"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.
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.
I must say that our owners are amazing. I got a package through the post yesterday with a bunch of free stuff to celebrate the FACup final. A lovely note too thanking us for our support. Enamel badge, rosette, facepaints and the inevitable clap banner. Top really appreciates the fans.
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"
'No meaning or control' sums up my feelings on life during the past year. My business upturned overnight. My entire way of life changed. After a dicey few weeks I managed to shake the OCD handwashing and just about start coping again.
I have tonight - for the first time in over a year - picked up an LRB and read it, relaxed, not thinking about how things might get worse. Because things can only get better from here on in...
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
Perhaps you could give the numbers of the infected by the Indian variant which is giving you such thrills and the number of vaccinations during the same period.
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.
Wonderful stuff. Do you have an opinion on “Modern Life is Rubbish”?
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"
'No meaning or control' sums up my feelings on life during the past year. My business upturned overnight. My entire way of life changed. After a dicey few weeks I managed to shake the OCD handwashing and just about start coping again.
I have tonight - for the first time in over a year - picked up an LRB and read it, relaxed, not thinking about how things might get worse. Because things can only get better from here on in...
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.
Some decisions made in my workplace today.
We won't be renewing our lease, we have 12 months to run. The office is too big for our purposes now.
We will make the office available for staff to use from September. But after we have made some changes removing many desks and overhauling the space as a collaborative working space.
We've surveyed staff throughout the pandemic. Over 90% see themselves in the office 1 or 2 days a week maximum. We will facilitate that and still make space available either in an office type place or co-working space for those who want to sit at a desk 5 days a week.
The mantra will be "Locate for your day". Hybrid working is here to stay.
There are a few organisations who are intending to go back to life pre-pandemic. But in my experience they are the ones who demanded their employees returned during the height of the virus as it was "essential". They will increasingly look anachronistic in my view.
I hadn't realised the HO vans look very like ambulances, complete with emergency services flashes along the side. You actually have to read the text, though there are no beacons. Didn't know the HO vans were an emergency service in Scotland or anywhere.
"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.
Am too dumb and ignorant to read though all the stats & stuff, not my bag dude.
But you being snarky and dismissive (akin to blase) does NOT persuade me you know what you're talking about.
You really don't understand the point I just made? Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.
You should shut up. Really.
Does anyone else understand his point? Beside showing us all his ass that is?
Well it started with misrepresenting another poster. He basically comes on here tells us we are all stupid and he’s better than the rest of us
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"
'No meaning or control' sums up my feelings on life during the past year. My business upturned overnight. My entire way of life changed. After a dicey few weeks I managed to shake the OCD handwashing and just about start coping again.
I have tonight - for the first time in over a year - picked up an LRB and read it, relaxed, not thinking about how things might get worse. Because things can only get better from here on in...
Now here’s a weird thing.
I stopped reading the LRB precisely in March 2020. And I also, have just picked it up again.
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!!!
Quite obviously, I deviate from my Church's advice on gambling. Hence my presence on this site!
"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.
Am too dumb and ignorant to read though all the stats & stuff, not my bag dude.
But you being snarky and dismissive (akin to blase) does NOT persuade me you know what you're talking about.
You really don't understand the point I just made? Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.
You should shut up. Really.
Does anyone else understand his point? Beside showing us all his ass that is?
Well it started with misrepresenting another poster. He basically comes on here tells us we are all stupid and he’s better than the rest of us
I don't recall him doing that before, did I miss it OR is this exceptional?
As Winston Churchill once said, every dog deserves at least one bite.
Though he (Winston not Chris) WAS an animal lover - was once photographed with a bird perched on his head!
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!!!
Quite obviously, I deviate from my Church's advice on gambling. Hence my presence on this site!
Somehow I failed to put two & two together - which is why I do NOT 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.
Am too dumb and ignorant to read though all the stats & stuff, not my bag dude.
But you being snarky and dismissive (akin to blase) does NOT persuade me you know what you're talking about.
You really don't understand the point I just made? Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.
You should shut up. Really.
Does anyone else understand his point? Beside showing us all his ass that is?
Well it started with misrepresenting another poster. He basically comes on here tells us we are all stupid and he’s better than the rest of us
I don't recall him doing that before, did I miss it OR is this exceptional?
As Winston Churchill once said, every dog deserves at least one bite.
Though he (Winston not Chris) WAS an animal lover - was once photographed with a bird perched on his head!
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"
'No meaning or control' sums up my feelings on life during the past year. My business upturned overnight. My entire way of life changed. After a dicey few weeks I managed to shake the OCD handwashing and just about start coping again.
I have tonight - for the first time in over a year - picked up an LRB and read it, relaxed, not thinking about how things might get worse. Because things can only get better from here on in...
Now here’s a weird thing.
I stopped reading the LRB precisely in March 2020. And I also, have just picked it up again.
And I can’t explain why.
Spooky. But I think I can.
Honestly couldn't cope with the beautifully crafted literary negativity of it, on top of the world going to actual shit all around. Now the world (or at least our part of it) is healing, I can cope with it again.
2) Any thoughts on Airdrie and Shotts? Surely there must be SOME interest? I think SNP, but not by loads - 2000 or so. Labour in with the faintest of chances if there's sufficient unionist tactical voting.
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.
That is the problem with doing numerical analysis based on percentages and rates, rather than in terms of real numbers.
Population 66.8 million Non-adults 14.2 million Adults 52.6 million
If we get to 90% of the adult population having 95% protection, that means 7.6 million adults and 14.2 million kids i.e. 21.8 million people in the UK do not have protection from the vaccine. A third of the unvaccinated currently have naturally acquired antibodies, so presumably immunity from severe disease.
Assuming that current vaccines are effective against new variants (I believe they will be), even once 90% of all adults are vaccinated, we have a pool of something over 14 million (mostly kids) in which the virus can play.
Put differently, that puts the population immunity level at 79%. That is herd immunity provided R0 is below 5 (Foxy's caveats about community level operation of herd immunity acknowledged)
The original Wuhan strain R was ~2.6; Kent was a 50% increase, to 3.9. If India is indeed a further 60% increase on the Kent strain, that would put its R at 6.24 (but only 4.2 if the increase is measured from the Wuhan strain).
You can see why it is of concern and why more data is needed. But you can also see that the ceiling of its potential impact is very much lower than it was in March last year.
And it also shows the importance of getting the vaccines cleared for kids.
"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.
Hang on. That's not exactly what it said:
Firstly, there was protection against mild- to moderate-, it just wasn't very much (c. 10%). Secondly, we now know that AZ efficacy builds substantially over the twelve weeks between first and second dose, and as the trial was only over a relatively short period (June to November), this means there will not have been time for immunity to build in many of the participants, Thirdly, the trial involved people "received at least one dose of placebo or vaccine", which (given the short period the trial was over) meant that we're including a whole bunch of people who only got one dose. Fourthly, because of the small number of participants and the young average age of people in the study (30), there weren't actually any hospitalisation events.
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"
'No meaning or control' sums up my feelings on life during the past year. My business upturned overnight. My entire way of life changed. After a dicey few weeks I managed to shake the OCD handwashing and just about start coping again.
I have tonight - for the first time in over a year - picked up an LRB and read it, relaxed, not thinking about how things might get worse. Because things can only get better from here on in...
"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.
Am too dumb and ignorant to read though all the stats & stuff, not my bag dude.
But you being snarky and dismissive (akin to blase) does NOT persuade me you know what you're talking about.
You really don't understand the point I just made? Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.
You should shut up. Really.
Does anyone else understand his point? Beside showing us all his ass that is?
Well it started with misrepresenting another poster. He basically comes on here tells us we are all stupid and he’s better than the rest of us
I don't recall him doing that before, did I miss it OR is this exceptional?
As Winston Churchill once said, every dog deserves at least one bite.
Though he (Winston not Chris) WAS an animal lover - was once photographed with a bird perched on his head!
2) Any thoughts on Airdrie and Shotts? Surely there must be SOME interest? I think SNP, but not by loads - 2000 or so. Labour in with the faintest of chances if there's sufficient unionist tactical voting.
I am slightly surprised too, I think everyone's overdosed on Scotland. But even if there is some TV we've been told ad nauseam on PB that it makes no difference if the SNP{ have 0 or 61 MPs, so one or two more or less is about as exciting as a wet Sunday in Hawick.
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"
'No meaning or control' sums up my feelings on life during the past year. My business upturned overnight. My entire way of life changed. After a dicey few weeks I managed to shake the OCD handwashing and just about start coping again.
I have tonight - for the first time in over a year - picked up an LRB and read it, relaxed, not thinking about how things might get worse. Because things can only get better from here on in...
Now here’s a weird thing.
I stopped reading the LRB precisely in March 2020. And I also, have just picked it up again.
And I can’t explain why.
Spooky. But I think I can.
Honestly couldn't cope with the beautifully crafted literary negativity of it, on top of the world going to actual shit all around. Now the world (or at least our part of it) is healing, I can cope with it again.
The LRB is very unpredictable. From insights you won't find anywhere else, to the most laborious arcana. Almost an academic journal equivalent of early 1980's Channel 4 or late 1980s BBC2, and it's its utter lack of commercialism that makes it so valuable.
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.
Some decisions made in my workplace today.
We won't be renewing our lease, we have 12 months to run. The office is too big for our purposes now.
We will make the office available for staff to use from September. But after we have made some changes removing many desks and overhauling the space as a collaborative working space.
We've surveyed staff throughout the pandemic. Over 90% see themselves in the office 1 or 2 days a week maximum. We will facilitate that and still make space available either in an office type place or co-working space for those who want to sit at a desk 5 days a week.
The mantra will be "Locate for your day". Hybrid working is here to stay.
There are a few organisations who are intending to go back to life pre-pandemic. But in my experience they are the ones who demanded their employees returned during the height of the virus as it was "essential". They will increasingly look anachronistic in my view.
Meanwhile, I am just about to renew our lease. Will soon have all my staff back from furlough. And hoping to find another member of staff to join us.
"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.
Am too dumb and ignorant to read though all the stats & stuff, not my bag dude.
But you being snarky and dismissive (akin to blase) does NOT persuade me you know what you're talking about.
You really don't understand the point I just made? Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.
You should shut up. Really.
Does anyone else understand his point? Beside showing us all his ass that is?
Well it started with misrepresenting another poster. He basically comes on here tells us we are all stupid and he’s better than the rest of us
I don't recall him doing that before, did I miss it OR is this exceptional?
As Winston Churchill once said, every dog deserves at least one bite.
Though he (Winston not Chris) WAS an animal lover - was once photographed with a bird perched on his head!
Not quite. For one thing, the pic was black & white. And Churchill clearly was not moving his head.
But he did have a look quite similar to the kitty's.
While on the Tom and Jerry front, I noticed this too. I think it refers to the water filter for the supply from the roof of the farmhouse (from what I recall of a trip to Oz some years ago). Ewwww.
2) Any thoughts on Airdrie and Shotts? Surely there must be SOME interest? I think SNP, but not by loads - 2000 or so. Labour in with the faintest of chances if there's sufficient unionist tactical voting.
1) very interesting.
2) great name for a comedy duo OR a US website selling over-priced whatever, with free shipping!
"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....
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
Perhaps you could give the numbers of the infected by the Indian variant which is giving you such thrills and the number of vaccinations during the same period.
Thrills?
Don't be a fucking dick
I HATE lockdown. I live alone. I HATE it. Believe me
I also love travel
But I can see numbers and I can see what they mean
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"
'No meaning or control' sums up my feelings on life during the past year. My business upturned overnight. My entire way of life changed. After a dicey few weeks I managed to shake the OCD handwashing and just about start coping again.
I have tonight - for the first time in over a year - picked up an LRB and read it, relaxed, not thinking about how things might get worse. Because things can only get better from here on in...
Now here’s a weird thing.
I stopped reading the LRB precisely in March 2020. And I also, have just picked it up again.
And I can’t explain why.
Spooky. But I think I can.
Honestly couldn't cope with the beautifully crafted literary negativity of it, on top of the world going to actual shit all around. Now the world (or at least our part of it) is healing, I can cope with it again.
The LRB is very unpredictable. From insights you won't find anywhere else, to the most laborious arcana. Almost an academic journal equivalent of early 1980s Channel 4 or BBC2.
That is a good comparison.
Honestly think it is the best writing available. I always used to love book reviews as a student. Best way to ease oneself into a new text I found.
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.
Wonderful stuff. Do you have an opinion on “Modern Life is Rubbish”?
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"
'No meaning or control' sums up my feelings on life during the past year. My business upturned overnight. My entire way of life changed. After a dicey few weeks I managed to shake the OCD handwashing and just about start coping again.
I have tonight - for the first time in over a year - picked up an LRB and read it, relaxed, not thinking about how things might get worse. Because things can only get better from here on in...
Now here’s a weird thing.
I stopped reading the LRB precisely in March 2020. And I also, have just picked it up again.
And I can’t explain why.
Spooky. But I think I can.
Honestly couldn't cope with the beautifully crafted literary negativity of it, on top of the world going to actual shit all around. Now the world (or at least our part of it) is healing, I can cope with it again.
The LRB is very unpredictable. From insights you won't find anywhere else, to the most laborious arcana. Almost an academic journal equivalent of early 1980's Channel 4 or late 1980s BBC2, and it's its utter lack of commercialism that makes it so valuable.
It’s also...not woke. I mean it is v liberal left of course, and totally up to date on matters intersectional, but editorially it does not interfere with a policy of choosing good writing.
Having said that, they were criticised for mostly publishing old white men by some ranting academics, and they cravenly agreed to take diversity training.
"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.
Hang on. That's not exactly what it said:
Firstly, there was protection against mild- to moderate-, it just wasn't very much (c. 10%). Secondly, we now know that AZ efficacy builds substantially over the twelve weeks between first and second dose, and as the trial was only over a relatively short period (June to November), this means there will not have been time for immunity to build in many of the participants, Thirdly, the trial involved people "received at least one dose of placebo or vaccine", which (given the short period the trial was over) meant that we're including a whole bunch of people who only got one dose. Fourthly, because of the small number of participants and the young average age of people in the study (30), there weren't actually any hospitalisation events.
Indeed, that whole study was known to be problematic from the start.
"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.
Why not post a link? If you are referring to the one I think you are referring to then that will tell me all I need to know
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.
Wonderful stuff. Do you have an opinion on “Modern Life is Rubbish”?
Of course I do! MLIR is to Parklife as HnH is to Different Class. It doesn't contain quite the same shouty big singalong hits. But it's a more interesting album, and actually slightly more uplifting. For tomorrow is massive sigh of exasperation and disappointment, but is curiously satisfying to listen to, and recognisable: the hangover after the night that actually wasn't good enough to justify it.
Parklife is good too, of course. No denying that. But quite a lot of surprisingly depressing tracks which get forgotten among the cheery singalong singles. (Park life, the single, might be superficially throwaway, but is actually a work of genius, and who else at the time would have had the sheer nerve to write a song so superficially banal and the confidence to present it as a manifesto? Indeed, who would have thought to use Phil Daniels at all? I once saw Blur live on an occasion when they'd actually managed to bring Phil Daniels along. Absolutely joyous. Having brought him on for Park Life, they then felt they had to make use of him and had him sing/speak another, slightly darker song which I thought was absolutely fantastic but whose title I didn't catch and which I have never found since. Later I got off with a tiny and surprisingly enthusiastic girl from Reading, then lost the friend who I was staying with and ended up trying gamely to sleep on the street. All worked out ok in the end though. It was summer, though, it was fine.)
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"
'No meaning or control' sums up my feelings on life during the past year. My business upturned overnight. My entire way of life changed. After a dicey few weeks I managed to shake the OCD handwashing and just about start coping again.
I have tonight - for the first time in over a year - picked up an LRB and read it, relaxed, not thinking about how things might get worse. Because things can only get better from here on in...
"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.
Damn. I almost didn't comment on this thread and not just because work has kept me busy to an unreasonable hour.
Cyclefree once again holds our hypocrisy, arrogance and delusions to the fire and my toes are burning. I really, really struggle to have sympathy with IRA bastards who murdered so many of our people or their fellow travellers. I have an instinctive sympathy for soldiers doing their job for us under enormous stress having been trained within an inch of their lives to respond extremely and disproportionately violently to any threat. I remember my late father telling me that quite a number of officers in Germany resigned their commissions, so appalled were they that the Paras had been let loose on a British street. They should never have been there, that is not what they were trained for.
I want to make excuses but I can't. If this is indeed a country that respects justice and the rule of law as opposed to being hypocritical about it we must, absolutely must, be rigorous in investigating and punishing our men when they fall below the high standards that we claim to set ourselves. I hate it but she is right. We have let ourselves down badly in investigating our dirty war (and it was a war, even although we pretended otherwise). Justice delayed is justice denied and the delays here are egregious and wrong. Bugger.
"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.
Am too dumb and ignorant to read though all the stats & stuff, not my bag dude.
But you being snarky and dismissive (akin to blase) does NOT persuade me you know what you're talking about.
You really don't understand the point I just made? Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.
You should shut up. Really.
Does anyone else understand his point? Beside showing us all his ass that is?
Well it started with misrepresenting another poster. He basically comes on here tells us we are all stupid and he’s better than the rest of us
I don't recall him doing that before, did I miss it OR is this exceptional?
As Winston Churchill once said, every dog deserves at least one bite.
Though he (Winston not Chris) WAS an animal lover - was once photographed with a bird perched on his head!
It’s his standard MO the last few times I’ve seen him post
I was selected for the random home antibody testing, and have just completed my test having had the AZN two months back. No short term antibodies but the long term antibody line shows positive, if rather faint. I guess this means the vaccine worked!
Just did the same thing and showed no antibody at all, FWIW. First AZN dose two months ago, too.
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.
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.
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
Perhaps you could give the numbers of the infected by the Indian variant which is giving you such thrills and the number of vaccinations during the same period.
Thrills?
Don't be a fucking dick
I HATE lockdown. I live alone. I HATE it. Believe me
I also love travel
But I can see numbers and I can see what they mean
But you really love doing the doom stuff.
As someone once said "it gives me the horn".
And if you can see the numbers then give them.
How many infected with Indian variant and how many vaccinations during that period.
I'd have thought the bigger issue for Howard Beckett this morning is the £1.3m that he as Assistant Gen Sec of Unite and Len McCluskey have just spaffed away on legal fees losing the libel action with Anna Turley that they could have settled ages ago.
That and Unite misusing private information about a member.
Comments
That is precisely what Darwinian evolution is.
https://twitter.com/thetrashiesuk/status/1392932891055767552?s=21
I have tonight - for the first time in over a year - picked up an LRB and read it, relaxed, not thinking about how things might get worse. Because things can only get better from here on in...
and Black Grape – ‘It’s Great When You’re Straight… Yeah!’
Do you have an opinion on “Modern Life is Rubbish”?
We won't be renewing our lease, we have 12 months to run. The office is too big for our purposes now.
We will make the office available for staff to use from September. But after we have made some changes removing many desks and overhauling the space as a collaborative working space.
We've surveyed staff throughout the pandemic. Over 90% see themselves in the office 1 or 2 days a week maximum. We will facilitate that and still make space available either in an office type place or co-working space for those who want to sit at a desk 5 days a week.
The mantra will be "Locate for your day". Hybrid working is here to stay.
There are a few organisations who are intending to go back to life pre-pandemic. But in my experience they are the ones who demanded their employees returned during the height of the virus as it was "essential". They will increasingly look anachronistic in my view.
I stopped reading the LRB precisely in March 2020. And I also, have just picked it up again.
And I can’t explain why.
Enjoying this game. Hopefully its the last game without crowds.
As Winston Churchill once said, every dog deserves at least one bite.
Though he (Winston not Chris) WAS an animal lover - was once photographed with a bird perched on his head!
Or do epidemiology.
https://twitter.com/LucyThack/status/1386918894888099840
Honestly couldn't cope with the beautifully crafted literary negativity of it, on top of the world going to actual shit all around. Now the world (or at least our part of it) is healing, I can cope with it again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_towns_and_cities_in_England_by_historical_population
2) Any thoughts on Airdrie and Shotts? Surely there must be SOME interest? I think SNP, but not by loads - 2000 or so. Labour in with the faintest of chances if there's sufficient unionist tactical voting.
Bring it On - Gomez
Exile on Cold Harbour Lane is a sound like no other.
That is the problem with doing numerical analysis based on percentages and rates, rather than in terms of real numbers.
Population 66.8 million
Non-adults 14.2 million
Adults 52.6 million
If we get to 90% of the adult population having 95% protection, that means 7.6 million adults and 14.2 million kids i.e. 21.8 million people in the UK do not have protection from the vaccine. A third of the unvaccinated currently have naturally acquired antibodies, so presumably immunity from severe disease.
Assuming that current vaccines are effective against new variants (I believe they will be), even once 90% of all adults are vaccinated, we have a pool of something over 14 million (mostly kids) in which the virus can play.
Put differently, that puts the population immunity level at 79%. That is herd immunity provided R0 is below 5 (Foxy's caveats about community level operation of herd immunity acknowledged)
The original Wuhan strain R was ~2.6; Kent was a 50% increase, to 3.9. If India is indeed a further 60% increase on the Kent strain, that would put its R at 6.24 (but only 4.2 if the increase is measured from the Wuhan strain).
You can see why it is of concern and why more data is needed. But you can also see that the ceiling of its potential impact is very much lower than it was in March last year.
And it also shows the importance of getting the vaccines cleared for kids.
Firstly, there was protection against mild- to moderate-, it just wasn't very much (c. 10%).
Secondly, we now know that AZ efficacy builds substantially over the twelve weeks between first and second dose, and as the trial was only over a relatively short period (June to November), this means there will not have been time for immunity to build in many of the participants,
Thirdly, the trial involved people "received at least one dose of placebo or vaccine", which (given the short period the trial was over) meant that we're including a whole bunch of people who only got one dose.
Fourthly, because of the small number of participants and the young average age of people in the study (30), there weren't actually any hospitalisation events.
But he did have a look quite similar to the kitty's.
https://twitter.com/jcressw3/status/1391918623946514435
2) great name for a comedy duo OR a US website selling over-priced whatever, with free shipping!
Don't be a fucking dick
I HATE lockdown. I live alone. I HATE it. Believe me
I also love travel
But I can see numbers and I can see what they mean
Honestly think it is the best writing available. I always used to love book reviews as a student. Best way to ease oneself into a new text I found.
But Different Class was not the best album of the 1990s. It was - at best - third behind YouKnowWho's second and third albums.
Please don't make me ban you for breaking the rule.
I mean it is v liberal left of course, and totally up to date on matters intersectional, but editorially it does not interfere with a policy of choosing good writing.
Having said that, they were criticised for mostly publishing old white men by some ranting academics, and they cravenly agreed to take diversity training.
MLIR is to Parklife as HnH is to Different Class. It doesn't contain quite the same shouty big singalong hits. But it's a more interesting album, and actually slightly more uplifting. For tomorrow is massive sigh of exasperation and disappointment, but is curiously satisfying to listen to, and recognisable: the hangover after the night that actually wasn't good enough to justify it.
Parklife is good too, of course. No denying that. But quite a lot of surprisingly depressing tracks which get forgotten among the cheery singalong singles. (Park life, the single, might be superficially throwaway, but is actually a work of genius, and who else at the time would have had the sheer nerve to write a song so superficially banal and the confidence to present it as a manifesto? Indeed, who would have thought to use Phil Daniels at all? I once saw Blur live on an occasion when they'd actually managed to bring Phil Daniels along. Absolutely joyous. Having brought him on for Park Life, they then felt they had to make use of him and had him sing/speak another, slightly darker song which I thought was absolutely fantastic but whose title I didn't catch and which I have never found since. Later I got off with a tiny and surprisingly enthusiastic girl from Reading, then lost the friend who I was staying with and ended up trying gamely to sleep on the street. All worked out ok in the end though. It was summer, though, it was fine.)
Cyclefree once again holds our hypocrisy, arrogance and delusions to the fire and my toes are burning. I really, really struggle to have sympathy with IRA bastards who murdered so many of our people or their fellow travellers. I have an instinctive sympathy for soldiers doing their job for us under enormous stress having been trained within an inch of their lives to respond extremely and disproportionately violently to any threat. I remember my late father telling me that quite a number of officers in Germany resigned their commissions, so appalled were they that the Paras had been let loose on a British street. They should never have been there, that is not what they were trained for.
I want to make excuses but I can't. If this is indeed a country that respects justice and the rule of law as opposed to being hypocritical about it we must, absolutely must, be rigorous in investigating and punishing our men when they fall below the high standards that we claim to set ourselves. I hate it but she is right. We have let ourselves down badly in investigating our dirty war (and it was a war, even although we pretended otherwise). Justice delayed is justice denied and the delays here are egregious and wrong. Bugger.
First AZN dose two months ago, too.
As someone once said "it gives me the horn".
And if you can see the numbers then give them.
How many infected with Indian variant and how many vaccinations during that period.
That and Unite misusing private information about a member.
They could have got off with an apology.
https://news.sky.com/story/unite-leadership-candidate-howard-beckett-suspended-from-labour-after-saying-priti-patel-should-be-deported-12305814
Please don't tar me with that brush. This is one of the reasons I voted Remain and will never support Brexit.