5m PHE: Cases of the Indian variant of concern have shot up in the UK from 520 to 1313 this week.
Not gonna panic yet. But if I was in relatively less vaccinated Europe, I would be.
That's exponential growth. Nearly tripling in a week. In six weeks, at that rate (ie the end of June, which is meant to be when we finally unlockdown) we would - in theory - see 900,000 new cases a day
This is the inexorable and hideous logic of exponential growth. And only 25% of us are fully vaccinated.
I can easily see the government wettings its knickers, and locking us down, deeper, again (or just keeping us locked down)
How do we escape the logic of the maths? Isolate the outbreaks? It looks too deeply rooted and widely spread, to me
Approve Ivermectin and HCQ for early stages of the disease ... worked in almost endless RCTs, effective against all variants. Fortify food with vitamin D as in Finland ... very few COVID deaths there.
But it won't happen in the UK. No money in it for those who've been making a fortune since March 2020 probably including half the cabinet, e.g. Hancock, Zahawi.
Do wake up. This is not primarily about a virus. It's about a further transfer of some of the world's $$$ from have-nots to haves.
If you believe the Worldometers figures for 'COVID deaths per million', compare India to the UK or France, pour yourself a glass of nice red wine and read a calming travel book (do not at this time go near books by Orwell or Huxley, or you'll have nightmares).
End of scare story. Calm down.
But then, you wake up and see that for a 2nd time the NHS is trying to package and sell all our private medical records to the highest bidder ... totally anonymised of course, if you believe a word these bastards say
As the weekly vaccination statistics have been updated, I thought I'd see where we are in my home Borough of Newham in East London.
I'm using the published NIMS estimates of population:
There are 353,012 people over 16 in the Borough of whom 123,122 have received a first vaccination and 41,526 a second vaccination.
Among the 88,202 aged 50 and over, 62,763 have received a first vaccination of whom 27,209 have had both vaccinations.
Among the 17,773 aged 70 and over, 14,254 have received a first vaccination of whom 12,086 have had both second vaccination.
So, just under 35% of the total adult (16+) population have had a first vaccination.
Among those more at risk, 71.1% of those over 50 have had a first vaccination and 30.8% have had both vaccinations.
Among those over 70, 80.2% had had a first vaccination and 68% have had both vaccinations.
Put another way, 25,300 people over 50 have had no vaccination. There are a total of 230,000 unvaccinated people over 16 in the Borough so that's your target for the Indian Variant.
As a comparison, Richmond has 79,006 people over 50 of whom 65,913 (83.4%) have had a first vaccination and 37,687 (47.7%) have had a second vaccination.
Those compare with 71.1% and 30.8% respectively in Newham so it's a tale of divergent vaccination programmes. In Newham, a significant minority of those over 50 and potentially at risk have yet to receive a first vaccination and less than a third have received both vaccinations.
The more I look at these numbers, the more I think the Government has called this right - we need to unlock all together as one "Team UK" (apparently) so as much time as possible needs to be given to those areas and communities which are struggling to get the numbers vaccinated.
Arguing the case risk from the Indian Variant is only for the younger age groups ignores the fact of the 25,300 over 50s in Newham who are also currently unprotected.
Without wishing to be cruel, if people choose to be unvaccinated that is their choice and the consequences of that choice should be theirs. Not extended lockdown for everyone else.
100% this and quite frankly this point needs to be made at some point. If people think they can avoid the vaccine and be kept safe because lockdowns will be kept to keep them safe - that is not on!
This is what I am now struggling with. Are we now saying we must lockdown for the sake of those who refuse the vaccine?
I don't think we should delay ending lockdown. I think we should follow the road map set out by the Government and I have not yet seen evidence that this should be derailed by the new variant.
But...
I think the point is well made that we are not yet at the point where everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. Indeed it looks unlikely - in fact impossible - that everyone over the age of 18 will have been vaccinated by the 21st June when all restrictions are supposed to end.
This is fine if we are saying that people who have not yet been vaccinated can still voluntarily work from home or do distance learning. But Johnson has now announced that the work from home instruction is ending. This means that companies could be forcing people to go back into the office or universities could be ending distance learning whilst many of their employees/students have not yet had the chance to have the vaccine, no matter how much they want to.
Is it really fair to say to those people that because all the over 40s are fully vaccinated (if they are by then) that everything should go back to normal and if you catch covid then tough?
If you have chosen not to have the vaccine that is one matter and I have no sympathy for you. If, like my daughter at university, you have not been offered the vaccine and cannot have it then I would think it is reasonable for people to kick up a stink at suggestions it is all over and we can get on with life as before.
Anyone who hasn't had the vaccine ought to be able to continue to stay at home if they want to do so, or go out if they want to do so, their choice.
They were never at much real risk in the first place. My children aren't going to be vaccinated, because the vaccine isn't going to kids, but that's fine because kids aren't at any real risk so it doesn't matter. The risk previously was that they'd catch it and pass it on not that they'd catch it.
Young adults are at some risk unlike kids, but very minimal, so they ought to be able to make an educated decision. If they want to stay at home they should have the choice, if they want to go to the library, or go clubbing, or study in a class, or dance, and drink and screw - that that's up to them to do.
Is anyone here agreeing with the point Chris is attempting to make, through his smokescreen of invective & vituperation? EDIT - "arrogance of Lucifer" for example.
That's a genuine question. If he's right, or most correct, then he's making a good, indeed important point. Even if he's not doing it quite poorly.
As the weekly vaccination statistics have been updated, I thought I'd see where we are in my home Borough of Newham in East London.
I'm using the published NIMS estimates of population:
There are 353,012 people over 16 in the Borough of whom 123,122 have received a first vaccination and 41,526 a second vaccination.
Among the 88,202 aged 50 and over, 62,763 have received a first vaccination of whom 27,209 have had both vaccinations.
Among the 17,773 aged 70 and over, 14,254 have received a first vaccination of whom 12,086 have had both second vaccination.
So, just under 35% of the total adult (16+) population have had a first vaccination.
Among those more at risk, 71.1% of those over 50 have had a first vaccination and 30.8% have had both vaccinations.
Among those over 70, 80.2% had had a first vaccination and 68% have had both vaccinations.
Put another way, 25,300 people over 50 have had no vaccination. There are a total of 230,000 unvaccinated people over 16 in the Borough so that's your target for the Indian Variant.
As a comparison, Richmond has 79,006 people over 50 of whom 65,913 (83.4%) have had a first vaccination and 37,687 (47.7%) have had a second vaccination.
Those compare with 71.1% and 30.8% respectively in Newham so it's a tale of divergent vaccination programmes. In Newham, a significant minority of those over 50 and potentially at risk have yet to receive a first vaccination and less than a third have received both vaccinations.
The more I look at these numbers, the more I think the Government has called this right - we need to unlock all together as one "Team UK" (apparently) so as much time as possible needs to be given to those areas and communities which are struggling to get the numbers vaccinated.
Arguing the case risk from the Indian Variant is only for the younger age groups ignores the fact of the 25,300 over 50s in Newham who are also currently unprotected.
Without wishing to be cruel, if people choose to be unvaccinated that is their choice and the consequences of that choice should be theirs. Not extended lockdown for everyone else.
100% this and quite frankly this point needs to be made at some point. If people think they can avoid the vaccine and be kept safe because lockdowns will be kept to keep them safe - that is not on!
This is what I am now struggling with. Are we now saying we must lockdown for the sake of those who refuse the vaccine?
I don't think we should delay ending lockdown. I think we should follow the road map set out by the Government and I have not yet seen evidence that this should be derailed by the new variant.
But...
I think the point is well made that we are not yet at the point where everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. Indeed it looks unlikely - in fact impossible - that everyone over the age of 18 will have been vaccinated by the 21st June when all restrictions are supposed to end.
This is fine if we are saying that people who have not yet been vaccinated can still voluntarily work from home or do distance learning. But Johnson has now announced that the work from home instruction is ending. This means that companies could be forcing people to go back into the office or universities could be ending distance learning whilst many of their employees/students have not yet had the chance to have the vaccine, no matter how much they want to.
Is it really fair to say to those people that because all the over 40s are fully vaccinated (if they are by then) that everything should go back to normal and if you catch covid then tough?
If you have chosen not to have the vaccine that is one matter and I have no sympathy for you. If, like my daughter at university, you have not been offered the vaccine and cannot have it then I would think it is reasonable for people to kick up a stink at suggestions it is all over and we can get on with life as before.
Anyone who hasn't had the vaccine ought to be able to continue to stay at home if they want to do so, or go out if they want to do so, their choice.
They were never at much real risk in the first place. My children aren't going to be vaccinated, because the vaccine isn't going to kids, but that's fine because kids aren't at any real risk so it doesn't matter. The risk previously was that they'd catch it and pass it on not that they'd catch it.
Young adults are at some risk unlike kids, but very minimal, so they ought to be able to make an educated decision. If they want to stay at home they should have the choice, if they want to go to the library, or go clubbing, or study in a class, or dance, and drink and screw - that that's up to them to do.
As the weekly vaccination statistics have been updated, I thought I'd see where we are in my home Borough of Newham in East London.
I'm using the published NIMS estimates of population:
There are 353,012 people over 16 in the Borough of whom 123,122 have received a first vaccination and 41,526 a second vaccination.
Among the 88,202 aged 50 and over, 62,763 have received a first vaccination of whom 27,209 have had both vaccinations.
Among the 17,773 aged 70 and over, 14,254 have received a first vaccination of whom 12,086 have had both second vaccination.
So, just under 35% of the total adult (16+) population have had a first vaccination.
Among those more at risk, 71.1% of those over 50 have had a first vaccination and 30.8% have had both vaccinations.
Among those over 70, 80.2% had had a first vaccination and 68% have had both vaccinations.
Put another way, 25,300 people over 50 have had no vaccination. There are a total of 230,000 unvaccinated people over 16 in the Borough so that's your target for the Indian Variant.
As a comparison, Richmond has 79,006 people over 50 of whom 65,913 (83.4%) have had a first vaccination and 37,687 (47.7%) have had a second vaccination.
Those compare with 71.1% and 30.8% respectively in Newham so it's a tale of divergent vaccination programmes. In Newham, a significant minority of those over 50 and potentially at risk have yet to receive a first vaccination and less than a third have received both vaccinations.
The more I look at these numbers, the more I think the Government has called this right - we need to unlock all together as one "Team UK" (apparently) so as much time as possible needs to be given to those areas and communities which are struggling to get the numbers vaccinated.
Arguing the case risk from the Indian Variant is only for the younger age groups ignores the fact of the 25,300 over 50s in Newham who are also currently unprotected.
Without wishing to be cruel, if people choose to be unvaccinated that is their choice and the consequences of that choice should be theirs. Not extended lockdown for everyone else.
100% this and quite frankly this point needs to be made at some point. If people think they can avoid the vaccine and be kept safe because lockdowns will be kept to keep them safe - that is not on!
This is what I am now struggling with. Are we now saying we must lockdown for the sake of those who refuse the vaccine?
I don't think we should delay ending lockdown. I think we should follow the road map set out by the Government and I have not yet seen evidence that this should be derailed by the new variant.
But...
I think the point is well made that we are not yet at the point where everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. Indeed it looks unlikely - in fact impossible - that everyone over the age of 18 will have been vaccinated by the 21st June when all restrictions are supposed to end.
This is fine if we are saying that people who have not yet been vaccinated can still voluntarily work from home or do distance learning. But Johnson has now announced that the work from home instruction is ending. This means that companies could be forcing people to go back into the office or universities could be ending distance learning whilst many of their employees/students have not yet had the chance to have the vaccine, no matter how much they want to.
Is it really fair to say to those people that because all the over 40s are fully vaccinated (if they are by then) that everything should go back to normal and if you catch covid then tough?
If you have chosen not to have the vaccine that is one matter and I have no sympathy for you. If, like my daughter at university, you have not been offered the vaccine and cannot have it then I would think it is reasonable for people to kick up a stink at suggestions it is all over and we can get on with life as before.
Oh and for the record I have had both jabs and will be as immune as I am ever going to be in about 14 days.
Given that the risk to the under 40s is exponentially lower than for other age groups then the negatives for them of continuing restrictions are far higher than the negatives potential covid infection would have.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
As the weekly vaccination statistics have been updated, I thought I'd see where we are in my home Borough of Newham in East London.
I'm using the published NIMS estimates of population:
There are 353,012 people over 16 in the Borough of whom 123,122 have received a first vaccination and 41,526 a second vaccination.
Among the 88,202 aged 50 and over, 62,763 have received a first vaccination of whom 27,209 have had both vaccinations.
Among the 17,773 aged 70 and over, 14,254 have received a first vaccination of whom 12,086 have had both second vaccination.
So, just under 35% of the total adult (16+) population have had a first vaccination.
Among those more at risk, 71.1% of those over 50 have had a first vaccination and 30.8% have had both vaccinations.
Among those over 70, 80.2% had had a first vaccination and 68% have had both vaccinations.
Put another way, 25,300 people over 50 have had no vaccination. There are a total of 230,000 unvaccinated people over 16 in the Borough so that's your target for the Indian Variant.
As a comparison, Richmond has 79,006 people over 50 of whom 65,913 (83.4%) have had a first vaccination and 37,687 (47.7%) have had a second vaccination.
Those compare with 71.1% and 30.8% respectively in Newham so it's a tale of divergent vaccination programmes. In Newham, a significant minority of those over 50 and potentially at risk have yet to receive a first vaccination and less than a third have received both vaccinations.
The more I look at these numbers, the more I think the Government has called this right - we need to unlock all together as one "Team UK" (apparently) so as much time as possible needs to be given to those areas and communities which are struggling to get the numbers vaccinated.
Arguing the case risk from the Indian Variant is only for the younger age groups ignores the fact of the 25,300 over 50s in Newham who are also currently unprotected.
Without wishing to be cruel, if people choose to be unvaccinated that is their choice and the consequences of that choice should be theirs. Not extended lockdown for everyone else.
100% this and quite frankly this point needs to be made at some point. If people think they can avoid the vaccine and be kept safe because lockdowns will be kept to keep them safe - that is not on!
This is what I am now struggling with. Are we now saying we must lockdown for the sake of those who refuse the vaccine?
I don't think we should delay ending lockdown. I think we should follow the road map set out by the Government and I have not yet seen evidence that this should be derailed by the new variant.
But...
I think the point is well made that we are not yet at the point where everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. Indeed it looks unlikely - in fact impossible - that everyone over the age of 18 will have been vaccinated by the 21st June when all restrictions are supposed to end.
This is fine if we are saying that people who have not yet been vaccinated can still voluntarily work from home or do distance learning. But Johnson has now announced that the work from home instruction is ending. This means that companies could be forcing people to go back into the office or universities could be ending distance learning whilst many of their employees/students have not yet had the chance to have the vaccine, no matter how much they want to.
Is it really fair to say to those people that because all the over 40s are fully vaccinated (if they are by then) that everything should go back to normal and if you catch covid then tough?
If you have chosen not to have the vaccine that is one matter and I have no sympathy for you. If, like my daughter at university, you have not been offered the vaccine and cannot have it then I would think it is reasonable for people to kick up a stink at suggestions it is all over and we can get on with life as before.
Oh and for the record I have had both jabs and will be as immune as I am ever going to be in about 14 days.
Given that the risk to the under 40s is exponentially lower than for other age groups then the negatives for them of continuing restrictions are far higher than the negatives potential covid infection would have.
Precisely.
The young have bent over backwards to help the not so young in the past year. Now that 99% of the elderly and vulnerable are protected, It is time to accept that life is not without risk, and carry on.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
And you're making false assumption that that happens without the virus burning out because you've got 20x the cases so it runs out of hosts.
You're wanting to eliminate risk, that's not possible.
No. You are the one making all the assumptions and assertions - for example, "120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing." And so on, and so forth.
You are the one making the assertions. I am just trying to knock a bit of caution and humility into your thick skull, by pointing out a few very obvious reasons for caution.
Or at least they would be very obvious to anyone who wasn't functionally innumerate and with the arrogance of Lucifer despite that fact!
No you're talking shit because you're acting as a Zero Covidiot and worse looking down your nose conceited at others besides the fact that your nonsense is getting called out. SeaShantyIrish2 was able to correct you on what I said before I even saw it because he had good reading comprehension - but you decided to double down with calling it dancing on the head of the pin.
Sorry but the vaccine the real risk of death and by 31 May (so active by 21 June) all the vulnerable will be double-dosed. We need to learn to live with this and if a few people die that's still nothing in real terms. There won't be excess deaths, there won't be overloaded morgues. Some people may get sick, some people may die but that happens every single day anyway and we have to live with that. Get over it.
As the weekly vaccination statistics have been updated, I thought I'd see where we are in my home Borough of Newham in East London.
I'm using the published NIMS estimates of population:
There are 353,012 people over 16 in the Borough of whom 123,122 have received a first vaccination and 41,526 a second vaccination.
Among the 88,202 aged 50 and over, 62,763 have received a first vaccination of whom 27,209 have had both vaccinations.
Among the 17,773 aged 70 and over, 14,254 have received a first vaccination of whom 12,086 have had both second vaccination.
So, just under 35% of the total adult (16+) population have had a first vaccination.
Among those more at risk, 71.1% of those over 50 have had a first vaccination and 30.8% have had both vaccinations.
Among those over 70, 80.2% had had a first vaccination and 68% have had both vaccinations.
Put another way, 25,300 people over 50 have had no vaccination. There are a total of 230,000 unvaccinated people over 16 in the Borough so that's your target for the Indian Variant.
As a comparison, Richmond has 79,006 people over 50 of whom 65,913 (83.4%) have had a first vaccination and 37,687 (47.7%) have had a second vaccination.
Those compare with 71.1% and 30.8% respectively in Newham so it's a tale of divergent vaccination programmes. In Newham, a significant minority of those over 50 and potentially at risk have yet to receive a first vaccination and less than a third have received both vaccinations.
The more I look at these numbers, the more I think the Government has called this right - we need to unlock all together as one "Team UK" (apparently) so as much time as possible needs to be given to those areas and communities which are struggling to get the numbers vaccinated.
Arguing the case risk from the Indian Variant is only for the younger age groups ignores the fact of the 25,300 over 50s in Newham who are also currently unprotected.
Without wishing to be cruel, if people choose to be unvaccinated that is their choice and the consequences of that choice should be theirs. Not extended lockdown for everyone else.
100% this and quite frankly this point needs to be made at some point. If people think they can avoid the vaccine and be kept safe because lockdowns will be kept to keep them safe - that is not on!
This is what I am now struggling with. Are we now saying we must lockdown for the sake of those who refuse the vaccine?
I don't think we should delay ending lockdown. I think we should follow the road map set out by the Government and I have not yet seen evidence that this should be derailed by the new variant.
But...
I think the point is well made that we are not yet at the point where everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. Indeed it looks unlikely - in fact impossible - that everyone over the age of 18 will have been vaccinated by the 21st June when all restrictions are supposed to end.
This is fine if we are saying that people who have not yet been vaccinated can still voluntarily work from home or do distance learning. But Johnson has now announced that the work from home instruction is ending. This means that companies could be forcing people to go back into the office or universities could be ending distance learning whilst many of their employees/students have not yet had the chance to have the vaccine, no matter how much they want to.
Is it really fair to say to those people that because all the over 40s are fully vaccinated (if they are by then) that everything should go back to normal and if you catch covid then tough?
If you have chosen not to have the vaccine that is one matter and I have no sympathy for you. If, like my daughter at university, you have not been offered the vaccine and cannot have it then I would think it is reasonable for people to kick up a stink at suggestions it is all over and we can get on with life as before.
All the under 40s I know cannot WAIT to get back to normal.
You mean all the under 40s who you associate with because they have a similar world view to yours.
You may well be right (actually you are not as I know plenty of under 40s who are extremely nervous about everything opening up before they have had the chance to get jabbed) but you cannot draw any conclusions from your own very limited circle of acquaintances any more than I can from mine.
And as I said I think that, on balance, we should follow the planned road map and reopen fully by 21st June. But to say we will do it no matter what happens over the next few weeks is just plain dumb. And to their credit the Government are not doing that. But hand in hand with that we should not be forcing the unwillingly unvaccinated back into work or education if they do not feel confident about it.
Open up as planned but do not let anyone get forced back to work until they have been jabbed if they don't want to.
As the weekly vaccination statistics have been updated, I thought I'd see where we are in my home Borough of Newham in East London.
I'm using the published NIMS estimates of population:
There are 353,012 people over 16 in the Borough of whom 123,122 have received a first vaccination and 41,526 a second vaccination.
Among the 88,202 aged 50 and over, 62,763 have received a first vaccination of whom 27,209 have had both vaccinations.
Among the 17,773 aged 70 and over, 14,254 have received a first vaccination of whom 12,086 have had both second vaccination.
So, just under 35% of the total adult (16+) population have had a first vaccination.
Among those more at risk, 71.1% of those over 50 have had a first vaccination and 30.8% have had both vaccinations.
Among those over 70, 80.2% had had a first vaccination and 68% have had both vaccinations.
Put another way, 25,300 people over 50 have had no vaccination. There are a total of 230,000 unvaccinated people over 16 in the Borough so that's your target for the Indian Variant.
As a comparison, Richmond has 79,006 people over 50 of whom 65,913 (83.4%) have had a first vaccination and 37,687 (47.7%) have had a second vaccination.
Those compare with 71.1% and 30.8% respectively in Newham so it's a tale of divergent vaccination programmes. In Newham, a significant minority of those over 50 and potentially at risk have yet to receive a first vaccination and less than a third have received both vaccinations.
The more I look at these numbers, the more I think the Government has called this right - we need to unlock all together as one "Team UK" (apparently) so as much time as possible needs to be given to those areas and communities which are struggling to get the numbers vaccinated.
Arguing the case risk from the Indian Variant is only for the younger age groups ignores the fact of the 25,300 over 50s in Newham who are also currently unprotected.
Without wishing to be cruel, if people choose to be unvaccinated that is their choice and the consequences of that choice should be theirs. Not extended lockdown for everyone else.
100% this and quite frankly this point needs to be made at some point. If people think they can avoid the vaccine and be kept safe because lockdowns will be kept to keep them safe - that is not on!
This is what I am now struggling with. Are we now saying we must lockdown for the sake of those who refuse the vaccine?
I don't think we should delay ending lockdown. I think we should follow the road map set out by the Government and I have not yet seen evidence that this should be derailed by the new variant.
But...
I think the point is well made that we are not yet at the point where everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. Indeed it looks unlikely - in fact impossible - that everyone over the age of 18 will have been vaccinated by the 21st June when all restrictions are supposed to end.
This is fine if we are saying that people who have not yet been vaccinated can still voluntarily work from home or do distance learning. But Johnson has now announced that the work from home instruction is ending. This means that companies could be forcing people to go back into the office or universities could be ending distance learning whilst many of their employees/students have not yet had the chance to have the vaccine, no matter how much they want to.
Is it really fair to say to those people that because all the over 40s are fully vaccinated (if they are by then) that everything should go back to normal and if you catch covid then tough?
If you have chosen not to have the vaccine that is one matter and I have no sympathy for you. If, like my daughter at university, you have not been offered the vaccine and cannot have it then I would think it is reasonable for people to kick up a stink at suggestions it is all over and we can get on with life as before.
Oh and for the record I have had both jabs and will be as immune as I am ever going to be in about 14 days.
As the weekly vaccination statistics have been updated, I thought I'd see where we are in my home Borough of Newham in East London.
I'm using the published NIMS estimates of population:
There are 353,012 people over 16 in the Borough of whom 123,122 have received a first vaccination and 41,526 a second vaccination.
Among the 88,202 aged 50 and over, 62,763 have received a first vaccination of whom 27,209 have had both vaccinations.
Among the 17,773 aged 70 and over, 14,254 have received a first vaccination of whom 12,086 have had both second vaccination.
So, just under 35% of the total adult (16+) population have had a first vaccination.
Among those more at risk, 71.1% of those over 50 have had a first vaccination and 30.8% have had both vaccinations.
Among those over 70, 80.2% had had a first vaccination and 68% have had both vaccinations.
Put another way, 25,300 people over 50 have had no vaccination. There are a total of 230,000 unvaccinated people over 16 in the Borough so that's your target for the Indian Variant.
As a comparison, Richmond has 79,006 people over 50 of whom 65,913 (83.4%) have had a first vaccination and 37,687 (47.7%) have had a second vaccination.
Those compare with 71.1% and 30.8% respectively in Newham so it's a tale of divergent vaccination programmes. In Newham, a significant minority of those over 50 and potentially at risk have yet to receive a first vaccination and less than a third have received both vaccinations.
The more I look at these numbers, the more I think the Government has called this right - we need to unlock all together as one "Team UK" (apparently) so as much time as possible needs to be given to those areas and communities which are struggling to get the numbers vaccinated.
Arguing the case risk from the Indian Variant is only for the younger age groups ignores the fact of the 25,300 over 50s in Newham who are also currently unprotected.
Without wishing to be cruel, if people choose to be unvaccinated that is their choice and the consequences of that choice should be theirs. Not extended lockdown for everyone else.
100% this and quite frankly this point needs to be made at some point. If people think they can avoid the vaccine and be kept safe because lockdowns will be kept to keep them safe - that is not on!
This is what I am now struggling with. Are we now saying we must lockdown for the sake of those who refuse the vaccine?
I don't think we should delay ending lockdown. I think we should follow the road map set out by the Government and I have not yet seen evidence that this should be derailed by the new variant.
But...
I think the point is well made that we are not yet at the point where everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. Indeed it looks unlikely - in fact impossible - that everyone over the age of 18 will have been vaccinated by the 21st June when all restrictions are supposed to end.
This is fine if we are saying that people who have not yet been vaccinated can still voluntarily work from home or do distance learning. But Johnson has now announced that the work from home instruction is ending. This means that companies could be forcing people to go back into the office or universities could be ending distance learning whilst many of their employees/students have not yet had the chance to have the vaccine, no matter how much they want to.
Is it really fair to say to those people that because all the over 40s are fully vaccinated (if they are by then) that everything should go back to normal and if you catch covid then tough?
If you have chosen not to have the vaccine that is one matter and I have no sympathy for you. If, like my daughter at university, you have not been offered the vaccine and cannot have it then I would think it is reasonable for people to kick up a stink at suggestions it is all over and we can get on with life as before.
Oh and for the record I have had both jabs and will be as immune as I am ever going to be in about 14 days.
I absolutely agree with this Richard. Sorry if I presented otherwise. My view is that on 21 June all legal restrictions should be removed - albeit that those who remain unvaccinated (by consequence of their youth) should not be asked to return to the office, in-person meetings, and so on.
As the weekly vaccination statistics have been updated, I thought I'd see where we are in my home Borough of Newham in East London.
I'm using the published NIMS estimates of population:
There are 353,012 people over 16 in the Borough of whom 123,122 have received a first vaccination and 41,526 a second vaccination.
Among the 88,202 aged 50 and over, 62,763 have received a first vaccination of whom 27,209 have had both vaccinations.
Among the 17,773 aged 70 and over, 14,254 have received a first vaccination of whom 12,086 have had both second vaccination.
So, just under 35% of the total adult (16+) population have had a first vaccination.
Among those more at risk, 71.1% of those over 50 have had a first vaccination and 30.8% have had both vaccinations.
Among those over 70, 80.2% had had a first vaccination and 68% have had both vaccinations.
Put another way, 25,300 people over 50 have had no vaccination. There are a total of 230,000 unvaccinated people over 16 in the Borough so that's your target for the Indian Variant.
As a comparison, Richmond has 79,006 people over 50 of whom 65,913 (83.4%) have had a first vaccination and 37,687 (47.7%) have had a second vaccination.
Those compare with 71.1% and 30.8% respectively in Newham so it's a tale of divergent vaccination programmes. In Newham, a significant minority of those over 50 and potentially at risk have yet to receive a first vaccination and less than a third have received both vaccinations.
The more I look at these numbers, the more I think the Government has called this right - we need to unlock all together as one "Team UK" (apparently) so as much time as possible needs to be given to those areas and communities which are struggling to get the numbers vaccinated.
Arguing the case risk from the Indian Variant is only for the younger age groups ignores the fact of the 25,300 over 50s in Newham who are also currently unprotected.
Without wishing to be cruel, if people choose to be unvaccinated that is their choice and the consequences of that choice should be theirs. Not extended lockdown for everyone else.
100% this and quite frankly this point needs to be made at some point. If people think they can avoid the vaccine and be kept safe because lockdowns will be kept to keep them safe - that is not on!
This is what I am now struggling with. Are we now saying we must lockdown for the sake of those who refuse the vaccine?
I don't think we should delay ending lockdown. I think we should follow the road map set out by the Government and I have not yet seen evidence that this should be derailed by the new variant.
But...
I think the point is well made that we are not yet at the point where everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. Indeed it looks unlikely - in fact impossible - that everyone over the age of 18 will have been vaccinated by the 21st June when all restrictions are supposed to end.
This is fine if we are saying that people who have not yet been vaccinated can still voluntarily work from home or do distance learning. But Johnson has now announced that the work from home instruction is ending. This means that companies could be forcing people to go back into the office or universities could be ending distance learning whilst many of their employees/students have not yet had the chance to have the vaccine, no matter how much they want to.
Is it really fair to say to those people that because all the over 40s are fully vaccinated (if they are by then) that everything should go back to normal and if you catch covid then tough?
If you have chosen not to have the vaccine that is one matter and I have no sympathy for you. If, like my daughter at university, you have not been offered the vaccine and cannot have it then I would think it is reasonable for people to kick up a stink at suggestions it is all over and we can get on with life as before.
Anyone who hasn't had the vaccine ought to be able to continue to stay at home if they want to do so, or go out if they want to do so, their choice.
They were never at much real risk in the first place. My children aren't going to be vaccinated, because the vaccine isn't going to kids, but that's fine because kids aren't at any real risk so it doesn't matter. The risk previously was that they'd catch it and pass it on not that they'd catch it.
Young adults are at some risk unlike kids, but very minimal, so they ought to be able to make an educated decision. If they want to stay at home they should have the choice, if they want to go to the library, or go clubbing, or study in a class, or dance, and drink and screw - that that's up to them to do.
Agree. And great reference to Jarvis too - a leftie I suspect you have time for!
My concern is that it's not just your risk - the people who are refusing vaccinations are placing those who cannot be vaccinated at risk and that is a problem.
How you resolve it however is a question to which I don't think there is an acceptable answer...
That's an entirely valid point and we mustn't forget those who cannot have the vaccine for medical reasons. I do agree they need to be protected and I don't have an answer either.
As the weekly vaccination statistics have been updated, I thought I'd see where we are in my home Borough of Newham in East London.
I'm using the published NIMS estimates of population:
There are 353,012 people over 16 in the Borough of whom 123,122 have received a first vaccination and 41,526 a second vaccination.
Among the 88,202 aged 50 and over, 62,763 have received a first vaccination of whom 27,209 have had both vaccinations.
Among the 17,773 aged 70 and over, 14,254 have received a first vaccination of whom 12,086 have had both second vaccination.
So, just under 35% of the total adult (16+) population have had a first vaccination.
Among those more at risk, 71.1% of those over 50 have had a first vaccination and 30.8% have had both vaccinations.
Among those over 70, 80.2% had had a first vaccination and 68% have had both vaccinations.
Put another way, 25,300 people over 50 have had no vaccination. There are a total of 230,000 unvaccinated people over 16 in the Borough so that's your target for the Indian Variant.
As a comparison, Richmond has 79,006 people over 50 of whom 65,913 (83.4%) have had a first vaccination and 37,687 (47.7%) have had a second vaccination.
Those compare with 71.1% and 30.8% respectively in Newham so it's a tale of divergent vaccination programmes. In Newham, a significant minority of those over 50 and potentially at risk have yet to receive a first vaccination and less than a third have received both vaccinations.
The more I look at these numbers, the more I think the Government has called this right - we need to unlock all together as one "Team UK" (apparently) so as much time as possible needs to be given to those areas and communities which are struggling to get the numbers vaccinated.
Arguing the case risk from the Indian Variant is only for the younger age groups ignores the fact of the 25,300 over 50s in Newham who are also currently unprotected.
Without wishing to be cruel, if people choose to be unvaccinated that is their choice and the consequences of that choice should be theirs. Not extended lockdown for everyone else.
100% this and quite frankly this point needs to be made at some point. If people think they can avoid the vaccine and be kept safe because lockdowns will be kept to keep them safe - that is not on!
This is what I am now struggling with. Are we now saying we must lockdown for the sake of those who refuse the vaccine?
I don't think we should delay ending lockdown. I think we should follow the road map set out by the Government and I have not yet seen evidence that this should be derailed by the new variant.
But...
I think the point is well made that we are not yet at the point where everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. Indeed it looks unlikely - in fact impossible - that everyone over the age of 18 will have been vaccinated by the 21st June when all restrictions are supposed to end.
This is fine if we are saying that people who have not yet been vaccinated can still voluntarily work from home or do distance learning. But Johnson has now announced that the work from home instruction is ending. This means that companies could be forcing people to go back into the office or universities could be ending distance learning whilst many of their employees/students have not yet had the chance to have the vaccine, no matter how much they want to.
Is it really fair to say to those people that because all the over 40s are fully vaccinated (if they are by then) that everything should go back to normal and if you catch covid then tough?
If you have chosen not to have the vaccine that is one matter and I have no sympathy for you. If, like my daughter at university, you have not been offered the vaccine and cannot have it then I would think it is reasonable for people to kick up a stink at suggestions it is all over and we can get on with life as before.
Oh and for the record I have had both jabs and will be as immune as I am ever going to be in about 14 days.
Given that the risk to the under 40s is exponentially lower than for other age groups then the negatives for them of continuing restrictions are far higher than the negatives potential covid infection would have.
Precisely.
The young have bent over backwards to help the not so young in the past year. Now that 99% of the elderly and vulnerable are protected, It is time to accept that life is not without risk, and carry on.
I accept you may not intend it that way but that reads as
"The young have bent over backwards to help the not so young in the past year. Now that 99% of the elderly and vulnerable are protected, who cares if the young get ill".
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
You're scaremongering Leon. Or is it Sean? I'm a little confused. People seem to call you by different names.
For every rabid lockdown scientist frothing at the mouth there's another (or probably ten) who remind us that the vaccines are working really well.
Even if, and it's a big if, there was an Indian surge it would not cause hospitalisations on anything like the scale you are suggesting with your mass hyperbole. Why? Because that's one of the major benefits of mass vaccination.
Calm down.
Call me Leon, it's my name
The trouble is the stats don't lie. And we still have enough unvaxxed people in the country for a rampant new variant to cause MAJOR trouble.
There are, what, 30m unvaxxed Brits? 45m partly vaxxed? Add in a few million vulnerable-but-stupid vax refuseniks, and remember they will be concentrated in particular areas....
As the weekly vaccination statistics have been updated, I thought I'd see where we are in my home Borough of Newham in East London.
I'm using the published NIMS estimates of population:
There are 353,012 people over 16 in the Borough of whom 123,122 have received a first vaccination and 41,526 a second vaccination.
Among the 88,202 aged 50 and over, 62,763 have received a first vaccination of whom 27,209 have had both vaccinations.
Among the 17,773 aged 70 and over, 14,254 have received a first vaccination of whom 12,086 have had both second vaccination.
So, just under 35% of the total adult (16+) population have had a first vaccination.
Among those more at risk, 71.1% of those over 50 have had a first vaccination and 30.8% have had both vaccinations.
Among those over 70, 80.2% had had a first vaccination and 68% have had both vaccinations.
Put another way, 25,300 people over 50 have had no vaccination. There are a total of 230,000 unvaccinated people over 16 in the Borough so that's your target for the Indian Variant.
As a comparison, Richmond has 79,006 people over 50 of whom 65,913 (83.4%) have had a first vaccination and 37,687 (47.7%) have had a second vaccination.
Those compare with 71.1% and 30.8% respectively in Newham so it's a tale of divergent vaccination programmes. In Newham, a significant minority of those over 50 and potentially at risk have yet to receive a first vaccination and less than a third have received both vaccinations.
The more I look at these numbers, the more I think the Government has called this right - we need to unlock all together as one "Team UK" (apparently) so as much time as possible needs to be given to those areas and communities which are struggling to get the numbers vaccinated.
Arguing the case risk from the Indian Variant is only for the younger age groups ignores the fact of the 25,300 over 50s in Newham who are also currently unprotected.
Without wishing to be cruel, if people choose to be unvaccinated that is their choice and the consequences of that choice should be theirs. Not extended lockdown for everyone else.
100% this and quite frankly this point needs to be made at some point. If people think they can avoid the vaccine and be kept safe because lockdowns will be kept to keep them safe - that is not on!
This is what I am now struggling with. Are we now saying we must lockdown for the sake of those who refuse the vaccine?
I don't think we should delay ending lockdown. I think we should follow the road map set out by the Government and I have not yet seen evidence that this should be derailed by the new variant.
But...
I think the point is well made that we are not yet at the point where everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. Indeed it looks unlikely - in fact impossible - that everyone over the age of 18 will have been vaccinated by the 21st June when all restrictions are supposed to end.
This is fine if we are saying that people who have not yet been vaccinated can still voluntarily work from home or do distance learning. But Johnson has now announced that the work from home instruction is ending. This means that companies could be forcing people to go back into the office or universities could be ending distance learning whilst many of their employees/students have not yet had the chance to have the vaccine, no matter how much they want to.
Is it really fair to say to those people that because all the over 40s are fully vaccinated (if they are by then) that everything should go back to normal and if you catch covid then tough?
If you have chosen not to have the vaccine that is one matter and I have no sympathy for you. If, like my daughter at university, you have not been offered the vaccine and cannot have it then I would think it is reasonable for people to kick up a stink at suggestions it is all over and we can get on with life as before.
Oh and for the record I have had both jabs and will be as immune as I am ever going to be in about 14 days.
Given that the risk to the under 40s is exponentially lower than for other age groups then the negatives for them of continuing restrictions are far higher than the negatives potential covid infection would have.
Again to be clear my argument is not against removing restrictions. It is against forcing people back into work and education when they are not yet vaccinated through no fault of their own. Johnson's comments about lifting the work from home rules does open up a potential issue with employers forcing unvaccinated people back into offices unless some rules are in place to prevent this.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
But that's the point, you were acting as if it was possible to undo the vaccine, but it doesn't work that way. Nor should it. If 0.25% of those who get hospitalised then they get hospitalised and we need to deal with that. If 0.035% of those who get infected die then again so be it.
If the original virus was like that we'd have never locked down in the first place and never developed a vaccine in the first place. It would have burnt out and we'd have moved on.
You may well be right (actually you are not as I know plenty of under 40s who are extremely nervous about everything opening up before they have had the chance to get jabbed) but you cannot draw any conclusions from your own very limited circle of acquaintances any more than I can from mine.
And as I said I think that, on balance, we should follow the planned road map and reopen fully by 21st June. But to say we will do it no matter what happens over the next few weeks is just plain dumb. And to their credit the Government are not doing that. But hand in hand with that we should not be forcing the unwillingly unvaccinated back into work or education if they do not feel confident about it.
Open up as planned but do not let anyone get forced back to work until they have been jabbed if they don't want to.
I think any exhortation from Boris or any other Government Minister about returning to offices is, in many cases, going to fall on deaf ears.
There are those (and I accept mainly but not exclusively among the younger parts of the population) who want to go back to offices and all the social interaction associated but that isn't where most older office workers are.
They don't miss the early starts and the commute - I know I don't. 1-2 days per week maximum in the office is the way forward and all manner of surveys confirm this. Many like working at home for many reasons and it's a way of life to which many have adjusted surprisingly easily.
Many companies now see no future in buildings full of banks of desks - the ergonomic revolution to collaborative working areas and spaces is gathering pace and won't be stopped by Johnson.
The Age of the Commuter is over - it's time for everyone to accept that and consider the ramifications.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
Is anyone here agreeing with the point Chris is attempting to make, through his smokescreen of invective & vituperation? EDIT - "arrogance of Lucifer" for example.
That's a genuine question. If he's right, or most correct, then he's making a good, indeed important point. Even if he's not doing it quite poorly.
On the other hand . . .
I think this is a waste of time, to be honest. People will believe what they want to believe, and an Internet forum devoted to political betting is not going to produce anything other than a parody of scientific discussion.
I'm sorry, I don't know why I keep coming back here expecting better.
As the weekly vaccination statistics have been updated, I thought I'd see where we are in my home Borough of Newham in East London.
I'm using the published NIMS estimates of population:
There are 353,012 people over 16 in the Borough of whom 123,122 have received a first vaccination and 41,526 a second vaccination.
Among the 88,202 aged 50 and over, 62,763 have received a first vaccination of whom 27,209 have had both vaccinations.
Among the 17,773 aged 70 and over, 14,254 have received a first vaccination of whom 12,086 have had both second vaccination.
So, just under 35% of the total adult (16+) population have had a first vaccination.
Among those more at risk, 71.1% of those over 50 have had a first vaccination and 30.8% have had both vaccinations.
Among those over 70, 80.2% had had a first vaccination and 68% have had both vaccinations.
Put another way, 25,300 people over 50 have had no vaccination. There are a total of 230,000 unvaccinated people over 16 in the Borough so that's your target for the Indian Variant.
As a comparison, Richmond has 79,006 people over 50 of whom 65,913 (83.4%) have had a first vaccination and 37,687 (47.7%) have had a second vaccination.
Those compare with 71.1% and 30.8% respectively in Newham so it's a tale of divergent vaccination programmes. In Newham, a significant minority of those over 50 and potentially at risk have yet to receive a first vaccination and less than a third have received both vaccinations.
The more I look at these numbers, the more I think the Government has called this right - we need to unlock all together as one "Team UK" (apparently) so as much time as possible needs to be given to those areas and communities which are struggling to get the numbers vaccinated.
Arguing the case risk from the Indian Variant is only for the younger age groups ignores the fact of the 25,300 over 50s in Newham who are also currently unprotected.
Without wishing to be cruel, if people choose to be unvaccinated that is their choice and the consequences of that choice should be theirs. Not extended lockdown for everyone else.
100% this and quite frankly this point needs to be made at some point. If people think they can avoid the vaccine and be kept safe because lockdowns will be kept to keep them safe - that is not on!
This is what I am now struggling with. Are we now saying we must lockdown for the sake of those who refuse the vaccine?
I don't think we should delay ending lockdown. I think we should follow the road map set out by the Government and I have not yet seen evidence that this should be derailed by the new variant.
But...
I think the point is well made that we are not yet at the point where everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. Indeed it looks unlikely - in fact impossible - that everyone over the age of 18 will have been vaccinated by the 21st June when all restrictions are supposed to end.
This is fine if we are saying that people who have not yet been vaccinated can still voluntarily work from home or do distance learning. But Johnson has now announced that the work from home instruction is ending. This means that companies could be forcing people to go back into the office or universities could be ending distance learning whilst many of their employees/students have not yet had the chance to have the vaccine, no matter how much they want to.
Is it really fair to say to those people that because all the over 40s are fully vaccinated (if they are by then) that everything should go back to normal and if you catch covid then tough?
If you have chosen not to have the vaccine that is one matter and I have no sympathy for you. If, like my daughter at university, you have not been offered the vaccine and cannot have it then I would think it is reasonable for people to kick up a stink at suggestions it is all over and we can get on with life as before.
All the under 40s I know cannot WAIT to get back to normal.
You mean all the under 40s who you associate with because they have a similar world view to yours.
You may well be right (actually you are not as I know plenty of under 40s who are extremely nervous about everything opening up before they have had the chance to get jabbed) but you cannot draw any conclusions from your own very limited circle of acquaintances any more than I can from mine.
And as I said I think that, on balance, we should follow the planned road map and reopen fully by 21st June. But to say we will do it no matter what happens over the next few weeks is just plain dumb. And to their credit the Government are not doing that. But hand in hand with that we should not be forcing the unwillingly unvaccinated back into work or education if they do not feel confident about it.
Open up as planned but do not let anyone get forced back to work until they have been jabbed if they don't want to.
You do know that many millions of people have been working at their places of work for many months before they were vaccinated ?
There's never been any option of not going into work at my employer - the site was open and everyone went to work as normal albeit with health and safety modifications to reduce risk.
It might just be the influence of Cyclefree who I think brings out the best in all of us.
But both on the topic of the thread header and the discussions this evening on vaccinations and opening up, this has been a cracking thread all round with really enjoyable contributions from loads of people across the spectrum.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
Obviously the concern centres on whether the benefits of vaccines will remain the same for new variants.
There is still surprisingly little data on that. I'm sorry, again. I thought that might have been understood.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
It is, but we do need to consider that herd immunity acts at a community level, not a national one. It is quite possible for covid transmission rates to be quite high in some inner communities while others go unscathed.
As the weekly vaccination statistics have been updated, I thought I'd see where we are in my home Borough of Newham in East London.
I'm using the published NIMS estimates of population:
There are 353,012 people over 16 in the Borough of whom 123,122 have received a first vaccination and 41,526 a second vaccination.
Among the 88,202 aged 50 and over, 62,763 have received a first vaccination of whom 27,209 have had both vaccinations.
Among the 17,773 aged 70 and over, 14,254 have received a first vaccination of whom 12,086 have had both second vaccination.
So, just under 35% of the total adult (16+) population have had a first vaccination.
Among those more at risk, 71.1% of those over 50 have had a first vaccination and 30.8% have had both vaccinations.
Among those over 70, 80.2% had had a first vaccination and 68% have had both vaccinations.
Put another way, 25,300 people over 50 have had no vaccination. There are a total of 230,000 unvaccinated people over 16 in the Borough so that's your target for the Indian Variant.
As a comparison, Richmond has 79,006 people over 50 of whom 65,913 (83.4%) have had a first vaccination and 37,687 (47.7%) have had a second vaccination.
Those compare with 71.1% and 30.8% respectively in Newham so it's a tale of divergent vaccination programmes. In Newham, a significant minority of those over 50 and potentially at risk have yet to receive a first vaccination and less than a third have received both vaccinations.
The more I look at these numbers, the more I think the Government has called this right - we need to unlock all together as one "Team UK" (apparently) so as much time as possible needs to be given to those areas and communities which are struggling to get the numbers vaccinated.
Arguing the case risk from the Indian Variant is only for the younger age groups ignores the fact of the 25,300 over 50s in Newham who are also currently unprotected.
Without wishing to be cruel, if people choose to be unvaccinated that is their choice and the consequences of that choice should be theirs. Not extended lockdown for everyone else.
100% this and quite frankly this point needs to be made at some point. If people think they can avoid the vaccine and be kept safe because lockdowns will be kept to keep them safe - that is not on!
This is what I am now struggling with. Are we now saying we must lockdown for the sake of those who refuse the vaccine?
I don't think we should delay ending lockdown. I think we should follow the road map set out by the Government and I have not yet seen evidence that this should be derailed by the new variant.
But...
I think the point is well made that we are not yet at the point where everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. Indeed it looks unlikely - in fact impossible - that everyone over the age of 18 will have been vaccinated by the 21st June when all restrictions are supposed to end.
This is fine if we are saying that people who have not yet been vaccinated can still voluntarily work from home or do distance learning. But Johnson has now announced that the work from home instruction is ending. This means that companies could be forcing people to go back into the office or universities could be ending distance learning whilst many of their employees/students have not yet had the chance to have the vaccine, no matter how much they want to.
Is it really fair to say to those people that because all the over 40s are fully vaccinated (if they are by then) that everything should go back to normal and if you catch covid then tough?
If you have chosen not to have the vaccine that is one matter and I have no sympathy for you. If, like my daughter at university, you have not been offered the vaccine and cannot have it then I would think it is reasonable for people to kick up a stink at suggestions it is all over and we can get on with life as before.
Oh and for the record I have had both jabs and will be as immune as I am ever going to be in about 14 days.
Given that the risk to the under 40s is exponentially lower than for other age groups then the negatives for them of continuing restrictions are far higher than the negatives potential covid infection would have.
Again to be clear my argument is not against removing restrictions. It is against forcing people back into work and education when they are not yet vaccinated through no fault of their own. Johnson's comments about lifting the work from home rules does open up a potential issue with employers forcing unvaccinated people back into offices unless some rules are in place to prevent this.
Agreed. Two different things. Let the young get their jabs + three weeks before we ask them to congregate again. Same courtesy as for us old gits.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
But that's the point, you were acting as if it was possible to undo the vaccine, but it doesn't work that way. Nor should it. If 0.25% of those who get hospitalised then they get hospitalised and we need to deal with that. If 0.035% of those who get infected die then again so be it.
If the original virus was like that we'd have never locked down in the first place and never developed a vaccine in the first place. It would have burnt out and we'd have moved on.
You seem to understand nothing at all. It's incomprehensible to me how someone can talk so much and understand so little.
Is anyone here agreeing with the point Chris is attempting to make, through his smokescreen of invective & vituperation? EDIT - "arrogance of Lucifer" for example.
That's a genuine question. If he's right, or most correct, then he's making a good, indeed important point. Even if he's not doing it quite poorly.
On the other hand . . .
I think this is a waste of time, to be honest. People will believe what they want to believe, and an Internet forum devoted to political betting is not going to produce anything other than a parody of scientific discussion.
I'm sorry, I don't know why I keep coming back here expecting better.
You're getting better, you just need some humility so you can understand it.
Exponential growth can't keep going on forever. The notion that the vaccine effect can be wiped out in 4 weeks, it just isn't scientific.
As the weekly vaccination statistics have been updated, I thought I'd see where we are in my home Borough of Newham in East London.
I'm using the published NIMS estimates of population:
There are 353,012 people over 16 in the Borough of whom 123,122 have received a first vaccination and 41,526 a second vaccination.
Among the 88,202 aged 50 and over, 62,763 have received a first vaccination of whom 27,209 have had both vaccinations.
Among the 17,773 aged 70 and over, 14,254 have received a first vaccination of whom 12,086 have had both second vaccination.
So, just under 35% of the total adult (16+) population have had a first vaccination.
Among those more at risk, 71.1% of those over 50 have had a first vaccination and 30.8% have had both vaccinations.
Among those over 70, 80.2% had had a first vaccination and 68% have had both vaccinations.
Put another way, 25,300 people over 50 have had no vaccination. There are a total of 230,000 unvaccinated people over 16 in the Borough so that's your target for the Indian Variant.
As a comparison, Richmond has 79,006 people over 50 of whom 65,913 (83.4%) have had a first vaccination and 37,687 (47.7%) have had a second vaccination.
Those compare with 71.1% and 30.8% respectively in Newham so it's a tale of divergent vaccination programmes. In Newham, a significant minority of those over 50 and potentially at risk have yet to receive a first vaccination and less than a third have received both vaccinations.
The more I look at these numbers, the more I think the Government has called this right - we need to unlock all together as one "Team UK" (apparently) so as much time as possible needs to be given to those areas and communities which are struggling to get the numbers vaccinated.
Arguing the case risk from the Indian Variant is only for the younger age groups ignores the fact of the 25,300 over 50s in Newham who are also currently unprotected.
Without wishing to be cruel, if people choose to be unvaccinated that is their choice and the consequences of that choice should be theirs. Not extended lockdown for everyone else.
100% this and quite frankly this point needs to be made at some point. If people think they can avoid the vaccine and be kept safe because lockdowns will be kept to keep them safe - that is not on!
This is what I am now struggling with. Are we now saying we must lockdown for the sake of those who refuse the vaccine?
I don't think we should delay ending lockdown. I think we should follow the road map set out by the Government and I have not yet seen evidence that this should be derailed by the new variant.
But...
I think the point is well made that we are not yet at the point where everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. Indeed it looks unlikely - in fact impossible - that everyone over the age of 18 will have been vaccinated by the 21st June when all restrictions are supposed to end.
This is fine if we are saying that people who have not yet been vaccinated can still voluntarily work from home or do distance learning. But Johnson has now announced that the work from home instruction is ending. This means that companies could be forcing people to go back into the office or universities could be ending distance learning whilst many of their employees/students have not yet had the chance to have the vaccine, no matter how much they want to.
Is it really fair to say to those people that because all the over 40s are fully vaccinated (if they are by then) that everything should go back to normal and if you catch covid then tough?
If you have chosen not to have the vaccine that is one matter and I have no sympathy for you. If, like my daughter at university, you have not been offered the vaccine and cannot have it then I would think it is reasonable for people to kick up a stink at suggestions it is all over and we can get on with life as before.
All the under 40s I know cannot WAIT to get back to normal.
You mean all the under 40s who you associate with because they have a similar world view to yours.
You may well be right (actually you are not as I know plenty of under 40s who are extremely nervous about everything opening up before they have had the chance to get jabbed) but you cannot draw any conclusions from your own very limited circle of acquaintances any more than I can from mine.
And as I said I think that, on balance, we should follow the planned road map and reopen fully by 21st June. But to say we will do it no matter what happens over the next few weeks is just plain dumb. And to their credit the Government are not doing that. But hand in hand with that we should not be forcing the unwillingly unvaccinated back into work or education if they do not feel confident about it.
Open up as planned but do not let anyone get forced back to work until they have been jabbed if they don't want to.
You do know that many millions of people have been working at their places of work for many months before they were vaccinated ?
There's never been any option of not going into work at my employer - the site was open and everyone went to work as normal albeit with health and safety modifications to reduce risk.
Yes that has been the case for many. But by no means for the majority. I have crews working offshore in an environment tailor made for passing on infection so I am well aware of the risks. But it is still not right to force people back if it is not necessary but it is already clear that employers are looking at doing just that.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
It is, but we do need to consider that herd immunity acts at a community level, not a national one. It is quite possible for covid transmission rates to be quite high in some inner communities while others go unscathed.
Which would seem to be a good reason for providing positive incentives, tailored to specific audiences, for folks in these communities to get jabbed with COVID vax?
Even though it is NOT totally effective, still better than jabbed with a sharp stick!
Is anyone here agreeing with the point Chris is attempting to make, through his smokescreen of invective & vituperation? EDIT - "arrogance of Lucifer" for example.
That's a genuine question. If he's right, or most correct, then he's making a good, indeed important point. Even if he's not doing it quite poorly.
On the other hand . . .
I think this is a waste of time, to be honest. People will believe what they want to believe, and an Internet forum devoted to political betting is not going to produce anything other than a parody of scientific discussion.
I'm sorry, I don't know why I keep coming back here expecting better.
You're getting better, you just need some humility so you can understand it.
Exponential growth can't keep going on forever. The notion that the vaccine effect can be wiped out in 4 weeks, it just isn't scientific.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
It is, but we do need to consider that herd immunity acts at a community level, not a national one. It is quite possible for covid transmission rates to be quite high in some inner communities while others go unscathed.
Which would seem to be a good reason for providing positive incentives, tailored to specific audiences, for folks in these communities to get jabbed with COVID vax?
Even though it is NOT totally effective, still better than jabbed with a sharp stick!
Isn't one US state offering a lottery? 5 x $1 million to random individuals who get vaccinated?
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
It is, but we do need to consider that herd immunity acts at a community level, not a national one. It is quite possible for covid transmission rates to be quite high in some inner communities while others go unscathed.
If those communities have refused the vaccine then they'll get the virus. They've been offered the vaccine. What else can we do, keep locked down forever to protect vaccine refusers? 🤷♂️
I see Priti got her arse handed to her in Glasgow.
I take it we're talking about the immigration removal story?
The Scots can afford to be smug and superior about illegal immigration. They're 400 miles from the Channel and very few people want to settle there.
‘Bloody virtue signalling Jocks pretending not to be xenophobes like normal people’
One characteristic human feature is to be against immigrants in principle, yet to get on fine with Hamza next door and think it appalling that the government are trying to deport him.
I remember a similar case down south (was it Dorset?) Where local people banded together to prevent the deportation of an African migrant who had made himself popular with the locals.
I think local lockdowns are like turning the pumps on in the Titanic; they buy you time but minutes only. The ship will still sink.
If it's here it's here. Local lockdowns might give you 2-3 weeks extra.
That's it.
The solution has to be vaccinations, vaccinations and more vaccinations - as fast as humanly possible.
I think local lockdowns could work at suppressing the virus if they were heavy and on a hair trigger. Otherwise I agree with you, they basically do nothing.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
Isn't it obvious ?
Rates triple this week and then quadruple next week leading to the NHS to collapse next month followed by everyone dying in July.
It must be true because I've read here that a 95% vaccination rate is much too low to end lockdown.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
Obviously the concern centres on whether the benefits of vaccines will remain the same for new variants.
There is still surprisingly little data on that. I'm sorry, again. I thought that might have been understood.
Actually there is a lot of data on this, and none of the variants so far have escaped the vaccines, and likely most will be pretty effective. There has even been posts on this thread about this very subject.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
It is, but we do need to consider that herd immunity acts at a community level, not a national one. It is quite possible for covid transmission rates to be quite high in some inner communities while others go unscathed.
Which would seem to be a good reason for providing positive incentives, tailored to specific audiences, for folks in these communities to get jabbed with COVID vax?
Even though it is NOT totally effective, still better than jabbed with a sharp stick!
Isn't one US state offering a lottery? 5 x $1 million to random individuals who get vaccinated?
It may not work with communities that don't gamble...
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
I'm not a biologist but I can't see how a virus can mutate itself that much through natural replication to the point where it becomes a *totally* different beast able to evade all vaccines and antibodies, which are then unable to recognise it or bond to it in any form whatsoever.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
It is, but we do need to consider that herd immunity acts at a community level, not a national one. It is quite possible for covid transmission rates to be quite high in some inner communities while others go unscathed.
Which would seem to be a good reason for providing positive incentives, tailored to specific audiences, for folks in these communities to get jabbed with COVID vax?
Even though it is NOT totally effective, still better than jabbed with a sharp stick!
Isn't one US state offering a lottery? 5 x $1 million to random individuals who get vaccinated?
All sorts of government and private incentives in play here. Municipal bonds, lottery tickets, baseball game tickets, free beer, free dinner. It is a long list.
Thanks to Philip I’m now blasting out Common People on the HiFi (Mrs Anabob is out).
Smoke some fags and play some pool, pretend you never went to school...
I love that song but I hate the fact that on the radio they always cut out the best bit.
"You will never understand How it feels to live your life With no meaning or control And with nowhere left to go You are amazed that they exist And they burn so bright whilst you can only wonder why"
The Age of the Commuter is over - it's time for everyone to accept that and consider the ramifications.
LA says different.
Two months ago the roads here were blessedly empty. It was possible to get to the airport (8 miles) in as little as 20 or 30 minutes, even in rush hour.
Now, people are flocking back to offices and traffic is almost as bad as ever. That eight miles now takes an hour at rush hour.
I thought people would work from home more, but they're not.
Is anyone here agreeing with the point Chris is attempting to make, through his smokescreen of invective & vituperation? EDIT - "arrogance of Lucifer" for example.
That's a genuine question. If he's right, or most correct, then he's making a good, indeed important point. Even if he's not doing it quite poorly.
On the other hand . . .
I think this is a waste of time, to be honest. People will believe what they want to believe, and an Internet forum devoted to political betting is not going to produce anything other than a parody of scientific discussion.
I'm sorry, I don't know why I keep coming back here expecting better.
You're getting better, you just need some humility so you can understand it.
Yes, thank you. Really. With your help, every time I come back and try to make a sensible comment, I get a deeper understanding of just how stupid people here can be, and just what a waste of time it is trying to have a sensible discussion here.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
Obviously the concern centres on whether the benefits of vaccines will remain the same for new variants.
There is still surprisingly little data on that. I'm sorry, again. I thought that might have been understood.
The EMA have said things are looking promising in that front.
As the weekly vaccination statistics have been updated, I thought I'd see where we are in my home Borough of Newham in East London.
I'm using the published NIMS estimates of population:
There are 353,012 people over 16 in the Borough of whom 123,122 have received a first vaccination and 41,526 a second vaccination.
Among the 88,202 aged 50 and over, 62,763 have received a first vaccination of whom 27,209 have had both vaccinations.
Among the 17,773 aged 70 and over, 14,254 have received a first vaccination of whom 12,086 have had both second vaccination.
So, just under 35% of the total adult (16+) population have had a first vaccination.
Among those more at risk, 71.1% of those over 50 have had a first vaccination and 30.8% have had both vaccinations.
Among those over 70, 80.2% had had a first vaccination and 68% have had both vaccinations.
Put another way, 25,300 people over 50 have had no vaccination. There are a total of 230,000 unvaccinated people over 16 in the Borough so that's your target for the Indian Variant.
As a comparison, Richmond has 79,006 people over 50 of whom 65,913 (83.4%) have had a first vaccination and 37,687 (47.7%) have had a second vaccination.
Those compare with 71.1% and 30.8% respectively in Newham so it's a tale of divergent vaccination programmes. In Newham, a significant minority of those over 50 and potentially at risk have yet to receive a first vaccination and less than a third have received both vaccinations.
The more I look at these numbers, the more I think the Government has called this right - we need to unlock all together as one "Team UK" (apparently) so as much time as possible needs to be given to those areas and communities which are struggling to get the numbers vaccinated.
Arguing the case risk from the Indian Variant is only for the younger age groups ignores the fact of the 25,300 over 50s in Newham who are also currently unprotected.
Without wishing to be cruel, if people choose to be unvaccinated that is their choice and the consequences of that choice should be theirs. Not extended lockdown for everyone else.
100% this and quite frankly this point needs to be made at some point. If people think they can avoid the vaccine and be kept safe because lockdowns will be kept to keep them safe - that is not on!
This is what I am now struggling with. Are we now saying we must lockdown for the sake of those who refuse the vaccine?
I don't think we should delay ending lockdown. I think we should follow the road map set out by the Government and I have not yet seen evidence that this should be derailed by the new variant.
But...
I think the point is well made that we are not yet at the point where everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. Indeed it looks unlikely - in fact impossible - that everyone over the age of 18 will have been vaccinated by the 21st June when all restrictions are supposed to end.
This is fine if we are saying that people who have not yet been vaccinated can still voluntarily work from home or do distance learning. But Johnson has now announced that the work from home instruction is ending. This means that companies could be forcing people to go back into the office or universities could be ending distance learning whilst many of their employees/students have not yet had the chance to have the vaccine, no matter how much they want to.
Is it really fair to say to those people that because all the over 40s are fully vaccinated (if they are by then) that everything should go back to normal and if you catch covid then tough?
If you have chosen not to have the vaccine that is one matter and I have no sympathy for you. If, like my daughter at university, you have not been offered the vaccine and cannot have it then I would think it is reasonable for people to kick up a stink at suggestions it is all over and we can get on with life as before.
All the under 40s I know cannot WAIT to get back to normal.
You mean all the under 40s who you associate with because they have a similar world view to yours.
You may well be right (actually you are not as I know plenty of under 40s who are extremely nervous about everything opening up before they have had the chance to get jabbed) but you cannot draw any conclusions from your own very limited circle of acquaintances any more than I can from mine.
And as I said I think that, on balance, we should follow the planned road map and reopen fully by 21st June. But to say we will do it no matter what happens over the next few weeks is just plain dumb. And to their credit the Government are not doing that. But hand in hand with that we should not be forcing the unwillingly unvaccinated back into work or education if they do not feel confident about it.
Open up as planned but do not let anyone get forced back to work until they have been jabbed if they don't want to.
You do know that many millions of people have been working at their places of work for many months before they were vaccinated ?
There's never been any option of not going into work at my employer - the site was open and everyone went to work as normal albeit with health and safety modifications to reduce risk.
Yes that has been the case for many. But by no means for the majority. I have crews working offshore in an environment tailor made for passing on infection so I am well aware of the risks. But it is still not right to force people back if it is not necessary but it is already clear that employers are looking at doing just that.
If its unjustified it will not endear the employer to their workforce with negative consequences for the employer.
You may well be right (actually you are not as I know plenty of under 40s who are extremely nervous about everything opening up before they have had the chance to get jabbed) but you cannot draw any conclusions from your own very limited circle of acquaintances any more than I can from mine.
And as I said I think that, on balance, we should follow the planned road map and reopen fully by 21st June. But to say we will do it no matter what happens over the next few weeks is just plain dumb. And to their credit the Government are not doing that. But hand in hand with that we should not be forcing the unwillingly unvaccinated back into work or education if they do not feel confident about it.
Open up as planned but do not let anyone get forced back to work until they have been jabbed if they don't want to.
I think any exhortation from Boris or any other Government Minister about returning to offices is, in many cases, going to fall on deaf ears.
There are those (and I accept mainly but not exclusively among the younger parts of the population) who want to go back to offices and all the social interaction associated but that isn't where most older office workers are.
They don't miss the early starts and the commute - I know I don't. 1-2 days per week maximum in the office is the way forward and all manner of surveys confirm this. Many like working at home for many reasons and it's a way of life to which many have adjusted surprisingly easily.
Many companies now see no future in buildings full of banks of desks - the ergonomic revolution to collaborative working areas and spaces is gathering pace and won't be stopped by Johnson.
The Age of the Commuter is over - it's time for everyone to accept that and consider the ramifications.
I hope you are right. It is long overdue if it finally is the case.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
I'm not a biologist but I can't see how a virus can mutate itself that much through natural replication to the point where it becomes a *totally* different beast able to evade all vaccines and antibodies, which are then unable to recognise it or bond to it in any form whatsoever.
It just doesn't follow Occam's Razor.
Re mutations, I think people who are not in the field have little idea of how big a protein is, how many different parts will be recognised by the immune system, and small changing one residue is to the overall shape. My word of the week is epitope. Well worth looking up.
I see Priti got her arse handed to her in Glasgow.
I take it we're talking about the immigration removal story?
The Scots can afford to be smug and superior about illegal immigration. They're 400 miles from the Channel and very few people want to settle there.
‘Bloody virtue signalling Jocks pretending not to be xenophobes like normal people’
One characteristic human feature is to be against immigrants in principle, yet to get on fine with Hamza next door and think it appalling that the government are trying to deport him.
I remember a similar case down south (was it Dorset?) Where local people banded together to prevent the deportation of an African migrant who had made himself popular with the locals.
Same story (or rather stories) from small-town America. Such as doctors vital to providing health care, and doing a good job of it. And small business owners who are almost stereotypical community boosters & go-getters in their adopted communities.
Remember a neighbor right after my family moved to Louisiana, his family had also moved recently, from Denver. He was a kind of a low life, basically a decent guy but liked hanging out with the wrong crowd a bit too much.
He was NOT a big fan of either African Americans OR Hispanics.
Yet he spoke often and sincerely about his friendships, with ONE Black guy and ONE Latino dude.
Is anyone here agreeing with the point Chris is attempting to make, through his smokescreen of invective & vituperation? EDIT - "arrogance of Lucifer" for example.
That's a genuine question. If he's right, or most correct, then he's making a good, indeed important point. Even if he's not doing it quite poorly.
On the other hand . . .
I think this is a waste of time, to be honest. People will believe what they want to believe, and an Internet forum devoted to political betting is not going to produce anything other than a parody of scientific discussion.
I'm sorry, I don't know why I keep coming back here expecting better.
You're getting better, you just need some humility so you can understand it.
Yes, thank you. Really. With your help, every time I come back and try to make a sensible comment, I get a deeper understanding of just how stupid people here can be, and just what a waste of time it is trying to have a sensible discussion here.
You need to start with the man in the mirror. Everyone else is trying to help you with your failure to understand the science here, its being patiently explained to you by many people - so if you want to make this site a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change.
On previous thread, Ydoethur asserted that "Erskine May" the primary authority on parliamentary procedure, was in "error" to say that
Parliament is composed of the Sovereign, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Collectively they form the legislature and as distinct constituent parts of the constitution exercise functions and enjoy privileges peculiar to each.
"An interesting example of how an error can become entrenched because of who makes it. Although now it’s held because of Erskine May’s balls up that the Crown is part of parliament, it is not one of the three estates and therefore historically was not part of parliament."
While I think Y has a point regarding the historical development of Parliament up to the mid 17th century, here is what wikipedia says at start of entry "United Kingdom Political System".
"The political system of the United Kingdom since the Glorious Revolution has been based on the concept that the King in Parliament (also the-Crown-in-Parliament or the-Queen-in-Parliament) has full state authority. It is not the people themselves who are sovereign , but parliament (see parliamentary sovereignty), consisting of the upper house and the lower house , together with the monarch."
SSI2 - The Glorious Revolution of 1688 predating publication of first edition of Erskine May (1844)
Here is quote from conclusion of "Law of the Constitution (1885) by A.V.Dicey, who first popularized the phrase "rule of law" -
"[The] law of the constitution is…the true foundation on which the English polity rests, and it gives in truth even to the conventional element of constitutional law such force as it really possesses.
The law of the constitution, again, is in all its branches the result of two guiding principles, which have been gradually worked out by the more or less conscious efforts of generations of English statesmen and lawyers.
The first of these principles is the sovereignty of Parliament, which means in effect the gradual transfer of power from the Crown to a body which has come more and more to represent the nation. This curious process, by which the personal authority of the King has been turned into the sovereignty of the King in Parliament, has had two effects: it has put an end to the arbitrary powers of the monarch; it has preserved intact and undiminished the supreme authority of the State.
The second of these principles is what I have called “the rule of law”, or the supremacy throughout our institutions of the ordinary law of the land. . . ."
SSI2 - My point is that I believe "Queen/King in Parliament" is the fundamental legal basis for transferring actual governmental power from the Sovereign - the embodiment and personification of state legitimacy - to the Houses of Parliament. Which was & is a pretty big deal.
The Queen and the Queen-in-Parliament are different people. The former is not part of Parliament, the latter is. This goes back to 1688 @ydoethur was wrong… and you are right
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
It is, but we do need to consider that herd immunity acts at a community level, not a national one. It is quite possible for covid transmission rates to be quite high in some inner communities while others go unscathed.
Which would seem to be a good reason for providing positive incentives, tailored to specific audiences, for folks in these communities to get jabbed with COVID vax?
Even though it is NOT totally effective, still better than jabbed with a sharp stick!
Isn't one US state offering a lottery? 5 x $1 million to random individuals who get vaccinated?
It may not work with communities that don't gamble...
I see Priti got her arse handed to her in Glasgow.
I take it we're talking about the immigration removal story?
The Scots can afford to be smug and superior about illegal immigration. They're 400 miles from the Channel and very few people want to settle there.
‘Bloody virtue signalling Jocks pretending not to be xenophobes like normal people’
One characteristic human feature is to be against immigrants in principle, yet to get on fine with Hamza next door and think it appalling that the government are trying to deport him.
I remember a similar case down south (was it Dorset?) Where local people banded together to prevent the deportation of an African migrant who had made himself popular with the locals.
Yes, this confused pattern of dehumanisation and rehumanisation is common to all cultures.
As the weekly vaccination statistics have been updated, I thought I'd see where we are in my home Borough of Newham in East London.
I'm using the published NIMS estimates of population:
There are 353,012 people over 16 in the Borough of whom 123,122 have received a first vaccination and 41,526 a second vaccination.
Among the 88,202 aged 50 and over, 62,763 have received a first vaccination of whom 27,209 have had both vaccinations.
Among the 17,773 aged 70 and over, 14,254 have received a first vaccination of whom 12,086 have had both second vaccination.
So, just under 35% of the total adult (16+) population have had a first vaccination.
Among those more at risk, 71.1% of those over 50 have had a first vaccination and 30.8% have had both vaccinations.
Among those over 70, 80.2% had had a first vaccination and 68% have had both vaccinations.
Put another way, 25,300 people over 50 have had no vaccination. There are a total of 230,000 unvaccinated people over 16 in the Borough so that's your target for the Indian Variant.
As a comparison, Richmond has 79,006 people over 50 of whom 65,913 (83.4%) have had a first vaccination and 37,687 (47.7%) have had a second vaccination.
Those compare with 71.1% and 30.8% respectively in Newham so it's a tale of divergent vaccination programmes. In Newham, a significant minority of those over 50 and potentially at risk have yet to receive a first vaccination and less than a third have received both vaccinations.
The more I look at these numbers, the more I think the Government has called this right - we need to unlock all together as one "Team UK" (apparently) so as much time as possible needs to be given to those areas and communities which are struggling to get the numbers vaccinated.
Arguing the case risk from the Indian Variant is only for the younger age groups ignores the fact of the 25,300 over 50s in Newham who are also currently unprotected.
Without wishing to be cruel, if people choose to be unvaccinated that is their choice and the consequences of that choice should be theirs. Not extended lockdown for everyone else.
100% this and quite frankly this point needs to be made at some point. If people think they can avoid the vaccine and be kept safe because lockdowns will be kept to keep them safe - that is not on!
This is what I am now struggling with. Are we now saying we must lockdown for the sake of those who refuse the vaccine?
I don't think we should delay ending lockdown. I think we should follow the road map set out by the Government and I have not yet seen evidence that this should be derailed by the new variant.
But...
I think the point is well made that we are not yet at the point where everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. Indeed it looks unlikely - in fact impossible - that everyone over the age of 18 will have been vaccinated by the 21st June when all restrictions are supposed to end.
This is fine if we are saying that people who have not yet been vaccinated can still voluntarily work from home or do distance learning. But Johnson has now announced that the work from home instruction is ending. This means that companies could be forcing people to go back into the office or universities could be ending distance learning whilst many of their employees/students have not yet had the chance to have the vaccine, no matter how much they want to.
Is it really fair to say to those people that because all the over 40s are fully vaccinated (if they are by then) that everything should go back to normal and if you catch covid then tough?
If you have chosen not to have the vaccine that is one matter and I have no sympathy for you. If, like my daughter at university, you have not been offered the vaccine and cannot have it then I would think it is reasonable for people to kick up a stink at suggestions it is all over and we can get on with life as before.
All the under 40s I know cannot WAIT to get back to normal.
You mean all the under 40s who you associate with because they have a similar world view to yours.
You may well be right (actually you are not as I know plenty of under 40s who are extremely nervous about everything opening up before they have had the chance to get jabbed) but you cannot draw any conclusions from your own very limited circle of acquaintances any more than I can from mine.
And as I said I think that, on balance, we should follow the planned road map and reopen fully by 21st June. But to say we will do it no matter what happens over the next few weeks is just plain dumb. And to their credit the Government are not doing that. But hand in hand with that we should not be forcing the unwillingly unvaccinated back into work or education if they do not feel confident about it.
Open up as planned but do not let anyone get forced back to work until they have been jabbed if they don't want to.
You do know that many millions of people have been working at their places of work for many months before they were vaccinated ?
There's never been any option of not going into work at my employer - the site was open and everyone went to work as normal albeit with health and safety modifications to reduce risk.
Yes that has been the case for many. But by no means for the majority. I have crews working offshore in an environment tailor made for passing on infection so I am well aware of the risks. But it is still not right to force people back if it is not necessary but it is already clear that employers are looking at doing just that.
If its unjustified it will not endear the employer to their workforce with negative consequences for the employer.
I think you might have a mistaken idea of where the balance of power lies in most employer/employee relationships. Particularly when the majority of managers will be older people who have been fully jabbed and those who might be raising concerns are younger and lower on the ladder.
On previous thread, Ydoethur asserted that "Erskine May" the primary authority on parliamentary procedure, was in "error" to say that
Parliament is composed of the Sovereign, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Collectively they form the legislature and as distinct constituent parts of the constitution exercise functions and enjoy privileges peculiar to each.
"An interesting example of how an error can become entrenched because of who makes it. Although now it’s held because of Erskine May’s balls up that the Crown is part of parliament, it is not one of the three estates and therefore historically was not part of parliament."
While I think Y has a point regarding the historical development of Parliament up to the mid 17th century, here is what wikipedia says at start of entry "United Kingdom Political System".
"The political system of the United Kingdom since the Glorious Revolution has been based on the concept that the King in Parliament (also the-Crown-in-Parliament or the-Queen-in-Parliament) has full state authority. It is not the people themselves who are sovereign , but parliament (see parliamentary sovereignty), consisting of the upper house and the lower house , together with the monarch."
SSI2 - The Glorious Revolution of 1688 predating publication of first edition of Erskine May (1844)
Here is quote from conclusion of "Law of the Constitution (1885) by A.V.Dicey, who first popularized the phrase "rule of law" -
"[The] law of the constitution is…the true foundation on which the English polity rests, and it gives in truth even to the conventional element of constitutional law such force as it really possesses.
The law of the constitution, again, is in all its branches the result of two guiding principles, which have been gradually worked out by the more or less conscious efforts of generations of English statesmen and lawyers.
The first of these principles is the sovereignty of Parliament, which means in effect the gradual transfer of power from the Crown to a body which has come more and more to represent the nation. This curious process, by which the personal authority of the King has been turned into the sovereignty of the King in Parliament, has had two effects: it has put an end to the arbitrary powers of the monarch; it has preserved intact and undiminished the supreme authority of the State.
The second of these principles is what I have called “the rule of law”, or the supremacy throughout our institutions of the ordinary law of the land. . . ."
SSI2 - My point is that I believe "Queen/King in Parliament" is the fundamental legal basis for transferring actual governmental power from the Sovereign - the embodiment and personification of state legitimacy - to the Houses of Parliament. Which was & is a pretty big deal.
The Queen and the Queen-in-Parliament are different people. The former is not part of Parliament, the latter is. This goes back to 1688 @ydoethur was wrong… and you are right
Thanks! AND why do I get the feeling that you were in the room when it happened?
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
Obviously the concern centres on whether the benefits of vaccines will remain the same for new variants.
There is still surprisingly little data on that. I'm sorry, again. I thought that might have been understood.
Actually there is a lot of data on this, and none of the variants so far have escaped the vaccines, and likely most will be pretty effective. There has even been posts on this thread about this very subject.
This is the kind of comment I find just incomprehensible.
In fact, such data as there are show that - for example - the South African variant evades the immunity produced by all the vaccines to at least some extent. Look at the Phase III trial data from South Africa.
Those data show that AstraZeneca demonstrated no statistically significnant protection at all against the South African variant.
The comments some people make here are completely divorced from fact and reality.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
I'm not a biologist but I can't see how a virus can mutate itself that much through natural replication to the point where it becomes a *totally* different beast able to evade all vaccines and antibodies, which are then unable to recognise it or bond to it in any form whatsoever.
It just doesn't follow Occam's Razor.
Well that's not true. We know that the influenza virus is pretty good at mutating to evade the vaccines we develop against it. This is why a new vaccine is developed every year to target the specific strains in circulation, sometimes not very effectively.
However, we have a lot of information on SARS-COV-2 now and it's clear that it's easier to develop a vaccine against, and it's harder for a vaccine to escape it, and we've probably advanced decades in vaccine technology as well.
So comprehensive vaccine escape by viruses is, in general, a possible and plausible thing. But not so much with this virus, and these vaccines.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
It is, but we do need to consider that herd immunity acts at a community level, not a national one. It is quite possible for covid transmission rates to be quite high in some inner communities while others go unscathed.
Which would seem to be a good reason for providing positive incentives, tailored to specific audiences, for folks in these communities to get jabbed with COVID vax?
Even though it is NOT totally effective, still better than jabbed with a sharp stick!
Isn't one US state offering a lottery? 5 x $1 million to random individuals who get vaccinated?
It may not work with communities that don't gamble...
Is a give away classed as gambling?
It would be in my regarded as a game of chance in my church.
No reason that other incentives would be problematic though.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
Obviously the concern centres on whether the benefits of vaccines will remain the same for new variants.
There is still surprisingly little data on that. I'm sorry, again. I thought that might have been understood.
Actually there is a lot of data on this, and none of the variants so far have escaped the vaccines, and likely most will be pretty effective. There has even been posts on this thread about this very subject.
This is the kind of comment I find just incomprehensible.
In fact, such data as there are show that - for example - the South African variant evades the immunity produced by all the vaccines to at least some extent. Look at the Phase III trial data from South Africa.
Those data show that AstraZeneca demonstrated no statistically significnant protection at all against the South African variant.
The comments some people make here are completely divorced from fact and reality.
Which data? The very early stuff from SA? That is long in the past. Check up thread. I think you are also falling the trap that antibodies = the entire immune system. It doesn’t. It’s way more complex. Plus having a reduced effect does not mean no effect.
The Age of the Commuter is over - it's time for everyone to accept that and consider the ramifications.
LA says different.
Two months ago the roads here were blessedly empty. It was possible to get to the airport (8 miles) in as little as 20 or 30 minutes, even in rush hour.
Now, people are flocking back to offices and traffic is almost as bad as ever. That eight miles now takes an hour at rush hour.
I thought people would work from home more, but they're not.
I can't speak to US corporate culture - it may be they are still in the Dark Ages of presentee-ism. The organisations I deal with are relaxed about the new "hybrid" way of working recognising for many home working leads to increased productivity and improved wellbeing. That's not to say the office won't be there for those who cannot work at home - it will - but, especially among older office workers, I sense no desire to get back on the commuting treadmill and I sense no desire among most organisations to insist they get back on.
Over here, traffic levels are increasing and have increased but passenger numbers on public transport tell a different story.
National rail and tube passenger numbers remain at just over one third of pre-pandemic levels. In my part of London, there is a discernible increase in morning and evening passenger numbers but it's nowhere near the sardine experience of old.
There may be an initial "rush" back for the novelty value and a chance to meet colleagues face-to-face but longer term home working is here to stay.
Paris has announced plans to turn the entirely of Zone 1 - the Boulevard St Denis in the north to the Boulevard Saint-Germain in the south - into a car free zone.
"Queen/King in Parliament" was and still is a device so that legally all LEGITIMATE state authority belongs to the Crown - and that the Crown transfers its powers, especially THE final say so, to the Houses of Parliament. Originally both houses, but of course the preeminent legislative power is the House of Commons, and executive power is concentrated in the Cabinet directly responsible to the Commons.
So Queen in Parliament is rather like the Holy Trinity (and may have been suggested by it?). That is (bear with me!) the Crown as God the Father (or Mother), House of Commons God the Son, and House of Lords the Holy Ghost. Or something like that.
May sound (and is) slightly bonkers. But it does provide a theoretical construct (if you have faith!) that allows for Britons (or Northern Irish if they are inclined) including Lords & Commons to bow to the Queen and her authority, while permitting Parliament to run the show.
Eton (and Rome) also work on triumvirates
In Eton’s case
- the Head Manis overseen by a Triumvirate comprising the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the Provost and the Bishop of Lincoln - The beaks are overseen by the Provost (representing the Supreme Governor), Head Man and the Conduct (representing +Lincoln) - the boys are overseen by the Captain of School, the Captain of Oppidans and the Captain of Boats
The Age of the Commuter is over - it's time for everyone to accept that and consider the ramifications.
LA says different.
Two months ago the roads here were blessedly empty. It was possible to get to the airport (8 miles) in as little as 20 or 30 minutes, even in rush hour.
Now, people are flocking back to offices and traffic is almost as bad as ever. That eight miles now takes an hour at rush hour.
I thought people would work from home more, but they're not.
I can't speak to US corporate culture - it may be they are still in the Dark Ages of presentee-ism. The organisations I deal with are relaxed about the new "hybrid" way of working recognising for many home working leads to increased productivity and improved wellbeing. That's not to say the office won't be there for those who cannot work at home - it will - but, especially among older office workers, I sense no desire to get back on the commuting treadmill and I sense no desire among most organisations to insist they get back on.
Over here, traffic levels are increasing and have increased but passenger numbers on public transport tell a different story.
National rail and tube passenger numbers remain at just over one third of pre-pandemic levels. In my part of London, there is a discernible increase in morning and evening passenger numbers but it's nowhere near the sardine experience of old.
There may be an initial "rush" back for the novelty value and a chance to meet colleagues face-to-face but longer term home working is here to stay.
You seem very certain as to your ability to predict the future.
I'm detecting a lot of reluctance to go back to the office from older colleagues too. We will see.
Successful in the ballot to be in the crowd for the final game of the season, at home vs Spurs.
Last time I got to a match was March last year. Hard to believe that I was amongst 32000 other people with no social distancing or masks singing away at the Villa as we thrashed them 4 nil. A week before lockdown.
As the weekly vaccination statistics have been updated, I thought I'd see where we are in my home Borough of Newham in East London.
I'm using the published NIMS estimates of population:
There are 353,012 people over 16 in the Borough of whom 123,122 have received a first vaccination and 41,526 a second vaccination.
Among the 88,202 aged 50 and over, 62,763 have received a first vaccination of whom 27,209 have had both vaccinations.
Among the 17,773 aged 70 and over, 14,254 have received a first vaccination of whom 12,086 have had both second vaccination.
So, just under 35% of the total adult (16+) population have had a first vaccination.
Among those more at risk, 71.1% of those over 50 have had a first vaccination and 30.8% have had both vaccinations.
Among those over 70, 80.2% had had a first vaccination and 68% have had both vaccinations.
Put another way, 25,300 people over 50 have had no vaccination. There are a total of 230,000 unvaccinated people over 16 in the Borough so that's your target for the Indian Variant.
As a comparison, Richmond has 79,006 people over 50 of whom 65,913 (83.4%) have had a first vaccination and 37,687 (47.7%) have had a second vaccination.
Those compare with 71.1% and 30.8% respectively in Newham so it's a tale of divergent vaccination programmes. In Newham, a significant minority of those over 50 and potentially at risk have yet to receive a first vaccination and less than a third have received both vaccinations.
The more I look at these numbers, the more I think the Government has called this right - we need to unlock all together as one "Team UK" (apparently) so as much time as possible needs to be given to those areas and communities which are struggling to get the numbers vaccinated.
Arguing the case risk from the Indian Variant is only for the younger age groups ignores the fact of the 25,300 over 50s in Newham who are also currently unprotected.
Without wishing to be cruel, if people choose to be unvaccinated that is their choice and the consequences of that choice should be theirs. Not extended lockdown for everyone else.
100% this and quite frankly this point needs to be made at some point. If people think they can avoid the vaccine and be kept safe because lockdowns will be kept to keep them safe - that is not on!
This is what I am now struggling with. Are we now saying we must lockdown for the sake of those who refuse the vaccine?
I don't think we should delay ending lockdown. I think we should follow the road map set out by the Government and I have not yet seen evidence that this should be derailed by the new variant.
But...
I think the point is well made that we are not yet at the point where everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. Indeed it looks unlikely - in fact impossible - that everyone over the age of 18 will have been vaccinated by the 21st June when all restrictions are supposed to end.
This is fine if we are saying that people who have not yet been vaccinated can still voluntarily work from home or do distance learning. But Johnson has now announced that the work from home instruction is ending. This means that companies could be forcing people to go back into the office or universities could be ending distance learning whilst many of their employees/students have not yet had the chance to have the vaccine, no matter how much they want to.
Is it really fair to say to those people that because all the over 40s are fully vaccinated (if they are by then) that everything should go back to normal and if you catch covid then tough?
If you have chosen not to have the vaccine that is one matter and I have no sympathy for you. If, like my daughter at university, you have not been offered the vaccine and cannot have it then I would think it is reasonable for people to kick up a stink at suggestions it is all over and we can get on with life as before.
All the under 40s I know cannot WAIT to get back to normal.
You mean all the under 40s who you associate with because they have a similar world view to yours.
You may well be right (actually you are not as I know plenty of under 40s who are extremely nervous about everything opening up before they have had the chance to get jabbed) but you cannot draw any conclusions from your own very limited circle of acquaintances any more than I can from mine.
And as I said I think that, on balance, we should follow the planned road map and reopen fully by 21st June. But to say we will do it no matter what happens over the next few weeks is just plain dumb. And to their credit the Government are not doing that. But hand in hand with that we should not be forcing the unwillingly unvaccinated back into work or education if they do not feel confident about it.
Open up as planned but do not let anyone get forced back to work until they have been jabbed if they don't want to.
You do know that many millions of people have been working at their places of work for many months before they were vaccinated ?
There's never been any option of not going into work at my employer - the site was open and everyone went to work as normal albeit with health and safety modifications to reduce risk.
Yes that has been the case for many. But by no means for the majority. I have crews working offshore in an environment tailor made for passing on infection so I am well aware of the risks. But it is still not right to force people back if it is not necessary but it is already clear that employers are looking at doing just that.
If its unjustified it will not endear the employer to their workforce with negative consequences for the employer.
I think you might have a mistaken idea of where the balance of power lies in most employer/employee relationships. Particularly when the majority of managers will be older people who have been fully jabbed and those who might be raising concerns are younger and lower on the ladder.
People leave jobs for better ones regularly.
And recruitment is certainly not easy at present for many employers.
Of course it varies depending upon the desirability of the potential employer and employee but then it always has - the covid factor is merely one among many.
Successful in the ballot to be in the crowd for the final game of the season, at home vs Spurs.
Last time I got to a match was March last year. Hard to believe that I was amongst 32000 other people with no social distancing or masks singing away at the Villa as we thrashed them 4 nil. A week before lockdown.
It seems like a different world.
"Successful in the ballot" - But was that not also "a game of chance"?
Yes or no, congratulations and enjoy! Rejoice!! Sans guilt!!!
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
Obviously the concern centres on whether the benefits of vaccines will remain the same for new variants.
There is still surprisingly little data on that. I'm sorry, again. I thought that might have been understood.
Actually there is a lot of data on this, and none of the variants so far have escaped the vaccines, and likely most will be pretty effective. There has even been posts on this thread about this very subject.
This is the kind of comment I find just incomprehensible.
In fact, such data as there are show that - for example - the South African variant evades the immunity produced by all the vaccines to at least some extent. Look at the Phase III trial data from South Africa.
Those data show that AstraZeneca demonstrated no statistically significnant protection at all against the South African variant.
The comments some people make here are completely divorced from fact and reality.
Which data? The very early stuff from SA? That is long in the past. Check up thread. I think you are also falling the trap that antibodies = the entire immune system. It doesn’t. It’s way more complex. Plus having a reduced effect does not mean no effect.
Phase III studies.
I'll repeat it a few times so you don't miss it again.
Phase III studies. Phase III studies. Phase III studies.
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
This discussion has made me fish out a couple of papers on the death risk from flu in normal-ish flu years, if only to get some sort of benchmark as to what might be 'acceptable' risk levels. I haven't finished reading them, but what struck me at once is how important co-morbidities (ie preexisting conditions) are, just as with the current pox. I had not realised this.
That's just your ignorance, if so. The simple fact is that the overall fatality rate is around ten times larger for COVID-19. There's no way any but the looniest are going to be fooled by a "no worse than flu" narrative. Not to discourage you, because by all appearances there are plenty of carpet-biting loonies around here!
That's precisely what I need to know - a comparative factor. Very helpful, many thanks!
Leon said: Prediction: SAGE will now advise the Govt that further unlockdowning is too risky. The govt will look at that exponential growth in Indian variant cases, and reluctantly agree
The pubs will stay shut. No holibobs for anyone until 2029
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
I'm not a biologist but I can't see how a virus can mutate itself that much through natural replication to the point where it becomes a *totally* different beast able to evade all vaccines and antibodies, which are then unable to recognise it or bond to it in any form whatsoever.
It just doesn't follow Occam's Razor.
Re mutations, I think people who are not in the field have little idea of how big a protein is, how many different parts will be recognised by the immune system, and small changing one residue is to the overall shape. My word of the week is epitope. Well worth looking up.
Ok but it's not a superpower is it? It can't transmute into a higher being, grow wings, leap 30ft across the room, dive through your mask and bitch-slap your mum can it?
It's a protein. Just a protein. The simplest form of life. It relies on simple mutations by natural selection by sheer volume of infections. It's not smart. It's not clever. It's just a numbers game.
By contrast, and let's do a bit of species exceptionalism here: we are fucking clever. We've decoded the human genome. We understand DNA. We have AI. We have supercomputers. We have the very best scientists in the world working on it day and night, in the very best facilities, working on mRNA bioengineered designs of highly sophisticated vaccines.
"Queen/King in Parliament" was and still is a device so that legally all LEGITIMATE state authority belongs to the Crown - and that the Crown transfers its powers, especially THE final say so, to the Houses of Parliament. Originally both houses, but of course the preeminent legislative power is the House of Commons, and executive power is concentrated in the Cabinet directly responsible to the Commons.
So Queen in Parliament is rather like the Holy Trinity (and may have been suggested by it?). That is (bear with me!) the Crown as God the Father (or Mother), House of Commons God the Son, and House of Lords the Holy Ghost. Or something like that.
May sound (and is) slightly bonkers. But it does provide a theoretical construct (if you have faith!) that allows for Britons (or Northern Irish if they are inclined) including Lords & Commons to bow to the Queen and her authority, while permitting Parliament to run the show.
Eton (and Rome) also work on triumvirates
In Eton’s case
- the Head Manis overseen by a Triumvirate comprising the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the Provost and the Bishop of Lincoln - The beaks are overseen by the Provost (representing the Supreme Governor), Head Man and the Conduct (representing +Lincoln) - the boys are overseen by the Captain of School, the Captain of Oppidans and the Captain of Boats
Interesting. Was this system in place before or after 1688? And do Oxford and/or Cambridge (or their college) have anything similar?
Another tripartite example is US separation of powers - legislative, executive, judicial - of federal & state governments
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
Obviously the concern centres on whether the benefits of vaccines will remain the same for new variants.
There is still surprisingly little data on that. I'm sorry, again. I thought that might have been understood.
While there will always be limited data on new variants, the nature of vaccines is that this isn't binary. A virus can only mutate so much, each one a tiny shift. If a vaccine is 95% effective (as pretty much all the approved vaccines are), then you simply aren't going to see more than a couple of points from a single mutation.
Now... it's possible that the Indian variant moves efficacy down a few percentage points, and then that variant mutates again. But that ignores the fact that the vaccine means that there are fewer hosts for there to be mutations in.
And it's also the case that efficacy climbs as you go up the severity curve. A vaccine (like J&J) that is only 60% effective at preventing symptomatic Covid might well prevent close to 100% of hospitalisations.
Leon said: Prediction: SAGE will now advise the Govt that further unlockdowning is too risky. The govt will look at that exponential growth in Indian variant cases, and reluctantly agree
The pubs will stay shut. No holibobs for anyone until 2029
"Scientists do not believe the Indian variant is likely to blunt the effectiveness of vaccines but have concluded it could well be more transmissible than the Kent variant now dominant in Britain. This would mean a far higher peak of infection in the summer and, as more of those who are still vulnerable catch the virus, thousands more deaths and hospital admissions."
&
"Dominic Cummings, who unsuccessfully attempted to convince Johnson to impose a “circuit breaker” lockdown last September, today retweeted a message from the mathematician Timothy Gowers.
"Gowers said that if there was even a 20 per cent chance that the B.617.2 variant was far more transmissible, “the cost of another big wave is much higher than the cost of delaying the next stage of the road map. The precautionary principle is much stronger when exponential growth is involved.”
Except effectively all the vulnerable have been vaccinated and so they're not at real risk anymore. Haven't for a long time. 🤦♂️
By 21 June then all vaccines done by 31 May will be live and active.
120% of nothing is nothing. 200% of nothing is nothing. 1000% of nothing is nothing.
Can anybody still be so ignorant as still to think that vaccinated = "at no risk"?
Truly, sometimes I think the human race is too stupid to survive.
PT did NOT say "at no risk" he said "at no real risk".
No pin too narrow for some people to dance on the head of, evidently!
Must be missing something? Is it that ANY risk is totally unacceptable?
Or am I just misunderstanding what your driving at?
Just try to think. Please. Just try to think.
The protection conferred by the vaccine is a factor of 10 or 20.
The estimated growth of the Indian variant in the UK per week is a factor of 2.
I hope those figures are misleading. But on the face of it, that growth rate would wipe out the benefit from the vaccine in a month or so.
Please just don't be so blase about it.
Just to check, please: you mean in total population statistics, rather than the protection to a single individual?
That's the point really. Vaccine efficacy reduces your risk by 90% or 95% or whatever. That's for a given level of infection in the population. If infection levels rise by a factor of 10 or 20 because of a new variant, you end up with the same level of risk that you started with. That's even if the vaccine is just as effective against the new variant.
But we don't have an infinitely large population, so there's a limit to the number of people who can be infected to "undo" the vaccines effectiveness.
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
Did you somehow get the impression I was talking about surpassing the January peak in hospitalisations?
I don't know how.
As an aside, the analysis from @LostPassword understates the benefits of vaccines, because transmission is also dramatically cut. Even at the level we're at now, it's almost impossible to see how five or six million people could end up with Covid simultaneously.
Obviously the concern centres on whether the benefits of vaccines will remain the same for new variants.
There is still surprisingly little data on that. I'm sorry, again. I thought that might have been understood.
Actually there is a lot of data on this, and none of the variants so far have escaped the vaccines, and likely most will be pretty effective. There has even been posts on this thread about this very subject.
This is the kind of comment I find just incomprehensible.
In fact, such data as there are show that - for example - the South African variant evades the immunity produced by all the vaccines to at least some extent. Look at the Phase III trial data from South Africa.
Those data show that AstraZeneca demonstrated no statistically significnant protection at all against the South African variant.
The comments some people make here are completely divorced from fact and reality.
Which data? The very early stuff from SA? That is long in the past. Check up thread. I think you are also falling the trap that antibodies = the entire immune system. It doesn’t. It’s way more complex. Plus having a reduced effect does not mean no effect.
Phase III studies.
I'll repeat it a few times so you don't miss it again.
Phase III studies. Phase III studies. Phase III studies.
It’s clear we won’t agree on this, and I have no desire to be rude. I have seen plenty of data showing decent effects. I’d also point out that real world is a far bigger laboratory than phase III studies. In the U.K. we’ve been looking at whether the Kent variant is not stopped by the AZ and Pfizer jabs (and lately moderna). So far the evidence is that it is. A couple of weeks ago data was published showing how few people had died after two shots (plus three weeks). This is the hard evidence. What evidence can you show that the Indian variant is worse than the Kent one? Most reports say it is possibly more transmissible, but not showing reduced vaccine effects.
Thanks to Philip I’m now blasting out Common People on the HiFi (Mrs Anabob is out).
Smoke some fags and play some pool, pretend you never went to school...
Posterity is a weird thing. At the time, Pulp were considered niche next to Blur and certainly next to Oasis.
Yet “Common People” is referenced these days much more than “Park Life” or even “Wonderwall”.
Also, “Disco 2000” is actually the better song.
Different Class is a superb album. It’s aged far better than the contemporaneous releases by Blur and Oasis.
Yes, but I preferred His n Hers.
Pulp had spent upwards of a decade releasing albums which largely reflected the state of their optimism in any sort of success. A lot of bleakness and hopelessness. Then in the early 90s there was a slight sniff of recognition, and His n Hers reflected that - amongst the kitchen sinks there was a glimmer of sunshine, a ray of hope. Then Different Class came along; they had made it; success, tempered with disillusionment. Was success all it was cracked up to be? Then This is Hardcore answered the question: No, it wasn't.
So I prefer the hardly-dare-it optimism of His n Hers - the moment before everything goes right. And I could write an essay on David's Last Summer: one of the most interesting pop songs ever written: starts out all summery and happy for two and a half verses, before two sudden, slightly jarring, shiver-down-the-spine key changes leave us somewhere altogether more uncertain. Absolute genius.
Comments
But it won't happen in the UK. No money in it for those who've been making a fortune since March 2020 probably including half the cabinet, e.g. Hancock, Zahawi.
Do wake up. This is not primarily about a virus. It's about a further transfer of some of the world's $$$ from have-nots to haves.
If you believe the Worldometers figures for 'COVID deaths per million', compare India to the UK or France, pour yourself a glass of nice red wine and read a calming travel book (do not at this time go near books by Orwell or Huxley, or you'll have nightmares).
End of scare story. Calm down.
But then, you wake up and see that for a 2nd time the NHS is trying to package and sell all our private medical records to the highest bidder ... totally anonymised of course, if you believe a word these bastards say
https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/13/nhs_data_grab/
You only have 6 weeks to opt out.
They were never at much real risk in the first place. My children aren't going to be vaccinated, because the vaccine isn't going to kids, but that's fine because kids aren't at any real risk so it doesn't matter. The risk previously was that they'd catch it and pass it on not that they'd catch it.
Young adults are at some risk unlike kids, but very minimal, so they ought to be able to make an educated decision. If they want to stay at home they should have the choice, if they want to go to the library, or go clubbing, or study in a class, or dance, and drink and screw - that that's up to them to do.
That's a genuine question. If he's right, or most correct, then he's making a good, indeed important point. Even if he's not doing it quite poorly.
On the other hand . . .
Let's suppose that Covid has a hospitalization rate of 5%. Our largest peak saw 40,000 Covid patients in hospital, which would require 800,000 infections in a period beforehand.
Suppose the vaccines are 95% effective, so the hospitalization rate is 0.25%. To reach another peak of 40,000 in hospital would require 16 million infections in a period beforehand.
Even if the Indian variant is super-transmissible, it's very hard to see that number of infections in a short enough time period to swamp the hospitals again. Our population isn't large enough.
The young have bent over backwards to help the not so young in the past year. Now that 99% of the elderly and vulnerable are protected, It is time to accept that life is not without risk, and carry on.
Sorry but the vaccine the real risk of death and by 31 May (so active by 21 June) all the vulnerable will be double-dosed. We need to learn to live with this and if a few people die that's still nothing in real terms. There won't be excess deaths, there won't be overloaded morgues. Some people may get sick, some people may die but that happens every single day anyway and we have to live with that. Get over it.
You may well be right (actually you are not as I know plenty of under 40s who are extremely nervous about everything opening up before they have had the chance to get jabbed) but you cannot draw any conclusions from your own very limited circle of acquaintances any more than I can from mine.
And as I said I think that, on balance, we should follow the planned road map and reopen fully by 21st June. But to say we will do it no matter what happens over the next few weeks is just plain dumb. And to their credit the Government are not doing that. But hand in hand with that we should not be forcing the unwillingly unvaccinated back into work or education if they do not feel confident about it.
Open up as planned but do not let anyone get forced back to work until they have been jabbed if they don't want to.
"The young have bent over backwards to help the not so young in the past year. Now that 99% of the elderly and vulnerable are protected, who cares if the young get ill".
I don't know how.
Two million Brits are going to die.
I pray I am wrong.
If the original virus was like that we'd have never locked down in the first place and never developed a vaccine in the first place. It would have burnt out and we'd have moved on.
There are those (and I accept mainly but not exclusively among the younger parts of the population) who want to go back to offices and all the social interaction associated but that isn't where most older office workers are.
They don't miss the early starts and the commute - I know I don't. 1-2 days per week maximum in the office is the way forward and all manner of surveys confirm this. Many like working at home for many reasons and it's a way of life to which many have adjusted surprisingly easily.
Many companies now see no future in buildings full of banks of desks - the ergonomic revolution to collaborative working areas and spaces is gathering pace and won't be stopped by Johnson.
The Age of the Commuter is over - it's time for everyone to accept that and consider the ramifications.
I'm sorry, I don't know why I keep coming back here expecting better.
There's never been any option of not going into work at my employer - the site was open and everyone went to work as normal albeit with health and safety modifications to reduce risk.
Smoke some fags and play some pool, pretend you never went to school...
It might just be the influence of Cyclefree who I think brings out the best in all of us.
But both on the topic of the thread header and the discussions this evening on vaccinations and opening up, this has been a cracking thread all round with really enjoyable contributions from loads of people across the spectrum.
Just wanted to say thanks.
Like how the SNP are Nazis and you can tell they are because they want a more Liberal immigration policy to hide the fact that they are Nazis
There is still surprisingly little data on that. I'm sorry, again. I thought that might have been understood.
Genuinely amazing at this stage. I belive it is performance art.
If it's here it's here. Local lockdowns might give you 2-3 weeks extra.
That's it.
The solution has to be vaccinations, vaccinations and more vaccinations - as fast as humanly possible.
Exponential growth can't keep going on forever. The notion that the vaccine effect can be wiped out in 4 weeks, it just isn't scientific.
Even though it is NOT totally effective, still better than jabbed with a sharp stick!
I remember a similar case down south (was it Dorset?) Where local people banded together to prevent the deportation of an African migrant who had made himself popular with the locals.
Rates triple this week and then quadruple next week leading to the NHS to collapse next month followed by everyone dying in July.
It must be true because I've read here that a 95% vaccination rate is much too low to end lockdown.
It just doesn't follow Occam's Razor.
"You will never understand
How it feels to live your life
With no meaning or control
And with nowhere left to go
You are amazed that they exist
And they burn so bright whilst you can only wonder why"
Clear penalty, even Neville agrees its a penalty! Could cost us the game and the Champions League because VAR is broken.
Two months ago the roads here were blessedly empty. It was possible to get to the airport (8 miles) in as little as 20 or 30 minutes, even in rush hour.
Now, people are flocking back to offices and traffic is almost as bad as ever. That eight miles now takes an hour at rush hour.
I thought people would work from home more, but they're not.
Remember a neighbor right after my family moved to Louisiana, his family had also moved recently, from Denver. He was a kind of a low life, basically a decent guy but liked hanging out with the wrong crowd a bit too much.
He was NOT a big fan of either African Americans OR Hispanics.
Yet he spoke often and sincerely about his friendships, with ONE Black guy and ONE Latino dude.
At the time, Pulp were considered niche next to Blur and certainly next to Oasis.
Yet “Common People” is referenced these days much more than “Park Life” or even “Wonderwall”.
Also, “Disco 2000” is actually the better song.
In fact, such data as there are show that - for example - the South African variant evades the immunity produced by all the vaccines to at least some extent. Look at the Phase III trial data from South Africa.
Those data show that AstraZeneca demonstrated no statistically significnant protection at all against the South African variant.
The comments some people make here are completely divorced from fact and reality.
Apparently, Monday is now a 'tough call' for the Prime Minister.....
A bit like Bournemouth's relegation last season - when if Hawk-Eye hadn't been broken then Aston Villa would have been relegated.
However, we have a lot of information on SARS-COV-2 now and it's clear that it's easier to develop a vaccine against, and it's harder for a vaccine to escape it, and we've probably advanced decades in vaccine technology as well.
So comprehensive vaccine escape by viruses is, in general, a possible and plausible thing. But not so much with this virus, and these vaccines.
No reason that other incentives would be problematic though.
Over here, traffic levels are increasing and have increased but passenger numbers on public transport tell a different story.
National rail and tube passenger numbers remain at just over one third of pre-pandemic levels. In my part of London, there is a discernible increase in morning and evening passenger numbers but it's nowhere near the sardine experience of old.
There may be an initial "rush" back for the novelty value and a chance to meet colleagues face-to-face but longer term home working is here to stay.
Exceptions made for taxis and disabled transport.
In Eton’s case
- the Head Manis overseen by a Triumvirate comprising the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the Provost and the Bishop of Lincoln
- The beaks are overseen by the Provost (representing the Supreme Governor), Head Man and the Conduct (representing +Lincoln)
- the boys are overseen by the Captain of School, the Captain of Oppidans and the Captain of Boats
I'm detecting a lot of reluctance to go back to the office from older colleagues too. We will see.
Last time I got to a match was March last year. Hard to believe that I was amongst 32000 other people with no social distancing or masks singing away at the Villa as we thrashed them 4 nil. A week before lockdown.
It seems like a different world.
And recruitment is certainly not easy at present for many employers.
Of course it varies depending upon the desirability of the potential employer and employee but then it always has - the covid factor is merely one among many.
It gives you something to continuously complain about.
They are A++, not A+++
Yes or no, congratulations and enjoy! Rejoice!! Sans guilt!!!
I'll repeat it a few times so you don't miss it again.
Phase III studies. Phase III studies. Phase III studies.
Leon said:
Prediction: SAGE will now advise the Govt that further unlockdowning is too risky. The govt will look at that exponential growth in Indian variant cases, and reluctantly agree
The pubs will stay shut. No holibobs for anyone until 2029
I pray I am wrong
It's a protein. Just a protein. The simplest form of life. It relies on simple mutations by natural selection by sheer volume of infections. It's not smart. It's not clever. It's just a numbers game.
By contrast, and let's do a bit of species exceptionalism here: we are fucking clever. We've decoded the human genome. We understand DNA. We have AI. We have supercomputers. We have the very best scientists in the world working on it day and night, in the very best facilities, working on mRNA bioengineered designs of highly sophisticated vaccines.
I think we can beat a protein.
Another tripartite example is US separation of powers - legislative, executive, judicial - of federal & state governments
Now... it's possible that the Indian variant moves efficacy down a few percentage points, and then that variant mutates again. But that ignores the fact that the vaccine means that there are fewer hosts for there to be mutations in.
And it's also the case that efficacy climbs as you go up the severity curve. A vaccine (like J&J) that is only 60% effective at preventing symptomatic Covid might well prevent close to 100% of hospitalisations.
Pulp had spent upwards of a decade releasing albums which largely reflected the state of their optimism in any sort of success. A lot of bleakness and hopelessness. Then in the early 90s there was a slight sniff of recognition, and His n Hers reflected that - amongst the kitchen sinks there was a glimmer of sunshine, a ray of hope.
Then Different Class came along; they had made it; success, tempered with disillusionment. Was success all it was cracked up to be?
Then This is Hardcore answered the question: No, it wasn't.
So I prefer the hardly-dare-it optimism of His n Hers - the moment before everything goes right. And I could write an essay on David's Last Summer: one of the most interesting pop songs ever written: starts out all summery and happy for two and a half verses, before two sudden, slightly jarring, shiver-down-the-spine key changes leave us somewhere altogether more uncertain. Absolute genius.