The problem for Northern Ireland is that plenty of the people who live there don't care about the place. So I'm not sure why I should.
On the contrary, I think they care too much, at least about matters that others find hard to understand.
Okay, that's probably true too.
Of course, one of the ironies in all of this is that Sinn Fein and the party's voters cannot complain about Brexit and the border down the Irish Sea.
Of course, NI voted to Remain in 2016.
It's no good saying "NI voted to Remain". Northern Irish voters aren't fungible such that a simple majority is decisive and they split into two largely polarised communities; that's why we have the GFA in the first place.
A majority of unionists voted to Leave. A majority of nationalist voted to Remain. So the province split along secretarian lines and any Brexit solution needs to address the concerns of both.
Do you have an exact breakdown? I don't think NI voters had to give their constitutional allegiance when they cast their ballots!
We know 56% of NI voted Remain - given that Nationalists are a minority, a significant number of Unionists must also have voted to Remain.
I'm glad you brought up the GFA - I remember back in 1998 the DUP complaining about the GFA as being supported largely by Nationalists.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
On a related matter - does anyone have a good source for mortality from flu in a normal flu year
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
What a wonderful image of the new model Britain. Italians, French, Bulgarians, Spaniards, Portugese and Greeks sitting in prisons and detention centres. It will also work wonders for the necessities of the working relationship going forwards, I expect.
What else should be done if people have broken the law and come here illegally when its not permitted because there's a pandemic going on?
Its against the law to come here without an essential reason. "Exploring the job market" is not essential.
They could do that after the pandemic. No need to do it now while we're under lockdown and the border is closed. 🙄
"Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
[...] In other cases, visitors are clearly breaking rules, such as those now barring EU citizens from taking up unpaid internships."
Yet the only quotes are from people "exploring the job market".
Exploring the job market is not attending an interview. Its coming to go fishing for an interview and it is not permitted. So
Insdeed, because who wants to screw up a job by naming the company [edit] to the media? But the article should certainly have explained that lacuna.
Eugenia, a 24-year-old woman from the Basque region of northern Spain, reached Gatwick on Sunday 2 February on a flight from Bilbao. She planned to look for a job offer, go home to apply for a visa and then return to live with her Spanish boyfriend – an NHS worker who has been in the UK for four years. “I had a return ticket and had filled out an online travel form in which I explained all that,” she said.
She planned to look for a job offer. Not attend an interview.
Yes, wrong, as the article says.
But it's the interview holders (so to speak) which are at issue.
What interview holders? Not one interview holder is quoted.
Instead those with an agenda people coming to look for an interview are being phrased as those coming for an interview, which is not the same thing.
The article is actually not doing quite that - but it is not presenting enough evidence, agreed. We will khave to see what comes out.
The story is so full of holes I’d be surprised if we heard anything more about it. What was that CNN quote about asking too many questions?
The government said it was going slowly because it wanted this to be the last lockdown.
Today has shown that to be what it is. A barefaced lie. They are ruling nothing out. If this was the last lockdown, they would be ruling out some things, including another lockdown.
The truth is they are terrified of SAGE.
Right now people who are unaccountable, unanswerable, whose science is disputed and whose predictions have been utterly junked on many occasions, are deciding our fate. People who who are in some cases not even experts in epidemiology, but communist psychologists with another agenda so obvious its untrue.
And you guys think this is OK. I don't know how dangerous covid is, but i do know how dangerous your attitudes are.
If you want something to be frightened of, look at the hospitals waiting lists. Trying seeing your GP.
If you want something else to be frightened of, look at the coming economic tsunami that is the result of these utterly devastating and ludicrous lockdowns.
The "not ruling out" is just semantics. You can't 100% rule out another lockdown because you can't 100% rule out the genuine need for one - eg the virus mutating into something that the current vaccines can't combat.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The vast majority of the increases in Bolton appear to be sub 45 so this may provide further support that the vaccines are effective against the Indian variant.
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Re architecture, the Victorians were great vandals too. The village of Lewisham featured rows of timber framed Elizabethan cottages, then the railways arrived in the late 19th century and down they came, replaced by flimsily built brick shopping streets and, by the 1890s, ugly red neo-gothic churches and civic buildings.
I live in a mid Victorian terrace. Looks attractive enough now but it was part of a speculative edge of town development that upended acres of centenarian orchards, saw the razing of the Tudor Brockley Manor and the destruction of most, though not quite all, of the Georgian canalside cottages.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Re architecture, the Victorians were great vandals too. The village of Lewisham featured rows of timber framed Elizabethan cottages, then the railways arrived in the late 19th century and down they came, replaced by flimsily built brick shopping streets and, by the 1890s, ugly red neo-gothic churches and civic buildings.
I live in a mid Victorian terrace. Looks attractive enough now but it was part of a speculative edge of town development that upended acres of centenarian orchards, saw the razing of the Tudor Brockley Manor and the destruction of most, though not quite all, of the Georgian canalside cottages.
The Victorians were the Chinese of their day - nothing would get in their way.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
In my noble desire to expose myself to the *best* of Birmingham, I have just discovered their Symphony Hall
How? How could any city outside Saddam Hussein’s Iraq erect such a hideous wart, surrounded by similar warts? Why are British cities so bad at this? How did London, almost uniquely, escape?
Not great from the outside, but the acoustics are fantastic, and inside the hall itself looks pretty good.
you think that's bad - take a look at what they're taking the photo from ...
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
You're not a scientist, so perhaps don't pick the nuance. 'Encouraged' and 'pretty confident' is pretty strong. I never say I'm 100% on anything, as there is always scope to be wrong, but on this the mRNA vaccines look fine, and there is no reason to suspect AZ won't be either. If you want a reason - look up epitopes.
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
Probably poor taste to say this when 15 old dears got ill, but that's great news.
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
No fully vaccinated healthcare workers at two of the largest hospitals have been seriously ill with the Indian variant. Again, the chances of that being sheer random luck are negligible.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
True, but doesn't always follow: Obama, over dinner, 22 June 2016: "I'd be surprised if the Brits vote for Brexit. Doesn't make much sense for them IMO"
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
Four of them were hospitalized. Hmm.
My fear is that ‘moderate Covid’, if rampant, is bad enough to stop us unlockdowning properly, for years
This is an acquaintance of mine. Never in hospital. But life badly damaged by Long Covid
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
Four of them were hospitalized. Hmm.
My fear is that ‘moderate Covid’, if rampant, is bad enough to stop us unlockdowning properly, for years
This is an acquaintance of mine. Never in hospital. But life badly damaged by Long Covid
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
Re architecture, the Victorians were great vandals too. The village of Lewisham featured rows of timber framed Elizabethan cottages, then the railways arrived in the late 19th century and down they came, replaced by flimsily built brick shopping streets and, by the 1890s, ugly red neo-gothic churches and civic buildings.
I live in a mid Victorian terrace. Looks attractive enough now but it was part of a speculative edge of town development that upended acres of centenarian orchards, saw the razing of the Tudor Brockley Manor and the destruction of most, though not quite all, of the Georgian canalside cottages.
The Victorians were the Chinese of their day - nothing would get in their way.
Or, it seems, in Donald Trump's way when it comes to utterly corrupting the GOP. See the sacking of Cheney. You can't be a player in the party right now unless you subscribe publicly to the subversion of democracy by violence and intimidation. What a state of affairs. They cannot win the White House on this basis so a detox is surely inevitable. But I wonder how this happens and how long it'll take?
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, and with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
"If the detentions continue"... they were denied entry and put on the first flight back. That happens all the time in all countries, almost a million in 2019 in the EU-27.
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
Four of them were hospitalized. Hmm.
My fear is that ‘moderate Covid’, if rampant, is bad enough to stop us unlockdowning properly, for years
This is an acquaintance of mine. Never in hospital. But life badly damaged by Long Covid
Eventually we will learn to cope with the risks - and develop treatments and medications - but it could take quite a time
"Four of them were hospitalized"... with non-severe illness. Which indicates precautionary measures; they weren't taking any chances with the seriously elderly and highly vulnerable.
Whatever causes Long Covid will almost certainly be seriously hampered by vaccinations that protect against other levels of illness. Your immune system is ramped up and fully prepared for it.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, and with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
"If the detentions continue"... they were denied entry and put on the first flight back. That happens all the time in all countries, almost a million in 2019 in the EU-27.
The article mentions several people being sent to detention facilities, rather than being instantly put on the next plane black. If anything remotely like that continues after Covid, it will happen to Brits abroad in the EU too.
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
Four of them were hospitalized. Hmm.
My fear is that ‘moderate Covid’, if rampant, is bad enough to stop us unlockdowning properly, for years
This is an acquaintance of mine. Never in hospital. But life badly damaged by Long Covid
Eventually we will learn to cope with the risks - and develop treatments and medications - but it could take quite a time
But not with severe cases. If it can't even give a severe case to the most vulnerable then there is nothing to worry about.
A few weeks ago Richard Nabavi posted a link to a moving and distressing account, from a young fit guy, who got Covid, never went to hospital, but has endured ruinous bad health ever since
You don’t have to be a ‘severe’ case for this wretched virus to fuck you up. You don’t even have to go to hospital
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
No fully vaccinated healthcare workers at two of the largest hospitals have been seriously ill with the Indian variant. Again, the chances of that being sheer random luck are negligible.
Indeed, there was a great piece in the FT this week (with a misleading headline) where they'd gone to speak to a whole bunch of doctors in India. Cases of immune escape are "very, very rare" – and with a massive sample size.
Regarding surge vaccinations, I'd do it. Just clear the decks in the high prevalence areas. It's the endgame, but needs playing well.
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
Four of them were hospitalized. Hmm.
My fear is that ‘moderate Covid’, if rampant, is bad enough to stop us unlockdowning properly, for years
This is an acquaintance of mine. Never in hospital. But life badly damaged by Long Covid
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, and with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
"If the detentions continue"... they were denied entry and put on the first flight back. That happens all the time in all countries, almost a million in 2019 in the EU-27.
The article mentions several people being sent to detention facilities, rather than instantly put on the next plane black. If anything remotely like that continues after Covid, it will happen to Britons abroad in the EU too.
While waiting for the next flight. And it happens to Brits who don't have the necessary paperwork to travel to other countries too.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, and with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
"If the detentions continue"... they were denied entry and put on the first flight back. That happens all the time in all countries, almost a million in 2019 in the EU-27.
The article mentions several people being sent to detention facilities, rather than instantly put on the next plane black. If anything remotely like that continues after Covid, it will happen to Britons abroad in the EU too.
While waiting for the next flight. And it happens to Brits who don't have the necessary paperwork to travel to other countries too.
If you can point me to Brits in EU detention facilities between January and now, I'm genuinely all ears.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, and with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
"If the detentions continue"... they were denied entry and put on the first flight back. That happens all the time in all countries, almost a million in 2019 in the EU-27.
The article mentions several people being sent to detention facilities, rather than instantly put on the next plane black. If anything remotely like that continues after Covid, it will happen to Britons abroad in the EU too.
While waiting for the next flight. And it happens to Brits who don't have the necessary paperwork to travel to other countries too.
If you can point to Brits in EU detention facilities between January and now, I'm genuinely all ears.
Brits have been refused entry before, and will again in the future. You don't seriously believe that documentation requirement at the border started last week, do you?
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
Four of them were hospitalized. Hmm.
My fear is that ‘moderate Covid’, if rampant, is bad enough to stop us unlockdowning properly, for years
This is an acquaintance of mine. Never in hospital. But life badly damaged by Long Covid
Eventually we will learn to cope with the risks - and develop treatments and medications - but it could take quite a time
"Four of them were hospitalized"... with non-severe illness. Which indicates precautionary measures; they weren't taking any chances with the seriously elderly and highly vulnerable.
Whatever causes Long Covid will almost certainly be seriously hampered by vaccinations that protect against other levels of illness. Your immune system is ramped up and fully prepared for it.
I'm convinced that for some (not all) long covid will turn out to be functional neuronal disorders (FND). Real conditions, just not driven by physical effects of the virus. Some absolutely will have physical damage - heart, lungs etc. But I am hearing many cases that sound so much like FND, and not hard to understand why - the awful stress of this year on people. Some will not like the diagnosis, and I may be very wrong, but that's my take on this. A colleague knows of a young girl near Bristol who woke up paralyzed recently. Not physical damage, a history of being bullied, and I imagine covid stress too. Diagnosed as FND, and still struggling.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, and with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
"If the detentions continue"... they were denied entry and put on the first flight back. That happens all the time in all countries, almost a million in 2019 in the EU-27.
The article mentions several people being sent to detention facilities, rather than instantly put on the next plane black. If anything remotely like that continues after Covid, it will happen to Britons abroad in the EU too.
While waiting for the next flight. And it happens to Brits who don't have the necessary paperwork to travel to other countries too.
If you can point to Brits in EU detention facilities between January and now, I'm genuinely all ears.
Brits have been refused entry before, and will again in the future. You don't seriously believe that documentation requirement at the border started last week, do you?
Why then did it take a further 11 years for the truth to come out about Ballymurphy?... They did what governments do with inconvenient truths - keep them hidden for as long as possible in the hope that time will render them unjusticiable.
It is a great header, and as @Cyclefree points out, not unique to Northern Ireland that government cover ups of wrongdoings can eventually be exposed by campaign groups and courts. At least they could in the past before this government started to outlaw some attempts.
So a "statute of limitations" has problems when a government cam effectively time out any punishment by dragging its feet, something private citizens cannot do.
It is noticeable to how few of the organisational and command culprits get punished when these crimes get exposed. The paratrooper with the gun is the one who gets exposed, but the officers who put him there then covered it up get away with it completely. It is typical British class privilege.
At the beginning of Operation Banner the British Army treated Northern Ireland like a Colonial insurrection. The (always difficult) problems of distinguishing irregular combatants from civilians were never really addressed, as the citizens of Aden, Kenya, Malaysia and many had previously found out. Indeed, the USA was doing very little to distinguish between combatants and civilians in 1971 in Indochina too.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, and with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
"If the detentions continue"... they were denied entry and put on the first flight back. That happens all the time in all countries, almost a million in 2019 in the EU-27.
The article mentions several people being sent to detention facilities, rather than instantly put on the next plane black. If anything remotely like that continues after Covid, it will happen to Britons abroad in the EU too.
While waiting for the next flight. And it happens to Brits who don't have the necessary paperwork to travel to other countries too.
If you can point to Brits in EU detention facilities between January and now, I'm genuinely all ears.
Brits have been refused entry before, and will again in the future. You don't seriously believe that documentation requirement at the border started last week, do you?
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
No fully vaccinated healthcare workers at two of the largest hospitals have been seriously ill with the Indian variant. Again, the chances of that being sheer random luck are negligible.
Indeed, there was a great piece in the FT this week (with a misleading headline) where they'd gone to speak to a whole bunch of doctors in India. Cases of immune escape are "very, very rare" – and with a massive sample size.
Regarding surge vaccinations, I'd do it. Just clear the decks in the high prevalence areas. It's the endgame, but needs playing well.
Surge vaccinations are such a no-brainer. Very few people outside the surge areas will object, they can probably be achieved using the stockpile without slowing rollout elsewhere (we're talking hundreds of '000s of jabs, not millions), they are I suspect good PR and a way of getting to communities with lower take-up rates, and all the most vulnerable have been jabbed elsewhere already. And give them mRNA ones so the second dose can come more quickly, otherwise you're part protecting a surge area for 12 weeks.
We already know that the vaccines prevent serious illness from the Indian variant. As they do from the Brazil variant and the South African variant.
Keep Jabbing and Carry On.
I find myself unconcerned over the Indian variant, but I suppose the media need some form of outrage. And contrarian needs some straw to cling to.
I hope you're right - but I think there is some evidence that vaccines are less effective against B.1.617.1 India variant. Time will tell though. Such an error of the govt not to impose quarantine from India.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, and with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
"If the detentions continue"... they were denied entry and put on the first flight back. That happens all the time in all countries, almost a million in 2019 in the EU-27.
The article mentions several people being sent to detention facilities, rather than instantly put on the next plane black. If anything remotely like that continues after Covid, it will happen to Britons abroad in the EU too.
While waiting for the next flight. And it happens to Brits who don't have the necessary paperwork to travel to other countries too.
If you can point to Brits in EU detention facilities between January and now, I'm genuinely all ears.
Brits have been refused entry before, and will again in the future. You don't seriously believe that documentation requirement at the border started last week, do you?
It's the same thing. If there isn't a flight until tomorrow, the person has to be held until then.
Not quite. Some are held at airports, and it looks like the Home Office machinery in some cases may have swung into action to send people to detention facilities quite a long way away for a period of days. As mentioned, if that is a long-term policy separate from Covid, there will be consequences for Brits abroad,
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
Andy's point is that herd immunity is about what happens when you lift restrictions, not what happens when there are restrictions.
We've got R down well below 1 in the past with very little immunity (and all that infection-acquired) in the first lockdown. So low numbers while we still have restrictions do not mean we're at herd immunity.
Decreasing numbers mean restrictions + immunity are pushing R below 1. It may be that immunity alone will keep R below 1 (= herd immunity) but given R appears close to 1 (very slightly below) and we still have restrictions it is likely (although not certain) that we're not quite there with herd immunity yet.
That does not mean that I (or, I think, Andy) think the 17 May and 21 June openings need to be delayed. We're close to herd immunity; by 21 June we could well be there. We're also at a very low base of cases at the moment, so R a little bit above 1 in the short term will be manageable - say we end up with R at 1.1 for 50 days, that's 10 periods of 10% increases, which only gets us to 2.6 times current levels of infections (if my maths is right), which looks very manageable still.
The evidence show we're probably not at herd immunity just yet*, but (for me) it doesn't suggest we need to delay opening.
* Wee bit more complicated because we could be at herd immunity overall, but local lower levels of immunity allow an increase in cases nonetheless - subpopulations that are below herd immunity. Mostly the young, who are at low risk. Maybe some others at higher risk who refused vaccine - not much to be done except encourage take-up.
The problem for Northern Ireland is that plenty of the people who live there don't care about the place. So I'm not sure why I should.
On the contrary, I think they care too much, at least about matters that others find hard to understand.
Okay, that's probably true too.
Of course, one of the ironies in all of this is that Sinn Fein and the party's voters cannot complain about Brexit and the border down the Irish Sea.
Of course, NI voted to Remain in 2016.
It's no good saying "NI voted to Remain". Northern Irish voters aren't fungible such that a simple majority is decisive and they split into two largely polarised communities; that's why we have the GFA in the first place.
A majority of unionists voted to Leave. A majority of nationalist voted to Remain. So the province split along secretarian lines and any Brexit solution needs to address the concerns of both.
Do you have an exact breakdown? I don't think NI voters had to give their constitutional allegiance when they cast their ballots!
We know 56% of NI voted Remain - given that Nationalists are a minority, a significant number of Unionists must also have voted to Remain.
I'm glad you brought up the GFA - I remember back in 1998 the DUP complaining about the GFA as being supported largely by Nationalists.
According to a study done by the NI Assembly, 88% of Nationalists voted Remain and 34% of Unionists. So yes I think Casino probably is correct in his assertion that the majority of Unionists voted Leave.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, and with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
"If the detentions continue"... they were denied entry and put on the first flight back. That happens all the time in all countries, almost a million in 2019 in the EU-27.
The article mentions several people being sent to detention facilities, rather than instantly put on the next plane black. If anything remotely like that continues after Covid, it will happen to Britons abroad in the EU too.
While waiting for the next flight. And it happens to Brits who don't have the necessary paperwork to travel to other countries too.
If you can point to Brits in EU detention facilities between January and now, I'm genuinely all ears.
Brits have been refused entry before, and will again in the future. You don't seriously believe that documentation requirement at the border started last week, do you?
It's the same thing. If there isn't a flight until tomorrow, the person has to be held until then.
Not quite. Some are held at airports, and it looks like the Home Office machinery in some cases may have swung into action to send people to detention facilities much further away for a period of days. As mentioned, if that continues, there will be consequences for Brits abroad,
It already happens to Brits abroad. Another example of where the lack of documentation gets you:
“The most curious subplot in the news right now is the admission, at the most senior levels of the United States government, that the military services have collected visuals, data and testimonials recording flying objects they cannot explain; that they are investigating these phenomena seriously; and that they will, in the coming months, report at least some of their findings to the public. It feels, at times, like the beginning of a film where everyone is going about their lives, even as the earthshaking events unfurl on a silenced television in the background.”
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
You need to look at the death by age details - which will probably be posted here by @Malmesbury later today as he always does.
That will show you the actual problem - the current deaths are mainly old people who should have been vaccinated but for whatever reason clearly have not been vaccinated.
Which also removes your herd immunity argument - if we had reached herd immunity these people would not be catching Covid.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, and with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
"If the detentions continue"... they were denied entry and put on the first flight back. That happens all the time in all countries, almost a million in 2019 in the EU-27.
The article mentions several people being sent to detention facilities, rather than instantly put on the next plane black. If anything remotely like that continues after Covid, it will happen to Britons abroad in the EU too.
While waiting for the next flight. And it happens to Brits who don't have the necessary paperwork to travel to other countries too.
If you can point to Brits in EU detention facilities between January and now, I'm genuinely all ears.
Brits have been refused entry before, and will again in the future. You don't seriously believe that documentation requirement at the border started last week, do you?
It's the same thing. If there isn't a flight until tomorrow, the person has to be held until then.
Not quite. Some are held at airports, and it looks like the Home Office machinery in some cases may have swung into action to send people to detention facilities much further away for a period of days. As mentioned, if that continues, there will be consequences for Brits abroad,
It already happens to Brits abroad. Another example of where the lack of documentation gets you:
But these were held at the airport on a strictly covid basis. As mentioned, the tests are whether it continues after Covid, and whether people are sent away to longer-term facilities.
The problem for Northern Ireland is that plenty of the people who live there don't care about the place. So I'm not sure why I should.
On the contrary, I think they care too much, at least about matters that others find hard to understand.
Okay, that's probably true too.
Of course, one of the ironies in all of this is that Sinn Fein and the party's voters cannot complain about Brexit and the border down the Irish Sea.
Of course, NI voted to Remain in 2016.
It's no good saying "NI voted to Remain". Northern Irish voters aren't fungible such that a simple majority is decisive and they split into two largely polarised communities; that's why we have the GFA in the first place.
A majority of unionists voted to Leave. A majority of nationalist voted to Remain. So the province split along secretarian lines and any Brexit solution needs to address the concerns of both.
Do you have an exact breakdown? I don't think NI voters had to give their constitutional allegiance when they cast their ballots!
We know 56% of NI voted Remain - given that Nationalists are a minority, a significant number of Unionists must also have voted to Remain.
I'm glad you brought up the GFA - I remember back in 1998 the DUP complaining about the GFA as being supported largely by Nationalists.
According to a study done by the NI Assembly, 88% of Nationalists voted Remain and 34% of Unionists. So yes I think Casino probably is correct in his assertion that the majority of Unionists voted Leave.
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
You need to look at the death by age details - which will probably be posted here by @Malmesbury later today as he always does.
That will show you the actual problem - the current deaths are mainly old people who should have been vaccinated but for whatever reason clearly have not been vaccinated.
Which also removes your herd immunity argument - if we had reached herd immunity these people would not be catching Covid.
Although people who are old, in hospital with heart failure, or other issues, can also die and be diagnosed covid positive. I've no doubt that most of those dying 'from covid' are dying from covid, but there will be many reasons behind it too. Remember captain Tom - he couldn't be vaccinated, and subsequently died. There will be others like him.
I had coffee last week with the CEO of one of the national care home chains. He doesn’t blame the government for the decision to move people from hospitals to care homes
Good to have that cleared up then. The Covid inquiry shouldn't take long if you could give us the rest of the evidence so succinctly.
He blamed the government for other things. But not that. It was a reasonable decision in the context of the time (Italy was falling over) given the decision that protecting the NHS was paramount
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, and with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
"If the detentions continue"... they were denied entry and put on the first flight back. That happens all the time in all countries, almost a million in 2019 in the EU-27.
The article mentions several people being sent to detention facilities, rather than instantly put on the next plane black. If anything remotely like that continues after Covid, it will happen to Britons abroad in the EU too.
While waiting for the next flight. And it happens to Brits who don't have the necessary paperwork to travel to other countries too.
If you can point to Brits in EU detention facilities between January and now, I'm genuinely all ears.
Brits have been refused entry before, and will again in the future. You don't seriously believe that documentation requirement at the border started last week, do you?
It's the same thing. If there isn't a flight until tomorrow, the person has to be held until then.
Not quite. Some are held at airports, and it looks like the Home Office machinery in some cases may have swung into action to send people to detention facilities much further away for a period of days. As mentioned, if that continues, there will be consequences for Brits abroad,
It already happens to Brits abroad. Another example of where the lack of documentation gets you:
But these were held at the airport on a strictly covid basis. As mentioned, the tests are whether it continues after Covid, and whether people are sent away to longer-term facilities.
But it’s the same thing, held after a denial of entry due to insufficient documentation. I’m confident refusals happened all the time before, and will continue to do so afterwards. Also for that specific case, it does sound as though there were extraneous circumstances. Of course those aren’t expanded upon in the article.
Why then did it take a further 11 years for the truth to come out about Ballymurphy?... They did what governments do with inconvenient truths - keep them hidden for as long as possible in the hope that time will render them unjusticiable.
It is a great header, and as @Cyclefree points out, not unique to Northern Ireland that government cover ups of wrongdoings can eventually be exposed by campaign groups and courts. At least they could in the past before this government started to outlaw some attempts.
So a "statute of limitations" has problems when a government cam effectively time out any punishment by dragging its feet, something private citizens cannot do.
It is noticeable to how few of the organisational and command culprits get punished when these crimes get exposed. The paratrooper with the gun is the one who gets exposed, but the officers who put him there then covered it up get away with it completely. It is typical British class privilege.
At the beginning of Operation Banner the British Army treated Northern Ireland like a Colonial insurrection. The (always difficult) problems of distinguishing irregular combatants from civilians were never really addressed, as the citizens of Aden, Kenya, Malaysia and many had previously found out. Indeed, the USA was doing very little to distinguish between combatants and civilians in 1971 in Indochina too.
Similar thing with corruption in the City. Tom Hayes absolutely monstered, nobody anywhere near the boardroom anywhere near jail.
The inquiry into Covid will be interesting in this regard. Will it be all "lessons to be learnt" or will there be some homing in on culpability? And if the latter, will it be exclusively 'institutional" or will there be individuals in the frame?
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
Andy's point is that herd immunity is about what happens when you lift restrictions, not what happens when there are restrictions.
We've got R down well below 1 in the past with very little immunity (and all that infection-acquired) in the first lockdown. So low numbers while we still have restrictions do not mean we're at herd immunity.
Decreasing numbers mean restrictions + immunity are pushing R below 1. It may be that immunity alone will keep R below 1 (= herd immunity) but given R appears close to 1 (very slightly below) and we still have restrictions it is likely (although not certain) that we're not quite there with herd immunity yet.
That does not mean that I (or, I think, Andy) think the 17 May and 21 June openings need to be delayed. We're close to her immunity; by 21 June we could well be there. We're also at a very low base of cases at the moment, so R a little bit above 1 in the short term will be manageable - say we end up with R at 1.1 for 50 days, that's 10 periods of 10% increases, which only gets us to 2.6 times current levels of infections (if my maths is right), which looks very manageable still.
The evidence show we're probably not at herd immunity just yet*, but (for me) it doesn't suggest we need to delay opening.
* Wee bit more complicated because we could be at herd immunity overall, but local lower levels of immunity allow an increase in cases nonetheless - subpopulations that are below herd immunity. Mostly the young, who are at low risk. Maybe some others at higher risk who refused vaccine - not much to be done except encourage take-up.
R was down to about 0.7 until we hit a floor. Now we have no meaningful deaths, that may 100% be "deaths with Covid" (or even deaths with a positive Covid test) rather than "deaths from Covid".
The positivity rate now in tests is down to just 0.25% of all tests being positive so its entirely possible that a significant portion of those are false positives (unlike when Covid Denialists were using the phrase last year) and there's no meaningful hospitalisations or deaths to say otherwise.
If we're at the floor and can't go any lower then you can't say R will go above 1 if we lift restrictions now.
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
You need to look at the death by age details - which will probably be posted here by @Malmesbury later today as he always does.
That will show you the actual problem - the current deaths are mainly old people who should have been vaccinated but for whatever reason clearly have not been vaccinated.
Which also removes your herd immunity argument - if we had reached herd immunity these people would not be catching Covid.
Again herd immunity does not mean there should be zero infections - and a teeny tiny number of old people dying doesn't mean they died due to Covid.
Old people die, its a fact of life. A tiny number of old people dying could entirely be natural causes. Are there any excess deaths to say otherwise?
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
Four of them were hospitalized. Hmm.
My fear is that ‘moderate Covid’, if rampant, is bad enough to stop us unlockdowning properly, for years
This is an acquaintance of mine. Never in hospital. But life badly damaged by Long Covid
Eventually we will learn to cope with the risks - and develop treatments and medications - but it could take quite a time
"Four of them were hospitalized"... with non-severe illness. Which indicates precautionary measures; they weren't taking any chances with the seriously elderly and highly vulnerable.
Whatever causes Long Covid will almost certainly be seriously hampered by vaccinations that protect against other levels of illness. Your immune system is ramped up and fully prepared for it.
I'm convinced that for some (not all) long covid will turn out to be functional neuronal disorders (FND). Real conditions, just not driven by physical effects of the virus. Some absolutely will have physical damage - heart, lungs etc. But I am hearing many cases that sound so much like FND, and not hard to understand why - the awful stress of this year on people. Some will not like the diagnosis, and I may be very wrong, but that's my take on this. A colleague knows of a young girl near Bristol who woke up paralyzed recently. Not physical damage, a history of being bullied, and I imagine covid stress too. Diagnosed as FND, and still struggling.
There was an astonishing article in Spectator recently from a hospital acute care consultant on the non-sick who had disappeared during lockdown who are now filling up his wards again. Some had paralysis yet nothing physical could be determined. Many had mysterious yet terrible pains and wanted CAT scans and so on. Some were well known patients. In and out every few months. Some had Munchausen's. Some liked the fuss and attention. It was a sad piece. Whatever the real cause they were clearly unhappy people.
The author thought that the NHS was a bit too indulgent.
This is not to say that I don't think Long Covid is real in most cases, just that your post reminded me of that article.
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
Andy's point is that herd immunity is about what happens when you lift restrictions, not what happens when there are restrictions.
We've got R down well below 1 in the past with very little immunity (and all that infection-acquired) in the first lockdown. So low numbers while we still have restrictions do not mean we're at herd immunity.
Decreasing numbers mean restrictions + immunity are pushing R below 1. It may be that immunity alone will keep R below 1 (= herd immunity) but given R appears close to 1 (very slightly below) and we still have restrictions it is likely (although not certain) that we're not quite there with herd immunity yet.
That does not mean that I (or, I think, Andy) think the 17 May and 21 June openings need to be delayed. We're close to her immunity; by 21 June we could well be there. We're also at a very low base of cases at the moment, so R a little bit above 1 in the short term will be manageable - say we end up with R at 1.1 for 50 days, that's 10 periods of 10% increases, which only gets us to 2.6 times current levels of infections (if my maths is right), which looks very manageable still.
The evidence show we're probably not at herd immunity just yet*, but (for me) it doesn't suggest we need to delay opening.
* Wee bit more complicated because we could be at herd immunity overall, but local lower levels of immunity allow an increase in cases nonetheless - subpopulations that are below herd immunity. Mostly the young, who are at low risk. Maybe some others at higher risk who refused vaccine - not much to be done except encourage take-up.
R was down to about 0.7 until we hit a floor. Now we have no meaningful deaths, that may 100% be "deaths with Covid" (or even deaths with a positive Covid test) rather than "deaths from Covid".
The positivity rate now in tests is down to just 0.25% of all tests being positive so its entirely possible that a significant portion of those are false positives (unlike when Covid Denialists were using the phrase last year) and there's no meaningful hospitalisations or deaths to say otherwise.
If we're at the floor and can't go any lower then you can't say R will go above 1 if we lift restrictions now.
While I am a bit suspicious of some of the lateral flow positives - if not confirmed, the chance of two tests both being false positives is very small indeed. There is clearly a small amount of virus still in circulation, albeit for much of the country you'd have to work hard to find someone to infect you. I'm interested that even at such low levels, test, track and trace still isn't able to squash it. Maybe the newer dominant variants are just too transmissable, and asymptomatic in the young.
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
Andy's point is that herd immunity is about what happens when you lift restrictions, not what happens when there are restrictions.
We've got R down well below 1 in the past with very little immunity (and all that infection-acquired) in the first lockdown. So low numbers while we still have restrictions do not mean we're at herd immunity.
Decreasing numbers mean restrictions + immunity are pushing R below 1. It may be that immunity alone will keep R below 1 (= herd immunity) but given R appears close to 1 (very slightly below) and we still have restrictions it is likely (although not certain) that we're not quite there with herd immunity yet.
That does not mean that I (or, I think, Andy) think the 17 May and 21 June openings need to be delayed. We're close to herd immunity; by 21 June we could well be there. We're also at a very low base of cases at the moment, so R a little bit above 1 in the short term will be manageable - say we end up with R at 1.1 for 50 days, that's 10 periods of 10% increases, which only gets us to 2.6 times current levels of infections (if my maths is right), which looks very manageable still.
The evidence show we're probably not at herd immunity just yet*, but (for me) it doesn't suggest we need to delay opening.
* Wee bit more complicated because we could be at herd immunity overall, but local lower levels of immunity allow an increase in cases nonetheless - subpopulations that are below herd immunity. Mostly the young, who are at low risk. Maybe some others at higher risk who refused vaccine - not much to be done except encourage take-up.
It is hard to get data on the specificity under clinical settings of the COVID tests being done. But let's assume it is 99.9%, that means at this level of testing we'd expect over 1,000 false positives a day, i.e. about half the total number of positives (implying that the predictive value of a positive test now is a coin toss).
If that is indeed the case, I am very confident that the schedule for easing restrictions need not be slowed down. Particularly as we now know that over 10 million of the unvaccinated have antibodies.
EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.
Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.
Denied entry?
Aren't we still under lockdown?
Yeah, it's illegal to travel internationally from England for a job interview. Hard to have much sympathy.
Either they are allowed to come here for their interviews or they aren’t.
If they are allowed, the fault is with the government, and if we are locking them up they deserve every sympathy, whether or not we are allowed to travel elsewhere for the same reason.
Not at all possible that it was those traveling that were at fault, is it?
Some of them clearly were - as the full article clearly states. But it would appear that most of them weren’t.
According to who? You've not provided a link to the article just a snippet.
Most of the article seems to be people who thought they could turn up “explore the job market” to get an offer. So not an interview.
But the article clearlty states r this is happeningn as does one person from a NGO quoted. I suspect the lack of quotes is cos the actual interviewees don't want comebacks.
Edit: It also makes clear some cases are not permitted anyway.
Irrespective of that, I'm still surprised at the HO advice permitting interviews, meetings, seminars. etc.
Work is permitted, travel for work is permitted as a result.
Travel to look for work, which is what all the quotes seem to be, is not. They've broken Covid rules, zero sympathy.
Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement, or the Leave.EU campaign.
Oh don't be a dickhead.
Should we remain under lockdown because hundreds of thousands of people are coming from Europe to "explore the job market" while they have surging case rates and we don't?
Coming here right now is against the law. Because of a pandemic, not Brexit.
Post-lockdown Europeans will be able to come here for a few months, explore the market to their content, fly home and apply for a visa. No issues. But not during a pandemic. 🙄
Your periodic resorting to abuse achieves nothing, and these measures will continue long after Covid, as I'm sure you know.
You're the one who chose to abuse the whole Brexit movement. I responded in kind.
Why would Covid measures continue after Covid? Currently coming as a tourist or to go looking for work etc is illegal - eventually it won't be.
No, you switched to ad hominem abuse, whereas I critiqued the Brexit movement as a whole. On the measures, theses are not fundamentally about Covid. If the government doesn't moderate them in response to European pressure, they will probably have long lasting knock-on effects on the relationship.
"Zero Sympathy could probably have been quite a successful slogan for the whole Brexit movement" is not a "critique" it is being a dickhead trolling 52% of the population.
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
The measures will continue long after Covid, and your defence of switching to direct personal insults, as being equivalent to a critique of lowest common denominator politics, is absurd.
The measures of refusing entry to people with insufficient evidence to justify their visit? Good.
Certainly - that's Brexit.
I hate to break it to you but it was like that before, too.
But not if you were Italian, French, Bulgarian, Portugese, Greek or Spanish.
But the policy is the same.
Yes, but now with different cultural consequences for our negotiations with our neighbours, as I said. Welcome to the Brexit, as they say.
Do you really think our neighbours will take offence because of a few people being denied entry for not having sufficient paperwork for their trip?
Yup.
Do keep us apprised of any diplomatic incidents that occur because of this then. I think the chance of this being of any consequence beyond tomorrow is nil.
If the detention continues after Covid, as it's very likely to, the Europeans will start detaining Britons, as they haven't done so far, and with the inevitable tabloid storm that will follow.
"If the detentions continue"... they were denied entry and put on the first flight back. That happens all the time in all countries, almost a million in 2019 in the EU-27.
The article mentions several people being sent to detention facilities, rather than instantly put on the next plane black. If anything remotely like that continues after Covid, it will happen to Britons abroad in the EU too.
While waiting for the next flight. And it happens to Brits who don't have the necessary paperwork to travel to other countries too.
If you can point to Brits in EU detention facilities between January and now, I'm genuinely all ears.
Brits have been refused entry before, and will again in the future. You don't seriously believe that documentation requirement at the border started last week, do you?
It's the same thing. If there isn't a flight until tomorrow, the person has to be held until then.
Not quite. Some are held at airports, and it looks like the Home Office machinery in some cases may have swung into action to send people to detention facilities much further away for a period of days. As mentioned, if that continues, there will be consequences for Brits abroad,
It already happens to Brits abroad. Another example of where the lack of documentation gets you:
But these were held at the airport on a strictly covid basis. As mentioned, the tests are whether it continues after Covid, and whether people are sent away to longer-term facilities.
But it’s the same thing, held after a denial of entry due to insufficient documentation. I’m confident refusals happened all the time before, and will continue to do so afterwards. Also for that specific case, it does sound as though there were extraneous circumstances. Of course those aren’t expanded upon in the article.
This is becoming a bit circular, so there's no point flogging the horse all day, but I do want to emphasise again : as far as I know, no Brits have been sent to longer-term detention facilities at any entry points to the EU, so far. If this is a longer-term British policy, as it most likely is, given the sacred cow status of ending free movement to the Brexit side, it will both be reciprocated and be an emotive and symbolic issue with long-term implications in the future negotiations ; as it was always probably going to be.
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
Oh, for fuck's sake - if people want to keep trotting this out, then for God's sake come up with some numbers! How many people would you expect to die from non-covid issues within 28 days of a random event, out of around 2000 positives? Bearing in mind that the age spread of positive cases nowadays looks the right hand side of this:
Answer? You'd be averaging somewhere around 1-2. Not 10.
Maybe it's all gone away and maybe it's all false positives and maybe it's just people who've been hit by a bus in the intensive care ward. But it's very very very likely not.
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
Four of them were hospitalized. Hmm.
My fear is that ‘moderate Covid’, if rampant, is bad enough to stop us unlockdowning properly, for years
This is an acquaintance of mine. Never in hospital. But life badly damaged by Long Covid
Eventually we will learn to cope with the risks - and develop treatments and medications - but it could take quite a time
But not with severe cases. If it can't even give a severe case to the most vulnerable then there is nothing to worry about.
A few weeks ago Richard Nabavi posted a link to a moving and distressing account, from a young fit guy, who got Covid, never went to hospital, but has endured ruinous bad health ever since
You don’t have to be a ‘severe’ case for this wretched virus to fuck you up. You don’t even have to go to hospital
We know that. What conclusions are you drawing from this? It's incredibly rare.
In my noble desire to expose myself to the *best* of Birmingham, I have just discovered their Symphony Hall
How? How could any city outside Saddam Hussein’s Iraq erect such a hideous wart, surrounded by similar warts? Why are British cities so bad at this? How did London, almost uniquely, escape?
Not great from the outside, but the acoustics are fantastic, and inside the hall itself looks pretty good.
To be fair the Brummies know it’s fugly, and they are ripping down the facade
How many times can a city tear down and rebuild its centre, until they realise the Germans are right? Just replace everything with an exact facsimile of the city centre in about 1890
So you expect London to tear down the Gherkin etc?
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
You need to look at the death by age details - which will probably be posted here by @Malmesbury later today as he always does.
That will show you the actual problem - the current deaths are mainly old people who should have been vaccinated but for whatever reason clearly have not been vaccinated.
Which also removes your herd immunity argument - if we had reached herd immunity these people would not be catching Covid.
Again herd immunity does not mean there should be zero infections - and a teeny tiny number of old people dying doesn't mean they died due to Covid.
Old people die, its a fact of life. A tiny number of old people dying could entirely be natural causes. Are there any excess deaths to say otherwise?
That's not the definition of herd immunity - it's the definition of something close to but not quite herd immunity.
Given that Herd immunity protects at-risk populations - if the at risk population is still catching the disease the population isn't quite there yet.
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
Andy's point is that herd immunity is about what happens when you lift restrictions, not what happens when there are restrictions.
We've got R down well below 1 in the past with very little immunity (and all that infection-acquired) in the first lockdown. So low numbers while we still have restrictions do not mean we're at herd immunity.
Decreasing numbers mean restrictions + immunity are pushing R below 1. It may be that immunity alone will keep R below 1 (= herd immunity) but given R appears close to 1 (very slightly below) and we still have restrictions it is likely (although not certain) that we're not quite there with herd immunity yet.
That does not mean that I (or, I think, Andy) think the 17 May and 21 June openings need to be delayed. We're close to her immunity; by 21 June we could well be there. We're also at a very low base of cases at the moment, so R a little bit above 1 in the short term will be manageable - say we end up with R at 1.1 for 50 days, that's 10 periods of 10% increases, which only gets us to 2.6 times current levels of infections (if my maths is right), which looks very manageable still.
The evidence show we're probably not at herd immunity just yet*, but (for me) it doesn't suggest we need to delay opening.
* Wee bit more complicated because we could be at herd immunity overall, but local lower levels of immunity allow an increase in cases nonetheless - subpopulations that are below herd immunity. Mostly the young, who are at low risk. Maybe some others at higher risk who refused vaccine - not much to be done except encourage take-up.
R was down to about 0.7 until we hit a floor. Now we have no meaningful deaths, that may 100% be "deaths with Covid" (or even deaths with a positive Covid test) rather than "deaths from Covid".
The positivity rate now in tests is down to just 0.25% of all tests being positive so its entirely possible that a significant portion of those are false positives (unlike when Covid Denialists were using the phrase last year) and there's no meaningful hospitalisations or deaths to say otherwise.
If we're at the floor and can't go any lower then you can't say R will go above 1 if we lift restrictions now.
How can R be below 1 if the number of infections is rising (granted it's rising slowly but it's rising)?
You're not a scientist, so perhaps don't pick the nuance. 'Encouraged' and 'pretty confident' is pretty strong. I never say I'm 100% on anything, as there is always scope to be wrong, but on this the mRNA vaccines look fine, and there is no reason to suspect AZ won't be either. If you want a reason - look up epitopes.
It just means that insufficient time has elapsed to get absolutely definitive evidence. But the early signs are good & they're pretty damn sure it will be fine, but too cautious (rightly) to say so.
The Header by Cyclefree is interesting and I don't entirely disagree with it. I do however think she makes some poor arguments on certain issues.
Personally I think Mercer is absolutely right on this. One of the reasons that the recent trials failed - indeed why they should never have been held - is that the men had already investigated before and that it was decided the evidence was not sufficient. The prosecution depended on statements made 50 years ago which the investigators decided had been made under coercion and direction from superior officers and that they were therefore unsafe. This was the conclusion reached in 2010 but the prosecutors tried to reintroduce the same evidence with no new supporting evidence and the judge rightly told them to take a hike. This is always going to be the case with these trials which is why they are pointless and wrong.
But on the more general point I am afraid the view that "this was a war in which both sides were combatants" has already been implicitly accepted in the Good Friday Agreement. That is why all those prisoners who had been found guilty of murder were let out and others, who had not got to trial, were given letters of immunity. The whole basis of the Good Friday Agreement was that bad things happened but we cannot punish those who did them because to do so we perpetuate the cycle of violence. But apparently we are to exclude one specific set of combatants from that rule. And that being the one set who - unlike the IRA and Loyalist gunmen were not given a choice of whether or not they had to walk the streets of Belfast carrying a gun.
If you think the Good Friday Agreement is rubbish and should be torn up then that is of course a valid view, even if one I disagree with. But it is hypocritical to defend the agreement and then attack the necessary evils that had to be put in place to make it work. What we need to do is mitigate those evils - one of which was the idea that one set of combatants should be hung out to dry whilst the others do, literally, get away with murder.
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
Andy's point is that herd immunity is about what happens when you lift restrictions, not what happens when there are restrictions.
We've got R down well below 1 in the past with very little immunity (and all that infection-acquired) in the first lockdown. So low numbers while we still have restrictions do not mean we're at herd immunity.
Decreasing numbers mean restrictions + immunity are pushing R below 1. It may be that immunity alone will keep R below 1 (= herd immunity) but given R appears close to 1 (very slightly below) and we still have restrictions it is likely (although not certain) that we're not quite there with herd immunity yet.
That does not mean that I (or, I think, Andy) think the 17 May and 21 June openings need to be delayed. We're close to herd immunity; by 21 June we could well be there. We're also at a very low base of cases at the moment, so R a little bit above 1 in the short term will be manageable - say we end up with R at 1.1 for 50 days, that's 10 periods of 10% increases, which only gets us to 2.6 times current levels of infections (if my maths is right), which looks very manageable still.
The evidence show we're probably not at herd immunity just yet*, but (for me) it doesn't suggest we need to delay opening.
* Wee bit more complicated because we could be at herd immunity overall, but local lower levels of immunity allow an increase in cases nonetheless - subpopulations that are below herd immunity. Mostly the young, who are at low risk. Maybe some others at higher risk who refused vaccine - not much to be done except encourage take-up.
It is hard to get data on the specificity under clinical settings of the COVID tests being done. But let's assume it is 99.9%, that means at this level of testing we'd expect over 1,000 false positives a day, i.e. about half the total number of positives (implying that the predictive value of a positive test now is a coin toss).
If that is indeed the case, I am very confident that the schedule for easing restrictions need not be slowed down. Particularly as we now know that over 10 million of the unvaccinated have antibodies.
From the ONS infection survey, it's pointing to being under 0.05% false positives at the very most (as that was the lowest level they found during summer)
We also have the outcome that the cases rise isn't uniform; it's primarily in the unvaccinated ages.
False positives aren't likely to be preferentially distributed in the unvaccinated.
True, but doesn't always follow: Obama, over dinner, 22 June 2016: "I'd be surprised if the Brits vote for Brexit. Doesn't make much sense for them IMO"
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
Four of them were hospitalized. Hmm.
My fear is that ‘moderate Covid’, if rampant, is bad enough to stop us unlockdowning properly, for years
This is an acquaintance of mine. Never in hospital. But life badly damaged by Long Covid
Eventually we will learn to cope with the risks - and develop treatments and medications - but it could take quite a time
"Four of them were hospitalized"... with non-severe illness. Which indicates precautionary measures; they weren't taking any chances with the seriously elderly and highly vulnerable.
Whatever causes Long Covid will almost certainly be seriously hampered by vaccinations that protect against other levels of illness. Your immune system is ramped up and fully prepared for it.
I'm convinced that for some (not all) long covid will turn out to be functional neuronal disorders (FND). Real conditions, just not driven by physical effects of the virus. Some absolutely will have physical damage - heart, lungs etc. But I am hearing many cases that sound so much like FND, and not hard to understand why - the awful stress of this year on people. Some will not like the diagnosis, and I may be very wrong, but that's my take on this. A colleague knows of a young girl near Bristol who woke up paralyzed recently. Not physical damage, a history of being bullied, and I imagine covid stress too. Diagnosed as FND, and still struggling.
There was an astonishing article in Spectator recently from a hospital acute care consultant on the non-sick who had disappeared during lockdown who are now filling up his wards again. Some had paralysis yet nothing physical could be determined. Many had mysterious yet terrible pains and wanted CAT scans and so on. Some were well known patients. In and out every few months. Some had Munchausen's. Some liked the fuss and attention. It was a sad piece. Whatever the real cause they were clearly unhappy people.
The author thought that the NHS was a bit too indulgent.
This is not to say that I don't think Long Covid is real in most cases, just that your post reminded me of that article.
A key hallmark of FND is symptom migration. Start with headaches, then becomes a leg problem, then heart issues etc. Whenever I see that I think FND. There is an issue with FND (and the related CFS) that we give more sympathy in the West to physical disease. These patients are no less ill, and need help, its just that it won't come via a vaccine, or drug, or surgery. I recommend Suzanne O'Sullivans excellent "Its all in your head" for an intro. https://amazon.co.uk/Its-All-Your-Head-Psychosomatic/dp/0099597853/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=its+all+in+your+head&qid=1620914265&sr=8-1
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
Four of them were hospitalized. Hmm.
My fear is that ‘moderate Covid’, if rampant, is bad enough to stop us unlockdowning properly, for years
This is an acquaintance of mine. Never in hospital. But life badly damaged by Long Covid
Eventually we will learn to cope with the risks - and develop treatments and medications - but it could take quite a time
"Four of them were hospitalized"... with non-severe illness. Which indicates precautionary measures; they weren't taking any chances with the seriously elderly and highly vulnerable.
Whatever causes Long Covid will almost certainly be seriously hampered by vaccinations that protect against other levels of illness. Your immune system is ramped up and fully prepared for it.
I'm convinced that for some (not all) long covid will turn out to be functional neuronal disorders (FND). Real conditions, just not driven by physical effects of the virus. Some absolutely will have physical damage - heart, lungs etc. But I am hearing many cases that sound so much like FND, and not hard to understand why - the awful stress of this year on people. Some will not like the diagnosis, and I may be very wrong, but that's my take on this. A colleague knows of a young girl near Bristol who woke up paralyzed recently. Not physical damage, a history of being bullied, and I imagine covid stress too. Diagnosed as FND, and still struggling.
There was an astonishing article in Spectator recently from a hospital acute care consultant on the non-sick who had disappeared during lockdown who are now filling up his wards again. Some had paralysis yet nothing physical could be determined. Many had mysterious yet terrible pains and wanted CAT scans and so on. Some were well known patients. In and out every few months. Some had Munchausen's. Some liked the fuss and attention. It was a sad piece. Whatever the real cause they were clearly unhappy people.
The author thought that the NHS was a bit too indulgent.
This is not to say that I don't think Long Covid is real in most cases, just that your post reminded me of that article.
Many syndromes end up having multiple unrelated causes (I am reminded of Gulf War syndrome).
But lest we feel tempted to dismiss others' suffering too quickly, I also remember how far the US was behind Europe in understanding Celiac Disease, and how for decades thousands of patients went undiagnosed (and presumably many sent away by doctors assuming them to have FND, Munchausens or worse).
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
You need to look at the death by age details - which will probably be posted here by @Malmesbury later today as he always does.
That will show you the actual problem - the current deaths are mainly old people who should have been vaccinated but for whatever reason clearly have not been vaccinated.
Which also removes your herd immunity argument - if we had reached herd immunity these people would not be catching Covid.
There will always be some vaccination failures, it seems to be around 1%, but vaccination failures bad enough to get admitted do seem to have the same prognosis as the unvaccinated.
It isn't clear how many of these are single rather than double jabbed, nor whether particular variants are involved, as this is an evolving area of interest.
One thing that pleasantly surprised me is that the rate in Leicester has dropped, indeed it is now lower than leafy, nearly entirely white Harborough:
Why then did it take a further 11 years for the truth to come out about Ballymurphy?... They did what governments do with inconvenient truths - keep them hidden for as long as possible in the hope that time will render them unjusticiable.
It is a great header, and as @Cyclefree points out, not unique to Northern Ireland that government cover ups of wrongdoings can eventually be exposed by campaign groups and courts. At least they could in the past before this government started to outlaw some attempts.
So a "statute of limitations" has problems when a government cam effectively time out any punishment by dragging its feet, something private citizens cannot do.
It is noticeable to how few of the organisational and command culprits get punished when these crimes get exposed. The paratrooper with the gun is the one who gets exposed, but the officers who put him there then covered it up get away with it completely. It is typical British class privilege.
At the beginning of Operation Banner the British Army treated Northern Ireland like a Colonial insurrection. The (always difficult) problems of distinguishing irregular combatants from civilians were never really addressed, as the citizens of Aden, Kenya, Malaysia and many had previously found out. Indeed, the USA was doing very little to distinguish between combatants and civilians in 1971 in Indochina too.
Similar thing with corruption in the City. Tom Hayes absolutely monstered, nobody anywhere near the boardroom anywhere near jail.
The inquiry into Covid will be interesting in this regard. Will it be all "lessons to be learnt" or will there be some homing in on culpability? And if the latter, will it be exclusively 'institutional" or will there be individuals in the frame?
It broke out in a care home. 15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths. Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
Four of them were hospitalized. Hmm.
My fear is that ‘moderate Covid’, if rampant, is bad enough to stop us unlockdowning properly, for years
This is an acquaintance of mine. Never in hospital. But life badly damaged by Long Covid
Eventually we will learn to cope with the risks - and develop treatments and medications - but it could take quite a time
"Four of them were hospitalized"... with non-severe illness. Which indicates precautionary measures; they weren't taking any chances with the seriously elderly and highly vulnerable.
Whatever causes Long Covid will almost certainly be seriously hampered by vaccinations that protect against other levels of illness. Your immune system is ramped up and fully prepared for it.
I'm convinced that for some (not all) long covid will turn out to be functional neuronal disorders (FND). Real conditions, just not driven by physical effects of the virus. Some absolutely will have physical damage - heart, lungs etc. But I am hearing many cases that sound so much like FND, and not hard to understand why - the awful stress of this year on people. Some will not like the diagnosis, and I may be very wrong, but that's my take on this. A colleague knows of a young girl near Bristol who woke up paralyzed recently. Not physical damage, a history of being bullied, and I imagine covid stress too. Diagnosed as FND, and still struggling.
There was an astonishing article in Spectator recently from a hospital acute care consultant on the non-sick who had disappeared during lockdown who are now filling up his wards again. Some had paralysis yet nothing physical could be determined. Many had mysterious yet terrible pains and wanted CAT scans and so on. Some were well known patients. In and out every few months. Some had Munchausen's. Some liked the fuss and attention. It was a sad piece. Whatever the real cause they were clearly unhappy people.
The author thought that the NHS was a bit too indulgent.
This is not to say that I don't think Long Covid is real in most cases, just that your post reminded me of that article.
Many syndromes end up having multiple unrelated causes (I am reminded of Gulf War syndrome).
But lest we feel tempted to dismiss others' suffering too quickly, I also remember how far the US was behind Europe in understanding Celiac Disease, and how for decades thousands of patients went undiagnosed (and presumably many sent away by doctors assuming them to have FND, Munchausens or worse).
Very true, and I am open to being very wrong about some of the long covid cases, but some of the anecdotes match exactly those of FND anecdotes, even the really sporty, fit, young people then struck down, sometimes to the point of paralysis.
The problem for Northern Ireland is that plenty of the people who live there don't care about the place. So I'm not sure why I should.
On the contrary, I think they care too much, at least about matters that others find hard to understand.
Okay, that's probably true too.
Of course, one of the ironies in all of this is that Sinn Fein and the party's voters cannot complain about Brexit and the border down the Irish Sea.
Of course, NI voted to Remain in 2016.
It's no good saying "NI voted to Remain". Northern Irish voters aren't fungible such that a simple majority is decisive and they split into two largely polarised communities; that's why we have the GFA in the first place.
A majority of unionists voted to Leave. A majority of nationalist voted to Remain. So the province split along secretarian lines and any Brexit solution needs to address the concerns of both.
Do you have an exact breakdown? I don't think NI voters had to give their constitutional allegiance when they cast their ballots!
We know 56% of NI voted Remain - given that Nationalists are a minority, a significant number of Unionists must also have voted to Remain.
I'm glad you brought up the GFA - I remember back in 1998 the DUP complaining about the GFA as being supported largely by Nationalists.
According to a study done by the NI Assembly, 88% of Nationalists voted Remain and 34% of Unionists. So yes I think Casino probably is correct in his assertion that the majority of Unionists voted Leave.
That's a great example of be careful what you wish for - it may become true.
Equally it shows that the Unionists hadn't thought about what the foundations of the Good Friday agreement were built upon.
The Good Friday Agreement was always built on sand and was waiting for a strong enough tremor to damage it. The question is whether the various parties are clever enough and committed enough to peace to rebuild it more strongly.
They'll both happen on time. By the time we get to June 21st there will be just a handful of cases per day among the unvaccinated, there's no way we can delay unlockdown because of people who have refused the vaccine. The government target of one dose per person by July 31st is laughable, we have the supply to get every single person done once by the end of this month but it just leaves us at the mercy of supply chains for second doses. June 21st is a reasonably good target for 95% of 53m adults having had their first dose and end of July for 95% of 53m adults having had both doses.
If you take the few towns and cities were cases are still spreading in any meaningful numbers, then how much vaccine would it take to offer first doses to everyone remaining before the end of this month?
If cases are 20x more prevalent in Bolton than Bath it makes more sense to be vaccinating a 20 year old in Bolton than a 38 year old in Bath.
We're probably already at herd immunity levels nationwide, but crush the virus with surge vaccination past where its still circulating.
Yesterdays data -
Consistent with having hit herd immunity.
... at the current levels of restrictions.
Inconsistent with having hit herd immunity without restrictions, otherwise it would be dropping at over 50% per week.
Well it is dropping week on week, and herd immunity doesn't mean that a virus will be eliminated - it means that a new surge won't happen.
It means that the reproduction number of the virus is below 1.0. The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions. If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9. The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either: - We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or - We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
Cases plummeted until we hit a minimal floor, for which they might even be false positives now, in which case it can't drop any further.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
That's not true. Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says. The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
The data absolutely does point to that and 10 a day is none meaningfully.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
Andy's point is that herd immunity is about what happens when you lift restrictions, not what happens when there are restrictions.
We've got R down well below 1 in the past with very little immunity (and all that infection-acquired) in the first lockdown. So low numbers while we still have restrictions do not mean we're at herd immunity.
Decreasing numbers mean restrictions + immunity are pushing R below 1. It may be that immunity alone will keep R below 1 (= herd immunity) but given R appears close to 1 (very slightly below) and we still have restrictions it is likely (although not certain) that we're not quite there with herd immunity yet.
That does not mean that I (or, I think, Andy) think the 17 May and 21 June openings need to be delayed. We're close to herd immunity; by 21 June we could well be there. We're also at a very low base of cases at the moment, so R a little bit above 1 in the short term will be manageable - say we end up with R at 1.1 for 50 days, that's 10 periods of 10% increases, which only gets us to 2.6 times current levels of infections (if my maths is right), which looks very manageable still.
The evidence show we're probably not at herd immunity just yet*, but (for me) it doesn't suggest we need to delay opening.
* Wee bit more complicated because we could be at herd immunity overall, but local lower levels of immunity allow an increase in cases nonetheless - subpopulations that are below herd immunity. Mostly the young, who are at low risk. Maybe some others at higher risk who refused vaccine - not much to be done except encourage take-up.
It is hard to get data on the specificity under clinical settings of the COVID tests being done. But let's assume it is 99.9%, that means at this level of testing we'd expect over 1,000 false positives a day, i.e. about half the total number of positives (implying that the predictive value of a positive test now is a coin toss).
If that is indeed the case, I am very confident that the schedule for easing restrictions need not be slowed down. Particularly as we now know that over 10 million of the unvaccinated have antibodies.
From the ONS infection survey, it's pointing to being under 0.05% false positives at the very most (as that was the lowest level they found during summer)
We also have the outcome that the cases rise isn't uniform; it's primarily in the unvaccinated ages.
False positives aren't likely to be preferentially distributed in the unvaccinated.
Thanks. You are right, a high percentage of false positives would flatten out the vaccine effect.
* added thought. False positives would be preferentially distributed to the unvaccinated if the vaccinated are no longer being tested. Is that the case, or is the UK still testing the vaccinated in the same way as the unvaccinated?
Comments
We know 56% of NI voted Remain - given that Nationalists are a minority, a significant number of Unionists must also have voted to Remain.
I'm glad you brought up the GFA - I remember back in 1998 the DUP complaining about the GFA as being supported largely by Nationalists.
I’ve looked for this evidence but can’t find it. So if you have a link I’d be genuinely grateful - and reassured
Edit: this seems to be the latest evidence. The EMA is ‘encouraged’ and ‘pretty confident’. Which is good news but far from definite
https://www.euronews.com/2021/05/13/european-regulator-pretty-confident-mrna-covid-vaccines-work-against-indian-variant
These measures are fundamentally about Covid. Its against the law to enter the country without a reason - in normal circumstances it is and people could arrive in the UK for tourism and look for work then head home to apply for a visa - but that's illegal under Covid rules.
Anyone who chooses to fly to another country, without a visa, without anything arranged, during a pandemic, during a lockdown, is a selfish fool who deserves to be sent packing. If we can't even go to a restaurant, why should they be able to come to browse the job market?
https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1392828031132176384
636,647 vaccinations in 🇬🇧 yesterday
🏴 146,934 1st doses / 402,524 2nd doses
🏴 19,565 / 24,450
🏴 14,150 / 14,287
NI 3,561 / 11,176
The restrictions are one thing that reduces the effective reproduction number of the virus; that's the entire point of having them.
If cases are constant, then the R is around 1.0 with restrictions.
If they are dropping at, say, 10% every 5 days or so, then R-with-restrictions is averaging around 0.9.
The average over the past fortnight on cases has been about 0.96 per 5 days (dropping around 4% every 5 days), albeit that this is higher than it was before that (the past five days or so have seen it running over 1.0).
That means that either:
- We have significant restrictions and are not at herd immunity without them; or
- We have negligible restrictions and are close to her immunity without them.
I live in a mid Victorian terrace. Looks attractive enough now but it was part of a speculative edge of town development that upended acres of centenarian orchards, saw the razing of the Tudor Brockley Manor and the destruction of most, though not quite all, of the Georgian canalside cottages.
Doesn’t make much sense for them, IMO
It broke out in a care home.
15 infections, zero serious illnesses, zero deaths.
Statistical chance of that if the vaccine did not provide considerable protection: tiny.
There are no deaths happening. There are negligible hospitalisations happening. If you're waiting until it drops to 0 you might be waiting forever now with millions of tests happening.
We're at herd immunity. There are no deaths happening and it can't drop any lower than that.
https://twitter.com/VincentRK/status/1391869808858238979
No fully vaccinated healthcare workers at two of the largest hospitals have been seriously ill with the Indian variant. Again, the chances of that being sheer random luck are negligible.
Obama, over dinner, 22 June 2016: "I'd be surprised if the Brits vote for Brexit. Doesn't make much sense for them IMO"
https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1392828031132176384
England 146,934 1st doses / 402,524 2nd doses
Scotland 19,565 / 24,450
Wales 14,150 / 14,287
NI 3,561 / 11,176
For the first jab they did this at least 2 weeks after I got it in one of the big centres
2nd jab coming up early June same place - docs already invited me in for it
Seems to me things are going well again
My fear is that ‘moderate Covid’, if rampant, is bad enough to stop us unlockdowning properly, for years
This is an acquaintance of mine. Never in hospital. But life badly damaged by Long Covid
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9292521/100-days-long-Covid-torture-counting.html
Eventually we will learn to cope with the risks - and develop treatments and medications - but it could take quite a time
Deaths are down to about 10 a day; possibly a fraction below. It's not "no deaths."
And no, I'm not holding out for zero any of them; I'm watching the data to see what it says.
The stance "We're not at herd immunity, but I want to open up, anyway; I believe the cost is now low enough" is one thing. We don't have to claim "we're at herd immunity" when the data doesn't point to that at all.
Whatever causes Long Covid will almost certainly be seriously hampered by vaccinations that protect against other levels of illness. Your immune system is ramped up and fully prepared for it.
You don’t have to be a ‘severe’ case for this wretched virus to fuck you up. You don’t even have to go to hospital
Regarding surge vaccinations, I'd do it. Just clear the decks in the high prevalence areas. It's the endgame, but needs playing well.
Don't forget that the supposed 10 deaths per day are "deaths within 28 days of a test", not deaths from Covid. You could be one of millions in a day to get a test, get a false positive, be hit by a bus 27 days later and be recorded as a Covid death. How would herd immunity lower that any further than the floor we're already at?
https://twitter.com/BBCLancashire/status/1392791805922627593
People aged 18 and over in three wards in #Blackburn can now book an appointment for a Pfizer jab online.
It's after the Indian variant was found in Shear Brow and Corporation Park, Billinge and Beardwood aswell as Bastwell & Daisyfield.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/04/netherlands-refuses-entry-uk-nationals-non-essential-travel-brexit-coronavirus
https://twitter.com/Smyth_Chris/status/1392835390399291393
Blackburn move was not approved by central government and NHS England is now demanding to know why they are going against priority list.
JCVI is debating surge vaccination - but thinking is it won't combat variants effectively because it takes three weeks for immunity to build
So a "statute of limitations" has problems when a government cam effectively time out any punishment by dragging its feet, something private citizens cannot do.
It is noticeable to how few of the organisational and command culprits get punished when these crimes get exposed. The paratrooper with the gun is the one who gets exposed, but the officers who put him there then covered it up get away with it completely. It is typical British class privilege.
At the beginning of Operation Banner the British Army treated Northern Ireland like a Colonial insurrection. The (always difficult) problems of distinguishing irregular combatants from civilians were never really addressed, as the citizens of Aden, Kenya, Malaysia and many had previously found out. Indeed, the USA was doing very little to distinguish between combatants and civilians in 1971 in Indochina too.
https://www.ft.com/content/5f742765-61ac-4da6-8c6f-49119cd7d46c
We've got R down well below 1 in the past with very little immunity (and all that infection-acquired) in the first lockdown. So low numbers while we still have restrictions do not mean we're at herd immunity.
Decreasing numbers mean restrictions + immunity are pushing R below 1. It may be that immunity alone will keep R below 1 (= herd immunity) but given R appears close to 1 (very slightly below) and we still have restrictions it is likely (although not certain) that we're not quite there with herd immunity yet.
That does not mean that I (or, I think, Andy) think the 17 May and 21 June openings need to be delayed. We're close to herd immunity; by 21 June we could well be there. We're also at a very low base of cases at the moment, so R a little bit above 1 in the short term will be manageable - say we end up with R at 1.1 for 50 days, that's 10 periods of 10% increases, which only gets us to 2.6 times current levels of infections (if my maths is right), which looks very manageable still.
The evidence show we're probably not at herd immunity just yet*, but (for me) it doesn't suggest we need to delay opening.
* Wee bit more complicated because we could be at herd immunity overall, but local lower levels of immunity allow an increase in cases nonetheless - subpopulations that are below herd immunity. Mostly the young, who are at low risk. Maybe some others at higher risk who refused vaccine - not much to be done except encourage take-up.
http://www.niassembly.gov.uk/globalassets/documents/raise/knowledge_exchange/briefing_papers/series6/garry121016.pdf
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/04/six-british-passengers-held-overnight-swedish-airport-negative/
“The most curious subplot in the news right now is the admission, at the most senior levels of the United States government, that the military services have collected visuals, data and testimonials recording flying objects they cannot explain; that they are investigating these phenomena seriously; and that they will, in the coming months, report at least some of their findings to the public. It feels, at times, like the beginning of a film where everyone is going about their lives, even as the earthshaking events unfurl on a silenced television in the background.”
That will show you the actual problem - the current deaths are mainly old people who should have been vaccinated but for whatever reason clearly have not been vaccinated.
Which also removes your herd immunity argument - if we had reached herd immunity these people would not be catching Covid.
Equally it shows that the Unionists hadn't thought about what the foundations of the Good Friday agreement were built upon.
At April 2020, 80% of its £234 million loan portfolio was classed as nonperforming. Disaster.
First take here w/ @_MODwyer / @sylviapfeifer
https://www.ft.com/content/6c76487e-1119-4a36-9038-89d52fa0ea3b#comments-anchor
The inquiry into Covid will be interesting in this regard. Will it be all "lessons to be learnt" or will there be some homing in on culpability? And if the latter, will it be exclusively 'institutional" or will there be individuals in the frame?
The positivity rate now in tests is down to just 0.25% of all tests being positive so its entirely possible that a
significant portion of those are false positives (unlike when Covid Denialists were using the phrase last year) and there's no meaningful hospitalisations or deaths to say otherwise.
If we're at the floor and can't go any lower then you can't say R will go above 1 if we lift restrictions now.
Old people die, its a fact of life. A tiny number of old people dying could entirely be natural causes. Are there any excess deaths to say otherwise?
The author thought that the NHS was a bit too indulgent.
This is not to say that I don't think Long Covid is real in most cases, just that your post reminded me of that article.
If that is indeed the case, I am very confident that the schedule for easing restrictions need not be slowed down. Particularly as we now know that over 10 million of the unvaccinated have antibodies.
@keiranpedley
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1h
NEW
@IpsosMORI
Political pulse survey shows Keir Starmer has had a tough year.
Starmer - net favourability
2021
Jan = -1
Feb = -6
March = -11
May = -22
Politics is brutal isn't it.
How many people would you expect to die from non-covid issues within 28 days of a random event, out of around 2000 positives? Bearing in mind that the age spread of positive cases nowadays looks the right hand side of this:
Answer? You'd be averaging somewhere around 1-2.
Not 10.
Maybe it's all gone away and maybe it's all false positives and maybe it's just people who've been hit by a bus in the intensive care ward.
But it's very very very likely not.
Given that Herd immunity protects at-risk populations - if the at risk population is still catching the disease the population isn't quite there yet.
But the early signs are good & they're pretty damn sure it will be fine, but too cautious (rightly) to say so.
Personally I think Mercer is absolutely right on this. One of the reasons that the recent trials failed - indeed why they should never have been held - is that the men had already investigated before and that it was decided the evidence was not sufficient. The prosecution depended on statements made 50 years ago which the investigators decided had been made under coercion and direction from superior officers and that they were therefore unsafe. This was the conclusion reached in 2010 but the prosecutors tried to reintroduce the same evidence with no new supporting evidence and the judge rightly told them to take a hike. This is always going to be the case with these trials which is why they are pointless and wrong.
But on the more general point I am afraid the view that "this was a war in which both sides were combatants" has already been implicitly accepted in the Good Friday Agreement. That is why all those prisoners who had been found guilty of murder were let out and others, who had not got to trial, were given letters of immunity. The whole basis of the Good Friday Agreement was that bad things happened but we cannot punish those who did them because to do so we perpetuate the cycle of violence. But apparently we are to exclude one specific set of combatants from that rule. And that being the one set who - unlike the IRA and Loyalist gunmen were not given a choice of whether or not they had to walk the streets of Belfast carrying a gun.
If you think the Good Friday Agreement is rubbish and should be torn up then that is of course a valid view, even if one I disagree with. But it is hypocritical to defend the agreement and then attack the necessary evils that had to be put in place to make it work. What we need to do is mitigate those evils - one of which was the idea that one set of combatants should be hung out to dry whilst the others do, literally, get away with murder.
We also have the outcome that the cases rise isn't uniform; it's primarily in the unvaccinated ages.
False positives aren't likely to be preferentially distributed in the unvaccinated.
https://amazon.co.uk/Its-All-Your-Head-Psychosomatic/dp/0099597853/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=its+all+in+your+head&qid=1620914265&sr=8-1
But lest we feel tempted to dismiss others' suffering too quickly, I also remember how far the US was behind Europe in understanding Celiac Disease, and how for decades thousands of patients went undiagnosed (and presumably many sent away by doctors assuming them to have FND, Munchausens or worse).
https://www.bioworld.com/articles/506587-real-world-uk-data-show-small-number-of-covid-19-vaccine-failures
It isn't clear how many of these are single rather than double jabbed, nor whether particular variants are involved, as this is an evolving area of interest.
One thing that pleasantly surprised me is that the rate in Leicester has dropped, indeed it is now lower than leafy, nearly entirely white Harborough:
https://twitter.com/CovidLeics/status/1392213067560325120?s=19
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
* added thought. False positives would be preferentially distributed to the unvaccinated if the vaccinated are no longer being tested. Is that the case, or is the UK still testing the vaccinated in the same way as the unvaccinated?