Spare a thought for the Treasury tonight. Looking at the sea of red debt and thinking that SAGE are edging us towards another lockdown.
If the Treasury had paid attention to SAGE in Septmeber rather than dishonest Covid Denialist we'd be in a vastly better position now.
Actually, given its only really the vaccine rollout that's allowed unlocking, that's not true, unless lockdowns allow for faster vaccination by some means or other.
What sage should have been harder on is the need for border controls - we should be at zero people coming in except accompanied freight (and even that should be discouraged where possible) until this is under control globally.
A month ago, this pandemic was over in a UK context, but the government's utterly moronic obsession with not properly closing the borders appears to have put all this at serious risk. That is an error a thousand times more serious than whether or not we should have locked down a week or two earlier than we did.
On a personal level, it wouldn't particularly bother me if it was impossible to enter the UK from abroad without hotel quarantine for the rest of my life - I would trade that without hesitation over another month of lockdown, never mind the possibility of worse.
Interestingly, the Indian variant is here in the US too.
Do you know how much panicking there is on this side of the pond?
None. Zero. Nada.
Everything is opening up. Spring is here. It's joyous.
I would be a bit worried in those states that appear to think vaccinations is something every other state does.
Yes, that's a fair point.
Re the UK, it the key point (to me) is that the Indian variant does not seem to manage to evade vaccines in any meaningful way. As we're going to be doing increasing numbers of first vaccinations again, and as they are Pfizer and Moderna which confer protection pretty damn quickly, this is going to be a very short term problem.
So while the UK is right to be cautious about opening up its borders, we're getting increasingly close to the point where everybody can just relax.
It's a tabloid headline. The CDC just opined yesterday that none of the variants (Saffer, Indian, etc.) had any meaningful effect on efficacy.
Much more of an issue is that protection with the AZN vaccine takes time to build. (This was why the trial in South Africa was so misleading relative to what we now know.)
Essentially, your protection from Covid rises from about 20% in week two up to about 90% in week 12*. There will therefore be a lot of people who got their first vaccine shot 4, 5, or 6 weeks ago who are quite a bit protected... but nowhere near fully protected. I suspect some of these guys are the ones in hospital.
* The same is very much true of the J&J vaccine, but isn't really true of Moderna or Pfizer.
Do you think that Pfizer & Moderna will maintain their advantage as time marches on? Or will AZN show itself to be better in other ways, perhaps length of highly-effective protection after it kicks in fully?
You got all these “I predict unprecedented growth” smiles by Bank of England Chief, and salivating “biggest growth rate on record chases Covid blues away” headlines on newspapers, but surely in understandable and healthy balance of things, such growth should surge inflation?
Bust to boom with the electoral boob of pay freeze?
It’s only 4 months in, but Trump removing Chainey and the Inflation splurge already is already curtains for re-election of a Dem Pres I think.
They don't say that. The SAGE sub-com says "more than 50%" but they are waiting for further data to be really sure.
This is a tad ominous
It might be for the non-vaxxed.
For the non religious nutters / conspiracy obsessed it isn't.
After 14 months of a pandemic, you still don't understand how pandemics work. Impressive
Let me explain:
The anti-vaxxers are at far more risk than the vaccinated.
Christ
We are all at risk if the NHS crashes. We share it with the refuseniks
Worth running the numbers a bit on this, before panicking too hard.
70% of UK adults have antibodies, and that number is steadily rising. If we say that those with antibodies generally aren't hospitalised, that leaves 30% of the adult population to worry about (kids are kind of irrelevant, as very few get it badly enough to need hospitalisation.)
There are around 53 million adults in the UK.
So far around there have been around 5 million confirmed cases, so allowing for the lack of testing in the first wave probably 10-15% of the adult population have had the virus - without crashing the NHS.
The 30% of the adult population who remain without antibodies almost certainly skews very young compared to the age profile for those who were infected in the first two waves. If we said because of this, this group would see 50% of the hospitalisation rate of the first and second waves, and if the Indian variant infects every single one of that 30%, that's a similar number of hospitalisations to the 1st and 2nd waves.
That's the absolute worst case scenario, assuming we relax all the restrictions, and then the Indian variant goes through the entire un-jabed population - in reality we'll top out with herd immunity some way before this.
You got all these “I predict unprecedented growth” smiles by Bank of England Chief, and salivating “biggest growth rate on record chases Covid blues away” headlines on newspapers, but surely in understandable and healthy balance of things, such growth should surge inflation?
Bust to boom with the electoral boob of pay freeze?
It’s only 4 months in, but Trump removing Chainey and the Inflation splurge already is already curtains for re-election of a Dem Pres I think.
Interest rates are (as the mortgage butchers tell me every day via TV ads) "at historic lows".
And Janet Yellen is a lot better at financial prediction & regulation than Andrew Mellon EVER was.
And Trumpsky getting McCarthy to defenestrate Cheney is NOT a sign of Republican political health.
Sleaze inquiry into Boris's £15,000 Mustique holiday with Carrie finds him guilty of failing to reveal how freebie villa break was financed and it was worth double what he declared - but PM REFUSES to accept ruling
Her damning verdict was delivered privately to Mr Johnson months ago.
Worth reading through the Daily Mail report on Boris & Carrie's Amazing Vacation.
> Sign that UK is indeed a country where the rule of law still matters, that a government functionary unknown to almost everyone outside the Westminster Bubble, can compel the Prime Minister to stand and deliver.
> Odd (or normal routine?) that none of Boris Johnson's keepers bothered to keep tabs on who was financing the fun (don't need a Wharton School MBA to know answer likely NOT him) and/or if the whole business was at least within the letter of the law (ditto).
> A No. 10 spokes-hack said that "The PM transparently declared the benefit . . .";Miss Stone the parliamentary standards-keeper begs to differ; all I can say is, that if this is PM & his entourage's idea of transparency, wish I was the chief Downing Street window-washer, cause I could spend about 350 days a year on a tropic isle, and still get Christmas off for dinner with Aunt Ophelia in West Wokeshire.
Sleaze inquiry into Boris's £15,000 Mustique holiday with Carrie finds him guilty of failing to reveal how freebie villa break was financed and it was worth double what he declared - but PM REFUSES to accept ruling
Her damning verdict was delivered privately to Mr Johnson months ago.
Thought for a minute the PM was wearing a very funky pair of ugg boots in that pix. He's not.
But those shorts, with shirt tucked in, are a clear & present danger to anyone unfortunate enough to gaze upon them.
Seems to me that Carrie herself MUST have a lot to answer fo here.
Who wears a dress shirt with that kind of shorts while on holiday in the Caribbean?
Someone who has just finished a zoom call from their cabin.
Makes sense. BUT does not explain - or condone - those shorts and the harm they no doubt caused to innocent bystanders.
Though could be the reason for the PM's rather bemused, slightly hangdog look IF he'd been zooming with his accountant?
Historical note - Boris Johnson is clearly channeling his idol & model Sir Winston Churchill. Who also made a habit of holidaying on someone else's tab to the extent humanly possible - and then some. One of the last & most notable being Aristotle Onassis.
With benefits to his generous host both tangible and intangible. "Did I mention that the Prime Minister was just here for a fortnight? Such a great honor. And of course, only the very best is good enough for a leader of his high stature and standards. Etc. etc. etc."
Interestingly, the Indian variant is here in the US too.
Do you know how much panicking there is on this side of the pond?
None. Zero. Nada.
Everything is opening up. Spring is here. It's joyous.
I would be a bit worried in those states that appear to think vaccinations is something every other state does.
Yes, that's a fair point.
Re the UK, it the key point (to me) is that the Indian variant does not seem to manage to evade vaccines in any meaningful way. As we're going to be doing increasing numbers of first vaccinations again, and as they are Pfizer and Moderna which confer protection pretty damn quickly, this is going to be a very short term problem.
So while the UK is right to be cautious about opening up its borders, we're getting increasingly close to the point where everybody can just relax.
It's a tabloid headline. The CDC just opined yesterday that none of the variants (Saffer, Indian, etc.) had any meaningful effect on efficacy.
Much more of an issue is that protection with the AZN vaccine takes time to build. (This was why the trial in South Africa was so misleading relative to what we now know.)
Essentially, your protection from Covid rises from about 20% in week two up to about 90% in week 12*. There will therefore be a lot of people who got their first vaccine shot 4, 5, or 6 weeks ago who are quite a bit protected... but nowhere near fully protected. I suspect some of these guys are the ones in hospital.
* The same is very much true of the J&J vaccine, but isn't really true of Moderna or Pfizer.
Do you think that Pfizer & Moderna will maintain their advantage as time marches on? Or will AZN show itself to be better in other ways, perhaps length of highly-effective protection after it kicks in fully?
I think they will all offer close to 100% protection against severe illness, with the mRNA vaccines being slightly more effective at protecting against mild cases.
Daily Star front page Ruskies warn of impending World War 3 ..by twisting 4-year-old story from the Daily Star
When you think geo-politics, you think Daily Star, right? Well, it turns out you're on the same wavelength as Russian hardman Vladimir Putin. Full story: page 9 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-57124546
Matt Chorley @MattChorley I am genuinely perplexed. And have asked experts on the show about this all week.
90%+ of those at risk of illness/death have been vaccinated.
If they don’t think the new variant is resistant to the vaccine, what is the risk? Young healthy people get Covid for a week?
I've told you. Derr. There are 5m older people not wholly vaxxed. That's enough to cause big problems
It won't.
Yeah, my takeaway from earlier is that they’ll now massively surprise on the upside. This reserved the position a bit, but we don’t seem concerned.
Ultimately, we’ve had schools reopened for four weeks and there has been no surge in cases, and certainly no surge in hospitalisation and deaths.
Since notwithstanding the lies of the DfE they appear to have been one of the key factors, along with unis and foreign travel, in spreading the disease in the autumn that is a sign that we can be optimistic there isn’t a likelihood of meltdown if we reopen other venues.
If the Indian variant were to lead to vaccine escape, we would know by now. So I think that can be discounted.
Although open plan offices probably should be the last to reopen as they appear to be the highest risk environment.
And finally, we can definitely say some scientists are power crazed pillocks with bizarre mask fetishes. One thing this pandemic does show is the need to treat scientists and doctors just as sceptically as everyone else.
Agreed. Prepared to be quoted later and shown up as an idiot if I’m wrong, but it feels to me that by June we’ll have forgotten about this Indian variant, or indeed any variants.
I certainly will. There’ll be Test Cricket and a major football tournament on home soil, with most home nations involved.
One thing our esteemed scientific community have forgotten is that this is about balancing risks. The risk of Covid taking off, as against the risk of society breaking down if we lock down longer. The risk of variants arising from infections leading to vaccine escape, against the risk of major health problems occurring form keeping us all indoors all the time.
At the moment, all the indications are that the risks involved in easing lockdown are low. That’s not to say things couldn’t go wrong, but if 20% of the population are meeting daily in old unventilated buildings and not wearing masks (and they really are not, because again these scientists don’t understand teenagers) without the virus going mental, that’s a sign the risk of opening other venues where masks would be worn or where ventilation is likely to be better are minimal.
Unfortunately these people seem to be suffering from the burden of knowledge. They keep thinking of all the things that could go wrong and are paralysed with fear as a result. Therefore, they dare not accept good news. At the same time, in doing so they ignore that balance of other risks.
Masks in school are a good example. SAGE estimates they could cut transmission by 30%. Leaving aside the interesting de facto admission that everything the DfE said about transmission in schools in the autumn must have been a lie, the fact is that even if they do the cost - discomfort, confusion, trouble communicating (as a deaf teacher my life has been beyond impossible for the last two months) and the potential to cause nice anonymised mischief simply isn’t worth it. It makes returning to schools pretty well worthless for them. It’s no coincidence those people at the unions agitating to keep them haven’t taught for years. It is not a good balance of risk.
So I think another casualty of this pandemic will be SAGE.
It definitely needs reform.
Fraser Nelson was saying this morning that one of the issues is SAGE are supposed to collate/synthesis the scientific advice and then pass on up to a group what weighs up other issues and proportions things e.g. economics. There should even have been an actual other committee sitting above SAGE. That has just not happened in this crisis. SAGE has become "the science" and "the science must be followed".
The committee sitting above SAGE used to be Dominic Cummings.
I'm not sure that analysis is right and the problem is what is below SAGE in terms of how it relates to actual research scientists doing the actual research.
You got all these “I predict unprecedented growth” smiles by Bank of England Chief, and salivating “biggest growth rate on record chases Covid blues away” headlines on newspapers, but surely in understandable and healthy balance of things, such growth should surge inflation?
Bust to boom with the electoral boob of pay freeze?
It’s only 4 months in, but Trump removing Chainey and the Inflation splurge already is already curtains for re-election of a Dem Pres I think.
This is much more scary than the virus. Any significant jumps in interest rates will cause real issues with those who are highly susceptible. The western world is now addicted to very low interest rates. It will find it very difficult to wean itself off that addiction. I suspect governments, who have been borrowing essentially free money with gay abandon, may also find it a major issue to carry on with their spend, spend, spend policies.
Comments
What sage should have been harder on is the need for border controls - we should be at zero people coming in except accompanied freight (and even that should be discouraged where possible) until this is under control globally.
A month ago, this pandemic was over in a UK context, but the government's utterly moronic obsession with not properly closing the borders appears to have put all this at serious risk. That is an error a thousand times more serious than whether or not we should have locked down a week or two earlier than we did.
On a personal level, it wouldn't particularly bother me if it was impossible to enter the UK from abroad without hotel quarantine for the rest of my life - I would trade that without hesitation over another month of lockdown, never mind the possibility of worse.
Consumer prices jumped 4.2% in the 12 months through to April, up from 2.6% in March and marking the biggest increase since September 2008.
The report from the US Labor Department comes amid fears that rising consumer prices could push up interest rates."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57090421
Bust to boom with the electoral boob of pay freeze?
It’s only 4 months in, but Trump removing Chainey and the Inflation splurge already is already curtains for re-election of a Dem Pres I think.
70% of UK adults have antibodies, and that number is steadily rising. If we say that those with antibodies generally aren't hospitalised, that leaves 30% of the adult population to worry about (kids are kind of irrelevant, as very few get it badly enough to need hospitalisation.)
There are around 53 million adults in the UK.
So far around there have been around 5 million confirmed cases, so allowing for the lack of testing in the first wave probably 10-15% of the adult population have had the virus - without crashing the NHS.
The 30% of the adult population who remain without antibodies almost certainly skews very young compared to the age profile for those who were infected in the first two waves.
If we said because of this, this group would see 50% of the hospitalisation rate of the first and second waves, and if the Indian variant infects every single one of that 30%, that's a similar number of hospitalisations to the 1st and 2nd waves.
That's the absolute worst case scenario, assuming we relax all the restrictions, and then the Indian variant goes through the entire un-jabed population - in reality we'll top out with herd immunity some way before this.
And Janet Yellen is a lot better at financial prediction & regulation than Andrew Mellon EVER was.
And Trumpsky getting McCarthy to defenestrate Cheney is NOT a sign of Republican political health.
So rush for the lifeboats is a tad premature.
Raise a glass and stay briefly silent tonight in remembrance of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry
Brice Stratford"
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-final-toll/
> Sign that UK is indeed a country where the rule of law still matters, that a government functionary unknown to almost everyone outside the Westminster Bubble, can compel the Prime Minister to stand and deliver.
> Odd (or normal routine?) that none of Boris Johnson's keepers bothered to keep tabs on who was financing the fun (don't need a Wharton School MBA to know answer likely NOT him) and/or if the whole business was at least within the letter of the law (ditto).
> A No. 10 spokes-hack said that "The PM transparently declared the benefit . . .";Miss Stone the parliamentary standards-keeper begs to differ; all I can say is, that if this is PM & his entourage's idea of transparency, wish I was the chief Downing Street window-washer, cause I could spend about 350 days a year on a tropic isle, and still get Christmas off for dinner with Aunt Ophelia in West Wokeshire.
Though could be the reason for the PM's rather bemused, slightly hangdog look IF he'd been zooming with his accountant?
Historical note - Boris Johnson is clearly channeling his idol & model Sir Winston Churchill. Who also made a habit of holidaying on someone else's tab to the extent humanly possible - and then some. One of the last & most notable being Aristotle Onassis.
With benefits to his generous host both tangible and intangible. "Did I mention that the Prime Minister was just here for a fortnight? Such a great honor. And of course, only the very best is good enough for a leader of his high stature and standards. Etc. etc. etc."
Ruskies warn of impending World War 3 ..by twisting 4-year-old story from the Daily Star
When you think geo-politics, you think Daily Star, right?
Well, it turns out you're on the same wavelength as Russian hardman Vladimir Putin.
Full story: page 9
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-57124546
I'm not sure that analysis is right and the problem is what is below SAGE in terms of how it relates to actual research scientists doing the actual research.