Personally I think there's a large swathe of more vulnerable younger people left - anyone with a waistline > half height or higher blood pressure. Unless they have another comorbidity (Diabetes is somewhat correlated but doesn't match up completely) they won't be vaccinated yet.
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
Thank you, Andy - an unpleasant but very salutary and necessary bucket of cold water. In the spirit of optimism, do you have a current estimate for when you think we're likely to pass the point of danger? I'd be very interested to hear it, and I'm sure others would too.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Personally I think there's a large swathe of more vulnerable younger people left - anyone with a waistline > half height or higher blood pressure. Unless they have another comorbidity (Diabetes is somewhat correlated but doesn't match up completely) they won't be vaccinated yet.
Prioritise Stoke and Hull?
They'll be picked up in the general rollout of younger age groups but we're not there yet.
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
This is why a lot of us are indeed willing to put up with the Government's slow unlocking timetable. The concern is, of course, that excuses are found to leave a lot of the restrictions in place beyond June 21st and to invent some new ones on top of that.
It's fair enough to argue that the vaccination programme is insufficient to bin all the rules now, or in the near future - but what if the Government and the scientists start insisting that it will *never* be sufficient, regardless of how complete the level of coverage is that it provides?
After everything that has happened over the past year, who'd be prepared to trust them not to treat us like that? I certainly wouldn't.
You don't need to trust them. You just need to analyse the situation rationally without overweighting what you fear.
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.
I wonder what would the top 20 of those would be? To get to 10 in the south east region you are into Labours top 100 target area if I have counted correctly.
I would say, from that list, the following - which I think were all blue in 1997 (?) will tip into the Labour column in the next decade: Kensington (again) Chipping Barnet Chingford and Wood Green Stroud Hendon Filton and Bradley Stoke Altrincham and Sale West Cities of London and Westminster Finchley and Golders Green Croydon South Welwyn Hatfield
Perhaps I was overstating it with 'dozens', and obviously the list above owes a lot more to 'remainery' than 'south east'!. I would have thought there would be a few more in Bucks/Surrey too but on closer inspection likely candidates aren't leaping out at me.
I'd add Wycombe to that list, and then two which aren't obvious from the 'Labour target' list but to be aware of next time...
Beaconsfield (where Grieve standing in 2019 totally confuses the picture) Uxbridge (this suggestion doesn't count if Boris still the candidate and PM - but post Boris I think that this seat goes the same way as Croydon South long term)
If Beaconsfield is close to turning Red then the Chesham and Amersham by-election should be a lot closer than it will be.
Beaconsfield is basically the rich parts of Wycombe and other (even richer) areas.
Chesham's population profile very much matches High Wycombe's. Amersham and Great Missenden matches the Beaconsfield's profile.
And I suspect the Tories will completely walk it.
Would be fascinating to see Tories gain Hartlepool but lose Chesham and Amersham.
In fact, I think neither will happen. But I don't put either out of reach for the challenging party.
Just checked my vaccine appointment for Sunday and there is a warning that you will need to wait 15 minutes after taking the vaccine. I suspect that means I (and everyone else under 50) is getting Moderna as I think that has the same adverse reaction checks that pfizer needs.
I had to sit around for 15 minutes after getting Pfizer on Monday. Not really sure why. No one asked me how I felt as I left. I suppose I hadn't keeled over or something. I felt like I had a heck of a bruise on my arm Monday night and didn't feel 100% on Tuesday morning, possibly because sleep was disrupted. By lunchtime Tuesday it was fine.
With the success of how they managed COVID and GOT BREXIT DONE the Tories are not just on for a Stella night, heaping the pressure on Starmer, but Labour can now write off the next General Election too. Starmer will be replaced then or before then, what do Labour do, skip a generation to someone we have hardly heard of?
Meanwhile in the big news story, Daily Star has more on the aliens who have, allegedly, made a deal with Trump.
Maybe the deal was to have replaced Biden with a robot, Biden does come across as someone losing his faculties at an alarming rate.
You are ignoring the fact when the county council seats up this year were last up in 2017 the Tories had an 11% lead, most current polls have the Tories lead on less than that so Labour should actually make gains, at least at county level.
Given Corbyn survived losing 382 Labour county councillors and control of 7 county councils in 2017 Starmer will certainly survive making Labour gains at county level.
Given too Labour only got 27% in the 2017 counties and 31% in the 2016 district elections which were when the local seats up this year were last up, even the 34% Yougov has Labour now on would be an improvement (other pollsters have Labour on 36%).
In fact given the LDs 15% in 2016 and 18% in 2017 and are now polling under 10% they may face the biggest losses, on paper at least, though they tend to do better locally than nationally
In your post just below this one Mike you pointed out this is a new landscape. No UKIP. By delivering painless brexit (WWIII not broken out yet) Boris has shored up his Dec 19 vote. He has voters UKIP once pulled from Labour and Conservative. On top of that, Boris government has ensured we are just one of two nations to have beaten COVID and back to normal. As Marquee says, excellent reports back from the doorsteps.
Tories will achieve way about 40% here not less than 38.
Out of the two arguments on here today, this is the more persuasive one, HY data is unreliable against this backdrop.
It’s a new Landscape, that ensures the Tories have the next GE sown up as well.
With the success of how they managed COVID and GOT BREXIT DONE the Tories are not just on for a Stella night, heaping the pressure on Starmer, but Labour can now write off the next General Election too. Starmer will be replaced then or before then, what do Labour do, skip a generation to someone we have hardly heard of?
Meanwhile in the big news story, Daily Star has more on the aliens who have, allegedly, made a deal with Trump.
Maybe the deal was to have replaced Biden with a robot, Biden does come across as someone losing his faculties at an alarming rate.
You are ignoring the fact when the county council seats up this year were last up in 2017 the Tories had an 11% lead, most current polls have the Tories lead on less than that so Labour should actually make gains, at least at county level.
Given Corbyn survived losing 382 Labour county councillors and control of 7 county councils in 2017 Starmer will certainly survive making Labour gains at county level.
Given too Labour only got 27% in the 2017 counties and 31% in the 2016 district elections which were when the local seats up this year were last up, even the 34% Yougov has Labour now on would be an improvement (other pollsters have Labour on 36%).
In fact given the LDs 15% in 2016 and 18% in 2017 and are now polling under 10% they may face the biggest losses, on paper at least, though they tend to do better locally than nationally
In your post just below this one Mike you pointed out this is a new landscape. No UKIP. By delivering painless brexit (WWIII not broken out yet) Boris has shored up his Dec 19 vote. He has voters UKIP once pulled from Labour and Conservative. On top of that, Boris government has ensured we are just one of two nations to have beaten COVID and back to normal. As Marquee says, excellent reports back from the doorsteps.
Tories will achieve way about 40% here not less than 38.
Out of the two arguments on here today, this is the more persuasive one, HY data is unreliable against this backdrop.
It’s a new Landscape, that ensures the Tories have the next GE sown up as well.
Except as others pointed out, Mike was uncharacteristically wrong. There was no UKIP in 2017. UKIP got 1 (ONE) Councillor elected in 2017, they didn't get a 25% share.
Yet they then lost the majority in 2017. No GE is sown up before people have voted.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
This is not happening in Florida and it is not happening in Texas. Which you are conveniently ignoring.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
With the success of how they managed COVID and GOT BREXIT DONE the Tories are not just on for a Stella night, heaping the pressure on Starmer, but Labour can now write off the next General Election too. Starmer will be replaced then or before then, what do Labour do, skip a generation to someone we have hardly heard of?
Meanwhile in the big news story, Daily Star has more on the aliens who have, allegedly, made a deal with Trump.
Maybe the deal was to have replaced Biden with a robot, Biden does come across as someone losing his faculties at an alarming rate.
You are ignoring the fact when the county council seats up this year were last up in 2017 the Tories had an 11% lead, most current polls have the Tories lead on less than that so Labour should actually make gains, at least at county level.
Given Corbyn survived losing 382 Labour county councillors and control of 7 county councils in 2017 Starmer will certainly survive making Labour gains at county level.
Given too Labour only got 27% in the 2017 counties and 31% in the 2016 district elections which were when the local seats up this year were last up, even the 34% Yougov has Labour now on would be an improvement (other pollsters have Labour on 36%).
In fact given the LDs 15% in 2016 and 18% in 2017 and are now polling under 10% they may face the biggest losses, on paper at least, though they tend to do better locally than nationally
In your post just below this one Mike you pointed out this is a new landscape. No UKIP. By delivering painless brexit (WWIII not broken out yet) Boris has shored up his Dec 19 vote. He has voters UKIP once pulled from Labour and Conservative. On top of that, Boris government has ensured we are just one of two nations to have beaten COVID and back to normal. As Marquee says, excellent reports back from the doorsteps.
Tories will achieve way about 40% here not less than 38.
Out of the two arguments on here today, this is the more persuasive one, HY data is unreliable against this backdrop.
It’s a new Landscape, that ensures the Tories have the next GE sown up as well.
In the 2017 local elections the Tories got 38% and Corbyn Labour got just 27%, an 11% lead.
The latest Yougov has the Tories on 41% and Starmer Labour on 34%, so even if the Tories get over 40% in the county elections their lead will be smaller and Labour will make gains (with both parties likely squeezing the LDs who got 18% in the 2017 locals).
UKIP will be less of a factor in the county elections as they only got 4% in 2017 anyway, the Tories if they make gains will likely do so in the district elections where the Tories only got 30% when they were last up in 2016 with UKIP on 12%, thus a much bigger UKIP vote in the district elections for the Tories to squeeze
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
I think, rationally, I know we can't unlock completely, yet. But I think a lot of the restrictions which remain in place are massively disproportionate to their effectiveness in suppressing R.
Edit @Andy_Cooke - I'd heard (Telegraph) that we passed herd immunity on Monday, although not much appeared to be made of it and it was mentioned almost in passing - is that not right?
I hope these are the last unlockings by June, but things have to remain data driven, and it has still to be a combination of cases and Hospitalisations that determine any future lockdowns (the case growth in any short-term remains relevant as it informs the hospitalisation trajectory at that time).
Herd immunity is probably not a single point event horizon in any case. Different coverage in different communities, different age groups means localised outbreaks could remain possible, but an outbreak itself at close to herd immunity level but little distancing will probably be closer to the short, sharp outbreaks of the student halls than the building crisis this winter.
I suspect this winter any issues will be dealable with fairly light, short-lived and localised restrictions.
Ursula von der Leyen says the EU is negotiating a new contract with BioNTech/Pfizer for 1.8bn doses for 2022-2023 with the full supply chain in the EU.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
@DavidL are you expecting the SNP to get a majority?
Its going to be close. I think (hope) that they will fall just short but their little green helpers will get them over the line once again. I expect the Tories to fall back a bit, possibly to 3rd and Labour to pick up a bit but not necessarily win many more seats.
Most of the campaigning seems to revolve around the regional list vote, where the MSM and broadcasters are continuing to blank the Alba party. Salmond needs something to give them a second push. I expect an assault on all the lead SNP candidate in the regional lists, all of whom IIRC received a tiny proportion of members' votes, but have been advanced to the top as preferred BAME/disabled status (self ID'd or not).
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
I never said they were "obviously safe".
Schools aren't closed, schools are open. Schools reopened over a month ago. As for what I am proposing, I would bring forward the domestic element of the Stage 3 restrictions to no later than the end of the month, which would be 3 weeks after the Phase I rollout was completed.
But I would balance that by postponing the lifting of restrictions on travel due for the middle of May. I would add every nation with a case rate double ours per capita (or insufficient testing to accurately measure their case rate) to the red list, which is pretty much all of Europe.
Stop cases coming in from where they are, rather than spreading where they aren't.
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.
I wonder what would the top 20 of those would be? To get to 10 in the south east region you are into Labours top 100 target area if I have counted correctly.
I would say, from that list, the following - which I think were all blue in 1997 (?) will tip into the Labour column in the next decade: Kensington (again) Chipping Barnet Chingford and Wood Green Stroud Hendon Filton and Bradley Stoke Altrincham and Sale West Cities of London and Westminster Finchley and Golders Green Croydon South Welwyn Hatfield
Perhaps I was overstating it with 'dozens', and obviously the list above owes a lot more to 'remainery' than 'south east'!. I would have thought there would be a few more in Bucks/Surrey too but on closer inspection likely candidates aren't leaping out at me.
I'd add Wycombe to that list, and then two which aren't obvious from the 'Labour target' list but to be aware of next time...
Beaconsfield (where Grieve standing in 2019 totally confuses the picture) Uxbridge (this suggestion doesn't count if Boris still the candidate and PM - but post Boris I think that this seat goes the same way as Croydon South long term)
If Beaconsfield is close to turning Red then the Chesham and Amersham by-election should be a lot closer than it will be.
Beaconsfield is basically the rich parts of Wycombe and other (even richer) areas.
Chesham's population profile very much matches High Wycombe's. Amersham and Great Missenden matches the Beaconsfield's profile.
And I suspect the Tories will completely walk it.
Indeed, South Bucks, containing Beaconsfield, has the highest average house price of any local authority in England outside London after Esher and Walton, it is a very wealthy area.
However the LDs are likely to be the Tories main challengers in Chesham and Amersham, in 2019 they got 26% in the seat to just 12% for Labour
With the success of how they managed COVID and GOT BREXIT DONE the Tories are not just on for a Stella night, heaping the pressure on Starmer, but Labour can now write off the next General Election too. Starmer will be replaced then or before then, what do Labour do, skip a generation to someone we have hardly heard of?
Meanwhile in the big news story, Daily Star has more on the aliens who have, allegedly, made a deal with Trump.
Maybe the deal was to have replaced Biden with a robot, Biden does come across as someone losing his faculties at an alarming rate.
You are ignoring the fact when the county council seats up this year were last up in 2017 the Tories had an 11% lead, most current polls have the Tories lead on less than that so Labour should actually make gains, at least at county level.
Given Corbyn survived losing 382 Labour county councillors and control of 7 county councils in 2017 Starmer will certainly survive making Labour gains at county level.
Given too Labour only got 27% in the 2017 counties and 31% in the 2016 district elections which were when the local seats up this year were last up, even the 34% Yougov has Labour now on would be an improvement (other pollsters have Labour on 36%).
In fact given the LDs 15% in 2016 and 18% in 2017 and are now polling under 10% they may face the biggest losses, on paper at least, though they tend to do better locally than nationally
In your post just below this one Mike you pointed out this is a new landscape. No UKIP. By delivering painless brexit (WWIII not broken out yet) Boris has shored up his Dec 19 vote. He has voters UKIP once pulled from Labour and Conservative. On top of that, Boris government has ensured we are just one of two nations to have beaten COVID and back to normal. As Marquee says, excellent reports back from the doorsteps.
Tories will achieve way about 40% here not less than 38.
Out of the two arguments on here today, this is the more persuasive one, HY data is unreliable against this backdrop.
It’s a new Landscape, that ensures the Tories have the next GE sown up as well.
In the 2017 local elections the Tories got 38% and Corbyn Labour got just 27%, an 11% lead.
The latest Yougov has the Tories on 41% and Labour on 34%, so even if the Tories get over 40% in the county elections there lead will be smaller and Labour will make gains (with both parties likely squeezing the LDs who got 18% in the 2017 locals).
UKIP will be less of a factor in the county elections as they only got 4% in 2017 anyway, the Tories if they make gains will likely do so in the district elections where the Tories only got 30% when they were last up in 2016 with UKIP on 12%, thus a much bigger UKIP vote in the district elections for the Tories to squeeze
What kind of losses are normally sustained by governments in their 12th consecutive year in power?
With the success of how they managed COVID and GOT BREXIT DONE the Tories are not just on for a Stella night, heaping the pressure on Starmer, but Labour can now write off the next General Election too. Starmer will be replaced then or before then, what do Labour do, skip a generation to someone we have hardly heard of?
Meanwhile in the big news story, Daily Star has more on the aliens who have, allegedly, made a deal with Trump.
Maybe the deal was to have replaced Biden with a robot, Biden does come across as someone losing his faculties at an alarming rate.
This is a wired post. Biden losing faculties at an alarming rate? True it was an issue during the election but what has happened recently? Success of getting Brexit done? Again it is done, but not to acknowledge issues is bizarre. And how they managed covid is a streach. The big positive is the vaccination programme and being the most recent event will have a big impact and has been impressive. The rest is a biased imagination.
Trump and Republicans look in great place going forward in 22 and 24 elections. The Dems have a HUGE problem. At this rate of increasing forgetfulness, this time next year the presidents brain will resemble that stuff Proust so enjoyed dipping in his tea. Just around the corner The Dems are in a huge mess over this.
I pride myself on being helpful and not too abrasive in posts, but the problem with your reply is same as everything wrong with pandemic planning, it lacked creative thought.
With the success of how they managed COVID and GOT BREXIT DONE the Tories are not just on for a Stella night, heaping the pressure on Starmer, but Labour can now write off the next General Election too. Starmer will be replaced then or before then, what do Labour do, skip a generation to someone we have hardly heard of?
Meanwhile in the big news story, Daily Star has more on the aliens who have, allegedly, made a deal with Trump.
Maybe the deal was to have replaced Biden with a robot, Biden does come across as someone losing his faculties at an alarming rate.
You are ignoring the fact when the county council seats up this year were last up in 2017 the Tories had an 11% lead, most current polls have the Tories lead on less than that so Labour should actually make gains, at least at county level.
Given Corbyn survived losing 382 Labour county councillors and control of 7 county councils in 2017 Starmer will certainly survive making Labour gains at county level.
Given too Labour only got 27% in the 2017 counties and 31% in the 2016 district elections which were when the local seats up this year were last up, even the 34% Yougov has Labour now on would be an improvement (other pollsters have Labour on 36%).
In fact given the LDs 15% in 2016 and 18% in 2017 and are now polling under 10% they may face the biggest losses, on paper at least, though they tend to do better locally than nationally
In your post just below this one Mike you pointed out this is a new landscape. No UKIP. By delivering painless brexit (WWIII not broken out yet) Boris has shored up his Dec 19 vote. He has voters UKIP once pulled from Labour and Conservative. On top of that, Boris government has ensured we are just one of two nations to have beaten COVID and back to normal. As Marquee says, excellent reports back from the doorsteps.
Tories will achieve way about 40% here not less than 38.
Out of the two arguments on here today, this is the more persuasive one, HY data is unreliable against this backdrop.
It’s a new Landscape, that ensures the Tories have the next GE sown up as well.
In the 2017 local elections the Tories got 38% and Corbyn Labour got just 27%, an 11% lead.
The latest Yougov has the Tories on 41% and Labour on 34%, so even if the Tories get over 40% in the county elections there lead will be smaller and Labour will make gains (with both parties likely squeezing the LDs who got 18% in the 2017 locals).
UKIP will be less of a factor in the county elections as they only got 4% in 2017 anyway, the Tories if they make gains will likely do so in the district elections where the Tories only got 30% when they were last up in 2016 with UKIP on 12%, thus a much bigger UKIP vote in the district elections for the Tories to squeeze
What kind of losses are normally sustained by governments in their 12th consecutive year in power?
You might need to look at Japan for the answer to that question, since we seem to be getting Japanese style politics right now.
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. 👎
We're not "meant to be grateful". And stop virtue signalling. You don't love liberty any more than the next man. Same to all the posters banging on in this vein.
I'm not virtue signalling, its my opinion.
And I do love liberty more than many other people. I'm a libertarian/classical liberal, I always take the liberty position normally which many other people don't. A lot of people are happier to default to authoritarian positions.
Hmm, really? You have been consistently and thoughtfully supportive (as I have) of the government's use of "lockdown" as a core tool to control the pandemic. Also supportive (as I have) of the roadmap back to domestic normality.
Ok, so now, with the vaccination rollout working a dream, one can start making a case for accelerating the reopening a little bit. If you were to do so, you'd get no grief from me. I might even agree.
But no, what do we get instead? We get you switching on a sixpence into some liberty rottweiler and calling this a "scandal", that we are being "given scraps", wailing that this "isn't normal" and it's just a total abomination that we aren't already "unlocked" and "free".
It just doesn't scan.
You're a phony, Philip.
Actually for the past year in discussions with Stocky and TOPPING etc I have said I was philosophically against restrictions and their necessity was uncomfortable for me.
They're not necessary now. They were deemed necessary to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed, but now they're not. So yes it is a scandal.
It isn't acceptable to take away civil liberties unnecessarily.
As opposed to all those people who in discussions with Stocky and Topping etc said that they were "philosophically" in favour of having their liberty curtailed and who found it deeply pleasing?
C'mon.
Just argue for a quicker reopening if that's what you want to do. No need for all the virtue-signalling crap. It strikes an "off" note.
With the success of how they managed COVID and GOT BREXIT DONE the Tories are not just on for a Stella night, heaping the pressure on Starmer, but Labour can now write off the next General Election too. Starmer will be replaced then or before then, what do Labour do, skip a generation to someone we have hardly heard of?
Meanwhile in the big news story, Daily Star has more on the aliens who have, allegedly, made a deal with Trump.
Maybe the deal was to have replaced Biden with a robot, Biden does come across as someone losing his faculties at an alarming rate.
You are ignoring the fact when the county council seats up this year were last up in 2017 the Tories had an 11% lead, most current polls have the Tories lead on less than that so Labour should actually make gains, at least at county level.
Given Corbyn survived losing 382 Labour county councillors and control of 7 county councils in 2017 Starmer will certainly survive making Labour gains at county level.
Given too Labour only got 27% in the 2017 counties and 31% in the 2016 district elections which were when the local seats up this year were last up, even the 34% Yougov has Labour now on would be an improvement (other pollsters have Labour on 36%).
In fact given the LDs 15% in 2016 and 18% in 2017 and are now polling under 10% they may face the biggest losses, on paper at least, though they tend to do better locally than nationally
In your post just below this one Mike you pointed out this is a new landscape. No UKIP. By delivering painless brexit (WWIII not broken out yet) Boris has shored up his Dec 19 vote. He has voters UKIP once pulled from Labour and Conservative. On top of that, Boris government has ensured we are just one of two nations to have beaten COVID and back to normal. As Marquee says, excellent reports back from the doorsteps.
Tories will achieve way about 40% here not less than 38.
Out of the two arguments on here today, this is the more persuasive one, HY data is unreliable against this backdrop.
It’s a new Landscape, that ensures the Tories have the next GE sown up as well.
In the 2017 local elections the Tories got 38% and Corbyn Labour got just 27%, an 11% lead.
The latest Yougov has the Tories on 41% and Labour on 34%, so even if the Tories get over 40% in the county elections there lead will be smaller and Labour will make gains (with both parties likely squeezing the LDs who got 18% in the 2017 locals).
UKIP will be less of a factor in the county elections as they only got 4% in 2017 anyway, the Tories if they make gains will likely do so in the district elections where the Tories only got 30% when they were last up in 2016 with UKIP on 12%, thus a much bigger UKIP vote in the district elections for the Tories to squeeze
What kind of losses are normally sustained by governments in their 12th consecutive year in power?
Good point, in 2008 Labour got 24% in the locals and lost 9 councils and 331 councillors, in 1990 the Tories got 33% and lost 222 councillors
@DavidL are you expecting the SNP to get a majority?
Its going to be close. I think (hope) that they will fall just short but their little green helpers will get them over the line once again. I expect the Tories to fall back a bit, possibly to 3rd and Labour to pick up a bit but not necessarily win many more seats.
Most of the campaigning seems to revolve around the regional list vote, where the MSM and broadcasters are continuing to blank the Alba party. Salmond needs something to give them a second push. I expect an assault on all the lead SNP candidate in the regional lists, all of whom IIRC received a tiny proportion of members' votes, but have been advanced to the top as preferred BAME/disabled status (self ID'd or not).
That would be interesting. Salmond must be getting just a little bit desperate. He is an ego maniac and he is seriously in danger of being completely humiliated. He may well lash out at some point.
But the campaign has been almost non existent. Which has suited Nicola just fine of course.
With the success of how they managed COVID and GOT BREXIT DONE the Tories are not just on for a Stella night, heaping the pressure on Starmer, but Labour can now write off the next General Election too. Starmer will be replaced then or before then, what do Labour do, skip a generation to someone we have hardly heard of?
Meanwhile in the big news story, Daily Star has more on the aliens who have, allegedly, made a deal with Trump.
Maybe the deal was to have replaced Biden with a robot, Biden does come across as someone losing his faculties at an alarming rate.
You are ignoring the fact when the county council seats up this year were last up in 2017 the Tories had an 11% lead, most current polls have the Tories lead on less than that so Labour should actually make gains, at least at county level.
Given Corbyn survived losing 382 Labour county councillors and control of 7 county councils in 2017 Starmer will certainly survive making Labour gains at county level.
Given too Labour only got 27% in the 2017 counties and 31% in the 2016 district elections which were when the local seats up this year were last up, even the 34% Yougov has Labour now on would be an improvement (other pollsters have Labour on 36%).
In fact given the LDs 15% in 2016 and 18% in 2017 and are now polling under 10% they may face the biggest losses, on paper at least, though they tend to do better locally than nationally
In your post just below this one Mike you pointed out this is a new landscape. No UKIP. By delivering painless brexit (WWIII not broken out yet) Boris has shored up his Dec 19 vote. He has voters UKIP once pulled from Labour and Conservative. On top of that, Boris government has ensured we are just one of two nations to have beaten COVID and back to normal. As Marquee says, excellent reports back from the doorsteps.
Tories will achieve way about 40% here not less than 38.
Out of the two arguments on here today, this is the more persuasive one, HY data is unreliable against this backdrop.
It’s a new Landscape, that ensures the Tories have the next GE sown up as well.
In the 2017 local elections the Tories got 38% and Corbyn Labour got just 27%, an 11% lead.
The latest Yougov has the Tories on 41% and Labour on 34%, so even if the Tories get over 40% in the county elections there lead will be smaller and Labour will make gains (with both parties likely squeezing the LDs who got 18% in the 2017 locals).
UKIP will be less of a factor in the county elections as they only got 4% in 2017 anyway, the Tories if they make gains will likely do so in the district elections where the Tories only got 30% when they were last up in 2016 with UKIP on 12%, thus a much bigger UKIP vote in the district elections for the Tories to squeeze
What kind of losses are normally sustained by governments in their 12th consecutive year in power?
You might need to look at Japan for the answer to that question, since we seem to be getting Japanese style politics right now.
That's kind of what I was alluding to. On any historical precedent, the government should be losing hundreds or thousands of local seats and suffering 20-point swings against them in parliamentary by-elections.
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. 👎
We're not "meant to be grateful". And stop virtue signalling. You don't love liberty any more than the next man. Same to all the posters banging on in this vein.
I'm not virtue signalling, its my opinion.
And I do love liberty more than many other people. I'm a libertarian/classical liberal, I always take the liberty position normally which many other people don't. A lot of people are happier to default to authoritarian positions.
Hmm, really? You have been consistently and thoughtfully supportive (as I have) of the government's use of "lockdown" as a core tool to control the pandemic. Also supportive (as I have) of the roadmap back to domestic normality.
Ok, so now, with the vaccination rollout working a dream, one can start making a case for accelerating the reopening a little bit. If you were to do so, you'd get no grief from me. I might even agree.
But no, what do we get instead? We get you switching on a sixpence into some liberty rottweiler and calling this a "scandal", that we are being "given scraps", wailing that this "isn't normal" and it's just a total abomination that we aren't already "unlocked" and "free".
It just doesn't scan.
You're a phony, Philip.
Actually for the past year in discussions with Stocky and TOPPING etc I have said I was philosophically against restrictions and their necessity was uncomfortable for me.
They're not necessary now. They were deemed necessary to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed, but now they're not. So yes it is a scandal.
It isn't acceptable to take away civil liberties unnecessarily.
As opposed to all those people who in discussions with Stocky and Topping etc said that they were "philosophically" in favour of having their liberty curtailed and who found it deeply pleasing?
C'mon.
Just argue for a quicker reopening if that's what you want to do. No need for all the virtue-signalling crap. It strikes an "off" note.
No virtue-signalling, I am arguing for a quicker reopening. 🤷♂️
You're the one signalling, when I agree with the Government over something you say I am doing so as a partisan. When I say I oppose what the Government is doing you call me a "phony". Seems you have a stick up your arse, I'm happy to call it as I see it regardless of politics.
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.
Nicola's timing was deliberate - Westminster had only 4 weeks from the act being passed to challenge it in court.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
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. 👎
We're not "meant to be grateful". And stop virtue signalling. You don't love liberty any more than the next man. Same to all the posters banging on in this vein.
I'm not virtue signalling, its my opinion.
And I do love liberty more than many other people. I'm a libertarian/classical liberal, I always take the liberty position normally which many other people don't. A lot of people are happier to default to authoritarian positions.
Hmm, really? You have been consistently and thoughtfully supportive (as I have) of the government's use of "lockdown" as a core tool to control the pandemic. Also supportive (as I have) of the roadmap back to domestic normality.
Ok, so now, with the vaccination rollout working a dream, one can start making a case for accelerating the reopening a little bit. If you were to do so, you'd get no grief from me. I might even agree.
But no, what do we get instead? We get you switching on a sixpence into some liberty rottweiler and calling this a "scandal", that we are being "given scraps", wailing that this "isn't normal" and it's just a total abomination that we aren't already "unlocked" and "free".
It just doesn't scan.
You're a phony, Philip.
Actually for the past year in discussions with Stocky and TOPPING etc I have said I was philosophically against restrictions and their necessity was uncomfortable for me.
They're not necessary now. They were deemed necessary to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed, but now they're not. So yes it is a scandal.
It isn't acceptable to take away civil liberties unnecessarily.
As opposed to all those people who in discussions with Stocky and Topping etc said that they were "philosophically" in favour of having their liberty curtailed and who found it deeply pleasing?
C'mon.
Just argue for a quicker reopening if that's what you want to do. No need for all the virtue-signalling crap. It strikes an "off" note.
No virtue-signalling, I am arguing for a quicker reopening. 🤷♂️
You're the one signalling, when I agree with the Government over something you say I am doing so as a partisan. When I say I oppose what the Government is doing you call me a "phony". Seems you have a stick up your arse, I'm happy to call it as I see it regardless of politics.
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.
I wonder what would the top 20 of those would be? To get to 10 in the south east region you are into Labours top 100 target area if I have counted correctly.
I would say, from that list, the following - which I think were all blue in 1997 (?) will tip into the Labour column in the next decade: Kensington (again) Chipping Barnet Chingford and Wood Green Stroud Hendon Filton and Bradley Stoke Altrincham and Sale West Cities of London and Westminster Finchley and Golders Green Croydon South Welwyn Hatfield
Perhaps I was overstating it with 'dozens', and obviously the list above owes a lot more to 'remainery' than 'south east'!. I would have thought there would be a few more in Bucks/Surrey too but on closer inspection likely candidates aren't leaping out at me.
I'd add Wycombe to that list, and then two which aren't obvious from the 'Labour target' list but to be aware of next time...
Beaconsfield (where Grieve standing in 2019 totally confuses the picture) Uxbridge (this suggestion doesn't count if Boris still the candidate and PM - but post Boris I think that this seat goes the same way as Croydon South long term)
If Beaconsfield is close to turning Red then the Chesham and Amersham by-election should be a lot closer than it will be.
Beaconsfield is basically the rich parts of Wycombe and other (even richer) areas.
Chesham's population profile very much matches High Wycombe's. Amersham and Great Missenden matches the Beaconsfield's profile.
And I suspect the Tories will completely walk it.
Indeed, South Bucks, containing Beaconsfield, has the highest average house price of any local authority in England outside London after Esher and Walton, it is a very wealthy area.
However the LDs are likely to be the Tories main challengers in Chesham and Amersham, in 2019 they got 26% in the seat to just 12% for Labour
I know. The entire point is that neither Beaconsfield or Chesham and Amersham are in play - both are about as safe a seat as you could find...
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.
I wonder what would the top 20 of those would be? To get to 10 in the south east region you are into Labours top 100 target area if I have counted correctly.
I would say, from that list, the following - which I think were all blue in 1997 (?) will tip into the Labour column in the next decade: Kensington (again) Chipping Barnet Chingford and Wood Green Stroud Hendon Filton and Bradley Stoke Altrincham and Sale West Cities of London and Westminster Finchley and Golders Green Croydon South Welwyn Hatfield
Perhaps I was overstating it with 'dozens', and obviously the list above owes a lot more to 'remainery' than 'south east'!. I would have thought there would be a few more in Bucks/Surrey too but on closer inspection likely candidates aren't leaping out at me.
I think Stroud and Finchley famously flipped to New Labour in 1997.
David Drew has been the Stroud MP in the recent past. Stroud is one of those eco hubs like Totnes, Frome and Hebden Bridge. There is a strong consistent Labour vote there, but the town is not the biggest and the adjacent areas seem more Tory.
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.
to the Greensill share options and 'lessons to be learned'.
Cameron has disgraced himself, his reputation is in tatters.
I liked him but he is now clearly forevermore the Disgraced Former Prime Minister David Cameron.
Poor old TSE must be in mourning.
Indeed. And what now for Alastair Meeks' much-mourned 'era of dull competence'. Turns out it was the era of trousering enormous amounts of cash and not being clever enough to cover your tracks.
Another poor decision. Particularly, a premature decision.
REUTERS: "The European Commission, in agreement with the leaders of many (EU) countries, has decided that the contracts with the companies that produce (viral vector) vaccines that are valid for the current year will not be renewed at their expiry,” the newspaper reported.
It added that Brussels would rather focus on COVID-19 vaccines using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, such as Pfizer’s and Moderna’s.
A spokesman for the EU Commission said it was keeping all options open to be prepared for the next stages of the pandemic, for 2022 and beyond."
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
Thank you, Andy - an unpleasant but very salutary and necessary bucket of cold water. In the spirit of optimism, do you have a current estimate for when you think we're likely to pass the point of danger? I'd be very interested to hear it, and I'm sure others would too.
I did do a quick-and-dirty model based on the antibody level from two weeks ago, and assuming one dose or prior infection impairs transmission by 60%, while two doses or infection-plus-one-dose impairs it by 90%.
And roll-out average of 67 million first doses and 335 million second doses (or first-dose-plus-prior-infection) per day between now and end of April, increasing to 268 million first doses and 500 second doses (or first-dose-plus-prior-infection) per day after that.
It gave us hitting an impairment in R of about a factor of 2 right now, a factor of 2.5 by mid-May... and going past the inflexion point on the reciprocal curve to climb rapidly after that, hitting a factor of 4.5 (which should be enough to bring even Kent Covid down to below 1) by mid-to-late June.
It lines up spookily closely with the roadmap - to an extent that makes me suspicious of how well it aligns. And it's based on a massive series of assumptions, but the shape of a reciprocal curve is well known and it will accelerate hugely past a certain point.
This is a scrawl (I won't dignify it with the term "graph") of how it comes out.
The blue line is the effective proportion of immunity-to-transmission; the orange line is the factor by which R is reduced. The dashed green line is the handwavily guesstimated R0 of Kent Covid.
As emphasised above - massive assumptions and guesses throughout, but it's the shape of the orange line (which is accentuated by the inflexion point coming at around the point I'm assuming an uptick in vaccine supplies) that's crucial and will be valid; just with different slope due to assumptions when they change.
Ursula von der Leyen says the EU is negotiating a new contract with BioNTech/Pfizer for 1.8bn doses for 2022-2023 with the full supply chain in the EU.
If only they took this approach last year and Pfizer expanded their output to meet such a large order.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
Florida. Texas.
Now do Michigan.
Hospitalisations are at an all time high in Michigan.
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. 👎
We're not "meant to be grateful". And stop virtue signalling. You don't love liberty any more than the next man. Same to all the posters banging on in this vein.
I'm not virtue signalling, its my opinion.
And I do love liberty more than many other people. I'm a libertarian/classical liberal, I always take the liberty position normally which many other people don't. A lot of people are happier to default to authoritarian positions.
Hmm, really? You have been consistently and thoughtfully supportive (as I have) of the government's use of "lockdown" as a core tool to control the pandemic. Also supportive (as I have) of the roadmap back to domestic normality.
Ok, so now, with the vaccination rollout working a dream, one can start making a case for accelerating the reopening a little bit. If you were to do so, you'd get no grief from me. I might even agree.
But no, what do we get instead? We get you switching on a sixpence into some liberty rottweiler and calling this a "scandal", that we are being "given scraps", wailing that this "isn't normal" and it's just a total abomination that we aren't already "unlocked" and "free".
It just doesn't scan.
You're a phony, Philip.
Actually for the past year in discussions with Stocky and TOPPING etc I have said I was philosophically against restrictions and their necessity was uncomfortable for me.
They're not necessary now. They were deemed necessary to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed, but now they're not. So yes it is a scandal.
It isn't acceptable to take away civil liberties unnecessarily.
As opposed to all those people who in discussions with Stocky and Topping etc said that they were "philosophically" in favour of having their liberty curtailed and who found it deeply pleasing?
C'mon.
Just argue for a quicker reopening if that's what you want to do. No need for all the virtue-signalling crap. It strikes an "off" note.
No virtue-signalling, I am arguing for a quicker reopening. 🤷♂️
You're the one signalling, when I agree with the Government over something you say I am doing so as a partisan. When I say I oppose what the Government is doing you call me a "phony". Seems you have a stick up your arse, I'm happy to call it as I see it regardless of politics.
No, I judge case by case. No hard & fast rules.
As do I and in this case making it illegal to be in other people's home, illegal to be inside a restaurant etc etc when there is no imminent risk of the NHS being overwhelmed is utterly inexcusable.
The fact that my Government says it must be done does not change my principles.
The fact that I very reluctantly was OK with lockdowns as a last resort last year does not change the fact I am no OK with lockdowns now when we are not in a last resort position.
At no date last year did we have it illegal to be in other people's homes when the threat from Covid was as low as it is today. If we did, I would have opposed it then too.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
Florida. Texas.
Just so we can have a presentation of the facts regarding arguments involving Texas and Florida
Texas and Florida Pop 50,473,618 Deaths recorded yesterday 138 Cases recorded yesterday 13,600
England Pop 56,000,000 Deaths recorded yesterday 18 Cases 2,070
That's not the whole picture - people can add more stats & colour if they wish.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
Florida. Texas.
Now do Michigan.
Hospitalisations are at an all time high in Michigan.
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.
to the Greensill share options and 'lessons to be learned'.
Cameron has disgraced himself, his reputation is in tatters.
I liked him but he is now clearly forevermore the Disgraced Former Prime Minister David Cameron.
Poor old TSE must be in mourning.
Indeed. And what now for Alastair Meeks' much-mourned 'era of dull competence'. Turns out it was the era of trousering enormous amounts of cash and not being clever enough to cover your tracks.
They were not trousering money while in power - they only started doing it after screwing up a referendum which resulted in them leaving politics (in disgrace)..
The whole nation has become a psychiatric hospital and, unsurprisingly, people want out as they think they're doing well enough (they are) but the bureaucracy to get out seems intolerable (it is).
The whole nation has become a psychiatric hospital and, unsurprisingly, people want out as they think they're doing well enough (they are) but the bureaucracy to get out seems intolerable (it is).
I went to Ikea yesterday and was suffering from significant anxiety from the feeling of strangers being too close, to be honest.
It's clearly going to take some time to get used to social contact again.
With the success of how they managed COVID and GOT BREXIT DONE the Tories are not just on for a Stella night, heaping the pressure on Starmer, but Labour can now write off the next General Election too. Starmer will be replaced then or before then, what do Labour do, skip a generation to someone we have hardly heard of?
Meanwhile in the big news story, Daily Star has more on the aliens who have, allegedly, made a deal with Trump.
Maybe the deal was to have replaced Biden with a robot, Biden does come across as someone losing his faculties at an alarming rate.
This is a wired post. Biden losing faculties at an alarming rate? True it was an issue during the election but what has happened recently? Success of getting Brexit done? Again it is done, but not to acknowledge issues is bizarre. And how they managed covid is a streach. The big positive is the vaccination programme and being the most recent event will have a big impact and has been impressive. The rest is a biased imagination.
Trump and Republicans look in great place going forward in 22 and 24 elections. The Dems have a HUGE problem. At this rate of increasing forgetfulness, this time next year the presidents brain will resemble that stuff Proust so enjoyed dipping in his tea. Just around the corner The Dems are in a huge mess over this.
I pride myself on being helpful and not too abrasive in posts, but the problem with your reply is same as everything wrong with pandemic planning, it lacked creative thought.
I didn't even mention trump or the republicans!!!!
I'm sorry but you have come out with stuff that is plainly factually incorrect in your previous post and made some wild predictions as absolute certainties for years into the future. You might end up being correct and if you have a track record of being so I assume you are a multi millionaire from your betting receipts.
I would like to think my posts are creative. My likes would indicate others might think they are, but they don't extend into into fiction and wild rock solid predictions on events years into the future.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I think what people like Philip Thompson and I are saying is that we don't completely know if we can unlock or not safely yet, but what exactly do we have to lose by trying? The worst case is we end up back where we are now anyway.
Having a lockdown now to prevent a possible future lockdown is insanity.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
Florida. Texas.
Ah, the denialist switching around to try to cherry-pick whatever they can. We don't hear about Brazil, the major country run by a true Lockdown Sceptic. Or Chile, or Uruguay, or Poland, or Czechia. Or that urban areas in Texas that do have mask mandates (because county-level powers are considerably higher there than here) have significantly lower death rates. Missed that point, inexplicably. Or people getting their doors kicked in for posting accurate stats on Florida issues. Or that things like mask mandates and restrictions vary hugely across the various areas and counties of both Florida and Texas.
But what we do know is that the moment things don't suit your narrative in Texas or Florida, they'll be abandoned as quickly as Sweden, or India (herd immunity? Nope), or IFR calculations that show a missed decimal points.
Because you're not interested in how things actually are. We've seen that over the past year, with "choosing" Gupta and her model regardless of whether it fit reality, with choosing to believe Yeadon and Cummins because they were saying what you wanted to be true, with choosing to believe the absurd FALSE POSITIVES and CASEDEMIC narratives.
Just how you can argue things, in support of "It's not happening it's not happening it's not happening it's not happening"
This virus doesn't care how you argue, how I argue, how anyone argues. It's not sentient. It can't be argued with, or reasoned with, or anything like that. It just does what it does, unless we stop it.
The whole nation has become a psychiatric hospital and, unsurprisingly, people want out as they think they're doing well enough (they are) but the bureaucracy to get out seems intolerable (it is).
I went to Ikea yesterday and was suffering from significant anxiety from the feeling of strangers being too close, to be honest.
It's clearly going to take some time to get used to social contact again.
Usually if you go into Ikea mid-week it's the Maria Celeste. If you wanted to avoid social contact - you should have gone next week.
Good morning everyone. Gym's re-opened and I'll be heading there in an hour. Have to book spaces; can't just walk in, but after having a pint on Monday and Eldest Granddaughter promising a visit at the weekend....... things chez Cole are looking up in the later stages of the pandemic.
Still no intention of voting Tory, though!
Strange, have you not had your vaccine yet? Should have been operative by now.
Just catching up after getting used to changes at the gym, and recovering from 'different' exercises. Yes, had second Pfizer Good Friday.Mrs C had her second AZN about a week before. Didn't realise one of the long term side effects was breaking the habits of a life-time.
At the gym, although we don't have to wear a mask while exercising, we still have to wipe down the apparatus before and after. And all the staff are wearing them.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
I never said they were "obviously safe".
Schools aren't closed, schools are open. Schools reopened over a month ago. As for what I am proposing, I would bring forward the domestic element of the Stage 3 restrictions to no later than the end of the month, which would be 3 weeks after the Phase I rollout was completed.
But I would balance that by postponing the lifting of restrictions on travel due for the middle of May. I would add every nation with a case rate double ours per capita (or insufficient testing to accurately measure their case rate) to the red list, which is pretty much all of Europe.
Stop cases coming in from where they are, rather than spreading where they aren't.
Schools are in the process of re-opening after the break. The last time they were open, R increased. When they open again, R will probably increase.
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
Thank you, Andy - an unpleasant but very salutary and necessary bucket of cold water. In the spirit of optimism, do you have a current estimate for when you think we're likely to pass the point of danger? I'd be very interested to hear it, and I'm sure others would too.
I did do a quick-and-dirty model based on the antibody level from two weeks ago, and assuming one dose or prior infection impairs transmission by 60%, while two doses or infection-plus-one-dose impairs it by 90%.
And roll-out average of 67 million first doses and 335 million second doses (or first-dose-plus-prior-infection) per day between now and end of April, increasing to 268 million first doses and 500 second doses (or first-dose-plus-prior-infection) per day after that.
It gave us hitting an impairment in R of about a factor of 2 right now, a factor of 2.5 by mid-May... and going past the inflexion point on the reciprocal curve to climb rapidly after that, hitting a factor of 4.5 (which should be enough to bring even Kent Covid down to below 1) by mid-to-late June.
It lines up spookily closely with the roadmap - to an extent that makes me suspicious of how well it aligns. And it's based on a massive series of assumptions, but the shape of a reciprocal curve is well known and it will accelerate hugely past a certain point.
This is a scrawl (I won't dignify it with the term "graph") of how it comes out.
The blue line is the effective proportion of immunity-to-transmission; the orange line is the factor by which R is reduced. The dashed green line is the handwavily guesstimated R0 of Kent Covid.
As emphasised above - massive assumptions and guesses throughout, but it's the shape of the orange line (which is accentuated by the inflexion point coming at around the point I'm assuming an uptick in vaccine supplies) that's crucial and will be valid; just with different slope due to assumptions when they change.
I think a few "millions" and "thousands" got switched around...
But, yes, the pattern is that of approach and achieving herd immunity. Which we haven't done yet.
The whole nation has become a psychiatric hospital and, unsurprisingly, people want out as they think they're doing well enough (they are) but the bureaucracy to get out seems intolerable (it is).
I went to Ikea yesterday and was suffering from significant anxiety from the feeling of strangers being too close, to be honest.
It's clearly going to take some time to get used to social contact again.
Usually if you go into Ikea mid-week it's the Maria Celeste. If you wanted to avoid social contact - you should have gone next week.
I don't want to avoid social contact, I was just surprised about how anxious I felt.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
Florida. Texas.
Just so we can have a presentation of the facts regarding arguments involving Texas and Florida
Texas and Florida Pop 50,473,618 Deaths recorded yesterday 138 Cases recorded yesterday 13,600
England Pop 56,000,000 Deaths recorded yesterday 18 Cases 2,070
That's not the whole picture - people can add more stats & colour if they wish.
OK more stats & colour.
Daily deaths normally expected in the UK without Covid: 1,644
Most recent Texas 'excess deaths': 0 Most recent England 'excess deaths': 0
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
Florida. Texas.
Ah, the denialist switching around to try to cherry-pick whatever they can. We don't hear about Brazil, the major country run by a true Lockdown Sceptic. Or Chile, or Uruguay, or Poland, or Czechia. Or that urban areas in Texas that do have mask mandates (because county-level powers are considerably higher there than here) have significantly lower death rates. Missed that point, inexplicably. Or people getting their doors kicked in for posting accurate stats on Florida issues. Or that things like mask mandates and restrictions vary hugely across the various areas and counties of both Florida and Texas.
But what we do know is that the moment things don't suit your narrative in Texas or Florida, they'll be abandoned as quickly as Sweden, or India (herd immunity? Nope), or IFR calculations that show a missed decimal points.
Because you're not interested in how things actually are. We've seen that over the past year, with "choosing" Gupta and her model regardless of whether it fit reality, with choosing to believe Yeadon and Cummins because they were saying what you wanted to be true, with choosing to believe the absurd FALSE POSITIVES and CASEDEMIC narratives.
Just how you can argue things, in support of "It's not happening it's not happening it's not happening it's not happening"
This virus doesn't care how you argue, how I argue, how anyone argues. It's not sentient. It can't be argued with, or reasoned with, or anything like that. It just does what it does, unless we stop it.
Of course you and Malmsbury are basing your arguments on Covid gold standard country Chile
Just checked my vaccine appointment for Sunday and there is a warning that you will need to wait 15 minutes after taking the vaccine. I suspect that means I (and everyone else under 50) is getting Moderna as I think that has the same adverse reaction checks that pfizer needs.
I had to sit around for 15 minutes after getting Pfizer on Monday. Not really sure why. No one asked me how I felt as I left. I suppose I hadn't keeled over or something. I felt like I had a heck of a bruise on my arm Monday night and didn't feel 100% on Tuesday morning, possibly because sleep was disrupted. By lunchtime Tuesday it was fine.
There have been cases of people feeling a bit groggy immediately after the Pfizer vaccine; someone did when I had my second. Three of us were synchronising watches and counting down!
@DavidL are you expecting the SNP to get a majority?
Its going to be close. I think (hope) that they will fall just short but their little green helpers will get them over the line once again. I expect the Tories to fall back a bit, possibly to 3rd and Labour to pick up a bit but not necessarily win many more seats.
Most of the campaigning seems to revolve around the regional list vote, where the MSM and broadcasters are continuing to blank the Alba party. Salmond needs something to give them a second push. I expect an assault on all the lead SNP candidate in the regional lists, all of whom IIRC received a tiny proportion of members' votes, but have been advanced to the top as preferred BAME/disabled status (self ID'd or not).
That would be interesting. Salmond must be getting just a little bit desperate. He is an ego maniac and he is seriously in danger of being completely humiliated. He may well lash out at some point.
But the campaign has been almost non existent. Which has suited Nicola just fine of course.
Like a lot of pols I believe Salmond, wily campaigner though he is, has been listening to ill chosen advisors & believed twitter was real life. He's maybe been out of the ring too long.
'You're a big man, but you're in bad shape. With me it's a full time job. Now behave yourself.'
I've been thinking a bit on solving corruption on high office - which is two problems really, finding a solution, and the people in charge actually agreeing to implement the solution.
The issue now as I see it is that through various means, Government procurement is prevented from achieving efficiency, effectiveness and great value for the taxpayer, because a small number of large scale suppliers and consultants (with initials we all know) are gaming the system. Other businesses who might do a great job, but don't know how to subtly lubricate the process, are frozen out, to the detriment of all.
I haven't thought of an answer, but I have a couple of suggestions:
1. Titles/honours seem to carry weight with some civil servant/Government types. We should create a situation whereby these are taken back if the person is naughty just as easily as they were conferred for merit initially. It might help persuade a few people to stay on the straight and narrow if their wife was going to have to go back to life as Mrs. Joe Bloggs, rather than Lady Bloggs.
2. There should be significant financial incentives for performance in the civil service relating to projects that are completed ahead of schedule and under-budget.
3. Government pensions above a basic rate should be linked to a number of economic metrics, so that good performance in Government was directly rewarded via the pension system.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
I never said they were "obviously safe".
Schools aren't closed, schools are open. Schools reopened over a month ago. As for what I am proposing, I would bring forward the domestic element of the Stage 3 restrictions to no later than the end of the month, which would be 3 weeks after the Phase I rollout was completed.
But I would balance that by postponing the lifting of restrictions on travel due for the middle of May. I would add every nation with a case rate double ours per capita (or insufficient testing to accurately measure their case rate) to the red list, which is pretty much all of Europe.
Stop cases coming in from where they are, rather than spreading where they aren't.
Schools are in the process of re-opening after the break. The last time they were open, R increased. When they open again, R will probably increase.
Hospitalisations have a lag between date of infection and day of hospitalisation, people don't go to hospital on the day they get infected. So your hospitalisation R almost entirely in recent periods relates to when schools were open, not closed.
Your hospitalisation R never increased to 1, indeed it didn't come close to 1 - and the rates of vaccination have only ever increased 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
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. 👎
We're not "meant to be grateful". And stop virtue signalling. You don't love liberty any more than the next man. Same to all the posters banging on in this vein.
I'm not virtue signalling, its my opinion.
And I do love liberty more than many other people. I'm a libertarian/classical liberal, I always take the liberty position normally which many other people don't. A lot of people are happier to default to authoritarian positions.
Hmm, really? You have been consistently and thoughtfully supportive (as I have) of the government's use of "lockdown" as a core tool to control the pandemic. Also supportive (as I have) of the roadmap back to domestic normality.
Ok, so now, with the vaccination rollout working a dream, one can start making a case for accelerating the reopening a little bit. If you were to do so, you'd get no grief from me. I might even agree.
But no, what do we get instead? We get you switching on a sixpence into some liberty rottweiler and calling this a "scandal", that we are being "given scraps", wailing that this "isn't normal" and it's just a total abomination that we aren't already "unlocked" and "free".
It just doesn't scan.
You're a phony, Philip.
Actually for the past year in discussions with Stocky and TOPPING etc I have said I was philosophically against restrictions and their necessity was uncomfortable for me.
They're not necessary now. They were deemed necessary to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed, but now they're not. So yes it is a scandal.
It isn't acceptable to take away civil liberties unnecessarily.
As opposed to all those people who in discussions with Stocky and Topping etc said that they were "philosophically" in favour of having their liberty curtailed and who found it deeply pleasing?
C'mon.
Just argue for a quicker reopening if that's what you want to do. No need for all the virtue-signalling crap. It strikes an "off" note.
No virtue-signalling, I am arguing for a quicker reopening. 🤷♂️
You're the one signalling, when I agree with the Government over something you say I am doing so as a partisan. When I say I oppose what the Government is doing you call me a "phony". Seems you have a stick up your arse, I'm happy to call it as I see it regardless of politics.
No, I judge case by case. No hard & fast rules.
As do I and in this case making it illegal to be in other people's home, illegal to be inside a restaurant etc etc when there is no imminent risk of the NHS being overwhelmed is utterly inexcusable.
The fact that my Government says it must be done does not change my principles.
The fact that I very reluctantly was OK with lockdowns as a last resort last year does not change the fact I am no OK with lockdowns now when we are not in a last resort position.
At no date last year did we have it illegal to be in other people's homes when the threat from Covid was as low as it is today. If we did, I would have opposed it then too.
In large parts of the North of England it became illegal last summer to enter other people's homes. At that point local case rates were around half what they are today and with no great burden of hospitalisation.
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.
That was a very concerning comment from Johnson yesterday - that it is the lockdown not the vaccines that is responsible for dramatic drop in Covid stats. How to explain our success versus other nations then?
Certainly is odd.
We've been in a pretty good lockdown since early Jan. Only in the later stages have we started to see the vaccine effect, mostly in the older population. There has been estimates of how many lives have been saved by the vaccine so far, and its a not insignificant number. However it is certainly true that the bulk of the work in suppressing the virus to date has been the lock down. Moving forward, as we open up, the high levels of protected people will make it much less likely we will see a big resurgence.
@Luckyguy1983 you appear to be very good at coming up with reasonable and workable "blue sky" ideas. Have you thought about working for the Civil Service and/or Dominic Cummings?
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
I never said they were "obviously safe".
Schools aren't closed, schools are open. Schools reopened over a month ago. As for what I am proposing, I would bring forward the domestic element of the Stage 3 restrictions to no later than the end of the month, which would be 3 weeks after the Phase I rollout was completed.
But I would balance that by postponing the lifting of restrictions on travel due for the middle of May. I would add every nation with a case rate double ours per capita (or insufficient testing to accurately measure their case rate) to the red list, which is pretty much all of Europe.
Stop cases coming in from where they are, rather than spreading where they aren't.
Schools are in the process of re-opening after the break. The last time they were open, R increased. When they open again, R will probably increase.
Hospitalisations have a lag between date of infection and day of hospitalisation, people don't go to hospital on the day they get infected. So your hospitalisation R almost entirely in recent periods relates to when schools were open, not closed.
Your hospitalisation R never increased to 1, indeed it didn't come close to 1 - and the rates of vaccination have only ever increased from there.
I'm not sure you've understood R. Unless I'm very much mistaken, it's a measure of infection spread, not just a general concept of how much a quantity is increasing/decreasing. Hence, there's no such thing as "hospitalisation R".
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
Florida. Texas.
Ah, the denialist switching around to try to cherry-pick whatever they can. We don't hear about Brazil, the major country run by a true Lockdown Sceptic. Or Chile, or Uruguay, or Poland, or Czechia. Or that urban areas in Texas that do have mask mandates (because county-level powers are considerably higher there than here) have significantly lower death rates. Missed that point, inexplicably. Or people getting their doors kicked in for posting accurate stats on Florida issues. Or that things like mask mandates and restrictions vary hugely across the various areas and counties of both Florida and Texas.
But what we do know is that the moment things don't suit your narrative in Texas or Florida, they'll be abandoned as quickly as Sweden, or India (herd immunity? Nope), or IFR calculations that show a missed decimal points.
Because you're not interested in how things actually are. We've seen that over the past year, with "choosing" Gupta and her model regardless of whether it fit reality, with choosing to believe Yeadon and Cummins because they were saying what you wanted to be true, with choosing to believe the absurd FALSE POSITIVES and CASEDEMIC narratives.
Just how you can argue things, in support of "It's not happening it's not happening it's not happening it's not happening"
This virus doesn't care how you argue, how I argue, how anyone argues. It's not sentient. It can't be argued with, or reasoned with, or anything like that. It just does what it does, unless we stop it.
Of course you and Malmsbury are basing your arguments on Covid gold standard country Chile
FFS Andy.
I think Andy typed a few other words in addition to Chile.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
I never said they were "obviously safe".
Schools aren't closed, schools are open. Schools reopened over a month ago. As for what I am proposing, I would bring forward the domestic element of the Stage 3 restrictions to no later than the end of the month, which would be 3 weeks after the Phase I rollout was completed.
But I would balance that by postponing the lifting of restrictions on travel due for the middle of May. I would add every nation with a case rate double ours per capita (or insufficient testing to accurately measure their case rate) to the red list, which is pretty much all of Europe.
Stop cases coming in from where they are, rather than spreading where they aren't.
Schools are in the process of re-opening after the break. The last time they were open, R increased. When they open again, R will probably increase.
Hospitalisations have a lag between date of infection and day of hospitalisation, people don't go to hospital on the day they get infected. So your hospitalisation R almost entirely in recent periods relates to when schools were open, not closed.
Your hospitalisation R never increased to 1, indeed it didn't come close to 1 - and the rates of vaccination have only ever increased from there.
I'm not sure you've understood R. Unless I'm very much mistaken, it's a measure of infection spread, not just a general concept of how much a quantity is increasing/decreasing. Hence, there's no such thing as "hospitalisation R".
I guess "hospitalisation R" is just shorthand for "the rate of increase of hospitalisations".
@Luckyguy1983 you appear to be very good at coming up with reasonable and workable "blue sky" ideas. Have you thought about working for the Civil Service and/or Dominic Cummings?
They couldn't afford me.
*they probably could
Really appreciate your comment. We're lucky we have PB as a forum for these musings!
"@DarrenGBNews NEW: Belgium’s top virologist slams Denmark’s decision to stop using #AstraZeneca entirely
Marc Van Ranst: "It's hysterical, yes, because you save a lot of people with it... And if you know it saves more people than it harms people, then this is clearly an emotional decision”"
@DavidL are you expecting the SNP to get a majority?
Its going to be close. I think (hope) that they will fall just short but their little green helpers will get them over the line once again. I expect the Tories to fall back a bit, possibly to 3rd and Labour to pick up a bit but not necessarily win many more seats.
Most of the campaigning seems to revolve around the regional list vote, where the MSM and broadcasters are continuing to blank the Alba party. Salmond needs something to give them a second push. I expect an assault on all the lead SNP candidate in the regional lists, all of whom IIRC received a tiny proportion of members' votes, but have been advanced to the top as preferred BAME/disabled status (self ID'd or not).
That would be interesting. Salmond must be getting just a little bit desperate. He is an ego maniac and he is seriously in danger of being completely humiliated. He may well lash out at some point.
But the campaign has been almost non existent. Which has suited Nicola just fine of course.
Like a lot of pols I believe Salmond, wily campaigner though he is, has been listening to ill chosen advisors & believed twitter was real life. He's maybe been out of the ring too long.
'You're a big man, but you're in bad shape. With me it's a full time job. Now behave yourself.'
Salmond thought that being acquitted absolved him.
It seems clear that a very large section of the electorate are not prepared to forgive his behaviour, even if it was judged as not illegal.
The phrase "He left the court, acquitted, but a ruined man" - comes to mind.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
I never said they were "obviously safe".
Schools aren't closed, schools are open. Schools reopened over a month ago. As for what I am proposing, I would bring forward the domestic element of the Stage 3 restrictions to no later than the end of the month, which would be 3 weeks after the Phase I rollout was completed.
But I would balance that by postponing the lifting of restrictions on travel due for the middle of May. I would add every nation with a case rate double ours per capita (or insufficient testing to accurately measure their case rate) to the red list, which is pretty much all of Europe.
Stop cases coming in from where they are, rather than spreading where they aren't.
Schools are in the process of re-opening after the break. The last time they were open, R increased. When they open again, R will probably increase.
Hospitalisations have a lag between date of infection and day of hospitalisation, people don't go to hospital on the day they get infected. So your hospitalisation R almost entirely in recent periods relates to when schools were open, not closed.
Your hospitalisation R never increased to 1, indeed it didn't come close to 1 - and the rates of vaccination have only ever increased from there.
I'm not sure you've understood R. Unless I'm very much mistaken, it's a measure of infection spread, not just a general concept of how much a quantity is increasing/decreasing. Hence, there's no such thing as "hospitalisation R".
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
I never said they were "obviously safe".
Schools aren't closed, schools are open. Schools reopened over a month ago. As for what I am proposing, I would bring forward the domestic element of the Stage 3 restrictions to no later than the end of the month, which would be 3 weeks after the Phase I rollout was completed.
But I would balance that by postponing the lifting of restrictions on travel due for the middle of May. I would add every nation with a case rate double ours per capita (or insufficient testing to accurately measure their case rate) to the red list, which is pretty much all of Europe.
Stop cases coming in from where they are, rather than spreading where they aren't.
Schools are in the process of re-opening after the break. The last time they were open, R increased. When they open again, R will probably increase.
Hospitalisations have a lag between date of infection and day of hospitalisation, people don't go to hospital on the day they get infected. So your hospitalisation R almost entirely in recent periods relates to when schools were open, not closed.
Your hospitalisation R never increased to 1, indeed it didn't come close to 1 - and the rates of vaccination have only ever increased from there.
I'm not sure you've understood R. Unless I'm very much mistaken, it's a measure of infection spread, not just a general concept of how much a quantity is increasing/decreasing. Hence, there's no such thing as "hospitalisation R".
I'm referring to this.
Yes, properly, it should described as "A measure of R derived from hospitalisation data"
Ursula von der Leyen says the EU is negotiating a new contract with BioNTech/Pfizer for 1.8bn doses for 2022-2023 with the full supply chain in the EU.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
I never said they were "obviously safe".
Schools aren't closed, schools are open. Schools reopened over a month ago. As for what I am proposing, I would bring forward the domestic element of the Stage 3 restrictions to no later than the end of the month, which would be 3 weeks after the Phase I rollout was completed.
But I would balance that by postponing the lifting of restrictions on travel due for the middle of May. I would add every nation with a case rate double ours per capita (or insufficient testing to accurately measure their case rate) to the red list, which is pretty much all of Europe.
Stop cases coming in from where they are, rather than spreading where they aren't.
Schools are in the process of re-opening after the break. The last time they were open, R increased. When they open again, R will probably increase.
Hospitalisations have a lag between date of infection and day of hospitalisation, people don't go to hospital on the day they get infected. So your hospitalisation R almost entirely in recent periods relates to when schools were open, not closed.
Your hospitalisation R never increased to 1, indeed it didn't come close to 1 - and the rates of vaccination have only ever increased from there.
I'm not sure you've understood R. Unless I'm very much mistaken, it's a measure of infection spread, not just a general concept of how much a quantity is increasing/decreasing. Hence, there's no such thing as "hospitalisation R".
That too is my understanding. Isn’t it how many people one infected person infects? So under R 0.8 every ten people infects eight more and so on...
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
I never said they were "obviously safe".
Schools aren't closed, schools are open. Schools reopened over a month ago. As for what I am proposing, I would bring forward the domestic element of the Stage 3 restrictions to no later than the end of the month, which would be 3 weeks after the Phase I rollout was completed.
But I would balance that by postponing the lifting of restrictions on travel due for the middle of May. I would add every nation with a case rate double ours per capita (or insufficient testing to accurately measure their case rate) to the red list, which is pretty much all of Europe.
Stop cases coming in from where they are, rather than spreading where they aren't.
Schools are in the process of re-opening after the break. The last time they were open, R increased. When they open again, R will probably increase.
Hospitalisations have a lag between date of infection and day of hospitalisation, people don't go to hospital on the day they get infected. So your hospitalisation R almost entirely in recent periods relates to when schools were open, not closed.
Your hospitalisation R never increased to 1, indeed it didn't come close to 1 - and the rates of vaccination have only ever increased from there.
I'm not sure you've understood R. Unless I'm very much mistaken, it's a measure of infection spread, not just a general concept of how much a quantity is increasing/decreasing. Hence, there's no such thing as "hospitalisation R".
I'm referring to this.
Yes, properly, it should described as "A measure of R derived from hospitalisation data"
Indeed and this chart, due to lag, corresponds to when schools were open and at no stage did English R ever come close to 1.
Since then the vaccine rollout has continued. Since then the rate of antibodies in society (as shown by the ONS) has increased.
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
Thank you, Andy - an unpleasant but very salutary and necessary bucket of cold water. In the spirit of optimism, do you have a current estimate for when you think we're likely to pass the point of danger? I'd be very interested to hear it, and I'm sure others would too.
I did do a quick-and-dirty model based on the antibody level from two weeks ago, and assuming one dose or prior infection impairs transmission by 60%, while two doses or infection-plus-one-dose impairs it by 90%.
And roll-out average of 67 million first doses and 335 million second doses (or first-dose-plus-prior-infection) per day between now and end of April, increasing to 268 million first doses and 500 second doses (or first-dose-plus-prior-infection) per day after that.
It gave us hitting an impairment in R of about a factor of 2 right now, a factor of 2.5 by mid-May... and going past the inflexion point on the reciprocal curve to climb rapidly after that, hitting a factor of 4.5 (which should be enough to bring even Kent Covid down to below 1) by mid-to-late June.
It lines up spookily closely with the roadmap - to an extent that makes me suspicious of how well it aligns. And it's based on a massive series of assumptions, but the shape of a reciprocal curve is well known and it will accelerate hugely past a certain point.
This is a scrawl (I won't dignify it with the term "graph") of how it comes out.
The blue line is the effective proportion of immunity-to-transmission; the orange line is the factor by which R is reduced. The dashed green line is the handwavily guesstimated R0 of Kent Covid.
As emphasised above - massive assumptions and guesses throughout, but it's the shape of the orange line (which is accentuated by the inflexion point coming at around the point I'm assuming an uptick in vaccine supplies) that's crucial and will be valid; just with different slope due to assumptions when they change.
That's very interesting, thank you - I hadn't realized that the rate of reduction in R would change shape and accelerate in that way. And you're right, the alignment of dates is downright spooky.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
I never said they were "obviously safe".
Schools aren't closed, schools are open. Schools reopened over a month ago. As for what I am proposing, I would bring forward the domestic element of the Stage 3 restrictions to no later than the end of the month, which would be 3 weeks after the Phase I rollout was completed.
But I would balance that by postponing the lifting of restrictions on travel due for the middle of May. I would add every nation with a case rate double ours per capita (or insufficient testing to accurately measure their case rate) to the red list, which is pretty much all of Europe.
Stop cases coming in from where they are, rather than spreading where they aren't.
Schools are in the process of re-opening after the break. The last time they were open, R increased. When they open again, R will probably increase.
Hospitalisations have a lag between date of infection and day of hospitalisation, people don't go to hospital on the day they get infected. So your hospitalisation R almost entirely in recent periods relates to when schools were open, not closed.
Your hospitalisation R never increased to 1, indeed it didn't come close to 1 - and the rates of vaccination have only ever increased from there.
I'm not sure you've understood R. Unless I'm very much mistaken, it's a measure of infection spread, not just a general concept of how much a quantity is increasing/decreasing. Hence, there's no such thing as "hospitalisation R".
I'm referring to this.
OK fair enough, it wasn't your term. I still don't like it though - if we mean the relative movement, we should just say that as it's confusing.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
I never said they were "obviously safe".
Schools aren't closed, schools are open. Schools reopened over a month ago. As for what I am proposing, I would bring forward the domestic element of the Stage 3 restrictions to no later than the end of the month, which would be 3 weeks after the Phase I rollout was completed.
But I would balance that by postponing the lifting of restrictions on travel due for the middle of May. I would add every nation with a case rate double ours per capita (or insufficient testing to accurately measure their case rate) to the red list, which is pretty much all of Europe.
Stop cases coming in from where they are, rather than spreading where they aren't.
Schools are in the process of re-opening after the break. The last time they were open, R increased. When they open again, R will probably increase.
Hospitalisations have a lag between date of infection and day of hospitalisation, people don't go to hospital on the day they get infected. So your hospitalisation R almost entirely in recent periods relates to when schools were open, not closed.
Your hospitalisation R never increased to 1, indeed it didn't come close to 1 - and the rates of vaccination have only ever increased from there.
I'm not sure you've understood R. Unless I'm very much mistaken, it's a measure of infection spread, not just a general concept of how much a quantity is increasing/decreasing. Hence, there's no such thing as "hospitalisation R".
I'm referring to this.
Yes, properly, it should described as "A measure of R derived from hospitalisation data"
Indeed and this chart, due to lag, corresponds to when schools were open and at no stage did English R ever come close to 1.
Since then the vaccine rollout has continued. Since then the rate of antibodies in society (as shown by the ONS) has increased.
Ursula von der Leyen says the EU is negotiating a new contract with BioNTech/Pfizer for 1.8bn doses for 2022-2023 with the full supply chain in the EU.
40-45 billion Euro expenditure.
Certainly a change of spots.
It's a lot of money to spend to monopolise the supply chain for vaccines that the EU won't need.
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. 👎
We're not "meant to be grateful". And stop virtue signalling. You don't love liberty any more than the next man. Same to all the posters banging on in this vein.
I'm not virtue signalling, its my opinion.
And I do love liberty more than many other people. I'm a libertarian/classical liberal, I always take the liberty position normally which many other people don't. A lot of people are happier to default to authoritarian positions.
Hmm, really? You have been consistently and thoughtfully supportive (as I have) of the government's use of "lockdown" as a core tool to control the pandemic. Also supportive (as I have) of the roadmap back to domestic normality.
Ok, so now, with the vaccination rollout working a dream, one can start making a case for accelerating the reopening a little bit. If you were to do so, you'd get no grief from me. I might even agree.
But no, what do we get instead? We get you switching on a sixpence into some liberty rottweiler and calling this a "scandal", that we are being "given scraps", wailing that this "isn't normal" and it's just a total abomination that we aren't already "unlocked" and "free".
It just doesn't scan.
You're a phony, Philip.
Actually for the past year in discussions with Stocky and TOPPING etc I have said I was philosophically against restrictions and their necessity was uncomfortable for me.
They're not necessary now. They were deemed necessary to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed, but now they're not. So yes it is a scandal.
It isn't acceptable to take away civil liberties unnecessarily.
As opposed to all those people who in discussions with Stocky and Topping etc said that they were "philosophically" in favour of having their liberty curtailed and who found it deeply pleasing?
C'mon.
Just argue for a quicker reopening if that's what you want to do. No need for all the virtue-signalling crap. It strikes an "off" note.
No virtue-signalling, I am arguing for a quicker reopening. 🤷♂️
You're the one signalling, when I agree with the Government over something you say I am doing so as a partisan. When I say I oppose what the Government is doing you call me a "phony". Seems you have a stick up your arse, I'm happy to call it as I see it regardless of politics.
No, I judge case by case. No hard & fast rules.
As do I and in this case making it illegal to be in other people's home, illegal to be inside a restaurant etc etc when there is no imminent risk of the NHS being overwhelmed is utterly inexcusable.
The fact that my Government says it must be done does not change my principles.
The fact that I very reluctantly was OK with lockdowns as a last resort last year does not change the fact I am no OK with lockdowns now when we are not in a last resort position.
At no date last year did we have it illegal to be in other people's homes when the threat from Covid was as low as it is today. If we did, I would have opposed it then too.
In large parts of the North of England it became illegal last summer to enter other people's homes. At that point local case rates were around half what they are today and with no great burden of hospitalisation.
I don't think that's right. The national case rate now is back to what it was in August last year.
Please can you say when and where it became illegal to enter other people's homes with a local case rate around half what they are today.
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. 👎.
Completely agree Philip ... I'm glad it's not just me. Solidarity mon brave.
The justification for May 17th can be seen in the ONS antibody survey (repost from Andy Cooke) -
The idea is clearly that by getting the 2nd doses in the older population done, and a large chunk of those for the younger groups *and* getting vaccinations down into the mid/low 40s, to maximise protection for the most vulnerable groups before opening things out further.
How's that a justification?
The justification for lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. The NHS isn't being overwhelmed. The 99% who were vulnerable to dying have all been offered a vaccine already.
We can't and shouldn't have zero-risk, its just time to get on with it.
Go look at Brazil or Chile. The idea that younger people aren't effected by COVID, is ignorant, stupid, garbage.
We are not in herd immunity. Yet. Otherwise hospitalisation (for one) would have collapsed. It hasn't.
If we simply lift all restrictions now. hospitalisation R will rise above 1.
We're not Brazil or Chile, we're not starting from their point and they don't have our vaccines (Chile is using almost glorified saline not our vaccines).
I never said the young weren't vulnerable, I said they weren't that the 99% vulnerable to dying which is true. A key to remember is that in that 99% is the vulnerable young who have been vaccinated.
Hospitalisation figures have collapsed. They're nothing like what they were.
The figures from Chile are quite clear - they are protecting the vaccinated, though less well than here. The hospitals are filling with younger people, who are not vaccinated.
The groups being protected has done a high proportion of the dying so far. But if you fill the hospitals with younger people, that will change.
That is what will happen here, in short order, if you simply lift restrictions. R will go to 1.2+ and the rest will follow.
You're tilting at windmills. Who is proposing we "simply lift restrictions"?
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
Ah yes, the list of "These things are obviously safe".
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
I never said they were "obviously safe".
Schools aren't closed, schools are open. Schools reopened over a month ago. As for what I am proposing, I would bring forward the domestic element of the Stage 3 restrictions to no later than the end of the month, which would be 3 weeks after the Phase I rollout was completed.
But I would balance that by postponing the lifting of restrictions on travel due for the middle of May. I would add every nation with a case rate double ours per capita (or insufficient testing to accurately measure their case rate) to the red list, which is pretty much all of Europe.
Stop cases coming in from where they are, rather than spreading where they aren't.
Schools are in the process of re-opening after the break. The last time they were open, R increased. When they open again, R will probably increase.
Hospitalisations have a lag between date of infection and day of hospitalisation, people don't go to hospital on the day they get infected. So your hospitalisation R almost entirely in recent periods relates to when schools were open, not closed.
Your hospitalisation R never increased to 1, indeed it didn't come close to 1 - and the rates of vaccination have only ever increased from there.
I'm not sure you've understood R. Unless I'm very much mistaken, it's a measure of infection spread, not just a general concept of how much a quantity is increasing/decreasing. Hence, there's no such thing as "hospitalisation R".
I'm referring to this.
Yes, properly, it should described as "A measure of R derived from hospitalisation data"
Ah, good. So presumably the lag is already baked in?
Personally I think there's a large swathe of more vulnerable younger people left - anyone with a waistline > half height or higher blood pressure. Unless they have another comorbidity (Diabetes is somewhat correlated but doesn't match up completely) they won't be vaccinated yet.
Personally I think there's a large swathe of more vulnerable younger people left - anyone with a waistline > half height or higher blood pressure. Unless they have another comorbidity (Diabetes is somewhat correlated but doesn't match up completely) they won't be vaccinated yet.
Prioritise Stoke and Hull?
Or even Hartlepool?
Having Labour's vote feeling safe enough to go to the polling booth won't earn me bank.
Ursula von der Leyen says the EU is negotiating a new contract with BioNTech/Pfizer for 1.8bn doses for 2022-2023 with the full supply chain in the EU.
There seems to be a lot of anger at not instantly unlocking completely. We have to remember:
1 - We are not at herd immunity yet. If we were, the ONS infection figures would be dropping at 70%+ per week; in the latest week, they increased slightly. Our antibody levels have increased slightly since then, but they won't have increased enough to cause R to drop by a factor of 2-3.
Accordingly, we eliminate all restrictions and go back to normal right NOW and infections will skyrocket.
2 - While we've heavily eroded the link between infections and hospitalisations, it's not completely broken. Group 2 is largely unvaccinated, and most of Group 1 is only single-dosed. That provides considerable protection, and the "get one dose out as fast as possible" route was certainly the best way to move with limited supplies, but it doesn't yet provide the full protection. From breakthrough infections and infections in the unvaccinated, we can easily get enough to (re-)flood the NHS. Just because infections, hospitalisations, and deaths are low today doesn't mean that everything's all gone away. Hell, from Group 2 alone, we can swamp ICUs.
3 - It does affect younger age groups - just at a lower rate than the older ones, and, with hospital support, is considerably more survivable in the younger groups. Statements like "the young are unaffected by the virus" are simply false. Brazil has a considerably younger age skew than the UK, and now half of all covid patients in ICUs there are under 40. Given that their healthcare system is well into collapse, we can surmise that they're already triaging considerably.
4 - The ever-widening vaccination programme is providing more and more first doses and really boosting second doses. Every single day takes us closer to that hoped-for herd immunity. It's just not instant.
5 - If we unlock too soon and infections skyrocket, and then hospitalisations start to follow ten days later (albeit at a slower slope than before - but with exponential growth, able to go upwards just as it did before) then regardless of what people say, they WOULD re-impose restrictions. They wouldn't simply shrug as hospitals overloaded again. And people WOULD largely follow them again. We heard "they'll never do a second lockdown" through most of last summer. There was less "they'll never do a third lockdown" but some still said it. Anyone saying "they'll never do a fourth lockdown" is just repeating what was wrong before.
I'm impatient; God knows. I've found myself more and more prone to being on an emotional rollercoaster as this goes on and on and bloody on. But wanting something to be true has never made it true, no matter how hard I want it to be, and that's just as true today as it's ever been.
Thank you, Andy - an unpleasant but very salutary and necessary bucket of cold water. In the spirit of optimism, do you have a current estimate for when you think we're likely to pass the point of danger? I'd be very interested to hear it, and I'm sure others would too.
I did do a quick-and-dirty model based on the antibody level from two weeks ago, and assuming one dose or prior infection impairs transmission by 60%, while two doses or infection-plus-one-dose impairs it by 90%.
And roll-out average of 67 million first doses and 335 million second doses (or first-dose-plus-prior-infection) per day between now and end of April, increasing to 268 million first doses and 500 second doses (or first-dose-plus-prior-infection) per day after that.
It gave us hitting an impairment in R of about a factor of 2 right now, a factor of 2.5 by mid-May... and going past the inflexion point on the reciprocal curve to climb rapidly after that, hitting a factor of 4.5 (which should be enough to bring even Kent Covid down to below 1) by mid-to-late June.
It lines up spookily closely with the roadmap - to an extent that makes me suspicious of how well it aligns. And it's based on a massive series of assumptions, but the shape of a reciprocal curve is well known and it will accelerate hugely past a certain point.
This is a scrawl (I won't dignify it with the term "graph") of how it comes out.
The blue line is the effective proportion of immunity-to-transmission; the orange line is the factor by which R is reduced. The dashed green line is the handwavily guesstimated R0 of Kent Covid.
As emphasised above - massive assumptions and guesses throughout, but it's the shape of the orange line (which is accentuated by the inflexion point coming at around the point I'm assuming an uptick in vaccine supplies) that's crucial and will be valid; just with different slope due to assumptions when they change.
That's very interesting, thank you - I hadn't realized that the rate of reduction in R would change shape and accelerate in that way. And you're right, the alignment of dates is downright spooky.
Yeah you get nice increasing returns on vaccination. 80% of population with sterlising immunity supresses a base R of 5, 90% it's 10.
Comments
There is a difference between simply lifting all restrictions including quarantining at the border, opening nightclubs etc - and saying it should not be illegal to go into a relatives living room. Or that restaurants and pubs should not be closed by law (indoors).
If we were to go to Stage 3 restrictions domestically sooner, but postpone the Stage 3 opening of the border until the rest of the world has caught up with us, then that would be smarter for preventing the virus here. Data not dates, the data says domestic is safer but abroad is not.
In fact, I think neither will happen. But I don't put either out of reach for the challenging party.
I felt like I had a heck of a bruise on my arm Monday night and didn't feel 100% on Tuesday morning, possibly because sleep was disrupted. By lunchtime Tuesday it was fine.
Tories will achieve way about 40% here not less than 38.
Out of the two arguments on here today, this is the more persuasive one, HY data is unreliable against this backdrop.
It’s a new Landscape, that ensures the Tories have the next GE sown up as well.
Yet they then lost the majority in 2017. No GE is sown up before people have voted.
The funny thing is that if you sum up the lists of "These things are obviously safe" for everyone you get a list of.... everything.
Hospital R is currently banging around 0.8 - with the schools closed. What are you proposing to do that will only move R by 0.2 or less?
The latest Yougov has the Tories on 41% and Starmer Labour on 34%, so even if the Tories get over 40% in the county elections their lead will be smaller and Labour will make gains (with both parties likely squeezing the LDs who got 18% in the 2017 locals).
UKIP will be less of a factor in the county elections as they only got 4% in 2017 anyway, the Tories if they make gains will likely do so in the district elections where the Tories only got 30% when they were last up in 2016 with UKIP on 12%, thus a much bigger UKIP vote in the district elections for the Tories to squeeze
Herd immunity is probably not a single point event horizon in any case. Different coverage in different communities, different age groups means localised outbreaks could remain possible, but an outbreak itself at close to herd immunity level but little distancing will probably be closer to the short, sharp outbreaks of the student halls than the building crisis this winter.
I suspect this winter any issues will be dealable with fairly light, short-lived and localised restrictions.
It is an apologist crock of shite.
Schools aren't closed, schools are open. Schools reopened over a month ago. As for what I am proposing, I would bring forward the domestic element of the Stage 3 restrictions to no later than the end of the month, which would be 3 weeks after the Phase I rollout was completed.
But I would balance that by postponing the lifting of restrictions on travel due for the middle of May. I would add every nation with a case rate double ours per capita (or insufficient testing to accurately measure their case rate) to the red list, which is pretty much all of Europe.
Stop cases coming in from where they are, rather than spreading where they aren't.
However the LDs are likely to be the Tories main challengers in Chesham and Amersham, in 2019 they got 26% in the seat to just 12% for Labour
I pride myself on being helpful and not too abrasive in posts, but the problem with your reply is same as everything wrong with pandemic planning, it lacked creative thought.
C'mon.
Just argue for a quicker reopening if that's what you want to do. No need for all the virtue-signalling crap. It strikes an "off" note.
But the campaign has been almost non existent. Which has suited Nicola just fine of course.
You're the one signalling, when I agree with the Government over something you say I am doing so as a partisan. When I say I oppose what the Government is doing you call me a "phony". Seems you have a stick up your arse, I'm happy to call it as I see it regardless of politics.
The EU are quite literally the only group on Earth trying to play politics with vaccines, it’s almost as if they’re trying to prolong the pandemic.
And roll-out average of 67 million first doses and 335 million second doses (or first-dose-plus-prior-infection) per day between now and end of April, increasing to 268 million first doses and 500 second doses (or first-dose-plus-prior-infection) per day after that.
It gave us hitting an impairment in R of about a factor of 2 right now, a factor of 2.5 by mid-May... and going past the inflexion point on the reciprocal curve to climb rapidly after that, hitting a factor of 4.5 (which should be enough to bring even Kent Covid down to below 1) by mid-to-late June.
It lines up spookily closely with the roadmap - to an extent that makes me suspicious of how well it aligns. And it's based on a massive series of assumptions, but the shape of a reciprocal curve is well known and it will accelerate hugely past a certain point.
This is a scrawl (I won't dignify it with the term "graph") of how it comes out.
The blue line is the effective proportion of immunity-to-transmission; the orange line is the factor by which R is reduced. The dashed green line is the handwavily guesstimated R0 of Kent Covid.
As emphasised above - massive assumptions and guesses throughout, but it's the shape of the orange line (which is accentuated by the inflexion point coming at around the point I'm assuming an uptick in vaccine supplies) that's crucial and will be valid; just with different slope due to assumptions when they change.
The fact that my Government says it must be done does not change my principles.
The fact that I very reluctantly was OK with lockdowns as a last resort last year does not change the fact I am no OK with lockdowns now when we are not in a last resort position.
At no date last year did we have it illegal to be in other people's homes when the threat from Covid was as low as it is today. If we did, I would have opposed it then too.
Texas and Florida
Pop 50,473,618
Deaths recorded yesterday 138
Cases recorded yesterday 13,600
England
Pop 56,000,000
Deaths recorded yesterday 18
Cases 2,070
That's not the whole picture - people can add more stats & colour if they wish.
It's clearly going to take some time to get used to social contact again.
I'm sorry but you have come out with stuff that is plainly factually incorrect in your previous post and made some wild predictions as absolute certainties for years into the future. You might end up being correct and if you have a track record of being so I assume you are a multi millionaire from your betting receipts.
I would like to think my posts are creative. My likes would indicate others might think they are, but they don't extend into into fiction and wild rock solid predictions on events years into the future.
Mr. Gate, indeed.
Growing accustomed to such heavy restrictions is not a good thing.
Having a lockdown now to prevent a possible future lockdown is insanity.
We don't hear about Brazil, the major country run by a true Lockdown Sceptic.
Or Chile, or Uruguay, or Poland, or Czechia.
Or that urban areas in Texas that do have mask mandates (because county-level powers are considerably higher there than here) have significantly lower death rates. Missed that point, inexplicably.
Or people getting their doors kicked in for posting accurate stats on Florida issues.
Or that things like mask mandates and restrictions vary hugely across the various areas and counties of both Florida and Texas.
But what we do know is that the moment things don't suit your narrative in Texas or Florida, they'll be abandoned as quickly as Sweden, or India (herd immunity? Nope), or IFR calculations that show a missed decimal points.
Because you're not interested in how things actually are.
We've seen that over the past year, with "choosing" Gupta and her model regardless of whether it fit reality, with choosing to believe Yeadon and Cummins because they were saying what you wanted to be true, with choosing to believe the absurd FALSE POSITIVES and CASEDEMIC narratives.
Just how you can argue things, in support of "It's not happening it's not happening it's not happening it's not happening"
This virus doesn't care how you argue, how I argue, how anyone argues. It's not sentient. It can't be argued with, or reasoned with, or anything like that. It just does what it does, unless we stop it.
Didn't realise one of the long term side effects was breaking the habits of a life-time.
At the gym, although we don't have to wear a mask while exercising, we still have to wipe down the apparatus before and after. And all the staff are wearing them.
But, yes, the pattern is that of approach and achieving herd immunity. Which we haven't done yet.
Daily deaths normally expected in the UK without Covid: 1,644
Most recent Texas 'excess deaths': 0
Most recent England 'excess deaths': 0
Of course you and Malmsbury are basing your arguments on Covid gold standard country Chile
FFS Andy.
https://twitter.com/GraceBrodie/status/1382027397919301632?s=20
Like a lot of pols I believe Salmond, wily campaigner though he is, has been listening to ill chosen advisors & believed twitter was real life. He's maybe been out of the ring too long.
'You're a big man, but you're in bad shape. With me it's a full time job. Now behave yourself.'
1st 18,343 Total 1,621,282
% of total pop. : 51.42%
% of adults. : 64.26%
% of over 50s. : 125.37%
2nd 11,998 Total 549,193
% of total pop. : 17.42%
% of adults. : 21.77%
% of over 50s. : 42.47%
The issue now as I see it is that through various means, Government procurement is prevented from achieving efficiency, effectiveness and great value for the taxpayer, because a small number of large scale suppliers and consultants (with initials we all know) are gaming the system. Other businesses who might do a great job, but don't know how to subtly lubricate the process, are frozen out, to the detriment of all.
I haven't thought of an answer, but I have a couple of suggestions:
1. Titles/honours seem to carry weight with some civil servant/Government types. We should create a situation whereby these are taken back if the person is naughty just as easily as they were conferred for merit initially. It might help persuade a few people to stay on the straight and narrow if their wife was going to have to go back to life as Mrs. Joe Bloggs, rather than Lady Bloggs.
2. There should be significant financial incentives for performance in the civil service relating to projects that are completed ahead of schedule and under-budget.
3. Government pensions above a basic rate should be linked to a number of economic metrics, so that good performance in Government was directly rewarded via the pension system.
Dunno whether any of these would work.
Your hospitalisation R never increased to 1, indeed it didn't come close to 1 - and the rates of vaccination have only ever increased from there.
It's an artificial figure, but is relevant as to why Wales is a bit ahead in first doses of everywhere else.
*they probably could
Really appreciate your comment. We're lucky we have PB as a forum for these musings!
NEW: Belgium’s top virologist slams Denmark’s decision to stop using #AstraZeneca entirely
Marc Van Ranst: "It's hysterical, yes, because you save a lot of people with it... And if you know it saves more people than it harms people, then this is clearly an emotional decision”"
https://twitter.com/DarrenGBNews/status/1382310339442839555
It seems clear that a very large section of the electorate are not prepared to forgive his behaviour, even if it was judged as not illegal.
The phrase "He left the court, acquitted, but a ruined man" - comes to mind.
Certainly a change of spots.
Since then the vaccine rollout has continued. Since then the rate of antibodies in society (as shown by the ONS) has increased.
https://twitter.com/StefSimanowitz/status/1382241701452992513?s=20
Please can you say when and where it became illegal to enter other people's homes with a local case rate around half what they are today.
Total 1st jabs as a % of the total pop. : 51.42%
Total 1st jabs as a % of adults : 64.26%
Total 1st jabs as a % of over 50s : 125.37%
2nd 11,998 Total 549,193
Total 2nd jabs as a % of the total pop. : 17.42%
Total 2nd jabs as a % of adults : 21.77%
Total 2nd jabs as a % of over 50s : 42.47%
The 125% will continue to increase....
Keep posting the numbers. Very interesting.
Also, well done Wales!