Anyway, who do I have to bribe to get my second Pfizer dose? That's the important question for today.
Despite getting an invite to book my second dose, every time I log in it says no appointments are available. Meanwhile my ex-GP texts me every day reminding me to book my second dose. I wish I could. The 12 weeks is almost up.
Nightmare .....
Ty and change your location, you may need to drive to somewhere further away to get it as the provisioning system has probably allocated you a dose in London.
I live in the Lake District. I cannot get a slot here because the GP cannot get me onto the booking system. I cannot change the location. I have spent ages on the phone to both my old practice and my new one and the NHS helpline. It is Kafkaesque.
If you got your first dose from a GP, they are supposed to arrange the second dose themselves, and you are blocked from the national NHs booking system. My mother was in the same position and she had to wait for a GP slot, and was done last week. At 89 I am sure she’s higher up the queue than you.
They have done. They have given me the link to the system which books and which I used last time to book my first dose. It checks my date of birth and then sends me to the site to book.
Then I get a screen saying: No Appointments Available and telling me to check the link every day and that I will be able to book the moment slots become available.
My brother was done yesterday and according to what he heard the next slots will be on 21st and 24th April. So am keeping my fingers crossed. But I it is a 5 hour drive down to London.
Quite why it was my ex-GP who organised my first dose despite me having already moved practice is unclear. It does not give me a lot of confidence in the system.
I would call your GP and tell him that you are just going to turn up tomorrow for your jab. Then just go down there and refuse to leave until they jab you.
My GP doesn't have any jabs. The GP in London doesn't have any jabs either. They are doing it at another location at a larger practice in Belsize Lane. If I haven't been able to book by the 21st I will get onto them.
It''s the feeling that I'm going to slip between the cracks and be forgotten that is worrying me .....
Do what we did. Book it at your old doctor, drive down and get it done.
My old doctor is not doing them. A bigger local clinic in Belsize Lane is. I have got the link. But there are no appointments available at that clinic. I just have to wait.
Today I have also had to deal with BT - a shambles - and Vodafone - well on the way to becoming a shambles.
Plus I ordered some coat hooks which looked nice on the website but which turned out to be quite horrible - the sorts of things you might hang meat carcasses on - not your dressing gown. So I have to pay to send this rubbish back.
At least the UFH in the hall is finally working though why the idiot electrician put the thermostat for it in a bathroom at the other end of the house is a mystery. So another non-idiot electrician has to come back to fix that.
I hope the afternoon will turn out better .......
If the website’s run out of appointments, at least credit them for the imagination to have diversified into offering coat hooks?
I don't understand how 1,300 babies can die of Covid in Brazil. And yet I've not read reports of this happening anywhere else in the world.
Either the Brazilian variant is uniquely bad, or there are infant deaths from Covid happening everywhere, but going unnoticed/unreported.
The news story is unhelpfully vague. However, the situation in Brazil seems to be a real crisis, with lack of space and resources in hospitals. It may be that this is having a severe impact on infant deaths* and many of those dying also happen to have Covid (the article seems to only reference excess respiratory deaths, there might be other things involved in those too).
*a number of possible things: - routine antenatal appointments missed due to staff shortage, fear of attending meaning complications are missed - poor midwife (and possibly consultant in particular) staffing levels due to sickness and some being pulled off to other duties - lack of ICU availability for those infants who do need it
It may also be that newborns are quite vulnerable to Covid. We likely haven't experienced this much here as everyone involved in birth is getting tested and lockdowns have meant only immediate family having close contact with the baby after birth - there's not much risk of exposure near birth. Infants are quite vulnerable, in general (my own daughter spent four nights in hospital aged 9 weeks with one of the relatively innocuous corona viruses, one that in an adult is just a common cold).
Whilst I understand that it must have been difficult for pregnant women during this (partners absent etc.), I hope this is sort of thing is looked at closely.
The behaviour of the media and some politicians on this issue has been, quite frankly, a disgrace.
"Ukraine on Thursday accused Russia of openly threatening it with 'war and the destruction of Ukrainian statehood', warning Moscow that any escalation of fighting would be met with a firm military response."
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Old classic cars are exempt, so you could just keep it and wait...
That's a thought actually! 25 years from now it could come right into its own. Envy of all.
I don't understand how 1,300 babies can die of Covid in Brazil. And yet I've not read reports of this happening anywhere else in the world.
Either the Brazilian variant is uniquely bad, or there are infant deaths from Covid happening everywhere, but going unnoticed/unreported.
The news story is unhelpfully vague. However, the situation in Brazil seems to be a real crisis, with lack of space and resources in hospitals. It may be that this is having a severe impact on infant deaths* and many of those dying also happen to have Covid (the article seems to only reference excess respiratory deaths, there might be other things involved in those too).
*a number of possible things: - routine antenatal appointments missed due to staff shortage, fear of attending meaning complications are missed - poor midwife (and possibly consultant in particular) staffing levels due to sickness and some being pulled off to other duties - lack of ICU availability for those infants who do need it
It may also be that newborns are quite vulnerable to Covid. We likely haven't experienced this much here as everyone involved in birth is getting tested and lockdowns have meant only immediate family having close contact with the baby after birth - there's not much risk of exposure near birth. Infants are quite vulnerable, in general (my own daughter spent four nights in hospital aged 9 weeks with one of the relatively innocuous corona viruses, one that in an adult is just a common cold).
Whilst I understand that it must have been difficult for pregnant women during this (partners absent etc.), I hope this is sort of thing is looked at closely.
The behaviour of the media and some politicians on this issue has been, quite frankly, a disgrace.
Right at the start it seemed unlikely to me that a disease which can kill unlucky healthy adults would, for some reason, completely ignore much more vulnerable newborns and toddlers - they aren't genetically different
We know that other mammal SPECIES can get Covid19....
I hope and pray this story is wrong in some fundamental way, or missing some crucial point
"Ukraine on Thursday accused Russia of openly threatening it with 'war and the destruction of Ukrainian statehood', warning Moscow that any escalation of fighting would be met with a firm military response."
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Surely not Laurence Fox?! He's pledged to scrap it. You wouldn't, would you? That would be the worst betrayal since..... I don't know when. Although I've no idea who you are, I'd never speak to you again anyway.
- I wouldn't vote "Lozza" if it came with a brand new merc let alone saving my old one. Ghastly ghastly character.
Not the most exciting election, though, I have to say. All manifestos except Khan's are totally irrelevant.
I'm sorry, but I simply cannot miss this opportunity to point out that Khan's is also irrelevant, given his track record of (not) keeping to the last one.
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Old classic cars are exempt, so you could just keep it and wait...
That's a thought actually! 25 years from now it could come right into its own. Envy of all.
I have a friend who has an SL350. The car used to belong to Hugh Laurie when he was a young Londoner.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
It's garbage messaging though.
Overall vaccines are going to do most of the heavy lifting in terms of herd immunity with infections around 16 million and vaccinations about 31 million right now. Lockdowns only delay things in terms of SEIR. Once you've got everyone vaxxed, boostered etc up you need to let the virus rip at that point or things will never end !
The reality is that the UK (and California and Israel) got their timings exactly right: lockdown to crush case numbers, combined with vaccines to prevent them rising quickly again.
If your case numbers are horrific, you simply can't vaccinated quickly enough to crush R.
I don't understand how 1,300 babies can die of Covid in Brazil. And yet I've not read reports of this happening anywhere else in the world.
Either the Brazilian variant is uniquely bad, or there are infant deaths from Covid happening everywhere, but going unnoticed/unreported.
The news story is unhelpfully vague. However, the situation in Brazil seems to be a real crisis, with lack of space and resources in hospitals. It may be that this is having a severe impact on infant deaths* and many of those dying also happen to have Covid (the article seems to only reference excess respiratory deaths, there might be other things involved in those too).
*a number of possible things: - routine antenatal appointments missed due to staff shortage, fear of attending meaning complications are missed - poor midwife (and possibly consultant in particular) staffing levels due to sickness and some being pulled off to other duties - lack of ICU availability for those infants who do need it
It may also be that newborns are quite vulnerable to Covid. We likely haven't experienced this much here as everyone involved in birth is getting tested and lockdowns have meant only immediate family having close contact with the baby after birth - there's not much risk of exposure near birth. Infants are quite vulnerable, in general (my own daughter spent four nights in hospital aged 9 weeks with one of the relatively innocuous corona viruses, one that in an adult is just a common cold).
Indeed. My eldest got hospitalised for a similar period of time aged just 2 weeks, after the 2-week weigh-in showed she had lost weight from birth (though we are pretty certain the student midwife recorded the birth weight wrong). After the first night an infection revealed itself, would have been entirely innocuous for a child or an adult but was a scary few days in hospital with a newborn.
We almost had the same situation with my son - fortunately the midwife had invited us to take a picture of him on the scales in the delivery room (whether as a precaution against this or just as a memento, I don't know). The midwife at the 3 or four day checkup was very happy with him, weighed him, looked at the notes, peered at him again, hesitated and then asked us if we remembered the birth weight (we did) and whether we happened to have a picture. After viewing it she explained that according to the notes he was in big trouble weight-wise, but looked healthy. She said she'd have had to send us to hospital to have him checed ove more thoroughly if we'd not had the birth weighing photo to prove the recorded birth weight was wrong. The hundred and tens of g digits had been transposed in the recorded birth weight.
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
It's garbage messaging though.
Overall vaccines are going to do most of the heavy lifting in terms of herd immunity with infections around 16 million and vaccinations about 31 million right now. Lockdowns only delay things in terms of SEIR. Once you've got everyone vaxxed, boostered etc up you need to let the virus rip at that point or things will never end !
The reality is that the UK (and California and Israel) got their timings exactly right: lockdown to crush case numbers, combined with vaccines to prevent them rising quickly again.
If your case numbers are horrific, you simply can't vaccinated quickly enough to crush R.
The biggest mystery at the moment is how France's death rate is stable despite all their other figures. Was their earlier vaccination programme particularly well targetted?
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Given the expected increase in doses for the final week of April it looks like we're on course to do between 4m and 6m for the month plus about 13-15m second doses. All that panic for nothing.
I don't understand how 1,300 babies can die of Covid in Brazil. And yet I've not read reports of this happening anywhere else in the world.
Either the Brazilian variant is uniquely bad, or there are infant deaths from Covid happening everywhere, but going unnoticed/unreported.
The news story is unhelpfully vague. However, the situation in Brazil seems to be a real crisis, with lack of space and resources in hospitals. It may be that this is having a severe impact on infant deaths* and many of those dying also happen to have Covid (the article seems to only reference excess respiratory deaths, there might be other things involved in those too).
*a number of possible things: - routine antenatal appointments missed due to staff shortage, fear of attending meaning complications are missed - poor midwife (and possibly consultant in particular) staffing levels due to sickness and some being pulled off to other duties - lack of ICU availability for those infants who do need it
It may also be that newborns are quite vulnerable to Covid. We likely haven't experienced this much here as everyone involved in birth is getting tested and lockdowns have meant only immediate family having close contact with the baby after birth - there's not much risk of exposure near birth. Infants are quite vulnerable, in general (my own daughter spent four nights in hospital aged 9 weeks with one of the relatively innocuous corona viruses, one that in an adult is just a common cold).
I agree the story is vague but other than the failure to test earlier it does not sound as if the child did not receive fairly comprehensive and very extensive medical care. This, of course, makes the outcome even more alarming as well as deeply sad.
Yep, the story is really all about the one child (which is a story in itself, of course, and deeply sad). There's very little information on the headline claim of a lot of babies dying.
There was a story here about a young child getting very ill with Covid, after displaying unusual (for adults) symptoms. The single cases will happen, sadly (low risk, not no risk and there are a lot of babies) but the more important question is whether risk in the very young may be higher than has been thought.
Latest PHE vaccine data is out. As of Sunday, 94.8% of over 50s have received at least one dose. Just extraordinary. Even when vaccines are not supply constrained, that’s a figure that will be the envy of almost everywhere in the world.
There were also a whisker under 7 million 18-49s with at least one dose in England, getting on for one third more or less. And we’re now at about 70% of over 75s with two doses.
Given the efficacy against hospitalisation and death is essentially 100% even from one dose, I think we really can say, Covid-19 is done for in this country. Especially so since perhaps a third of fatal infections were acquired in hospital and the number of frontline medical staff vaccinated is also now in the mid to high 90 percents.
You could randomly pick a dozen over 50s and quite happily let them have an indoor swinging party now I reckon.
I see Colin the Caterpillar-gate is likely to derail all this talk of viruses, elections and sleaze.
I have a quiz round of match the supermarket to the Caterpillar cake name.
Cuthbert really isn't that nice compared to the other options...
Who knew!
anyone who buys things from Aldi / Lidl - I do buy things from there but I'm very careful over what I do purchase..
Passing off. Trademarks. Lawyers heaven. Nothing hangs on it except billions for outfits that have billions. No-one gets hurt. The Lord Dennings of our day judge on whether Cadbury's dairy milk wrapping colour shade can be copied by others (it can't).
There is also the question of whether a Jaffa cake is a cake or a biscuit. Millions hang on the answer.
But my recent fave is this between a tattoo parlour and a cactus retailer on the subject of the word 'prick'. Prick Tattoo Parlour v Prick me Baby One More Time. You just couldn't make it up:
Guardian: Janet Yellen’s...plan is the following: ensure that all multinationals pay a minimum rate of tax on their profits – 21% – regardless of where they are booked. If they have some profits booked in a country that sets a lower rate, then they owe a “top up” of additional tax to the country where they are headquartered.
This plan, though simple, is revolutionary. It has the potential to substantially increase tax revenues. It stops the race to the bottom observed in recent decades, in which countries compete to attract multinationals by offering ever lower tax rates – bad news for tax havens such as Bermuda, good news for the rest of us. If countries want to compete to attract multinationals, it will have to be on quality of infrastructure or education of the workforce – things that citizens also value. US backing means this may actually happen.
USA, edging up again, nearly 80,000 cases, nearly 1,000 deaths
France: will go over 100,000 dead today, very probably
Poland, still bad: 803 deaths
Argentina, probably got the Brazilian bastard, ramping up to its worse wave yet: 25k cases (worst yet), 368 deaths (one of the worst)
india, horrific: 200,000 cases (worst yet)
Turkey, yikes: 62,000 cases (worst yet)
Ukraine, nearing a peak: 467 deaths (2nd worst ever)
Colombia, deep into a 3rd wave: 337 deaths
This bug is still Very Much With Us
This announcement was brought to you by DoomPorn Inc
Talking of which, I’m in London for the first time since last summer. And doesn’t the smell of DECAY hang over this city! Masked folk shuffle along the shuttered streets and everywhere is grey, despite a clear blue sky that simply screams ‘you could be somewhere else, with fresh air and scenery....’. You can feel the life slipping away from this place and if you have assets in London SELL NOW while you still can.....
Actually, having been a source of despair for much of this plague (esp as regards London, NYC, Paris - the big western cities) I sense the opposite. Plagues are shit if you are in a city, and yet after all this, people will want city life bigtime, I reckon. Restaurants, life, art, pubs, clubs, streets, shops, OTHER PEOPLE. I have friends sheltering in the countryside who are now sobbing with boredom
After a year of walking alone down bloody footpaths, everyone wants to crowd together in fancy bars; there will be a euphoria at the end, and the biggest cities will benefit
Watch where the really big money goes. Last year the London super-prime property market did better than any other city in the world
"London’s ‘super-prime’ luxury property market was world leader in 2020 UK capital is ‘world’s leading wealth destination’ after sales of homes worth more than £7.3m rose 3% last year"
Fear not, for I just took the first random idea that popped into my head, didn’t think about it too much, hammed it up with some dramatic language to make it sound like the world was about to end, and typed it with a few words in block capitals for added emphasis.
I don't understand how 1,300 babies can die of Covid in Brazil. And yet I've not read reports of this happening anywhere else in the world.
Either the Brazilian variant is uniquely bad, or there are infant deaths from Covid happening everywhere, but going unnoticed/unreported.
The news story is unhelpfully vague. However, the situation in Brazil seems to be a real crisis, with lack of space and resources in hospitals. It may be that this is having a severe impact on infant deaths* and many of those dying also happen to have Covid (the article seems to only reference excess respiratory deaths, there might be other things involved in those too).
*a number of possible things: - routine antenatal appointments missed due to staff shortage, fear of attending meaning complications are missed - poor midwife (and possibly consultant in particular) staffing levels due to sickness and some being pulled off to other duties - lack of ICU availability for those infants who do need it
It may also be that newborns are quite vulnerable to Covid. We likely haven't experienced this much here as everyone involved in birth is getting tested and lockdowns have meant only immediate family having close contact with the baby after birth - there's not much risk of exposure near birth. Infants are quite vulnerable, in general (my own daughter spent four nights in hospital aged 9 weeks with one of the relatively innocuous corona viruses, one that in an adult is just a common cold).
Whilst I understand that it must have been difficult for pregnant women during this (partners absent etc.), I hope this is sort of thing is looked at closely.
The behaviour of the media and some politicians on this issue has been, quite frankly, a disgrace.
The current approach of testing, testing and more testing makes sense.
Earlier on, it was blanket bans on partners, as far as I understand, which may have been necessary, but is sad in itself. I cannot imagine not having been there for the birth of my children - I know that was relatively commonplace just a generation or two ago (my dad wasn't present at my birth and my mum wouldn't have wanted him there!)
This bloody mask is so irritating; I’ve been following the rules, but until now that’s meant putting it on for short periods and making some effort to minimise such situations. Today I’ve had it on continuous since catching the 4am ferry and am already well fed up with it. Sympathy to anyone who has to wear one of these every day.
I flew to Hawaii, and the rules were masks on at all times even between sips of drinks.
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Old classic cars are exempt, so you could just keep it and wait...
That's a thought actually! 25 years from now it could come right into its own. Envy of all.
I have a friend who has an SL350. The car used to belong to Hugh Laurie when he was a young Londoner.
Really? Gosh. I wonder if that provenance is sufficient to add value. Some of Steve McQueen's cars are worth millions. Ok so Hugh Laurie isn't Steve McQueen, hard to see him as the Cooler King, but still he's pretty famous, especially after that "House" show went ballistic in the US.
Anyway, who do I have to bribe to get my second Pfizer dose? That's the important question for today.
Despite getting an invite to book my second dose, every time I log in it says no appointments are available. Meanwhile my ex-GP texts me every day reminding me to book my second dose. I wish I could. The 12 weeks is almost up.
Nightmare .....
Ty and change your location, you may need to drive to somewhere further away to get it as the provisioning system has probably allocated you a dose in London.
I live in the Lake District. I cannot get a slot here because the GP cannot get me onto the booking system. I cannot change the location. I have spent ages on the phone to both my old practice and my new one and the NHS helpline. It is Kafkaesque.
If you got your first dose from a GP, they are supposed to arrange the second dose themselves, and you are blocked from the national NHs booking system. My mother was in the same position and she had to wait for a GP slot, and was done last week. At 89 I am sure she’s higher up the queue than you.
They have done. They have given me the link to the system which books and which I used last time to book my first dose. It checks my date of birth and then sends me to the site to book.
Then I get a screen saying: No Appointments Available and telling me to check the link every day and that I will be able to book the moment slots become available.
My brother was done yesterday and according to what he heard the next slots will be on 21st and 24th April. So am keeping my fingers crossed. But I it is a 5 hour drive down to London.
Quite why it was my ex-GP who organised my first dose despite me having already moved practice is unclear. It does not give me a lot of confidence in the system.
I would call your GP and tell him that you are just going to turn up tomorrow for your jab. Then just go down there and refuse to leave until they jab you.
My GP doesn't have any jabs. The GP in London doesn't have any jabs either. They are doing it at another location at a larger practice in Belsize Lane. If I haven't been able to book by the 21st I will get onto them.
It''s the feeling that I'm going to slip between the cracks and be forgotten that is worrying me .....
Do what we did. Book it at your old doctor, drive down and get it done.
My old doctor is not doing them. A bigger local clinic in Belsize Lane is. I have got the link. But there are no appointments available at that clinic. I just have to wait.
Today I have also had to deal with BT - a shambles - and Vodafone - well on the way to becoming a shambles.
Plus I ordered some coat hooks which looked nice on the website but which turned out to be quite horrible - the sorts of things you might hang meat carcasses on - not your dressing gown. So I have to pay to send this rubbish back.
At least the UFH in the hall is finally working though why the idiot electrician put the thermostat for it in a bathroom at the other end of the house is a mystery. So another non-idiot electrician has to come back to fix that.
I hope the afternoon will turn out better .......
If the website’s run out of appointments, at least credit them for the imagination to have diversified into offering coat hooks?
I don't understand how 1,300 babies can die of Covid in Brazil. And yet I've not read reports of this happening anywhere else in the world.
Either the Brazilian variant is uniquely bad, or there are infant deaths from Covid happening everywhere, but going unnoticed/unreported.
The news story is unhelpfully vague. However, the situation in Brazil seems to be a real crisis, with lack of space and resources in hospitals. It may be that this is having a severe impact on infant deaths* and many of those dying also happen to have Covid (the article seems to only reference excess respiratory deaths, there might be other things involved in those too).
*a number of possible things: - routine antenatal appointments missed due to staff shortage, fear of attending meaning complications are missed - poor midwife (and possibly consultant in particular) staffing levels due to sickness and some being pulled off to other duties - lack of ICU availability for those infants who do need it
It may also be that newborns are quite vulnerable to Covid. We likely haven't experienced this much here as everyone involved in birth is getting tested and lockdowns have meant only immediate family having close contact with the baby after birth - there's not much risk of exposure near birth. Infants are quite vulnerable, in general (my own daughter spent four nights in hospital aged 9 weeks with one of the relatively innocuous corona viruses, one that in an adult is just a common cold).
Indeed. My eldest got hospitalised for a similar period of time aged just 2 weeks, after the 2-week weigh-in showed she had lost weight from birth (though we are pretty certain the student midwife recorded the birth weight wrong). After the first night an infection revealed itself, would have been entirely innocuous for a child or an adult but was a scary few days in hospital with a newborn.
We almost had the same situation with my son - fortunately the midwife had invited us to take a picture of him on the scales in the delivery room (whether as a precaution against this or just as a memento, I don't know). The midwife at the 3 or four day checkup was very happy with him, weighed him, looked at the notes, peered at him again, hesitated and then asked us if we remembered the birth weight (we did) and whether we happened to have a picture. After viewing it she explained that according to the notes he was in big trouble weight-wise, but looked healthy. She said she'd have had to send us to hospital to have him checed ove more thoroughly if we'd not had the birth weighing photo to prove the recorded birth weight was wrong. The hundred and tens of g digits had been transposed in the recorded birth weight.
Gee. I wish I'd taken a picture of the birth weight but didn't so it was just the student midwife who recorded it. I don't know what it was in kg but it translated to 7lb 11oz but 6lb 0oz after two weeks, so they said she'd lost over 20% of her birth weight which was never true.
The mad thing is that she was born tiny, she was too small for most of her newborn clothes and we needed to get some tiny baby clothes to fit her, and all the nurses etc said she didn't look 7lb 11oz but nobody thought to double-check it. The day after home visit we got we asked the lady who came to weigh her and she said they had a policy of not doing so so she wouldn't though she too said she didn't look 7lb 11; she was then the same person who did the 2 week weigh in and was very nasty about it saying "how did you not notice she's lost over 20% of her weight" when she clearly hadn't. She admitted her to the hospital and people kept giving us funny looks until the head doctor of the unit saw her and said "that's not a baby that's lost 20% of her weight, you can see that by looking at her" that people stopped treating us funny.
Was not a very pleasant experience at all. I'd definitely recommend first time parents in future to supervise the weigh-in but its not something I'd thought about and I was with my wife while the midwife did that.
Latest PHE vaccine data is out. As of Sunday, 94.8% of over 50s have received at least one dose. Just extraordinary. Even when vaccines are not supply constrained, that’s a figure that will be the envy of almost everywhere in the world.
There were also a whisker under 7 million 18-49s with at least one dose in England, getting on for one third more or less. And we’re now at about 70% of over 75s with two doses.
Given the efficacy against hospitalisation and death is essentially 100% even from one dose, I think we really can say, Covid-19 is done for in this country. Especially so since perhaps a third of fatal infections were acquired in hospital and the number of frontline medical staff vaccinated is also now in the mid to high 90 percents.
You could randomly pick a dozen over 50s and quite happily let them have an indoor swinging party now I reckon.
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Surely not Laurence Fox?! He's pledged to scrap it. You wouldn't, would you? That would be the worst betrayal since..... I don't know when. Although I've no idea who you are, I'd never speak to you again anyway.
- I wouldn't vote "Lozza" if it came with a brand new merc let alone saving my old one. Ghastly ghastly character.
Not the most exciting election, though, I have to say. All manifestos except Khan's are totally irrelevant.
I'm sorry, but I simply cannot miss this opportunity to point out that Khan's is also irrelevant, given his track record of (not) keeping to the last one.
I'd say his main value - which is considerable - is to prevent any of the others getting the job.
I don't understand how 1,300 babies can die of Covid in Brazil. And yet I've not read reports of this happening anywhere else in the world.
Either the Brazilian variant is uniquely bad, or there are infant deaths from Covid happening everywhere, but going unnoticed/unreported.
The news story is unhelpfully vague. However, the situation in Brazil seems to be a real crisis, with lack of space and resources in hospitals. It may be that this is having a severe impact on infant deaths* and many of those dying also happen to have Covid (the article seems to only reference excess respiratory deaths, there might be other things involved in those too).
*a number of possible things: - routine antenatal appointments missed due to staff shortage, fear of attending meaning complications are missed - poor midwife (and possibly consultant in particular) staffing levels due to sickness and some being pulled off to other duties - lack of ICU availability for those infants who do need it
It may also be that newborns are quite vulnerable to Covid. We likely haven't experienced this much here as everyone involved in birth is getting tested and lockdowns have meant only immediate family having close contact with the baby after birth - there's not much risk of exposure near birth. Infants are quite vulnerable, in general (my own daughter spent four nights in hospital aged 9 weeks with one of the relatively innocuous corona viruses, one that in an adult is just a common cold).
I agree the story is vague but other than the failure to test earlier it does not sound as if the child did not receive fairly comprehensive and very extensive medical care. This, of course, makes the outcome even more alarming as well as deeply sad.
Yep, the story is really all about the one child (which is a story in itself, of course, and deeply sad). There's very little information on the headline claim of a lot of babies dying.
There was a story here about a young child getting very ill with Covid, after displaying unusual (for adults) symptoms. The single cases will happen, sadly (low risk, not no risk and there are a lot of babies) but the more important question is whether risk in the very young may be higher than has been thought.
1300 deaths in "babies" and 2000 ? was it in 0 - 9 suggests there may well be an increased risk in the very young.
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
It's garbage messaging though.
Overall vaccines are going to do most of the heavy lifting in terms of herd immunity with infections around 16 million and vaccinations about 31 million right now. Lockdowns only delay things in terms of SEIR. Once you've got everyone vaxxed, boostered etc up you need to let the virus rip at that point or things will never end !
The reality is that the UK (and California and Israel) got their timings exactly right: lockdown to crush case numbers, combined with vaccines to prevent them rising quickly again.
If your case numbers are horrific, you simply can't vaccinated quickly enough to crush R.
The biggest mystery at the moment is how France's death rate is stable despite all their other figures. Was their earlier vaccination programme particularly well targetted?
I think there are probably three answers to that question:
1. The French health care system is excellent, with a great deal more capacity (especially intensive capacity) than we do 2. Deaths are understated, albeit they do ok on the excess death metrics 3. Unlike Spain or italy, there aren't that many intergenerational households and they may have done a better job of shielding oldies
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Old classic cars are exempt, so you could just keep it and wait...
That's a thought actually! 25 years from now it could come right into its own. Envy of all.
I have a friend who has an SL350. The car used to belong to Hugh Laurie when he was a young Londoner.
Really? Gosh. I wonder if that provenance is sufficient to add value. Some of Steve McQueen's cars are worth millions. Ok so Hugh Laurie isn't Steve McQueen, hard to see him as the Cooler King, but still he's pretty famous, especially after that "House" show went ballistic in the US.
I wondered the same. But it’s academic as she doesn’t want to part with it.
My fiddling about with old car days are long gone, my having nursed a 1972 Sunbeam Rapier fastback as my first car from 1987 through to 1998.
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
You still don't get it do you?
It's about presentation. Andy, TLG and I have all suggested ways he could have presented it better.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has not been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Was his opening gambit. The qualification was added as an afterthought:
First rule of PR: If you are explaining, you are losing.
Well we'll see. I think the public are more intelligent than you give them credit for.
You seem to have been reduced to arguing that the message was correct but the spin was not good. I have no intention to argue against that.
Lets see if there's any actual polling or other evidence to show a decline in vaccine take-up after those remarks. If there isn't, its all much ado about nothing.
But, Philip, half of the country remains terrified when there is no reason for it. It's not a question of intelligence but many people do listen to what government (via the media) says and take it at face value.
These are people that we will need to "unterrify" to have any chance of getting back to normal. Rather than doubling down on the negativity, at this stage in the pandemic the government needs to shift to a communications strategy that underpins rather than undermines the recovery. Boris had a glorious opportunity to signal a change in messaging but he failed to do that. I assume it was deliberate because the government remains in thrall to SAGE (whose models and assumptions are questionable to say the least).
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
It's garbage messaging though.
Overall vaccines are going to do most of the heavy lifting in terms of herd immunity with infections around 16 million and vaccinations about 31 million right now. Lockdowns only delay things in terms of SEIR. Once you've got everyone vaxxed, boostered etc up you need to let the virus rip at that point or things will never end !
The reality is that the UK (and California and Israel) got their timings exactly right: lockdown to crush case numbers, combined with vaccines to prevent them rising quickly again.
If your case numbers are horrific, you simply can't vaccinated quickly enough to crush R.
I'm not sure. I'd be really interested in seeing some data on this but I don't think we have any examples of countries not doing lockdown but also having a rapid vaccine programme. Maybe one of the Arab states, I know they've had very good vaccine programmes and not much success with lockdowns but I don't know how robust the reporting is.
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
It's garbage messaging though.
Overall vaccines are going to do most of the heavy lifting in terms of herd immunity with infections around 16 million and vaccinations about 31 million right now. Lockdowns only delay things in terms of SEIR. Once you've got everyone vaxxed, boostered etc up you need to let the virus rip at that point or things will never end !
The reality is that the UK (and California and Israel) got their timings exactly right: lockdown to crush case numbers, combined with vaccines to prevent them rising quickly again.
If your case numbers are horrific, you simply can't vaccinated quickly enough to crush R.
The biggest mystery at the moment is how France's death rate is stable despite all their other figures. Was their earlier vaccination programme particularly well targetted?
Perhaps they are managing the figures, I presume there is some degree of management everywhere. For example here we brought in the 28 day cut off.
I doubt that Starmer's 'Tory sleaze' redux (is Mandelson advising him?) will go anywhere. The transplant from the 1990s doesn't fit the world of the 2020s.
Why do you think lining your pockets with taxpayers money is ok in the 2020s?
Because the expected standards for conduct in public life are massively lower.
Latterly I've been struck by how many officials of all stripes in the UK are amenable to bit of fragrant grease - as the Chinese say.
That's interesting.
Can you give us a list of say 20 examples you have encountered personally in the UK in the last 3 years?
I am 59 and I cannot recall a single incident in my adult life where any official has ever indicated to me that some "fragrant grease" might aid the process along. Of course I don't live in Liverpool but it is just not a feature of public life in Britain in my experience. I have of course had to deal with officious and pedantic idiots who seemed to be creating problems for irrational reasons. Maybe I was just missing the signposts?
Our "corruption" seems to me to be at a different level. It is the appointment of like minded people to public bodies and publicly funded organisations, grants to those bodies who become beholden to and cheerleaders for those in charge, in more recent times contracts offered to chums without due diligence or competitive tendering, that sort of thing. We are a long way from perfect but just plain bribes or "thank you's"? Just never seen it.
Yesterday I had a call from someone in a Local Authority regarding our tender for some major works. He wanted to have a meeting about it outside Starbucks over a coffee.. This is an example of the signpost you are talking about.
This type of thing has been happening for decades and will always continue to happen. I could give hundreds of examples of where we do work on peoples houses for nothing, provide holidays, golf memberships etc etc as well as the good old brown envelope.
Keep a diary and a list; one day you might feel able to do the right thing.
Whats the right thing? Not do LA work ?
The most extreme example I can give is the rewiring of a Council Head Office. When the job came out to tender we were informed through the grapevine that Company A were going to win it and the tender exercise was just a front. Despite this we still decided to tender it.
One morning we received via email from the LA Procurement Department a congratulations letter that we had won the job.
Within an hour this award letter was withdrawn as a "mistake" had been made in the Procurement process.
What had actually happened was that a junior person in the Procurement Department was not in on the fix. On hearing the news that they had not won the job Company A called their man in the Procurement Department and the changes were made.
We complained but it got us nowhere.
This interests me.
Are these Senior Officers or Councillors?
Do you have any ideas how that would come under control? Or what causes it? Is it to do with Councils that never change hands, for example?
Clearly the last example you give would in any just world be somewhere between career ending and jail time for the corrupt official. And no more work for say a decade for the corrupt company.
Should this be overview and scrutiny operating better? Or just Senior Officers with a shred of personal integrity?
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
It's garbage messaging though.
Overall vaccines are going to do most of the heavy lifting in terms of herd immunity with infections around 16 million and vaccinations about 31 million right now. Lockdowns only delay things in terms of SEIR. Once you've got everyone vaxxed, boostered etc up you need to let the virus rip at that point or things will never end !
The reality is that the UK (and California and Israel) got their timings exactly right: lockdown to crush case numbers, combined with vaccines to prevent them rising quickly again.
If your case numbers are horrific, you simply can't vaccinated quickly enough to crush R.
The biggest mystery at the moment is how France's death rate is stable despite all their other figures. Was their earlier vaccination programme particularly well targetted?
I think there are probably three answers to that question:
1. The French health care system is excellent, with a great deal more capacity (especially intensive capacity) than we do 2. Deaths are understated, albeit they do ok on the excess death metrics 3. Unlike Spain or italy, there aren't that many intergenerational households and they may have done a better job of shielding oldies
On the 19th May 2020 France managed to raise 217 souls from the dead. Truly remarkable.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
You still don't get it do you?
It's about presentation. Andy, TLG and I have all suggested ways he could have presented it better.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has not been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Was his opening gambit. The qualification was added as an afterthought:
First rule of PR: If you are explaining, you are losing.
Well we'll see. I think the public are more intelligent than you give them credit for.
You seem to have been reduced to arguing that the message was correct but the spin was not good. I have no intention to argue against that.
Lets see if there's any actual polling or other evidence to show a decline in vaccine take-up after those remarks. If there isn't, its all much ado about nothing.
But, Philip, half of the country remains terrified when there is no reason for it. It's not a question of intelligence but many people do listen to what government (via the media) says and take it at face value.
These are people that we will need to "unterrify" to have any chance of getting back to normal. Rather than doubling down on the negativity, at this stage in the pandemic the government needs to shift to a communications strategy that underpins rather than undermines the recovery. Boris had a glorious opportunity to signal a change in messaging but he failed to do that. I assume it was deliberate because the government remains in thrall to SAGE (whose models and assumptions are questionable to say the least).
But he did change the messaging.
The whole point of his message, as its been for months now, is that even if cases rise then do not panic. That the link between cases and deaths/hospitalisations has been broken. That is a good message to get out there, or do you think that message shouldn't be made?
Germany did over 700k vaccinations again yesterday. They've picked things up significantly.
I think they made rule changes to remove the bureaucracy as we did at the beginning. It allows any medical type person to do the vaccinations rather than only specific people. I think I remember kamski saying that they were also shifting to a JiT dosing strategy as well to ensure maximum utilisation of vaccines.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
It's garbage messaging though.
Overall vaccines are going to do most of the heavy lifting in terms of herd immunity with infections around 16 million and vaccinations about 31 million right now. Lockdowns only delay things in terms of SEIR. Once you've got everyone vaxxed, boostered etc up you need to let the virus rip at that point or things will never end !
The reality is that the UK (and California and Israel) got their timings exactly right: lockdown to crush case numbers, combined with vaccines to prevent them rising quickly again.
If your case numbers are horrific, you simply can't vaccinated quickly enough to crush R.
The biggest mystery at the moment is how France's death rate is stable despite all their other figures. Was their earlier vaccination programme particularly well targetted?
I think there are probably three answers to that question:
1. The French health care system is excellent, with a great deal more capacity (especially intensive capacity) than we do 2. Deaths are understated, albeit they do ok on the excess death metrics 3. Unlike Spain or italy, there aren't that many intergenerational households and they may have done a better job of shielding oldies
Much lower obesity rates than the UK or US. That alone accounts for the lower IFR, IMO.
Given the expected increase in doses for the final week of April it looks like we're on course to do between 4m and 6m for the month plus about 13-15m second doses. All that panic for nothing.
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
It's garbage messaging though.
Overall vaccines are going to do most of the heavy lifting in terms of herd immunity with infections around 16 million and vaccinations about 31 million right now. Lockdowns only delay things in terms of SEIR. Once you've got everyone vaxxed, boostered etc up you need to let the virus rip at that point or things will never end !
The reality is that the UK (and California and Israel) got their timings exactly right: lockdown to crush case numbers, combined with vaccines to prevent them rising quickly again.
If your case numbers are horrific, you simply can't vaccinated quickly enough to crush R.
The biggest mystery at the moment is how France's death rate is stable despite all their other figures. Was their earlier vaccination programme particularly well targetted?
I think there are probably three answers to that question:
1. The French health care system is excellent, with a great deal more capacity (especially intensive capacity) than we do 2. Deaths are understated, albeit they do ok on the excess death metrics 3. Unlike Spain or italy, there aren't that many intergenerational households and they may have done a better job of shielding oldies
Much lower obesity rates than the UK or US. That alone accounts for the lower IFR, IMO.
You don’t see many obese Italians, though, yet there are some in Germany, if not to the same level as UK or US. I doubt any single factor is to blame. People in France live further apart, both geographically and within housing units, than they do in Italy or Spain, for example.
Latest PHE vaccine data is out. As of Sunday, 94.8% of over 50s have received at least one dose. Just extraordinary. Even when vaccines are not supply constrained, that’s a figure that will be the envy of almost everywhere in the world.
There were also a whisker under 7 million 18-49s with at least one dose in England, getting on for one third more or less. And we’re now at about 70% of over 75s with two doses.
Given the efficacy against hospitalisation and death is essentially 100% even from one dose, I think we really can say, Covid-19 is done for in this country. Especially so since perhaps a third of fatal infections were acquired in hospital and the number of frontline medical staff vaccinated is also now in the mid to high 90 percents.
You could randomly pick a dozen over 50s and quite happily let them have an indoor swinging party now I reckon.
Reading post..... Good ... Point...SPITS TEA OUT!
The numbers for vaccinations in the release, using the NIMS population estimates, rather than raw ONS2019
Biden tells Congress he's "declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States posed by specified harmful foreign activities of the Government of the Russian Federation."
Historically if you take the 4 general elections since WW2 after one party had been in power for 10 years or more, as will be the case in 2024, the odds favour a change in government.
That was the case in 1964, 1997 and 2010, the only exception being in 1992 where Major's Tories held on despite some losses to Kinnock's Labour.
The question then is whether Starmer is Wilson 1964 or Cameron 2010 and becomes PM or Kinnock 1992 and he narrowly fails to, unless this government performs disastrously he is unlikely to be Blair 1997, more likely he will win narrowly as Wilson did in 1964 or more likely still become PM after a hung parliament as Cameron did in 2010
The other question is whether the change of governing party has already occurred. Does the voting public regard HMG as a Conservative government since 2010 or has the change from Cameron to May to Boris satisfied any putative demand for change?
It might be that in co-opting the popular parts of Jeremy Corbyn's platform and running against Cameron and May-style Conservatism, Boris already is the change prime minister. I'd not be wagering on 2024 based on historical parallels.
ETA I now see @moonshine has made much the same point in the last few minutes.
Boris is certainly much less of a fiscally conservative PM than Cameron was and is arguably now governing even as a social democrat, he has also delivered Brexit obviously which Cameron opposed and a harder Brexit than May wanted too.
So yes there is something in your point that a change of government has occurred already to some extent
If one really wants to be mischievous, what about Johnson as Major redux? Not (so far) the exhausted Major of 1997, but the triumphant Major of May 1992.
Both took over as PM after the Conservatives had been office for a long time and were struggling.
Both ditched the baggage holding the party down (Poll Tax, Brexit faff).
Both were seen as reaching out in a way that other Tories couldn't. If you weren't around at the time, you might not believe it, but the soapbox thing worked.
Both pulled off remarkable victories against an opposition that wasn't really ready for office. Remember, Major's 14.1 million votes still hasn't been beaten.
Both were, in different ways, masters of the art of persuading people that they were on their side.
There are differences of course. Johnson has been much more ruthless at getting rid of potential bastards before they can cause him trouble.
But in 1992, people were saying the same things that they're saying now; that Britain will become like Japan with a single natural party of government. Ten more glorious Conservative years.
But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder.
For those of us that have followed politics for a long time (and indeed have had an interest in history) your last para is quite powerful:
"But then things happened, and Major's strengths that had helped him defy gravity became weaknesses that made the crash all the harder."
As you say, people forget the John Major of 1992, and for that matter the John Major of Gulf war 1. Johnson apologists should take note.
By the way, I once met Major, and to my surprise he was genuinely charismatic, and came across as a genuinely nice chap. It was also, mercifully before the news regarding Edwina came out!
Yes, Major was a much underrated PM. He is also the only party leader since universal suffrage in 1918 to win a general election after more than 10 consecutive years of his party in power.
Boris or Sunak would need to match that to be re elected in 2024
Major is a great bloke and all that but catastrophic with regard to: ERM, where we should never have entertained the idea of going in. The ERM was the forerunner of the Euro. If it had never started we would still be in the EU. If we had joined it the outlook is unthinkable.
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
I doubt that Starmer's 'Tory sleaze' redux (is Mandelson advising him?) will go anywhere. The transplant from the 1990s doesn't fit the world of the 2020s.
Why do you think lining your pockets with taxpayers money is ok in the 2020s?
Because the expected standards for conduct in public life are massively lower.
Latterly I've been struck by how many officials of all stripes in the UK are amenable to bit of fragrant grease - as the Chinese say.
That's interesting.
Can you give us a list of say 20 examples you have encountered personally in the UK in the last 3 years?
I am 59 and I cannot recall a single incident in my adult life where any official has ever indicated to me that some "fragrant grease" might aid the process along. Of course I don't live in Liverpool but it is just not a feature of public life in Britain in my experience. I have of course had to deal with officious and pedantic idiots who seemed to be creating problems for irrational reasons. Maybe I was just missing the signposts?
Our "corruption" seems to me to be at a different level. It is the appointment of like minded people to public bodies and publicly funded organisations, grants to those bodies who become beholden to and cheerleaders for those in charge, in more recent times contracts offered to chums without due diligence or competitive tendering, that sort of thing. We are a long way from perfect but just plain bribes or "thank you's"? Just never seen it.
Yesterday I had a call from someone in a Local Authority regarding our tender for some major works. He wanted to have a meeting about it outside Starbucks over a coffee.. This is an example of the signpost you are talking about.
This type of thing has been happening for decades and will always continue to happen. I could give hundreds of examples of where we do work on peoples houses for nothing, provide holidays, golf memberships etc etc as well as the good old brown envelope.
Keep a diary and a list; one day you might feel able to do the right thing.
Whats the right thing? Not do LA work ?
The most extreme example I can give is the rewiring of a Council Head Office. When the job came out to tender we were informed through the grapevine that Company A were going to win it and the tender exercise was just a front. Despite this we still decided to tender it.
One morning we received via email from the LA Procurement Department a congratulations letter that we had won the job.
Within an hour this award letter was withdrawn as a "mistake" had been made in the Procurement process.
What had actually happened was that a junior person in the Procurement Department was not in on the fix. On hearing the news that they had not won the job Company A called their man in the Procurement Department and the changes were made.
We complained but it got us nowhere.
This interests me.
Are these Senior Officers or Councillors?
Do you have any ideas how that would come under control? Or what causes it? Is it to do with Councils that never change hands, for example?
Clearly the last example you give would in any just world be somewhere between career ending and jail time for the corrupt official. And no more work for say a decade for the corrupt company.
Should this be overview and scrutiny operating better? Or just Senior Officers with a shred of personal integrity?
If it is true at all, it is surely mostly officers. For a councillor to be doing this, they have to instruct officers to do it, which broadens the conspiracy and risk, and they are only going to get away with this in a one-party rotten borough where the councillor holds the officer’s fate in their hands and there isn’t any opposition to be tipped off.
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
It's garbage messaging though.
Overall vaccines are going to do most of the heavy lifting in terms of herd immunity with infections around 16 million and vaccinations about 31 million right now. Lockdowns only delay things in terms of SEIR. Once you've got everyone vaxxed, boostered etc up you need to let the virus rip at that point or things will never end !
The reality is that the UK (and California and Israel) got their timings exactly right: lockdown to crush case numbers, combined with vaccines to prevent them rising quickly again.
If your case numbers are horrific, you simply can't vaccinated quickly enough to crush R.
The biggest mystery at the moment is how France's death rate is stable despite all their other figures. Was their earlier vaccination programme particularly well targetted?
I think there are probably three answers to that question:
1. The French health care system is excellent, with a great deal more capacity (especially intensive capacity) than we do 2. Deaths are understated, albeit they do ok on the excess death metrics 3. Unlike Spain or italy, there aren't that many intergenerational households and they may have done a better job of shielding oldies
Much lower obesity rates than the UK or US. That alone accounts for the lower IFR, IMO.
You don’t see many obese Italians, though, yet there are some in Germany, if not to the same level as UK or US. I doubt any single factor is to blame. People in France live further apart, both geographically and within housing units, than they do in Italy or Spain, for example.
A lot more intergenerational households in Italy and the obesity rate among men is much higher in Italy than in France and it does seem like COVID has a higher IFR in men than in women (though not necessarily causatively).
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
It's garbage messaging though.
Overall vaccines are going to do most of the heavy lifting in terms of herd immunity with infections around 16 million and vaccinations about 31 million right now. Lockdowns only delay things in terms of SEIR. Once you've got everyone vaxxed, boostered etc up you need to let the virus rip at that point or things will never end !
The reality is that the UK (and California and Israel) got their timings exactly right: lockdown to crush case numbers, combined with vaccines to prevent them rising quickly again.
If your case numbers are horrific, you simply can't vaccinated quickly enough to crush R.
The biggest mystery at the moment is how France's death rate is stable despite all their other figures. Was their earlier vaccination programme particularly well targetted?
I think there are probably three answers to that question:
1. The French health care system is excellent, with a great deal more capacity (especially intensive capacity) than we do 2. Deaths are understated, albeit they do ok on the excess death metrics 3. Unlike Spain or italy, there aren't that many intergenerational households and they may have done a better job of shielding oldies
Much lower obesity rates than the UK or US. That alone accounts for the lower IFR, IMO.
You don’t see many obese Italians, though, yet there are some in Germany, if not to the same level as UK or US. I doubt any single factor is to blame. People in France live further apart, both geographically and within housing units, than they do in Italy or Spain, for example.
A lot more intergenerational households in Italy and the obesity rate among men is much higher in Italy than in France and it does seem like COVID has a higher IFR in men than in women (though not necessarily causatively).
A quick Google via the oecd suggests France and Italy are pretty similar at around 10%
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
It's garbage messaging though.
Overall vaccines are going to do most of the heavy lifting in terms of herd immunity with infections around 16 million and vaccinations about 31 million right now. Lockdowns only delay things in terms of SEIR. Once you've got everyone vaxxed, boostered etc up you need to let the virus rip at that point or things will never end !
The reality is that the UK (and California and Israel) got their timings exactly right: lockdown to crush case numbers, combined with vaccines to prevent them rising quickly again.
If your case numbers are horrific, you simply can't vaccinated quickly enough to crush R.
The biggest mystery at the moment is how France's death rate is stable despite all their other figures. Was their earlier vaccination programme particularly well targetted?
I think there are probably three answers to that question:
1. The French health care system is excellent, with a great deal more capacity (especially intensive capacity) than we do 2. Deaths are understated, albeit they do ok on the excess death metrics 3. Unlike Spain or italy, there aren't that many intergenerational households and they may have done a better job of shielding oldies
Much lower obesity rates than the UK or US. That alone accounts for the lower IFR, IMO.
You don’t see many obese Italians, though, yet there are some in Germany, if not to the same level as UK or US. I doubt any single factor is to blame. People in France live further apart, both geographically and within housing units, than they do in Italy or Spain, for example.
A lot more intergenerational households in Italy and the obesity rate among men is much higher in Italy than in France and it does seem like COVID has a higher IFR in men than in women (though not necessarily causatively).
A quick Google via the oecd suggests France and Italy are pretty similar at around 10%
16% rate for men, 12% rate for women according to the WHO.
I think there will be some differences between countries due to health and population densities etc. But any large differences in data are likely to be due to dodgy data.
The French figures have looked dodgy all the way through this.
Germany did over 700k vaccinations again yesterday. They've picked things up significantly.
I think they made rule changes to remove the bureaucracy as we did at the beginning. It allows any medical type person to do the vaccinations rather than only specific people. I think I remember kamski saying that they were also shifting to a JiT dosing strategy as well to ensure maximum utilisation of vaccines.
Though the big factor remains supply, and a biggish increase in EU supply was always pretty likely about now, as Pfizer really got going.
Incidentally, what do you make of this guy's numbers? AIUI, he's taking the scraps of data that are in the public domain to work out what's going on with UK deliveries.
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
It's garbage messaging though.
Overall vaccines are going to do most of the heavy lifting in terms of herd immunity with infections around 16 million and vaccinations about 31 million right now. Lockdowns only delay things in terms of SEIR. Once you've got everyone vaxxed, boostered etc up you need to let the virus rip at that point or things will never end !
The reality is that the UK (and California and Israel) got their timings exactly right: lockdown to crush case numbers, combined with vaccines to prevent them rising quickly again.
If your case numbers are horrific, you simply can't vaccinated quickly enough to crush R.
The biggest mystery at the moment is how France's death rate is stable despite all their other figures. Was their earlier vaccination programme particularly well targetted?
I think there are probably three answers to that question:
1. The French health care system is excellent, with a great deal more capacity (especially intensive capacity) than we do 2. Deaths are understated, albeit they do ok on the excess death metrics 3. Unlike Spain or italy, there aren't that many intergenerational households and they may have done a better job of shielding oldies
Much lower obesity rates than the UK or US. That alone accounts for the lower IFR, IMO.
You don’t see many obese Italians, though, yet there are some in Germany, if not to the same level as UK or US. I doubt any single factor is to blame. People in France live further apart, both geographically and within housing units, than they do in Italy or Spain, for example.
A lot more intergenerational households in Italy and the obesity rate among men is much higher in Italy than in France and it does seem like COVID has a higher IFR in men than in women (though not necessarily causatively).
A quick Google via the oecd suggests France and Italy are pretty similar at around 10%
16% rate for men, 12% rate for women according to the WHO.
Wikipedia being the gospel says “ Overall, the Italians, along with the French and the Swiss, are considered among the slimmest people in Europe on average”, although that article could do with updating.
Kids eating too much pasta does seem to be an issue.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Surely not Laurence Fox?! He's pledged to scrap it. You wouldn't, would you? That would be the worst betrayal since..... I don't know when. Although I've no idea who you are, I'd never speak to you again anyway.
- I wouldn't vote "Lozza" if it came with a brand new merc let alone saving my old one. Ghastly ghastly character.
Not the most exciting election, though, I have to say. All manifestos except Khan's are totally irrelevant.
I'm sorry, but I simply cannot miss this opportunity to point out that Khan's is also irrelevant, given his track record of (not) keeping to the last one.
I'd say his main value - which is considerable - is to prevent any of the others getting the job.
Oh god, I might actually agree with you on that one!
Germany did over 700k vaccinations again yesterday. They've picked things up significantly.
I think they made rule changes to remove the bureaucracy as we did at the beginning. It allows any medical type person to do the vaccinations rather than only specific people. I think I remember kamski saying that they were also shifting to a JiT dosing strategy as well to ensure maximum utilisation of vaccines.
Though the big factor remains supply, and a biggish increase in EU supply was always pretty likely about now, as Pfizer really got going.
Incidentally, what do you make of this guy's numbers? AIUI, he's taking the scraps of data that are in the public domain to work out what's going on with UK deliveries.
It looks like an intelligent analysis, but I wouldn’t trust his stock estimate, as a small number derived from the difference between two estimated much larger numbers and an apparently arbitrary assumption around wastage, applied to one of the large numbers. Any small error in any of these three could change his stock on hand figure considerably.
He’s done a lot of work and the conclusion is basically that we’re on target? Hardly news
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
It's garbage messaging though.
Overall vaccines are going to do most of the heavy lifting in terms of herd immunity with infections around 16 million and vaccinations about 31 million right now. Lockdowns only delay things in terms of SEIR. Once you've got everyone vaxxed, boostered etc up you need to let the virus rip at that point or things will never end !
The reality is that the UK (and California and Israel) got their timings exactly right: lockdown to crush case numbers, combined with vaccines to prevent them rising quickly again.
If your case numbers are horrific, you simply can't vaccinated quickly enough to crush R.
The biggest mystery at the moment is how France's death rate is stable despite all their other figures. Was their earlier vaccination programme particularly well targetted?
I think there are probably three answers to that question:
1. The French health care system is excellent, with a great deal more capacity (especially intensive capacity) than we do 2. Deaths are understated, albeit they do ok on the excess death metrics 3. Unlike Spain or italy, there aren't that many intergenerational households and they may have done a better job of shielding oldies
On the 19th May 2020 France managed to raise 217 souls from the dead. Truly remarkable.
Every data item I've ever seen out of a French company has been absolute garbage and I don't expect their government or other public bodies to be any better.
That's a terrible story. Why is this just a Brazilian story? Is it? Are children being affected elsewhere like this?
It's certainly something for those who want to accelerate the end of lockdown to think about.
Yes, something doesn't add up. Three answers:
1 The story is simply wrong
2 The Brazilian variant is so uniquely awful it also kills babies (but we know the Brazilian variant is elsewhere, too, so surely it would be killing babes elsewhere, as well?
3 Babies ARE dying of Covid elsewhere, but no one has recorded it, either because they missed it, or out of a desire not to freak out parents
I fear the answer is 3, I hope it is 1. 2 doesn't make sense
Quite a few things of concern in that story:
It focuses on one tragic case about a rare syndrome in children (MIS) that results in a extreme immune response to the virus.
The 1300 babies figure is a guess arrived at by assumption and extrapolation.
Brazil's children are more at risk due socioeconomic, ethnicity and healthcare factors.
So, no, I don't think it gives me pause for thought about accelerating the ending of the UK's lockdown.
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Old classic cars are exempt, so you could just keep it and wait...
That's a thought actually! 25 years from now it could come right into its own. Envy of all.
I have a friend who has an SL350. The car used to belong to Hugh Laurie when he was a young Londoner.
Really? Gosh. I wonder if that provenance is sufficient to add value. Some of Steve McQueen's cars are worth millions. Ok so Hugh Laurie isn't Steve McQueen, hard to see him as the Cooler King, but still he's pretty famous, especially after that "House" show went ballistic in the US.
I wondered the same. But it’s academic as she doesn’t want to part with it.
My fiddling about with old car days are long gone, my having nursed a 1972 Sunbeam Rapier fastback as my first car from 1987 through to 1998.
Ah no I could never get into old cars in that sense. If the bonnet comes up once a year that's once too often for me. Which is where these 80s and 90s mercs really score. Built to last. I also love that everything is low tech. No "e" or computer stuff. Real keys go into real holes. Turn the main one and ... brum brum.
I don't understand how 1,300 babies can die of Covid in Brazil. And yet I've not read reports of this happening anywhere else in the world.
Either the Brazilian variant is uniquely bad, or there are infant deaths from Covid happening everywhere, but going unnoticed/unreported.
Or they died for other reasons but tested positive for COVID. Brazil doesn't have the best record on infant mortality.
Let's hope you're right. Could well be. All the alternatives are intolerable
Or option 4 - there have simply been so many Covid cases in Brazil, way more than recorded by testing, that an infinitesimally small fraction of cases leading to mortality in children (coupled with comorbidities like malnutrition and poor healthcare referenced in the BBC article) means a big absolute number.
Brazil has recorded 360,000 Covid19 deaths. And now 1,300 deaths in babies.
It's a very small fraction: 0.3%, but it's not "infinitesimally small"
Britain has had 127,000 deaths, the equivalent here would be 400 dead babies
In America it would be 2,000 dead babies
It's horrible to speak in these crude terms, but those deaths would DEFINITELY be noticed, as being so cruel
Though its worth noting that Brazil has a relatively high infant mortality rate at the best of times.
In 2019 their infant mortality rate was 12.4 per 1000 live births.
And I wouldn't be surprised if total Covid mortality is much higher than the 360,000 either (will check excess deaths stats if they exist).
All in all it seems unlikely this is down to an epidemiological cause particularly as a lot of the baby deaths were in the first wave. Must presumably be mainly down to social factors, healthcare system, pre-existing health etc. Kind of the reverse of explanations for France's low CFR.
Which doesn't make it any less awful to consider, but probably reduces the fear in the West that this would be replicated elsewhere because of some feature of the P1 variant.
Germany did over 700k vaccinations again yesterday. They've picked things up significantly.
I think they made rule changes to remove the bureaucracy as we did at the beginning. It allows any medical type person to do the vaccinations rather than only specific people. I think I remember kamski saying that they were also shifting to a JiT dosing strategy as well to ensure maximum utilisation of vaccines.
Though the big factor remains supply, and a biggish increase in EU supply was always pretty likely about now, as Pfizer really got going.
Incidentally, what do you make of this guy's numbers? AIUI, he's taking the scraps of data that are in the public domain to work out what's going on with UK deliveries.
I think Moderna will probably come a bit faster and Novavax have publicly said they will commence deliveries in early May. Their CEO has confirmed this to investors twice and the GSK partnership has already commenced for delivery of the first doses in May. That should bring the schedule forwards by about 4-6 weeks compared to what he has got IMO.
One of the major differences between the UK scheme and others is that take up is in the mid 90s for each age group once completed. It's actually quite a big factor in getting more groups covered faster and why under 30s might need to wait until June rather than mid-May.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Old classic cars are exempt, so you could just keep it and wait...
That's a thought actually! 25 years from now it could come right into its own. Envy of all.
I have a friend who has an SL350. The car used to belong to Hugh Laurie when he was a young Londoner.
Really? Gosh. I wonder if that provenance is sufficient to add value. Some of Steve McQueen's cars are worth millions. Ok so Hugh Laurie isn't Steve McQueen, hard to see him as the Cooler King, but still he's pretty famous, especially after that "House" show went ballistic in the US.
I wondered the same. But it’s academic as she doesn’t want to part with it.
My fiddling about with old car days are long gone, my having nursed a 1972 Sunbeam Rapier fastback as my first car from 1987 through to 1998.
Ah no I could never get into old cars in that sense. If the bonnet comes up once a year that's once too often for me. Which is where these 80s and 90s mercs really score. Built to last. I also love that everything is low tech. No "e" or computer stuff. Real keys go into real holes. Turn the main one and ... brum brum.
That’s odd, because her SL is way ahead of its time in terms of tech. Not compared with nowadays, of course, but it must have been very advanced when it was made in the 70s, compared to my old sunbeam made in Derby during the dying days of the UK car industry. When the same body parts turned to rust having been replaced once, I knew its time was up.
She reckons her car is worth £35,000. I advertised mine for £50 for parts or free for restoration, and gave it to a guy down in Margate who did an amazing job restoring it to good as new. But he was the sort of guy who would be driving it twice a year at thirty miles an hour to an exhibition, whereas I had taken it onto the beach at the Med and over to the west coast of Ireland, and kept it on the street along the Archway Road.
Latest PHE vaccine data is out. As of Sunday, 94.8% of over 50s have received at least one dose. Just extraordinary. Even when vaccines are not supply constrained, that’s a figure that will be the envy of almost everywhere in the world.
There were also a whisker under 7 million 18-49s with at least one dose in England, getting on for one third more or less. And we’re now at about 70% of over 75s with two doses.
Given the efficacy against hospitalisation and death is essentially 100% even from one dose, I think we really can say, Covid-19 is done for in this country. Especially so since perhaps a third of fatal infections were acquired in hospital and the number of frontline medical staff vaccinated is also now in the mid to high 90 percents.
You could randomly pick a dozen over 50s and quite happily let them have an indoor swinging party now I reckon.
Not from one dose, unfortunately. As well as the SIREN studies
The Israelis have confirmed the above in real life results.
(NB - the second dose hospitalisation figure has massive confidence intervals due to the low numbers involved; it is perfectly feasible that your statement could still be true for second-dose-plus-14 days).
But 1 dose and 3-5 weeks gives: - infections down 60% - Hospitalisations down 80% - Deaths down 85%
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
You still don't get it do you?
It's about presentation. Andy, TLG and I have all suggested ways he could have presented it better.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has not been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Was his opening gambit. The qualification was added as an afterthought:
First rule of PR: If you are explaining, you are losing.
Well we'll see. I think the public are more intelligent than you give them credit for.
You seem to have been reduced to arguing that the message was correct but the spin was not good. I have no intention to argue against that.
Lets see if there's any actual polling or other evidence to show a decline in vaccine take-up after those remarks. If there isn't, its all much ado about nothing.
But, Philip, half of the country remains terrified when there is no reason for it. It's not a question of intelligence but many people do listen to what government (via the media) says and take it at face value.
These are people that we will need to "unterrify" to have any chance of getting back to normal. Rather than doubling down on the negativity, at this stage in the pandemic the government needs to shift to a communications strategy that underpins rather than undermines the recovery. Boris had a glorious opportunity to signal a change in messaging but he failed to do that. I assume it was deliberate because the government remains in thrall to SAGE (whose models and assumptions are questionable to say the least).
But he did change the messaging.
The whole point of his message, as its been for months now, is that even if cases rise then do not panic. That the link between cases and deaths/hospitalisations has been broken. That is a good message to get out there, or do you think that message shouldn't be made?
I agree - that is a great message. Why is it not being heard? Lots of reasons:
His delivery sucks Government media management sucks It's being drowned out by contradictory messaging (e.g. the radio ads) It's being undermined by government action (e.g. one-way ratchet on ending lockdown, dates not data)
You seem to be saying that the government messaging is positive. Frankly, that's laughable. The messaging needs to be negative to keep us locked down until June 21st no matter the data and I find that inexcusable.
Just read through my booklet of London Mayor candidates and noticed that one of them is pledging to scrap the extension of the ULEZ car pollution zone! This will (if they win) save me having to do something I'm dreading; sell my old merc that has been with me since 1994 and never given a moment's trouble. It's rare for an election to be capable of delivering such an immediate and tangible personal benefit to me.
Old classic cars are exempt, so you could just keep it and wait...
That's a thought actually! 25 years from now it could come right into its own. Envy of all.
I have a friend who has an SL350. The car used to belong to Hugh Laurie when he was a young Londoner.
Really? Gosh. I wonder if that provenance is sufficient to add value. Some of Steve McQueen's cars are worth millions. Ok so Hugh Laurie isn't Steve McQueen, hard to see him as the Cooler King, but still he's pretty famous, especially after that "House" show went ballistic in the US.
I wondered the same. But it’s academic as she doesn’t want to part with it.
My fiddling about with old car days are long gone, my having nursed a 1972 Sunbeam Rapier fastback as my first car from 1987 through to 1998.
Ah no I could never get into old cars in that sense. If the bonnet comes up once a year that's once too often for me. Which is where these 80s and 90s mercs really score. Built to last. I also love that everything is low tech. No "e" or computer stuff. Real keys go into real holes. Turn the main one and ... brum brum.
I once worked on an R107 SL and the quality of the materials was amazingly high. I'd be amazed if MB made a profit selling it. It did drive like dog shit though. You can pretty much tell the exact moment MB gave up on quality as the defining brand value with the launch of the W211 E class.
Speaking to a New Yorker recently. Restaurants have been at 25% capacity for some time; now at 50%. Ho hum...
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
We're going to get there. I think there are now enough Tory MPs to force Boris into a full unlockdown fuck the consequences in June becuase the vaccine programme is producing the right results. Fearties like Leon and others will just have to live with a few unvaccinated people in restaurants and theatres.
Germany did over 700k vaccinations again yesterday. They've picked things up significantly.
I think they made rule changes to remove the bureaucracy as we did at the beginning. It allows any medical type person to do the vaccinations rather than only specific people. I think I remember kamski saying that they were also shifting to a JiT dosing strategy as well to ensure maximum utilisation of vaccines.
Latest PHE vaccine data is out. As of Sunday, 94.8% of over 50s have received at least one dose. Just extraordinary. Even when vaccines are not supply constrained, that’s a figure that will be the envy of almost everywhere in the world.
There were also a whisker under 7 million 18-49s with at least one dose in England, getting on for one third more or less. And we’re now at about 70% of over 75s with two doses.
Given the efficacy against hospitalisation and death is essentially 100% even from one dose, I think we really can say, Covid-19 is done for in this country. Especially so since perhaps a third of fatal infections were acquired in hospital and the number of frontline medical staff vaccinated is also now in the mid to high 90 percents.
You could randomly pick a dozen over 50s and quite happily let them have an indoor swinging party now I reckon.
Not from one dose, unfortunately. As well as the SIREN studies
The Israelis have confirmed the above in real life results.
(NB - the second dose hospitalisation figure has massive confidence intervals due to the low numbers involved; it is perfectly feasible that your statement could still be true for second-dose-plus-14 days).
But 1 dose and 3-5 weeks gives: - infections down 60% - Hospitalisations down 80% - Deaths down 85%
Which is fantastic, but shouldn't be oversold.
It would be interested to see a study into the cumulative reduction in hospitalisation risk with just one dose and add in the reduction in infection risk because of lower virus prevalence. It could actually be in the mid to high 90s.
We seem to be back to the lockdown fanatics actively seeking bad news. Not helped by the moronic intervention by Boris earlier in the week – probably the most stupid thing he has said since this shitshow began.
Typical hyperbole from you.
Hysterical, attention-seeking nonsense.
A wise person once said that
FFS, get a brain of your own. Drop the partisan fanboy stuff. Please.
I do have one of my own, thank you very much, and as a result I don't need to outsource my thinking to the Spectator. I'm just not a hysteric. Nothing bad is going to happen because Boris dared to defy Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown.
Anabobazina's personal fatwah against ever acknowledging the efficacy of lockdown
Idiotic post, I'm doing no such thing. I'm criticising Boris' moronic presentation – read my posts.
I do read your posts, and I understand what they actually mean. You're so obsessed with our never entering lockdown ever again that you think just mentioning the subject in public makes it more likely to happen; but it doesn't. We locked down because we had to, and if we ever have to again, we'll do so in the future. I hope it doesn't happen just as much as you do, but them's the facts.
People have quoted Boris' words to you, which say that the public have to learn to accept more cases as we unlock; the posters on here who have the most epidemiological knowledge pointed out at the time that there was nothing wrong with the statement, not least because we're still some distance from full herd immunity; but you still think disaster is coming because the PM acknowledged scientific facts in a balanced way. I'm not trying to be harsh, but surely you can see that your perspective isn't entirely rational.
Wrong.
His presentation of it was terrible – I'm not talking about 'epidemiological knowledge', I am talking about messaging.
You clearly know nothing about PR, is my conclusion.
To be precise, your conclusion is that Boris knows nothing about PR, which is provably untrue.
He might know about it, but he cocks it up too frequently by failing to engage brain before opening mouth.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has NOT been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Which is 100% correct, yes.
WRONG.
Some of the reduction IS due to the vaccines, a non-trivial portion of it in fact.
So actually, it's crap messaging and it's inaccurate.
He said some was. 🤦♂️
You took that out of his remarks. You editing what he said to exclude that doesn't mean he didn't say it.
All he needed to say was “alone” at the end of that sentence. Pretty poor that he didn’t.
From the quote Anabob gave before:
Yes, of course, the vaccination programme has helped. But the bulk of the work in reducing the disease has been done by the lockdown.
Its true. 🤷♂️
You still don't get it do you?
It's about presentation. Andy, TLG and I have all suggested ways he could have presented it better.
"But it is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers - in hospitalisations and in deaths and infections - has not been achieved by the vaccination programme."
Was his opening gambit. The qualification was added as an afterthought:
First rule of PR: If you are explaining, you are losing.
Well we'll see. I think the public are more intelligent than you give them credit for.
You seem to have been reduced to arguing that the message was correct but the spin was not good. I have no intention to argue against that.
Lets see if there's any actual polling or other evidence to show a decline in vaccine take-up after those remarks. If there isn't, its all much ado about nothing.
But, Philip, half of the country remains terrified when there is no reason for it. It's not a question of intelligence but many people do listen to what government (via the media) says and take it at face value.
These are people that we will need to "unterrify" to have any chance of getting back to normal. Rather than doubling down on the negativity, at this stage in the pandemic the government needs to shift to a communications strategy that underpins rather than undermines the recovery. Boris had a glorious opportunity to signal a change in messaging but he failed to do that. I assume it was deliberate because the government remains in thrall to SAGE (whose models and assumptions are questionable to say the least).
But he did change the messaging.
The whole point of his message, as its been for months now, is that even if cases rise then do not panic. That the link between cases and deaths/hospitalisations has been broken. That is a good message to get out there, or do you think that message shouldn't be made?
I agree - that is a great message. Why is it not being heard? Lots of reasons:
His delivery sucks Government media management sucks It's being drowned out by contradictory messaging (e.g. the radio ads) It's being undermined by government action (e.g. one-way ratchet on ending lockdown, dates not data)
You seem to be saying that the government messaging is positive. Frankly, that's laughable. The messaging needs to be negative to keep us locked down until June 21st no matter the data and I find that inexcusable.
The underlying rationale, as I understand it from @Andy_Cooke's very helpful posts yesterday, is that our current ability to suppress R through immunity (the R impairment rate) comes in at about a factor of 2 right now. By mid-May, it'll rise to 2.5, then shoot up after that point until late June, which is when it hits the 4.5 or so that we need to suppress transmission without restrictions.
If anyone wants to amend that analysis with their own data, please go ahead. But as it stands, it seems to back up the existing timetable quite closely.
Thank you very much @AnneJGP and everyone else who have posted congratulations since my last acknowledgment.
I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck in.
Getting going - a start - can be the hardest thing too. My son had a difficult time post grad finding anything with prospects. Did eventually but it was a worrying period. Longer it goes on, harder it gets. So, yes, nice one. All a piece of cake from here.
Why would you give such crap advice? Although I appreciate you must have been affected with your son but leave that baggage at home. So to speak.
@Gallowgate - when you are starting out in a new career your every move must be made on the assumption that 20 people are after your job and have interviewed for it that morning.
Nope. Getting "in" can be the biggest hurdle of all. Perfectly serious and sincere comment. Phrasing of the last bit was obviously (I'd hope) light hearted.
Stop trying to be "wise" and bossy. You not in the army now.
It's difficult not to appear wise when discussing stuff with you.
I'll try though, promise.
- Wise is actually fine. But not bossy. Try not to be so bossy.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
Excellent. A bet. We are on PB after all. How much?
Yikes, even higher?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
How much?
I sense you're dying to tell me now! But you've missed the moment. Will the chance come again? It might.
"Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?"
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
You're being a little odd now. How much what for what?
How much?
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
You seem to have gone all weird, Colonel Topping. I'm getting a bit scared now.
Surely given the number of humans on the planet we must produce quite a bit too. How long before this will be the latest green trend to reduce flatulence?
Germany did over 700k vaccinations again yesterday. They've picked things up significantly.
I think they made rule changes to remove the bureaucracy as we did at the beginning. It allows any medical type person to do the vaccinations rather than only specific people. I think I remember kamski saying that they were also shifting to a JiT dosing strategy as well to ensure maximum utilisation of vaccines.
You can use it to back out vaccine inventories by type and by country.
The big take away that I see is that Moderna is ramping up more quickly in the EU than I'd expected.
Yes, that's good for us too as we're due 17m of them which will cover 8.5m under 50s. Novavax is the big question marks I've heard their data came in slower than expected due to crashing incidence rates in the UK but their final submission to the MHRA and FDA has now been made and approval is expected imminently, deliveries to follow about two weeks later for the UK and about four weeks later for the US.
Comments
The behaviour of the media and some politicians on this issue has been, quite frankly, a disgrace.
https://news.yahoo.com/ukraine-slams-russias-open-threats-110557394.html
We know that other mammal SPECIES can get Covid19....
I hope and pray this story is wrong in some fundamental way, or missing some crucial point
Can't imagine any country will willingly do the same in the future.
Wtf does this guy know about supply chain finance?
What a fking sleazy establishment we have.
Bet you were a full Colonel, weren't you?
79,117 292,383
18,763 10,695
If your case numbers are horrific, you simply can't vaccinated quickly enough to crush R.
I was one of those 117,835.
Knocked the stuffing out of me overnight with fevers, chills and aches, but bouncing back now.
There was a story here about a young child getting very ill with Covid, after displaying unusual (for adults) symptoms. The single cases will happen, sadly (low risk, not no risk and there are a lot of babies) but the more important question is whether risk in the very young may be higher than has been thought.
I’m bloody angry about this.
Grr
There were also a whisker under 7 million 18-49s with at least one dose in England, getting on for one third more or less. And we’re now at about 70% of over 75s with two doses.
Given the efficacy against hospitalisation and death is essentially 100% even from one dose, I think we really can say, Covid-19 is done for in this country. Especially so since perhaps a third of fatal infections were acquired in hospital and the number of frontline medical staff vaccinated is also now in the mid to high 90 percents.
You could randomly pick a dozen over 50s and quite happily let them have an indoor swinging party now I reckon.
There is also the question of whether a Jaffa cake is a cake or a biscuit. Millions hang on the answer.
But my recent fave is this between a tattoo parlour and a cactus retailer on the subject of the word 'prick'. Prick Tattoo Parlour v Prick me Baby One More Time. You just couldn't make it up:
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/IPEC/2018/776.html
You live in a country where you can rent a top policeman.....
This plan, though simple, is revolutionary. It has the potential to substantially increase tax revenues. It stops the race to the bottom observed in recent decades, in which countries compete to attract multinationals by offering ever lower tax rates – bad news for tax havens such as Bermuda, good news for the rest of us. If countries want to compete to attract multinationals, it will have to be on quality of infrastructure or education of the workforce – things that citizens also value. US backing means this may actually happen.
Earlier on, it was blanket bans on partners, as far as I understand, which may have been necessary, but is sad in itself. I cannot imagine not having been there for the birth of my children - I know that was relatively commonplace just a generation or two ago (my dad wasn't present at my birth and my mum wouldn't have wanted him there!)
Where were those sheep?
The mad thing is that she was born tiny, she was too small for most of her newborn clothes and we needed to get some tiny baby clothes to fit her, and all the nurses etc said she didn't look 7lb 11oz but nobody thought to double-check it. The day after home visit we got we asked the lady who came to weigh her and she said they had a policy of not doing so so she wouldn't though she too said she didn't look 7lb 11; she was then the same person who did the 2 week weigh in and was very nasty about it saying "how did you not notice she's lost over 20% of her weight" when she clearly hadn't. She admitted her to the hospital and people kept giving us funny looks until the head doctor of the unit saw her and said "that's not a baby that's lost 20% of her weight, you can see that by looking at her" that people stopped treating us funny.
Was not a very pleasant experience at all. I'd definitely recommend first time parents in future to supervise the weigh-in but its not something I'd thought about and I was with my wife while the midwife did that.
1. The French health care system is excellent, with a great deal more capacity (especially intensive capacity) than we do
2. Deaths are understated, albeit they do ok on the excess death metrics
3. Unlike Spain or italy, there aren't that many intergenerational households and they may have done a better job of shielding oldies
(Am I doing this "Getting behind the project" thing right?)
My fiddling about with old car days are long gone, my having nursed a 1972 Sunbeam Rapier fastback as my first car from 1987 through to 1998.
These are people that we will need to "unterrify" to have any chance of getting back to normal. Rather than doubling down on the negativity, at this stage in the pandemic the government needs to shift to a communications strategy that underpins rather than undermines the recovery. Boris had a glorious opportunity to signal a change in messaging but he failed to do that. I assume it was deliberate because the government remains in thrall to SAGE (whose models and assumptions are questionable to say the least).
Are these Senior Officers or Councillors?
Do you have any ideas how that would come under control? Or what causes it? Is it to do with Councils that never change hands, for example?
Clearly the last example you give would in any just world be somewhere between career ending and jail time for the corrupt official. And no more work for say a decade for the corrupt company.
Should this be overview and scrutiny operating better? Or just Senior Officers with a shred of personal integrity?
Maybe best if I don't know then. It'll get in the way.
The whole point of his message, as its been for months now, is that even if cases rise then do not panic. That the link between cases and deaths/hospitalisations has been broken. That is a good message to get out there, or do you think that message shouldn't be made?
How much?
First Vaccinations
Under 50 26.01%
50-54 82.14%
55-59 85.47%
60-64 88.08%
65-69 90.93%
70-74 93.56%
75-79 94.59%
80+ 93.92%
Remaining unvaccinated
Under 50 19,877,311
50-54 749,749
55-59 589,305
60-64 409,929
65-69 262,152
70-74 185,681
75-79 113,426
80+ 174,804
Biden tells Congress he's "declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States posed by specified harmful foreign activities of the Government of the Russian Federation."
https://twitter.com/MarQs__/status/1382686771536916488
ussia Today editor-in-chief says "returning Donbass home could be considered an asymmetric response" to recent #US sanctions on #Russia
Quote Tweet
And Maastricht. From today's perspective the idea of a Treaty in which every person in the EU becomes an EU citizen is big and bold. It ought to have been vetoed immediately to signal what the UKs long term goals were. But if acceptable to a government (and of course real as opposed to tactical opposition only came from the Tory right and a handful of Labour traditionalists) a referendum should have been the minimum qualification.
It has taken decades to sort both nation and Tory party from this sorry mess.
My post was meant to be vaguely amusing, not taken seriously.
The French figures have looked dodgy all the way through this.
Incidentally, what do you make of this guy's numbers? AIUI, he's taking the scraps of data that are in the public domain to work out what's going on with UK deliveries.
https://twitter.com/PaulMainwood/status/1382249490422333441?s=20
Kids eating too much pasta does seem to be an issue.
He’s done a lot of work and the conclusion is basically that we’re on target? Hardly news
We happen to be on a betting site. How much?
It focuses on one tragic case about a rare syndrome in children (MIS) that results in a extreme immune response to the virus.
The 1300 babies figure is a guess arrived at by assumption and extrapolation.
Brazil's children are more at risk due socioeconomic, ethnicity and healthcare factors.
So, no, I don't think it gives me pause for thought about accelerating the ending of the UK's lockdown.
All in all it seems unlikely this is down to an epidemiological cause particularly as a lot of the baby deaths were in the first wave. Must presumably be mainly down to social factors, healthcare system, pre-existing health etc. Kind of the reverse of explanations for France's low CFR.
Which doesn't make it any less awful to consider, but probably reduces the fear in the West that this would be replicated elsewhere because of some feature of the P1 variant.
One of the major differences between the UK scheme and others is that take up is in the mid 90s for each age group once completed. It's actually quite a big factor in getting more groups covered faster and why under 30s might need to wait until June rather than mid-May.
If you have decided against that's fine just say so.
She reckons her car is worth £35,000. I advertised mine for £50 for parts or free for restoration, and gave it to a guy down in Margate who did an amazing job restoring it to good as new. But he was the sort of guy who would be driving it twice a year at thirty miles an hour to an exhibition, whereas I had taken it onto the beach at the Med and over to the west coast of Ireland, and kept it on the street along the Archway Road.
As well as the SIREN studies
The Israelis have confirmed the above in real life results.
(NB - the second dose hospitalisation figure has massive confidence intervals due to the low numbers involved; it is perfectly feasible that your statement could still be true for second-dose-plus-14 days).
But 1 dose and 3-5 weeks gives:
- infections down 60%
- Hospitalisations down 80%
- Deaths down 85%
Which is fantastic, but shouldn't be oversold.
His delivery sucks
Government media management sucks
It's being drowned out by contradictory messaging (e.g. the radio ads)
It's being undermined by government action (e.g. one-way ratchet on ending lockdown, dates not data)
You seem to be saying that the government messaging is positive. Frankly, that's laughable. The messaging needs to be negative to keep us locked down until June 21st no matter the data and I find that inexcusable.
Edit: other than that, most of NY is operative including cinemas, etc.
East of England. 96%
London. 86.7%
Midlands. 95.5%
NE&Yorks. 95.7%
North West. 94.9%
South East. 96%
South West. 96.9%
England. 94.8%
Denominator ONS19 I think
You can use it to back out vaccine inventories by type and by country.
The big take away that I see is that Moderna is ramping up more quickly in the EU than I'd expected.
If anyone wants to amend that analysis with their own data, please go ahead. But as it stands, it seems to back up the existing timetable quite closely.
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1382705905570041863
Surely given the number of humans on the planet we must produce quite a bit too. How long before this will be the latest green trend to reduce flatulence?