough, given that the demographics who won't want one also believe the virus is a hoax, and mostly don't live in the places that matter as far as contagion is concerned (ie cities).
The big question is where the EU will top out. Once the US is done, you're correct that supply won't be an issue, and with a smaller gap between doses they'll probably finish quite soon after us. However, the continued negative press around side effects is going to destroy any hope they have of achieving the UK's take-up rate, and there's a good chance they'll end up well behind the US as well. That may or may not be good enough for herd immunity - my guess would be it won't, especially because the likelihood of refusing a vaccine is likely correlated with likelihood of being at risk, and/or living in populated areas. Or at least it won't be negatively correlated with those things.
The real bad news for the EU today is not the supply issues; it's about the demand side. And this is why they were so unbelievably stupid to denigrate the AstraZeneca vaccine so heavily and so publicly - with a second vaccine now in the spotlight for the same reasons, there is a real risk that EU citizens will no longer trust any vaccine they are to be given. This is a disaster for them.
How about a small wager?
I reckon vaccine take up in the EU this year (as a percent of adult population) will be higher than the US.
£100?
@rcs1000 I think your numbers are slightly off in a couple of respects, which I think helps the overall estimate.
EU-27 population is 450 million total, which at 80% is 360m adults. Jabs so far are 97m jabs to 70m people. 27m have had two jabs. So 70% of adults are 260m. At that they need 520m doses, so the gap is 420m.
Johnson's net approval with Conservative voters is +63
'Tis but a flesh wound...
That is of 2019 Labour voters though, some 2019 LD voters are now voting Labour and some 2019 Labour voters are now voting Green
Just humour him.
I read your analysis with interest, you confirm the visceral fears of a Tory foot soldier, and sometimes it gives me hope from the other side of the fence. Far more interesting than someone trolling from his student bedsit.
'H' is a good analyst. I don't mind being out on a limb but it was comforting to find him sharing much of my 'new politics new punditry' perspective on Hartlepool and the wider post Brexit political landscape. We both recognize in our opposite but equally shrewd and dispassionate ways that a Labour hold there is not the most likely outcome and should it happen would be a genuine boost for the party's longer term GE24 prospects. Others, meanwhile, either cling to the old mantras and fail to put their thinking cap on, or allow partisanship to drive their punditry and predictions. And that's perfectly ok. There's no shame in that at all.
I think you're overreaching. The Hartlepool debate is really only about what happens to 19GE BXP voters: so they mostly transfer to CON, or LAB, or stay with Farage, or stay at home? Either way, we're all taking the 19GE result as the starting point, which is presumably after (or at least when) your supposed "new politics" started.
Overreaching? Possibly, but I don't think so. Hartlepool is just one event. If the Cons win it - which I expect - I'll be looking for an OTT market reaction on GE24 and Starmer markets and taking advantage.
I disagree btw that everyone is taking GE19 as their start point. That is exactly what lots of people are not doing. One hears much by way of "total DISASTER if they can't hold a rock solid working class northern seat like this!" and "losing Hartlepool spells DOOM!"
If you base your analysis on what happened at GE19 you would not come out with stuff like that.
I don't agree. Losing Hartlepool means having gone backwards since the election, and it means Starmer hasn't reversed Labour's fortunes.
Starmer's main job is to win back as many as possible of the Northern working class seats as possible, and if he starts off by losing one even Corbyn won then it doesn't bode well for his chances at the others. That's the argument being made.
No Labour leader has ever lost the first by-election after being elected leader where his party were incumbents
I can't recall circumstances where the party of Government has had a free-ride on radio and TV news for three months on the trot, like this one has. Most bulletins until Philip's demise on Friday, started with "Boris Johnson says..." followed by a positively spun story.
Starmer may be the disastrous vote loser you claim, but even godesses like Long-Bailey and Pidcock would be struggling under such a tide of media positivity for the incumbent Prime Minister.
< I get the feeling we won't use any J&J, we've elected to defer delivery to Q3 or later for it already. I don't think we'd need it anyway. From my research we're set to have capacity of around 2.5m first doses per week in May and June from Novavax, Pfizer and Moderna combined (though Pfizer will drop of necessarily for second doses around the end of May as we'll have hit the wall).
By the end of May that means ~44m people will have had their first doses which around 83% of adults or 64% of the total population. By the end of June we'll have hit 95% of adults and and 75% of the population with first doses and somewhere around 80% of adults fully done.
The unlockdown schedule is going to be exactly right.
Currently, in Newham, 3,700 people over 70 (more than 20%) have yet to have a first vaccination. The number over 50 not yet having received a first dose is 28,000. I expect the second number to fall but what about the first?
MY second vaccination is May 28th so as you say the "roadmap" is sensible and coherent and allows for large numbers to receive both vaccinations by mid June.
Johnson's net approval with Conservative voters is +63
'Tis but a flesh wound...
That is of 2019 Labour voters though, some 2019 LD voters are now voting Labour and some 2019 Labour voters are now voting Green
Just humour him.
I read your analysis with interest, you confirm the visceral fears of a Tory foot soldier, and sometimes it gives me hope from the other side of the fence. Far more interesting than someone trolling from his student bedsit.
'H' is a good analyst. I don't mind being out on a limb but it was comforting to find him sharing much of my 'new politics new punditry' perspective on Hartlepool and the wider post Brexit political landscape. We both recognize in our opposite but equally shrewd and dispassionate ways that a Labour hold there is not the most likely outcome and should it happen would be a genuine boost for the party's longer term GE24 prospects. Others, meanwhile, either cling to the old mantras and fail to put their thinking cap on, or allow partisanship to drive their punditry and predictions. And that's perfectly ok. There's no shame in that at all.
I think you're overreaching. The Hartlepool debate is really only about what happens to 19GE BXP voters: so they mostly transfer to CON, or LAB, or stay with Farage, or stay at home? Either way, we're all taking the 19GE result as the starting point, which is presumably after (or at least when) your supposed "new politics" started.
Overreaching? Possibly, but I don't think so. Hartlepool is just one event. If the Cons win it - which I expect - I'll be looking for an OTT market reaction on GE24 and Starmer markets and taking advantage.
I disagree btw that everyone is taking GE19 as their start point. That is exactly what lots of people are not doing. One hears much by way of "total DISASTER if they can't hold a rock solid working class northern seat like this!" and "losing Hartlepool spells DOOM!"
If you base your analysis on what happened at GE19 you would not come out with stuff like that.
I don't agree. Losing Hartlepool means having gone backwards since the election, and it means Starmer hasn't reversed Labour's fortunes.
Starmer's main job is to win back as many as possible of the Northern working class seats as possible, and if he starts off by losing one even Corbyn won then it doesn't bode well for his chances at the others. That's the argument being made.
But it's an argument that doesn't stack up. Hartlepool would likely have turned blue at GE19 were it not for the BXP putting their leader up there and going hard for the seat. Remove that, and add in the vaccine bounce and a good hard Brexit recently delivered as those BXP voters wanted, and what you've got is a seat that should go Tory.
If it doesn't, if Labour hold it despite everything, which they might and I hope they do, this will bode well for them. It will indicate progress since the election and potential to make more as time passes and both "getting Brexit done" and the pandemic recede into memory to be replaced by the long dreary hangover from both.
Your second sentence is the argument. It's possible that BXP overperforming in Hartlepool in 2019 flattered the Tories' second place, rather than causing it. We don't know who those voters will go for this time, but if they don't pick Labour, it doesn't say much for Starmer's appeal and gives us a clue as to how similar-minded voters will behave in 2024.
Yes, it's not about the result but how to interpret it. And if Labour can at this time under these circumstances win a big chunk of the hard hard Brexit, Northern working class nationalistic vote, under a London Remainer leader, it will be a good result and will bode well for their longer term prospects.
Well, a win is always a good result.
But that's not the issue. We're arguing about a Labour defeat - you say it's the "expected" outcome (for some value of expected; >50%, I suppose), and (more importantly) that anyone who says it's not expected hasn't understood the paradigm shift that occurred around the last election. I say you're wrong, and it's totally reasonable to interpret the specific Hartlepool result in 2019 in other ways.
And for whatever it's worth I think the Tories are slight favourites to beat Labour. But only slight.
I'm late to the party on it but glad to see the speed up of some lifting of restrictions in Scotland, even if it feels like the very least that could be done. I will actually be able to meet up with a group of friends outside of my council area now for the first time in a long time, so something to look forward to finally.
Considering that until very recently the Scottish unlock roadmap asserted that even in middle of June you would only be able to have outdoor meetings of 8 people from 3 households, it feels like someone has had a bite of the sensible pill with this change coming for Friday.
As always, the easiest way to determine what Sturgeon is going to do is look at what England's doing and pick the opposite. A follower not a leader.
She deliberately engineered 2/3s of England's Covid death rate just to be different. Shockingly passive.
Scotland population density 65 per sq km. England population density 450 per sq km.
You were blithely stating that the 40 miles between Glasgow and Edinburgh were empty yesterday, not even an F for your level of Scotch expertise I'm afraid.
It seems the context went completely over your head, it is relatively empty compared to the distance between Liverpool and Manchester is what I was contrasting it with. This provides more of a firebreak.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
The EU will achieve "practical completion" less than three months after the UK. The problem is as follows:
The UK will reach the end of May at 80-90% completion of first doses (maybe slightly higher), will then probably make one final attempt at getting the vaccine refusers to have a jab, and then give up. By the end of the summer, all the second doses will have been given and we'll probably get those to 70-85% of adults.
Israel seems to have maxed out at 60% of the population. That is starting to look like being enough, in conjunction with the people who've already caught the virus and gained some immunity, although there are still questions how long that lasts and how much protection it gives to new variants. It helps that the people who are more likely to refuse the vaccine are also more likely to have caught the virus (either because they're generally thick, or just now think they don't need it).
The US will probably top out around the same level as, maybe a tad higher than, Israel. This will probably also be enough, given that the demographics who won't want one also believe the virus is a hoax, and mostly don't live in the places that matter as far as contagion is concerned (ie cities).
The big question is where the EU will top out. Once the US is done, you're correct that supply won't be an issue, and with a smaller gap between doses they'll probably finish quite soon after us. However, the continued negative press around side effects is going to destroy any hope they have of achieving the UK's take-up rate, and there's a good chance they'll end up well behind the US as well. That may or may not be good enough for herd immunity - my guess would be it won't, especially because the likelihood of refusing a vaccine is likely correlated with likelihood of being at risk, and/or living in populated areas. Or at least it won't be negatively correlated with those things.
The real bad news for the EU today is not the supply issues; it's about the demand side. And this is why they were so unbelievably stupid to denigrate the AstraZeneca vaccine so heavily and so publicly - with a second vaccine now in the spotlight for the same reasons, there is a real risk that EU citizens will no longer trust any vaccine they are to be given. This is a disaster for them.
How about a small wager?
I reckon vaccine take up in the EU this year (as a percent of adult population) will be higher than the US.
£100?
@rcs1000 I think your numbers are slightly off in a couple of respects, which I think helps the overall estimate.
EU-27 population is 450 million total, which at 80% is 360m adults. Jabs so far are 97m jabs to 70m people. 27m have had two jabs. So 70% of adults are 260m. At that they need 520m doses, so the gap is 420m.
I think the thing they never talk about is the extra month needed for vaccine distribution and immunity to build.
To me they look to be very heavily dependent on the ramp-up at Marburg and the timing of second round orders.
Just checked.
20m doses delivered in EU in the first 12 days (40%) of April. The number on March 31st was around 75 million. The current EU daily average on a 7-day sample is 2 million a day.
Would not currently like to be the Czar. UVDL will be on a scapegoat hunt.
She will be blaming J&J and Health Logistics within countries.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
The EU will achieve "practical completion" less than three months after the UK. The problem is as follows:
The UK will reach the end of May at 80-90% completion of first doses (maybe slightly higher), will then probably make one final attempt at getting the vaccine refusers to have a jab, and then give up. By the end of the summer, all the second doses will have been given and we'll probably get those to 70-85% of adults.
Israel seems to have maxed out at 60% of the population. That is starting to look like being enough, in conjunction with the people who've already caught the virus and gained some immunity, although there are still questions how long that lasts and how much protection it gives to new variants. It helps that the people who are more likely to refuse the vaccine are also more likely to have caught the virus (either because they're generally thick, or just now think they don't need it).
The US will probably top out around the same level as, maybe a tad higher than, Israel. This will probably also be enough, given that the demographics who won't want one also believe the virus is a hoax, and mostly don't live in the places that matter as far as contagion is concerned (ie cities).
The big question is where the EU will top out. Once the US is done, you're correct that supply won't be an issue, and with a smaller gap between doses they'll probably finish quite soon after us. However, the continued negative press around side effects is going to destroy any hope they have of achieving the UK's take-up rate, and there's a good chance they'll end up well behind the US as well. That may or may not be good enough for herd immunity - my guess would be it won't, especially because the likelihood of refusing a vaccine is likely correlated with likelihood of being at risk, and/or living in populated areas. Or at least it won't be negatively correlated with those things.
The real bad news for the EU today is not the supply issues; it's about the demand side. And this is why they were so unbelievably stupid to denigrate the AstraZeneca vaccine so heavily and so publicly - with a second vaccine now in the spotlight for the same reasons, there is a real risk that EU citizens will no longer trust any vaccine they are to be given. This is a disaster for them.
How about a small wager?
I reckon vaccine take up in the EU this year (as a percent of adult population) will be higher than the US.
£100?
The data on historical flu vaccine coverage in the over-65s might be relevant. The equivalent figure for the US is around 65%, which is better than any current EU member state.
I think you're wrong, for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, there is much broader concerns in certain communities about the CV19 vaccine than there is about the flu shot.
Secondly, the consequences of not having a CV19 vaccine will be much greater for people in the EU, than those in the US. Most Americans don't travel. So, if you're in Texas what's the incentive to get a CV19 vaccine shot, unless you are genuinely scared about getting the disease. By contrast, if you want to jump on a plane to Tenerife in Europe, you will need to have been vaccinated.
So, about that £100... You up for it?
Also- who is going to mutter and then grumpily have the vaccine when offered, as opposed to who really believes the anti-vax stuff and will continue to refuse no matter what?
Some of the more... Fox News-ier... bits of America might be harder to shift than hippy Europe.
Big picture is still that First World will be fine at some point in the summer, but we'd better not need autumn rejabs, because there's a world out there that haven't had one jab yet.
I, haggis, took one of Nicola's vaccines yesterday, ken whit I mean, I dinnae see ony side effects so far, tho whit's fur ye'll no go past ye richt enough.
< I get the feeling we won't use any J&J, we've elected to defer delivery to Q3 or later for it already. I don't think we'd need it anyway. From my research we're set to have capacity of around 2.5m first doses per week in May and June from Novavax, Pfizer and Moderna combined (though Pfizer will drop of necessarily for second doses around the end of May as we'll have hit the wall).
By the end of May that means ~44m people will have had their first doses which around 83% of adults or 64% of the total population. By the end of June we'll have hit 95% of adults and and 75% of the population with first doses and somewhere around 80% of adults fully done.
The unlockdown schedule is going to be exactly right.
Currently, in Newham, 3,700 people over 70 (more than 20%) have yet to have a first vaccination. The number over 50 not yet having received a first dose is 28,000. I expect the second number to fall but what about the first?
MY second vaccination is May 28th so as you say the "roadmap" is sensible and coherent and allows for large numbers to receive both vaccinations by mid June.
Beyond forcing them to have vaccines there isn't much they can do.
Johnson's net approval with Conservative voters is +63
'Tis but a flesh wound...
That is of 2019 Labour voters though, some 2019 LD voters are now voting Labour and some 2019 Labour voters are now voting Green
Just humour him.
I read your analysis with interest, you confirm the visceral fears of a Tory foot soldier, and sometimes it gives me hope from the other side of the fence. Far more interesting than someone trolling from his student bedsit.
'H' is a good analyst. I don't mind being out on a limb but it was comforting to find him sharing much of my 'new politics new punditry' perspective on Hartlepool and the wider post Brexit political landscape. We both recognize in our opposite but equally shrewd and dispassionate ways that a Labour hold there is not the most likely outcome and should it happen would be a genuine boost for the party's longer term GE24 prospects. Others, meanwhile, either cling to the old mantras and fail to put their thinking cap on, or allow partisanship to drive their punditry and predictions. And that's perfectly ok. There's no shame in that at all.
I think you're overreaching. The Hartlepool debate is really only about what happens to 19GE BXP voters: so they mostly transfer to CON, or LAB, or stay with Farage, or stay at home? Either way, we're all taking the 19GE result as the starting point, which is presumably after (or at least when) your supposed "new politics" started.
Overreaching? Possibly, but I don't think so. Hartlepool is just one event. If the Cons win it - which I expect - I'll be looking for an OTT market reaction on GE24 and Starmer markets and taking advantage.
I disagree btw that everyone is taking GE19 as their start point. That is exactly what lots of people are not doing. One hears much by way of "total DISASTER if they can't hold a rock solid working class northern seat like this!" and "losing Hartlepool spells DOOM!"
If you base your analysis on what happened at GE19 you would not come out with stuff like that.
I don't agree. Losing Hartlepool means having gone backwards since the election, and it means Starmer hasn't reversed Labour's fortunes.
Starmer's main job is to win back as many as possible of the Northern working class seats as possible, and if he starts off by losing one even Corbyn won then it doesn't bode well for his chances at the others. That's the argument being made.
But it's an argument that doesn't stack up. Hartlepool would likely have turned blue at GE19 were it not for the BXP putting their leader up there and going hard for the seat. Remove that, and add in the vaccine bounce and a good hard Brexit recently delivered as those BXP voters wanted, and what you've got is a seat that should go Tory.
If it doesn't, if Labour hold it despite everything, which they might and I hope they do, this will bode well for them. It will indicate progress since the election and potential to make more as time passes and both "getting Brexit done" and the pandemic recede into memory to be replaced by the long dreary hangover from both.
Your second sentence is the argument. It's possible that BXP overperforming in Hartlepool in 2019 flattered the Tories' second place, rather than causing it. We don't know who those voters will go for this time, but if they don't pick Labour, it doesn't say much for Starmer's appeal and gives us a clue as to how similar-minded voters will behave in 2024.
Yes, it's not about the result but how to interpret it. And if Labour can at this time under these circumstances win a big chunk of the hard hard Brexit, Northern working class nationalistic vote, under a London Remainer leader, it will be a good result and will bode well for their longer term prospects.
Hartlepool is just huge for you personally, despite the nonchalance you affect about it. Your hard won reputation as a superforecaster hangs on it. Genuinely nervous on your behalf, Kinabalu.
Clearly, the most important election on May 6th isn't Hartlepool or even Cornwall Council or even the London Mayoralty but the Newham Governance Referendum.
Yes, I know...
The options are to keep the existing structure which has the Borough run by the Mayor, Councillor Fiaz, or to revert to a Committee-based structure. The group agitating for the latter is called Restore Democracy and we received their leaflet this evening and very attractive it is too. Apparently the Mayor alone is responsible for the £60 I now have to pay for parking outside Stodge Towers.
Hang on - she may be Mayor but there is a Cabinet and while Newham is a one-party state, in theory every measure still has to have the support of 31 Labour Councillors.
The other niggle I have about Restore Democracy is who is behind Restore Democracy. It's not easy to discover - do the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Greens, Christian People's Alliance or TUSC support them?
Er, no, well, not publicly it seems.
They seem connected to Newham People Power https://newhampeoplepower.wordpress.com/ which is strongly anti the parking charges (which I get) and is run by Luke, Shan and Craig (whoever they may be).
One person who is prepared to back Restore publicly is Zain Miah who happens to be the Vice Chair of West Ham Constituency Labour Party which, along with its East Ham counterpart, have been suspended by the national Labour Party over allegations of entryism and being run by Momentum.
So are we looking at a Labour party civil war being played out via this referendum? Is it possible that IF the mayoral system is dropped, Councillor Fiaz, who, let's be fair, was elected by the Newham residents, might be ousted as Labour lead by an internal coup putting a pro-Momentum individual in charge at the Town Hall? Given the next set of local elections is next year, would we then see the wholesale deselection of those not considered "suitable" by those running Labour?
Fiaz herself got the political leadership by running against Sir Robin Wales and beating him in the Labour candidate election. She then got 73% in the 2018 election.
I'm late to the party on it but glad to see the speed up of some lifting of restrictions in Scotland, even if it feels like the very least that could be done. I will actually be able to meet up with a group of friends outside of my council area now for the first time in a long time, so something to look forward to finally.
Considering that until very recently the Scottish unlock roadmap asserted that even in middle of June you would only be able to have outdoor meetings of 8 people from 3 households, it feels like someone has had a bite of the sensible pill with this change coming for Friday.
As always, the easiest way to determine what Sturgeon is going to do is look at what England's doing and pick the opposite. A follower not a leader.
She deliberately engineered 2/3s of England's Covid death rate just to be different. Shockingly passive.
Scotland population density 65 per sq km. England population density 450 per sq km.
You were blithely stating that the 40 miles between Glasgow and Edinburgh were empty yesterday, not even an F for your level of Scotch expertise I'm afraid.
It seems the context went completely over your head, it is relatively empty compared to the distance between Liverpool and Manchester is what I was contrasting it with. This provides more of a firebreak.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
I agree with you, however, I'm not convinced that the EU won't fumble from here as well.
On our roll out I think it will be around there when we reach herd immunity and then and 90%+ fully vaccinated by the middle of July.
The worry I have for Europe is that other countries will consider it a hotzone and not allow their citizens to travel there until after the summer which will basically put Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Southern Italy under water. I could see the UK government only selectively reopen to the US, Israel and other high vaccination countries.
The UK 100% should consider Europe a hotzone but there seems to be little evidence that the decision will be made. It should be made, but they're still not on the red list. Its ridiculous quite frankly if they're not
If African countries had the same case rates as Europe they would be on the red list already..
There is no solution to the asymmetry of the UK. We can ameliorate it by making the Lords an elected Federal chamber (with two Lords from each UK county?), but there is no optimal arrangement
This is a rare occasion when I agree with Kinabalu. Apart from that change to the Lords, the fudge we have now is probably the best we can hope for. It's a good deal for Scotland, Wales and NI, but that's the price England pays for keeping the Union.
The Scots would be mad to reject it for something worse, but ultimately they must decide that (in about 10 years time)
The answer is to create regions of England with their own interests.
Manchester thinks they are ignored? Give Greater Manchester two senators, same as London. 2 for the Summer Country (including Devon and Cornwall) 2 for Yorkshire etc
I'm late to the party on it but glad to see the speed up of some lifting of restrictions in Scotland, even if it feels like the very least that could be done. I will actually be able to meet up with a group of friends outside of my council area now for the first time in a long time, so something to look forward to finally.
Considering that until very recently the Scottish unlock roadmap asserted that even in middle of June you would only be able to have outdoor meetings of 8 people from 3 households, it feels like someone has had a bite of the sensible pill with this change coming for Friday.
As always, the easiest way to determine what Sturgeon is going to do is look at what England's doing and pick the opposite. A follower not a leader.
She deliberately engineered 2/3s of England's Covid death rate just to be different. Shockingly passive.
Scotland population density 65 per sq km. England population density 450 per sq km.
You were blithely stating that the 40 miles between Glasgow and Edinburgh were empty yesterday, not even an F for your level of Scotch expertise I'm afraid.
It seems the context went completely over your head, it is relatively empty compared to the distance between Liverpool and Manchester is what I was contrasting it with. This provides more of a firebreak.
I, haggis, took one of Nicola's vaccines yesterday, ken whit I mean, I dinnae see ony side effects so far, tho whit's fur ye'll no go past ye richt enough.
Well, that's a more poetic address of the Haggis than managed by Ol' Doggerel.
Johnson's net approval with Conservative voters is +63
'Tis but a flesh wound...
That is of 2019 Labour voters though, some 2019 LD voters are now voting Labour and some 2019 Labour voters are now voting Green
Just humour him.
I read your analysis with interest, you confirm the visceral fears of a Tory foot soldier, and sometimes it gives me hope from the other side of the fence. Far more interesting than someone trolling from his student bedsit.
'H' is a good analyst. I don't mind being out on a limb but it was comforting to find him sharing much of my 'new politics new punditry' perspective on Hartlepool and the wider post Brexit political landscape. We both recognize in our opposite but equally shrewd and dispassionate ways that a Labour hold there is not the most likely outcome and should it happen would be a genuine boost for the party's longer term GE24 prospects. Others, meanwhile, either cling to the old mantras and fail to put their thinking cap on, or allow partisanship to drive their punditry and predictions. And that's perfectly ok. There's no shame in that at all.
I think you're overreaching. The Hartlepool debate is really only about what happens to 19GE BXP voters: so they mostly transfer to CON, or LAB, or stay with Farage, or stay at home? Either way, we're all taking the 19GE result as the starting point, which is presumably after (or at least when) your supposed "new politics" started.
Overreaching? Possibly, but I don't think so. Hartlepool is just one event. If the Cons win it - which I expect - I'll be looking for an OTT market reaction on GE24 and Starmer markets and taking advantage.
I disagree btw that everyone is taking GE19 as their start point. That is exactly what lots of people are not doing. One hears much by way of "total DISASTER if they can't hold a rock solid working class northern seat like this!" and "losing Hartlepool spells DOOM!"
If you base your analysis on what happened at GE19 you would not come out with stuff like that.
I don't agree. Losing Hartlepool means having gone backwards since the election, and it means Starmer hasn't reversed Labour's fortunes.
Starmer's main job is to win back as many as possible of the Northern working class seats as possible, and if he starts off by losing one even Corbyn won then it doesn't bode well for his chances at the others. That's the argument being made.
But it's an argument that doesn't stack up. Hartlepool would likely have turned blue at GE19 were it not for the BXP putting their leader up there and going hard for the seat. Remove that, and add in the vaccine bounce and a good hard Brexit recently delivered as those BXP voters wanted, and what you've got is a seat that should go Tory.
If it doesn't, if Labour hold it despite everything, which they might and I hope they do, this will bode well for them. It will indicate progress since the election and potential to make more as time passes and both "getting Brexit done" and the pandemic recede into memory to be replaced by the long dreary hangover from both.
Your second sentence is the argument. It's possible that BXP overperforming in Hartlepool in 2019 flattered the Tories' second place, rather than causing it. We don't know who those voters will go for this time, but if they don't pick Labour, it doesn't say much for Starmer's appeal and gives us a clue as to how similar-minded voters will behave in 2024.
Yes, it's not about the result but how to interpret it. And if Labour can at this time under these circumstances win a big chunk of the hard hard Brexit, Northern working class nationalistic vote, under a London Remainer leader, it will be a good result and will bode well for their longer term prospects.
Well, a win is always a good result.
But that's not the issue. We're arguing about a Labour defeat - you say it's the "expected" outcome (for some value of expected; >50%, I suppose), and (more importantly) that anyone who says it's not expected hasn't understood the paradigm shift that occurred around the last election. I say you're wrong, and it's totally reasonable to interpret the specific Hartlepool result in 2019 in other ways.
And for whatever it's worth I think the Tories are slight favourites to beat Labour. But only slight.
Kinbalu makes a good point about GE19 being the new baseline; and not viewing through our habitual 90s lens of what a 'natural' Labour or Tory seat looks like. (It's worth stressing just how unattractive a leader Corbyn was, so really GE17 and 19 were special cases - but I think we're in agreement here.) Where I'm not yet convinced we'vemoves on from the old norms is in the realms of government making gains at by-elections. That's just so historically rare I'm inconvinces it will happen. We kniw what typically happens: government supporters are less motivated to defend their party than opposition voters are to punish them. And Conservative voters ate les motivated than Labour ones, and working class voters are less motivated than middle class ones. None of this looks to me like good news for the Tories. I do accept we are in new times. But I'd make Con gain no greater than35%.
I'm late to the party on it but glad to see the speed up of some lifting of restrictions in Scotland, even if it feels like the very least that could be done. I will actually be able to meet up with a group of friends outside of my council area now for the first time in a long time, so something to look forward to finally.
Considering that until very recently the Scottish unlock roadmap asserted that even in middle of June you would only be able to have outdoor meetings of 8 people from 3 households, it feels like someone has had a bite of the sensible pill with this change coming for Friday.
As always, the easiest way to determine what Sturgeon is going to do is look at what England's doing and pick the opposite. A follower not a leader.
She deliberately engineered 2/3s of England's Covid death rate just to be different. Shockingly passive.
Scotland population density 65 per sq km. England population density 450 per sq km.
You were blithely stating that the 40 miles between Glasgow and Edinburgh were empty yesterday, not even an F for your level of Scotch expertise I'm afraid.
It seems the context went completely over your head, it is relatively empty compared to the distance between Liverpool and Manchester is what I was contrasting it with. This provides more of a firebreak.
There is no solution to the asymmetry of the UK. We can ameliorate it by making the Lords an elected Federal chamber (with two Lords from each UK county?), but there is no optimal arrangement
This is a rare occasion when I agree with Kinabalu. Apart from that change to the Lords, the fudge we have now is probably the best we can hope for. It's a good deal for Scotland, Wales and NI, but that's the price England pays for keeping the Union.
The Scots would be mad to reject it for something worse, but ultimately they must decide that (in about 10 years time)
The answer is to create regions of England with their own interests.
Manchester thinks they are ignored? Give Greater Manchester two senators, same as London. 2 for the Summer Country (including Devon and Cornwall) 2 for Yorkshire etc
What about the towns and villages across the country? What do they get?
I've got an idea, why don't we divide the country into blocs, we could call them constituencies, and each of those blocs elects one person to represent them - we could call that a Member of Parliament.
I, haggis, took one of Nicola's vaccines yesterday, ken whit I mean, I dinnae see ony side effects so far, tho whit's fur ye'll no go past ye richt enough.
Well, that's a more poetic address of the Haggis than managed by Ol' Doggerel.
Sacrilege
Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care, And dish them out their bill o fare, Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware That jaups in luggies: But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer, Gie her a Haggis!
I'm late to the party on it but glad to see the speed up of some lifting of restrictions in Scotland, even if it feels like the very least that could be done. I will actually be able to meet up with a group of friends outside of my council area now for the first time in a long time, so something to look forward to finally.
Considering that until very recently the Scottish unlock roadmap asserted that even in middle of June you would only be able to have outdoor meetings of 8 people from 3 households, it feels like someone has had a bite of the sensible pill with this change coming for Friday.
As always, the easiest way to determine what Sturgeon is going to do is look at what England's doing and pick the opposite. A follower not a leader.
She deliberately engineered 2/3s of England's Covid death rate just to be different. Shockingly passive.
Scotland population density 65 per sq km. England population density 450 per sq km.
You were blithely stating that the 40 miles between Glasgow and Edinburgh were empty yesterday, not even an F for your level of Scotch expertise I'm afraid.
It seems the context went completely over your head, it is relatively empty compared to the distance between Liverpool and Manchester is what I was contrasting it with. This provides more of a firebreak.
I find it absolutely incomprehensible that anyone in the UK could look at the US and the mess of federal and state (not to mention municipal) responsibilities and competencies and say, "yeah, that's the model I want to follow".
It may - it probably won't, but it may - provide a more stable and long-lasting resolution to the constitutional issue. However, it cannot possibly be worth making absolutely every aspect of day-to-day life for everyone in England more complicated. Taxes, healthcare, education, transport - just some of the many areas where having a regional structure sitting below the federal government would need to have some involvement, purely to justify their existence.
And all to solve a problem that essentially boils down to a minority of rabble-rousers in Scotland who lost the argument seven years ago and now need to be put back in their box.
I agree entirely - my proposal (I know you're not addressing me personally) is a cost-free one, that just involves the 'heads' of the UK, England, Scotland, NI and Wales, voting to rubber-stamp the key non-devolved issues, like foreign treaties, war, and perhaps the pivotal finance and defence investments, where such decisions would now simply require a WM vote, or be made using the PM's Royal prerogative.
There would be no change to daily life for anyone. An English Parliament is not a necessary pre-requisite, though an English 'leader' is, but he or she could be elected by English WM MPs.
What a sclerotic nightmare.
So the First Minister's of Wales, NI and Scotland can just veto everything and lead to us never making any decisions?
And even worse these decisions couldn't be settled UK-wide at UK General Elections anymore?
What an absolute nightmare. Sounds even worse than us being in the European Union.
Yes, Wales, NI and Scotland voting together, would be able to vote something down - or to put it another way, the UK PM would need to convince at least one other home nation except England of the wisdom of a decision before it passed. Is that really such a big ask? That one other home nation thinks something isn't a complete crock of shit?
Nothing to do with "convincing". The issue is that you'd generally have a Labour Wales FM and an SNP Scotland FM - both of whom are inclined to vote against Conservative governments on principle - plus whoever is in Stormont, and that's either the DUP - famous for saying "No" at every opportunity, even when it's against their own best interests - or SF - even more likely to say no on principle.
So a Labour Government gets things through by strong-arming or bribing Wales, and Conservatives can only bribe NI. It's a recipe for gridlock and bad governance.
Given that I would envisage this being primarily about decisions like going to war, I see little to no harm in gridlock. I would prefer that five people have to be convinced to send in the Navy, rather than a cowed PM who has just been on the receiving end of a tongue lashing from the White House. Indeed I think it gives the PM some much needed cover to say no or at least delay saying yes.
As for other decisions, take accession to the TPTPTT. England and the UK would vote for. I would strongly suspect and hope Wales and NI would vote for. That is a happy majority with only the SNP playing a deliberately obstructionist game, a fact that would be lost on no-one.
Good grief. Where to even start with this.
Ok, firstly, the phrase "I see little to no harm in gridlock". Where were you during most of 2019, when Parliament was at an utter standstill due to Brexit? Because you can't possibly have witnessed that and thought, "yes, I want more of this please, especially over really big decisions that matter".
Secondly, your first paragraph makes sense only if you don't actually want the UK to go to war, ever. Which is fine as a view, but in that case just say it, instead of supporting a policy that just makes it impossible in practice.
Whether or not Wales and NI would vote for TPP accession is moot - I'm sure they could find plenty of Walloonian-style objections as cover for demanding concessions in other arenas - because you've just cherry picked one example where everyone probably agrees. The whole point of having the extra assembly is precisely because not everyone agrees all the time.
It's impossible to assess what impact the existence of the COTI would have had on Brexit - and indeed since I'm proposing it partly as a response to the rise in nationalism that that process seems to have accelerated, I'm not sure what clarity is gained by retroactively applying it to that situation. The process was gridlocked enough. It's by no means certain that it would have worsened that.
Regarding going to war - no, I am not against going to war in principle - but neither am I against making it harder politically to do so than it currently is. That doesn't seem to me to be in any way unreasonable.
I didn't cherry pick that example at all - it was something current that seemed to be a good fit. I'm happy to look at any plausible future scenarios, though obviously not Phil's ludicrous 'PM delays retaking the Shard whilst he rings around the leaders' bullshite.
OK, I've gone back to your original proposal to have a think about other scenarios. You said: ... my proposal ... just involves the 'heads' of the UK, England, Scotland, NI and Wales, voting to rubber-stamp the key non-devolved issues, like foreign treaties, war, and perhaps the pivotal finance and defence investments, where such decisions would now simply require a WM vote, or be made using the PM's Royal prerogative.
So plausible future scenarios might include: - Trident renewal - Heathrow airport expansion - HS2/3/n - Whatever the current plan is for "levelling-up" the North of England
Big fat no on allowing veto power to the fringe nations on any of those. In particular, any investment decisions are fraught with danger as every region would want an equivalent spend in their own territory.
Also, you keep framing it as a check on England's power. But it works the other way as well - so Scotland/Wales/NI could unilaterally take the UK back into the EU, over the objections from England, if they chose. That alone is enough for this idea to be terrible.
No they couldn't. The COTI would not have any role in proposing anything, as I made very clear from the start. They could say no to something, not create something else.
Regarding Trident renewal, regrettably (as I'm not a Trident fan) I think it would pass no problems, with at least NI, probably Wales, probably not Scotland. However, the recent inexplicable investment in 260 missiles (up from the current 40)? Far tougher sell, and would have probably been a big boon for Boris to have been able to tell Uncle Joe he'd have to get back to him on that one.
As for making approval of investment decisions contingent on equivalent amounts being spent in the nations - isn't this exactly what happens at the moment anyway?
So you seriously think it's a good idea to kneecap the Government's ability to invest in Defence based on a holistic MOD plan? Instead the four countries should cherrypick which bit's they like or not.
Utter madness. Is there a single nation with a strong military stupid enough to do a scheme like yours?
Location of US military bases is driven by pork barrelling
I, haggis, took one of Nicola's vaccines yesterday, ken whit I mean, I dinnae see ony side effects so far, tho whit's fur ye'll no go past ye richt enough.
Well, that's a more poetic address of the Haggis than managed by Ol' Doggerel.
Sacrilege
Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care, And dish them out their bill o fare, Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware That jaups in luggies: But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer, Gie her a Haggis!
I find it absolutely incomprehensible that anyone in the UK could look at the US and the mess of federal and state (not to mention municipal) responsibilities and competencies and say, "yeah, that's the model I want to follow".
It may - it probably won't, but it may - provide a more stable and long-lasting resolution to the constitutional issue. However, it cannot possibly be worth making absolutely every aspect of day-to-day life for everyone in England more complicated. Taxes, healthcare, education, transport - just some of the many areas where having a regional structure sitting below the federal government would need to have some involvement, purely to justify their existence.
And all to solve a problem that essentially boils down to a minority of rabble-rousers in Scotland who lost the argument seven years ago and now need to be put back in their box.
I agree entirely - my proposal (I know you're not addressing me personally) is a cost-free one, that just involves the 'heads' of the UK, England, Scotland, NI and Wales, voting to rubber-stamp the key non-devolved issues, like foreign treaties, war, and perhaps the pivotal finance and defence investments, where such decisions would now simply require a WM vote, or be made using the PM's Royal prerogative.
There would be no change to daily life for anyone. An English Parliament is not a necessary pre-requisite, though an English 'leader' is, but he or she could be elected by English WM MPs.
What a sclerotic nightmare.
So the First Minister's of Wales, NI and Scotland can just veto everything and lead to us never making any decisions?
And even worse these decisions couldn't be settled UK-wide at UK General Elections anymore?
What an absolute nightmare. Sounds even worse than us being in the European Union.
Yes, Wales, NI and Scotland voting together, would be able to vote something down - or to put it another way, the UK PM would need to convince at least one other home nation except England of the wisdom of a decision before it passed. Is that really such a big ask? That one other home nation thinks something isn't a complete crock of shit?
Nothing to do with "convincing". The issue is that you'd generally have a Labour Wales FM and an SNP Scotland FM - both of whom are inclined to vote against Conservative governments on principle - plus whoever is in Stormont, and that's either the DUP - famous for saying "No" at every opportunity, even when it's against their own best interests - or SF - even more likely to say no on principle.
So a Labour Government gets things through by strong-arming or bribing Wales, and Conservatives can only bribe NI. It's a recipe for gridlock and bad governance.
Given that I would envisage this being primarily about decisions like going to war, I see little to no harm in gridlock. I would prefer that five people have to be convinced to send in the Navy, rather than a cowed PM who has just been on the receiving end of a tongue lashing from the White House. Indeed I think it gives the PM some much needed cover to say no or at least delay saying yes.
As for other decisions, take accession to the TPTPTT. England and the UK would vote for. I would strongly suspect and hope Wales and NI would vote for. That is a happy majority with only the SNP playing a deliberately obstructionist game, a fact that would be lost on no-one.
Good grief. Where to even start with this.
Ok, firstly, the phrase "I see little to no harm in gridlock". Where were you during most of 2019, when Parliament was at an utter standstill due to Brexit? Because you can't possibly have witnessed that and thought, "yes, I want more of this please, especially over really big decisions that matter".
Secondly, your first paragraph makes sense only if you don't actually want the UK to go to war, ever. Which is fine as a view, but in that case just say it, instead of supporting a policy that just makes it impossible in practice.
Whether or not Wales and NI would vote for TPP accession is moot - I'm sure they could find plenty of Walloonian-style objections as cover for demanding concessions in other arenas - because you've just cherry picked one example where everyone probably agrees. The whole point of having the extra assembly is precisely because not everyone agrees all the time.
It's impossible to assess what impact the existence of the COTI would have had on Brexit - and indeed since I'm proposing it partly as a response to the rise in nationalism that that process seems to have accelerated, I'm not sure what clarity is gained by retroactively applying it to that situation. The process was gridlocked enough. It's by no means certain that it would have worsened that.
Regarding going to war - no, I am not against going to war in principle - but neither am I against making it harder politically to do so than it currently is. That doesn't seem to me to be in any way unreasonable.
I didn't cherry pick that example at all - it was something current that seemed to be a good fit. I'm happy to look at any plausible future scenarios, though obviously not Phil's ludicrous 'PM delays retaking the Shard whilst he rings around the leaders' bullshite.
OK, I've gone back to your original proposal to have a think about other scenarios. You said: ... my proposal ... just involves the 'heads' of the UK, England, Scotland, NI and Wales, voting to rubber-stamp the key non-devolved issues, like foreign treaties, war, and perhaps the pivotal finance and defence investments, where such decisions would now simply require a WM vote, or be made using the PM's Royal prerogative.
So plausible future scenarios might include: - Trident renewal - Heathrow airport expansion - HS2/3/n - Whatever the current plan is for "levelling-up" the North of England
Big fat no on allowing veto power to the fringe nations on any of those. In particular, any investment decisions are fraught with danger as every region would want an equivalent spend in their own territory.
Also, you keep framing it as a check on England's power. But it works the other way as well - so Scotland/Wales/NI could unilaterally take the UK back into the EU, over the objections from England, if they chose. That alone is enough for this idea to be terrible.
No they couldn't. The COTI would not have any role in proposing anything, as I made very clear from the start. They could say no to something, not create something else.
Regarding Trident renewal, regrettably (as I'm not a Trident fan) I think it would pass no problems, with at least NI, probably Wales, probably not Scotland. However, the recent inexplicable investment in 260 missiles (up from the current 40)? Far tougher sell, and would have probably been a big boon for Boris to have been able to tell Uncle Joe he'd have to get back to him on that one.
As for making approval of investment decisions contingent on equivalent amounts being spent in the nations - isn't this exactly what happens at the moment anyway?
So you seriously think it's a good idea to kneecap the Government's ability to invest in Defence based on a holistic MOD plan? Instead the four countries should cherrypick which bit's they like or not.
Utter madness. Is there a single nation with a strong military stupid enough to do a scheme like yours?
Location of US military bases is driven by pork barrelling
Is that something we should deliberately replicate?
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
I agree with you, however, I'm not convinced that the EU won't fumble from here as well.
On our roll out I think it will be around there when we reach herd immunity and then and 90%+ fully vaccinated by the middle of July.
The worry I have for Europe is that other countries will consider it a hotzone and not allow their citizens to travel there until after the summer which will basically put Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Southern Italy under water. I could see the UK government only selectively reopen to the US, Israel and other high vaccination countries.
Sure, I think that's spot on. And that means that the Italian, Spanish, and Greek tourist industries get hammered this year.
I also think you're unduly pessimistic about the UK. Once you start adding some J&J in there, and the Moderna doses, it's hard not to see us back to close to 1m shots a day by early May. Which means practical completion is there by the end of the Month. Sure, we'll still be vaccinating people after that date. But once you get to 60+% of the people fully vaccinated, then, for all intents and purposes, you're done.
The tough one for the US-UK (and I speak as someone directly affected) is that you are seeing rates of vaccine hesitancy in some states that rival France. And I think the solution is simply going to be that travel is going to be largely restricted to double dosed people (and the same applies to travel between the Continent and the UK).
I get the feeling we won't use any J&J, we've elected to defer delivery to Q3 or later for it already. I don't think we'd need it anyway. From my research we're set to have capacity of around 2.5m first doses per week in May and June from Novavax, Pfizer and Moderna combined (though Pfizer will drop of necessarily for second doses around the end of May as we'll have hit the wall).
By the end of May that means ~44m people will have had their first doses which around 83% of adults or 64% of the total population. By the end of June we'll have hit 95% of adults and and 75% of the population with first doses and somewhere around 80% of adults fully done.
The unlockdown schedule is going to be exactly right.
By the end of May, we'll be meaningfully further along than Israel is. Of course, AZ has a slightly longer time to be effective and is probably less efficacious against Saffer Covid, but I see no reason why meaningful restrictions last beyond June in the UK.
No they won't. Tbh, we should be in a position to not ever have lockdown again because our vaccine portfolio will be providing Gen 2 vaccines well before the end of the year. I think that's what will set us apart from the EU as well. A lot of planning has gone into gen 2 variant busters for September to avoid a lockdown.
Johnson's net approval with Conservative voters is +63
'Tis but a flesh wound...
That is of 2019 Labour voters though, some 2019 LD voters are now voting Labour and some 2019 Labour voters are now voting Green
Just humour him.
I read your analysis with interest, you confirm the visceral fears of a Tory foot soldier, and sometimes it gives me hope from the other side of the fence. Far more interesting than someone trolling from his student bedsit.
'H' is a good analyst. I don't mind being out on a limb but it was comforting to find him sharing much of my 'new politics new punditry' perspective on Hartlepool and the wider post Brexit political landscape. We both recognize in our opposite but equally shrewd and dispassionate ways that a Labour hold there is not the most likely outcome and should it happen would be a genuine boost for the party's longer term GE24 prospects. Others, meanwhile, either cling to the old mantras and fail to put their thinking cap on, or allow partisanship to drive their punditry and predictions. And that's perfectly ok. There's no shame in that at all.
I think you're overreaching. The Hartlepool debate is really only about what happens to 19GE BXP voters: so they mostly transfer to CON, or LAB, or stay with Farage, or stay at home? Either way, we're all taking the 19GE result as the starting point, which is presumably after (or at least when) your supposed "new politics" started.
Overreaching? Possibly, but I don't think so. Hartlepool is just one event. If the Cons win it - which I expect - I'll be looking for an OTT market reaction on GE24 and Starmer markets and taking advantage.
I disagree btw that everyone is taking GE19 as their start point. That is exactly what lots of people are not doing. One hears much by way of "total DISASTER if they can't hold a rock solid working class northern seat like this!" and "losing Hartlepool spells DOOM!"
If you base your analysis on what happened at GE19 you would not come out with stuff like that.
I don't agree. Losing Hartlepool means having gone backwards since the election, and it means Starmer hasn't reversed Labour's fortunes.
Starmer's main job is to win back as many as possible of the Northern working class seats as possible, and if he starts off by losing one even Corbyn won then it doesn't bode well for his chances at the others. That's the argument being made.
But it's an argument that doesn't stack up. Hartlepool would likely have turned blue at GE19 were it not for the BXP putting their leader up there and going hard for the seat. Remove that, and add in the vaccine bounce and a good hard Brexit recently delivered as those BXP voters wanted, and what you've got is a seat that should go Tory.
If it doesn't, if Labour hold it despite everything, which they might and I hope they do, this will bode well for them. It will indicate progress since the election and potential to make more as time passes and both "getting Brexit done" and the pandemic recede into memory to be replaced by the long dreary hangover from both.
Your second sentence is the argument. It's possible that BXP overperforming in Hartlepool in 2019 flattered the Tories' second place, rather than causing it. We don't know who those voters will go for this time, but if they don't pick Labour, it doesn't say much for Starmer's appeal and gives us a clue as to how similar-minded voters will behave in 2024.
Yes, it's not about the result but how to interpret it. And if Labour can at this time under these circumstances win a big chunk of the hard hard Brexit, Northern working class nationalistic vote, under a London Remainer leader, it will be a good result and will bode well for their longer term prospects.
Hartlepool is just huge for you personally, despite the nonchalance you affect about it. Your hard won reputation as a superforecaster hangs on it. Genuinely nervous on your behalf, Kinabalu.
Entirely off-topic, but an interesting piece in The Guardian about Norniron. For me the key paragraph is here:
"Working-class loyalists feel left behind and ignored. I am not here to debate the merits of that, or the so-called siege mentality of loyalism. However there is a deep-rooted anger there that has been both been ignored by mainstream unionism and used time and again by the DUP and the Ulster Unionist party for political machinations when it suited them. The fear of a united Ireland and what that will mean for unionism is amped up at election time, and tensions are stoked by both political unionism and “stakeholders” within loyalism, such as the Loyalist Communities Council. And for what? What has fundamentally changed, or got better for working-class loyalist communities in Northern Ireland? They deserve better than being lied to and led up the hill, then abandoned when violence erupts"
I have to ask, what is it that these working-class loyalists think there is any point in being a loyalist? They have been lied to and led up the hill not only by their elected politicians but by the British government. Rather than doing something about these areas of deep deprivation, the unionist politicians and the UK government have abandoned them.
"The fear of a united Ireland" in case what - they end up deprived and ignored? In deprived working class communities in England, people decided to throw the dice and vote for Brexit. In NI they didn't. Will be interesting to see how the fear of reunification plays out in these communities - even if they only stay at home in a border vote that could be enough to swing a close vote.
We need to average 350k 2nd doses a day in England to keep to a 76 day gap. We might be bottoming out at 77 days average and then staying there though.
Entirely off-topic, but an interesting piece in The Guardian about Norniron. For me the key paragraph is here:
"Working-class loyalists feel left behind and ignored. I am not here to debate the merits of that, or the so-called siege mentality of loyalism. However there is a deep-rooted anger there that has been both been ignored by mainstream unionism and used time and again by the DUP and the Ulster Unionist party for political machinations when it suited them. The fear of a united Ireland and what that will mean for unionism is amped up at election time, and tensions are stoked by both political unionism and “stakeholders” within loyalism, such as the Loyalist Communities Council. And for what? What has fundamentally changed, or got better for working-class loyalist communities in Northern Ireland? They deserve better than being lied to and led up the hill, then abandoned when violence erupts"
I have to ask, what is it that these working-class loyalists think there is any point in being a loyalist? They have been lied to and led up the hill not only by their elected politicians but by the British government. Rather than doing something about these areas of deep deprivation, the unionist politicians and the UK government have abandoned them.
"The fear of a united Ireland" in case what - they end up deprived and ignored? In deprived working class communities in England, people decided to throw the dice and vote for Brexit. In NI they didn't. Will be interesting to see how the fear of reunification plays out in these communities - even if they only stay at home in a border vote that could be enough to swing a close vote.
I think that Working Class Loyalists would like Devo-Max, so nominally British but effectively under Home Rule. Of course that is rather dependent on there remaining a Unionist majority.
Ulster Loyalists rather remind me of the Afrikaaners in the last days of apartheid. Not just the prospect of losing power, but also their pre-enlightenment Calvinist ideology.
Europe are more f**ked than a dockside hooker/stepmom on Pornhub.
Yet the number of people being vaccinated across the EU keeps rising every day. J&J will - like AZ - just not be given to younger people, particularly women.
I think the issue is that current Pfizer doses are already pretty much spoken for and they need to fill a gap of about 150m single dose J&J vaccines with 300m of something else.
Additionally Pfizer has raised their prices to look a lot more like Moderna so the thrifty EC won't want to commit to $25 per dose when they previously signed at $16 per dose and I'm told that Pfizer aren't giving out discounts becuase they know it's a seller's market because of all the AZ and now J&J issues that they aren't facing.
There are - what - 450 million adults in the EU. So, you need 300 million of them vaccinated (given existing people who have been infected) to get the same place Israel is today.
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
I agree with you, however, I'm not convinced that the EU won't fumble from here as well.
On our roll out I think it will be around there when we reach herd immunity and then and 90%+ fully vaccinated by the middle of July.
The worry I have for Europe is that other countries will consider it a hotzone and not allow their citizens to travel there until after the summer which will basically put Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Southern Italy under water. I could see the UK government only selectively reopen to the US, Israel and other high vaccination countries.
Sure, I think that's spot on. And that means that the Italian, Spanish, and Greek tourist industries get hammered this year.
I also think you're unduly pessimistic about the UK. Once you start adding some J&J in there, and the Moderna doses, it's hard not to see us back to close to 1m shots a day by early May. Which means practical completion is there by the end of the Month. Sure, we'll still be vaccinating people after that date. But once you get to 60+% of the people fully vaccinated, then, for all intents and purposes, you're done.
The tough one for the US-UK (and I speak as someone directly affected) is that you are seeing rates of vaccine hesitancy in some states that rival France. And I think the solution is simply going to be that travel is going to be largely restricted to double dosed people (and the same applies to travel between the Continent and the UK).
I get the feeling we won't use any J&J, we've elected to defer delivery to Q3 or later for it already. I don't think we'd need it anyway. From my research we're set to have capacity of around 2.5m first doses per week in May and June from Novavax, Pfizer and Moderna combined (though Pfizer will drop of necessarily for second doses around the end of May as we'll have hit the wall).
By the end of May that means ~44m people will have had their first doses which around 83% of adults or 64% of the total population. By the end of June we'll have hit 95% of adults and and 75% of the population with first doses and somewhere around 80% of adults fully done.
The unlockdown schedule is going to be exactly right.
By the end of May, we'll be meaningfully further along than Israel is. Of course, AZ has a slightly longer time to be effective and is probably less efficacious against Saffer Covid, but I see no reason why meaningful restrictions last beyond June in the UK.
No they won't. Tbh, we should be in a position to not ever have lockdown again because our vaccine portfolio will be providing Gen 2 vaccines well before the end of the year. I think that's what will set us apart from the EU as well. A lot of planning has gone into gen 2 variant busters for September to avoid a lockdown.
Hopefully.
On the other hand, the more advanced the vaccine project becomes, the more the Prime Minister chooses to award virtually all the credit for the drop in cases, and all other indicators, to lockdowns.
The pressure to maintain at least some of the restrictions through the Summer will be considerable. Panicking scientists and the terrified ministers operating under their influence do not make for ideal circumstances. You can imagine how the goalposts could very easily be shifted repeatedly to keep quite a lot of the apparatus of oppression running through to the Autumn: claim there are too many unvaccinated adults still vulnerable to the virus; say that children must also be vaccinated to stop the spread; throw in a load of mithering about variants; and then that the old and vulnerable will be at risk again until they've had their boosters. Then, once Covid and Flu cases begin to rise in tandem in September or October, we're back to "protecting the NHS" and the garotte starts to tighten again for the Winter. Conveniently, this would also give the Government the time and the excuse to develop and deploy a system of compulsory ID cards.
Vaccine project mk.1 on it's own should (we fervently hope) be enough to avert any more total lockdowns, but do not be surprised if the miserable drudgery of masks, social distancing and rules and passes everywhere drags on for a long, long time.
Entirely off-topic, but an interesting piece in The Guardian about Norniron. For me the key paragraph is here:
"Working-class loyalists feel left behind and ignored. I am not here to debate the merits of that, or the so-called siege mentality of loyalism. However there is a deep-rooted anger there that has been both been ignored by mainstream unionism and used time and again by the DUP and the Ulster Unionist party for political machinations when it suited them. The fear of a united Ireland and what that will mean for unionism is amped up at election time, and tensions are stoked by both political unionism and “stakeholders” within loyalism, such as the Loyalist Communities Council. And for what? What has fundamentally changed, or got better for working-class loyalist communities in Northern Ireland? They deserve better than being lied to and led up the hill, then abandoned when violence erupts"
I have to ask, what is it that these working-class loyalists think there is any point in being a loyalist? They have been lied to and led up the hill not only by their elected politicians but by the British government. Rather than doing something about these areas of deep deprivation, the unionist politicians and the UK government have abandoned them.
"The fear of a united Ireland" in case what - they end up deprived and ignored? In deprived working class communities in England, people decided to throw the dice and vote for Brexit. In NI they didn't. Will be interesting to see how the fear of reunification plays out in these communities - even if they only stay at home in a border vote that could be enough to swing a close vote.
I think that Working Class Loyalists would like Devo-Max, so nominally British but effectively under Home Rule. Of course that is rather dependent on there remaining a Unionist majority.
Ulster Loyalists rather remind me of the Afrikaaners in the last days of apartheid. Not just the prospect of losing power, but also their pre-enlightenment Calvinist ideology.
A border poll will only happen if Ireland presses for it.
The prospect of renewed Loyalist terror will push that into the distant future.
The men in balaclavas have a veto both ways, and I can't see that changing for a long time, there won't be a frontier within Ireland, equally, there won't be a United Ireland.
Isn't it going to be difficult to make people use vaccine passports to have a pint when they've already got used to being able to have one without a vaccine passport, and the figures will be lower in the future/?
Comments
Thank you.
Egypt 'seizes' megaship Ever Given which blocked the Suez Canal until the owners pay $900MILLION compensation
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9466575/Egypt-seizes-megaship-blocked-Suez-Canal.html
I doubt Khan is losing any sleep over the possibilities if he fails to get 50% though.
Spare a thought for Trump bootlicker David Perdue though - 49.73% in November, goes to a runoff and loses.
Starmer won the leadership in large part because he was considered a potential election winner who could forensically take on Boris. If on the other hand Starmer continues to decline and continues to be disliked even by his own voters then that's got to open up the potential for a challenge.
Labour aren't great at ousting leaders, but there seems to be little actual love for Starmer.
...It's pretty hard to claim there's a vast conspiracy to suppress secret deaths and side effects when the whole damn system literally stops because it found 6 cases of a thing out of 7 million doses....
Though actually it ought to say that it's pretty hard to justify such a claim....
Considering that until very recently the Scottish unlock roadmap asserted that even in middle of June you would only be able to have outdoor meetings of 8 people from 3 households, it feels like someone has had a bite of the sensible pill with this change coming for Friday.
https://twitter.com/benjaminbutter/status/1382024944205361155
https://twitter.com/JamesMelville/status/1382017775087058948
Our exchange has clearly moved the market.
England population density 450 per sq km.
I assume Nancy Cartwright will be apologising too...
Starmer's main job is to win back as many as possible of the Northern working class seats as possible, and if he starts off by losing one even Corbyn won then it doesn't bode well for his chances at the others. That's the argument being made.
If it all goes wrong, it will be because of things happening some months in the future, not because of permutations of the situation now, especially with so little foreign travel. Make hay while the sun shines. Unless we really are waiting for Barnsley?
https://twitter.com/IainRWhite/status/1381885921738506241?s=20
At a high level, that means you'd need 600 million doses. (The reality is - particularly if you were a little smarter - you wouldn't need so many. But the EU has made some poor choices.) Right now, over 100 million have been done. So that leaves you with 500 million doses still to do.
Pfizer is still ramping up production. Don't forget they now expect to manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year. And the US export ban is going to end because the US is reaching practical completion by the end of May, and some of those doses are going to end up being shipped to the EU.
You also have the Lonza Moderna plant, which is now producing close to a million doses a day, and while we and Switzerland have first dibs, the EU is next in line from that plant.
It also looks highly likely that CureVac will end up being approved next month - and production has already began at Novartis, Rentschler and Celonic.
Even before we're talking about AstraZeneca and J&J - both of which end up being used - we are probably talking about more than 3 million doses a day from those sources alone - and perhaps more like 4-5m.
I see no reason why the EU vaccine rollout should do anything other than continue to accelerate. My forecast was that the UK would achieve practical completion at the end of May, and the EU would be three months behind. There's no reason right now to change that forecast.
One of the things i was concerned about the change in policy was that lots of people were saying "it's ok because we've got lots of vaccines coming on track". But that's a very risky strategy when we have no idea about the potential safety risks of the new vaccines. If we've set the bar at the extremely low level of AZ, as demonstrated through vaccination of 10s of millions of people, then it isn't surprising that we are going to get issues with the new ones as they come on line.
On our roll out I think it will be around there when we reach herd immunity and then and 90%+ fully vaccinated by the middle of July.
The worry I have for Europe is that other countries will consider it a hotzone and not allow their citizens to travel there until after the summer which will basically put Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Southern Italy under water. I could see the UK government only selectively reopen to the US, Israel and other high vaccination countries.
I suppose it wouldn't be worth the risk, given that "officially" surgeries aren't supposed to be venturing outside the approved list. Even though everyone knows it's been going on.
The UK will reach the end of May at 80-90% completion of first doses (maybe slightly higher), will then probably make one final attempt at getting the vaccine refusers to have a jab, and then give up. By the end of the summer, all the second doses will have been given and we'll probably get those to 70-85% of adults.
Israel seems to have maxed out at 60% of the population. That is starting to look like being enough, in conjunction with the people who've already caught the virus and gained some immunity, although there are still questions how long that lasts and how much protection it gives to new variants. It helps that the people who are more likely to refuse the vaccine are also more likely to have caught the virus (either because they're generally thick, or just now think they don't need it).
The US will probably top out around the same level as, maybe a tad higher than, Israel. This will probably also be enough, given that the demographics who won't want one also believe the virus is a hoax, and mostly don't live in the places that matter as far as contagion is concerned (ie cities).
The big question is where the EU will top out. Once the US is done, you're correct that supply won't be an issue, and with a smaller gap between doses they'll probably finish quite soon after us. However, the continued negative press around side effects is going to destroy any hope they have of achieving the UK's take-up rate, and there's a good chance they'll end up well behind the US as well. That may or may not be good enough for herd immunity - my guess would be it won't, especially because the likelihood of refusing a vaccine is likely correlated with likelihood of being at risk, and/or living in populated areas. Or at least it won't be negatively correlated with those things.
The real bad news for the EU today is not the supply issues; it's about the demand side. And this is why they were so unbelievably stupid to denigrate the AstraZeneca vaccine so heavily and so publicly - with a second vaccine now in the spotlight for the same reasons, there is a real risk that EU citizens will no longer trust any vaccine they are to be given. This is a disaster for them.
I also think you're unduly pessimistic about the UK. Once you start adding some J&J in there, and the Moderna doses, it's hard not to see us back to close to 1m shots a day by early May. Which means practical completion is there by the end of the Month. Sure, we'll still be vaccinating people after that date. But once you get to 60+% of the people fully vaccinated, then, for all intents and purposes, you're done.
The tough one for the US-UK (and I speak as someone directly affected) is that you are seeing rates of vaccine hesitancy in some states that rival France. And I think the solution is simply going to be that travel is going to be largely restricted to double dosed people (and the same applies to travel between the Continent and the UK).
You can understand a new player like Novavax making mistakes, but what were governments and the larger industry doing in not stockpiling such basic kit over the last year ? Compared to the total outlays on vaccines, it would have been a rounding error in cash terms.
I jest, but I think he's apologising for the specific portrayal, rather than because he portrayed someone with a different background to him.
I reckon vaccine take up in the EU this year (as a percent of adult population) will be higher than the US.
£100?
If it doesn't, if Labour hold it despite everything, which they might and I hope they do, this will bode well for them. It will indicate progress since the election and potential to make more as time passes and both "getting Brexit done" and the pandemic recede into memory to be replaced by the long dreary hangover from both.
https://covid19-vaccine-report.ecdc.europa.eu/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjXxaImfxgg
About those currency plans and pension provision.....
By the end of May that means ~44m people will have had their first doses which around 83% of adults or 64% of the total population. By the end of June we'll have hit 95% of adults and and 75% of the population with first doses and somewhere around 80% of adults fully done.
The unlockdown schedule is going to be exactly right.
The thrombosis is a natural part of SARS-type infection, as well as a side effect of the adenovirus vaccines and occurs as a symptom at about the same rate as it appears as a vaccine ADR
Thus the risk calculus is altered to chance of infection x all symptoms risks plus thrombosis, vs risk of thrombosis from vaccine.
I.e. it tilts the calculus much further towards using the AZN vaccine if no other is available, even for those at higher risk of the thrombosis ADR
One of them was leaning on a lamppost at the corner of the street.
Twenty-three cases of the South African variant were detected in the care home - 13 staff and 10 residents.
Six of the 10 residents infected had received one dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine two or more weeks before their positive test date.
One of the 13 infected staff had a single Pfizer vaccine dose two or more weeks before their positive test.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-56729607
So does that suggest that 12/13 of the staff were anti-vaxxers ?
Firstly, there is much broader concerns in certain communities about the CV19 vaccine than there is about the flu shot.
Secondly, the consequences of not having a CV19 vaccine will be much greater for people in the EU, than those in the US. Most Americans don't travel. So, if you're in Texas what's the incentive to get a CV19 vaccine shot, unless you are genuinely scared about getting the disease. By contrast, if you want to jump on a plane to Tenerife in Europe, you will need to have been vaccinated.
So, about that £100... You up for it?
EU-27 population is 450 million total, which at 80% is 360m adults.
Jabs so far are 97m jabs to 70m people. 27m have had two jabs.
So 70% of adults are 260m. At that they need 520m doses, so the gap is 420m.
In March EU received 2m a day.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-eu-vaccines/eu-to-get-107-million-covid-doses-by-end-of-march-30-million-from-astrazeneca-idINKBN2BN1LT
I think the thing they never talk about is the extra month needed for vaccine distribution and immunity to build.
To me they look to be very heavily dependent on the ramp-up at Marburg and the timing of second round orders.
Starmer may be the disastrous vote loser you claim, but even godesses like Long-Bailey and Pidcock would be struggling under such a tide of media positivity for the incumbent Prime Minister.
MY second vaccination is May 28th so as you say the "roadmap" is sensible and coherent and allows for large numbers to receive both vaccinations by mid June.
But that's not the issue. We're arguing about a Labour defeat - you say it's the "expected" outcome (for some value of expected; >50%, I suppose), and (more importantly) that anyone who says it's not expected hasn't understood the paradigm shift that occurred around the last election. I say you're wrong, and it's totally reasonable to interpret the specific Hartlepool result in 2019 in other ways.
And for whatever it's worth I think the Tories are slight favourites to beat Labour. But only slight.
https://ibb.co/JCyRjkd
https://ibb.co/JCyRjkd
20m doses delivered in EU in the first 12 days (40%) of April.
The number on March 31st was around 75 million.
The current EU daily average on a 7-day sample is 2 million a day.
Would not currently like to be the Czar. UVDL will be on a scapegoat hunt.
She will be blaming J&J and Health Logistics within countries.
Some of the more... Fox News-ier... bits of America might be harder to shift than hippy Europe.
Big picture is still that First World will be fine at some point in the summer, but we'd better not need autumn rejabs, because there's a world out there that haven't had one jab yet.
Clearly, the most important election on May 6th isn't Hartlepool or even Cornwall Council or even the London Mayoralty but the Newham Governance Referendum.
Yes, I know...
The options are to keep the existing structure which has the Borough run by the Mayor, Councillor Fiaz, or to revert to a Committee-based structure. The group agitating for the latter is called Restore Democracy and we received their leaflet this evening and very attractive it is too. Apparently the Mayor alone is responsible for the £60 I now have to pay for parking outside Stodge Towers.
Hang on - she may be Mayor but there is a Cabinet and while Newham is a one-party state, in theory every measure still has to have the support of 31 Labour Councillors.
The other niggle I have about Restore Democracy is who is behind Restore Democracy. It's not easy to discover - do the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Greens, Christian People's Alliance or TUSC support them?
Er, no, well, not publicly it seems.
They seem connected to Newham People Power https://newhampeoplepower.wordpress.com/ which is strongly anti the parking charges (which I get) and is run by Luke, Shan and Craig (whoever they may be).
One person who is prepared to back Restore publicly is Zain Miah who happens to be the Vice Chair of West Ham Constituency Labour Party which, along with its East Ham counterpart, have been suspended by the national Labour Party over allegations of entryism and being run by Momentum.
So are we looking at a Labour party civil war being played out via this referendum? Is it possible that IF the mayoral system is dropped, Councillor Fiaz, who, let's be fair, was elected by the Newham residents, might be ousted as Labour lead by an internal coup putting a pro-Momentum individual in charge at the Town Hall? Given the next set of local elections is next year, would we then see the wholesale deselection of those not considered "suitable" by those running Labour?
Fiaz herself got the political leadership by running against Sir Robin Wales and beating him in the Labour candidate election. She then got 73% in the 2018 election.
If African countries had the same case rates as Europe they would be on the red list already..
Manchester thinks they are ignored? Give Greater Manchester two senators, same as London. 2 for the Summer Country (including Devon and Cornwall) 2 for Yorkshire etc
That doesn't mean its "empty", just that there are large parts of not very much.
There's no need for you to exaggerate or deliberately misunderstand what other people are saying..
Where I'm not yet convinced we'vemoves on from the old norms is in the realms of government making gains at by-elections. That's just so historically rare I'm inconvinces it will happen. We kniw what typically happens: government supporters are less motivated to defend their party than opposition voters are to punish them. And Conservative voters ate les motivated than Labour ones, and working class voters are less motivated than middle class ones. None of this looks to me like good news for the Tories.
I do accept we are in new times. But I'd make Con gain no greater than35%.
So 'Get to Falkirk', as they say.
I've got an idea, why don't we divide the country into blocs, we could call them constituencies, and each of those blocs elects one person to represent them - we could call that a Member of Parliament.
Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies:
But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer,
Gie her a Haggis!
And a whole lot of not very much.
You're not contradicting me.
"Working-class loyalists feel left behind and ignored. I am not here to debate the merits of that, or the so-called siege mentality of loyalism. However there is a deep-rooted anger there that has been both been ignored by mainstream unionism and used time and again by the DUP and the Ulster Unionist party for political machinations when it suited them. The fear of a united Ireland and what that will mean for unionism is amped up at election time, and tensions are stoked by both political unionism and “stakeholders” within loyalism, such as the Loyalist Communities Council. And for what? What has fundamentally changed, or got better for working-class loyalist communities in Northern Ireland? They deserve better than being lied to and led up the hill, then abandoned when violence erupts"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/13/belfast-violence-young-working-class-people-failed
I have to ask, what is it that these working-class loyalists think there is any point in being a loyalist? They have been lied to and led up the hill not only by their elected politicians but by the British government. Rather than doing something about these areas of deep deprivation, the unionist politicians and the UK government have abandoned them.
"The fear of a united Ireland" in case what - they end up deprived and ignored? In deprived working class communities in England, people decided to throw the dice and vote for Brexit. In NI they didn't. Will be interesting to see how the fear of reunification plays out in these communities - even if they only stay at home in a border vote that could be enough to swing a close vote.
https://twitter.com/JimMFelton/status/1381730864627912706?s=20
Ulster Loyalists rather remind me of the Afrikaaners in the last days of apartheid. Not just the prospect of losing power, but also their pre-enlightenment Calvinist ideology.
On the other hand, the more advanced the vaccine project becomes, the more the Prime Minister chooses to award virtually all the credit for the drop in cases, and all other indicators, to lockdowns.
The pressure to maintain at least some of the restrictions through the Summer will be considerable. Panicking scientists and the terrified ministers operating under their influence do not make for ideal circumstances. You can imagine how the goalposts could very easily be shifted repeatedly to keep quite a lot of the apparatus of oppression running through to the Autumn: claim there are too many unvaccinated adults still vulnerable to the virus; say that children must also be vaccinated to stop the spread; throw in a load of mithering about variants; and then that the old and vulnerable will be at risk again until they've had their boosters. Then, once Covid and Flu cases begin to rise in tandem in September or October, we're back to "protecting the NHS" and the garotte starts to tighten again for the Winter. Conveniently, this would also give the Government the time and the excuse to develop and deploy a system of compulsory ID cards.
Vaccine project mk.1 on it's own should (we fervently hope) be enough to avert any more total lockdowns, but do not be surprised if the miserable drudgery of masks, social distancing and rules and passes everywhere drags on for a long, long time.
The prospect of renewed Loyalist terror will push that into the distant future.
The men in balaclavas have a veto both ways, and I can't see that changing for a long time, there won't be a frontier within Ireland, equally, there won't be a United Ireland.