Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
lol. No one believes the WHO investigation. Not even the leader of the WHO
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
Because China is - for want of a better word - our enemy (or should I say actively hostile towards us), we are predisposed to believe everything.
Almost nobody who actually works in viral research, even the most hawkish and anti-China, believes CV19 escaped from a lab. They all think that the simpler explanation is more likely correct.
Ah, but they have a vested interest. If it escaped from a Chinese lab, it could escape from their lab, so their labs might get shut down. Never trust anyone who knows what they are talking about.
Fascinating. 15 gains by the Tories on this swing, which some like @kinabalu is saying should be considered the 'status quo'.
If they're right then the status quo going into the next election ought to be a 110 seat majority, not an 80 seat majority.
Yep, precise numbers aside, the general point is correct and is key to understanding the depth of the hole Labour must clamber out of in order to get competitive. The 80 seat Con majority doesn't tell the whole story. Take the BXP out of GE19 and you'd have an even bigger defeat. And of course nowhere is this factor more salient and important to grasp than in the seat where the BXP stood their leader in 2019, really went for it, and managed their largest vote share. The citadel of northern working class hard leave. Hartlepool.
If Labour can hold this seat on May 6th it will be an excellent result for them. It will show progress from the GE (once the above insight is duly processed) and this will have been achieved despite the GE being quite recent and the main events subsequent to it being in favour of the government - the delivery of the promised hard Brexit and the early ending of the pandemic via a vaccine rollout that stands in triumphant contrast to the shambles made of things by the EU.
Can Labour do it? I doubt it myself. My call remains as was. I'm on the Cons at evens and I expect to collect. But, yes, of course Labour can win in Hartlepool. It's Hartlepool ffs. Current betting gives them about a 40% chance. I rate it lower but I wouldn't disagree too much with that.
That's about my view too, based partly on second-hand reports from people involved. That said, there has been a longstanding shift of C2D voters from Lab to Con and a corresponding shift of ABC1 voters from Con to Lab - going back before Starmer, Corbyn or Miliband. Education and especially age are now much better predictors of voting intention than class. The effect of that is that seats like Hartlepool become vulnerable to the Tories, as the tweet shows, but that's matched by middle-class seats slipping to Labour. Obviously both parties should fight to retain both, but it's misleading that the tweet only looks at similar seats to Hartlepool.
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
So the CPS have pulled Newcastle upon Tyne as an available location option just as I was about to submit my application and 4 days before the closing date. What a complete waste of time.
I guess my career as a criminal prosecutor is over before it even began.
Don't take a job as a criminal prosecutor because the pay is shit and you're overworked, kids with paper rounds will make more money per hour than you would as a criminal prosecutor you might end up being just like Sir Keir Starmer.
What TSE says - I really can't imagine anything worse except possible being an on-duty legal aid defence lawyer.
I was quite excited about the opportunity. Although I didn't expect to actually be successful, I think it would have been good. Never mind.
I would recommend reading the Secret Barrister's books - that would quickly put you off.
Money is being spent on the visible parts of the criminal justice system (Police and Prisons) but not on the hidden bits that actually do the real work.
It is the next big scandal waiting to happen. It’s an issue that crosses party lines and has tainted our politics for too long, an issue that exposes the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money.
I’m talking about lobbying – and we all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisors for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way. In this party, we believe in competition, not cronyism. We believe in market economics, not crony capitalism. So we must be the party that sorts all this out.
Now, I want to be clear: it’s not just big business that gets involved in lobbying. Charities and other organisations, including trade unions, do it too. What’s more, when it's open and transparent, when people know who is meeting who, for what reason and with what outcome, lobbying is perfectly reasonable.
It’s important that businesses, charities and other organisations feel they can make sure their voice is heard. And indeed, lobbying often makes for better, more workable, legislation. But I believe that it is increasingly clear that lobbying in this country is getting out of control.
Today it is a £2 billion industry that has a huge presence in Parliament. The Hansard Society has estimated that some MPs are approached over one hundred times a week by lobbyists. Much of the time this happens covertly.
We don’t know who is meeting whom. We don’t know whether any favours are being exchanged. We don’t know which outside interests are wielding unhealthy influence. This isn’t a minor issue with minor consequences. Commercial interests - not to mention government contracts - worth hundreds of billions of pounds are potentially at stake.
I believe that secret corporate lobbying, like the expenses scandal, goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics. It arouses people’s worst fears and suspicions about how our political system works, with money buying power, power fishing for money and a cosy club at the top making decisions in their own interest.
We can’t go on like this. I believe it’s time we shone the light of transparency on lobbying in our country and forced our politics to come clean about who is buying power and influence.
Glad we have the Leon report into the origins of covid, I was feeling quite underwhelmed having to rely on the WHO which involved those pesky "experts" doing lots of work based on years of boring study. What I really needed was someone deducing it from their feelings.
We do know that viruses escape from research labs (see the Birmingham Smallpox outbreak and the sad death of Janet Parker).
I think it is true that we still don't really know exactly how the transmission to Janet Parker actually occurred in the University of Birmingham Medical School.
COVID is very infectious, and so the @Leon Report (whilst it may not have any direct evidence) certainly can't be dismissed out of hand, IMO.
That unherd article makes a very good point. Otherwise intelligent people are stupidly refusing to believe the likeliest explanation - it leaked out of the lab. Why? Because this theory was advanced by Trump, which has made it toxic. No one wants to agree with a racist madman
If a new theory was propounded by Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson, many sane people would go to great lengths to disagree with it, even if it were palpably true
Indeed something exactly like that happened when Nick Griffin broke the Grooming scandal
Out there somewhere, there is an astonishing interview between Griffin and Gavin Esler, where Esler exhibited, to a tee, precisely what you describe here.
It cannot be true, because Griffin is saying it,
and conversely, it must be true, because 'mainstream' politicians are saying it.
Many people on here show the same attitude.
The people anointed by the mainstream media have to be believed and defended. Ie, SAGE members, big party politicians, senior civil servants and so on.
The president of the region of France containing the Riviera has placed an order for 500,000 doses of Sputnik.
That's not quite accurate: "he announced that he had contacted the Russian ambassador for a “pre-order” of 500,000 doses of the anti-Covid vaccine -19 Sputnik V"
"Wants to" is some way away from "has an order for"
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
lol. No one believes the WHO investigation. Not even the leader of the WHO
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
Because China is - for want of a better word - our enemy (or should I say actively hostile towards us), we are predisposed to believe everything.
Almost nobody who actually works in viral research, even the most hawkish and anti-China, believes CV19 escaped from a lab. They all think that the simpler explanation is more likely correct.
I’ve just given you about 300 examples of virologists and other experts believing precisely that.
You dislike this theory because Trump propounded it. Your understandable allergy to him has lowered your IQ. Do some reading
So the CPS have pulled Newcastle upon Tyne as an available location option just as I was about to submit my application and 4 days before the closing date. What a complete waste of time.
I guess my career as a criminal prosecutor is over before it even began.
Don't take a job as a criminal prosecutor because the pay is shit and you're overworked, kids with paper rounds will make more money per hour than you would as a criminal prosecutor you might end up being just like Sir Keir Starmer.
What TSE says - I really can't imagine anything worse except possible being an on-duty legal aid defence lawyer.
I was quite excited about the opportunity. Although I didn't expect to actually be successful, I think it would have been good. Never mind.
I would recommend reading the Secret Barrister's books - that would quickly put you off.
Money is being spent on the visible parts of the criminal justice system (Police and Prisons) but not on the hidden bits that actually do the real work.
I have read them!
In fact my colleagues bought hard copies for me as a leaving present from my last engineering job.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Given how much less efficacious the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine is than the Western vaccines, CV19 has also done a great job of persuading many developing countries that a good relationship with the West *is* important. Chinese dollar diplomacy has become a whole lot less effective in the last year.
Another very good reason for assuming they had neither studied nor created the virus.
It’s widely accepted that they were studying this virus (or something close to it). SARS-cov-2 comes from bats in Yunnan, SW China, and it killed a few miners years ago. Wuhan scientists have been visiting Yunnan for a decade
When the BBC went to Yunnan to investigate the Chinese got very jumpy
Again, they always get jumpy around independent journalists. That’s because of the way they operate. It’s not in itself a sign of anything sinister going on.
As I noted earlier, they just passed a law in Hong Kong which would make @TheScreamingEagles advocating drawing a dick picture on a ballot paper an imprisonable offence.
Totalitarian regimes do stupid and brutal stuff, but it doesn't make conspiracies any more likely.
Please, I'm much more classier than that.
I would never use the word dick, I would use the word phallus.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
At some point it seems to me politicians are going to have to say 'no' to the science advisors. Enough is enough. You say we must learn to live with it as an endemic disease, so we are going to do just that.
We cannot afford, mentally or economically, another three month national full lockdown next winter. In the very worse case we should advise the very vulnerable to lockdown and the rest get on with life including schools remaining open.
I fear though we are already being soften up for one.
I think you need to distinguish between the press and scientists. The Government's insistence on releasing everything through press leaks doesn't help though. One problem is naivety of scientists when talking to the press I think mind
The Scientists cannot and will not say, "x will not happen", as long as there is even half a percent chance or less, or x happening.
And the Press have no interest in accurately reporting the probability.
They also have no interest or understanding of wider statistics.
The inability of journalists to understand even quite basic numbers has been absolutely staggering. Not all journalists, of course. But a surprisingly large number are surprisingly stupid.
Fascinating. 15 gains by the Tories on this swing, which some like @kinabalu is saying should be considered the 'status quo'.
If they're right then the status quo going into the next election ought to be a 110 seat majority, not an 80 seat majority.
Yep, precise numbers aside, the general point is correct and is key to understanding the depth of the hole Labour must clamber out of in order to get competitive. The 80 seat Con majority doesn't tell the whole story. Take the BXP out of GE19 and you'd have an even bigger defeat. And of course nowhere is this factor more salient and important to grasp than in the seat where the BXP stood their leader in 2019, really went for it, and managed their largest vote share. The citadel of northern working class hard leave. Hartlepool.
If Labour can hold this seat on May 6th it will be an excellent result for them. It will show progress from the GE (once the above insight is duly processed) and this will have been achieved despite the GE being quite recent and the main events subsequent to it being in favour of the government - the delivery of the promised hard Brexit and the early ending of the pandemic via a vaccine rollout that stands in triumphant contrast to the shambles made of things by the EU.
Can Labour do it? I doubt it myself. My call remains as was. I'm on the Cons at evens and I expect to collect. But, yes, of course Labour can win in Hartlepool. It's Hartlepool ffs. Current betting gives them about a 40% chance. I rate it lower but I wouldn't disagree too much with that.
That's about my view too, based partly on second-hand reports from people involved. That said, there has been a longstanding shift of C2D voters from Lab to Con and a corresponding shift of ABC1 voters from Con to Lab - going back before Starmer, Corbyn or Miliband. Education and especially age are now much better predictors of voting intention than class. The effect of that is that seats like Hartlepool become vulnerable to the Tories, as the tweet shows, but that's matched by middle-class seats slipping to Labour. Obviously both parties should fight to retain both, but it's misleading that the tweet only looks at similar seats to Hartlepool.
Yes, this political realignment (turbocharged by Brexit) - the "new politics" as it were - cuts both ways. Labour seats become Tory but the opposite too. It's all for play for at the next election as far as I'm concerned. And I won't be making firm judgments on Starmer until this time next year, regardless of May 6th.
Interesting they have 2017 as 39% when the BBC figure is 38%
So barring general election turnout in 1992, the last time a governing party got 40% was back in 1982.
Fake news, the 1992 locals did NOT take place on the same day as the 1992 general election.
Here’s a question though, thinking of how that was a month after the general.
Does the campaigning for a general election in itself drive up turnout for the local elections? The first intimation I had that there were elections round here (other than PB, obviously) was when I got my polling card yesterday. Otherwise, everywhere is dead silent. No posters, no TV broadcasts, no leaflets - OK, so no canvassers anyway at the moment, but still, nothing at all is a bit limp.
Yes, I live in a safe Labour ward and therefore am probably assumed to be not worth canvassing. But you can understand when they’re this low key why people don’t bother to or even realise they could/should turn out.
Edit - and I note @Gallowgate hasn’t been contacted by the challengers in his ward either.
Turnout in most local elections is 35% or less, compared to say the turnout of 67% there was at the 2019 general election.
However campaigning in a general election constituency safe seat is actually less than in a council ward marginal, eg at the last general election in Epping Forest we put one leaflet out and spent the rest of the time delivering and canvassing in Chingford and Woodford Green, our nearest marginal seat.
In this year's locals in marginal wards we have already put out several newsletters before the election address and have resumed canvassing there too
I was thinking of things like TV/radio/internet coverage, plus posters, rallies etc.
They cut through as they are newsworthy.
A few public spirited people delivering leaflets in marginal wards, less so.
Is there ever much media coverage of local elections? Not in my experience apart from after the results come out.
In Scotland and Wales I would expect there to be coverage of the Holyrood and Senedd elections and in London there to be coverage of the Mayoral and Assembly elections, I would not expect there to be much coverage of the council elections and PCC elections in the rest of England though.
Rallies are obviously out given Covid rules at the moment anyway
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
Johnson will keep doing what Johnson does, and Starmer will keep doing what Starmer does, until you stop voting for them, stop supporting them, and stop calling the people who want liberty back lunatics, tin foil hatters, conspiracy theorists and all the other bullsh8t insult you have collectively thrown in the last year.
Almost all of you are, in effect, are the useful idiots of Johnson, SAGE, Starmer et al. Things will change when you chumps do. And not before.
And be advised that if you vote labour or conservative in May what you are doing is endorsing the status quo, and saying 'more please' to every single privation you have endured in the past year.
Johnson will stop when we take his democratic legs away. Not before.
That's fine on the single condition that you remind us who and which political group is willing, able and competent to govern that complex entity called the UK better than Lab or Con? You are keeping that secret. Politics is about the boring thing of possible options.
Mostly, politicians don't run Britain, actually. Citizens do. Politicians mainly get in the way.
And this isn't a general election. Its a free hit. But accept the status quo if you want. I'm not going to tell you how to vote.
Here's the thing. Steve Baker & Co can't move if the tories do well in the locals. IF bedrock tory support drains away, he might be able to do something.
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
At some point it seems to me politicians are going to have to say 'no' to the science advisors. Enough is enough. You say we must learn to live with it as an endemic disease, so we are going to do just that.
We cannot afford, mentally or economically, another three month national full lockdown next winter. In the very worse case we should advise the very vulnerable to lockdown and the rest get on with life including schools remaining open.
I fear though we are already being soften up for one.
I think you need to distinguish between the press and scientists. The Government's insistence on releasing everything through press leaks doesn't help though. One problem is naivety of scientists when talking to the press I think mind
The Scientists cannot and will not say, "x will not happen", as long as there is even half a percent chance or less, or x happening.
And the Press have no interest in accurately reporting the probability.
They also have no interest or understanding of wider statistics.
The inability of journalists to understand even quite basic numbers has been absolutely staggering. Not all journalists, of course. But a surprisingly large number are surprisingly stupid.
Same with a few MPs if I'm honest.
There were few MPs last year who were saying we're in the wrong tier, we've got one of the largest decreases in cases in the country so we should be moved to a less severe tier.
Not realising that falling from 400 cases per 100k population to 300 cases per 100k population isn't as impressive as an area with say only 80 cases per 100k population that was previously 82 cases 100k population.
On the retail level, Tory sleaze is one of the foundations of SKS's strategy so far, which is that he can win if, and perhaps only if, the Tories enable him to. His party and his leadership does not look enough to win by its own merit.
On the reality level for a moment, there are several things to distinguish:
Lobbying, advertising, position maximising, service providing, mutual back scratching, bribery, theft, getting a job matching your past experience, risk taking, lying, making big profits, networking are all things. They vary from public service to stuff you should get 20 years for; they can look remarkably similar. At the moment Labour's job is to make them all look the same. When in government their job is make them all look different.
Our job is to enjoy the show and back the winner. (Labour for Hartlepool for example).
I'll quote the numbers around this though. The Tories now have a huge lead with C2DE voters. Yougov has shown in the last month a 25% lead for the party and an 18% lead for Boris on best PM.
I grew up in working class areas. Corruption is an envelope full of cash or an incompetent family member getting a job or being promoted. Getting jobs through friends is a way of life. If you go past a non food pub in a working class area between 4 and 7 you will see lots of white vans outside. This is the office networking. Where you speak to friends / acquaintances and get things done. Friendship and trust for part of this so if you want to understand why this will have limited impact, and why Boris is focussed on spending more money on the north (levelling up) - these people want results not empty promises and being taken for granted by labour.
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Indeed, the poshest voters are now more likely to vote LD than Tory.
Labour also do far better amongst the middle classes than they did in say the 1950s, the Tories though do far better now with the working classes than they did then so class is no longer as big a dividing line as age is on voting intention
Johnson will keep doing what Johnson does, and Starmer will keep doing what Starmer does, until you stop voting for them, stop supporting them, and stop calling the people who want liberty back lunatics, tin foil hatters, conspiracy theorists and all the other bullsh8t insult you have collectively thrown in the last year.
Almost all of you are, in effect, are the useful idiots of Johnson, SAGE, Starmer et al. Things will change when you chumps do. And not before.
And be advised that if you vote labour or conservative in May what you are doing is endorsing the status quo, and saying 'more please' to every single privation you have endured in the past year.
Johnson will stop when we take his democratic legs away. Not before.
That's fine on the single condition that you remind us who and which political group is willing, able and competent to govern that complex entity called the UK better than Lab or Con? You are keeping that secret. Politics is about the boring thing of possible options.
Mostly, politicians don't run Britain, actually. Citizens do. Politicians mainly get in the way.
And this isn't a general election. Its a free hit. But accept the status quo if you want. I'm not going to tell you how to vote.
Here's the thing. Steve Baker & Co can't move if the tories do well in the locals. IF bedrock tory support drains away, he might be able to do something.
Nice try.
No moaning about restrictions from you then matey. And I will be watching.
Fascinating. 15 gains by the Tories on this swing, which some like @kinabalu is saying should be considered the 'status quo'.
If they're right then the status quo going into the next election ought to be a 110 seat majority, not an 80 seat majority.
Yep, precise numbers aside, the general point is correct and is key to understanding the depth of the hole Labour must clamber out of in order to get competitive. The 80 seat Con majority doesn't tell the whole story. Take the BXP out of GE19 and you'd have an even bigger defeat. And of course nowhere is this factor more salient and important to grasp than in the seat where the BXP stood their leader in 2019, really went for it, and managed their largest vote share. The citadel of northern working class hard leave. Hartlepool.
If Labour can hold this seat on May 6th it will be an excellent result for them. It will show progress from the GE (once the above insight is duly processed) and this will have been achieved despite the GE being quite recent and the main events subsequent to it being in favour of the government - the delivery of the promised hard Brexit and the early ending of the pandemic via a vaccine rollout that stands in triumphant contrast to the shambles made of things by the EU.
Can Labour do it? I doubt it myself. My call remains as was. I'm on the Cons at evens and I expect to collect. But, yes, of course Labour can win in Hartlepool. It's Hartlepool ffs. Current betting gives them about a 40% chance. I rate it lower but I wouldn't disagree too much with that.
That's about my view too, based partly on second-hand reports from people involved. That said, there has been a longstanding shift of C2D voters from Lab to Con and a corresponding shift of ABC1 voters from Con to Lab - going back before Starmer, Corbyn or Miliband. Education and especially age are now much better predictors of voting intention than class. The effect of that is that seats like Hartlepool become vulnerable to the Tories, as the tweet shows, but that's matched by middle-class seats slipping to Labour. Obviously both parties should fight to retain both, but it's misleading that the tweet only looks at similar seats to Hartlepool.
Yes, this political realignment (turbocharged by Brexit) - the "new politics" as it were - cuts both ways. Labour seats become Tory but the opposite too. It's all for play for at the next election as far as I'm concerned. And I won't be making firm judgments on Starmer until this time next year, regardless of May 6th.
I think it'll be all to play for until well into 2023, or maybe 2024. Starmer hasn't broken through, as many on the left hoped, but he hasn't failed completely either, and it is entirely possible that the Conservatives could screw up disastrously, which seems to be what you need to change government these days.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
lol. No one believes the WHO investigation. Not even the leader of the WHO
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
Because China is - for want of a better word - our enemy (or should I say actively hostile towards us), we are predisposed to believe everything.
Almost nobody who actually works in viral research, even the most hawkish and anti-China, believes CV19 escaped from a lab. They all think that the simpler explanation is more likely correct.
Perhaps someone who works in viral research can explain to us how you can tell the difference between the two scenarios?
What is the "smoking gun" that tells us that this virus came from Wuhan Animal Market?
More covid reading. The South China Morning Post. A long article FULL of virologists and the like saying Yes, it could easily have come from the lab
‘Lentzos at King’s College London said while such analysis did suggest Sars-CoV-2 was a “natural” virus, this does not affect the validity of the lab-leak theory.
“If we look at the genetics, it looks like it could possibly have been a natural spillover, but none of that evidence rules out a lab leak theory, it is entirely plausible that the spillover happened as a result of lab-related research or field work or a transportation mishap,” she said.’
‘Ebright said “the emergence last year of a pandemic involving bat Sars-related coronavirus in Wuhan, on [the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s] doorstep, immediately suggested a possible laboratory origin for the pandemic” to ALL SCIENTISTS AND SCIENCE POLICY SPECIALISTS who had been debating “since 2015” the institute’s “extremely high-risk gain-of-function research on bat Sars-related coronaviruses”’
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
I think it's like rcs1000 has said: the media love a dramatic story that gets the clicks and attention. Which story looks more dramatic:
ALL IS GOING QUITE WELL, ACTUALLY
WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE FROM SUPER-MUTATED VIRUS!!!
I've seen plenty of scientists saying the first one. A slack handful saying the second one. Which one does the media choose to amplify?
No need for any conspiracy theory that the Government want that amplified, or that there's a sinister cabal of scientists who want to control everything. If either COULD control what the media amplifies, they'd be a lot happier in getting out Government messages and decent science; they can't. Because the media are drawn to melodramatic amplification like flies are drawn to shit,
More covid reading. The South China Morning Post. A long article FULL of virologists and the like saying Yes, it could easily have come from the lab
‘Lentzos at King’s College London said while such analysis did suggest Sars-CoV-2 was a “natural” virus, this does not affect the validity of the lab-leak theory.
“If we look at the genetics, it looks like it could possibly have been a natural spillover, but none of that evidence rules out a lab leak theory, it is entirely plausible that the spillover happened as a result of lab-related research or field work or a transportation mishap,” she said.’
‘Ebright said “the emergence last year of a pandemic involving bat Sars-related coronavirus in Wuhan, on [the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s] doorstep, immediately suggested a possible laboratory origin for the pandemic” to ALL SCIENTISTS AND SCIENCE POLICY SPECIALISTS who had been debating “since 2015” the institute’s “extremely high-risk gain-of-function research on bat Sars-related coronaviruses”’
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
At some point it seems to me politicians are going to have to say 'no' to the science advisors. Enough is enough. You say we must learn to live with it as an endemic disease, so we are going to do just that.
We cannot afford, mentally or economically, another three month national full lockdown next winter. In the very worse case we should advise the very vulnerable to lockdown and the rest get on with life including schools remaining open.
I fear though we are already being soften up for one.
I think you need to distinguish between the press and scientists. The Government's insistence on releasing everything through press leaks doesn't help though. One problem is naivety of scientists when talking to the press I think mind
The Scientists cannot and will not say, "x will not happen", as long as there is even half a percent chance or less, or x happening.
And the Press have no interest in accurately reporting the probability.
They also have no interest or understanding of wider statistics.
The inability of journalists to understand even quite basic numbers has been absolutely staggering. Not all journalists, of course. But a surprisingly large number are surprisingly stupid.
If you talk to journalists, the following beliefs come up
- Numbers are boring, people don't wan to hear about them - "This is a question. This is a story" - A story is seen as "questions have been raised". "Questions raised and answered" is not a proper story.
Fascinating. 15 gains by the Tories on this swing, which some like @kinabalu is saying should be considered the 'status quo'.
If they're right then the status quo going into the next election ought to be a 110 seat majority, not an 80 seat majority.
Yep, precise numbers aside, the general point is correct and is key to understanding the depth of the hole Labour must clamber out of in order to get competitive. The 80 seat Con majority doesn't tell the whole story. Take the BXP out of GE19 and you'd have an even bigger defeat. And of course nowhere is this factor more salient and important to grasp than in the seat where the BXP stood their leader in 2019, really went for it, and managed their largest vote share. The citadel of northern working class hard leave. Hartlepool.
If Labour can hold this seat on May 6th it will be an excellent result for them. It will show progress from the GE (once the above insight is duly processed) and this will have been achieved despite the GE being quite recent and the main events subsequent to it being in favour of the government - the delivery of the promised hard Brexit and the early ending of the pandemic via a vaccine rollout that stands in triumphant contrast to the shambles made of things by the EU.
Can Labour do it? I doubt it myself. My call remains as was. I'm on the Cons at evens and I expect to collect. But, yes, of course Labour can win in Hartlepool. It's Hartlepool ffs. Current betting gives them about a 40% chance. I rate it lower but I wouldn't disagree too much with that.
That's about my view too, based partly on second-hand reports from people involved. That said, there has been a longstanding shift of C2D voters from Lab to Con and a corresponding shift of ABC1 voters from Con to Lab - going back before Starmer, Corbyn or Miliband. Education and especially age are now much better predictors of voting intention than class. The effect of that is that seats like Hartlepool become vulnerable to the Tories, as the tweet shows, but that's matched by middle-class seats slipping to Labour. Obviously both parties should fight to retain both, but it's misleading that the tweet only looks at similar seats to Hartlepool.
Yes, this political realignment (turbocharged by Brexit) - the "new politics" as it were - cuts both ways. Labour seats become Tory but the opposite too. It's all for play for at the next election as far as I'm concerned. And I won't be making firm judgments on Starmer until this time next year, regardless of May 6th.
I think it'll be all to play for until well into 2023, or maybe 2024. Starmer hasn't broken through, as many on the left hoped, but he hasn't failed completely either, and it is entirely possible that the Conservatives could screw up disastrously, which seems to be what you need to change government these days.
Pretty much agree. And these are very unusual times with the pandemic. Let's see how it looks a year from now.
One point though. Most of the left are rooting for Starmer to succeed - including me - but there's a chunk that aren't.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
At some point it seems to me politicians are going to have to say 'no' to the science advisors. Enough is enough. You say we must learn to live with it as an endemic disease, so we are going to do just that.
We cannot afford, mentally or economically, another three month national full lockdown next winter. In the very worse case we should advise the very vulnerable to lockdown and the rest get on with life including schools remaining open.
I fear though we are already being soften up for one.
I think you need to distinguish between the press and scientists. The Government's insistence on releasing everything through press leaks doesn't help though. One problem is naivety of scientists when talking to the press I think mind
The Scientists cannot and will not say, "x will not happen", as long as there is even half a percent chance or less, or x happening.
And the Press have no interest in accurately reporting the probability.
They also have no interest or understanding of wider statistics.
The inability of journalists to understand even quite basic numbers has been absolutely staggering. Not all journalists, of course. But a surprisingly large number are surprisingly stupid.
If you talk to journalists, the following beliefs come up
- Numbers are boring, people don't wan to hear about them - "This is a question. This is a story" - A story is seen as "questions have been raised". "Questions raised and answered" is not a proper story.
"When can we go on holiday?" seems to be the only thing most of them care about.
More covid reading. The South China Morning Post. A long article FULL of virologists and the like saying Yes, it could easily have come from the lab
‘Lentzos at King’s College London said while such analysis did suggest Sars-CoV-2 was a “natural” virus, this does not affect the validity of the lab-leak theory.
“If we look at the genetics, it looks like it could possibly have been a natural spillover, but none of that evidence rules out a lab leak theory, it is entirely plausible that the spillover happened as a result of lab-related research or field work or a transportation mishap,” she said.’
‘Ebright said “the emergence last year of a pandemic involving bat Sars-related coronavirus in Wuhan, on [the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s] doorstep, immediately suggested a possible laboratory origin for the pandemic” to ALL SCIENTISTS AND SCIENCE POLICY SPECIALISTS who had been debating “since 2015” the institute’s “extremely high-risk gain-of-function research on bat Sars-related coronaviruses”’
Interesting they have 2017 as 39% when the BBC figure is 38%
So barring general election turnout in 1992, the last time a governing party got 40% was back in 1982.
Fake news, the 1992 locals did NOT take place on the same day as the 1992 general election.
Here’s a question though, thinking of how that was a month after the general.
Does the campaigning for a general election in itself drive up turnout for the local elections? The first intimation I had that there were elections round here (other than PB, obviously) was when I got my polling card yesterday. Otherwise, everywhere is dead silent. No posters, no TV broadcasts, no leaflets - OK, so no canvassers anyway at the moment, but still, nothing at all is a bit limp.
Yes, I live in a safe Labour ward and therefore am probably assumed to be not worth canvassing. But you can understand when they’re this low key why people don’t bother to or even realise they could/should turn out.
Edit - and I note @Gallowgate hasn’t been contacted by the challengers in his ward either.
Turnout in most local elections is 35% or less, compared to say the turnout of 67% there was at the 2019 general election.
However campaigning in a general election constituency safe seat is actually less than in a council ward marginal, eg at the last general election in Epping Forest we put one leaflet out and spent the rest of the time delivering and canvassing in Chingford and Woodford Green, our nearest marginal seat.
In this year's locals in marginal wards we have already put out several newsletters before the election address and have resumed canvassing there too
I was thinking of things like TV/radio/internet coverage, plus posters, rallies etc.
They cut through as they are newsworthy.
A few public spirited people delivering leaflets in marginal wards, less so.
Is there ever much media coverage of local elections? Not in my experience apart from after the results come out.
In Scotland and Wales I would expect there to be coverage of the Holyrood and Senedd elections and in London there to be coverage of the Mayoral and Assembly elections, I would not expect there to be much coverage of the council elections and PCC elections in the rest of England though.
Rallies are obviously out given Covid rules at the moment anyway
Sigh.
THAT WAS MY POINT. You don’t get them for locals, so people don’t notice they’re happening.
You do in general election years. Does that help drive turnout?
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
Yes the most likely explanation is that wet market with loads of live animals and awful sanitary conditions being the source. However, the lab theory is also a plausible scenario, just not very likely. Given everything we know about China, I wouldn't want to rule out accidental spread from an improperly secured lab sample.
Fascinating. 15 gains by the Tories on this swing, which some like @kinabalu is saying should be considered the 'status quo'.
If they're right then the status quo going into the next election ought to be a 110 seat majority, not an 80 seat majority.
Yep, precise numbers aside, the general point is correct and is key to understanding the depth of the hole Labour must clamber out of in order to get competitive. The 80 seat Con majority doesn't tell the whole story. Take the BXP out of GE19 and you'd have an even bigger defeat. And of course nowhere is this factor more salient and important to grasp than in the seat where the BXP stood their leader in 2019, really went for it, and managed their largest vote share. The citadel of northern working class hard leave. Hartlepool.
If Labour can hold this seat on May 6th it will be an excellent result for them. It will show progress from the GE (once the above insight is duly processed) and this will have been achieved despite the GE being quite recent and the main events subsequent to it being in favour of the government - the delivery of the promised hard Brexit and the early ending of the pandemic via a vaccine rollout that stands in triumphant contrast to the shambles made of things by the EU.
Can Labour do it? I doubt it myself. My call remains as was. I'm on the Cons at evens and I expect to collect. But, yes, of course Labour can win in Hartlepool. It's Hartlepool ffs. Current betting gives them about a 40% chance. I rate it lower but I wouldn't disagree too much with that.
That's about my view too, based partly on second-hand reports from people involved. That said, there has been a longstanding shift of C2D voters from Lab to Con and a corresponding shift of ABC1 voters from Con to Lab - going back before Starmer, Corbyn or Miliband. Education and especially age are now much better predictors of voting intention than class. The effect of that is that seats like Hartlepool become vulnerable to the Tories, as the tweet shows, but that's matched by middle-class seats slipping to Labour. Obviously both parties should fight to retain both, but it's misleading that the tweet only looks at similar seats to Hartlepool.
Yes, this political realignment (turbocharged by Brexit) - the "new politics" as it were - cuts both ways. Labour seats become Tory but the opposite too. It's all for play for at the next election as far as I'm concerned. And I won't be making firm judgments on Starmer until this time next year, regardless of May 6th.
Look at the top 120-125 seats they need to win to have a majority, take out the SNP ones they won't get back, add some more to make up for it and you get to Hexham, Basingstoke and Bromley. Look at the list as whole and it is a bit short of the Labour hot spots - posh, BAME, super urban, big universities. They are distinguished by their middling ordinariness, which is where Labour is failing to score and the Tories are focussing.
The Tories no doubt will try hard to lose all this by sleaze, incompetence and so on but Labour have a hard road.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
I think it's like rcs1000 has said: the media love a dramatic story that gets the clicks and attention. Which story looks more dramatic:
ALL IS GOING QUITE WELL, ACTUALLY
WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE FROM SUPER-MUTATED VIRUS!!!
I've seen plenty of scientists saying the first one. A slack handful saying the second one. Which one does the media choose to amplify?
No need for any conspiracy theory that the Government want that amplified, or that there's a sinister cabal of scientists who want to control everything. If either COULD control what the media amplifies, they'd be a lot happier in getting out Government messages and decent science; they can't. Because the media are drawn to melodramatic amplification like flies are drawn to shit,
You love a strawman Andy.
All the media is doing is reporting the latest pronouncement from Chairman Johnson.
And the latest pronouncement is the experimental vaccine that you have so willingly taken will not set you free.
More covid reading. The South China Morning Post. A long article FULL of virologists and the like saying Yes, it could easily have come from the lab
‘Lentzos at King’s College London said while such analysis did suggest Sars-CoV-2 was a “natural” virus, this does not affect the validity of the lab-leak theory.
“If we look at the genetics, it looks like it could possibly have been a natural spillover, but none of that evidence rules out a lab leak theory, it is entirely plausible that the spillover happened as a result of lab-related research or field work or a transportation mishap,” she said.’
‘Ebright said “the emergence last year of a pandemic involving bat Sars-related coronavirus in Wuhan, on [the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s] doorstep, immediately suggested a possible laboratory origin for the pandemic” to ALL SCIENTISTS AND SCIENCE POLICY SPECIALISTS who had been debating “since 2015” the institute’s “extremely high-risk gain-of-function research on bat Sars-related coronaviruses”’
Interesting they have 2017 as 39% when the BBC figure is 38%
So barring general election turnout in 1992, the last time a governing party got 40% was back in 1982.
Fake news, the 1992 locals did NOT take place on the same day as the 1992 general election.
Here’s a question though, thinking of how that was a month after the general.
Does the campaigning for a general election in itself drive up turnout for the local elections? The first intimation I had that there were elections round here (other than PB, obviously) was when I got my polling card yesterday. Otherwise, everywhere is dead silent. No posters, no TV broadcasts, no leaflets - OK, so no canvassers anyway at the moment, but still, nothing at all is a bit limp.
Yes, I live in a safe Labour ward and therefore am probably assumed to be not worth canvassing. But you can understand when they’re this low key why people don’t bother to or even realise they could/should turn out.
Edit - and I note @Gallowgate hasn’t been contacted by the challengers in his ward either.
Turnout in most local elections is 35% or less, compared to say the turnout of 67% there was at the 2019 general election.
However campaigning in a general election constituency safe seat is actually less than in a council ward marginal, eg at the last general election in Epping Forest we put one leaflet out and spent the rest of the time delivering and canvassing in Chingford and Woodford Green, our nearest marginal seat.
In this year's locals in marginal wards we have already put out several newsletters before the election address and have resumed canvassing there too
I was thinking of things like TV/radio/internet coverage, plus posters, rallies etc.
They cut through as they are newsworthy.
A few public spirited people delivering leaflets in marginal wards, less so.
Is there ever much media coverage of local elections? Not in my experience apart from after the results come out.
In Scotland and Wales I would expect there to be coverage of the Holyrood and Senedd elections and in London there to be coverage of the Mayoral and Assembly elections, I would not expect there to be much coverage of the council elections and PCC elections in the rest of England though.
Rallies are obviously out given Covid rules at the moment anyway
Sigh.
THAT WAS MY POINT. You don’t get them for locals, so people don’t notice they’re happening.
You do in general election years. Does that help drive turnout.
I doubt it, unless you have a burning gripe about potholes, anti social behaviour, council tax or plans for new housing in your area you are less likely to vote locally than nationally.
Local media coverage however could make a difference to improving local elections turnout in the local paper or regional TV, national coverage wouldn't
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
lol. No one believes the WHO investigation. Not even the leader of the WHO
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
That is a misreading - he pointed out its inadequacies, but did not say that he 'didn't believe it'.
The investigation is both inadequate and incomplete, as noted, but the preponderance of evidence (of which there is a large amount) was for natural transmission. Your comment that "the likeliest explanation is an accidental leak" covered up by China would require a large effort to manufacture evidence which has gone undetected by a number of independent scientists who visited the site - the second bit of that seems implausible.
You clearly haven't looked at the details of the WHO investigation. A good place to start might be this thread by a Scripps Research Institute immunologist and infectious disease expert: https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1376954932004196352
Note that the report does not run out a lab leak (or indeed other possibilities). It simply concludes that it is a less likely explanation.
Johnson will keep doing what Johnson does, and Starmer will keep doing what Starmer does, until you stop voting for them, stop supporting them, and stop calling the people who want liberty back lunatics, tin foil hatters, conspiracy theorists and all the other bullsh8t insult you have collectively thrown in the last year.
Almost all of you are, in effect, are the useful idiots of Johnson, SAGE, Starmer et al. Things will change when you chumps do. And not before.
And be advised that if you vote labour or conservative in May what you are doing is endorsing the status quo, and saying 'more please' to every single privation you have endured in the past year.
Johnson will stop when we take his democratic legs away. Not before.
That's fine on the single condition that you remind us who and which political group is willing, able and competent to govern that complex entity called the UK better than Lab or Con? You are keeping that secret. Politics is about the boring thing of possible options.
I don't think UKIP could have governed the country particularly well but they forced through a policy which one of the main parties had no option but to accept.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
On the retail level, Tory sleaze is one of the foundations of SKS's strategy so far, which is that he can win if, and perhaps only if, the Tories enable him to. His party and his leadership does not look enough to win by its own merit.
On the reality level for a moment, there are several things to distinguish:
Lobbying, advertising, position maximising, service providing, mutual back scratching, bribery, theft, getting a job matching your past experience, risk taking, lying, making big profits, networking are all things. They vary from public service to stuff you should get 20 years for; they can look remarkably similar. At the moment Labour's job is to make them all look the same. When in government their job is make them all look different.
Our job is to enjoy the show and back the winner. (Labour for Hartlepool for example).
I'll quote the numbers around this though. The Tories now have a huge lead with C2DE voters. Yougov has shown in the last month a 25% lead for the party and an 18% lead for Boris on best PM.
I grew up in working class areas. Corruption is an envelope full of cash or an incompetent family member getting a job or being promoted. Getting jobs through friends is a way of life. If you go past a non food pub in a working class area between 4 and 7 you will see lots of white vans outside. This is the office networking. Where you speak to friends / acquaintances and get things done. Friendship and trust for part of this so if you want to understand why this will have limited impact, and why Boris is focussed on spending more money on the north (levelling up) - these people want results not empty promises and being taken for granted by labour.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
Yes the most likely explanation is that wet market with loads of live animals and awful sanitary conditions being the source. However, the lab theory is also a plausible scenario, just not very likely. Given everything we know about China, I wouldn't want to rule out accidental spread from an improperly secured lab sample.
Bats aren’t sold in Wuhan wet market
Especially not bats from faraway Yunnan
Now, how could a virus from a bat in Yunnan have got all the way to Wuhan, a city which boasts a unique laboratory investigating novel coronaviruses in Yunnanese bats?
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
At some point it seems to me politicians are going to have to say 'no' to the science advisors. Enough is enough. You say we must learn to live with it as an endemic disease, so we are going to do just that.
We cannot afford, mentally or economically, another three month national full lockdown next winter. In the very worse case we should advise the very vulnerable to lockdown and the rest get on with life including schools remaining open.
I fear though we are already being soften up for one.
I think you need to distinguish between the press and scientists. The Government's insistence on releasing everything through press leaks doesn't help though. One problem is naivety of scientists when talking to the press I think mind
The Scientists cannot and will not say, "x will not happen", as long as there is even half a percent chance or less, or x happening.
And the Press have no interest in accurately reporting the probability.
They also have no interest or understanding of wider statistics.
The inability of journalists to understand even quite basic numbers has been absolutely staggering. Not all journalists, of course. But a surprisingly large number are surprisingly stupid.
If you talk to journalists, the following beliefs come up
- Numbers are boring, people don't wan to hear about them - "This is a question. This is a story" - A story is seen as "questions have been raised". "Questions raised and answered" is not a proper story.
And the scary thing is; they're right.
People want to believe the dramatic or scary stuff, they don't care about the basic numbers (unless they support their preconceptions; if they do, they are "proven", if they don't, they are disregarded and irrelevant).
What stories and viewpoints do we see brought up repeatedly and argued even on here?
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
I think it's like rcs1000 has said: the media love a dramatic story that gets the clicks and attention. Which story looks more dramatic:
ALL IS GOING QUITE WELL, ACTUALLY
WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE FROM SUPER-MUTATED VIRUS!!!
I've seen plenty of scientists saying the first one. A slack handful saying the second one. Which one does the media choose to amplify?
No need for any conspiracy theory that the Government want that amplified, or that there's a sinister cabal of scientists who want to control everything. If either COULD control what the media amplifies, they'd be a lot happier in getting out Government messages and decent science; they can't. Because the media are drawn to melodramatic amplification like flies are drawn to shit,
You love a strawman Andy.
All the media is doing is reporting the latest pronouncement from Chairman Johnson.
And the latest pronouncement is the experimental vaccine that you have so willingly taken will not set you free.
A perfect example of my later post immediately above...
Interesting they have 2017 as 39% when the BBC figure is 38%
So barring general election turnout in 1992, the last time a governing party got 40% was back in 1982.
Fake news, the 1992 locals did NOT take place on the same day as the 1992 general election.
Here’s a question though, thinking of how that was a month after the general.
Does the campaigning for a general election in itself drive up turnout for the local elections? The first intimation I had that there were elections round here (other than PB, obviously) was when I got my polling card yesterday. Otherwise, everywhere is dead silent. No posters, no TV broadcasts, no leaflets - OK, so no canvassers anyway at the moment, but still, nothing at all is a bit limp.
Yes, I live in a safe Labour ward and therefore am probably assumed to be not worth canvassing. But you can understand when they’re this low key why people don’t bother to or even realise they could/should turn out.
Edit - and I note @Gallowgate hasn’t been contacted by the challengers in his ward either.
Turnout in most local elections is 35% or less, compared to say the turnout of 67% there was at the 2019 general election.
However campaigning in a general election constituency safe seat is actually less than in a council ward marginal, eg at the last general election in Epping Forest we put one leaflet out and spent the rest of the time delivering and canvassing in Chingford and Woodford Green, our nearest marginal seat.
In this year's locals in marginal wards we have already put out several newsletters before the election address and have resumed canvassing there too
I was thinking of things like TV/radio/internet coverage, plus posters, rallies etc.
They cut through as they are newsworthy.
A few public spirited people delivering leaflets in marginal wards, less so.
Is there ever much media coverage of local elections? Not in my experience apart from after the results come out.
In Scotland and Wales I would expect there to be coverage of the Holyrood and Senedd elections and in London there to be coverage of the Mayoral and Assembly elections, I would not expect there to be much coverage of the council elections and PCC elections in the rest of England though.
Rallies are obviously out given Covid rules at the moment anyway
Sigh.
THAT WAS MY POINT. You don’t get them for locals, so people don’t notice they’re happening.
You do in general election years. Does that help drive turnout?
Turns out that turnout was down in 1992, not up. It was the lowest ever recorded, turnout rebounded a bit the following couple of years before falling again to a new low in 1996.
So the Tories 42% in 1992 was probably because opposition voters didn't bother to turnout but the Tory voters did.
Glad we have the Leon report into the origins of covid, I was feeling quite underwhelmed having to rely on the WHO which involved those pesky "experts" doing lots of work based on years of boring study. What I really needed was someone deducing it from their feelings.
We do know that viruses escape from research labs (see the Birmingham Smallpox outbreak and the sad death of Janet Parker).
I think it is true that we still don't really know exactly how the transmission to Janet Parker actually occurred in the University of Birmingham Medical School.
COVID is very infectious, and so the @Leon Report (whilst it may not have any direct evidence) certainly can't be dismissed out of hand, IMO.
It can be dismissed out of hand. I've done it and absolutely nothing untoward has happened. Recommended to all. Like the vaccine.
Johnson will keep doing what Johnson does, and Starmer will keep doing what Starmer does, until you stop voting for them, stop supporting them, and stop calling the people who want liberty back lunatics, tin foil hatters, conspiracy theorists and all the other bullsh8t insult you have collectively thrown in the last year.
Almost all of you are, in effect, are the useful idiots of Johnson, SAGE, Starmer et al. Things will change when you chumps do. And not before.
And be advised that if you vote labour or conservative in May what you are doing is endorsing the status quo, and saying 'more please' to every single privation you have endured in the past year.
Johnson will stop when we take his democratic legs away. Not before.
That's fine on the single condition that you remind us who and which political group is willing, able and competent to govern that complex entity called the UK better than Lab or Con? You are keeping that secret. Politics is about the boring thing of possible options.
I don't think UKIP could have governed the country particularly well but they forced through a policy which one of the main parties had no option but to accept.
One of the main parties had no option but to accept it because well over 100 of its own MPs rebelled against the whip to vote in favour.
Had the Tory MPs been united in opposing a referendum, rather than well over 100 Tories demanding one, then UKIP would have been much easier to ignore. Instead UKIP added pressure to what was already a pre-existing split in the Tory party that had dominated politics for many years before UKIP were even formed.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
lol. No one believes the WHO investigation. Not even the leader of the WHO
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
That is a misreading - he pointed out its inadequacies, but did not say that he 'didn't believe it'.
The investigation is both inadequate and incomplete, as noted, but the preponderance of evidence (of which there is a large amount) was for natural transmission. Your comment that "the likeliest explanation is an accidental leak" covered up by China would require a large effort to manufacture evidence which has gone undetected by a number of independent scientists who visited the site - the second bit of that seems implausible.
You clearly haven't looked at the details of the WHO investigation. A good place to start might be this thread by a Scripps Research Institute immunologist and infectious disease expert: https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1376954932004196352
Note that the report does not run out a lab leak (or indeed other possibilities). It simply concludes that it is a less likely explanation.
It could have been a mixture of both, the initial seed coming from an improperly secured lab sample (and knowing Chinese standards on clean rooms and biosecurity, this is well within the realms of possibility) leading to spread and mutation to other live animals at the wet market by an infected person from the lab and subsequent spread from those animals such as pangolins to other humans of a newly mutated virus that was capable of human to human transmission.
I wouldn't rule anything out and the above scenario is plausible, IMO.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
Yes the most likely explanation is that wet market with loads of live animals and awful sanitary conditions being the source. However, the lab theory is also a plausible scenario, just not very likely. Given everything we know about China, I wouldn't want to rule out accidental spread from an improperly secured lab sample.
Bats aren’t sold in Wuhan wet market
Especially not bats from faraway Yunnan
Now, how could a virus from a bat in Yunnan have got all the way to Wuhan, a city which boasts a unique laboratory investigating novel coronaviruses in Yunnanese bats?
Truly, a mystery for the ages
What evidence do you have that this came from Yunnan?
That a similar (not the same) virus existed in Yunnan is not proof that this came from there.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
At some point it seems to me politicians are going to have to say 'no' to the science advisors. Enough is enough. You say we must learn to live with it as an endemic disease, so we are going to do just that.
We cannot afford, mentally or economically, another three month national full lockdown next winter. In the very worse case we should advise the very vulnerable to lockdown and the rest get on with life including schools remaining open.
I fear though we are already being soften up for one.
I think you need to distinguish between the press and scientists. The Government's insistence on releasing everything through press leaks doesn't help though. One problem is naivety of scientists when talking to the press I think mind
The Scientists cannot and will not say, "x will not happen", as long as there is even half a percent chance or less, or x happening.
And the Press have no interest in accurately reporting the probability.
They also have no interest or understanding of wider statistics.
The inability of journalists to understand even quite basic numbers has been absolutely staggering. Not all journalists, of course. But a surprisingly large number are surprisingly stupid.
If you talk to journalists, the following beliefs come up
- Numbers are boring, people don't wan to hear about them - "This is a question. This is a story" - A story is seen as "questions have been raised". "Questions raised and answered" is not a proper story.
And the scary thing is; they're right.
People want to believe the dramatic or scary stuff, they don't care about the basic numbers (unless they support their preconceptions; if they do, they are "proven", if they don't, they are disregarded and irrelevant).
What stories and viewpoints do we see brought up repeatedly and argued even on here?
True.
But there is a hunger for more detail and more background on stories.
Arstechnica îs an interesting example - follow up stories, reports and lots of links to external data.
UK Gov challenging new Scottish Laws in the Supreme Court under the Scotland Act.
Interesting.
"The UK government is asking the Supreme Court to decide whether two bills passed by the Scottish parliament go beyond its legislative competence. They are
the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill; and
the European Charter of Local Self-Government (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill.
As a devolved assembly, the Scottish parliament has only the powers it was given by the Westminster parliament when it passed the Scotland Act 1998. Section 33 of that act allows the UK government’s law officers “to refer the question of whether a bill or any provision of a bill would be within the legislative competence of the [Scottish] parliament to the Supreme Court for decision”. "
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
lol. No one believes the WHO investigation. Not even the leader of the WHO
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
That is a misreading - he pointed out its inadequacies, but did not say that he 'didn't believe it'.
The investigation is both inadequate and incomplete, as noted, but the preponderance of evidence (of which there is a large amount) was for natural transmission. Your comment that "the likeliest explanation is an accidental leak" covered up by China would require a large effort to manufacture evidence which has gone undetected by a number of independent scientists who visited the site - the second bit of that seems implausible.
You clearly haven't looked at the details of the WHO investigation. A good place to start might be this thread by a Scripps Research Institute immunologist and infectious disease expert: https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1376954932004196352
Note that the report does not run out a lab leak (or indeed other possibilities). It simply concludes that it is a less likely explanation.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
lol. No one believes the WHO investigation. Not even the leader of the WHO
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
That is a misreading - he pointed out its inadequacies, but did not say that he 'didn't believe it'.
The investigation is both inadequate and incomplete, as noted, but the preponderance of evidence (of which there is a large amount) was for natural transmission. Your comment that "the likeliest explanation is an accidental leak" covered up by China would require a large effort to manufacture evidence which has gone undetected by a number of independent scientists who visited the site - the second bit of that seems implausible.
You clearly haven't looked at the details of the WHO investigation. A good place to start might be this thread by a Scripps Research Institute immunologist and infectious disease expert: https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1376954932004196352
Note that the report does not run out a lab leak (or indeed other possibilities). It simply concludes that it is a less likely explanation.
You just need Occam’s razor. It’s probably the lab, but we’ll likely never know for sure because of Chinese duplicity (or guilt?). There’s no major positive evidence for any of the other theories (which might still be true, of course).
One confounding factor for the bat-in-the-market hypothesis is that the earliest cases predate the market cluster. Which again suggests the lab, as a highly plausible alternative
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
At some point it seems to me politicians are going to have to say 'no' to the science advisors. Enough is enough. You say we must learn to live with it as an endemic disease, so we are going to do just that.
We cannot afford, mentally or economically, another three month national full lockdown next winter. In the very worse case we should advise the very vulnerable to lockdown and the rest get on with life including schools remaining open.
I fear though we are already being soften up for one.
I think you need to distinguish between the press and scientists. The Government's insistence on releasing everything through press leaks doesn't help though. One problem is naivety of scientists when talking to the press I think mind
The Scientists cannot and will not say, "x will not happen", as long as there is even half a percent chance or less, or x happening.
And the Press have no interest in accurately reporting the probability.
They also have no interest or understanding of wider statistics.
The inability of journalists to understand even quite basic numbers has been absolutely staggering. Not all journalists, of course. But a surprisingly large number are surprisingly stupid.
If you talk to journalists, the following beliefs come up
- Numbers are boring, people don't wan to hear about them - "This is a question. This is a story" - A story is seen as "questions have been raised". "Questions raised and answered" is not a proper story.
And the scary thing is; they're right.
People want to believe the dramatic or scary stuff, they don't care about the basic numbers (unless they support their preconceptions; if they do, they are "proven", if they don't, they are disregarded and irrelevant).
What stories and viewpoints do we see brought up repeatedly and argued even on here?
True.
But there is a hunger for more detail and more background on stories.
Arstechnica îs an interesting example - follow up stories, reports and lots of links to external data.
News as a wiki, rather than a 1 minute gotcha.
Arstechnica is a niche market though - while a lot of other people get their news from the people they see on social media.
We really will be moving into a world where some people know exactly what is going on and others don't know and don't care.
UK Gov challenging new Scottish Laws in the Supreme Court under the Scotland Act.
Interesting.
"The UK government is asking the Supreme Court to decide whether two bills passed by the Scottish parliament go beyond its legislative competence. They are
the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill; and
the European Charter of Local Self-Government (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill.
As a devolved assembly, the Scottish parliament has only the powers it was given by the Westminster parliament when it passed the Scotland Act 1998. Section 33 of that act allows the UK government’s law officers “to refer the question of whether a bill or any provision of a bill would be within the legislative competence of the [Scottish] parliament to the Supreme Court for decision”. "
I saw this a few days ago. Doesn't strike me as a politically good time to do this. Just another "Westminster overruling Scotland" grievance for the SNP to stoke.
Fascinating. 15 gains by the Tories on this swing, which some like @kinabalu is saying should be considered the 'status quo'.
If they're right then the status quo going into the next election ought to be a 110 seat majority, not an 80 seat majority.
Yep, precise numbers aside, the general point is correct and is key to understanding the depth of the hole Labour must clamber out of in order to get competitive. The 80 seat Con majority doesn't tell the whole story. Take the BXP out of GE19 and you'd have an even bigger defeat. And of course nowhere is this factor more salient and important to grasp than in the seat where the BXP stood their leader in 2019, really went for it, and managed their largest vote share. The citadel of northern working class hard leave. Hartlepool.
If Labour can hold this seat on May 6th it will be an excellent result for them. It will show progress from the GE (once the above insight is duly processed) and this will have been achieved despite the GE being quite recent and the main events subsequent to it being in favour of the government - the delivery of the promised hard Brexit and the early ending of the pandemic via a vaccine rollout that stands in triumphant contrast to the shambles made of things by the EU.
Can Labour do it? I doubt it myself. My call remains as was. I'm on the Cons at evens and I expect to collect. But, yes, of course Labour can win in Hartlepool. It's Hartlepool ffs. Current betting gives them about a 40% chance. I rate it lower but I wouldn't disagree too much with that.
That's about my view too, based partly on second-hand reports from people involved. That said, there has been a longstanding shift of C2D voters from Lab to Con and a corresponding shift of ABC1 voters from Con to Lab - going back before Starmer, Corbyn or Miliband. Education and especially age are now much better predictors of voting intention than class. The effect of that is that seats like Hartlepool become vulnerable to the Tories, as the tweet shows, but that's matched by middle-class seats slipping to Labour. Obviously both parties should fight to retain both, but it's misleading that the tweet only looks at similar seats to Hartlepool.
Yes, this political realignment (turbocharged by Brexit) - the "new politics" as it were - cuts both ways. Labour seats become Tory but the opposite too. It's all for play for at the next election as far as I'm concerned. And I won't be making firm judgments on Starmer until this time next year, regardless of May 6th.
Look at the top 120-125 seats they need to win to have a majority, take out the SNP ones they won't get back, add some more to make up for it and you get to Hexham, Basingstoke and Bromley. Look at the list as whole and it is a bit short of the Labour hot spots - posh, BAME, super urban, big universities. They are distinguished by their middling ordinariness, which is where Labour is failing to score and the Tories are focussing.
The Tories no doubt will try hard to lose all this by sleaze, incompetence and so on but Labour have a hard road.
Sorry, by "all to play for" at the next election I meant whether we have a Labour or a Conservative PM after it. I can't see a Labour outright majority. You're quite right to emphasize how unlikely that is.
UK Gov challenging new Scottish Laws in the Supreme Court under the Scotland Act.
Interesting.
"The UK government is asking the Supreme Court to decide whether two bills passed by the Scottish parliament go beyond its legislative competence. They are
the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill; and
the European Charter of Local Self-Government (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill.
As a devolved assembly, the Scottish parliament has only the powers it was given by the Westminster parliament when it passed the Scotland Act 1998. Section 33 of that act allows the UK government’s law officers “to refer the question of whether a bill or any provision of a bill would be within the legislative competence of the [Scottish] parliament to the Supreme Court for decision”. "
I saw this a few days ago. Doesn't strike me as a politically good time to do this. Just another "Westminster overruling Scotland" grievance for the SNP to stoke.
Think for a second.
Why in a 5 year Scottish Parliament were these 2 bills introduced and voted through in the weeks leading up to the next election.
The entire point of these bills was to emphasis that Scotland doesn't have full control - hence vote SNP for the right to determine our own laws.
UK Gov challenging new Scottish Laws in the Supreme Court under the Scotland Act.
Interesting.
"The UK government is asking the Supreme Court to decide whether two bills passed by the Scottish parliament go beyond its legislative competence. They are
the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill; and
the European Charter of Local Self-Government (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill.
As a devolved assembly, the Scottish parliament has only the powers it was given by the Westminster parliament when it passed the Scotland Act 1998. Section 33 of that act allows the UK government’s law officers “to refer the question of whether a bill or any provision of a bill would be within the legislative competence of the [Scottish] parliament to the Supreme Court for decision”. "
I saw this a few days ago. Doesn't strike me as a politically good time to do this. Just another "Westminster overruling Scotland" grievance for the SNP to stoke.
Think for a second.
Why in a 5 year Scottish Parliament were these 2 bills introduced and voted through in the weeks leading up to the next election.
The entire point of these bills was to emphasis that Scotland doesn't have full control - hence vote SNP for the right to determine our own laws.
UK Gov challenging new Scottish Laws in the Supreme Court under the Scotland Act.
Interesting.
"The UK government is asking the Supreme Court to decide whether two bills passed by the Scottish parliament go beyond its legislative competence. They are
the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill; and
the European Charter of Local Self-Government (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill.
As a devolved assembly, the Scottish parliament has only the powers it was given by the Westminster parliament when it passed the Scotland Act 1998. Section 33 of that act allows the UK government’s law officers “to refer the question of whether a bill or any provision of a bill would be within the legislative competence of the [Scottish] parliament to the Supreme Court for decision”. "
The lord advocate — the Scottish government’s law officer — can also refer a bill to the Supreme Court, presumably in the hope that the court will confirm that its is within the parliament’s competence.
There is currently a debate as to whether an advisory referendum on Scottish Independence is legal or not, since an advisory referendum isn't binding (and in general all referenda are advisory anyway). One thing I'd thought is that the UK Government might decline to take that to the Supreme Court and instead consider a boycott as an option, because if the Supreme Court rules that an advisory referendum is legitimate then that legitimises the referendum politically and makes a boycott a much tougher sell.
But if the Scottish Government can then refer it itself, then this is likely to end up before SCOTUK potentially either way.
Johnson will keep doing what Johnson does, and Starmer will keep doing what Starmer does, until you stop voting for them, stop supporting them, and stop calling the people who want liberty back lunatics, tin foil hatters, conspiracy theorists and all the other bullsh8t insult you have collectively thrown in the last year.
Almost all of you are, in effect, are the useful idiots of Johnson, SAGE, Starmer et al. Things will change when you chumps do. And not before.
And be advised that if you vote labour or conservative in May what you are doing is endorsing the status quo, and saying 'more please' to every single privation you have endured in the past year.
Johnson will stop when we take his democratic legs away. Not before.
That's fine on the single condition that you remind us who and which political group is willing, able and competent to govern that complex entity called the UK better than Lab or Con? You are keeping that secret. Politics is about the boring thing of possible options.
I don't think UKIP could have governed the country particularly well but they forced through a policy which one of the main parties had no option but to accept.
One of the main parties had no option but to accept it because well over 100 of its own MPs rebelled against the whip to vote in favour.
Had the Tory MPs been united in opposing a referendum, rather than well over 100 Tories demanding one, then UKIP would have been much easier to ignore. Instead UKIP added pressure to what was already a pre-existing split in the Tory party that had dominated politics for many years before UKIP were even formed.
Yes. How big is the Covid Recovery Group? No idea. But if there was a genuinely anti-lockdown party analogously to UKIP then the CRG would be in the same position as those 100 MPs over Brexit.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
At some point it seems to me politicians are going to have to say 'no' to the science advisors. Enough is enough. You say we must learn to live with it as an endemic disease, so we are going to do just that.
We cannot afford, mentally or economically, another three month national full lockdown next winter. In the very worse case we should advise the very vulnerable to lockdown and the rest get on with life including schools remaining open.
I fear though we are already being soften up for one.
I think you need to distinguish between the press and scientists. The Government's insistence on releasing everything through press leaks doesn't help though. One problem is naivety of scientists when talking to the press I think mind
The Scientists cannot and will not say, "x will not happen", as long as there is even half a percent chance or less, or x happening.
And the Press have no interest in accurately reporting the probability.
They also have no interest or understanding of wider statistics.
The inability of journalists to understand even quite basic numbers has been absolutely staggering. Not all journalists, of course. But a surprisingly large number are surprisingly stupid.
If you talk to journalists, the following beliefs come up
- Numbers are boring, people don't wan to hear about them - "This is a question. This is a story" - A story is seen as "questions have been raised". "Questions raised and answered" is not a proper story.
And the scary thing is; they're right.
People want to believe the dramatic or scary stuff, they don't care about the basic numbers (unless they support their preconceptions; if they do, they are "proven", if they don't, they are disregarded and irrelevant).
What stories and viewpoints do we see brought up repeatedly and argued even on here?
True.
But there is a hunger for more detail and more background on stories.
Arstechnica îs an interesting example - follow up stories, reports and lots of links to external data.
News as a wiki, rather than a 1 minute gotcha.
Arstechnica is a niche market though - while a lot of other people get their news from the people they see on social media.
We really will be moving into a world where some people know exactly what is going on and others don't know and don't care.
'Twas ever thus...
Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
Yes the most likely explanation is that wet market with loads of live animals and awful sanitary conditions being the source. However, the lab theory is also a plausible scenario, just not very likely. Given everything we know about China, I wouldn't want to rule out accidental spread from an improperly secured lab sample.
Bats aren’t sold in Wuhan wet market
Especially not bats from faraway Yunnan
Now, how could a virus from a bat in Yunnan have got all the way to Wuhan, a city which boasts a unique laboratory investigating novel coronaviruses in Yunnanese bats?
Truly, a mystery for the ages
What evidence do you have that this came from Yunnan?
That a similar (not the same) virus existed in Yunnan is not proof that this came from there.
Years ago there was a covid-19 like outbreak in one specific yunnanese mine which was being researched by Wuhan virologists looking for new bat coronaviruses. See that New York Mag link I posted earlier. I’m not sure the lab denies any of this
The Yunnan and Wuhan viruses are, genetically, extremely similar
‘The virus genome consists of six major open-reading frames (ORFs) that are common to coronaviruses and a number of other accessory genes (Fig. 1b). Further analysis indicates that some of the 2019-nCoV genes shared less than 80% nucleotide sequence identity to SARS-CoV. However, the amino acid sequences of the seven conserved replicase domains in ORF1ab that were used for CoV species classification were 94.4% identical between 2019-nCoV and SARS-CoV, suggesting that the two viruses belong to the same species, SARSr-CoV.
‘We then found that a short region of RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) from a bat coronavirus (BatCoV RaTG13)—which was previously detected in Rhinolophus affinis from Yunnan province—showed high sequence identity to 2019-nCoV. We carried out full-length sequencing on this RNA sample (GISAID accession number EPI_ISL_402131). Simplot analysis showed that 2019-nCoV was highly similar throughout the genome to RaTG13 (Fig. 1c), with an overall genome sequence identity of 96.2%’
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
At some point it seems to me politicians are going to have to say 'no' to the science advisors. Enough is enough. You say we must learn to live with it as an endemic disease, so we are going to do just that.
We cannot afford, mentally or economically, another three month national full lockdown next winter. In the very worse case we should advise the very vulnerable to lockdown and the rest get on with life including schools remaining open.
I fear though we are already being soften up for one.
I think you need to distinguish between the press and scientists. The Government's insistence on releasing everything through press leaks doesn't help though. One problem is naivety of scientists when talking to the press I think mind
The Scientists cannot and will not say, "x will not happen", as long as there is even half a percent chance or less, or x happening.
And the Press have no interest in accurately reporting the probability.
They also have no interest or understanding of wider statistics.
The inability of journalists to understand even quite basic numbers has been absolutely staggering. Not all journalists, of course. But a surprisingly large number are surprisingly stupid.
If you talk to journalists, the following beliefs come up
- Numbers are boring, people don't wan to hear about them - "This is a question. This is a story" - A story is seen as "questions have been raised". "Questions raised and answered" is not a proper story.
And the scary thing is; they're right.
People want to believe the dramatic or scary stuff, they don't care about the basic numbers (unless they support their preconceptions; if they do, they are "proven", if they don't, they are disregarded and irrelevant).
What stories and viewpoints do we see brought up repeatedly and argued even on here?
True.
But there is a hunger for more detail and more background on stories.
Arstechnica îs an interesting example - follow up stories, reports and lots of links to external data.
News as a wiki, rather than a 1 minute gotcha.
Arstechnica is a niche market though - while a lot of other people get their news from the people they see on social media.
We really will be moving into a world where some people know exactly what is going on and others don't know and don't care.
'Twas ever thus...
Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.
And those where the people willing to pick up a paper. Nowadays most people get their news from whatever Facebook / Twitter's algorithms thinks will keep them on that site for an extra second.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
Yes the most likely explanation is that wet market with loads of live animals and awful sanitary conditions being the source. However, the lab theory is also a plausible scenario, just not very likely. Given everything we know about China, I wouldn't want to rule out accidental spread from an improperly secured lab sample.
Bats aren’t sold in Wuhan wet market
Especially not bats from faraway Yunnan
Now, how could a virus from a bat in Yunnan have got all the way to Wuhan, a city which boasts a unique laboratory investigating novel coronaviruses in Yunnanese bats?
Truly, a mystery for the ages
What evidence do you have that this came from Yunnan?
That a similar (not the same) virus existed in Yunnan is not proof that this came from there.
Years ago there was a covid-19 like outbreak in one specific yunnanese mine which was being researched by Wuhan virologists looking for new bat coronaviruses. See that New York Mag link I posted earlier. I’m not sure the lab denies any of this
The Yunnan and Wuhan viruses are, genetically, extremely similar
‘The virus genome consists of six major open-reading frames (ORFs) that are common to coronaviruses and a number of other accessory genes (Fig. 1b). Further analysis indicates that some of the 2019-nCoV genes shared less than 80% nucleotide sequence identity to SARS-CoV. However, the amino acid sequences of the seven conserved replicase domains in ORF1ab that were used for CoV species classification were 94.4% identical between 2019-nCoV and SARS-CoV, suggesting that the two viruses belong to the same species, SARSr-CoV.
‘We then found that a short region of RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) from a bat coronavirus (BatCoV RaTG13)—which was previously detected in Rhinolophus affinis from Yunnan province—showed high sequence identity to 2019-nCoV. We carried out full-length sequencing on this RNA sample (GISAID accession number EPI_ISL_402131). Simplot analysis showed that 2019-nCoV was highly similar throughout the genome to RaTG13 (Fig. 1c), with an overall genome sequence identity of 96.2%’
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
lol. No one believes the WHO investigation. Not even the leader of the WHO
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
That is a misreading - he pointed out its inadequacies, but did not say that he 'didn't believe it'.
The investigation is both inadequate and incomplete, as noted, but the preponderance of evidence (of which there is a large amount) was for natural transmission. Your comment that "the likeliest explanation is an accidental leak" covered up by China would require a large effort to manufacture evidence which has gone undetected by a number of independent scientists who visited the site - the second bit of that seems implausible.
You clearly haven't looked at the details of the WHO investigation. A good place to start might be this thread by a Scripps Research Institute immunologist and infectious disease expert: https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1376954932004196352
Note that the report does not run out a lab leak (or indeed other possibilities). It simply concludes that it is a less likely explanation.
It could have been a mixture of both, the initial seed coming from an improperly secured lab sample (and knowing Chinese standards on clean rooms and biosecurity, this is well within the realms of possibility) leading to spread and mutation to other live animals at the wet market by an infected person from the lab and subsequent spread from those animals such as pangolins to other humans of a newly mutated virus that was capable of human to human transmission.
I wouldn't rule anything out and the above scenario is plausible, IMO.
A very similar scenario was suggested by an ex-PBer, here. Tho he suggests the Chinese boffins just got drunk. Which is typical of his vulgar style
Johnson will keep doing what Johnson does, and Starmer will keep doing what Starmer does, until you stop voting for them, stop supporting them, and stop calling the people who want liberty back lunatics, tin foil hatters, conspiracy theorists and all the other bullsh8t insult you have collectively thrown in the last year.
Almost all of you are, in effect, are the useful idiots of Johnson, SAGE, Starmer et al. Things will change when you chumps do. And not before.
And be advised that if you vote labour or conservative in May what you are doing is endorsing the status quo, and saying 'more please' to every single privation you have endured in the past year.
Johnson will stop when we take his democratic legs away. Not before.
That's fine on the single condition that you remind us who and which political group is willing, able and competent to govern that complex entity called the UK better than Lab or Con? You are keeping that secret. Politics is about the boring thing of possible options.
I don't think UKIP could have governed the country particularly well but they forced through a policy which one of the main parties had no option but to accept.
One of the main parties had no option but to accept it because well over 100 of its own MPs rebelled against the whip to vote in favour.
Had the Tory MPs been united in opposing a referendum, rather than well over 100 Tories demanding one, then UKIP would have been much easier to ignore. Instead UKIP added pressure to what was already a pre-existing split in the Tory party that had dominated politics for many years before UKIP were even formed.
Yes. How big is the Covid Recovery Group? No idea. But if there was a genuinely anti-lockdown party analogously to UKIP then the CRG would be in the same position as those 100 MPs over Brexit.
There could be 200 Tory MPs opposed to the government's Coronavirus strategy, but it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference if the official Opposition are supportive of the measures.
Johnson will keep doing what Johnson does, and Starmer will keep doing what Starmer does, until you stop voting for them, stop supporting them, and stop calling the people who want liberty back lunatics, tin foil hatters, conspiracy theorists and all the other bullsh8t insult you have collectively thrown in the last year.
Almost all of you are, in effect, are the useful idiots of Johnson, SAGE, Starmer et al. Things will change when you chumps do. And not before.
And be advised that if you vote labour or conservative in May what you are doing is endorsing the status quo, and saying 'more please' to every single privation you have endured in the past year.
Johnson will stop when we take his democratic legs away. Not before.
That's fine on the single condition that you remind us who and which political group is willing, able and competent to govern that complex entity called the UK better than Lab or Con? You are keeping that secret. Politics is about the boring thing of possible options.
I don't think UKIP could have governed the country particularly well but they forced through a policy which one of the main parties had no option but to accept.
One of the main parties had no option but to accept it because well over 100 of its own MPs rebelled against the whip to vote in favour.
Had the Tory MPs been united in opposing a referendum, rather than well over 100 Tories demanding one, then UKIP would have been much easier to ignore. Instead UKIP added pressure to what was already a pre-existing split in the Tory party that had dominated politics for many years before UKIP were even formed.
Yes. How big is the Covid Recovery Group? No idea. But if there was a genuinely anti-lockdown party analogously to UKIP then the CRG would be in the same position as those 100 MPs over Brexit.
There could be 200 Tory MPs opposed to the government's Coronavirus strategy, but it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference if the official Opposition are supportive of the measures.
Johnson will keep doing what Johnson does, and Starmer will keep doing what Starmer does, until you stop voting for them, stop supporting them, and stop calling the people who want liberty back lunatics, tin foil hatters, conspiracy theorists and all the other bullsh8t insult you have collectively thrown in the last year.
Almost all of you are, in effect, are the useful idiots of Johnson, SAGE, Starmer et al. Things will change when you chumps do. And not before.
And be advised that if you vote labour or conservative in May what you are doing is endorsing the status quo, and saying 'more please' to every single privation you have endured in the past year.
Johnson will stop when we take his democratic legs away. Not before.
That's fine on the single condition that you remind us who and which political group is willing, able and competent to govern that complex entity called the UK better than Lab or Con? You are keeping that secret. Politics is about the boring thing of possible options.
I don't think UKIP could have governed the country particularly well but they forced through a policy which one of the main parties had no option but to accept.
One of the main parties had no option but to accept it because well over 100 of its own MPs rebelled against the whip to vote in favour.
Had the Tory MPs been united in opposing a referendum, rather than well over 100 Tories demanding one, then UKIP would have been much easier to ignore. Instead UKIP added pressure to what was already a pre-existing split in the Tory party that had dominated politics for many years before UKIP were even formed.
Yes. How big is the Covid Recovery Group? No idea. But if there was a genuinely anti-lockdown party analogously to UKIP then the CRG would be in the same position as those 100 MPs over Brexit.
There could be 200 Tory MPs opposed to the government's Coronavirus strategy, but it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference if the official Opposition are supportive of the measures.
I normally agree with you but I have to disagree there.
200 Tory MPs opposed to the government's Covid strategy would only need to threaten a letter to Graham Brady and the strategy would change.
'The opposition occupies the benches in front of you, but the enemy sits behind you'
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
Yes the most likely explanation is that wet market with loads of live animals and awful sanitary conditions being the source. However, the lab theory is also a plausible scenario, just not very likely. Given everything we know about China, I wouldn't want to rule out accidental spread from an improperly secured lab sample.
Bats aren’t sold in Wuhan wet market
Especially not bats from faraway Yunnan
Now, how could a virus from a bat in Yunnan have got all the way to Wuhan, a city which boasts a unique laboratory investigating novel coronaviruses in Yunnanese bats?
Truly, a mystery for the ages
What evidence do you have that this came from Yunnan?
That a similar (not the same) virus existed in Yunnan is not proof that this came from there.
Years ago there was a covid-19 like outbreak in one specific yunnanese mine which was being researched by Wuhan virologists looking for new bat coronaviruses. See that New York Mag link I posted earlier. I’m not sure the lab denies any of this
The Yunnan and Wuhan viruses are, genetically, extremely similar
‘The virus genome consists of six major open-reading frames (ORFs) that are common to coronaviruses and a number of other accessory genes (Fig. 1b). Further analysis indicates that some of the 2019-nCoV genes shared less than 80% nucleotide sequence identity to SARS-CoV. However, the amino acid sequences of the seven conserved replicase domains in ORF1ab that were used for CoV species classification were 94.4% identical between 2019-nCoV and SARS-CoV, suggesting that the two viruses belong to the same species, SARSr-CoV.
‘We then found that a short region of RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) from a bat coronavirus (BatCoV RaTG13)—which was previously detected in Rhinolophus affinis from Yunnan province—showed high sequence identity to 2019-nCoV. We carried out full-length sequencing on this RNA sample (GISAID accession number EPI_ISL_402131). Simplot analysis showed that 2019-nCoV was highly similar throughout the genome to RaTG13 (Fig. 1c), with an overall genome sequence identity of 96.2%’
‘Shi’s team used the antibody test to narrow down the list of locations and bat species to pursue in the quest for genomic clues. After roaming mountainous terrain in most of China’s dozens of provinces, the researchers turned their attention to one spot: Shitou Cave, on the outskirts of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, where they conducted intense sampling during different seasons over five consecutive years.
‘The efforts paid off. The pathogen hunters discovered hundreds of bat-borne coronaviruses with incredible genetic diversity. “The majority of them are harmless,” Shi says. But dozens belong to the same group as SARS. They can infect human lung cells in a petri dish and cause SARS-like diseases in mice.’
‘Three years earlier Shi’s team had been called in to investigate the virus profile of a mine shaft in Yunnan’s mountainous Mojiang County—famous for its fermented Pu’er tea—where six miners suffered from pneumonialike diseases and two died. After sampling the cave for a year, the researchers discovered a diverse group of coronaviruses in six bat species. In many cases, multiple viral strains had infected a single animal, turning it into a flying factory for new viruses.
“The mine shaft stunk like hell,” says Shi, who, like her colleagues, went in wearing a protective mask and clothing. “Bat guano, covered in fungus, littered the cave.” Although the fungus turned out to be the pathogen that had sickened the miners, she says it would have been only a matter of time before they caught the coronaviruses if the mine had not been promptly shut.’
I mean, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes, do you?
Fascinating. 15 gains by the Tories on this swing, which some like @kinabalu is saying should be considered the 'status quo'.
If they're right then the status quo going into the next election ought to be a 110 seat majority, not an 80 seat majority.
Yep, precise numbers aside, the general point is correct and is key to understanding the depth of the hole Labour must clamber out of in order to get competitive. The 80 seat Con majority doesn't tell the whole story. Take the BXP out of GE19 and you'd have an even bigger defeat. And of course nowhere is this factor more salient and important to grasp than in the seat where the BXP stood their leader in 2019, really went for it, and managed their largest vote share. The citadel of northern working class hard leave. Hartlepool.
If Labour can hold this seat on May 6th it will be an excellent result for them. It will show progress from the GE (once the above insight is duly processed) and this will have been achieved despite the GE being quite recent and the main events subsequent to it being in favour of the government - the delivery of the promised hard Brexit and the early ending of the pandemic via a vaccine rollout that stands in triumphant contrast to the shambles made of things by the EU.
Can Labour do it? I doubt it myself. My call remains as was. I'm on the Cons at evens and I expect to collect. But, yes, of course Labour can win in Hartlepool. It's Hartlepool ffs. Current betting gives them about a 40% chance. I rate it lower but I wouldn't disagree too much with that.
That's about my view too, based partly on second-hand reports from people involved. That said, there has been a longstanding shift of C2D voters from Lab to Con and a corresponding shift of ABC1 voters from Con to Lab - going back before Starmer, Corbyn or Miliband. Education and especially age are now much better predictors of voting intention than class. The effect of that is that seats like Hartlepool become vulnerable to the Tories, as the tweet shows, but that's matched by middle-class seats slipping to Labour. Obviously both parties should fight to retain both, but it's misleading that the tweet only looks at similar seats to Hartlepool.
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
I like this enclave theory - the best example I have seen was in Bristol
I got lost looking for a pub and this road of houses quite central to Bristol but very middle class - every house had a Labour banner or poster, and on Google Street view a house on the adjacent road still has a fixed permanent vote Jeremy Corbyn sign!
If you want a counterpoint go to Rightmove and look at Hartlepool. Plenty of houses for less than 100k
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
At some point it seems to me politicians are going to have to say 'no' to the science advisors. Enough is enough. You say we must learn to live with it as an endemic disease, so we are going to do just that.
We cannot afford, mentally or economically, another three month national full lockdown next winter. In the very worse case we should advise the very vulnerable to lockdown and the rest get on with life including schools remaining open.
I fear though we are already being soften up for one.
I think you need to distinguish between the press and scientists. The Government's insistence on releasing everything through press leaks doesn't help though. One problem is naivety of scientists when talking to the press I think mind
The Scientists cannot and will not say, "x will not happen", as long as there is even half a percent chance or less, or x happening.
And the Press have no interest in accurately reporting the probability.
They also have no interest or understanding of wider statistics.
The inability of journalists to understand even quite basic numbers has been absolutely staggering. Not all journalists, of course. But a surprisingly large number are surprisingly stupid.
If you talk to journalists, the following beliefs come up
- Numbers are boring, people don't wan to hear about them - "This is a question. This is a story" - A story is seen as "questions have been raised". "Questions raised and answered" is not a proper story.
And the scary thing is; they're right.
People want to believe the dramatic or scary stuff, they don't care about the basic numbers (unless they support their preconceptions; if they do, they are "proven", if they don't, they are disregarded and irrelevant).
What stories and viewpoints do we see brought up repeatedly and argued even on here?
True.
But there is a hunger for more detail and more background on stories.
Arstechnica îs an interesting example - follow up stories, reports and lots of links to external data.
News as a wiki, rather than a 1 minute gotcha.
Arstechnica is a niche market though - while a lot of other people get their news from the people they see on social media.
We really will be moving into a world where some people know exactly what is going on and others don't know and don't care.
'Twas ever thus...
Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.
And those where the people willing to pick up a paper. Nowadays most people get their news from whatever Facebook / Twitter's algorithms thinks will keep them on that site for an extra second.
The Sun was (and is) written in exactly that style.
Johnson will keep doing what Johnson does, and Starmer will keep doing what Starmer does, until you stop voting for them, stop supporting them, and stop calling the people who want liberty back lunatics, tin foil hatters, conspiracy theorists and all the other bullsh8t insult you have collectively thrown in the last year.
Almost all of you are, in effect, are the useful idiots of Johnson, SAGE, Starmer et al. Things will change when you chumps do. And not before.
And be advised that if you vote labour or conservative in May what you are doing is endorsing the status quo, and saying 'more please' to every single privation you have endured in the past year.
Johnson will stop when we take his democratic legs away. Not before.
That's fine on the single condition that you remind us who and which political group is willing, able and competent to govern that complex entity called the UK better than Lab or Con? You are keeping that secret. Politics is about the boring thing of possible options.
I don't think UKIP could have governed the country particularly well but they forced through a policy which one of the main parties had no option but to accept.
One of the main parties had no option but to accept it because well over 100 of its own MPs rebelled against the whip to vote in favour.
Had the Tory MPs been united in opposing a referendum, rather than well over 100 Tories demanding one, then UKIP would have been much easier to ignore. Instead UKIP added pressure to what was already a pre-existing split in the Tory party that had dominated politics for many years before UKIP were even formed.
Yes. How big is the Covid Recovery Group? No idea. But if there was a genuinely anti-lockdown party analogously to UKIP then the CRG would be in the same position as those 100 MPs over Brexit.
There could be 200 Tory MPs opposed to the government's Coronavirus strategy, but it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference if the official Opposition are supportive of the measures.
I normally agree with you but I have to disagree there.
200 Tory MPs opposed to the government's Covid strategy would only need to threaten a letter to Graham Brady and the strategy would change.
'The opposition occupies the benches in front of you, but the enemy sits behind you'
Oh indeed. If it's a letter-to-Brady issue for enough of them, then the PM could be in real trouble with his party - even if not in Parliament.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
Yes, I agree with this. It’s a kind of paralysed apathy. I thought when my gym opened I’d be straight down there. Yet I can’t be bothered.
Good article on the brain fog and torpor of lockdown
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
If I agree with you does that constitute an admission that I am not exceptionally intelligent or an above average specimen of humankind?
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
Except that (for example) for me to go and see my young lady's parents with her is almost impossible at the moment; they are four hours away, and if I drive there I can't go inside there house. I've managed meet them once, we've been going out since November 2019.
I'm graciously permitted to go to a church, but I can't talk to anyone inside, or sing hymns as part of the congregation. This in an area currently with 2 cases in 100k people.
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
If I agree with you does that constitute an admission that I am not exceptionally intelligent or an above average specimen of humankind?
There is only one @kinabalu and yet even he's not immune from the whole thing - he is pretending that he has "mates".
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
Except that (for example) for me to go and see my young lady's parents with her is almost impossible at the moment; they are four hours away, and if I drive there I can't go inside there house. I've managed meet them once, we've been going out since November 2019.
I'm graciously permitted to go to a church, but I can't talk to anyone inside, or sing hymns as part of the congregation. This in an area currently with 2 cases in 100k people.
Lockdown will only be over when I can casually WALK inside a pub for my oysters, or go to Sheekey’s Atlantic Bar for the same.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
Except that (for example) for me to go and see my young lady's parents with her is almost impossible at the moment; they are four hours away, and if I drive there I can't go inside there house. I've managed meet them once, we've been going out since November 2019.
I'm graciously permitted to go to a church, but I can't talk to anyone inside, or sing hymns as part of the congregation. This in an area currently with 2 cases in 100k people.
And if you do do a bit of shopping, it has to be from behind a mask. And if you do pop to the pub, you have to give your contact details.
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Thanks. But just to knock the Tories off their majority perch they need to lose 40 or so seats. Several factors make this alone tricky: The Tories are going all out to consolidate the non super urban ex Labour vote and Labour give no sense of having a better retail offer up their sleeve;
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying and it's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Friend of mine has been sent a vaccination invite right at the same time as she's been sent home from work and needs a Covid test. Hopefully it'll be negative, she cleans in a food processing enviroment though and is only just under 50.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
Really? I would personally have been less concerned, as it would probably be more stable than a naturally mutating virus.
Unless you think the Chinese would try and release another one that would evade the vaccines. But I don’t think even Xi would be so stupid as to hope to get away with that twice.
I don’t think it was manufactured in a lab, though. It’s doing exactly what China doesn’t want it to do - killing off the elderly in the west and leaving the younger economic producers untouched. An attempt to extend their power would have been the other way around.
If it had genuinely rampaged through China killing more than 350,000, then I might have wondered if it was a rather drastic attempted solution to their demographic problem. But as it didn’t, and as it seems to have taken them by surprise as well given their confused and incoherent response, I’m thinking it’s unlikely.
Given how much less efficacious the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine is than the Western vaccines, CV19 has also done a great job of persuading many developing countries that a good relationship with the West *is* important. Chinese dollar diplomacy has become a whole lot less effective in the last year.
Another very good reason for assuming they had neither studied nor created the virus.
It’s widely accepted that they were studying this virus (or something close to it). SARS-cov-2 comes from bats in Yunnan, SW China, and it killed a few miners years ago. Wuhan scientists have been visiting Yunnan for a decade
When the BBC went to Yunnan to investigate the Chinese got very jumpy
Again, they always get jumpy around independent journalists. That’s because of the way they operate. It’s not in itself a sign of anything sinister going on.
As I noted earlier, they just passed a law in Hong Kong which would make @TheScreamingEagles advocating drawing a dick picture on a ballot paper an imprisonable offence.
Totalitarian regimes do stupid and brutal stuff, but it doesn't make conspiracies any more likely.
Please, I'm much more classier than that.
I would never use the word dick, I would use the word phallus.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
At some point it seems to me politicians are going to have to say 'no' to the science advisors. Enough is enough. You say we must learn to live with it as an endemic disease, so we are going to do just that.
We cannot afford, mentally or economically, another three month national full lockdown next winter. In the very worse case we should advise the very vulnerable to lockdown and the rest get on with life including schools remaining open.
I fear though we are already being soften up for one.
I think you need to distinguish between the press and scientists. The Government's insistence on releasing everything through press leaks doesn't help though. One problem is naivety of scientists when talking to the press I think mind
The Scientists cannot and will not say, "x will not happen", as long as there is even half a percent chance or less, or x happening.
And the Press have no interest in accurately reporting the probability.
They also have no interest or understanding of wider statistics.
The inability of journalists to understand even quite basic numbers has been absolutely staggering. Not all journalists, of course. But a surprisingly large number are surprisingly stupid.
If you talk to journalists, the following beliefs come up
- Numbers are boring, people don't wan to hear about them - "This is a question. This is a story" - A story is seen as "questions have been raised". "Questions raised and answered" is not a proper story.
And the scary thing is; they're right.
People want to believe the dramatic or scary stuff, they don't care about the basic numbers (unless they support their preconceptions; if they do, they are "proven", if they don't, they are disregarded and irrelevant).
What stories and viewpoints do we see brought up repeatedly and argued even on here?
True.
But there is a hunger for more detail and more background on stories.
Arstechnica îs an interesting example - follow up stories, reports and lots of links to external data.
News as a wiki, rather than a 1 minute gotcha.
Arstechnica is a niche market though - while a lot of other people get their news from the people they see on social media.
We really will be moving into a world where some people know exactly what is going on and others don't know and don't care.
'Twas ever thus...
Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.
And those where the people willing to pick up a paper. Nowadays most people get their news from whatever Facebook / Twitter's algorithms thinks will keep them on that site for an extra second.
The Sun was (and is) written in exactly that style.
When it feels like it the Sun has surprisingly sharp political coverage. It has an exceedingly acute ear for its readership. It has given a lot of coverage too recently about how the benefits system works - not just stories about feckless chavs.
Looks like they've got the timing of the shift towards second doses in the elderly pretty good overall, from the ONS antibody survey.
Antibody levels have been starting to fall off in the single-dosed elderly; the big push towards second doses should rectify that.
Vaccination takeup is incredible in older adults in this country and yes from those charts it does look like the dosing strategy has been bang on.
If you use the adjusted population figures* rather than raw ONS2019 (as they seem to have done) then the percentages vaccinated and and the peak antibody levels match even more closely.
*ONS 2019 projected forward and combined with other data - see data in the weekly vaccination reports for England
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Thanks. But just to knock the Tories off their majority perch they need to lose 40 or so seats. Several factors make this alone tricky: The Tories are going all out to consolidate the non super urban ex Labour vote and Labour give no sense of having a better retail offer up their sleeve;
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
it isn't going to be dull.
The danger for Labour here, especially with some of the ex-New Labour people currently advising Starmer, is that if they move too far in an authoritarian right direction, they will lose considerable voters to the Greens and the LD's. The metropolitan vote became permanently more mobile after the early 2000s, and if they get the balance wrong, they will lose on the other flank. There've been some signs of slippage there already, since the expulsion of Corbyn.
They probably need a centre-left Miliband-era adviser like Stewart Wood, with channels of communication both to the left and the New Labourites, to balance out Claire Ainsley, who seems entirely focused on the Red Wall. Overseeing them both should probably be someone with first-hand, historical experience of the Wilson administration Starmer looks to as his model, whoever that might be, and if there is such a person surviving.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
Except that (for example) for me to go and see my young lady's parents with her is almost impossible at the moment; they are four hours away, and if I drive there I can't go inside there house. I've managed meet them once, we've been going out since November 2019.
I'm graciously permitted to go to a church, but I can't talk to anyone inside, or sing hymns as part of the congregation. This in an area currently with 2 cases in 100k people.
Yes, I understand. It was just the phrase "locked up". Not keen. No big deal.
It seems to me that where Labour is gaining from the Tories is a bit niche, and the reverse is more of a general repeatable trend. Labour gain from the Tories in a cluster of enclaves: Too posh to vote Tory, Polly Toynbee land, university vote, whatever I am supposed to call BAME seats this week, super urban.
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
That's a mistaken impression, because what's happening is a shift within every constituency - while there are some niche seats as you say (just as there are some with few ABC1 voters), the battlegrounds are seats where the demography is gradually shifting.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
Thanks. But just to knock the Tories off their majority perch they need to lose 40 or so seats. Several factors make this alone tricky: The Tories are going all out to consolidate the non super urban ex Labour vote and Labour give no sense of having a better retail offer up their sleeve;
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
it isn't going to be dull.
Labour may never (well, medium term never) win back the likes of Workington and Mansfield. But there will be dozens of previously safe seats in the remainery south east which will come into play for them - seats which were Tory even in 1997.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
lol. No one believes the WHO investigation. Not even the leader of the WHO
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
That is a misreading - he pointed out its inadequacies, but did not say that he 'didn't believe it'.
The investigation is both inadequate and incomplete, as noted, but the preponderance of evidence (of which there is a large amount) was for natural transmission. Your comment that "the likeliest explanation is an accidental leak" covered up by China would require a large effort to manufacture evidence which has gone undetected by a number of independent scientists who visited the site - the second bit of that seems implausible.
You clearly haven't looked at the details of the WHO investigation. A good place to start might be this thread by a Scripps Research Institute immunologist and infectious disease expert: https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1376954932004196352
Note that the report does not run out a lab leak (or indeed other possibilities). It simply concludes that it is a less likely explanation.
It could have been a mixture of both, the initial seed coming from an improperly secured lab sample (and knowing Chinese standards on clean rooms and biosecurity, this is well within the realms of possibility) leading to spread and mutation to other live animals at the wet market by an infected person from the lab and subsequent spread from those animals such as pangolins to other humans of a newly mutated virus that was capable of human to human transmission.
I wouldn't rule anything out and the above scenario is plausible, IMO.
And yet the serology from the lab does tend to rule out an infected person for the lab spreading it, unless it was faked.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Something in this, yes. I've been looking forward to April 12th for ages, thought I'd be bouncing around like zeberdee this week, but no. Very little has happened with me. Kind of stuck.
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
If I agree with you does that constitute an admission that I am not exceptionally intelligent or an above average specimen of humankind?
You're agreeing with him that I'm exceptionally intelligent? I say!
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Something in this, yes. I've been looking forward to April 12th for ages, thought I'd be bouncing around like zeberdee this week, but no. Very little has happened with me. Kind of stuck.
I'm not particularly bothered to go to the pub. There are no particularly great pubs in my neighbourhood. And I'm disinclined to sit outside in the cold. And table service isn't a pub. And I object to leaving my details or using an app on my phone. So basically I'm finding reasons not to engage. I have become sullen, detached. I think big for me will be when the restrictions to being in other people's houses go. That's when life will change.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
At some point it seems to me politicians are going to have to say 'no' to the science advisors. Enough is enough. You say we must learn to live with it as an endemic disease, so we are going to do just that.
We cannot afford, mentally or economically, another three month national full lockdown next winter. In the very worse case we should advise the very vulnerable to lockdown and the rest get on with life including schools remaining open.
I fear though we are already being soften up for one.
I think you need to distinguish between the press and scientists. The Government's insistence on releasing everything through press leaks doesn't help though. One problem is naivety of scientists when talking to the press I think mind
The Scientists cannot and will not say, "x will not happen", as long as there is even half a percent chance or less, or x happening.
And the Press have no interest in accurately reporting the probability.
They also have no interest or understanding of wider statistics.
The inability of journalists to understand even quite basic numbers has been absolutely staggering. Not all journalists, of course. But a surprisingly large number are surprisingly stupid.
If you talk to journalists, the following beliefs come up
- Numbers are boring, people don't wan to hear about them - "This is a question. This is a story" - A story is seen as "questions have been raised". "Questions raised and answered" is not a proper story.
And the scary thing is; they're right.
People want to believe the dramatic or scary stuff, they don't care about the basic numbers (unless they support their preconceptions; if they do, they are "proven", if they don't, they are disregarded and irrelevant).
What stories and viewpoints do we see brought up repeatedly and argued even on here?
True.
But there is a hunger for more detail and more background on stories.
Arstechnica îs an interesting example - follow up stories, reports and lots of links to external data.
News as a wiki, rather than a 1 minute gotcha.
Arstechnica is a niche market though - while a lot of other people get their news from the people they see on social media.
We really will be moving into a world where some people know exactly what is going on and others don't know and don't care.
'Twas ever thus...
Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.
And those where the people willing to pick up a paper. Nowadays most people get their news from whatever Facebook / Twitter's algorithms thinks will keep them on that site for an extra second.
The Sun was (and is) written in exactly that style.
When it feels like it the Sun has surprisingly sharp political coverage. It has an exceedingly acute ear for its readership. It has given a lot of coverage too recently about how the benefits system works - not just stories about feckless chavs.
There's good reasons why Cameron spent so much political capital on Andy Coulson, Brown on Damien McBride and Blair on Alastair Campbell. A PM needs someone very close to them, with a good eye on what actually happens in the country.
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
The other interpretation is that neither scientists nor government have any more desire for further lockdowns than you do, and that is what is driving their caution. The only way we get another major wave is if all precautions are abandoned before we vaccinate a substantial majority of the population, I think.
It's a perverted logic that says "because we don't want another lockdown we must maintain lockdown now despite it no longer being necessary at all".
1000 x this. We're currently locked up on the basis that there is a (increasingly vanishingly small) risk we might be needed to be locked up again. I'd rather take my chances on this than wait months more for a (still uncertain) apparently irreversible normally.
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
We're not "locked up". C'mon.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
The problem is that you are exceptionally intelligent and an above average specimen of humankind. So your post, apart from the obviously transparent fabrication of "with a mate", employs that special intelligence to intellectualise the current situation.
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
It was in fact all a fabrication. I'm going nowhere. But I could, is the point. Nevertheless I understand what you're saying. It's a fair enough observation. It's just the language. "Locked up". Total hyperbole and tbh it irritates me. There are people in this world who are locked up. We need a new word for that if we're going to recast what the term means by nabbing it for this.
Institutionalized. We are like long term prisoners who can now leave, at least partially, but often we don’t want to. It’s too much of a faff. Booking a pub. We make excuses, some good, some bad. We’ve got so used to our own four walls it’s easier to stay home, psychologically
Something in this, yes. I've been looking forward to April 12th for ages, thought I'd be bouncing around like zeberdee this week, but no. Very little has happened with me. Kind of stuck.
I've not been looking forward to this week as its not enough for me.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎
Horrible feeling we’re being mentally prepared for many more months of restrictions
Endless talk of variants. Safferbug in Clapham. Supervariant in Brazil. Scary new variant in India (which is surging into a terrifying second wave)
Meanwhile vaccines are suddenly less important... and we must expect new waves and 50,000 deaths. Hmm
Cui bono? I don’t believe the government wants us locked down forever; I do believe there is a group of scientists who are properly scared, and they are spooking the politicians
One answer we don't know is how much the Government, and other Governments, really believe about the causes of Covid. If they believe - despite public commentary - that this thing was actually manufactured in a Chinese lab, and not a natural outbreak, then you can see why they might be a tad concerned.
The likeliest explanation is an accidental leak from that lab. I’ve not seen any convincing evidence, however, that the virus has been genetically altered, manufactured or ‘weaponised’. It’s just a bloody nasty virus, from a bat - exactly the type of virus being studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It really isn't the most likely explanation. It's not impossible, of course, but all the data fro the WHO investigation suggests a natural origin.
lol. No one believes the WHO investigation. Not even the leader of the WHO
“The WHO chief said there is a particular need for a “full analysis” of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the WHO report did not conduct an “extensive enough” assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident”
That is a misreading - he pointed out its inadequacies, but did not say that he 'didn't believe it'.
The investigation is both inadequate and incomplete, as noted, but the preponderance of evidence (of which there is a large amount) was for natural transmission. Your comment that "the likeliest explanation is an accidental leak" covered up by China would require a large effort to manufacture evidence which has gone undetected by a number of independent scientists who visited the site - the second bit of that seems implausible.
You clearly haven't looked at the details of the WHO investigation. A good place to start might be this thread by a Scripps Research Institute immunologist and infectious disease expert: https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1376954932004196352
Note that the report does not run out a lab leak (or indeed other possibilities). It simply concludes that it is a less likely explanation.
It could have been a mixture of both, the initial seed coming from an improperly secured lab sample (and knowing Chinese standards on clean rooms and biosecurity, this is well within the realms of possibility) leading to spread and mutation to other live animals at the wet market by an infected person from the lab and subsequent spread from those animals such as pangolins to other humans of a newly mutated virus that was capable of human to human transmission.
I wouldn't rule anything out and the above scenario is plausible, IMO.
And yet the serology from the lab does tend to rule out an infected person for the lab spreading it, unless it was faked.
The issue in China is that last sentence. A lab leak would be hugely embarrassing for the CCP, faking it and blaming it on some natural incidence would be very much something they would want to do.
Looks like they've got the timing of the shift towards second doses in the elderly pretty good overall, from the ONS antibody survey.
Antibody levels have been starting to fall off in the single-dosed elderly; the big push towards second doses should rectify that.
True, but its important to remember that the immune system is not just antibodies.
Oh, yes. But the antibody level is the key driver for reducing R (providing sterilising immunity).
Antibody levels being at maximum provides maximum suppression of R. (Of course, you get a benefit to reducing R from T-cells making it so that viral loads reach a lower peak and remain for a shorter time, but someone with only T-cell immunity and not sterilising immunity can still pass on the virus, even though it's a reduced likelihood).
Get antibody levels up and keep them up and that's a bazooka shot to the virus spreading. T-cell levels cover the gaps to an extent on spread and make it so that infections that do get through are considerably less likely to be harmful.
Comments
All the big influencers and media types live in these, as do all the people they know, it affects their judgement. There aren't many more to gain. At the same time Workington is Tory and Barnsley East is actually a marginal. So 'matched by middle class seats slipping to Labour' may not be quite right.
Money is being spent on the visible parts of the criminal justice system (Police and Prisons) but not on the hidden bits that actually do the real work.
George Osborne only has one* job these days, as per the terms of his contract with Robey Warshaw.
*Paid.
It cannot be true, because Griffin is saying it,
and conversely, it must be true, because 'mainstream' politicians are saying it.
Many people on here show the same attitude.
The people anointed by the mainstream media have to be believed and defended. Ie, SAGE members, big party politicians, senior civil servants and so on.
You dislike this theory because Trump propounded it. Your understandable allergy to him has lowered your IQ. Do some reading
In fact my colleagues bought hard copies for me as a leaving present from my last engineering job.
https://www.ft.com/content/1a8e5bf7-49e0-4987-98c8-893f08d9c77c
Quick over view it's solve an issue the EU can't actually fix itself by taking it elsewhere.
If you can't read it click https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Europe’s+low-tax+nations+braced+for+struggle+over+US+corporate+tax+plan and click the top (FT) link
In Scotland and Wales I would expect there to be coverage of the Holyrood and Senedd elections and in London there to be coverage of the Mayoral and Assembly elections, I would not expect there to be much coverage of the council elections and PCC elections in the rest of England though.
Rallies are obviously out given Covid rules at the moment anyway
It's difficult to believe that our political leaders are this stupid, but it really does seem that they are.
That said, they aren't going to change course now, so the really important thing is that we must ensure every single restriction (other than foreign travel - that's a special case for good reasons) goes on the 21st June. Circumstances to prevent spread are simply not ever going to get any better than those that will exist then (summer, almost everyone jabbed), and a return to full normality is more important than anything else, even virus case numbers.
It's going to happen anyway eventually whatever the government does (as it would have done even without vaccines) so we should get on with it, rather than ending up with permanent nominal restrictions that are widely ignored (cf speed limits) which is where the regulations are rapidly heading at the moment.
This gives a good picture of the situation, based on 2017 when the parties were close nationally:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_target_seats_in_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election
There were few MPs last year who were saying we're in the wrong tier, we've got one of the largest decreases in cases in the country so we should be moved to a less severe tier.
Not realising that falling from 400 cases per 100k population to 300 cases per 100k population isn't as impressive as an area with say only 80 cases per 100k population that was previously 82 cases 100k population.
I grew up in working class areas. Corruption is an envelope full of cash or an incompetent family member getting a job or being promoted. Getting jobs through friends is a way of life. If you go past a non food pub in a working class area between 4 and 7 you will see lots of white vans outside. This is the office networking. Where you speak to friends / acquaintances and get things done. Friendship and trust for part of this so if you want to understand why this will have limited impact, and why Boris is focussed on spending more money on the north (levelling up) - these people want results not empty promises and being taken for granted by labour.
Labour also do far better amongst the middle classes than they did in say the 1950s, the Tories though do far better now with the working classes than they did then so class is no longer as big a dividing line as age is on voting intention
What is the "smoking gun" that tells us that this virus came from Wuhan Animal Market?
‘Lentzos at King’s College London said while such analysis did suggest Sars-CoV-2 was a “natural” virus, this does not affect the validity of the lab-leak theory.
“If we look at the genetics, it looks like it could possibly have been a natural spillover, but none of that evidence rules out a lab leak theory, it is entirely plausible that the spillover happened as a result of lab-related research or field work or a transportation mishap,” she said.’
‘Ebright said “the emergence last year of a pandemic involving bat Sars-related coronavirus in Wuhan, on [the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s] doorstep, immediately suggested a possible laboratory origin for the pandemic” to ALL SCIENTISTS AND SCIENCE POLICY SPECIALISTS who had been debating “since 2015” the institute’s “extremely high-risk gain-of-function research on bat Sars-related coronaviruses”’
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3128984/covid-19-origins-how-unseen-wuhan-research-notes-could
Which story looks more dramatic:
ALL IS GOING QUITE WELL, ACTUALLY
WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE FROM SUPER-MUTATED VIRUS!!!
I've seen plenty of scientists saying the first one. A slack handful saying the second one.
Which one does the media choose to amplify?
No need for any conspiracy theory that the Government want that amplified, or that there's a sinister cabal of scientists who want to control everything. If either COULD control what the media amplifies, they'd be a lot happier in getting out Government messages and decent science; they can't. Because the media are drawn to melodramatic amplification like flies are drawn to shit,
- Numbers are boring, people don't wan to hear about them
- "This is a question. This is a story" - A story is seen as "questions have been raised". "Questions raised and answered" is not a proper story.
One point though. Most of the left are rooting for Starmer to succeed - including me - but there's a chunk that aren't.
THAT WAS MY POINT. You don’t get them for locals, so people don’t notice they’re happening.
You do in general election years. Does that help drive turnout?
The Tories no doubt will try hard to lose all this by sleaze, incompetence and so on but Labour have a hard road.
All the media is doing is reporting the latest pronouncement from Chairman Johnson.
And the latest pronouncement is the experimental vaccine that you have so willingly taken will not set you free.
You should tell all these worried << checks notes >> virologists and epidemiologists that they’re being ridiculous
Local media coverage however could make a difference to improving local elections turnout in the local paper or regional TV, national coverage wouldn't
https://twitter.com/JamesShotter/status/1382251686979366915
Poland records its second highest daily death toll of the pandemic so far, with 803 deaths.
(The only higher figure, on April 8, contained catch-up data from several days over the Easter period).
Quote Tweet
The investigation is both inadequate and incomplete, as noted, but the preponderance of evidence (of which there is a large amount) was for natural transmission. Your comment that "the likeliest explanation is an accidental leak" covered up by China would require a large effort to manufacture evidence which has gone undetected by a number of independent scientists who visited the site - the second bit of that seems implausible.
You clearly haven't looked at the details of the WHO investigation.
A good place to start might be this thread by a Scripps Research Institute immunologist and infectious disease expert:
https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1376954932004196352
Note that the report does not run out a lab leak (or indeed other possibilities). It simply concludes that it is a less likely explanation.
I'm popping out shortly to do a few things. Bit of shopping. Walk in Regents Park. Maybe a beer with a mate. Haircut even if there's a slot.
North London's my oyster. (which I'd never order in a pub).
Especially not bats from faraway Yunnan
Now, how could a virus from a bat in Yunnan have got all the way to Wuhan, a city which boasts a unique laboratory investigating novel coronaviruses in Yunnanese bats?
Truly, a mystery for the ages
People want to believe the dramatic or scary stuff, they don't care about the basic numbers (unless they support their preconceptions; if they do, they are "proven", if they don't, they are disregarded and irrelevant).
What stories and viewpoints do we see brought up repeatedly and argued even on here?
The data is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oqYNMWwYA5m1LNpJAOOyC7nimJvbQUGGznagrBUUmBo/edit#gid=0
Turns out that turnout was down in 1992, not up. It was the lowest ever recorded, turnout rebounded a bit the following couple of years before falling again to a new low in 1996.
So the Tories 42% in 1992 was probably because opposition voters didn't bother to turnout but the Tory voters did.
Had the Tory MPs been united in opposing a referendum, rather than well over 100 Tories demanding one, then UKIP would have been much easier to ignore. Instead UKIP added pressure to what was already a pre-existing split in the Tory party that had dominated politics for many years before UKIP were even formed.
I wouldn't rule anything out and the above scenario is plausible, IMO.
That a similar (not the same) virus existed in Yunnan is not proof that this came from there.
But there is a hunger for more detail and more background on stories.
Arstechnica îs an interesting example - follow up stories, reports and lots of links to external data.
News as a wiki, rather than a 1 minute gotcha.
Interesting.
"The UK government is asking the Supreme Court to decide whether two bills passed by the Scottish parliament go beyond its legislative competence. They are
the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill; and
the European Charter of Local Self-Government (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill.
As a devolved assembly, the Scottish parliament has only the powers it was given by the Westminster parliament when it passed the Scotland Act 1998. Section 33 of that act allows the UK government’s law officers “to refer the question of whether a bill or any provision of a bill would be within the legislative competence of the [Scottish] parliament to the Supreme Court for decision”. "
https://rozenberg.substack.com/p/how-competent-is-scotlands-parliament
One confounding factor for the bat-in-the-market hypothesis is that the earliest cases predate the market cluster. Which again suggests the lab, as a highly plausible alternative
We really will be moving into a world where some people know exactly what is going on and others don't know and don't care.
Why in a 5 year Scottish Parliament were these 2 bills introduced and voted through in the weeks leading up to the next election.
The entire point of these bills was to emphasis that Scotland doesn't have full control - hence vote SNP for the right to determine our own laws.
The lord advocate — the Scottish government’s law officer — can also refer a bill to the Supreme Court, presumably in the hope that the court will confirm that its is within the parliament’s competence.
There is currently a debate as to whether an advisory referendum on Scottish Independence is legal or not, since an advisory referendum isn't binding (and in general all referenda are advisory anyway). One thing I'd thought is that the UK Government might decline to take that to the Supreme Court and instead consider a boycott as an option, because if the Supreme Court rules that an advisory referendum is legitimate then that legitimises the referendum politically and makes a boycott a much tougher sell.
But if the Scottish Government can then refer it itself, then this is likely to end up before SCOTUK potentially either way.
Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.
The Yunnan and Wuhan viruses are, genetically, extremely similar
‘The virus genome consists of six major open-reading frames (ORFs) that are common to coronaviruses and a number of other accessory genes (Fig. 1b). Further analysis indicates that some of the 2019-nCoV genes shared less than 80% nucleotide sequence identity to SARS-CoV. However, the amino acid sequences of the seven conserved replicase domains in ORF1ab that were used for CoV species classification were 94.4% identical between 2019-nCoV and SARS-CoV, suggesting that the two viruses belong to the same species, SARSr-CoV.
‘We then found that a short region of RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) from a bat coronavirus (BatCoV RaTG13)—which was previously detected in Rhinolophus affinis from Yunnan province—showed high sequence identity to 2019-nCoV. We carried out full-length sequencing on this RNA sample (GISAID accession number EPI_ISL_402131). Simplot analysis showed that 2019-nCoV was highly similar throughout the genome to RaTG13 (Fig. 1c), with an overall genome sequence identity of 96.2%’
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7
As we have seen here on PB and I'm sure in the broader community, not to say especially with young people, they are either unwilling or unable to analyse it all away. "Lockdown" becomes bigger than not being able to go to the footie with another 40,000 people while being able, if you read the small print, to go to the pub outside. It is an oppressive, debilitating frame of mind that many people are hugely affected by.
"Like" is not the same.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-Id-write-covid-the-thriller
200 Tory MPs opposed to the government's Covid strategy would only need to threaten a letter to Graham Brady and the strategy would change.
'The opposition occupies the benches in front of you, but the enemy sits behind you'
Antibody levels have been starting to fall off in the single-dosed elderly; the big push towards second doses should rectify that.
‘Shi’s team used the antibody test to narrow down the list of locations and bat species to pursue in the quest for genomic clues. After roaming mountainous terrain in most of China’s dozens of provinces, the researchers turned their attention to one spot: Shitou Cave, on the outskirts of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, where they conducted intense sampling during different seasons over five consecutive years.
‘The efforts paid off. The pathogen hunters discovered hundreds of bat-borne coronaviruses with incredible genetic diversity. “The majority of them are harmless,” Shi says. But dozens belong to the same group as SARS. They can infect human lung cells in a petri dish and cause SARS-like diseases in mice.’
‘Three years earlier Shi’s team had been called in to investigate the virus profile of a mine shaft in Yunnan’s mountainous Mojiang County—famous for its fermented Pu’er tea—where six miners suffered from pneumonialike diseases and two died. After sampling the cave for a year, the researchers discovered a diverse group of coronaviruses in six bat species. In many cases, multiple viral strains had infected a single animal, turning it into a flying factory for new viruses.
“The mine shaft stunk like hell,” says Shi, who, like her colleagues, went in wearing a protective mask and clothing. “Bat guano, covered in fungus, littered the cave.” Although the fungus turned out to be the pathogen that had sickened the miners, she says it would have been only a matter of time before they caught the coronaviruses if the mine had not been promptly shut.’
I mean, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes, do you?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/bs2/the-yard.html
I got lost looking for a pub and this road of houses quite central to Bristol but very middle class - every house had a Labour banner or poster, and on Google Street view a house on the adjacent road still has a fixed permanent vote Jeremy Corbyn sign!
If you want a counterpoint go to Rightmove and look at Hartlepool. Plenty of houses for less than 100k
I don't think the story in the header will make any difference to VI
Good article on the brain fog and torpor of lockdown
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/apr/14/brain-fog-how-trauma-uncertainty-and-isolation-have-affected-our-minds-and-memory?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
I'm graciously permitted to go to a church, but I can't talk to anyone inside, or sing hymns as part of the congregation. This in an area currently with 2 cases in 100k people.
And if you do pop to the pub, you have to give your contact details.
This still feels somewhat dystopian to me.
to keep what they have Labour rely a bit on the Polly/Guardian tendency, which they would lose from the middle class if they went all cloth cap/populist;
Tory support consolidates at the risk of a rainbow/separatist coalition - which is the only offer Labour can make.
Most of the top 50 Labour targets are not posh/BAME/super urban/Guardian territory. The Tories will be fighting to extend their ground in their new found marginals (Barnsley East etc!). Labour will have to both defend and attack in an election they cannot win outright. It's possible but it is a big ask.
I think (not sure) that at the next election the Tories can run a truly populist campaign, but Labour can't risk it.
it isn't going to be dull.
Cheers! 🍻
*ONS 2019 projected forward and combined with other data - see data in the weekly vaccination reports for England
They probably need a centre-left Miliband-era adviser like Stewart Wood, with channels of communication both to the left and the New Labourites, to balance out Claire Ainsley, who seems entirely focused on the Red Wall. Overseeing them both should probably be someone with first-hand, historical experience of the Wilson administration Starmer looks to as his model, whoever that might be, and if there is such a person surviving.
I say!
I think big for me will be when the restrictions to being in other people's houses go. That's when life will change.
I have no interest in sitting outside in a beer garden while its cold. I'll be honest, I never did that in normal years anyway. In a beer garden when its sunny and warm - not much better than that - but in this weather? Its shit, I'd go indoors but no that's that's still illegal.
We're currently supposed to be grateful for the scraps of civil liberties we're restored? No, I'll pass. This is not good enough while cases, deaths, hospitalisations are so low, there is zero risk of the NHS being overwhelmed and the vulnerable are vaccinated already.
The 17 May one, that's the one I'm looking forward to, but it is where we should be today already.
This week is just not good enough, I'm not going to pretend to be happy with these scraps. 👎
Antibody levels being at maximum provides maximum suppression of R.
(Of course, you get a benefit to reducing R from T-cells making it so that viral loads reach a lower peak and remain for a shorter time, but someone with only T-cell immunity and not sterilising immunity can still pass on the virus, even though it's a reduced likelihood).
Get antibody levels up and keep them up and that's a bazooka shot to the virus spreading. T-cell levels cover the gaps to an extent on spread and make it so that infections that do get through are considerably less likely to be harmful.