Awful, awful poll - and probably the worst result possible for Labour. Somehow doing worse than Corbyn in 2019. Which is why I am deeply sceptical.
However, I think it's beyond doubt that the Tories are significantly ahead, vaccines are going well and the economy is reopening. They have not been "incompetent" for quite a long time, in fact I have forgotten when the last real incompetent moment has come out from them.
And so far Labour, they need to dump Dodds immediately and replace her with Reeves. Starmer needs to continue reforming Labour for the better and into an opposition that the country can respect. That takes time - but he is doing that slowly.
As I've said before, if his achievement is Kinnock-style/Smith-style preparation for a future win then so be it. That's sometimes the game you have to play.
I stand by the idea Starmer was still the best candidate and nobody else would be doing better.
Morning all. On topic. I'd pass either way on those Biden bets. It's a medical and actuarial play and I'm not motivated to study that in the detail needed to work out where the value is. For now I stick to laying Trump and Trumpery. He's over. He might not realize it yet, ditto many who either love or fear him, but he is.
On another matter, I've just taken a look at the guest list for the Duke's funeral and I'm pleased to see there’s a place for Prince Richard, the Duke of Gloucester. In all the hubbub around the Royals, especially in recent times, it’s easily forgotten that there are individuals like this, like Prince Richard the Duke of Gloucester, who just go calmly about their business, doing what they do, with no fuss, no ego, no special uniform, never troubling the tabloids or the rolling news. I’d actually never even heard of this chap, that’s how quietly effective he’s been in whatever role he has in the grand scheme of things.
All the Gloucesters are very non-descript.
The Kents are easier:
Duke - tall, bald, tennis, wife is nice Prince Michael - looks like the last Czar, wife is not nice
Morning all. On topic. I'd pass either way on those Biden bets. It's a medical and actuarial play and I'm not motivated to study that in the detail needed to work out where the value is. For now I stick to laying Trump and Trumpery. He's over. He might not realize it yet, ditto many who either love or fear him, but he is.
On another matter, I've just taken a look at the guest list for the Duke's funeral and I'm pleased to see there’s a place for Prince Richard, the Duke of Gloucester. In all the hubbub around the Royals, especially in recent times, it’s easily forgotten that there are individuals like this, like Prince Richard the Duke of Gloucester, who just go calmly about their business, doing what they do, with no fuss, no ego, no special uniform, never troubling the tabloids or the rolling news. I’d actually never even heard of this chap, that’s how quietly effective he’s been in whatever role he has in the grand scheme of things.
Cornwall, Wessex, Cambridge, Gloucester, Kent - what happened to levelling up for the North? And a massive snub to Andy Burnham, King of the North, wars have been started over less.
Its really just as well that there are not postal votes being sent out for a series of important elections across the UK right now. That could have been potentially disastrous.
And Boris is writing personal letters to Welsh voters, as Prime Minister, personally endorsing the Conservative candidate and highlighting the vaccine success and 22 years of labour failure
Call me a cynic but I am a bit suspicious about that. Over the last couple of years Boris has been writing to me fairly regularly. Its all quite chummy, David, Boris, that sort of thing and personally signed by him but I have become increasingly suspicious that he is sending very similar letters to a lot of other people. It might even be possible that he doesn't think about me at all 😢
I am coping with this but it was a disappointment.
You have to put the effort into a relationship. Write back. “Dear Boris all that stands between us and a Labour Gvt is you sending me twenty quid”.
Morning all. On topic. I'd pass either way on those Biden bets. It's a medical and actuarial play and I'm not motivated to study that in the detail needed to work out where the value is. For now I stick to laying Trump and Trumpery. He's over. He might not realize it yet, ditto many who either love or fear him, but he is.
On another matter, I've just taken a look at the guest list for the Duke's funeral and I'm pleased to see there’s a place for Prince Richard, the Duke of Gloucester. In all the hubbub around the Royals, especially in recent times, it’s easily forgotten that there are individuals like this, like Prince Richard the Duke of Gloucester, who just go calmly about their business, doing what they do, with no fuss, no ego, no special uniform, never troubling the tabloids or the rolling news. I’d actually never even heard of this chap, that’s how quietly effective he’s been in whatever role he has in the grand scheme of things.
Cornwall, Wessex, Cambridge, Gloucester, Kent - what happened to levelling up for the North? And a massive snub to Andy Burnham, King of the North, wars have been started over less.
Well look what happens when we try and level up with a northern Duke... *cough* York *cough*
Morning all. On topic. I'd pass either way on those Biden bets. It's a medical and actuarial play and I'm not motivated to study that in the detail needed to work out where the value is. For now I stick to laying Trump and Trumpery. He's over. He might not realize it yet, ditto many who either love or fear him, but he is.
On another matter, I've just taken a look at the guest list for the Duke's funeral and I'm pleased to see there’s a place for Prince Richard, the Duke of Gloucester. In all the hubbub around the Royals, especially in recent times, it’s easily forgotten that there are individuals like this, like Prince Richard the Duke of Gloucester, who just go calmly about their business, doing what they do, with no fuss, no ego, no special uniform, never troubling the tabloids or the rolling news. I’d actually never even heard of this chap, that’s how quietly effective he’s been in whatever role he has in the grand scheme of things.
Cornwall, Wessex, Cambridge, Gloucester, Kent - what happened to levelling up for the North? And a massive snub to Andy Burnham, King of the North, wars have been started over less.
Well look what happens when we try and level up with a northern Duke... *cough* York *cough*
Its really just as well that there are not postal votes being sent out for a series of important elections across the UK right now. That could have been potentially disastrous.
And Boris is writing personal letters to Welsh voters, as Prime Minister, personally endorsing the Conservative candidate and highlighting the vaccine success and 22 years of labour failure
Call me a cynic but I am a bit suspicious about that. Over the last couple of years Boris has been writing to me fairly regularly. Its all quite chummy, David, Boris, that sort of thing and personally signed by him but I have become increasingly suspicious that he is sending very similar letters to a lot of other people. It might even be possible that he doesn't think about me at all 😢
I am coping with this but it was a disappointment.
You have to put the effort into a relationship. Write back. “Dear Boris all that stands between us and a Labour Gvt is you sending me twenty quid”.
Its really just as well that there are not postal votes being sent out for a series of important elections across the UK right now. That could have been potentially disastrous.
And Boris is writing personal letters to Welsh voters, as Prime Minister, personally endorsing the Conservative candidate and highlighting the vaccine success and 22 years of labour failure
But Boris Johnson trails Mark Drakeford in the leader ratings Wales.
Those letters will be damaging to Tory prospects in Wales.
Given how bad you say Mark Drakeford is surely it must worry you that Boris Johnson trails Drakeford in Wales?
Wilson's Labour extended from the broad working class popular-patriotism to *the Beatles and the Open University", that post of mine should have said below, before it was cut off.
Going by this poll and others, it's clear that Starmer's strategy is not working yet, but that's hardly surprising at the moment.
My take is that in seeking to appeal to the 'patriots' and the centre ground he is alienating both the young and the Corbynistas, who are not interested in flags etc. So these are indicating voting for Greens, largely, though he can win them back. And his acceptance of Brexit is leading to some remainers drifting to the Lib Dems. At the same time, his new approach hasn't yet cut through with the white working class, who remain pro-Tory. The only consolation is that the Tory vote isn't increasing significantly.
It's a long-term strategy. It's not working yet, but I wouldn't expect it to as we celebrate vaccines and the loosening of restrictions. Patience is a virtue.
Morning all. On topic. I'd pass either way on those Biden bets. It's a medical and actuarial play and I'm not motivated to study that in the detail needed to work out where the value is. For now I stick to laying Trump and Trumpery. He's over. He might not realize it yet, ditto many who either love or fear him, but he is.
On another matter, I've just taken a look at the guest list for the Duke's funeral and I'm pleased to see there’s a place for Prince Richard, the Duke of Gloucester. In all the hubbub around the Royals, especially in recent times, it’s easily forgotten that there are individuals like this, like Prince Richard the Duke of Gloucester, who just go calmly about their business, doing what they do, with no fuss, no ego, no special uniform, never troubling the tabloids or the rolling news. I’d actually never even heard of this chap, that’s how quietly effective he’s been in whatever role he has in the grand scheme of things.
Cornwall, Wessex, Cambridge, Gloucester, Kent - what happened to levelling up for the North? And a massive snub to Andy Burnham, King of the North, wars have been started over less.
Well look what happens when we try and level up with a northern Duke... *cough* York *cough*
The Edinburgh one seemed to go quite well.
But he was a stateless refugee, immigrants turn out to be better than the natives.
Looks like people have made up their minds about SKS! Another Con majority seems very likely when Boris decides to go for it (I've got a feeling about June 2023)
Wasn't Swedish Lag the reason that the Lockdown Sceptic types kept using the Swedish example?
Ja. But Sweden has got a lot better at timely reporting.
https://adamaltmejd.se/covid/ shows how Swedeish deathas have updated over time (as well as projecting what final figures will look like
Late Nov, December, January was clown shoes for timely reporting - some of the data in those "14 day" bands arrived over a month later. Unless they are about to dump a whole bunch extra deaths they seem to have got death reporting down to 14-18 days to completion now.
My son moved permanently to Sweden in October and remains very relaxed about being there despite the recent rise in cases. (My granddaughter kindly brought Covid back from nursery and passed it on to both her parents.) His view is that the health service is not overwhelmed and his main concern is potentially being able to visit us in late summer.
Different populations behave differently, which will create a feeling that permeates the population It may be religious, social or national differences that influence behaviour. Those regions or countries that obey, respect and fear will take more care than those who say WTF
When we look at the stupendous age divide in that poll it's worth remembering that it has not always been that way. This is a relatively recent change in British voting habits - and not a positive one.
O/T — In London today I was surprised to find myself giving directions to Japanese tourists. I had thought that all tourism from other countries was off the cards atm.
It would appear that the Government is, in essence, operating an open door policy for visitors from the whole world, except those travelling from red list countries (and presumably visitors from e.g. Brazil could just get around the feeble rules by travelling via a third country and lying on whatever declarations they have to make when they get here, if sufficiently determined to do so?)
Like I said the other day, it's so reckless and illogical a policy that it only really makes sense if one assumes that ministers want to import variants, in order to have surge testing, panic in the press, and thus to maintain the general atmosphere of emergency. The emergency is wildly popular with the Tories' frightened elderly supporters, it gives them cover to act with impunity, and it serves further to neuter an already ineffectual Opposition. Why would they ever want it to end?
... but would ensure no mutations.
This is nonsense - but an assumption you come across time and again.
A mutation is just as likely to occur in your next door neighbour as in some random visiting German.
We could wall off the country and still be subject to potential future mutations - at least until the point at which the country is covid-free; which is a theoretical but probably unachievable position.
Travel restrictions make sense while there are places with significantly higher incidence than here and largely unvaccinated populations. But they come at an economic and social cost.
Reactions to the plagues of the middle ages were to shun or persecute foreigners, strangers, and various minorities - a response based on emotion not logic.
That's absolutely untrue!
The case rate is miniscule in this country so the odds of your next-door neighbour and the odds of a random German being infected are completely different.
The odds of your next door neighbour and the odds of a random German coming into contact with someone else being infected and capable of infecting them is completely different.
Travel restrictions absolutely make sense until other nations have eliminated the virus like we have.
There is absolutely no justification for not having travel restrictions unless we have zero other restrictions too.
p.s. and we haven't "eliminated the virus", nor likely will we ever (most likely it eventually mutates into a progressively milder form and ends joining the portfolio of minor infections we call the common cold).
We could have a 99% vaccinated population with the virus popping up only occasionally here and there in isolated outbreaks, yet it could mutate inside a homeless tramp from Glasgow into a form to which the current vaccine is not (or is less) resistant, and the whole cycle starts again. We got where we are from an infection within a single Chinese person.
No it doesn't work that way and this completely misunderstands (AFAIK) how vaccines, mutations and protection work.
Its worth recalling that the reason this was such a huge problem last year and now is because there was no protection.at all. We had zero immunity against this virus.
Mutations may reduce but are unlikely to eliminate the protection - I note you covered that a touch with "(or is less)" but that doesn't mean "the whole cycle starts again".
We need to keep things in perspective, even if a mutation evolves its going to still be protected against in a way that the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 never was.
When cases are negligible that "homeless tramp in Glasgow" isn't going to be a patient zero sparking a whole new global pandemic resetting the clock back to 2019, this is Leon-levels of hysteria.
If you think the Tories are 14 points ahead, you need your head examining.
BUT if the outlier is 14 points head, the truth could easily be 11, less easily 8, and unlikely to be less than that.
I believe 14 is, regretfully, possible.
We have a government led by a charismatic leader who is following what the majority want by putting populism way ahead of principle/ideology. It is almost impossible to unhinge them from power in this scenario.
I think it's very troubling and I wouldn't rule out - you heard it here first - a four-term Johnson PM (currently only age 56).
When we look at the stupendous age divide in that poll it's worth remembering that it has not always been that way. This is a relatively recent change in British voting habits - and not a positive one.
If you think the Tories are 14 points ahead, you need your head examining.
BUT if the outlier is 14 points head, the truth could easily be 11, less easily 8, and unlikely to be less than that.
I believe 14 is, regretfully, possible.
We have a government led by a charismatic leader who is following what the majority want by putting populism way ahead of principle/ideology. It is almost impossible to unhinge them from power in this scenario.
I think it's very troubling and I wouldn't rule out - you heard it here first - a four-term Johnson PM (currently only age 56).
Entirely plausible if you're counting the fag end of the 2017-2019 Parliament as his first term and this as his second term.
Entirely plausible that Johnson could win three General Elections - 19, 23 or 24 and then 27, 28 or 29 - handing over at the end of this decade or beginning of the next.
Its really just as well that there are not postal votes being sent out for a series of important elections across the UK right now. That could have been potentially disastrous.
And Boris is writing personal letters to Welsh voters, as Prime Minister, personally endorsing the Conservative candidate and highlighting the vaccine success and 22 years of labour failure
But Boris Johnson trails Mark Drakeford in the leader ratings Wales.
Those letters will be damaging to Tory prospects in Wales.
Given how bad you say Mark Drakeford is surely it must worry you that Boris Johnson trails Drakeford in Wales?
Feedback I'm getting back is that Drakeford is getting a decent reaction on the doorstep. The Tories are clearly worried about their man in Wales, Andrew RT Davies. If you think Drakeford is bad, Davies is 10x worse. Totally useless. Having said all that, it is a concern for me that if this poll is anywhere near right, Tories are going to do far better than they deserve in May in Wales.
To be honest Labour have been in power in Wales for 22 years and poverty in the Valleys is a as bad as ever, the health and education system is a total failure, and covid has caused devastation to the tourist industry
It should be noted that my granddaughter was the top student at her school in last year and she is expecting high A level passes this year
However, because part of the area she lives in is deemed in poverty, and because her school is such a low achieving school, she already has no problems in gaining access to the University of her choice
I agree with you about RT Davies but labour needs to understand it does not have a God given right to be in office in Wales
I am not going to rehash old arguments about how well or badly Labour has done in Wales, as we could never agree! Of course Wales is entitled to vote anyway it wants. In a masochistic sort of way, I think perhaps a spell with the Tories in charge might be interesting to say the least. Actually, on reflection the BJ letter may be quite clever. ARTDavies has little recognition in Wales, whilst BJ is quite the opposite, not always negatively either.
Morning all. On topic. I'd pass either way on those Biden bets. It's a medical and actuarial play and I'm not motivated to study that in the detail needed to work out where the value is. For now I stick to laying Trump and Trumpery. He's over. He might not realize it yet, ditto many who either love or fear him, but he is.
On another matter, I've just taken a look at the guest list for the Duke's funeral and I'm pleased to see there’s a place for Prince Richard, the Duke of Gloucester. In all the hubbub around the Royals, especially in recent times, it’s easily forgotten that there are individuals like this, like Prince Richard the Duke of Gloucester, who just go calmly about their business, doing what they do, with no fuss, no ego, no special uniform, never troubling the tabloids or the rolling news. I’d actually never even heard of this chap, that’s how quietly effective he’s been in whatever role he has in the grand scheme of things.
Cornwall, Wessex, Cambridge, Gloucester, Kent - what happened to levelling up for the North? And a massive snub to Andy Burnham, King of the North, wars have been started over less.
Well look what happens when we try and level up with a northern Duke... *cough* York *cough*
The Edinburgh one seemed to go quite well.
But he was a stateless refugee, immigrants turn out to be better than the natives.
Morning all. On topic. I'd pass either way on those Biden bets. It's a medical and actuarial play and I'm not motivated to study that in the detail needed to work out where the value is. For now I stick to laying Trump and Trumpery. He's over. He might not realize it yet, ditto many who either love or fear him, but he is.
On another matter, I've just taken a look at the guest list for the Duke's funeral and I'm pleased to see there’s a place for Prince Richard, the Duke of Gloucester. In all the hubbub around the Royals, especially in recent times, it’s easily forgotten that there are individuals like this, like Prince Richard the Duke of Gloucester, who just go calmly about their business, doing what they do, with no fuss, no ego, no special uniform, never troubling the tabloids or the rolling news. I’d actually never even heard of this chap, that’s how quietly effective he’s been in whatever role he has in the grand scheme of things.
Places too for Philip's German grand nephews, correctly, though no place for Fergie or Prince and Princess Michael of Kent
Awful, awful poll - and probably the worst result possible for Labour. Somehow doing worse than Corbyn in 2019. Which is why I am deeply sceptical.
However, I think it's beyond doubt that the Tories are significantly ahead, vaccines are going well and the economy is reopening. They have not been "incompetent" for quite a long time, in fact I have forgotten when the last real incompetent moment has come out from them.
And so far Labour, they need to dump Dodds immediately and replace her with Reeves. Starmer needs to continue reforming Labour for the better and into an opposition that the country can respect. That takes time - but he is doing that slowly.
As I've said before, if his achievement is Kinnock-style/Smith-style preparation for a future win then so be it. That's sometimes the game you have to play.
I stand by the idea Starmer was still the best candidate and nobody else would be doing better.
If Labour's strategy is to try to re-run the Kinnock / Smith / Blair route to power (which I agree is about the only plausible option for them) then they are going to struggle for a good few reasons:
1. The Labour party is now inextricably associated with Identity Politics and (as algakirk says above) their core vote is a set of fractured special interest enclaves. In the context of the culture wars and post Brexit they will find it very difficult to square the circle between metropolitan, elite loony lefties and provincial mainstream public opinion.
2. They are up against Populist Boris's conservative party not Evil Maggie's conservative party. Boris has parked his tanks on Labour's lawn as far as spending is concerned and the whole leveling up agenda. He's not seen as an evil, tax-cutting, baby-eating Tory so it's difficult for Labour to rally around a unifying bogey man (or woman).
3. Corbyn reinforced Labour's lack of credibility on the economy. At the end of they day, like it or not, most ordinary people vote according their personal finances. If Labour is seen as coming after your money / savings they will always struggle to reassure voters they are not a threat.
4. They lack authenticity on what I'll call British values e.g. wrapping themselves in the Union Jack. Whether you think its fair or not, Labour will never be seen as a patriotic party and people see straight through that kind of cynicism (even discounting the fact its a politician doing it).
5. Scotland. 50 slam dunk seats gone forever.
6. The vaccine. An obvious, glorious, tangible success, showcasing government competence and affecting every single voter. No two ways about it, the Tory's own it and will dine out on it for years. And all Labor can do as the official opposition is support it and thus validate it. The cherry on top is that it's success, thanks to the EU shooting itself in the foot, can be linked quite easily to the benefits of Brexit.
7. Brexit recovery. Once we get past COVID the economy will boom, not least because of pent up demand. Whether fair or not, Brexit will also get much of the credit, especially if / when trade deals are agreed with the rest of he world.
I'm sure anyone can come up with counter arguments to the above but my point is that there is a lot for the Tories to work with and much for Labour to contemplate, some of it structural.
I do think the poll is a bit of an outlier BTW but maybe not by much. Conventional wisdom is that polls tend to take a few weeks to reflect the public mood. Most people don't pay much attention to politics outside a GE, but the one thing everybody will have noticed in the past couple of months is the vaccine roll out ...
O/T — In London today I was surprised to find myself giving directions to Japanese tourists. I had thought that all tourism from other countries was off the cards atm.
It would appear that the Government is, in essence, operating an open door policy for visitors from the whole world, except those travelling from red list countries (and presumably visitors from e.g. Brazil could just get around the feeble rules by travelling via a third country and lying on whatever declarations they have to make when they get here, if sufficiently determined to do so?)
Like I said the other day, it's so reckless and illogical a policy that it only really makes sense if one assumes that ministers want to import variants, in order to have surge testing, panic in the press, and thus to maintain the general atmosphere of emergency. The emergency is wildly popular with the Tories' frightened elderly supporters, it gives them cover to act with impunity, and it serves further to neuter an already ineffectual Opposition. Why would they ever want it to end?
... but would ensure no mutations.
This is nonsense - but an assumption you come across time and again.
A mutation is just as likely to occur in your next door neighbour as in some random visiting German.
We could wall off the country and still be subject to potential future mutations - at least until the point at which the country is covid-free; which is a theoretical but probably unachievable position.
Travel restrictions make sense while there are places with significantly higher incidence than here and largely unvaccinated populations. But they come at an economic and social cost.
Reactions to the plagues of the middle ages were to shun or persecute foreigners, strangers, and various minorities - a response based on emotion not logic.
That's absolutely untrue!
The case rate is miniscule in this country so the odds of your next-door neighbour and the odds of a random German being infected are completely different.
The odds of your next door neighbour and the odds of a random German coming into contact with someone else being infected and capable of infecting them is completely different.
Travel restrictions absolutely make sense until other nations have eliminated the virus like we have.
There is absolutely no justification for not having travel restrictions unless we have zero other restrictions too.
p.s. and we haven't "eliminated the virus", nor likely will we ever (most likely it eventually mutates into a progressively milder form and ends joining the portfolio of minor infections we call the common cold).
We could have a 99% vaccinated population with the virus popping up only occasionally here and there in isolated outbreaks, yet it could mutate inside a homeless tramp from Glasgow into a form to which the current vaccine is not (or is less) resistant, and the whole cycle starts again. We got where we are from an infection within a single Chinese person.
No it doesn't work that way and this completely misunderstands (AFAIK) how vaccines, mutations and protection work.
Its worth recalling that the reason this was such a huge problem last year and now is because there was no protection.at all. We had zero immunity against this virus.
Mutations may reduce but are unlikely to eliminate the protection - I note you covered that a touch with "(or is less)" but that doesn't mean "the whole cycle starts again".
We need to keep things in perspective, even if a mutation evolves its going to still be protected against in a way that the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 never was.
When cases are negligible that "homeless tramp in Glasgow" isn't going to be a patient zero sparking a whole new global pandemic resetting the clock back to 2019, this is Leon-levels of hysteria.
Why are you so confident? Viruses mutate all the time, and there's not some magic that keeps them similar enough that the vaccine is no longer effective. All you need is for the spike protein to change sufficiently that no-one's immune system recognises it anymore and you have another pandemic on your hands, possibly worse than the first if it's more infectious.
Unless you know something more about the limitations of how spike proteins mutate that prevents this, that you'd care to share with the group?
@Foxy and @Charles and other investment-heads: in conjunction with stock market comments in last thread, I took similar action to you Foxy last spring and ended up doing well though I didn't get out as fast as you did last Feb. I too think markets are high at the moment.
I've been dabbling in a rather boring and neglected corner of the market: zero dividend preference shares. Anyone have any insight or experience on these?
Its really just as well that there are not postal votes being sent out for a series of important elections across the UK right now. That could have been potentially disastrous.
And Boris is writing personal letters to Welsh voters, as Prime Minister, personally endorsing the Conservative candidate and highlighting the vaccine success and 22 years of labour failure
But Boris Johnson trails Mark Drakeford in the leader ratings Wales.
Those letters will be damaging to Tory prospects in Wales.
Given how bad you say Mark Drakeford is surely it must worry you that Boris Johnson trails Drakeford in Wales?
And I have no doubt the conservatives have private polling indicating that Boris vaccine success is recognised in Wales
Indeed, I do not know of a Welsh poster on here who would back your comments
But you keep on saying PBers are NOT representative of the public, for example over vaccine passports.
So they are only representative when they agree with you, noted.
Deflection rather than accept that Labour are not good for Wales and of course I speak as someone who has been personally and also in my family adversely affected by labour's failures in Wales
Morning all. On topic. I'd pass either way on those Biden bets. It's a medical and actuarial play and I'm not motivated to study that in the detail needed to work out where the value is. For now I stick to laying Trump and Trumpery. He's over. He might not realize it yet, ditto many who either love or fear him, but he is.
On another matter, I've just taken a look at the guest list for the Duke's funeral and I'm pleased to see there’s a place for Prince Richard, the Duke of Gloucester. In all the hubbub around the Royals, especially in recent times, it’s easily forgotten that there are individuals like this, like Prince Richard the Duke of Gloucester, who just go calmly about their business, doing what they do, with no fuss, no ego, no special uniform, never troubling the tabloids or the rolling news. I’d actually never even heard of this chap, that’s how quietly effective he’s been in whatever role he has in the grand scheme of things.
Places too for Philip's German grand nephews, correctly, though no place for Fergie or Prince and Princess Michael of Kent
Richard, Duke of Gloucester, calls to my mind the character in Shakespeare who said ‘I am myself alone’.
Awful, awful poll - and probably the worst result possible for Labour. Somehow doing worse than Corbyn in 2019. Which is why I am deeply sceptical.
However, I think it's beyond doubt that the Tories are significantly ahead, vaccines are going well and the economy is reopening. They have not been "incompetent" for quite a long time, in fact I have forgotten when the last real incompetent moment has come out from them.
And so far Labour, they need to dump Dodds immediately and replace her with Reeves. Starmer needs to continue reforming Labour for the better and into an opposition that the country can respect. That takes time - but he is doing that slowly.
As I've said before, if his achievement is Kinnock-style/Smith-style preparation for a future win then so be it. That's sometimes the game you have to play.
I stand by the idea Starmer was still the best candidate and nobody else would be doing better.
If Labour's strategy is to try to re-run the Kinnock / Smith / Blair route to power (which I agree is about the only plausible option for them) then they are going to struggle for a good few reasons:
1. The Labour party is now inextricably associated with Identity Politics and (as algakirk says above) their core vote is a set of fractured special interest enclaves. In the context of the culture wars and post Brexit they will find it very difficult to square the circle between metropolitan, elite loony lefties and provincial mainstream public opinion.
I agree with some of your points but not especially this one. Contrary to the popular mythology, Labour has in fact always been a metropolitan-working-class mix since the start. As I mentioned a couple of months ago, one of its first ever associates, supported by her Liberal husband, was Lady Emilia Dilke, a proto-feminist art historian and trade unionist - what could be more metropolitan than that.
There are particular modern challenges though, especially in developing a nuanced and complicated, but modern stance on identity issues that's distinct from the American one.
Its really just as well that there are not postal votes being sent out for a series of important elections across the UK right now. That could have been potentially disastrous.
And Boris is writing personal letters to Welsh voters, as Prime Minister, personally endorsing the Conservative candidate and highlighting the vaccine success and 22 years of labour failure
But Boris Johnson trails Mark Drakeford in the leader ratings Wales.
Those letters will be damaging to Tory prospects in Wales.
Given how bad you say Mark Drakeford is surely it must worry you that Boris Johnson trails Drakeford in Wales?
And I have no doubt the conservatives have private polling indicating that Boris vaccine success is recognised in Wales
Indeed, I do not know of a Welsh poster on here who would back your comments
But you keep on saying PBers are NOT representative of the public, for example over vaccine passports.
So they are only representative when they agree with you, noted.
Deflection rather than accept that Labour are not good for Wales and of course I speak as someone who has been personally and also in my family adversely affected by labour's failures in Wales
Idiot, I've never said Labour are good for Wales, they are socialists and socialists always screw up things, but you cherry pick things and this is a bettign site.
Plus, I'd like to remind you that you've admitted to voting for Labour in the past, so you're part of the problem, so your complaints about Wales should be seen in that light.
Its really just as well that there are not postal votes being sent out for a series of important elections across the UK right now. That could have been potentially disastrous.
And Boris is writing personal letters to Welsh voters, as Prime Minister, personally endorsing the Conservative candidate and highlighting the vaccine success and 22 years of labour failure
But Boris Johnson trails Mark Drakeford in the leader ratings Wales.
Those letters will be damaging to Tory prospects in Wales.
Given how bad you say Mark Drakeford is surely it must worry you that Boris Johnson trails Drakeford in Wales?
Feedback I'm getting back is that Drakeford is getting a decent reaction on the doorstep. The Tories are clearly worried about their man in Wales, Andrew RT Davies. If you think Drakeford is bad, Davies is 10x worse. Totally useless. Having said all that, it is a concern for me that if this poll is anywhere near right, Tories are going to do far better than they deserve in May in Wales.
To be honest Labour have been in power in Wales for 22 years and poverty in the Valleys is a as bad as ever, the health and education system is a total failure, and covid has caused devastation to the tourist industry
It should be noted that my granddaughter was the top student at her school in last year and she is expecting high A level passes this year
However, because part of the area she lives in is deemed in poverty, and because her school is such a low achieving school, she already has no problems in gaining access to the University of her choice
I agree with you about RT Davies but labour needs to understand it does not have a God given right to be in office in Wales
I am not going to rehash old arguments about how well or badly Labour has done in Wales, as we could never agree! Of course Wales is entitled to vote anyway it wants. In a masochistic sort of way, I think perhaps a spell with the Tories in charge might be interesting to say the least. Actually, on reflection the BJ letter may be quite clever. ARTDavies has little recognition in Wales, whilst BJ is quite the opposite, not always negatively either.
Actually we received personal letters from both, but RT Davies was a statement of promises.
Boris was a direct endorsement of the conservative candidate with emphasis on the vaccine success and labour's failures over 22 years. And of course signed Boris Johnson, Prime Minister
I do not think this would work in Scotland but in Wales it has a fair chance
Morning all. On topic. I'd pass either way on those Biden bets. It's a medical and actuarial play and I'm not motivated to study that in the detail needed to work out where the value is. For now I stick to laying Trump and Trumpery. He's over. He might not realize it yet, ditto many who either love or fear him, but he is.
On another matter, I've just taken a look at the guest list for the Duke's funeral and I'm pleased to see there’s a place for Prince Richard, the Duke of Gloucester. In all the hubbub around the Royals, especially in recent times, it’s easily forgotten that there are individuals like this, like Prince Richard the Duke of Gloucester, who just go calmly about their business, doing what they do, with no fuss, no ego, no special uniform, never troubling the tabloids or the rolling news. I’d actually never even heard of this chap, that’s how quietly effective he’s been in whatever role he has in the grand scheme of things.
Places too for Philip's German grand nephews, correctly, though no place for Fergie or Prince and Princess Michael of Kent
Gloucester is one of the good guys. He's been a tireless campaigner for my old school.
Its really just as well that there are not postal votes being sent out for a series of important elections across the UK right now. That could have been potentially disastrous.
And Boris is writing personal letters to Welsh voters, as Prime Minister, personally endorsing the Conservative candidate and highlighting the vaccine success and 22 years of labour failure
But Boris Johnson trails Mark Drakeford in the leader ratings Wales.
Those letters will be damaging to Tory prospects in Wales.
Given how bad you say Mark Drakeford is surely it must worry you that Boris Johnson trails Drakeford in Wales?
And I have no doubt the conservatives have private polling indicating that Boris vaccine success is recognised in Wales
Indeed, I do not know of a Welsh poster on here who would back your comments
But you keep on saying PBers are NOT representative of the public, for example over vaccine passports.
So they are only representative when they agree with you, noted.
Deflection rather than accept that Labour are not good for Wales and of course I speak as someone who has been personally and also in my family adversely affected by labour's failures in Wales
Idiot, I've never said Labour are good for Wales, they are socialists and socialists always screw up things, but you cherry pick things and this is a bettign site.
Plus, I'd like to remind you that you've admitted to voting for Labour in the past, so you're part of the problem, so your complaints about Wales should be seen in that light.
O/T — In London today I was surprised to find myself giving directions to Japanese tourists. I had thought that all tourism from other countries was off the cards atm.
It would appear that the Government is, in essence, operating an open door policy for visitors from the whole world, except those travelling from red list countries (and presumably visitors from e.g. Brazil could just get around the feeble rules by travelling via a third country and lying on whatever declarations they have to make when they get here, if sufficiently determined to do so?)
Like I said the other day, it's so reckless and illogical a policy that it only really makes sense if one assumes that ministers want to import variants, in order to have surge testing, panic in the press, and thus to maintain the general atmosphere of emergency. The emergency is wildly popular with the Tories' frightened elderly supporters, it gives them cover to act with impunity, and it serves further to neuter an already ineffectual Opposition. Why would they ever want it to end?
... but would ensure no mutations.
This is nonsense - but an assumption you come across time and again.
A mutation is just as likely to occur in your next door neighbour as in some random visiting German.
We could wall off the country and still be subject to potential future mutations - at least until the point at which the country is covid-free; which is a theoretical but probably unachievable position.
Travel restrictions make sense while there are places with significantly higher incidence than here and largely unvaccinated populations. But they come at an economic and social cost.
Reactions to the plagues of the middle ages were to shun or persecute foreigners, strangers, and various minorities - a response based on emotion not logic.
That's absolutely untrue!
The case rate is miniscule in this country so the odds of your next-door neighbour and the odds of a random German being infected are completely different.
The odds of your next door neighbour and the odds of a random German coming into contact with someone else being infected and capable of infecting them is completely different.
Travel restrictions absolutely make sense until other nations have eliminated the virus like we have.
There is absolutely no justification for not having travel restrictions unless we have zero other restrictions too.
p.s. and we haven't "eliminated the virus", nor likely will we ever (most likely it eventually mutates into a progressively milder form and ends joining the portfolio of minor infections we call the common cold).
We could have a 99% vaccinated population with the virus popping up only occasionally here and there in isolated outbreaks, yet it could mutate inside a homeless tramp from Glasgow into a form to which the current vaccine is not (or is less) resistant, and the whole cycle starts again. We got where we are from an infection within a single Chinese person.
No it doesn't work that way and this completely misunderstands (AFAIK) how vaccines, mutations and protection work.
Its worth recalling that the reason this was such a huge problem last year and now is because there was no protection.at all. We had zero immunity against this virus.
Mutations may reduce but are unlikely to eliminate the protection - I note you covered that a touch with "(or is less)" but that doesn't mean "the whole cycle starts again".
We need to keep things in perspective, even if a mutation evolves its going to still be protected against in a way that the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 never was.
When cases are negligible that "homeless tramp in Glasgow" isn't going to be a patient zero sparking a whole new global pandemic resetting the clock back to 2019, this is Leon-levels of hysteria.
Why are you so confident? Viruses mutate all the time, and there's not some magic that keeps them similar enough that the vaccine is no longer effective. All you need is for the spike protein to change sufficiently that no-one's immune system recognises it anymore and you have another pandemic on your hands, possibly worse than the first if it's more infectious.
Unless you know something more about the limitations of how spike proteins mutate that prevents this, that you'd care to share with the group?
It's not just the spike protein (as I understand it).
Firstly - they need to find a mutation where the spike protein can still do its job and be unrecognisable to the immune system. Should it pull this off, the antibodies will no longer be effective. This is a challenge - while it can mutate a bit to erode the effectiveness of the current antibodies, they still have some neutralising effect, and it may not be possible to go far enough to be completely unrecognisable:
“There is not an infinite number of possibilities,” he said. “It is like putting your foot in a shoe. It still has to be basically the right shape and size and it still has to be recognizable as a shoe.” "
However, the T-cells have a swathe of epitopes (protein fragments) from far more than just the spike protein (if I understand it correctly), and the virus will need to mutate far more than that to change all those various proteins within itself to now be unrecognisable to the T-cells as well as the antibodies.
To evade both of those components of the immune system simultaneously would be needed to set us back far enough to start the whole cycle again. A partial reduction in immunity is very possible, but resistance to serious illness looks far less unlikely to be significantly eroded than resistance to mild or asymptomatic illness.
And, of course, tweaking the vaccines to deal with the mutations can be done far far faster than the original setup of them; they've already agreed that full trials will be unnecessary; it'll follow the flu vaccine tweaking method instead.
Awful, awful poll - and probably the worst result possible for Labour. Somehow doing worse than Corbyn in 2019. Which is why I am deeply sceptical.
However, I think it's beyond doubt that the Tories are significantly ahead, vaccines are going well and the economy is reopening. They have not been "incompetent" for quite a long time, in fact I have forgotten when the last real incompetent moment has come out from them.
And so far Labour, they need to dump Dodds immediately and replace her with Reeves. Starmer needs to continue reforming Labour for the better and into an opposition that the country can respect. That takes time - but he is doing that slowly.
As I've said before, if his achievement is Kinnock-style/Smith-style preparation for a future win then so be it. That's sometimes the game you have to play.
I stand by the idea Starmer was still the best candidate and nobody else would be doing better.
If Labour's strategy is to try to re-run the Kinnock / Smith / Blair route to power (which I agree is about the only plausible option for them) then they are going to struggle for a good few reasons:
1. The Labour party is now inextricably associated with Identity Politics and (as algakirk says above) their core vote is a set of fractured special interest enclaves. In the context of the culture wars and post Brexit they will find it very difficult to square the circle between metropolitan, elite loony lefties and provincial mainstream public opinion.
I agree with some of your points but not especially this one. Contrary to the popular mythology, Labour has in fact been a metropolitan-working-class mix since the start. As I mentioned a couple of months ago, one of its first members, supported by her Liberal husband, was Lady Emilia Dilke, a proto-feminist art historian and trade unionist.
There are particular modern challenges though, especially in developing a complicated but modern stance on identity issues that's distinct from the American one.
I agree that my point was maybe too simplistic and clumsy - in my defence, I'm not a scholar of Labour party history so I'm just telling it like I see it. Your last sentence is more nuanced and puts the point better. But what I was really getting at was the difficulty Labour has in convincing its Red Wall voters that it is not (excuse the phrase) up its own backside.
Looks like an outlier for Labour; and when something looks like an outlier it often is. It isn't credible given the consistency of Labour numbers recently.
Campaigning has begun in the locals though and whilst people may be less inclined to support national libdem and green candidates then locally they may be more so, and this may be seeping into those numbers
Looks like people have made up their minds about SKS! Another Con majority seems very likely when Boris decides to go for it (I've got a feeling about June 2023)
Thursday 1st June 2023
Anecdote: the doorstep is currently looking very favourable for the blues.....
Just been out and done a short shift. The weather is glorious, the mood amongst the punters upbeat.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
O/T — In London today I was surprised to find myself giving directions to Japanese tourists. I had thought that all tourism from other countries was off the cards atm.
It would appear that the Government is, in essence, operating an open door policy for visitors from the whole world, except those travelling from red list countries (and presumably visitors from e.g. Brazil could just get around the feeble rules by travelling via a third country and lying on whatever declarations they have to make when they get here, if sufficiently determined to do so?)
Like I said the other day, it's so reckless and illogical a policy that it only really makes sense if one assumes that ministers want to import variants, in order to have surge testing, panic in the press, and thus to maintain the general atmosphere of emergency. The emergency is wildly popular with the Tories' frightened elderly supporters, it gives them cover to act with impunity, and it serves further to neuter an already ineffectual Opposition. Why would they ever want it to end?
... but would ensure no mutations.
This is nonsense - but an assumption you come across time and again.
A mutation is just as likely to occur in your next door neighbour as in some random visiting German.
We could wall off the country and still be subject to potential future mutations - at least until the point at which the country is covid-free; which is a theoretical but probably unachievable position.
Travel restrictions make sense while there are places with significantly higher incidence than here and largely unvaccinated populations. But they come at an economic and social cost.
Reactions to the plagues of the middle ages were to shun or persecute foreigners, strangers, and various minorities - a response based on emotion not logic.
That's absolutely untrue!
The case rate is miniscule in this country so the odds of your next-door neighbour and the odds of a random German being infected are completely different.
The odds of your next door neighbour and the odds of a random German coming into contact with someone else being infected and capable of infecting them is completely different.
Travel restrictions absolutely make sense until other nations have eliminated the virus like we have.
There is absolutely no justification for not having travel restrictions unless we have zero other restrictions too.
p.s. and we haven't "eliminated the virus", nor likely will we ever (most likely it eventually mutates into a progressively milder form and ends joining the portfolio of minor infections we call the common cold).
We could have a 99% vaccinated population with the virus popping up only occasionally here and there in isolated outbreaks, yet it could mutate inside a homeless tramp from Glasgow into a form to which the current vaccine is not (or is less) resistant, and the whole cycle starts again. We got where we are from an infection within a single Chinese person.
No it doesn't work that way and this completely misunderstands (AFAIK) how vaccines, mutations and protection work.
Its worth recalling that the reason this was such a huge problem last year and now is because there was no protection.at all. We had zero immunity against this virus.
Mutations may reduce but are unlikely to eliminate the protection - I note you covered that a touch with "(or is less)" but that doesn't mean "the whole cycle starts again".
We need to keep things in perspective, even if a mutation evolves its going to still be protected against in a way that the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 never was.
When cases are negligible that "homeless tramp in Glasgow" isn't going to be a patient zero sparking a whole new global pandemic resetting the clock back to 2019, this is Leon-levels of hysteria.
Why are you so confident? Viruses mutate all the time, and there's not some magic that keeps them similar enough that the vaccine is no longer effective. All you need is for the spike protein to change sufficiently that no-one's immune system recognises it anymore and you have another pandemic on your hands, possibly worse than the first if it's more infectious.
Unless you know something more about the limitations of how spike proteins mutate that prevents this, that you'd care to share with the group?
Andy_Cooke has already responded to put it well.
There's a major difference between a virus evolving to mean we are less resistant due to vaccines, and one evolving to meaning we have no resistance whatsoever.
One reason the flu doesn't kill as many people as it does is because even if we do not have protection against a particular strain of the flu, we have protection from similar strains of flu (from vaccines or prior infection) that provides some protection. That will be the case with Covid19 in the future now, we aren't going back to square one.
O/T — In London today I was surprised to find myself giving directions to Japanese tourists. I had thought that all tourism from other countries was off the cards atm.
It would appear that the Government is, in essence, operating an open door policy for visitors from the whole world, except those travelling from red list countries (and presumably visitors from e.g. Brazil could just get around the feeble rules by travelling via a third country and lying on whatever declarations they have to make when they get here, if sufficiently determined to do so?)
Like I said the other day, it's so reckless and illogical a policy that it only really makes sense if one assumes that ministers want to import variants, in order to have surge testing, panic in the press, and thus to maintain the general atmosphere of emergency. The emergency is wildly popular with the Tories' frightened elderly supporters, it gives them cover to act with impunity, and it serves further to neuter an already ineffectual Opposition. Why would they ever want it to end?
... but would ensure no mutations.
This is nonsense - but an assumption you come across time and again.
A mutation is just as likely to occur in your next door neighbour as in some random visiting German.
We could wall off the country and still be subject to potential future mutations - at least until the point at which the country is covid-free; which is a theoretical but probably unachievable position.
Travel restrictions make sense while there are places with significantly higher incidence than here and largely unvaccinated populations. But they come at an economic and social cost.
Reactions to the plagues of the middle ages were to shun or persecute foreigners, strangers, and various minorities - a response based on emotion not logic.
That's absolutely untrue!
The case rate is miniscule in this country so the odds of your next-door neighbour and the odds of a random German being infected are completely different.
The odds of your next door neighbour and the odds of a random German coming into contact with someone else being infected and capable of infecting them is completely different.
Travel restrictions absolutely make sense until other nations have eliminated the virus like we have.
There is absolutely no justification for not having travel restrictions unless we have zero other restrictions too.
p.s. and we haven't "eliminated the virus", nor likely will we ever (most likely it eventually mutates into a progressively milder form and ends joining the portfolio of minor infections we call the common cold).
We could have a 99% vaccinated population with the virus popping up only occasionally here and there in isolated outbreaks, yet it could mutate inside a homeless tramp from Glasgow into a form to which the current vaccine is not (or is less) resistant, and the whole cycle starts again. We got where we are from an infection within a single Chinese person.
No it doesn't work that way and this completely misunderstands (AFAIK) how vaccines, mutations and protection work.
Its worth recalling that the reason this was such a huge problem last year and now is because there was no protection.at all. We had zero immunity against this virus.
Mutations may reduce but are unlikely to eliminate the protection - I note you covered that a touch with "(or is less)" but that doesn't mean "the whole cycle starts again".
We need to keep things in perspective, even if a mutation evolves its going to still be protected against in a way that the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 never was.
When cases are negligible that "homeless tramp in Glasgow" isn't going to be a patient zero sparking a whole new global pandemic resetting the clock back to 2019, this is Leon-levels of hysteria.
Why are you so confident? Viruses mutate all the time, and there's not some magic that keeps them similar enough that the vaccine is no longer effective. All you need is for the spike protein to change sufficiently that no-one's immune system recognises it anymore and you have another pandemic on your hands, possibly worse than the first if it's more infectious.
Unless you know something more about the limitations of how spike proteins mutate that prevents this, that you'd care to share with the group?
It's not just the spike protein (as I understand it).
Firstly - they need to find a mutation where the spike protein can still do its job and be unrecognisable to the immune system. Should it pull this off, the antibodies will no longer be effective. This is a challenge - while it can mutate a bit to erode the effectiveness of the current antibodies, they still have some neutralising effect, and it may not be possible to go far enough to be completely unrecognisable:
“There is not an infinite number of possibilities,” he said. “It is like putting your foot in a shoe. It still has to be basically the right shape and size and it still has to be recognizable as a shoe.” "
However, the T-cells have a swathe of epitopes (protein fragments) from far more than just the spike protein (if I understand it correctly), and the virus will need to mutate far more than that to change all those various proteins within itself to now be unrecognisable to the T-cells as well as the antibodies.
To evade both of those components of the immune system simultaneously would be needed to set us back far enough to start the whole cycle again. A partial reduction in immunity is very possible, but resistance to serious illness looks far less unlikely to be significantly eroded than resistance to mild or asymptomatic illness.
And, of course, tweaking the vaccines to deal with the mutations can be done far far faster than the original setup of them; they've already agreed that full trials will be unnecessary; it'll follow the flu vaccine tweaking method instead.
Fabulous post Andy but assume you mean likely rather than unlikely in your penultimate paragraph?
Its really just as well that there are not postal votes being sent out for a series of important elections across the UK right now. That could have been potentially disastrous.
And Boris is writing personal letters to Welsh voters, as Prime Minister, personally endorsing the Conservative candidate and highlighting the vaccine success and 22 years of labour failure
But Boris Johnson trails Mark Drakeford in the leader ratings Wales.
Those letters will be damaging to Tory prospects in Wales.
Given how bad you say Mark Drakeford is surely it must worry you that Boris Johnson trails Drakeford in Wales?
And I have no doubt the conservatives have private polling indicating that Boris vaccine success is recognised in Wales
Indeed, I do not know of a Welsh poster on here who would back your comments
But you keep on saying PBers are NOT representative of the public, for example over vaccine passports.
So they are only representative when they agree with you, noted.
Deflection rather than accept that Labour are not good for Wales and of course I speak as someone who has been personally and also in my family adversely affected by labour's failures in Wales
Idiot, I've never said Labour are good for Wales, they are socialists and socialists always screw up things, but you cherry pick things and this is a bettign site.
Plus, I'd like to remind you that you've admitted to voting for Labour in the past, so you're part of the problem, so your complaints about Wales should be seen in that light.
Labour's 14% poll deficit is the worst recorded by any Labour leader one year into the job since the emergence of modern polling techniques in the 1950s
Presumably more excuses from the New New Labour types
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
That America had "ridiculous woke-crap" is why America is a more stable and healthy nation for the long-term than China, America at its healthies has always had what some would consider "ridiculous crap" being advocated by others, its how the country evolves and makes progress.
Authoritarian states like China can grow for a period but they inevitably end up in corruption, decline and collapse. America can handle a peaceful [ish] handover of power from one doddery old bloke to the next, but China is being entirely set up now in the authoritarian grasp of one man. They are losing their ability, rare in non-democracies, to see a smooth transition of power from one leader to the next.
Despite the international policy issues, if Biden pushes through his full stimulus, and manages the elimination of tax haven corporate rate privileges he has planned, through essentially imposing the US's will on global flows of money, he'll still be remembered a century on from now.
O/T — In London today I was surprised to find myself giving directions to Japanese tourists. I had thought that all tourism from other countries was off the cards atm.
It would appear that the Government is, in essence, operating an open door policy for visitors from the whole world, except those travelling from red list countries (and presumably visitors from e.g. Brazil could just get around the feeble rules by travelling via a third country and lying on whatever declarations they have to make when they get here, if sufficiently determined to do so?)
Like I said the other day, it's so reckless and illogical a policy that it only really makes sense if one assumes that ministers want to import variants, in order to have surge testing, panic in the press, and thus to maintain the general atmosphere of emergency. The emergency is wildly popular with the Tories' frightened elderly supporters, it gives them cover to act with impunity, and it serves further to neuter an already ineffectual Opposition. Why would they ever want it to end?
... but would ensure no mutations.
This is nonsense - but an assumption you come across time and again.
A mutation is just as likely to occur in your next door neighbour as in some random visiting German.
We could wall off the country and still be subject to potential future mutations - at least until the point at which the country is covid-free; which is a theoretical but probably unachievable position.
Travel restrictions make sense while there are places with significantly higher incidence than here and largely unvaccinated populations. But they come at an economic and social cost.
Reactions to the plagues of the middle ages were to shun or persecute foreigners, strangers, and various minorities - a response based on emotion not logic.
That's absolutely untrue!
The case rate is miniscule in this country so the odds of your next-door neighbour and the odds of a random German being infected are completely different.
The odds of your next door neighbour and the odds of a random German coming into contact with someone else being infected and capable of infecting them is completely different.
Travel restrictions absolutely make sense until other nations have eliminated the virus like we have.
There is absolutely no justification for not having travel restrictions unless we have zero other restrictions too.
p.s. and we haven't "eliminated the virus", nor likely will we ever (most likely it eventually mutates into a progressively milder form and ends joining the portfolio of minor infections we call the common cold).
We could have a 99% vaccinated population with the virus popping up only occasionally here and there in isolated outbreaks, yet it could mutate inside a homeless tramp from Glasgow into a form to which the current vaccine is not (or is less) resistant, and the whole cycle starts again. We got where we are from an infection within a single Chinese person.
No it doesn't work that way and this completely misunderstands (AFAIK) how vaccines, mutations and protection work.
Its worth recalling that the reason this was such a huge problem last year and now is because there was no protection.at all. We had zero immunity against this virus.
Mutations may reduce but are unlikely to eliminate the protection - I note you covered that a touch with "(or is less)" but that doesn't mean "the whole cycle starts again".
We need to keep things in perspective, even if a mutation evolves its going to still be protected against in a way that the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 never was.
When cases are negligible that "homeless tramp in Glasgow" isn't going to be a patient zero sparking a whole new global pandemic resetting the clock back to 2019, this is Leon-levels of hysteria.
Why are you so confident? Viruses mutate all the time, and there's not some magic that keeps them similar enough that the vaccine is no longer effective. All you need is for the spike protein to change sufficiently that no-one's immune system recognises it anymore and you have another pandemic on your hands, possibly worse than the first if it's more infectious.
Unless you know something more about the limitations of how spike proteins mutate that prevents this, that you'd care to share with the group?
It's not just the spike protein (as I understand it).
Firstly - they need to find a mutation where the spike protein can still do its job and be unrecognisable to the immune system. Should it pull this off, the antibodies will no longer be effective. This is a challenge - while it can mutate a bit to erode the effectiveness of the current antibodies, they still have some neutralising effect, and it may not be possible to go far enough to be completely unrecognisable:
“There is not an infinite number of possibilities,” he said. “It is like putting your foot in a shoe. It still has to be basically the right shape and size and it still has to be recognizable as a shoe.” "
However, the T-cells have a swathe of epitopes (protein fragments) from far more than just the spike protein (if I understand it correctly), and the virus will need to mutate far more than that to change all those various proteins within itself to now be unrecognisable to the T-cells as well as the antibodies.
To evade both of those components of the immune system simultaneously would be needed to set us back far enough to start the whole cycle again. A partial reduction in immunity is very possible, but resistance to serious illness looks far less unlikely to be significantly eroded than resistance to mild or asymptomatic illness.
And, of course, tweaking the vaccines to deal with the mutations can be done far far faster than the original setup of them; they've already agreed that full trials will be unnecessary; it'll follow the flu vaccine tweaking method instead.
Don't the vaccines (as opposed to covid survivors) only expose patients to the spike protein, so T cells have no memory of other viral protein?
O/T — In London today I was surprised to find myself giving directions to Japanese tourists. I had thought that all tourism from other countries was off the cards atm.
It would appear that the Government is, in essence, operating an open door policy for visitors from the whole world, except those travelling from red list countries (and presumably visitors from e.g. Brazil could just get around the feeble rules by travelling via a third country and lying on whatever declarations they have to make when they get here, if sufficiently determined to do so?)
Like I said the other day, it's so reckless and illogical a policy that it only really makes sense if one assumes that ministers want to import variants, in order to have surge testing, panic in the press, and thus to maintain the general atmosphere of emergency. The emergency is wildly popular with the Tories' frightened elderly supporters, it gives them cover to act with impunity, and it serves further to neuter an already ineffectual Opposition. Why would they ever want it to end?
... but would ensure no mutations.
This is nonsense - but an assumption you come across time and again.
A mutation is just as likely to occur in your next door neighbour as in some random visiting German.
We could wall off the country and still be subject to potential future mutations - at least until the point at which the country is covid-free; which is a theoretical but probably unachievable position.
Travel restrictions make sense while there are places with significantly higher incidence than here and largely unvaccinated populations. But they come at an economic and social cost.
Reactions to the plagues of the middle ages were to shun or persecute foreigners, strangers, and various minorities - a response based on emotion not logic.
That's absolutely untrue!
The case rate is miniscule in this country so the odds of your next-door neighbour and the odds of a random German being infected are completely different.
The odds of your next door neighbour and the odds of a random German coming into contact with someone else being infected and capable of infecting them is completely different.
Travel restrictions absolutely make sense until other nations have eliminated the virus like we have.
There is absolutely no justification for not having travel restrictions unless we have zero other restrictions too.
p.s. and we haven't "eliminated the virus", nor likely will we ever (most likely it eventually mutates into a progressively milder form and ends joining the portfolio of minor infections we call the common cold).
We could have a 99% vaccinated population with the virus popping up only occasionally here and there in isolated outbreaks, yet it could mutate inside a homeless tramp from Glasgow into a form to which the current vaccine is not (or is less) resistant, and the whole cycle starts again. We got where we are from an infection within a single Chinese person.
No it doesn't work that way and this completely misunderstands (AFAIK) how vaccines, mutations and protection work.
Its worth recalling that the reason this was such a huge problem last year and now is because there was no protection.at all. We had zero immunity against this virus.
Mutations may reduce but are unlikely to eliminate the protection - I note you covered that a touch with "(or is less)" but that doesn't mean "the whole cycle starts again".
We need to keep things in perspective, even if a mutation evolves its going to still be protected against in a way that the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 never was.
When cases are negligible that "homeless tramp in Glasgow" isn't going to be a patient zero sparking a whole new global pandemic resetting the clock back to 2019, this is Leon-levels of hysteria.
Why are you so confident? Viruses mutate all the time, and there's not some magic that keeps them similar enough that the vaccine is no longer effective. All you need is for the spike protein to change sufficiently that no-one's immune system recognises it anymore and you have another pandemic on your hands, possibly worse than the first if it's more infectious.
Unless you know something more about the limitations of how spike proteins mutate that prevents this, that you'd care to share with the group?
It's not just the spike protein (as I understand it).
Firstly - they need to find a mutation where the spike protein can still do its job and be unrecognisable to the immune system. Should it pull this off, the antibodies will no longer be effective. This is a challenge - while it can mutate a bit to erode the effectiveness of the current antibodies, they still have some neutralising effect, and it may not be possible to go far enough to be completely unrecognisable:
“There is not an infinite number of possibilities,” he said. “It is like putting your foot in a shoe. It still has to be basically the right shape and size and it still has to be recognizable as a shoe.” "
However, the T-cells have a swathe of epitopes (protein fragments) from far more than just the spike protein (if I understand it correctly), and the virus will need to mutate far more than that to change all those various proteins within itself to now be unrecognisable to the T-cells as well as the antibodies.
To evade both of those components of the immune system simultaneously would be needed to set us back far enough to start the whole cycle again. A partial reduction in immunity is very possible, but resistance to serious illness looks far less unlikely to be significantly eroded than resistance to mild or asymptomatic illness.
And, of course, tweaking the vaccines to deal with the mutations can be done far far faster than the original setup of them; they've already agreed that full trials will be unnecessary; it'll follow the flu vaccine tweaking method instead.
Fabulous post Andy but assume you mean likely rather than unlikely in your penultimate paragraph?
Despite the international policy issues, if Biden pushes through his full stimulus, and manages the elimination of tax haven corporate rate privileges he has planned through essentially imposing the US's will on global flows of money, he'll be remembered in a century from now.
His domestic policy agenda is insanely popular. The pieces coming from GOP strategists despairing at it all is hilarious.
"even if we tie his infrastructure bill to 'Cancel Culture' it is still popular"
Labour's 14% poll deficit is the worst recorded by any Labour leader one year into the job since the emergence of modern polling techniques in the 1950s
Presumably more excuses from the New New Labour types
Lies, Corbyn had Labour 15% behind a year after becoming leader.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
That America had "ridiculous woke-crap" is why America is a more stable and healthy nation for the long-term than China, America at its healthies has always had what some would consider "ridiculous crap" being advocated by others, its how the country evolves and makes progress.
Authoritarian states like China can grow for a period but they inevitably end up in corruption, decline and collapse. America can handle a peaceful [ish] handover of power from one doddery old bloke to the next, but China is being entirely set up now in the authoritarian grasp of one man. They are losing their ability, rare in non-democracies, to see a smooth transition of power from one leader to the next.
What follows after Xi will not be success.
Nah. Wokery is burning America’s cities and will destroy its universities. eg They are abandoning SATs because they lead to ‘racial inequality of outcome’. It is pitiful. America is immolating itself.
Meanwhile China is quietly replacing the dollar as reserve currency with a new digitized Yuan (renminbi)
All done on the quiet as the rest of us freaked out about a plague from China. Sometimes you just have to admire the genius
O/T — In London today I was surprised to find myself giving directions to Japanese tourists. I had thought that all tourism from other countries was off the cards atm.
It would appear that the Government is, in essence, operating an open door policy for visitors from the whole world, except those travelling from red list countries (and presumably visitors from e.g. Brazil could just get around the feeble rules by travelling via a third country and lying on whatever declarations they have to make when they get here, if sufficiently determined to do so?)
Like I said the other day, it's so reckless and illogical a policy that it only really makes sense if one assumes that ministers want to import variants, in order to have surge testing, panic in the press, and thus to maintain the general atmosphere of emergency. The emergency is wildly popular with the Tories' frightened elderly supporters, it gives them cover to act with impunity, and it serves further to neuter an already ineffectual Opposition. Why would they ever want it to end?
... but would ensure no mutations.
This is nonsense - but an assumption you come across time and again.
A mutation is just as likely to occur in your next door neighbour as in some random visiting German.
We could wall off the country and still be subject to potential future mutations - at least until the point at which the country is covid-free; which is a theoretical but probably unachievable position.
Travel restrictions make sense while there are places with significantly higher incidence than here and largely unvaccinated populations. But they come at an economic and social cost.
Reactions to the plagues of the middle ages were to shun or persecute foreigners, strangers, and various minorities - a response based on emotion not logic.
That's absolutely untrue!
The case rate is miniscule in this country so the odds of your next-door neighbour and the odds of a random German being infected are completely different.
The odds of your next door neighbour and the odds of a random German coming into contact with someone else being infected and capable of infecting them is completely different.
Travel restrictions absolutely make sense until other nations have eliminated the virus like we have.
There is absolutely no justification for not having travel restrictions unless we have zero other restrictions too.
p.s. and we haven't "eliminated the virus", nor likely will we ever (most likely it eventually mutates into a progressively milder form and ends joining the portfolio of minor infections we call the common cold).
We could have a 99% vaccinated population with the virus popping up only occasionally here and there in isolated outbreaks, yet it could mutate inside a homeless tramp from Glasgow into a form to which the current vaccine is not (or is less) resistant, and the whole cycle starts again. We got where we are from an infection within a single Chinese person.
No it doesn't work that way and this completely misunderstands (AFAIK) how vaccines, mutations and protection work.
Its worth recalling that the reason this was such a huge problem last year and now is because there was no protection.at all. We had zero immunity against this virus.
Mutations may reduce but are unlikely to eliminate the protection - I note you covered that a touch with "(or is less)" but that doesn't mean "the whole cycle starts again".
We need to keep things in perspective, even if a mutation evolves its going to still be protected against in a way that the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 never was.
When cases are negligible that "homeless tramp in Glasgow" isn't going to be a patient zero sparking a whole new global pandemic resetting the clock back to 2019, this is Leon-levels of hysteria.
Why are you so confident? Viruses mutate all the time, and there's not some magic that keeps them similar enough that the vaccine is no longer effective. All you need is for the spike protein to change sufficiently that no-one's immune system recognises it anymore and you have another pandemic on your hands, possibly worse than the first if it's more infectious.
Unless you know something more about the limitations of how spike proteins mutate that prevents this, that you'd care to share with the group?
It's not just the spike protein (as I understand it).
Firstly - they need to find a mutation where the spike protein can still do its job and be unrecognisable to the immune system. Should it pull this off, the antibodies will no longer be effective. This is a challenge - while it can mutate a bit to erode the effectiveness of the current antibodies, they still have some neutralising effect, and it may not be possible to go far enough to be completely unrecognisable:
“There is not an infinite number of possibilities,” he said. “It is like putting your foot in a shoe. It still has to be basically the right shape and size and it still has to be recognizable as a shoe.” "
However, the T-cells have a swathe of epitopes (protein fragments) from far more than just the spike protein (if I understand it correctly), and the virus will need to mutate far more than that to change all those various proteins within itself to now be unrecognisable to the T-cells as well as the antibodies.
To evade both of those components of the immune system simultaneously would be needed to set us back far enough to start the whole cycle again. A partial reduction in immunity is very possible, but resistance to serious illness looks far less unlikely to be significantly eroded than resistance to mild or asymptomatic illness.
And, of course, tweaking the vaccines to deal with the mutations can be done far far faster than the original setup of them; they've already agreed that full trials will be unnecessary; it'll follow the flu vaccine tweaking method instead.
Don't the vaccines (as opposed to covid survivors) only expose patients to the spike protein, so T cells have no memory of other viral protein?
I rather assumed it was wider than that, based on the fact that B.1.351's antibody evasion seems to have not reduced T-cell protection at all. It's perfectly possible that it's just the spike protein, but from a lot more than just the binding points that antibodies target, I suppose; we'd need an immunologist to say. Which would imply that the spike protein changing sufficiently would help, but due to the number of potential chunks of protein that the T-cells use, it'd have to change enormously to do so.
I think. Again, an immunologist would be useful here (although every immunologist I've followed seems extremely upbeat about our prospects now).
I did read research early on where they were looking for T-cell epitopes to inform the immune response, which is probably what got me thinking in that direction.
The only thing stopping Biden at the momenent is Manchin and Sienma.
The American public voted for hard core socialism and Biden is eager to provide.
They didn't, had Sanders been the nominee Trump would probably have been narrowly re elected.
They voted for Biden as he was a relatively centrist not too woke alternative.
31% of Americans have a favourable view of socialism, 47% have an unfavourable view.
By contrast 55% of Americans have a favourable view of capitalism, only 24% unfavourable.
There is a reason the US, unlike Europe or Australia and New Zealand does not have a major Socialist or Labour Party and nor does it even have a major social democratic party like the NDP in Canada or the SPD in Germany.
The battle in the US is between liberals and conservatives, socialists don't really get a look in.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
That America had "ridiculous woke-crap" is why America is a more stable and healthy nation for the long-term than China, America at its healthies has always had what some would consider "ridiculous crap" being advocated by others, its how the country evolves and makes progress.
Authoritarian states like China can grow for a period but they inevitably end up in corruption, decline and collapse. America can handle a peaceful [ish] handover of power from one doddery old bloke to the next, but China is being entirely set up now in the authoritarian grasp of one man. They are losing their ability, rare in non-democracies, to see a smooth transition of power from one leader to the next.
What follows after Xi will not be success.
Nah. Wokery is burning America’s cities and will destroy its universities. eg They are abandoning SATs because they lead to ‘racial inequality of outcome’. It is pitiful. America is immolating itself.
Meanwhile China is quietly replacing the dollar as reserve currency with a new digitized Yuan (renminbi)
All done on the quiet as the rest of us freaked out about a plague from China. Sometimes you just have to admire the genius
America is challenging itself, its what America does any why it is strong.
Even though you're not you like to pretend nowadays that you're a doddery old fart who doesn't get the youth of today, and the doddery old farts of the 70s are the ones who would have been screaming against America destroying itself with counterculture etc at the same time as America was sending men to the moon.
There is nothing original about counterculture or "woke" or any of this bullshit. Its what we do in the liberal west and it is why we evolve successfully while authoritarian regimes become powerful, corrupt, ossify, collapse and fail.
Labour's 14% poll deficit is the worst recorded by any Labour leader one year into the job since the emergence of modern polling techniques in the 1950s
Presumably more excuses from the New New Labour types
Lies, Corbyn had Labour 15% behind a year after becoming leader.
O/T — In London today I was surprised to find myself giving directions to Japanese tourists. I had thought that all tourism from other countries was off the cards atm.
It would appear that the Government is, in essence, operating an open door policy for visitors from the whole world, except those travelling from red list countries (and presumably visitors from e.g. Brazil could just get around the feeble rules by travelling via a third country and lying on whatever declarations they have to make when they get here, if sufficiently determined to do so?)
Like I said the other day, it's so reckless and illogical a policy that it only really makes sense if one assumes that ministers want to import variants, in order to have surge testing, panic in the press, and thus to maintain the general atmosphere of emergency. The emergency is wildly popular with the Tories' frightened elderly supporters, it gives them cover to act with impunity, and it serves further to neuter an already ineffectual Opposition. Why would they ever want it to end?
... but would ensure no mutations.
This is nonsense - but an assumption you come across time and again.
A mutation is just as likely to occur in your next door neighbour as in some random visiting German.
We could wall off the country and still be subject to potential future mutations - at least until the point at which the country is covid-free; which is a theoretical but probably unachievable position.
Travel restrictions make sense while there are places with significantly higher incidence than here and largely unvaccinated populations. But they come at an economic and social cost.
Reactions to the plagues of the middle ages were to shun or persecute foreigners, strangers, and various minorities - a response based on emotion not logic.
That's absolutely untrue!
The case rate is miniscule in this country so the odds of your next-door neighbour and the odds of a random German being infected are completely different.
The odds of your next door neighbour and the odds of a random German coming into contact with someone else being infected and capable of infecting them is completely different.
Travel restrictions absolutely make sense until other nations have eliminated the virus like we have.
There is absolutely no justification for not having travel restrictions unless we have zero other restrictions too.
p.s. and we haven't "eliminated the virus", nor likely will we ever (most likely it eventually mutates into a progressively milder form and ends joining the portfolio of minor infections we call the common cold).
We could have a 99% vaccinated population with the virus popping up only occasionally here and there in isolated outbreaks, yet it could mutate inside a homeless tramp from Glasgow into a form to which the current vaccine is not (or is less) resistant, and the whole cycle starts again. We got where we are from an infection within a single Chinese person.
No it doesn't work that way and this completely misunderstands (AFAIK) how vaccines, mutations and protection work.
Its worth recalling that the reason this was such a huge problem last year and now is because there was no protection.at all. We had zero immunity against this virus.
Mutations may reduce but are unlikely to eliminate the protection - I note you covered that a touch with "(or is less)" but that doesn't mean "the whole cycle starts again".
We need to keep things in perspective, even if a mutation evolves its going to still be protected against in a way that the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 never was.
When cases are negligible that "homeless tramp in Glasgow" isn't going to be a patient zero sparking a whole new global pandemic resetting the clock back to 2019, this is Leon-levels of hysteria.
Why are you so confident? Viruses mutate all the time, and there's not some magic that keeps them similar enough that the vaccine is no longer effective. All you need is for the spike protein to change sufficiently that no-one's immune system recognises it anymore and you have another pandemic on your hands, possibly worse than the first if it's more infectious.
Unless you know something more about the limitations of how spike proteins mutate that prevents this, that you'd care to share with the group?
It's not just the spike protein (as I understand it).
Firstly - they need to find a mutation where the spike protein can still do its job and be unrecognisable to the immune system. Should it pull this off, the antibodies will no longer be effective. This is a challenge - while it can mutate a bit to erode the effectiveness of the current antibodies, they still have some neutralising effect, and it may not be possible to go far enough to be completely unrecognisable:
“There is not an infinite number of possibilities,” he said. “It is like putting your foot in a shoe. It still has to be basically the right shape and size and it still has to be recognizable as a shoe.” "
However, the T-cells have a swathe of epitopes (protein fragments) from far more than just the spike protein (if I understand it correctly), and the virus will need to mutate far more than that to change all those various proteins within itself to now be unrecognisable to the T-cells as well as the antibodies.
To evade both of those components of the immune system simultaneously would be needed to set us back far enough to start the whole cycle again. A partial reduction in immunity is very possible, but resistance to serious illness looks far less unlikely to be significantly eroded than resistance to mild or asymptomatic illness.
And, of course, tweaking the vaccines to deal with the mutations can be done far far faster than the original setup of them; they've already agreed that full trials will be unnecessary; it'll follow the flu vaccine tweaking method instead.
Don't the vaccines (as opposed to covid survivors) only expose patients to the spike protein, so T cells have no memory of other viral protein?
I rather assumed it was wider than that, based on the fact that B.1.351's antibody evasion seems to have not reduced T-cell protection at all. It's perfectly possible that it's just the spike protein, but from a lot more than just the binding points that antibodies target, I suppose; we'd need an immunologist to say. Which would imply that the spike protein changing sufficiently would help, but due to the number of potential chunks of protein that the T-cells use, it'd have to change enormously to do so.
I think. Again, an immunologist would be useful here (although every immunologist I've followed seems extremely upbeat about our prospects now).
I did read research early on where they were looking for T-cell epitopes to inform the immune response, which is probably what got me thinking in that direction.
Yes, it reaches the limit if my understanding of viral vaccine immunology, but I understood that Pfizer and Moderna are based on the mRNA of the spike protein. I am not sure how much other protein on top of the spike protein is in the viral vector vaccines, AZN, J and J and Sputnik.
Its really just as well that there are not postal votes being sent out for a series of important elections across the UK right now. That could have been potentially disastrous.
And Boris is writing personal letters to Welsh voters, as Prime Minister, personally endorsing the Conservative candidate and highlighting the vaccine success and 22 years of labour failure
But Boris Johnson trails Mark Drakeford in the leader ratings Wales.
Those letters will be damaging to Tory prospects in Wales.
Given how bad you say Mark Drakeford is surely it must worry you that Boris Johnson trails Drakeford in Wales?
And I have no doubt the conservatives have private polling indicating that Boris vaccine success is recognised in Wales
Indeed, I do not know of a Welsh poster on here who would back your comments
But you keep on saying PBers are NOT representative of the public, for example over vaccine passports.
So they are only representative when they agree with you, noted.
Deflection rather than accept that Labour are not good for Wales and of course I speak as someone who has been personally and also in my family adversely affected by labour's failures in Wales
Idiot, I've never said Labour are good for Wales, they are socialists and socialists always screw up things, but you cherry pick things and this is a bettign site.
Plus, I'd like to remind you that you've admitted to voting for Labour in the past, so you're part of the problem, so your complaints about Wales should be seen in that light.
Not sure calling someone an idiot is called for
So I will leave it at that
The truth hurts
I am sorry you feel that way
I actually complimented a post of yours this morning
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
That America had "ridiculous woke-crap" is why America is a more stable and healthy nation for the long-term than China, America at its healthies has always had what some would consider "ridiculous crap" being advocated by others, its how the country evolves and makes progress.
Authoritarian states like China can grow for a period but they inevitably end up in corruption, decline and collapse. America can handle a peaceful [ish] handover of power from one doddery old bloke to the next, but China is being entirely set up now in the authoritarian grasp of one man. They are losing their ability, rare in non-democracies, to see a smooth transition of power from one leader to the next.
What follows after Xi will not be success.
Nah. Wokery is burning America’s cities and will destroy its universities. eg They are abandoning SATs because they lead to ‘racial inequality of outcome’. It is pitiful. America is immolating itself.
Meanwhile China is quietly replacing the dollar as reserve currency with a new digitized Yuan (renminbi)
All done on the quiet as the rest of us freaked out about a plague from China. Sometimes you just have to admire the genius
O/T — In London today I was surprised to find myself giving directions to Japanese tourists. I had thought that all tourism from other countries was off the cards atm.
It would appear that the Government is, in essence, operating an open door policy for visitors from the whole world, except those travelling from red list countries (and presumably visitors from e.g. Brazil could just get around the feeble rules by travelling via a third country and lying on whatever declarations they have to make when they get here, if sufficiently determined to do so?)
Like I said the other day, it's so reckless and illogical a policy that it only really makes sense if one assumes that ministers want to import variants, in order to have surge testing, panic in the press, and thus to maintain the general atmosphere of emergency. The emergency is wildly popular with the Tories' frightened elderly supporters, it gives them cover to act with impunity, and it serves further to neuter an already ineffectual Opposition. Why would they ever want it to end?
... but would ensure no mutations.
This is nonsense - but an assumption you come across time and again.
A mutation is just as likely to occur in your next door neighbour as in some random visiting German.
We could wall off the country and still be subject to potential future mutations - at least until the point at which the country is covid-free; which is a theoretical but probably unachievable position.
Travel restrictions make sense while there are places with significantly higher incidence than here and largely unvaccinated populations. But they come at an economic and social cost.
Reactions to the plagues of the middle ages were to shun or persecute foreigners, strangers, and various minorities - a response based on emotion not logic.
That's absolutely untrue!
The case rate is miniscule in this country so the odds of your next-door neighbour and the odds of a random German being infected are completely different.
The odds of your next door neighbour and the odds of a random German coming into contact with someone else being infected and capable of infecting them is completely different.
Travel restrictions absolutely make sense until other nations have eliminated the virus like we have.
There is absolutely no justification for not having travel restrictions unless we have zero other restrictions too.
p.s. and we haven't "eliminated the virus", nor likely will we ever (most likely it eventually mutates into a progressively milder form and ends joining the portfolio of minor infections we call the common cold).
We could have a 99% vaccinated population with the virus popping up only occasionally here and there in isolated outbreaks, yet it could mutate inside a homeless tramp from Glasgow into a form to which the current vaccine is not (or is less) resistant, and the whole cycle starts again. We got where we are from an infection within a single Chinese person.
No it doesn't work that way and this completely misunderstands (AFAIK) how vaccines, mutations and protection work.
Its worth recalling that the reason this was such a huge problem last year and now is because there was no protection.at all. We had zero immunity against this virus.
Mutations may reduce but are unlikely to eliminate the protection - I note you covered that a touch with "(or is less)" but that doesn't mean "the whole cycle starts again".
We need to keep things in perspective, even if a mutation evolves its going to still be protected against in a way that the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 never was.
When cases are negligible that "homeless tramp in Glasgow" isn't going to be a patient zero sparking a whole new global pandemic resetting the clock back to 2019, this is Leon-levels of hysteria.
Why are you so confident? Viruses mutate all the time, and there's not some magic that keeps them similar enough that the vaccine is no longer effective. All you need is for the spike protein to change sufficiently that no-one's immune system recognises it anymore and you have another pandemic on your hands, possibly worse than the first if it's more infectious.
Unless you know something more about the limitations of how spike proteins mutate that prevents this, that you'd care to share with the group?
It's not just the spike protein (as I understand it).
Firstly - they need to find a mutation where the spike protein can still do its job and be unrecognisable to the immune system. Should it pull this off, the antibodies will no longer be effective. This is a challenge - while it can mutate a bit to erode the effectiveness of the current antibodies, they still have some neutralising effect, and it may not be possible to go far enough to be completely unrecognisable:
“There is not an infinite number of possibilities,” he said. “It is like putting your foot in a shoe. It still has to be basically the right shape and size and it still has to be recognizable as a shoe.” "
However, the T-cells have a swathe of epitopes (protein fragments) from far more than just the spike protein (if I understand it correctly), and the virus will need to mutate far more than that to change all those various proteins within itself to now be unrecognisable to the T-cells as well as the antibodies.
To evade both of those components of the immune system simultaneously would be needed to set us back far enough to start the whole cycle again. A partial reduction in immunity is very possible, but resistance to serious illness looks far less unlikely to be significantly eroded than resistance to mild or asymptomatic illness.
And, of course, tweaking the vaccines to deal with the mutations can be done far far faster than the original setup of them; they've already agreed that full trials will be unnecessary; it'll follow the flu vaccine tweaking method instead.
Don't the vaccines (as opposed to covid survivors) only expose patients to the spike protein, so T cells have no memory of other viral protein?
I rather assumed it was wider than that, based on the fact that B.1.351's antibody evasion seems to have not reduced T-cell protection at all. It's perfectly possible that it's just the spike protein, but from a lot more than just the binding points that antibodies target, I suppose; we'd need an immunologist to say. Which would imply that the spike protein changing sufficiently would help, but due to the number of potential chunks of protein that the T-cells use, it'd have to change enormously to do so.
I think. Again, an immunologist would be useful here (although every immunologist I've followed seems extremely upbeat about our prospects now).
I did read research early on where they were looking for T-cell epitopes to inform the immune response, which is probably what got me thinking in that direction.
The media are certainly pushing the ‘omg we’re fucked, again’ narrative. So I earnestly hope you’re right
I understand it’s in their interest to big this up and get us panicked. For clicks
As an added irony I read somewhere, last night (can’t find it now) that there is evidence AZ is a better defence against these new mutants than mRNA. That would be quite the outcome, especially for our EU friends
Its really just as well that there are not postal votes being sent out for a series of important elections across the UK right now. That could have been potentially disastrous.
And Boris is writing personal letters to Welsh voters, as Prime Minister, personally endorsing the Conservative candidate and highlighting the vaccine success and 22 years of labour failure
But Boris Johnson trails Mark Drakeford in the leader ratings Wales.
Those letters will be damaging to Tory prospects in Wales.
Given how bad you say Mark Drakeford is surely it must worry you that Boris Johnson trails Drakeford in Wales?
And I have no doubt the conservatives have private polling indicating that Boris vaccine success is recognised in Wales
Indeed, I do not know of a Welsh poster on here who would back your comments
But you keep on saying PBers are NOT representative of the public, for example over vaccine passports.
So they are only representative when they agree with you, noted.
Deflection rather than accept that Labour are not good for Wales and of course I speak as someone who has been personally and also in my family adversely affected by labour's failures in Wales
Idiot, I've never said Labour are good for Wales, they are socialists and socialists always screw up things, but you cherry pick things and this is a bettign site.
Plus, I'd like to remind you that you've admitted to voting for Labour in the past, so you're part of the problem, so your complaints about Wales should be seen in that light.
Not sure calling someone an idiot is called for
So I will leave it at that
The truth hurts
Like the truth that the only crossover Labour's achieving is breaking the sub-30 barrier? That kind of truth?
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
That America had "ridiculous woke-crap" is why America is a more stable and healthy nation for the long-term than China, America at its healthies has always had what some would consider "ridiculous crap" being advocated by others, its how the country evolves and makes progress.
Authoritarian states like China can grow for a period but they inevitably end up in corruption, decline and collapse. America can handle a peaceful [ish] handover of power from one doddery old bloke to the next, but China is being entirely set up now in the authoritarian grasp of one man. They are losing their ability, rare in non-democracies, to see a smooth transition of power from one leader to the next.
What follows after Xi will not be success.
Nah. Wokery is burning America’s cities and will destroy its universities. eg They are abandoning SATs because they lead to ‘racial inequality of outcome’. It is pitiful. America is immolating itself.
Meanwhile China is quietly replacing the dollar as reserve currency with a new digitized Yuan (renminbi)
All done on the quiet as the rest of us freaked out about a plague from China. Sometimes you just have to admire the genius
America is challenging itself, its what America does any why it is strong.
Even though you're not you like to pretend nowadays that you're a doddery old fart who doesn't get the youth of today, and the doddery old farts of the 70s are the ones who would have been screaming against America destroying itself with counterculture etc at the same time as America was sending men to the moon.
There is nothing original about counterculture or "woke" or any of this bullshit. Its what we do in the liberal west and it is why we evolve successfully while authoritarian regimes become powerful, corrupt, ossify, collapse and fail.
You just wrote THIS
‘Even though you're not you like to pretend nowadays that you're a doddery old fart who doesn't get the youth of today’
You’re a drooling nitwit, with bits of three day old scrambled egg on your chin. I’m putting you on IGNORE
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
That America had "ridiculous woke-crap" is why America is a more stable and healthy nation for the long-term than China, America at its healthies has always had what some would consider "ridiculous crap" being advocated by others, its how the country evolves and makes progress.
Authoritarian states like China can grow for a period but they inevitably end up in corruption, decline and collapse. America can handle a peaceful [ish] handover of power from one doddery old bloke to the next, but China is being entirely set up now in the authoritarian grasp of one man. They are losing their ability, rare in non-democracies, to see a smooth transition of power from one leader to the next.
What follows after Xi will not be success.
Nah. Wokery is burning America’s cities and will destroy its universities. eg They are abandoning SATs because they lead to ‘racial inequality of outcome’. It is pitiful. America is immolating itself.
Meanwhile China is quietly replacing the dollar as reserve currency with a new digitized Yuan (renminbi)
All done on the quiet as the rest of us freaked out about a plague from China. Sometimes you just have to admire the genius
America is challenging itself, its what America does any why it is strong.
Even though you're not you like to pretend nowadays that you're a doddery old fart who doesn't get the youth of today, and the doddery old farts of the 70s are the ones who would have been screaming against America destroying itself with counterculture etc at the same time as America was sending men to the moon.
There is nothing original about counterculture or "woke" or any of this bullshit. Its what we do in the liberal west and it is why we evolve successfully while authoritarian regimes become powerful, corrupt, ossify, collapse and fail.
Yes, I think that true. Crying over decadence in our culture, and of crazy ideas in the young is as at least a century old, probably millennia.
Its really just as well that there are not postal votes being sent out for a series of important elections across the UK right now. That could have been potentially disastrous.
And Boris is writing personal letters to Welsh voters, as Prime Minister, personally endorsing the Conservative candidate and highlighting the vaccine success and 22 years of labour failure
But Boris Johnson trails Mark Drakeford in the leader ratings Wales.
Those letters will be damaging to Tory prospects in Wales.
Given how bad you say Mark Drakeford is surely it must worry you that Boris Johnson trails Drakeford in Wales?
And I have no doubt the conservatives have private polling indicating that Boris vaccine success is recognised in Wales
Indeed, I do not know of a Welsh poster on here who would back your comments
But you keep on saying PBers are NOT representative of the public, for example over vaccine passports.
So they are only representative when they agree with you, noted.
Deflection rather than accept that Labour are not good for Wales and of course I speak as someone who has been personally and also in my family adversely affected by labour's failures in Wales
Idiot, I've never said Labour are good for Wales, they are socialists and socialists always screw up things, but you cherry pick things and this is a bettign site.
Plus, I'd like to remind you that you've admitted to voting for Labour in the past, so you're part of the problem, so your complaints about Wales should be seen in that light.
Not sure calling someone an idiot is called for
So I will leave it at that
The truth hurts
"Idiot . . . you've admitted to voting for Labour in the past, so you're part of the problem"
O/T — In London today I was surprised to find myself giving directions to Japanese tourists. I had thought that all tourism from other countries was off the cards atm.
It would appear that the Government is, in essence, operating an open door policy for visitors from the whole world, except those travelling from red list countries (and presumably visitors from e.g. Brazil could just get around the feeble rules by travelling via a third country and lying on whatever declarations they have to make when they get here, if sufficiently determined to do so?)
Like I said the other day, it's so reckless and illogical a policy that it only really makes sense if one assumes that ministers want to import variants, in order to have surge testing, panic in the press, and thus to maintain the general atmosphere of emergency. The emergency is wildly popular with the Tories' frightened elderly supporters, it gives them cover to act with impunity, and it serves further to neuter an already ineffectual Opposition. Why would they ever want it to end?
... but would ensure no mutations.
This is nonsense - but an assumption you come across time and again.
A mutation is just as likely to occur in your next door neighbour as in some random visiting German.
We could wall off the country and still be subject to potential future mutations - at least until the point at which the country is covid-free; which is a theoretical but probably unachievable position.
Travel restrictions make sense while there are places with significantly higher incidence than here and largely unvaccinated populations. But they come at an economic and social cost.
Reactions to the plagues of the middle ages were to shun or persecute foreigners, strangers, and various minorities - a response based on emotion not logic.
That's absolutely untrue!
The case rate is miniscule in this country so the odds of your next-door neighbour and the odds of a random German being infected are completely different.
The odds of your next door neighbour and the odds of a random German coming into contact with someone else being infected and capable of infecting them is completely different.
Travel restrictions absolutely make sense until other nations have eliminated the virus like we have.
There is absolutely no justification for not having travel restrictions unless we have zero other restrictions too.
p.s. and we haven't "eliminated the virus", nor likely will we ever (most likely it eventually mutates into a progressively milder form and ends joining the portfolio of minor infections we call the common cold).
We could have a 99% vaccinated population with the virus popping up only occasionally here and there in isolated outbreaks, yet it could mutate inside a homeless tramp from Glasgow into a form to which the current vaccine is not (or is less) resistant, and the whole cycle starts again. We got where we are from an infection within a single Chinese person.
No it doesn't work that way and this completely misunderstands (AFAIK) how vaccines, mutations and protection work.
Its worth recalling that the reason this was such a huge problem last year and now is because there was no protection.at all. We had zero immunity against this virus.
Mutations may reduce but are unlikely to eliminate the protection - I note you covered that a touch with "(or is less)" but that doesn't mean "the whole cycle starts again".
We need to keep things in perspective, even if a mutation evolves its going to still be protected against in a way that the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 never was.
When cases are negligible that "homeless tramp in Glasgow" isn't going to be a patient zero sparking a whole new global pandemic resetting the clock back to 2019, this is Leon-levels of hysteria.
Why are you so confident? Viruses mutate all the time, and there's not some magic that keeps them similar enough that the vaccine is no longer effective. All you need is for the spike protein to change sufficiently that no-one's immune system recognises it anymore and you have another pandemic on your hands, possibly worse than the first if it's more infectious.
Unless you know something more about the limitations of how spike proteins mutate that prevents this, that you'd care to share with the group?
Andy_Cooke has already responded to put it well.
There's a major difference between a virus evolving to mean we are less resistant due to vaccines, and one evolving to meaning we have no resistance whatsoever.
One reason the flu doesn't kill as many people as it does is because even if we do not have protection against a particular strain of the flu, we have protection from similar strains of flu (from vaccines or prior infection) that provides some protection. That will be the case with Covid19 in the future now, we aren't going back to square one.
Yes, I agree. However, we've already seen that some of the vaccines (and typically the ones that are easier and cheaper to produce and store) are less effective - sometimes much less - against the newer variants that are cropping up. Vaccine programmes will reduce the chances for new variants to crop up, but not eliminate them altogether. And the rest of the world is going to take some time to get to the levels needed for herd immunity, and it's still unclear what that level is - and it will be higher for the more infectious new variants, as well. We also don't know how long the protection from vaccines lasts - especially in the elderly - and how easy it will be to get people to go for top-up jabs every (3? 6? 12?) months.
As an example, if we hit 80% immunity in the UK, which should be comfortably enough to reduce current R well below 1 for the foreseeable, we could still be undone by a new variant with a much higher R0 that needs vaccination rates above 95% (similar to measles) to stop completely.
Overall, there are still a lot of unknowns, and we've all been proven wrong already a few times over our assumptions of the future of this disease. So I would be cautious for now. It's looking promising, but far too early to say it's over for definite.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
That America had "ridiculous woke-crap" is why America is a more stable and healthy nation for the long-term than China, America at its healthies has always had what some would consider "ridiculous crap" being advocated by others, its how the country evolves and makes progress.
Authoritarian states like China can grow for a period but they inevitably end up in corruption, decline and collapse. America can handle a peaceful [ish] handover of power from one doddery old bloke to the next, but China is being entirely set up now in the authoritarian grasp of one man. They are losing their ability, rare in non-democracies, to see a smooth transition of power from one leader to the next.
What follows after Xi will not be success.
Nah. Wokery is burning America’s cities and will destroy its universities. eg They are abandoning SATs because they lead to ‘racial inequality of outcome’. It is pitiful. America is immolating itself.
Meanwhile China is quietly replacing the dollar as reserve currency with a new digitized Yuan (renminbi)
All done on the quiet as the rest of us freaked out about a plague from China. Sometimes you just have to admire the genius
America is challenging itself, its what America does any why it is strong.
Even though you're not you like to pretend nowadays that you're a doddery old fart who doesn't get the youth of today, and the doddery old farts of the 70s are the ones who would have been screaming against America destroying itself with counterculture etc at the same time as America was sending men to the moon.
There is nothing original about counterculture or "woke" or any of this bullshit. Its what we do in the liberal west and it is why we evolve successfully while authoritarian regimes become powerful, corrupt, ossify, collapse and fail.
Yes, I think that true. Crying over decadence in our culture, and of crazy ideas in the young is as at least a century old, probably millennia.
There are opinions, some good, some silly, some pointlessly, painfully, otiosely obvious (like this) and then are hard facts. The hard facts say China is winning.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
That America had "ridiculous woke-crap" is why America is a more stable and healthy nation for the long-term than China, America at its healthies has always had what some would consider "ridiculous crap" being advocated by others, its how the country evolves and makes progress.
Authoritarian states like China can grow for a period but they inevitably end up in corruption, decline and collapse. America can handle a peaceful [ish] handover of power from one doddery old bloke to the next, but China is being entirely set up now in the authoritarian grasp of one man. They are losing their ability, rare in non-democracies, to see a smooth transition of power from one leader to the next.
What follows after Xi will not be success.
Nah. Wokery is burning America’s cities and will destroy its universities. eg They are abandoning SATs because they lead to ‘racial inequality of outcome’. It is pitiful. America is immolating itself.
Meanwhile China is quietly replacing the dollar as reserve currency with a new digitized Yuan (renminbi)
All done on the quiet as the rest of us freaked out about a plague from China. Sometimes you just have to admire the genius
America is challenging itself, its what America does any why it is strong.
Even though you're not you like to pretend nowadays that you're a doddery old fart who doesn't get the youth of today, and the doddery old farts of the 70s are the ones who would have been screaming against America destroying itself with counterculture etc at the same time as America was sending men to the moon.
There is nothing original about counterculture or "woke" or any of this bullshit. Its what we do in the liberal west and it is why we evolve successfully while authoritarian regimes become powerful, corrupt, ossify, collapse and fail.
You just wrote THIS
‘Even though you're not you like to pretend nowadays that you're a doddery old fart who doesn't get the youth of today’
You’re a drooling nitwit, with bits of three day old scrambled egg on your chin. I’m putting you on IGNORE
'The truth hurts'
Your complaints about the youth of today correspond with any era of the past apart from the war.
@Foxy and @Charles and other investment-heads: in conjunction with stock market comments in last thread, I took similar action to you Foxy last spring and ended up doing well though I didn't get out as fast as you did last Feb. I too think markets are high at the moment.
I've been dabbling in a rather boring and neglected corner of the market: zero dividend preference shares. Anyone have any insight or experience on these?
There was a big scandal a few years ago with them. Investment companies were investing in other related investment companies. When one went pop all the related zeros went pop as well.
Historically though they were boring and safe before financial engineering took over.
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
The ridiculous woke crap includes treating minorities with respect, rather than subjecting them to genocide. I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
There is a sweet midpoint between ‘stopping police from shooting black people all the time’ and ‘burning down Portland because we don’t need police at all’
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
O/T — In London today I was surprised to find myself giving directions to Japanese tourists. I had thought that all tourism from other countries was off the cards atm.
It would appear that the Government is, in essence, operating an open door policy for visitors from the whole world, except those travelling from red list countries (and presumably visitors from e.g. Brazil could just get around the feeble rules by travelling via a third country and lying on whatever declarations they have to make when they get here, if sufficiently determined to do so?)
Like I said the other day, it's so reckless and illogical a policy that it only really makes sense if one assumes that ministers want to import variants, in order to have surge testing, panic in the press, and thus to maintain the general atmosphere of emergency. The emergency is wildly popular with the Tories' frightened elderly supporters, it gives them cover to act with impunity, and it serves further to neuter an already ineffectual Opposition. Why would they ever want it to end?
... but would ensure no mutations.
This is nonsense - but an assumption you come across time and again.
A mutation is just as likely to occur in your next door neighbour as in some random visiting German.
We could wall off the country and still be subject to potential future mutations - at least until the point at which the country is covid-free; which is a theoretical but probably unachievable position.
Travel restrictions make sense while there are places with significantly higher incidence than here and largely unvaccinated populations. But they come at an economic and social cost.
Reactions to the plagues of the middle ages were to shun or persecute foreigners, strangers, and various minorities - a response based on emotion not logic.
That's absolutely untrue!
The case rate is miniscule in this country so the odds of your next-door neighbour and the odds of a random German being infected are completely different.
The odds of your next door neighbour and the odds of a random German coming into contact with someone else being infected and capable of infecting them is completely different.
Travel restrictions absolutely make sense until other nations have eliminated the virus like we have.
There is absolutely no justification for not having travel restrictions unless we have zero other restrictions too.
p.s. and we haven't "eliminated the virus", nor likely will we ever (most likely it eventually mutates into a progressively milder form and ends joining the portfolio of minor infections we call the common cold).
We could have a 99% vaccinated population with the virus popping up only occasionally here and there in isolated outbreaks, yet it could mutate inside a homeless tramp from Glasgow into a form to which the current vaccine is not (or is less) resistant, and the whole cycle starts again. We got where we are from an infection within a single Chinese person.
No it doesn't work that way and this completely misunderstands (AFAIK) how vaccines, mutations and protection work.
Its worth recalling that the reason this was such a huge problem last year and now is because there was no protection.at all. We had zero immunity against this virus.
Mutations may reduce but are unlikely to eliminate the protection - I note you covered that a touch with "(or is less)" but that doesn't mean "the whole cycle starts again".
We need to keep things in perspective, even if a mutation evolves its going to still be protected against in a way that the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 never was.
When cases are negligible that "homeless tramp in Glasgow" isn't going to be a patient zero sparking a whole new global pandemic resetting the clock back to 2019, this is Leon-levels of hysteria.
Why are you so confident? Viruses mutate all the time, and there's not some magic that keeps them similar enough that the vaccine is no longer effective. All you need is for the spike protein to change sufficiently that no-one's immune system recognises it anymore and you have another pandemic on your hands, possibly worse than the first if it's more infectious.
Unless you know something more about the limitations of how spike proteins mutate that prevents this, that you'd care to share with the group?
It's not just the spike protein (as I understand it).
Firstly - they need to find a mutation where the spike protein can still do its job and be unrecognisable to the immune system. Should it pull this off, the antibodies will no longer be effective. This is a challenge - while it can mutate a bit to erode the effectiveness of the current antibodies, they still have some neutralising effect, and it may not be possible to go far enough to be completely unrecognisable:
“There is not an infinite number of possibilities,” he said. “It is like putting your foot in a shoe. It still has to be basically the right shape and size and it still has to be recognizable as a shoe.” "
However, the T-cells have a swathe of epitopes (protein fragments) from far more than just the spike protein (if I understand it correctly), and the virus will need to mutate far more than that to change all those various proteins within itself to now be unrecognisable to the T-cells as well as the antibodies.
To evade both of those components of the immune system simultaneously would be needed to set us back far enough to start the whole cycle again. A partial reduction in immunity is very possible, but resistance to serious illness looks far less unlikely to be significantly eroded than resistance to mild or asymptomatic illness.
And, of course, tweaking the vaccines to deal with the mutations can be done far far faster than the original setup of them; they've already agreed that full trials will be unnecessary; it'll follow the flu vaccine tweaking method instead.
Don't the vaccines (as opposed to covid survivors) only expose patients to the spike protein, so T cells have no memory of other viral protein?
I rather assumed it was wider than that, based on the fact that B.1.351's antibody evasion seems to have not reduced T-cell protection at all. It's perfectly possible that it's just the spike protein, but from a lot more than just the binding points that antibodies target, I suppose; we'd need an immunologist to say. Which would imply that the spike protein changing sufficiently would help, but due to the number of potential chunks of protein that the T-cells use, it'd have to change enormously to do so.
I think. Again, an immunologist would be useful here (although every immunologist I've followed seems extremely upbeat about our prospects now).
I did read research early on where they were looking for T-cell epitopes to inform the immune response, which is probably what got me thinking in that direction.
The media are certainly pushing the ‘omg we’re fucked, again’ narrative. So I earnestly hope you’re right
I understand it’s in their interest to big this up and get us panicked. For clicks
As an added irony I read somewhere, last night (can’t find it now) that there is evidence AZ is a better defence against these new mutants than mRNA. That would be quite the outcome, especially for our EU friends
O/T — In London today I was surprised to find myself giving directions to Japanese tourists. I had thought that all tourism from other countries was off the cards atm.
It would appear that the Government is, in essence, operating an open door policy for visitors from the whole world, except those travelling from red list countries (and presumably visitors from e.g. Brazil could just get around the feeble rules by travelling via a third country and lying on whatever declarations they have to make when they get here, if sufficiently determined to do so?)
Like I said the other day, it's so reckless and illogical a policy that it only really makes sense if one assumes that ministers want to import variants, in order to have surge testing, panic in the press, and thus to maintain the general atmosphere of emergency. The emergency is wildly popular with the Tories' frightened elderly supporters, it gives them cover to act with impunity, and it serves further to neuter an already ineffectual Opposition. Why would they ever want it to end?
... but would ensure no mutations.
This is nonsense - but an assumption you come across time and again.
A mutation is just as likely to occur in your next door neighbour as in some random visiting German.
We could wall off the country and still be subject to potential future mutations - at least until the point at which the country is covid-free; which is a theoretical but probably unachievable position.
Travel restrictions make sense while there are places with significantly higher incidence than here and largely unvaccinated populations. But they come at an economic and social cost.
Reactions to the plagues of the middle ages were to shun or persecute foreigners, strangers, and various minorities - a response based on emotion not logic.
That's absolutely untrue!
The case rate is miniscule in this country so the odds of your next-door neighbour and the odds of a random German being infected are completely different.
The odds of your next door neighbour and the odds of a random German coming into contact with someone else being infected and capable of infecting them is completely different.
Travel restrictions absolutely make sense until other nations have eliminated the virus like we have.
There is absolutely no justification for not having travel restrictions unless we have zero other restrictions too.
p.s. and we haven't "eliminated the virus", nor likely will we ever (most likely it eventually mutates into a progressively milder form and ends joining the portfolio of minor infections we call the common cold).
We could have a 99% vaccinated population with the virus popping up only occasionally here and there in isolated outbreaks, yet it could mutate inside a homeless tramp from Glasgow into a form to which the current vaccine is not (or is less) resistant, and the whole cycle starts again. We got where we are from an infection within a single Chinese person.
No it doesn't work that way and this completely misunderstands (AFAIK) how vaccines, mutations and protection work.
Its worth recalling that the reason this was such a huge problem last year and now is because there was no protection.at all. We had zero immunity against this virus.
Mutations may reduce but are unlikely to eliminate the protection - I note you covered that a touch with "(or is less)" but that doesn't mean "the whole cycle starts again".
We need to keep things in perspective, even if a mutation evolves its going to still be protected against in a way that the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 never was.
When cases are negligible that "homeless tramp in Glasgow" isn't going to be a patient zero sparking a whole new global pandemic resetting the clock back to 2019, this is Leon-levels of hysteria.
Why are you so confident? Viruses mutate all the time, and there's not some magic that keeps them similar enough that the vaccine is no longer effective. All you need is for the spike protein to change sufficiently that no-one's immune system recognises it anymore and you have another pandemic on your hands, possibly worse than the first if it's more infectious.
Unless you know something more about the limitations of how spike proteins mutate that prevents this, that you'd care to share with the group?
It's not just the spike protein (as I understand it).
Firstly - they need to find a mutation where the spike protein can still do its job and be unrecognisable to the immune system. Should it pull this off, the antibodies will no longer be effective. This is a challenge - while it can mutate a bit to erode the effectiveness of the current antibodies, they still have some neutralising effect, and it may not be possible to go far enough to be completely unrecognisable:
“There is not an infinite number of possibilities,” he said. “It is like putting your foot in a shoe. It still has to be basically the right shape and size and it still has to be recognizable as a shoe.” "
However, the T-cells have a swathe of epitopes (protein fragments) from far more than just the spike protein (if I understand it correctly), and the virus will need to mutate far more than that to change all those various proteins within itself to now be unrecognisable to the T-cells as well as the antibodies.
To evade both of those components of the immune system simultaneously would be needed to set us back far enough to start the whole cycle again. A partial reduction in immunity is very possible, but resistance to serious illness looks far less unlikely to be significantly eroded than resistance to mild or asymptomatic illness.
And, of course, tweaking the vaccines to deal with the mutations can be done far far faster than the original setup of them; they've already agreed that full trials will be unnecessary; it'll follow the flu vaccine tweaking method instead.
Don't the vaccines (as opposed to covid survivors) only expose patients to the spike protein, so T cells have no memory of other viral protein?
I rather assumed it was wider than that, based on the fact that B.1.351's antibody evasion seems to have not reduced T-cell protection at all. It's perfectly possible that it's just the spike protein, but from a lot more than just the binding points that antibodies target, I suppose; we'd need an immunologist to say. Which would imply that the spike protein changing sufficiently would help, but due to the number of potential chunks of protein that the T-cells use, it'd have to change enormously to do so.
I think. Again, an immunologist would be useful here (although every immunologist I've followed seems extremely upbeat about our prospects now).
I did read research early on where they were looking for T-cell epitopes to inform the immune response, which is probably what got me thinking in that direction.
The media are certainly pushing the ‘omg we’re fucked, again’ narrative. So I earnestly hope you’re right
I understand it’s in their interest to big this up and get us panicked. For clicks
As an added irony I read somewhere, last night (can’t find it now) that there is evidence AZ is a better defence against these new mutants than mRNA. That would be quite the outcome, especially for our EU friends
O/T — In London today I was surprised to find myself giving directions to Japanese tourists. I had thought that all tourism from other countries was off the cards atm.
It would appear that the Government is, in essence, operating an open door policy for visitors from the whole world, except those travelling from red list countries (and presumably visitors from e.g. Brazil could just get around the feeble rules by travelling via a third country and lying on whatever declarations they have to make when they get here, if sufficiently determined to do so?)
Like I said the other day, it's so reckless and illogical a policy that it only really makes sense if one assumes that ministers want to import variants, in order to have surge testing, panic in the press, and thus to maintain the general atmosphere of emergency. The emergency is wildly popular with the Tories' frightened elderly supporters, it gives them cover to act with impunity, and it serves further to neuter an already ineffectual Opposition. Why would they ever want it to end?
... but would ensure no mutations.
This is nonsense - but an assumption you come across time and again.
A mutation is just as likely to occur in your next door neighbour as in some random visiting German.
We could wall off the country and still be subject to potential future mutations - at least until the point at which the country is covid-free; which is a theoretical but probably unachievable position.
Travel restrictions make sense while there are places with significantly higher incidence than here and largely unvaccinated populations. But they come at an economic and social cost.
Reactions to the plagues of the middle ages were to shun or persecute foreigners, strangers, and various minorities - a response based on emotion not logic.
That's absolutely untrue!
The case rate is miniscule in this country so the odds of your next-door neighbour and the odds of a random German being infected are completely different.
The odds of your next door neighbour and the odds of a random German coming into contact with someone else being infected and capable of infecting them is completely different.
Travel restrictions absolutely make sense until other nations have eliminated the virus like we have.
There is absolutely no justification for not having travel restrictions unless we have zero other restrictions too.
p.s. and we haven't "eliminated the virus", nor likely will we ever (most likely it eventually mutates into a progressively milder form and ends joining the portfolio of minor infections we call the common cold).
We could have a 99% vaccinated population with the virus popping up only occasionally here and there in isolated outbreaks, yet it could mutate inside a homeless tramp from Glasgow into a form to which the current vaccine is not (or is less) resistant, and the whole cycle starts again. We got where we are from an infection within a single Chinese person.
No it doesn't work that way and this completely misunderstands (AFAIK) how vaccines, mutations and protection work.
Its worth recalling that the reason this was such a huge problem last year and now is because there was no protection.at all. We had zero immunity against this virus.
Mutations may reduce but are unlikely to eliminate the protection - I note you covered that a touch with "(or is less)" but that doesn't mean "the whole cycle starts again".
We need to keep things in perspective, even if a mutation evolves its going to still be protected against in a way that the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 never was.
When cases are negligible that "homeless tramp in Glasgow" isn't going to be a patient zero sparking a whole new global pandemic resetting the clock back to 2019, this is Leon-levels of hysteria.
I fear that the impact of mutations may have been underestimated. If so, it will take about a year for the reality of the situation to become apparent. I think that the potential consequences may not be limited to regular revaccinations, huge investment in vaccine production facilities, and compulsory vaccinations. In addition, we could have to live with and accept a substantial ongoing death toll due to COVID, just as other countries must live with various tropical diseases. There have been few guarantees so far from the scientists that this will not happen.
In the longer term, evolution will cause humans to become less susceptible to COVID, but this will take at least several hundred years, assuming that the vaccines are not fully effective in the meantime.
There is no guarantee that the vaccines will be completely effective in controlling the pandemic. If we cannot eliminate COVID we will have to live with it as best we can.
That just confirms if Starmer becomes PM in 2024 he would likely allow a legal indyref2, especially as he would be reliant on SNP confidence and supply most likely to get to No10.
However as long as we have a UK Tory majority government there will be no legal indyref2 allowed for a generation
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
That America had "ridiculous woke-crap" is why America is a more stable and healthy nation for the long-term than China, America at its healthies has always had what some would consider "ridiculous crap" being advocated by others, its how the country evolves and makes progress.
Authoritarian states like China can grow for a period but they inevitably end up in corruption, decline and collapse. America can handle a peaceful [ish] handover of power from one doddery old bloke to the next, but China is being entirely set up now in the authoritarian grasp of one man. They are losing their ability, rare in non-democracies, to see a smooth transition of power from one leader to the next.
What follows after Xi will not be success.
Nah. Wokery is burning America’s cities and will destroy its universities. eg They are abandoning SATs because they lead to ‘racial inequality of outcome’. It is pitiful. America is immolating itself.
Meanwhile China is quietly replacing the dollar as reserve currency with a new digitized Yuan (renminbi)
All done on the quiet as the rest of us freaked out about a plague from China. Sometimes you just have to admire the genius
America is challenging itself, its what America does any why it is strong.
Even though you're not you like to pretend nowadays that you're a doddery old fart who doesn't get the youth of today, and the doddery old farts of the 70s are the ones who would have been screaming against America destroying itself with counterculture etc at the same time as America was sending men to the moon.
There is nothing original about counterculture or "woke" or any of this bullshit. Its what we do in the liberal west and it is why we evolve successfully while authoritarian regimes become powerful, corrupt, ossify, collapse and fail.
Yes, I think that true. Crying over decadence in our culture, and of crazy ideas in the young is as at least a century old, probably millennia.
There are opinions, some good, some silly, some pointlessly, painfully, otiosely obvious (like this) and then are hard facts. The hard facts say China is winning.
The hard facts say that China are progressing at the minute but only because they're still relatively poor per capita and have a lot of room to grow to catch up. The only reason China's economy is remotely close to America's is because for every one American there are 4 Chinese.
If we reverse the per capita ratios between America and China then China wouldn't be about the same size as America's economy it would be sixteen times bigger, so America and the west are still doing some things right don't you think?
It may be before your time but there used to be a poster here called @SeanT whose writings you might want to look up. He used to regale us with stories of his buxom young woke women that he would ahem spend time with. The young aren't as bad as you make out and will do what they've always done which is challenge those older than them, that's not a bad thing.
Comments
The Kents are easier:
Duke - tall, bald, tennis, wife is nice
Prince Michael - looks like the last Czar, wife is not nice
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1382970427769810946
CON: 43% (+2)
LAB: 29% (-5)
GRN: 8% (+2)
LDEM: 8% (+2)
REFUK: 3% (-)
via
@YouGov
, 12 - 13 Apr
Chgs. w/ 08 Apr
The most sensible thing to do is to put another data point on the chart....
As in https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/
So they are only representative when they agree with you, noted.
My take is that in seeking to appeal to the 'patriots' and the centre ground he is alienating both the young and the Corbynistas, who are not interested in flags etc. So these are indicating voting for Greens, largely, though he can win them back. And his acceptance of Brexit is leading to some remainers drifting to the Lib Dems. At the same time, his new approach hasn't yet cut through with the white working class, who remain pro-Tory. The only consolation is that the Tory vote isn't increasing significantly.
It's a long-term strategy. It's not working yet, but I wouldn't expect it to as we celebrate vaccines and the loosening of restrictions. Patience is a virtue.
Thursday 1st June 2023
It may be religious, social or national differences that influence behaviour.
Those regions or countries that obey, respect and fear will take more care than those who say WTF
https://timothylikeszebras.wordpress.com/2019/11/26/the-old-people-are-coming/
Its worth recalling that the reason this was such a huge problem last year and now is because there was no protection.at all. We had zero immunity against this virus.
Mutations may reduce but are unlikely to eliminate the protection - I note you covered that a touch with "(or is less)" but that doesn't mean "the whole cycle starts again".
We need to keep things in perspective, even if a mutation evolves its going to still be protected against in a way that the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 never was.
When cases are negligible that "homeless tramp in Glasgow" isn't going to be a patient zero sparking a whole new global pandemic resetting the clock back to 2019, this is Leon-levels of hysteria.
We have a government led by a charismatic leader who is following what the majority want by putting populism way ahead of principle/ideology. It is almost impossible to unhinge them from power in this scenario.
I think it's very troubling and I wouldn't rule out - you heard it here first - a four-term Johnson PM (currently only age 56).
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2019-election
Entirely plausible that Johnson could win three General Elections - 19, 23 or 24 and then 27, 28 or 29 - handing over at the end of this decade or beginning of the next.
Of course Wales is entitled to vote anyway it wants. In a masochistic sort of way, I think perhaps a spell with the Tories in charge might be interesting to say the least.
Actually, on reflection the BJ letter may be quite clever. ARTDavies has little recognition in Wales, whilst BJ is quite the opposite, not always negatively either.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/face-mask-use-needed-to-prevent-covid-19-second-wave/
How did that go?
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/b33929bb-2491-4cbe-bece-aae3e2cfae13
https://www.mirror.co.uk/film/batman-quote-perfectly-sums-up-22354301
1. The Labour party is now inextricably associated with Identity Politics and (as algakirk says above) their core vote is a set of fractured special interest enclaves. In the context of the culture wars and post Brexit they will find it very difficult to square the circle between metropolitan, elite loony lefties and provincial mainstream public opinion.
2. They are up against Populist Boris's conservative party not Evil Maggie's conservative party. Boris has parked his tanks on Labour's lawn as far as spending is concerned and the whole leveling up agenda. He's not seen as an evil, tax-cutting, baby-eating Tory so it's difficult for Labour to rally around a unifying bogey man (or woman).
3. Corbyn reinforced Labour's lack of credibility on the economy. At the end of they day, like it or not, most ordinary people vote according their personal finances. If Labour is seen as coming after your money / savings they will always struggle to reassure voters they are not a threat.
4. They lack authenticity on what I'll call British values e.g. wrapping themselves in the Union Jack. Whether you think its fair or not, Labour will never be seen as a patriotic party and people see straight through that kind of cynicism (even discounting the fact its a politician doing it).
5. Scotland. 50 slam dunk seats gone forever.
6. The vaccine. An obvious, glorious, tangible success, showcasing government competence and affecting every single voter. No two ways about it, the Tory's own it and will dine out on it for years. And all Labor can do as the official opposition is support it and thus validate it. The cherry on top is that it's success, thanks to the EU shooting itself in the foot, can be linked quite easily to the benefits of Brexit.
7. Brexit recovery. Once we get past COVID the economy will boom, not least because of pent up demand. Whether fair or not, Brexit will also get much of the credit, especially if / when trade deals are agreed with the rest of he world.
I'm sure anyone can come up with counter arguments to the above but my point is that there is a lot for the Tories to work with and much for Labour to contemplate, some of it structural.
I do think the poll is a bit of an outlier BTW but maybe not by much. Conventional wisdom is that polls tend to take a few weeks to reflect the public mood. Most people don't pay much attention to politics outside a GE, but the one thing everybody will have noticed in the past couple of months is the vaccine roll out ...
Unless you know something more about the limitations of how spike proteins mutate that prevents this, that you'd care to share with the group?
I've been dabbling in a rather boring and neglected corner of the market: zero dividend preference shares. Anyone have any insight or experience on these?
There are particular modern challenges though, especially in developing a nuanced and complicated, but modern stance on identity issues that's distinct from the American one.
Plus, I'd like to remind you that you've admitted to voting for Labour in the past, so you're part of the problem, so your complaints about Wales should be seen in that light.
Boris was a direct endorsement of the conservative candidate with emphasis on the vaccine success and labour's failures over 22 years. And of course signed Boris Johnson, Prime Minister
I do not think this would work in Scotland but in Wales it has a fair chance
So I will leave it at that
Firstly - they need to find a mutation where the spike protein can still do its job and be unrecognisable to the immune system. Should it pull this off, the antibodies will no longer be effective. This is a challenge - while it can mutate a bit to erode the effectiveness of the current antibodies, they still have some neutralising effect, and it may not be possible to go far enough to be completely unrecognisable:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-05/covid-mutants-multiply-as-scientists-race-to-decode-variations
"The spike protein must retain a shape that allows it to efficiently latch to its human receptor, according to Shane Crotty, a researcher at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology.
“There is not an infinite number of possibilities,” he said. “It is like putting your foot in a shoe. It still has to be basically the right shape and size and it still has to be recognizable as a shoe.”
"
However, the T-cells have a swathe of epitopes (protein fragments) from far more than just the spike protein (if I understand it correctly), and the virus will need to mutate far more than that to change all those various proteins within itself to now be unrecognisable to the T-cells as well as the antibodies.
To evade both of those components of the immune system simultaneously would be needed to set us back far enough to start the whole cycle again. A partial reduction in immunity is very possible, but resistance to serious illness looks far less unlikely to be significantly eroded than resistance to mild or asymptomatic illness.
And, of course, tweaking the vaccines to deal with the mutations can be done far far faster than the original setup of them; they've already agreed that full trials will be unnecessary; it'll follow the flu vaccine tweaking method instead.
As a Conservative, I have no particular incentive to disavow large Tory leads, however.
Tanks on lawn planning!!!!!
And Boulton v Salmond is hilarious
Nicola will be falling off her seat laughing as well
https://twitter.com/PeterArnottGlas/status/1383001086034857988?s=20
The voters look really angry about Greensill, and impressed by Sir Keir's narcoleptic platitudes...
Just been out and done a short shift. The weather is glorious, the mood amongst the punters upbeat.
‘China's economy grows 18.3% in post-Covid comeback’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56768663
This is obviously pandemic bounce back, but it’s worth remembering China was the only major economy to grow LAST year. Whether the bug was deliberately created, accidentally leaked, or ‘spontaneously leapt from bat to pangolin to zebra to human in the middle of the city with the world’s only lab researching bat-pangolin-zebra-human Coronaviral zoonosis’, there is no doubt the bug has, relatively, benefited China
This decade will, therefore, be the decade when China comprehensively and definitively overtakes the USA as the world’s pre-eminent power
Not a great time for the USA to be led by a doddery old bloke, or be mired in culture wars around ridiculous Marxist woke-crap, but maybe they are symptoms of that same American decline, and therefore predictable, if not inevitable
There's a major difference between a virus evolving to mean we are less resistant due to vaccines, and one evolving to meaning we have no resistance whatsoever.
One reason the flu doesn't kill as many people as it does is because even if we do not have protection against a particular strain of the flu, we have protection from similar strains of flu (from vaccines or prior infection) that provides some protection. That will be the case with Covid19 in the future now, we aren't going back to square one.
Presumably more excuses from the New New Labour types
Authoritarian states like China can grow for a period but they inevitably end up in corruption, decline and collapse. America can handle a peaceful [ish] handover of power from one doddery old bloke to the next, but China is being entirely set up now in the authoritarian grasp of one man. They are losing their ability, rare in non-democracies, to see a smooth transition of power from one leader to the next.
What follows after Xi will not be success.
"even if we tie his infrastructure bill to 'Cancel Culture' it is still popular"
The American public voted for hard core socialism and Biden is eager to provide.
Meanwhile China is quietly replacing the dollar as reserve currency with a new digitized Yuan (renminbi)
All done on the quiet as the rest of us freaked out about a plague from China. Sometimes you just have to admire the genius
https://news.bitcoin.com/us-government-chinas-digital-yuan-threaten-dollar-worlds-dominant-reserve-currency/
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/apr/02/the-us-dollars-hegemony-is-looking-fragile?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
It's perfectly possible that it's just the spike protein, but from a lot more than just the binding points that antibodies target, I suppose; we'd need an immunologist to say. Which would imply that the spike protein changing sufficiently would help, but due to the number of potential chunks of protein that the T-cells use, it'd have to change enormously to do so.
I think. Again, an immunologist would be useful here (although every immunologist I've followed seems extremely upbeat about our prospects now).
I did read research early on where they were looking for T-cell epitopes to inform the immune response, which is probably what got me thinking in that direction.
They voted for Biden as he was a relatively centrist not too woke alternative.
31% of Americans have a favourable view of socialism, 47% have an unfavourable view.
By contrast 55% of Americans have a favourable view of capitalism, only 24% unfavourable.
There is a reason the US, unlike Europe or Australia and New Zealand does not have a major Socialist or Labour Party and nor does it even have a major social democratic party like the NDP in Canada or the SPD in Germany.
The battle in the US is between liberals and conservatives, socialists don't really get a look in.
https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/10/04/what-do-americans-think-socialism-looks
Even though you're not you like to pretend nowadays that you're a doddery old fart who doesn't get the youth of today, and the doddery old farts of the 70s are the ones who would have been screaming against America destroying itself with counterculture etc at the same time as America was sending men to the moon.
There is nothing original about counterculture or "woke" or any of this bullshit. Its what we do in the liberal west and it is why we evolve successfully while authoritarian regimes become powerful, corrupt, ossify, collapse and fail.
I actually complimented a post of yours this morning
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48919813#:~:text=The data - based on median,£12.33 hourly pay rate.
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-indian-double-mutation-variant-arrives-in-britain-and-has-hallmarks-of-very-dangerous-virus-12276922
I understand it’s in their interest to big this up and get us panicked. For clicks
As an added irony I read somewhere, last night (can’t find it now) that there is evidence AZ is a better defence against these new mutants than mRNA. That would be quite the outcome, especially for our EU friends
I'd say that's a competitive advantage for the US.
‘Even though you're not you like to pretend nowadays that you're a doddery old fart who doesn't get the youth of today’
You’re a drooling nitwit, with bits of three day old scrambled egg on your chin. I’m putting you on IGNORE
https://twitter.com/ropoem/status/1383007424286748676?s=20
That's the truth in your eyes? 🤔
As an example, if we hit 80% immunity in the UK, which should be comfortably enough to reduce current R well below 1 for the foreseeable, we could still be undone by a new variant with a much higher R0 that needs vaccination rates above 95% (similar to measles) to stop completely.
Overall, there are still a lot of unknowns, and we've all been proven wrong already a few times over our assumptions of the future of this disease. So I would be cautious for now. It's looking promising, but far too early to say it's over for definite.
The truth hurts
SKS is a complete disaster (just to test your theory)
Your complaints about the youth of today correspond with any era of the past apart from the war.
Historically though they were boring and safe before financial engineering took over.
Unfortunately, America seems determined to miss that sweet spot, and swing wildly and dangerously to the burning cities bit
(CNN)Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/03/us/us-crime-rate-rise-2020/index.html
... which discussed the Oxford Group's decision to not stabilise the spike in their vaccine.
The upshot is that it reduces neutralising antibodies, but provides a wider range of T-cell responses and should thus provide broader protection against severe illness from variants.
In the longer term, evolution will cause humans to become less susceptible to COVID, but this will take at least several hundred years, assuming that the vaccines are not fully effective in the meantime.
There is no guarantee that the vaccines will be completely effective in controlling the pandemic. If we cannot eliminate COVID we will have to live with it as best we can.
However as long as we have a UK Tory majority government there will be no legal indyref2 allowed for a generation
If we reverse the per capita ratios between America and China then China wouldn't be about the same size as America's economy it would be sixteen times bigger, so America and the west are still doing some things right don't you think?
It may be before your time but there used to be a poster here called @SeanT whose writings you might want to look up. He used to regale us with stories of his buxom young woke women that he would ahem spend time with. The young aren't as bad as you make out and will do what they've always done which is challenge those older than them, that's not a bad thing.