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.
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
Good, I've just bought that book!
The migratory symptoms - how extraordinary. Sounds like the old notions of hysteria from a wandering womb.
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)?
What real evidence is that that infections are rising? They've been pretty flat for a while.
There's a Bank Holiday effect in the numbers currently as the numbers dipped over the Bank Holiday weekend then went back up afterwards, and we've currently got the after-effect of the Bank Holiday but not the dip in the numbers.
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.
I can
If we're at the floor of false positives then that doesn't tell us R is low, it just tells us that we no longer have useful data to measure R.
If one person in the UK genuinely has Covid and we lifted all restrictions, what would happen?
If we're at herd immunity, then the greater probability is that person will not be able to infect anyone else (the average infections caused by one infected person is below 1, so on average our one person does not infect someone else). If we're not, then - on average - our infected person infects more than one other person, they go on to infect more than one othe person and we see that R is above 1 from the numbers.
Now, with one person the possibilities are masively wide, that person might infect 10 if they go to a party where no one is vaccinated even if the country is at herd immunity. They might infect no one if they stay at home, even if no one is vaccinated. More realistic, a 1000 people have Covid nationally, and we'll get closer to an average effect of R.
Current R is below 1 (a little, as best we can tell from the data). I think you're saying that it's really well below 1 and we're misled by the 'cases' and so even the boost to R from unlocking would keep it below 1. It's possible, but the hospitalisation data are, for the past few days, fairly flat. Best measure? Maybe. Cases have a floor, with testing. Deaths have a floor too, from other causes and positive tests. Admissions - depends on definition (which I don't know - are these admissions for Covid, rather than just x days after a positive test?). If current R is close to 1 then easing restrictions (which do something, no?) might push it slightly above 1. No biggie, but likely the truth.
PS: Yes, I know - I'm arguing with you and yes, I know, I'll get tired of it before you do and yes, I know that means you win by defaut. But I'm still right. So there!
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
Good, I've just bought that book!
The migratory symptoms - how extraordinary. Sounds like the old notions of hysteria from a wandering womb.
I hope you find it interesting. Some of the stories are heartbreaking.
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.
I can
If we're at the floor of false positives then that doesn't tell us R is low, it just tells us that we no longer have useful data to measure R.
If one person in the UK genuinely has Covid and we lifted all restrictions, what would happen?
If we're at herd immunity, then the greater probability is that person will not be able to infect anyone else (the average infections caused by one infected person is below 1, so on average our one person does not infect someone else). If we're not, then - on average - our infected person infects more than one other person, they go on to infect more than one othe person and we see that R is above 1 from the numbers.
Now, with one person the possibilities are masively wide, that person might infect 10 if they go to a party where no one is vaccinated even if the country is at herd immunity. They might infect no one if they stay at home, even if no one is vaccinated. More realistic, a 1000 people have Covid nationally, and we'll get closer to an average effect of R.
Current R is below 1 (a little, as best we can tell from the data). I think you're saying that it's really well below 1 and we're misled by the 'cases' and so even the boost to R from unlocking would keep it below 1. It's possible, but the hospitalisation data are, for the past few days, fairly flat. Best measure? Maybe. Cases have a floor, with testing. Deaths have a floor too, from other causes and positive tests. Admissions - depends on definition (which I don't know - are these admissions for Covid, rather than just x days after a positive test?). If current R is close to 1 then easing restrictions (which do something, no?) might push it slightly above 1. No biggie, but likely the truth.
PS: Yes, I know - I'm arguing with you and yes, I know, I'll get tired of it before you do and yes, I know that means you win by defaut. But I'm still right. So there!
Good post.
"are these admissions for Covid, rather than just x days after a positive test?" - that's a good point. I'd assumed the former. Can anyone confirm?
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)?
What real evidence is that that infections are rising? They've been pretty flat for a while.
There's a Bank Holiday effect in the numbers currently as the numbers dipped over the Bank Holiday weekend then went back up afterwards, and we've currently got the after-effect of the Bank Holiday but not the dip in the numbers.
From a low base, they can be rising as a result of people returning infected from travel - see an earlier explanation of why the rising percentage of Indian variant cases in the UK did not necessarily mean that it was more infectious.
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.
Powerfully argued.
The argument that one should not have trials when the evidence is inadequate or inadmissible - as was the case with the two men recently acquitted - is not an argument for not having investigations or prosecutions where there is such evidence. Mercer's view is that soldiers should be exempt because it's somehow not fair to investigate them when they are accused of murder because it is all so long ago. I don't think that is a valid argument at all. We have never accepted a statute of limitations for murder. So why now and why here?
The counter-argument: that the truth should come out so that people know what happened and by whom but the quid pro quo is no prosecutions has some merit but only if it applies to all and the truth really does come out. But it seems to me that we're not going to get that either. It's a fudged mess which disgraces the government.
Perhaps it is the most that can be expected in and for NI. I fear that it will not heal wounds, will store up trouble and will be used as a troubling precedent elsewhere.
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
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.
I can
If we're at the floor of false positives then that doesn't tell us R is low, it just tells us that we no longer have useful data to measure R.
If one person in the UK genuinely has Covid and we lifted all restrictions, what would happen?
If we're at herd immunity, then the greater probability is that person will not be able to infect anyone else (the average infections caused by one infected person is below 1, so on average our one person does not infect someone else). If we're not, then - on average - our infected person infects more than one other person, they go on to infect more than one othe person and we see that R is above 1 from the numbers.
Now, with one person the possibilities are masively wide, that person might infect 10 if they go to a party where no one is vaccinated even if the country is at herd immunity. They might infect no one if they stay at home, even if no one is vaccinated. More realistic, a 1000 people have Covid nationally, and we'll get closer to an average effect of R.
Current R is below 1 (a little, as best we can tell from the data). I think you're saying that it's really well below 1 and we're misled by the 'cases' and so even the boost to R from unlocking would keep it below 1. It's possible, but the hospitalisation data are, for the past few days, fairly flat. Best measure? Maybe. Cases have a floor, with testing. Deaths have a floor too, from other causes and positive tests. Admissions - depends on definition (which I don't know - are these admissions for Covid, rather than just x days after a positive test?). If current R is close to 1 then easing restrictions (which do something, no?) might push it slightly above 1. No biggie, but likely the truth.
PS: Yes, I know - I'm arguing with you and yes, I know, I'll get tired of it before you do and yes, I know that means you win by defaut. But I'm still right. So there!
Anyway, it's all so much fluff and conjecture. We can easily test what matters:
Unless we massively increase testing, recorded 'cases' will, at worst, remain flat if we've hit the floor due to false positives. So we open up, a bit at a time, as we have. Look at what happens. If cases don't go up/barely go up (as expected) then R is still below 1 or very barely above. So we're good. And we ditch restrictions completely a few weeks later. Not too long after that we'll have vaccinated everyone we can anyway.
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.
I can
If we're at the floor of false positives then that doesn't tell us R is low, it just tells us that we no longer have useful data to measure R.
If one person in the UK genuinely has Covid and we lifted all restrictions, what would happen?
If we're at herd immunity, then the greater probability is that person will not be able to infect anyone else (the average infections caused by one infected person is below 1, so on average our one person does not infect someone else). If we're not, then - on average - our infected person infects more than one other person, they go on to infect more than one othe person and we see that R is above 1 from the numbers.
Now, with one person the possibilities are masively wide, that person might infect 10 if they go to a party where no one is vaccinated even if the country is at herd immunity. They might infect no one if they stay at home, even if no one is vaccinated. More realistic, a 1000 people have Covid nationally, and we'll get closer to an average effect of R.
Current R is below 1 (a little, as best we can tell from the data). I think you're saying that it's really well below 1 and we're misled by the 'cases' and so even the boost to R from unlocking would keep it below 1. It's possible, but the hospitalisation data are, for the past few days, fairly flat. Best measure? Maybe. Cases have a floor, with testing. Deaths have a floor too, from other causes and positive tests. Admissions - depends on definition (which I don't know - are these admissions for Covid, rather than just x days after a positive test?). If current R is close to 1 then easing restrictions (which do something, no?) might push it slightly above 1. No biggie, but likely the truth.
PS: Yes, I know - I'm arguing with you and yes, I know, I'll get tired of it before you do and yes, I know that means you win by defaut. But I'm still right. So there!
Sorry I don't understand how you're disagreeing with me? I absolutely 100% at low levels there will be much more natural variation in how much spread there is from low levels of cases - and I agree that herd immunity doesn't mean zero infections.
Yes I'm saying that if we're at the floor then its not really viable to expect it to go any lower. Yes I am saying that there's no longer useful data to measure R. I'm agreeing with you in all that.
It was plummetting down in almost a straight line, until it hit a floor and now its flattish at a straight line.
What do we have to say we're not at the floor? And if we are at a floor it won't reasonably go any lower.
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)?
What real evidence is that that infections are rising? They've been pretty flat for a while.
There's a Bank Holiday effect in the numbers currently as the numbers dipped over the Bank Holiday weekend then went back up afterwards, and we've currently got the after-effect of the Bank Holiday but not the dip in the numbers.
From a low base, they can be rising as a result of people returning infected from travel - see an earlier explanation of why the rising percentage of Indian variant cases in the UK did not necessarily mean that it was more infectious.
Bolton’s case numbers are about where they were a month ago. Has anyone run the PHE numbers on the affected areas vaccine uptake versus the national average?
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.
Functional* illnesses are very difficult to diagnose and investigate, let alone treat, but one of the many complexities is that there is often a genuine background of disease, and elaboration on top of this, so much more illness behaviour than justified by objective signs.
*"Hysteria" is no longer an acceptable term, and the condition is usually an unconscious process rather than deliberate malingering, though this happens too.
James Melville Cherry blossom @JamesMelville · 7h Wyoming has now joined other US states Alabama, Minnesota, South Carolina, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Montana, Texas and South Dakota that have all either passed legislation or issued orders to prevent Covid vaccine passports.
Is it me or has to gone pretty quiet from HMG on vaccine passports lately?
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?
Its conclusions are likely so far distant that I'm not sure that it will be particularly interesting. Which is rather the point.
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
Check out Resignation Syndrome, in Sweden
Very real, very sad, very much in the head
"For nearly two decades Sweden has been battling a mysterious illness. Called Resignation Syndrome, it affects only the children of asylum-seekers, who withdraw completely, ceasing to walk or talk, or open their eyes. Eventually they recover. But why does this only seem to occur in Sweden?
"When her father picks her up from her wheelchair, nine-year-old Sophie is lifeless. In contrast, her hair is thick and shiny - like a healthy child's. But Sophie's eyes are closed. And under her tracksuit bottoms she wears a nappy. A transparent feeding tube runs into Sophie's nose - this is how she has been nourished for the past 20 months."
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?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
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.
Powerfully argued.
The argument that one should not have trials when the evidence is inadequate or inadmissible - as was the case with the two men recently acquitted - is not an argument for not having investigations or prosecutions where there is such evidence. Mercer's view is that soldiers should be exempt because it's somehow not fair to investigate them when they are accused of murder because it is all so long ago. I don't think that is a valid argument at all. We have never accepted a statute of limitations for murder. So why now and why here?
The counter-argument: that the truth should come out so that people know what happened and by whom but the quid pro quo is no prosecutions has some merit but only if it applies to all and the truth really does come out. But it seems to me that we're not going to get that either. It's a fudged mess which disgraces the government.
Perhaps it is the most that can be expected in and for NI. I fear that it will not heal wounds, will store up trouble and will be used as a troubling precedent elsewhere.
Back to lurking. Bye.
The argument is that all these trials are going to run into the same issue. It is why the Judge was so critical of the prosecution. If the only way that you can get a conviction is by relying upon evidence that was already discounted more than a decade ago with no new supporting evidence then all you are doing is indulging in persecution rather than prosecution and wasting the court's time.
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
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?
I'm pretty sure they're still testing vaccinated and unvaccinated alike. Otherwise we'd not have any stats for asymptomatic breakthrough infections.
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.
How do you know "not driven by physical effects of the virus" ? FND is something of a catch all term for ill explained neuronal effects. Even clear physical post viral effects like cardiomyopathy have until quite recently been difficult to diagnose and ill explained.
One of the interesting things about Covid is the sheer number of patients with conditions like "brain fog". I think it's reasonably likely that we'll start to explain some of the mechanisms responsible.
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.
Is it that rare? Do we know?
Genuine questions.
Of my reasonably close friends - 20 to 30 people? - one has got Long Covid (very badly)
I am acquainted- had a lunch with, chatted several times with - another person with LC (quite badly)
I've no idea if this makes it rare or common, I just know I have encountered it
My hunch is that no one knows, this is a novel coronavirus. It is still a huge source of mystery. And it might be years before we have a clear grasp of all the sequelae
Spanish Flu was the same, had a lot of strange long term side-effects
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
Check out Resignation Syndrome, in Sweden
Very real, very sad, very much in the head
"For nearly two decades Sweden has been battling a mysterious illness. Called Resignation Syndrome, it affects only the children of asylum-seekers, who withdraw completely, ceasing to walk or talk, or open their eyes. Eventually they recover. But why does this only seem to occur in Sweden?
"When her father picks her up from her wheelchair, nine-year-old Sophie is lifeless. In contrast, her hair is thick and shiny - like a healthy child's. But Sophie's eyes are closed. And under her tracksuit bottoms she wears a nappy. A transparent feeding tube runs into Sophie's nose - this is how she has been nourished for the past 20 months."
Yes - this features in O'Sullivans latest book - The Sleeping Beauties. There is a cultural element at play here (at least that's her theory). See also the Grizi Sickess in latin america (can't recall of hand exactly where).
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?
I'm pretty sure they're still testing vaccinated and unvaccinated alike. Otherwise we'd not have any stats for asymptomatic breakthrough infections.
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.
I think to estimate what proportion are false positives, we would need to know how many tests are done where there is strong suspicion of COVID.
I don't think you can just divide total number of tests done by specificity.
Doesn't that suggest a more robust immune response?
The first data from the U.K.’s trial on mixing coronavirus vaccines has shown a higher rate of side effects such as headache and chills than standard regimens.
Participants reported more symptoms from the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab followed by the BioNTech/Pfizer jab, and vice versa, than from standard schedules, according to early data from the Com-COV study published in The Lancet late Wednesday. The initial findings looked at the side effects after two doses were administered four weeks apart.
For example, around 10 percent of people reported chills after the second dose of AstraZeneca in the standard schedule. If they had received Pfizer after AstraZeneca, that figure increased to around 40 percent, said Matthew Snape, lead investigator of the Oxford University trial.
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?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
He was not harshly done by. There is stuff I know about him which I cannot put on a public forum but which if you knew would explain why I am saying this.
I agree that others got away with behaviour which should have been dealt with more firmly than it was. Absolutely agree.
Once again I notice in today's press that some of the people I investigated have popped up in relation to Softbank / Greensill / Credit Suisse.
Doesn't that suggest a more robust immune response?
The first data from the U.K.’s trial on mixing coronavirus vaccines has shown a higher rate of side effects such as headache and chills than standard regimens.
Participants reported more symptoms from the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab followed by the BioNTech/Pfizer jab, and vice versa, than from standard schedules, according to early data from the Com-COV study published in The Lancet late Wednesday. The initial findings looked at the side effects after two doses were administered four weeks apart.
For example, around 10 percent of people reported chills after the second dose of AstraZeneca in the standard schedule. If they had received Pfizer after AstraZeneca, that figure increased to around 40 percent, said Matthew Snape, lead investigator of the Oxford University trial.
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)?
What real evidence is that that infections are rising? They've been pretty flat for a while.
There's a Bank Holiday effect in the numbers currently as the numbers dipped over the Bank Holiday weekend then went back up afterwards, and we've currently got the after-effect of the Bank Holiday but not the dip in the numbers.
From a low base, they can be rising as a result of people returning infected from travel - see an earlier explanation of why the rising percentage of Indian variant cases in the UK did not necessarily mean that it was more infectious.
This thread is interesting as it looks at locally acquired disease rather than travellers.
The argument is that all these trials are going to run into the same issue. It is why the Judge was so critical of the prosecution. If the only way that you can get a conviction is by relying upon evidence that was already discounted more than a decade ago with no new supporting evidence then all you are doing is indulging in persecution rather than prosecution and wasting the court's time.
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
And, indeed, point two was the principal argument against the GFA back in 1998.
An excellent header and very interesting mention of the 1991 War Crimes Act by Ms CycleFree, because it refers to a time when Conservative politicians still understood the importance of Britain's legal contribution to postwar global instutions, and as conservatives even as a key plank of Britain's international prestige ; from the UN to the ECHR.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
The War Crimes Act was widely criticised by jurists, and has been a dead letter since it was passed.
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.
I think to estimate what proportion are false positives, we would need to know how many tests are done where there is strong suspicion of COVID.
I don't think you can just divide total number of tests done by specificity.
I was not doing that. I was multiplying total tests by specificity to get false positives. Then dividing true positives by total positives to get predictive value. That is the way it is done.
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.
OT - Very profound and though-provoking contribution by Cyclefree. Thank you for writing this, and the Management for posting it.
I believe in truth and reconciliation. And that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process in South Africa, while far from perfect, was a positive, constructive thing for the entire country and the world.
We need more of it, in Northern Ireland AND North America. And all around the globe.
Have always been impressed by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and have known a few FoRers here in Seattle.
Believe it was Charles of PB who noted a while back, that hatred is a negative and destructive, especially self-destructive. Or something like that. I agree.
We all make mistakes. And to paraphrase, covering-up is generally the worst mistake.
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?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
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.
Powerfully argued.
The argument that one should not have trials when the evidence is inadequate or inadmissible - as was the case with the two men recently acquitted - is not an argument for not having investigations or prosecutions where there is such evidence. Mercer's view is that soldiers should be exempt because it's somehow not fair to investigate them when they are accused of murder because it is all so long ago. I don't think that is a valid argument at all. We have never accepted a statute of limitations for murder. So why now and why here?
The counter-argument: that the truth should come out so that people know what happened and by whom but the quid pro quo is no prosecutions has some merit but only if it applies to all and the truth really does come out. But it seems to me that we're not going to get that either. It's a fudged mess which disgraces the government.
Perhaps it is the most that can be expected in and for NI. I fear that it will not heal wounds, will store up trouble and will be used as a troubling precedent elsewhere.
Back to lurking. Bye.
The argument is that all these trials are going to run into the same issue. It is why the Judge was so critical of the prosecution. If the only way that you can get a conviction is by relying upon evidence that was already discounted more than a decade ago with no new supporting evidence then all you are doing is indulging in persecution rather than prosecution and wasting the court's time.
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
I am not suggesting that one side should benefit and not the other. See my para upthread re the counter-argument. My concern is that this choice risks not working because you get neither truth nor justice.
I will admit that I am a bit of a fundamentalist about the importance of both - but I can see the strong counter-arguments in a place such as NI. A very good book on this is by Patrick Radden Keefe: Say Nothing - A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. It takes the story of Jean McConville but expands to cover just the sort of things we have been discussing in relation to IRA crimes. It is heartbreaking - especially when you realise the effects on the families - but a very worthwhile read.
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.
Is it that rare? Do we know?
Genuine questions.
Of my reasonably close friends - 20 to 30 people? - one has got Long Covid (very badly)
I am acquainted- had a lunch with, chatted several times with - another person with LC (quite badly)
I've no idea if this makes it rare or common, I just know I have encountered it
My hunch is that no one knows, this is a novel coronavirus. It is still a huge source of mystery. And it might be years before we have a clear grasp of all the sequelae
Spanish Flu was the same, had a lot of strange long term side-effects
I've never come across anyone who has suffered from it. I've come across a couple of people who still didn't feel great a couple of months later, but both are fine 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?
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.
I can
If we're at the floor of false positives then that doesn't tell us R is low, it just tells us that we no longer have useful data to measure R.
If one person in the UK genuinely has Covid and we lifted all restrictions, what would happen?
If we're at herd immunity, then the greater probability is that person will not be able to infect anyone else (the average infections caused by one infected person is below 1, so on average our one person does not infect someone else). If we're not, then - on average - our infected person infects more than one other person, they go on to infect more than one othe person and we see that R is above 1 from the numbers.
Now, with one person the possibilities are masively wide, that person might infect 10 if they go to a party where no one is vaccinated even if the country is at herd immunity. They might infect no one if they stay at home, even if no one is vaccinated. More realistic, a 1000 people have Covid nationally, and we'll get closer to an average effect of R.
Current R is below 1 (a little, as best we can tell from the data). I think you're saying that it's really well below 1 and we're misled by the 'cases' and so even the boost to R from unlocking would keep it below 1. It's possible, but the hospitalisation data are, for the past few days, fairly flat. Best measure? Maybe. Cases have a floor, with testing. Deaths have a floor too, from other causes and positive tests. Admissions - depends on definition (which I don't know - are these admissions for Covid, rather than just x days after a positive test?). If current R is close to 1 then easing restrictions (which do something, no?) might push it slightly above 1. No biggie, but likely the truth.
PS: Yes, I know - I'm arguing with you and yes, I know, I'll get tired of it before you do and yes, I know that means you win by defaut. But I'm still right. So there!
Sorry I don't understand how you're disagreeing with me? I absolutely 100% at low levels there will be much more natural variation in how much spread there is from low levels of cases - and I agree that herd immunity doesn't mean zero infections.
Yes I'm saying that if we're at the floor then its not really viable to expect it to go any lower. Yes I am saying that there's no longer useful data to measure R. I'm agreeing with you in all that.
It was plummetting down in almost a straight line, until it hit a floor and now its flattish at a straight line.
What do we have to say we're not at the floor? And if we are at a floor it won't reasonably go any lower.
We agree? If that makes it a score-draw, I'll take it
They've just recorded 7,000 daily cases and 100 daily deaths. Both are close to their all-time pandemic peak.
1. How can they possibly hold the Olympics?
2. FFS Japan get vaccinating fast
Not just Japan. Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, etc are developing notable spikes of disease. I don't see the Asian wave stopping in India. If it takes off in China again it could be very messy indeed.
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.
How do you know "not driven by physical effects of the virus" ? FND is something of a catch all term for ill explained neuronal effects. Even clear physical post viral effects like cardiomyopathy have until quite recently been difficult to diagnose and ill explained.
One of the interesting things about Covid is the sheer number of patients with conditions like "brain fog". I think it's reasonably likely that we'll start to explain some of the mechanisms responsible.
I'll hold my hands and and admit that I don't know and can't know that they are not driven by physical effects of the virus. We may very well come to explain ALL long covid, but we currently can't and I am struck by the similarity of the stories of long covid, notably among those who were not seriously ill, but now experience a constellation of symptoms, something seen in FND (which is indeed a catchall, but useful). I am convinced that many long covid sufferers will have physical damage, but I suspect some will not. Their suffering should not be trivialised and that is not my intention. But if they are suffering from FND then the recovery will be different to recovery from lung damage, or heart damage etc. I may be very wrong.
OAKLAND — Republican gubernatorial candidate Caitlyn Jenner told CNN this week that she never voted for president in the November 2020 election and opted to golf instead because she "couldn't get excited" about the dozen measures on the California ballot. For someone seeking support in the upcoming recall, it was a head-turning statement.
Then came the head-scratcher: Los Angeles County records show she actually did cast a ballot last fall. . . .
The issue arose when CNN’s Dana Bash asked Jenner this week if she had voted for former President Donald Trump in last year's election. . . .
"I didn't even vote," Jenner told Bash in a wide-ranging interview at her home in Malibu. "Out here in California, it's like, why vote for a Republican president? It's just not going to work. I mean, it's overwhelming."
But Jenner didn't stop there. Asked further if she voted on downticket races, she said she did not and suggested she didn't participate at all.
"It was voting day, and I thought, the only thing out here in California that I worry about, which affects people, is the propositions that were out there," Jenner said. "And I didn't see any propositions that I really had one side or the other. And so it was Election Day. And I just couldn't get excited about it. And I just wound up going to play golf and I said, eh, I'm not doing that."
California voters considered 12 ballot measures in November during a campaign that set new records for overall spending. Proposals affected the future of cash bail, affirmative action, gig workers, rent control and criminal sentencing, among other topics. . . .
Despite Jenner giving the impression she opted out of the election entirely and played golf on Election Day — and that she only worries about state propositions but chose not to consider those as well — a spokesperson said that Jenner voted on "some local issues." The spokesperson said Jenner was responding to a question about whom she chose for president in 2020 and said that she didn't support any candidate. . . .
Her claim to be a non-voter in that seminal 2020 election was baffling for a gubernatorial candidate trying to establish her political credibility, especially since records show she did participate in the contest. And it remains unclear why her statements conflict with the records. . . .
Tim Rosales, a GOP strategist, said he’s heard many candidates over the years claim to have voted when they hadn’t — and got caught because voting records are public.
“But I've never heard it the opposite way, where somebody said that I didn't vote" and they actually did, he said. . . .
OT - Very profound and though-provoking contribution by Cyclefree. Thank you for writing this, and the Management for posting it.
I believe in truth and reconciliation. And that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process in South Africa, while far from perfect, was a positive, constructive thing for the entire country and the world.
We need more of it, in Northern Ireland AND North America. And all around the globe.
Have always been impressed by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and have known a few FoRers here in Seattle.
Believe it was Charles of PB who noted a while back, that hatred is a negative and destructive, especially self-destructive. Or something like that. I agree.
We all make mistakes. And to paraphrase, covering-up is generally the worst mistake.
Even worse than a woke mistake!
I doubt if this will ever be addressed satisfactorily.
If one side wins total victory, they get to prosecute the criminals on the other side - but will ignore the criminals on their own side. If there is something less then total victory, then the leaders you negotiate with will never agree that they or their subordinates should stand trial.
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.
Powerfully argued.
The argument that one should not have trials when the evidence is inadequate or inadmissible - as was the case with the two men recently acquitted - is not an argument for not having investigations or prosecutions where there is such evidence. Mercer's view is that soldiers should be exempt because it's somehow not fair to investigate them when they are accused of murder because it is all so long ago. I don't think that is a valid argument at all. We have never accepted a statute of limitations for murder. So why now and why here?
The counter-argument: that the truth should come out so that people know what happened and by whom but the quid pro quo is no prosecutions has some merit but only if it applies to all and the truth really does come out. But it seems to me that we're not going to get that either. It's a fudged mess which disgraces the government.
Perhaps it is the most that can be expected in and for NI. I fear that it will not heal wounds, will store up trouble and will be used as a troubling precedent elsewhere.
Back to lurking. Bye.
The argument is that all these trials are going to run into the same issue. It is why the Judge was so critical of the prosecution. If the only way that you can get a conviction is by relying upon evidence that was already discounted more than a decade ago with no new supporting evidence then all you are doing is indulging in persecution rather than prosecution and wasting the court's time.
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
Following the debate with you and Cyclefree; it's a complex issue, with no easy answers, and I'm not sure what could be done differently in the context of the GFA. But would it be naive of me to suggest that we should, ideally, hold our armed forces to a much higher standard than the IRA or Loyalist paramilitaries, even if they had no choice about their involvement?
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?
Its conclusions are likely so far distant that I'm not sure that it will be particularly interesting. Which is rather the point.
The classic long-term British approach of sweeping things under the carpet. The advantage of it is that a proportion of these things get to be evolved without particularly disruptive change, but the disadvantage is often a major lack of direct accountability.
You get a call from one of those idiotic scammers in Brazil or India. "Hi I'm Priya and we're calling about your massive tax problem"
The game is to string them out for as long as possible while getting more and more surreal in your responses
My record is about 5 minutes. I got to the point where I was telling this guy in Calcutta that I was seven foot tall, living in a tree, and having sex with his mother, only then did he realise I was winding him up.
You can go crazy too early and they ring off. Tricky
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?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
He was not harshly done by. There is stuff I know about him which I cannot put on a public forum but which if you knew would explain why I am saying this.
I agree that others got away with behaviour which should have been dealt with more firmly than it was. Absolutely agree.
Once again I notice in today's press that some of the people I investigated have popped up in relation to Softbank / Greensill / Credit Suisse.
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.
I can
If we're at the floor of false positives then that doesn't tell us R is low, it just tells us that we no longer have useful data to measure R.
If one person in the UK genuinely has Covid and we lifted all restrictions, what would happen?
If we're at herd immunity, then the greater probability is that person will not be able to infect anyone else (the average infections caused by one infected person is below 1, so on average our one person does not infect someone else). If we're not, then - on average - our infected person infects more than one other person, they go on to infect more than one othe person and we see that R is above 1 from the numbers.
Now, with one person the possibilities are masively wide, that person might infect 10 if they go to a party where no one is vaccinated even if the country is at herd immunity. They might infect no one if they stay at home, even if no one is vaccinated. More realistic, a 1000 people have Covid nationally, and we'll get closer to an average effect of R.
Current R is below 1 (a little, as best we can tell from the data). I think you're saying that it's really well below 1 and we're misled by the 'cases' and so even the boost to R from unlocking would keep it below 1. It's possible, but the hospitalisation data are, for the past few days, fairly flat. Best measure? Maybe. Cases have a floor, with testing. Deaths have a floor too, from other causes and positive tests. Admissions - depends on definition (which I don't know - are these admissions for Covid, rather than just x days after a positive test?). If current R is close to 1 then easing restrictions (which do something, no?) might push it slightly above 1. No biggie, but likely the truth.
PS: Yes, I know - I'm arguing with you and yes, I know, I'll get tired of it before you do and yes, I know that means you win by defaut. But I'm still right. So there!
Good post.
"are these admissions for Covid, rather than just x days after a positive test?" - that's a good point. I'd assumed the former. Can anyone confirm?
It was certainly the case a few months back that admissions included those admitted to hospital for other reasons who then tested positive for covid. So people who caught covid in hospital (I'm looking at you, Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust) end up counted in the 'admissions', even if they came in with a broken leg and suffered no particularly deleterious consequences of covid. On this basis there is also a logical floor to admissions numbers, though I would have thought considerably lower than 100 a day.
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.
Powerfully argued.
The argument that one should not have trials when the evidence is inadequate or inadmissible - as was the case with the two men recently acquitted - is not an argument for not having investigations or prosecutions where there is such evidence. Mercer's view is that soldiers should be exempt because it's somehow not fair to investigate them when they are accused of murder because it is all so long ago. I don't think that is a valid argument at all. We have never accepted a statute of limitations for murder. So why now and why here?
The counter-argument: that the truth should come out so that people know what happened and by whom but the quid pro quo is no prosecutions has some merit but only if it applies to all and the truth really does come out. But it seems to me that we're not going to get that either. It's a fudged mess which disgraces the government.
Perhaps it is the most that can be expected in and for NI. I fear that it will not heal wounds, will store up trouble and will be used as a troubling precedent elsewhere.
Back to lurking. Bye.
The argument is that all these trials are going to run into the same issue. It is why the Judge was so critical of the prosecution. If the only way that you can get a conviction is by relying upon evidence that was already discounted more than a decade ago with no new supporting evidence then all you are doing is indulging in persecution rather than prosecution and wasting the court's time.
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
Following the debate with you and Cyclefree; it's a complex issue, with no easy answers, and I'm not sure what could be done differently in the context of the GFA. But would it be naive of me to suggest that we should, ideally, hold our armed forces to a much higher standard than the IRA or Loyalist paramilitaries, even if they had no choice about their involvement?
Interestingly, both parties linked to the Loyalists, the PUP and the UDP, supported the GFA.
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)?
What real evidence is that that infections are rising? They've been pretty flat for a while.
There's a Bank Holiday effect in the numbers currently as the numbers dipped over the Bank Holiday weekend then went back up afterwards, and we've currently got the after-effect of the Bank Holiday but not the dip in the numbers.
From a low base, they can be rising as a result of people returning infected from travel - see an earlier explanation of why the rising percentage of Indian variant cases in the UK did not necessarily mean that it was more infectious.
This thread is interesting as it looks at locally acquired disease rather than travellers.
So, if it is 60% more infectious than Kent for whatever reason, then all the more reason to be watchful of the data in relation to easing restrictions. It makes what Johnson said even more sensible.
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.
Is it that rare? Do we know?
Genuine questions.
Of my reasonably close friends - 20 to 30 people? - one has got Long Covid (very badly)
I am acquainted- had a lunch with, chatted several times with - another person with LC (quite badly)
I've no idea if this makes it rare or common, I just know I have encountered it
My hunch is that no one knows, this is a novel coronavirus. It is still a huge source of mystery. And it might be years before we have a clear grasp of all the sequelae
Spanish Flu was the same, had a lot of strange long term side-effects
I've never come across anyone who has suffered from it. I've come across a couple of people who still didn't feel great a couple of months later, but both are fine now.
I wonder if it is geographically concentrated.
Interesting point. My Long Coviders are both wealthy west Londoners, indeed they've quite possibly met, they move in such similar circles
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.
I can
If we're at the floor of false positives then that doesn't tell us R is low, it just tells us that we no longer have useful data to measure R.
If one person in the UK genuinely has Covid and we lifted all restrictions, what would happen?
If we're at herd immunity, then the greater probability is that person will not be able to infect anyone else (the average infections caused by one infected person is below 1, so on average our one person does not infect someone else). If we're not, then - on average - our infected person infects more than one other person, they go on to infect more than one othe person and we see that R is above 1 from the numbers.
Now, with one person the possibilities are masively wide, that person might infect 10 if they go to a party where no one is vaccinated even if the country is at herd immunity. They might infect no one if they stay at home, even if no one is vaccinated. More realistic, a 1000 people have Covid nationally, and we'll get closer to an average effect of R.
Current R is below 1 (a little, as best we can tell from the data). I think you're saying that it's really well below 1 and we're misled by the 'cases' and so even the boost to R from unlocking would keep it below 1. It's possible, but the hospitalisation data are, for the past few days, fairly flat. Best measure? Maybe. Cases have a floor, with testing. Deaths have a floor too, from other causes and positive tests. Admissions - depends on definition (which I don't know - are these admissions for Covid, rather than just x days after a positive test?). If current R is close to 1 then easing restrictions (which do something, no?) might push it slightly above 1. No biggie, but likely the truth.
PS: Yes, I know - I'm arguing with you and yes, I know, I'll get tired of it before you do and yes, I know that means you win by defaut. But I'm still right. So there!
Sorry I don't understand how you're disagreeing with me? I absolutely 100% at low levels there will be much more natural variation in how much spread there is from low levels of cases - and I agree that herd immunity doesn't mean zero infections.
Yes I'm saying that if we're at the floor then its not really viable to expect it to go any lower. Yes I am saying that there's no longer useful data to measure R. I'm agreeing with you in all that.
It was plummetting down in almost a straight line, until it hit a floor and now its flattish at a straight line.
What do we have to say we're not at the floor? And if we are at a floor it won't reasonably go any lower.
We agree? If that makes it a score-draw, I'll take it
Cop out. I really think you should hunker down for another 25 posts and prepare for rollover onto the next thread. It's the only way.
They've just recorded 7,000 daily cases and 100 daily deaths. Both are close to their all-time pandemic peak.
1. How can they possibly hold the Olympics?
2. FFS Japan get vaccinating fast
Not just Japan. Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, etc are developing notable spikes of disease. I don't see the Asian wave stopping in India. If it takes off in China again it could be very messy indeed.
Take your general point, but not sure about Taiwan; or, if something is happening there, it is from an INCREDIBLY low base
They have recorded 12 deaths. That's not their daily total. That's their total total. TWELVE deaths through the entire plague, in a nation of 23 million
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.
Is it that rare? Do we know?
Genuine questions.
Of my reasonably close friends - 20 to 30 people? - one has got Long Covid (very badly)
I am acquainted- had a lunch with, chatted several times with - another person with LC (quite badly)
I've no idea if this makes it rare or common, I just know I have encountered it
My hunch is that no one knows, this is a novel coronavirus. It is still a huge source of mystery. And it might be years before we have a clear grasp of all the sequelae
Spanish Flu was the same, had a lot of strange long term side-effects
I've never come across anyone who has suffered from it. I've come across a couple of people who still didn't feel great a couple of months later, but both are fine now.
I wonder if it is geographically concentrated.
It's definitely a thing, I think my friend is starting to properly recover from it now - a year later. It might seem trivial to many but it has knocked his 5k times up a couple of minutes from where it was last year (And he's improved vastly since last year), and he's running every day.
If that is how it affects a very physically fit and active person then it's clear evidence of perhaps some lung scarring which means the less fit and active will likely be affected to a greater degree if they're suffering from long covid; of which I know someone else who is less fit (Has diabetes) and they were in the ICU after they had "recovered" from Covid - again. He now has blood clots in his legs which he did not have previously, again this is about a year post Covid.
So two cases of varying degree but certainly physical effects long after the virus is gone.
You get a call from one of those idiotic scammers in Brazil or India. "Hi I'm Priya and we're calling about your massive tax problem"
The game is to string them out for as long as possible while getting more and more surreal in your responses
My record is about 5 minutes. I got to the point where I was telling this guy in Calcutta that I was seven foot tall, living in a tree, and having sex with his mother, only then did he realise I was winding him up.
You can go crazy too early and they ring off. Tricky
Another version of the game is to take the opportunity of their call to try to convert them to some whacky sect.
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.
Powerfully argued.
The argument that one should not have trials when the evidence is inadequate or inadmissible - as was the case with the two men recently acquitted - is not an argument for not having investigations or prosecutions where there is such evidence. Mercer's view is that soldiers should be exempt because it's somehow not fair to investigate them when they are accused of murder because it is all so long ago. I don't think that is a valid argument at all. We have never accepted a statute of limitations for murder. So why now and why here?
The counter-argument: that the truth should come out so that people know what happened and by whom but the quid pro quo is no prosecutions has some merit but only if it applies to all and the truth really does come out. But it seems to me that we're not going to get that either. It's a fudged mess which disgraces the government.
Perhaps it is the most that can be expected in and for NI. I fear that it will not heal wounds, will store up trouble and will be used as a troubling precedent elsewhere.
Back to lurking. Bye.
The argument is that all these trials are going to run into the same issue. It is why the Judge was so critical of the prosecution. If the only way that you can get a conviction is by relying upon evidence that was already discounted more than a decade ago with no new supporting evidence then all you are doing is indulging in persecution rather than prosecution and wasting the court's time.
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
Following the debate with you and Cyclefree; it's a complex issue, with no easy answers, and I'm not sure what could be done differently in the context of the GFA. But would it be naive of me to suggest that we should, ideally, hold our armed forces to a much higher standard than the IRA or Loyalist paramilitaries, even if they had no choice about their involvement?
In a way I would argue they should almost be held to a lower standard.
Almost all of these soldiers would have joined up expecting to fight, if called upon, against an enemy, in a war. At the time many of them joined up the army was not even in Northern Ireland.
They were given no training at all about how to deal with civilian policing operations. Even less on how to react when some of those civilians are shooting at you. They went through a training system that taught them how to fight and kill and were given guns with which to do so.
They had no choice about whether they actually went to Northern Ireland. As a soldier you don't get to choose which wars you fight in. The paramilitaries on the other hand did have a choice. They chose to pick up guns and shoot at soldiers, policemen and other civilians of both sides of the community.
So holding your armed forces to a higher standard only works when you give those forces the proper training and support to allow them to be something other than what you trained them to be.
Yes you can reasonable argue that someone should be held responsible - although again the GFA is based on the principle that no one should be held responsible. But if you are going to do that then it should be the politicians who sent the troops in without proper training and who expected them to act as policemen rather than soldiers.
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?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
You get a call from one of those idiotic scammers in Brazil or India. "Hi I'm Priya and we're calling about your massive tax problem"
The game is to string them out for as long as possible while getting more and more surreal in your responses
My record is about 5 minutes. I got to the point where I was telling this guy in Calcutta that I was seven foot tall, living in a tree, and having sex with his mother, only then did he realise I was winding him up.
You can go crazy too early and they ring off. Tricky
I've done it a few times, when doing some routine tasks and able to do the call 'on the side' as it were. I'm (mostly) in front of a Linux desktop (at work and also personal preference) so I can keep the alleged 'Microsoft tech' virus/maintenance guys going for quite some time while I try and find the 'control centre' or 'internet explorer' or 'the registry', reading out the things I can see in my menus/on my desktop. Indeed, even finding the 'start' menu can take some time! I think my record is about 15 minutes or 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.
Powerfully argued.
The argument that one should not have trials when the evidence is inadequate or inadmissible - as was the case with the two men recently acquitted - is not an argument for not having investigations or prosecutions where there is such evidence. Mercer's view is that soldiers should be exempt because it's somehow not fair to investigate them when they are accused of murder because it is all so long ago. I don't think that is a valid argument at all. We have never accepted a statute of limitations for murder. So why now and why here?
The counter-argument: that the truth should come out so that people know what happened and by whom but the quid pro quo is no prosecutions has some merit but only if it applies to all and the truth really does come out. But it seems to me that we're not going to get that either. It's a fudged mess which disgraces the government.
Perhaps it is the most that can be expected in and for NI. I fear that it will not heal wounds, will store up trouble and will be used as a troubling precedent elsewhere.
Back to lurking. Bye.
The argument is that all these trials are going to run into the same issue. It is why the Judge was so critical of the prosecution. If the only way that you can get a conviction is by relying upon evidence that was already discounted more than a decade ago with no new supporting evidence then all you are doing is indulging in persecution rather than prosecution and wasting the court's time.
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
Following the debate with you and Cyclefree; it's a complex issue, with no easy answers, and I'm not sure what could be done differently in the context of the GFA. But would it be naive of me to suggest that we should, ideally, hold our armed forces to a much higher standard than the IRA or Loyalist paramilitaries, even if they had no choice about their involvement?
For me, it's less about perpetrators and more about victims. All victims are as entitled to justice as each other.
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.
How do you know "not driven by physical effects of the virus" ? FND is something of a catch all term for ill explained neuronal effects. Even clear physical post viral effects like cardiomyopathy have until quite recently been difficult to diagnose and ill explained.
One of the interesting things about Covid is the sheer number of patients with conditions like "brain fog". I think it's reasonably likely that we'll start to explain some of the mechanisms responsible.
I'll hold my hands and and admit that I don't know and can't know that they are not driven by physical effects of the virus. We may very well come to explain ALL long covid, but we currently can't and I am struck by the similarity of the stories of long covid, notably among those who were not seriously ill, but now experience a constellation of symptoms, something seen in FND (which is indeed a catchall, but useful). I am convinced that many long covid sufferers will have physical damage, but I suspect some will not. Their suffering should not be trivialised and that is not my intention. But if they are suffering from FND then the recovery will be different to recovery from lung damage, or heart damage etc. I may be very wrong.
'Long Covid' is no different from your FND in that it's a catch all term for a lot of cases which are poorly explained, and of varied nature. This Nature article calls it "a whole soup of stuff": https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-021-00069-9
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?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
You get a call from one of those idiotic scammers in Brazil or India. "Hi I'm Priya and we're calling about your massive tax problem"
The game is to string them out for as long as possible while getting more and more surreal in your responses
My record is about 5 minutes. I got to the point where I was telling this guy in Calcutta that I was seven foot tall, living in a tree, and having sex with his mother, only then did he realise I was winding him up.
You can go crazy too early and they ring off. Tricky
I've done it a few times, when doing some routine tasks and able to do the call 'on the side' as it were. I'm (mostly) in front of a Linux desktop (at work and also personal preference) so I can keep the alleged 'Microsoft tech' virus/maintenance guys going for quite some time while I try and find the 'control centre' or 'internet explorer' or 'the registry', reading out the things I can see in my menus/on my desktop. Indeed, even finding the 'start' menu can take some time! I think my record is about 15 minutes or so.
15 minutes! Jealous
My problem is that I go for the easy chuckles too soon. "Yes I had an accident! Last week I lost all my limbs and half of my face, and I am now living in an airtight vacuum with my favourite hen". Click
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.
I can
If we're at the floor of false positives then that doesn't tell us R is low, it just tells us that we no longer have useful data to measure R.
If one person in the UK genuinely has Covid and we lifted all restrictions, what would happen?
If we're at herd immunity, then the greater probability is that person will not be able to infect anyone else (the average infections caused by one infected person is below 1, so on average our one person does not infect someone else). If we're not, then - on average - our infected person infects more than one other person, they go on to infect more than one othe person and we see that R is above 1 from the numbers.
Now, with one person the possibilities are masively wide, that person might infect 10 if they go to a party where no one is vaccinated even if the country is at herd immunity. They might infect no one if they stay at home, even if no one is vaccinated. More realistic, a 1000 people have Covid nationally, and we'll get closer to an average effect of R.
Current R is below 1 (a little, as best we can tell from the data). I think you're saying that it's really well below 1 and we're misled by the 'cases' and so even the boost to R from unlocking would keep it below 1. It's possible, but the hospitalisation data are, for the past few days, fairly flat. Best measure? Maybe. Cases have a floor, with testing. Deaths have a floor too, from other causes and positive tests. Admissions - depends on definition (which I don't know - are these admissions for Covid, rather than just x days after a positive test?). If current R is close to 1 then easing restrictions (which do something, no?) might push it slightly above 1. No biggie, but likely the truth.
PS: Yes, I know - I'm arguing with you and yes, I know, I'll get tired of it before you do and yes, I know that means you win by defaut. But I'm still right. So there!
Good post.
"are these admissions for Covid, rather than just x days after a positive test?" - that's a good point. I'd assumed the former. Can anyone confirm?
It was certainly the case a few months back that admissions included those admitted to hospital for other reasons who then tested positive for covid. So people who caught covid in hospital (I'm looking at you, Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust) end up counted in the 'admissions', even if they came in with a broken leg and suffered no particularly deleterious consequences of covid. On this basis there is also a logical floor to admissions numbers, though I would have thought considerably lower than 100 a day.
If someone is in hospital for something else and catches Covid while there AND is ill enough to remain in hospital due to Covid then that person should be in the admission figures. Otherwise they should not.
What about if someone is admitted to hospital with a positive test for Covid but has nil or mild symptoms and is going into hospital for something else?
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?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
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.
Powerfully argued.
The argument that one should not have trials when the evidence is inadequate or inadmissible - as was the case with the two men recently acquitted - is not an argument for not having investigations or prosecutions where there is such evidence. Mercer's view is that soldiers should be exempt because it's somehow not fair to investigate them when they are accused of murder because it is all so long ago. I don't think that is a valid argument at all. We have never accepted a statute of limitations for murder. So why now and why here?
The counter-argument: that the truth should come out so that people know what happened and by whom but the quid pro quo is no prosecutions has some merit but only if it applies to all and the truth really does come out. But it seems to me that we're not going to get that either. It's a fudged mess which disgraces the government.
Perhaps it is the most that can be expected in and for NI. I fear that it will not heal wounds, will store up trouble and will be used as a troubling precedent elsewhere.
Back to lurking. Bye.
The argument is that all these trials are going to run into the same issue. It is why the Judge was so critical of the prosecution. If the only way that you can get a conviction is by relying upon evidence that was already discounted more than a decade ago with no new supporting evidence then all you are doing is indulging in persecution rather than prosecution and wasting the court's time.
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
Following the debate with you and Cyclefree; it's a complex issue, with no easy answers, and I'm not sure what could be done differently in the context of the GFA. But would it be naive of me to suggest that we should, ideally, hold our armed forces to a much higher standard than the IRA or Loyalist paramilitaries, even if they had no choice about their involvement?
We should, but if actual murderers on both sides are already being forgiven their crimes for the sake of peace, and they are, which murderers or potential murderers are not to be included? I'm sure theres a line, but it seems pretty murky from the outside. Especially when proving it to a required standard will be getting more difficult every year.
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.
Powerfully argued.
The argument that one should not have trials when the evidence is inadequate or inadmissible - as was the case with the two men recently acquitted - is not an argument for not having investigations or prosecutions where there is such evidence. Mercer's view is that soldiers should be exempt because it's somehow not fair to investigate them when they are accused of murder because it is all so long ago. I don't think that is a valid argument at all. We have never accepted a statute of limitations for murder. So why now and why here?
The counter-argument: that the truth should come out so that people know what happened and by whom but the quid pro quo is no prosecutions has some merit but only if it applies to all and the truth really does come out. But it seems to me that we're not going to get that either. It's a fudged mess which disgraces the government.
Perhaps it is the most that can be expected in and for NI. I fear that it will not heal wounds, will store up trouble and will be used as a troubling precedent elsewhere.
Back to lurking. Bye.
The argument is that all these trials are going to run into the same issue. It is why the Judge was so critical of the prosecution. If the only way that you can get a conviction is by relying upon evidence that was already discounted more than a decade ago with no new supporting evidence then all you are doing is indulging in persecution rather than prosecution and wasting the court's time.
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
I am not suggesting that one side should benefit and not the other. See my para upthread re the counter-argument. My concern is that this choice risks not working because you get neither truth nor justice.
I will admit that I am a bit of a fundamentalist about the importance of both - but I can see the strong counter-arguments in a place such as NI. A very good book on this is by Patrick Radden Keefe: Say Nothing - A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. It takes the story of Jean McConville but expands to cover just the sort of things we have been discussing in relation to IRA crimes. It is heartbreaking - especially when you realise the effects on the families - but a very worthwhile read.
The trouble is that - for all that I agree with you about truth and justice - the GFA is not based on those principles.
Much like the unwritten agreement in the post-Franco era, it is based on hiding the truth and hoping that peace lasts long enough that people on all sides become invested in it sufficiently to let it rest for the sake of continuing the peace. Either that or they die and it is no longer an issue. It is cruel but it is the only way they could see to get the paramilitaries onside. I am still not convinced that it has worked or ever will. But it is what both Governments and the paramilitaries signed up to.
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?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
They've just recorded 7,000 daily cases and 100 daily deaths. Both are close to their all-time pandemic peak.
1. How can they possibly hold the Olympics?
2. FFS Japan get vaccinating fast
Not just Japan. Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, etc are developing notable spikes of disease. I don't see the Asian wave stopping in India. If it takes off in China again it could be very messy indeed.
OT - Very profound and though-provoking contribution by Cyclefree. Thank you for writing this, and the Management for posting it.
I believe in truth and reconciliation. And that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process in South Africa, while far from perfect, was a positive, constructive thing for the entire country and the world.
We need more of it, in Northern Ireland AND North America. And all around the globe.
Have always been impressed by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and have known a few FoRers here in Seattle.
Believe it was Charles of PB who noted a while back, that hatred is a negative and destructive, especially self-destructive. Or something like that. I agree.
We all make mistakes. And to paraphrase, covering-up is generally the worst mistake.
Even worse than a woke mistake!
I have an interesting perspective on this as I am good friends - and neighbour - to one of the ladies who undertook the contacts and negotiations with the most extreme paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland and managed to get them to the table. At other times in her career she also acted as go between with the various Lebanese militias to get them to talks and negotiated hostage releases with the drug cartels in Mexico. Quite a remarkable lady.
They've just recorded 7,000 daily cases and 100 daily deaths. Both are close to their all-time pandemic peak.
1. How can they possibly hold the Olympics?
2. FFS Japan get vaccinating fast
Not just Japan. Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, etc are developing notable spikes of disease. I don't see the Asian wave stopping in India. If it takes off in China again it could be very messy indeed.
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.
How do you know "not driven by physical effects of the virus" ? FND is something of a catch all term for ill explained neuronal effects. Even clear physical post viral effects like cardiomyopathy have until quite recently been difficult to diagnose and ill explained.
One of the interesting things about Covid is the sheer number of patients with conditions like "brain fog". I think it's reasonably likely that we'll start to explain some of the mechanisms responsible.
I'll hold my hands and and admit that I don't know and can't know that they are not driven by physical effects of the virus. We may very well come to explain ALL long covid, but we currently can't and I am struck by the similarity of the stories of long covid, notably among those who were not seriously ill, but now experience a constellation of symptoms, something seen in FND (which is indeed a catchall, but useful). I am convinced that many long covid sufferers will have physical damage, but I suspect some will not. Their suffering should not be trivialised and that is not my intention. But if they are suffering from FND then the recovery will be different to recovery from lung damage, or heart damage etc. I may be very wrong.
'Long Covid' is no different from your FND in that it's a catch all term for a lot of cases which are poorly explained, and of varied nature. This Nature article calls it "a whole soup of stuff": https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-021-00069-9
“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.”
The conclusion from the military will be "we need a bigger budget".
They've just recorded 7,000 daily cases and 100 daily deaths. Both are close to their all-time pandemic peak.
1. How can they possibly hold the Olympics?
2. FFS Japan get vaccinating fast
Not just Japan. Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, etc are developing notable spikes of disease. I don't see the Asian wave stopping in India. If it takes off in China again it could be very messy indeed.
What a fine illustration of J. B. Haldane's essay 'On being the right size'
'To the mouse and any smaller animal [falling] presents practically no dangers. You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes. For the resistance presented to movement by the air is proportional to the surface of the moving object. '
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?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
Poor pun. Seek advice from Ydoethur?
We're meant to be doing good puns now? Well that's the site screwed.
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?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
Poor pun. Seek advice from Ydoethur?
We're meant to be doing good puns now? Well that's the site screwed.
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?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
Poor pun. Seek advice from Ydoethur?
He's the go-to guy for poor puns, for sure....
Sadly I was informed that 'services to punning' was not a valid reason for nominating someone for an honour, when I figured it was at least worth a BEM.
You get a call from one of those idiotic scammers in Brazil or India. "Hi I'm Priya and we're calling about your massive tax problem"
The game is to string them out for as long as possible while getting more and more surreal in your responses
My record is about 5 minutes. I got to the point where I was telling this guy in Calcutta that I was seven foot tall, living in a tree, and having sex with his mother, only then did he realise I was winding him up.
You can go crazy too early and they ring off. Tricky
I have a scammer impersonating somebody I had tangential contact with, still hoping that I am going to be sending him the US$4,988, after he sent me all the account details in the US yesterday for the transfer.
He has sent several chaser e-mails, asking how I am getting on.
At some point later today, I will say "Thank you for allowing me the extra time. It has allowed me to contact my friends in the British secret service and in turn they are liaising with the FBI.
You might want to pack a suitcase. And run. NOW!"
It amuses me. That it might cause them to pause even for a moment and think "Shiiiiiiiiiiit", amuses me even more.
“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.”
The conclusion from the military will be "we need a bigger budget".
So far the ufo research programme funded by Congress has only been $22m a year. It can afford to be a bit bigger.
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.
Powerfully argued.
The argument that one should not have trials when the evidence is inadequate or inadmissible - as was the case with the two men recently acquitted - is not an argument for not having investigations or prosecutions where there is such evidence. Mercer's view is that soldiers should be exempt because it's somehow not fair to investigate them when they are accused of murder because it is all so long ago. I don't think that is a valid argument at all. We have never accepted a statute of limitations for murder. So why now and why here?
The counter-argument: that the truth should come out so that people know what happened and by whom but the quid pro quo is no prosecutions has some merit but only if it applies to all and the truth really does come out. But it seems to me that we're not going to get that either. It's a fudged mess which disgraces the government.
Perhaps it is the most that can be expected in and for NI. I fear that it will not heal wounds, will store up trouble and will be used as a troubling precedent elsewhere.
Back to lurking. Bye.
The argument is that all these trials are going to run into the same issue. It is why the Judge was so critical of the prosecution. If the only way that you can get a conviction is by relying upon evidence that was already discounted more than a decade ago with no new supporting evidence then all you are doing is indulging in persecution rather than prosecution and wasting the court's time.
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
I am not suggesting that one side should benefit and not the other. See my para upthread re the counter-argument. My concern is that this choice risks not working because you get neither truth nor justice.
I will admit that I am a bit of a fundamentalist about the importance of both - but I can see the strong counter-arguments in a place such as NI. A very good book on this is by Patrick Radden Keefe: Say Nothing - A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. It takes the story of Jean McConville but expands to cover just the sort of things we have been discussing in relation to IRA crimes. It is heartbreaking - especially when you realise the effects on the families - but a very worthwhile read.
The trouble is that - for all that I agree with you about truth and justice - the GFA is not based on those principles.
Much like the unwritten agreement in the post-Franco era, it is based on hiding the truth and hoping that peace lasts long enough that people on all sides become invested in it sufficiently to let it rest for the sake of continuing the peace. Either that or they die and it is no longer an issue. It is cruel but it is the only way they could see to get the paramilitaries onside. I am still not convinced that it has worked or ever will. But it is what both Governments and the paramilitaries signed up to.
The Spanish example is interesting because that unwritten agreement is now, in part, being torn up with steps being taken against Francoists and their descendants and the truth of some of what was done by Franco now coming out. It shows that the passage of time may not be a healer - look how long ago the Spanish civil war was. Indeed, it may make the demand for knowledge even more urgent. And once knowledge is out, who knows what it may lead to.
They've just recorded 7,000 daily cases and 100 daily deaths. Both are close to their all-time pandemic peak.
1. How can they possibly hold the Olympics?
2. FFS Japan get vaccinating fast
Not just Japan. Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, etc are developing notable spikes of disease. I don't see the Asian wave stopping in India. If it takes off in China again it could be very messy indeed.
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?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
Poor pun. Seek advice from Ydoethur?
We're meant to be doing good puns now? Well that's the site screwed.
You get a call from one of those idiotic scammers in Brazil or India. "Hi I'm Priya and we're calling about your massive tax problem"
The game is to string them out for as long as possible while getting more and more surreal in your responses
My record is about 5 minutes. I got to the point where I was telling this guy in Calcutta that I was seven foot tall, living in a tree, and having sex with his mother, only then did he realise I was winding him up.
You can go crazy too early and they ring off. Tricky
I've done it a few times, when doing some routine tasks and able to do the call 'on the side' as it were. I'm (mostly) in front of a Linux desktop (at work and also personal preference) so I can keep the alleged 'Microsoft tech' virus/maintenance guys going for quite some time while I try and find the 'control centre' or 'internet explorer' or 'the registry', reading out the things I can see in my menus/on my desktop. Indeed, even finding the 'start' menu can take some time! I think my record is about 15 minutes or so.
15 minutes! Jealous
My problem is that I go for the easy chuckles too soon. "Yes I had an accident! Last week I lost all my limbs and half of my face, and I am now living in an airtight vacuum with my favourite hen". Click
I occasionally try to get to an 'occupation' question. I tell them it's complicated; I work for myself buying and selling antique toys and timepieces - I'm basically a complete wind up merchant.
I really hope this has made it on to some call-centre forms.
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.
Powerfully argued.
The argument that one should not have trials when the evidence is inadequate or inadmissible - as was the case with the two men recently acquitted - is not an argument for not having investigations or prosecutions where there is such evidence. Mercer's view is that soldiers should be exempt because it's somehow not fair to investigate them when they are accused of murder because it is all so long ago. I don't think that is a valid argument at all. We have never accepted a statute of limitations for murder. So why now and why here?
The counter-argument: that the truth should come out so that people know what happened and by whom but the quid pro quo is no prosecutions has some merit but only if it applies to all and the truth really does come out. But it seems to me that we're not going to get that either. It's a fudged mess which disgraces the government.
Perhaps it is the most that can be expected in and for NI. I fear that it will not heal wounds, will store up trouble and will be used as a troubling precedent elsewhere.
Back to lurking. Bye.
The argument is that all these trials are going to run into the same issue. It is why the Judge was so critical of the prosecution. If the only way that you can get a conviction is by relying upon evidence that was already discounted more than a decade ago with no new supporting evidence then all you are doing is indulging in persecution rather than prosecution and wasting the court's time.
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
Following the debate with you and Cyclefree; it's a complex issue, with no easy answers, and I'm not sure what could be done differently in the context of the GFA. But would it be naive of me to suggest that we should, ideally, hold our armed forces to a much higher standard than the IRA or Loyalist paramilitaries, even if they had no choice about their involvement?
For me, it's less about perpetrators and more about victims. All victims are as entitled to justice as each other.
That's incompatible with the GFA drawing a line in the sand principle though.
If all vitims were entitled to justice equitably then the prisoners would never have been released.
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?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
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.
Powerfully argued.
The argument that one should not have trials when the evidence is inadequate or inadmissible - as was the case with the two men recently acquitted - is not an argument for not having investigations or prosecutions where there is such evidence. Mercer's view is that soldiers should be exempt because it's somehow not fair to investigate them when they are accused of murder because it is all so long ago. I don't think that is a valid argument at all. We have never accepted a statute of limitations for murder. So why now and why here?
The counter-argument: that the truth should come out so that people know what happened and by whom but the quid pro quo is no prosecutions has some merit but only if it applies to all and the truth really does come out. But it seems to me that we're not going to get that either. It's a fudged mess which disgraces the government.
Perhaps it is the most that can be expected in and for NI. I fear that it will not heal wounds, will store up trouble and will be used as a troubling precedent elsewhere.
Back to lurking. Bye.
The argument is that all these trials are going to run into the same issue. It is why the Judge was so critical of the prosecution. If the only way that you can get a conviction is by relying upon evidence that was already discounted more than a decade ago with no new supporting evidence then all you are doing is indulging in persecution rather than prosecution and wasting the court's time.
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
I am not suggesting that one side should benefit and not the other. See my para upthread re the counter-argument. My concern is that this choice risks not working because you get neither truth nor justice.
I will admit that I am a bit of a fundamentalist about the importance of both - but I can see the strong counter-arguments in a place such as NI. A very good book on this is by Patrick Radden Keefe: Say Nothing - A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. It takes the story of Jean McConville but expands to cover just the sort of things we have been discussing in relation to IRA crimes. It is heartbreaking - especially when you realise the effects on the families - but a very worthwhile read.
The trouble is that - for all that I agree with you about truth and justice - the GFA is not based on those principles.
Much like the unwritten agreement in the post-Franco era, it is based on hiding the truth and hoping that peace lasts long enough that people on all sides become invested in it sufficiently to let it rest for the sake of continuing the peace. Either that or they die and it is no longer an issue. It is cruel but it is the only way they could see to get the paramilitaries onside. I am still not convinced that it has worked or ever will. But it is what both Governments and the paramilitaries signed up to.
The Spanish example is interesting because that unwritten agreement is now, in part, being torn up with steps being taken against Francoists and their descendants and the truth of some of what was done by Franco now coming out. It shows that the passage of time may not be a healer - look how long ago the Spanish civil war was. Indeed, it may make the demand for knowledge even more urgent. And once knowledge is out, who knows what it may lead to.
Anyway thanks for the thoughtful comments.
On of the reasons for the ongoing violence in NI, is that "The Men of Violence" fear that if they fade away, at some point, as in the former Yugoslavia, they will be hunted down and tried as a political tidy up.
In Yugoslavia ditching the war criminals was a very useful way to shed the past for certain politicians.
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.
I can
If we're at the floor of false positives then that doesn't tell us R is low, it just tells us that we no longer have useful data to measure R.
If one person in the UK genuinely has Covid and we lifted all restrictions, what would happen?
If we're at herd immunity, then the greater probability is that person will not be able to infect anyone else (the average infections caused by one infected person is below 1, so on average our one person does not infect someone else). If we're not, then - on average - our infected person infects more than one other person, they go on to infect more than one othe person and we see that R is above 1 from the numbers.
Now, with one person the possibilities are masively wide, that person might infect 10 if they go to a party where no one is vaccinated even if the country is at herd immunity. They might infect no one if they stay at home, even if no one is vaccinated. More realistic, a 1000 people have Covid nationally, and we'll get closer to an average effect of R.
Current R is below 1 (a little, as best we can tell from the data). I think you're saying that it's really well below 1 and we're misled by the 'cases' and so even the boost to R from unlocking would keep it below 1. It's possible, but the hospitalisation data are, for the past few days, fairly flat. Best measure? Maybe. Cases have a floor, with testing. Deaths have a floor too, from other causes and positive tests. Admissions - depends on definition (which I don't know - are these admissions for Covid, rather than just x days after a positive test?). If current R is close to 1 then easing restrictions (which do something, no?) might push it slightly above 1. No biggie, but likely the truth.
PS: Yes, I know - I'm arguing with you and yes, I know, I'll get tired of it before you do and yes, I know that means you win by defaut. But I'm still right. So there!
Good post.
"are these admissions for Covid, rather than just x days after a positive test?" - that's a good point. I'd assumed the former. Can anyone confirm?
It was certainly the case a few months back that admissions included those admitted to hospital for other reasons who then tested positive for covid. So people who caught covid in hospital (I'm looking at you, Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust) end up counted in the 'admissions', even if they came in with a broken leg and suffered no particularly deleterious consequences of covid. On this basis there is also a logical floor to admissions numbers, though I would have thought considerably lower than 100 a day.
If someone is in hospital for something else and catches Covid while there AND is ill enough to remain in hospital due to Covid then that person should be in the admission figures. Otherwise they should not.
What about if someone is admitted to hospital with a positive test for Covid but has nil or mild symptoms and is going into hospital for something else?
On your first point, yes, although that doesn't tell us anything about how prevalent it is in the community. So if we are using hospitalisations because we don't fully trust positive tests to tell us the real picture we need to acknowledge that there are limitations with using this measure too.
On your second, I think that counts as a hospitalisation, or at least did last summer - though I'm already well outside an area of expertise so happy to be contradicted yb someone who knows better!
OT - Very profound and though-provoking contribution by Cyclefree. Thank you for writing this, and the Management for posting it.
I believe in truth and reconciliation. And that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process in South Africa, while far from perfect, was a positive, constructive thing for the entire country and the world.
We need more of it, in Northern Ireland AND North America. And all around the globe.
Have always been impressed by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and have known a few FoRers here in Seattle.
Believe it was Charles of PB who noted a while back, that hatred is a negative and destructive, especially self-destructive. Or something like that. I agree.
We all make mistakes. And to paraphrase, covering-up is generally the worst mistake.
Even worse than a woke mistake!
I have an interesting perspective on this as I am good friends - and neighbour - to one of the ladies who undertook the contacts and negotiations with the most extreme paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland and managed to get them to the table. At other times in her career she also acted as go between with the various Lebanese militias to get them to talks and negotiated hostage releases with the drug cartels in Mexico. Quite a remarkable lady.
Four different proposals were shortlisted, as the various councils disagreed as to their preferred option.
From afar, I thought that the Morecambe Bay Authority looked the most interesting merging South Lakeland, Barrow and Lancaster councils, with the rest of Cumbria forming another unitary. This appeared to go hark back a few years to the northern part of the old Lancastershire boundaries. However Lancashire County Council is looking into its own unitarisation proposals.
There was a separate consultation for North Yorkshire and Somerset, but these looked less interesting.
OT - Very profound and though-provoking contribution by Cyclefree. Thank you for writing this, and the Management for posting it.
I believe in truth and reconciliation. And that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process in South Africa, while far from perfect, was a positive, constructive thing for the entire country and the world.
We need more of it, in Northern Ireland AND North America. And all around the globe.
Have always been impressed by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and have known a few FoRers here in Seattle.
Believe it was Charles of PB who noted a while back, that hatred is a negative and destructive, especially self-destructive. Or something like that. I agree.
We all make mistakes. And to paraphrase, covering-up is generally the worst mistake.
Even worse than a woke mistake!
I have an interesting perspective on this as I am good friends - and neighbour - to one of the ladies who undertook the contacts and negotiations with the most extreme paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland and managed to get them to the table. At other times in her career she also acted as go between with the various Lebanese militias to get them to talks and negotiated hostage releases with the drug cartels in Mexico. Quite a remarkable lady.
This winding up scammers, are people doing it for the elevated reason of protecting that little old lady who might be next in line and who won't be gotten around to because of the farting around with you? Or is it more just that it's a viscerally enjoyable thing to do?
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.
Powerfully argued.
The argument that one should not have trials when the evidence is inadequate or inadmissible - as was the case with the two men recently acquitted - is not an argument for not having investigations or prosecutions where there is such evidence. Mercer's view is that soldiers should be exempt because it's somehow not fair to investigate them when they are accused of murder because it is all so long ago. I don't think that is a valid argument at all. We have never accepted a statute of limitations for murder. So why now and why here?
The counter-argument: that the truth should come out so that people know what happened and by whom but the quid pro quo is no prosecutions has some merit but only if it applies to all and the truth really does come out. But it seems to me that we're not going to get that either. It's a fudged mess which disgraces the government.
Perhaps it is the most that can be expected in and for NI. I fear that it will not heal wounds, will store up trouble and will be used as a troubling precedent elsewhere.
Back to lurking. Bye.
The argument is that all these trials are going to run into the same issue. It is why the Judge was so critical of the prosecution. If the only way that you can get a conviction is by relying upon evidence that was already discounted more than a decade ago with no new supporting evidence then all you are doing is indulging in persecution rather than prosecution and wasting the court's time.
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
Following the debate with you and Cyclefree; it's a complex issue, with no easy answers, and I'm not sure what could be done differently in the context of the GFA. But would it be naive of me to suggest that we should, ideally, hold our armed forces to a much higher standard than the IRA or Loyalist paramilitaries, even if they had no choice about their involvement?
For me, it's less about perpetrators and more about victims. All victims are as entitled to justice as each other.
That's incompatible with the GFA drawing a line in the sand principle though.
If all vitims were entitled to justice equitably then the prisoners would never have been released.
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?
But Hayes absolutely deserved to be monstered. He was no innocent. Believe me.
Not innocent at all. But I did think he was harshly done by. Of course some of it comes from the relativity - his treatment cf others. That scandal was quite close to home for me. Interest rates were at the heart of much of what I used to do when I was in that arena and 'libors' were front and centre and gospel, how they moved drove valuations and trades and pee'n'ells all over the place, it used to - not kidding - dominate my waking hours, I'd even dream about it sometimes, libor this, libor that, libor plus 100, libor flat, libor libor libor, living and breathing the wretched thing, and then you look at the process to set it and it's just so naff, the fixing is a fix, libor is a liebor, and millions of financial positions across the world, wholesale and retail, are impacted. Quite incredible really. It reminded me a little of SP fixing by crooked bookies in horse racing. But you wouldn't expect that in blue chip financial institutions, would you? Well you would, I suppose, but you know what I mean.
Presumably now you're out of it you feel liborated?
- Yep. And good for people around me too. I was becoming a libore.
New Libor, New Danger...
I do hope so.
Some years ago I was called for jury service and got called for one of the Libor trials. My heart sank through my boots. Luckily though I was completely ruled out because of my extensive knowledge of the subject and connections with firms.
I finished up doing a couple of short trials and happily escaped the multi-month nightmare.
Yeah. Less than 100 hospitalisations yesterday (99). Lowest during this lockdown*. 120 last Thursday.
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99 120 134 150 201 220 274 354 426 532 757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
Only in August last year did we have lower rates, since records began. Even then only on 8 days in August.
Definitely another sign that we're at herd immunity already, the numbers shrinking are very significant.
I doubt these figures are accurate. Does anyone on this website know anyone in the last month who has been admitted to Hospital with Covid. As I said yesterday there is no one in any Hampshire Hospital with Covid, nor in Bournemouth Hospital. 2000 daily cases and a 100 admissions seems far too high a ratio.
Comments
The migratory symptoms - how extraordinary. Sounds like the old notions of hysteria from a wandering womb.
There's a Bank Holiday effect in the numbers currently as the numbers dipped over the Bank Holiday weekend then went back up afterwards, and we've currently got the after-effect of the Bank Holiday but not the dip in the numbers.
If we're at the floor of false positives then that doesn't tell us R is low, it just tells us that we no longer have useful data to measure R.
If one person in the UK genuinely has Covid and we lifted all restrictions, what would happen?
If we're at herd immunity, then the greater probability is that person will not be able to infect anyone else (the average infections caused by one infected person is below 1, so on average our one person does not infect someone else). If we're not, then - on average - our infected person infects more than one other person, they go on to infect more than one othe person and we see that R is above 1 from the numbers.
Now, with one person the possibilities are masively wide, that person might infect 10 if they go to a party where no one is vaccinated even if the country is at herd immunity. They might infect no one if they stay at home, even if no one is vaccinated. More realistic, a 1000 people have Covid nationally, and we'll get closer to an average effect of R.
Current R is below 1 (a little, as best we can tell from the data). I think you're saying that it's really well below 1 and we're misled by the 'cases' and so even the boost to R from unlocking would keep it below 1. It's possible, but the hospitalisation data are, for the past few days, fairly flat. Best measure? Maybe. Cases have a floor, with testing. Deaths have a floor too, from other causes and positive tests. Admissions - depends on definition (which I don't know - are these admissions for Covid, rather than just x days after a positive test?). If current R is close to 1 then easing restrictions (which do something, no?) might push it slightly above 1. No biggie, but likely the truth.
PS: Yes, I know - I'm arguing with you and yes, I know, I'll get tired of it before you do and yes, I know that means you win by defaut. But I'm still right. So there!
"are these admissions for Covid, rather than just x days after a positive test?" - that's a good point. I'd assumed the former. Can anyone confirm?
The counter-argument: that the truth should come out so that people know what happened and by whom but the quid pro quo is no prosecutions has some merit but only if it applies to all and the truth really does come out. But it seems to me that we're not going to get that either. It's a fudged mess which disgraces the government.
Perhaps it is the most that can be expected in and for NI. I fear that it will not heal wounds, will store up trouble and will be used as a troubling precedent elsewhere.
Back to lurking. Bye.
This has taken a severe stuffing from the populist war on the Human Rights Act onwards, with the government pursuing an international approach more typical of the post-Reaganite U.S. - itself not an accident.
Unless we massively increase testing, recorded 'cases' will, at worst, remain flat if we've hit the floor due to false positives. So we open up, a bit at a time, as we have. Look at what happens. If cases don't go up/barely go up (as expected) then R is still below 1 or very barely above. So we're good. And we ditch restrictions completely a few weeks later. Not too long after that we'll have vaccinated everyone we can anyway.
Yes I'm saying that if we're at the floor then its not really viable to expect it to go any lower. Yes I am saying that there's no longer useful data to measure R. I'm agreeing with you in all that.
It was plummetting down in almost a straight line, until it hit a floor and now its flattish at a straight line.
What do we have to say we're not at the floor? And if we are at a floor it won't reasonably go any lower.
*"Hysteria" is no longer an acceptable term, and the condition is usually an unconscious process rather than deliberate malingering, though this happens too.
@JamesMelville
·
7h
Wyoming has now joined other US states Alabama, Minnesota, South Carolina, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Montana, Texas and South Dakota that have all either passed legislation or issued orders to prevent Covid vaccine passports.
Is it me or has to gone pretty quiet from HMG on vaccine passports lately?
Which is rather the point.
Very real, very sad, very much in the head
"For nearly two decades Sweden has been battling a mysterious illness. Called Resignation Syndrome, it affects only the children of asylum-seekers, who withdraw completely, ceasing to walk or talk, or open their eyes. Eventually they recover. But why does this only seem to occur in Sweden?
"When her father picks her up from her wheelchair, nine-year-old Sophie is lifeless. In contrast, her hair is thick and shiny - like a healthy child's. But Sophie's eyes are closed. And under her tracksuit bottoms she wears a nappy. A transparent feeding tube runs into Sophie's nose - this is how she has been nourished for the past 20 months."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-41748485
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
FND is something of a catch all term for ill explained neuronal effects.
Even clear physical post viral effects like cardiomyopathy have until quite recently been difficult to diagnose and ill explained.
One of the interesting things about Covid is the sheer number of patients with conditions like "brain fog". I think it's reasonably likely that we'll start to explain some of the mechanisms responsible.
Genuine questions.
Of my reasonably close friends - 20 to 30 people? - one has got Long Covid (very badly)
I am acquainted- had a lunch with, chatted several times with - another person with LC (quite badly)
I've no idea if this makes it rare or common, I just know I have encountered it
My hunch is that no one knows, this is a novel coronavirus. It is still a huge source of mystery. And it might be years before we have a clear grasp of all the sequelae
Spanish Flu was the same, had a lot of strange long term side-effects
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/spanish-flu-pandemic-and-mental-health-historical-perspective
NHS England weekly stats show that in all age groups above 55, vaccine uptake (1st dose) is at least 94%.
But in younger groups, as of 9th May:
50-54 90%
45-49 78%
40-44 68%
(16-39 24%)
Looks like uptake is dropping at sharper rates than you'd expect based on survey data.
Much starker gap in uptake among 50+ broken down by race:
white - British 95%
Asian - Indian 88%
Asian - Bangladeshi 85%
white - 'other' 78%
Asian - Pakistani 76%
black - African 68%
black - Caribbean 63%
https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1392846599777292293?s=20
I don't think you can just divide total number of tests done by specificity.
The first data from the U.K.’s trial on mixing coronavirus vaccines has shown a higher rate of side effects such as headache and chills than standard regimens.
Participants reported more symptoms from the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab followed by the BioNTech/Pfizer jab, and vice versa, than from standard schedules, according to early data from the Com-COV study published in The Lancet late Wednesday. The initial findings looked at the side effects after two doses were administered four weeks apart.
For example, around 10 percent of people reported chills after the second dose of AstraZeneca in the standard schedule. If they had received Pfizer after AstraZeneca, that figure increased to around 40 percent, said Matthew Snape, lead investigator of the Oxford University trial.
https://www.politico.eu/article/study-mixing-coronavirus-vaccines-side-effects/
I agree that others got away with behaviour which should have been dealt with more firmly than it was. Absolutely agree.
Once again I notice in today's press that some of the people I investigated have popped up in relation to Softbank / Greensill / Credit Suisse.
Plus ca bloody change......
They've just recorded 7,000 daily cases and 100 daily deaths. Both are close to their all-time pandemic peak.
1. How can they possibly hold the Olympics?
2. FFS Japan get vaccinating fast
https://twitter.com/TWenseleers/status/1392745975907749888?s=19
Homeowners are more likely to live in Conservative constituencies.
Average share for...
Con constituencies: 69.4%
Lab constituencies: 54.9%
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1392848639094140930?s=20
. Bye.
The argument is that all these trials are going to run into the same issue. It is why the Judge was so critical of the prosecution. If the only way that you can get a conviction is by relying upon evidence that was already discounted more than a decade ago with no new supporting evidence then all you are doing is indulging in persecution rather than prosecution and wasting the court's time.
More to the point you ignore my second, more fundamental argument. The whole Good Friday Agreement is built on burying the past and letting people get away with murder. It is perverse to suggest that one side should benefit from this and not the other. Particularly when the ones you want to pursue are the ones who had no choice over being there, had received no training on how to deal with these situations and are now being hung out to dry by the very establishment which gave them guns and then pointed them at an enemy (a false one as it happened).
And, indeed, point two was the principal argument against the GFA back in 1998.
Republican Sinn Fein (as in the 1986 abstentionist faction) were the only Nationalist party against.
I believe in truth and reconciliation. And that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process in South Africa, while far from perfect, was a positive, constructive thing for the entire country and the world.
We need more of it, in Northern Ireland AND North America. And all around the globe.
Have always been impressed by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and have known a few FoRers here in Seattle.
Believe it was Charles of PB who noted a while back, that hatred is a negative and destructive, especially self-destructive. Or something like that. I agree.
We all make mistakes. And to paraphrase, covering-up is generally the worst mistake.
Even worse than a woke mistake!
I will admit that I am a bit of a fundamentalist about the importance of both - but I can see the strong counter-arguments in a place such as NI. A very good book on this is by Patrick Radden Keefe: Say Nothing - A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. It takes the story of Jean McConville but expands to cover just the sort of things we have been discussing in relation to IRA crimes. It is heartbreaking - especially when you realise the effects on the families - but a very worthwhile read.
I've never come across anyone who has suffered from it. I've come across a couple of people who still didn't feel great a couple of months later, but both are fine now.
I wonder if it is geographically concentrated.
I may be very wrong.
Politico.com - Jenner says she didn't vote in 2020. But records show she did.
https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2021/05/11/jenner-says-she-didnt-vote-in-2020-but-records-show-she-did-1381459
OAKLAND — Republican gubernatorial candidate Caitlyn Jenner told CNN this week that she never voted for president in the November 2020 election and opted to golf instead because she "couldn't get excited" about the dozen measures on the California ballot. For someone seeking support in the upcoming recall, it was a head-turning statement.
Then came the head-scratcher: Los Angeles County records show she actually did cast a ballot last fall. . . .
The issue arose when CNN’s Dana Bash asked Jenner this week if she had voted for former President Donald Trump in last year's election. . . .
"I didn't even vote," Jenner told Bash in a wide-ranging interview at her home in Malibu. "Out here in California, it's like, why vote for a Republican president? It's just not going to work. I mean, it's overwhelming."
But Jenner didn't stop there. Asked further if she voted on downticket races, she said she did not and suggested she didn't participate at all.
"It was voting day, and I thought, the only thing out here in California that I worry about, which affects people, is the propositions that were out there," Jenner said. "And I didn't see any propositions that I really had one side or the other. And so it was Election Day. And I just couldn't get excited about it. And I just wound up going to play golf and I said, eh, I'm not doing that."
California voters considered 12 ballot measures in November during a campaign that set new records for overall spending. Proposals affected the future of cash bail, affirmative action, gig workers, rent control and criminal sentencing, among other topics. . . .
Despite Jenner giving the impression she opted out of the election entirely and played golf on Election Day — and that she only worries about state propositions but chose not to consider those as well — a spokesperson said that Jenner voted on "some local issues." The spokesperson said Jenner was responding to a question about whom she chose for president in 2020 and said that she didn't support any candidate. . . .
Her claim to be a non-voter in that seminal 2020 election was baffling for a gubernatorial candidate trying to establish her political credibility, especially since records show she did participate in the contest. And it remains unclear why her statements conflict with the records. . . .
Tim Rosales, a GOP strategist, said he’s heard many candidates over the years claim to have voted when they hadn’t — and got caught because voting records are public.
“But I've never heard it the opposite way, where somebody said that I didn't vote" and they actually did, he said. . . .
If one side wins total victory, they get to prosecute the criminals on the other side - but will ignore the criminals on their own side. If there is something less then total victory, then the leaders you negotiate with will never agree that they or their subordinates should stand trial.
You get a call from one of those idiotic scammers in Brazil or India. "Hi I'm Priya and we're calling about your massive tax problem"
The game is to string them out for as long as possible while getting more and more surreal in your responses
My record is about 5 minutes. I got to the point where I was telling this guy in Calcutta that I was seven foot tall, living in a tree, and having sex with his mother, only then did he realise I was winding him up.
You can go crazy too early and they ring off. Tricky
On this basis there is also a logical floor to admissions numbers, though I would have thought considerably lower than 100 a day.
So maybe you are right
They have recorded 12 deaths. That's not their daily total. That's their total total. TWELVE deaths through the entire plague, in a nation of 23 million
Phenomenal control of a nasty virus
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/taiwan/
If that is how it affects a very physically fit and active person then it's clear evidence of perhaps some lung scarring which means the less fit and active will likely be affected to a greater degree if they're suffering from long covid; of which I know someone else who is less fit (Has diabetes) and they were in the ICU after they had "recovered" from Covid - again. He now has blood clots in his legs which he did not have previously, again this is about a year post Covid.
So two cases of varying degree but certainly physical effects long after the virus is gone.
Almost all of these soldiers would have joined up expecting to fight, if called upon, against an enemy, in a war. At the time many of them joined up the army was not even in Northern Ireland.
They were given no training at all about how to deal with civilian policing operations. Even less on how to react when some of those civilians are shooting at you. They went through a training system that taught them how to fight and kill and were given guns with which to do so.
They had no choice about whether they actually went to Northern Ireland. As a soldier you don't get to choose which wars you fight in. The paramilitaries on the other hand did have a choice. They chose to pick up guns and shoot at soldiers, policemen and other civilians of both sides of the community.
So holding your armed forces to a higher standard only works when you give those forces the proper training and support to allow them to be something other than what you trained them to be.
Yes you can reasonable argue that someone should be held responsible - although again the GFA is based on the principle that no one should be held responsible. But if you are going to do that then it should be the politicians who sent the troops in without proper training and who expected them to act as policemen rather than soldiers.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-021-00069-9
Regarding brain fog, here's a recent paper showing evidence for an immune system effect:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210209121044.htm
No doubt there will be others.
My problem is that I go for the easy chuckles too soon. "Yes I had an accident! Last week I lost all my limbs and half of my face, and I am now living in an airtight vacuum with my favourite hen". Click
What about if someone is admitted to hospital with a positive test for Covid but has nil or mild symptoms and is going into hospital for something else?
Much like the unwritten agreement in the post-Franco era, it is based on hiding the truth and hoping that peace lasts long enough that people on all sides become invested in it sufficiently to let it rest for the sake of continuing the peace. Either that or they die and it is no longer an issue. It is cruel but it is the only way they could see to get the paramilitaries onside. I am still not convinced that it has worked or ever will. But it is what both Governments and the paramilitaries signed up to.
There's also the Australian (NSW) mouse plague...
https://twitter.com/LucyThack/status/1392315030012522497
Last few Thursdays, most recent first:
99
120
134
150
201
220
274
354
426
532
757
edit: * 99 could be lowest back to when pandemic began?
'To the mouse and any smaller animal [falling] presents practically no dangers. You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes. For the resistance presented to movement by the air is proportional to the surface of the moving object. '
Yet another problem with that archaic system.
He has sent several chaser e-mails, asking how I am getting on.
At some point later today, I will say "Thank you for allowing me the extra time. It has allowed me to contact my friends in the British secret service and in turn they are liaising with the FBI.
You might want to pack a suitcase. And run. NOW!"
It amuses me. That it might cause them to pause even for a moment and think "Shiiiiiiiiiiit", amuses me even more.
Anyway thanks for the thoughtful comments.
I really hope this has made it on to some call-centre forms.
If all vitims were entitled to justice equitably then the prisoners would never have been released.
In Yugoslavia ditching the war criminals was a very useful way to shed the past for certain politicians.
On your second, I think that counts as a hospitalisation, or at least did last summer - though I'm already well outside an area of expertise so happy to be contradicted yb someone who knows better!
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/proposals-for-locally-led-reorganisation-of-local-government-in-cumbria-north-yorkshire-and-somerset/consultation-on-proposals-for-locally-led-reorganisation-of-local-government-in-cumbria-north-yorkshire-and-somerset
Four different proposals were shortlisted, as the various councils disagreed as to their preferred option.
From afar, I thought that the Morecambe Bay Authority looked the most interesting merging South Lakeland, Barrow and Lancaster councils, with the rest of Cumbria forming another unitary. This appeared to go hark back a few years to the northern part of the old Lancastershire boundaries. However Lancashire County Council is looking into its own unitarisation proposals.
There was a separate consultation for North Yorkshire and Somerset, but these looked less interesting.
Definitely another sign that we're at herd immunity already, the numbers shrinking are very significant.
I finished up doing a couple of short trials and happily escaped the multi-month nightmare.