I hadn't seen a proper image of the inflatable Corbyn stood next to at the demo. He should be expelled from the Labour Party immediately. Not suspended. Expelled. As should any other Labour MP or member who attended. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1394218824958947328/photo/1
We've got yet another day of the Corbynites claiming Jeremy was present, but not involved. Or didn't see the racist caricature. Or didn't know who else was going to be there. It just goes on. Again and again and again. Excuse after excuse after excuse. And it will just carry on.
Makes a change for Corbyn to be in trouble with Islamophobic rather than anti-Semitic issues....
Huh? Its supposed to be a Jew. Looks like it was lifted from the Running of the Jew scene in the first Borat movie.
No its supposed to be Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but they have put the antisemitic devil horn trope on him...its to do with him normalizing Abu Dhab relations with Israel.
Exactly. They have taken an arab and turned him into a devil jew. Its openly anti-semetic.
Do we cut any slack on antisemitism for Palestinians?
By which I mean, is anti-Jewish sentiment expressed by those at the sharp end of Israeli oppression as reprehensible as that expressed by people with no direct involvement?
No we don't. When "Palestinians" want to sweep Israel into the sea they are talking genocide. I am an open critic of the lunatic settlers and politicians like Netanyahu who provide them succour. But Israel has a right to peace and security, and that means not pandering to the lunatics who create a crisis by managing the PA so badly and blockading their part of Gaza and refusing to settle people from multi-generational refugee camps.
So if you heard antisemitic sentiment from a Palestinian who lost his family in an Israeli bomb attack, you'd find that as reprehensible as similar sentiment coming from (say) a hard left Corbynite with no connection to the conflict.
I hadn't seen a proper image of the inflatable Corbyn stood next to at the demo. He should be expelled from the Labour Party immediately. Not suspended. Expelled. As should any other Labour MP or member who attended. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1394218824958947328/photo/1
We've got yet another day of the Corbynites claiming Jeremy was present, but not involved. Or didn't see the racist caricature. Or didn't know who else was going to be there. It just goes on. Again and again and again. Excuse after excuse after excuse. And it will just carry on.
Makes a change for Corbyn to be in trouble with Islamophobic rather than anti-Semitic issues....
Huh? Its supposed to be a Jew. Looks like it was lifted from the Running of the Jew scene in the first Borat movie.
No its supposed to be Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but they have put the antisemitic devil horn trope on him...its to do with him normalizing Abu Dhab relations with Israel.
So the anti-Semites are now turning on Arab leaders, for trying hard to work out a lasting peace in the region?
The hardliners on both sides don't want peace, they want victory.
And thanks to the missile exchanges, people – in both Israel and Gaza – support the hardliners. In the second world war, we called it the Blitz Spirit. I'm not sure what the Hebrew or Arabic translation is but it is natural that when people are bombed, they want their side to hit back.
Which suits the hardliners. Job done.
There is surely a case that support for Hamas by British people is a dog whistle for anti-semitism.
I'd say it is in some cases. Just as enthusiastic backing here of the Israelis - and especially the uncompromising Israeli right - is a possible tell of white supremacy sympathies.
Well, Islamaphobic ones anyway.
Surely the fact is that neither side can claim total moral victory, and that is the point.
But how can you 'stand in solidarity' with the Palestinians when their own government is a dictatorship that is no longer representative of their views.
To be fair, I thought that VAR decision demonstrated everything that is wrong with VAR. Half a shoulder offside when measured by a computer a minute after it was given. Let the goal stand.
It was classic VAR. Anyone else remember "half a yard" and "strikers benefit of doubt"?
A couple of years ago football - uniquely amongst all sports at the top level - fundamentally refused to use technology to rule on controversial decisions. Nowadays, football - uniquely amongst all sports at the top level - generates more controversy than it solves by using technology. Why is football so uniquely pig-headed and incompetent? Why does football do things so badly?
Well yes, but that's all true in cricket and rugby too, and yet cricket and rugby manage to make use of technology to reduce the number of controversial decisions. Uniquely, football appears to have used technology to increase the number of controversial decisions.
Oh, come on. The Pubs are open! Let's not go for that old chestnut that is VAR to debate about. I stated on PB the other day that my opinion is that they shouldn't have changed the handball rule at the same time.
Yes, yes, I don't mean to be grumpy. I am agog at football's ability to prevaricate about rule changes and then implement them badly. But I don't really mind. I'm not actually that into football. Though I do enjoy talking about it. A good conversation about football is like a good game of cards; the outcome is unimportant, it is the process which is fun.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
20-50k deaths, with no restrictions, is (roughly) our normal experience with flu. I think there's a decent chance of the UK seeing more flu deaths than Covid deaths next winter, because the Covid vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccines and have a higher rate of uptake.
I see there’s a SAGE member in the Guardian saying he didn’t favour today’s opening up and “we might have to reverse if hospitalisation start to rise”. So basically he’s in favour of never opening up, since he’s not even prepared to open up to find out. And also “if hospitalisation rise”. Well rather depends on how seriously they rise and how I’ll people actually get you would think?
I hadn't seen a proper image of the inflatable Corbyn stood next to at the demo. He should be expelled from the Labour Party immediately. Not suspended. Expelled. As should any other Labour MP or member who attended. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1394218824958947328/photo/1
We've got yet another day of the Corbynites claiming Jeremy was present, but not involved. Or didn't see the racist caricature. Or didn't know who else was going to be there. It just goes on. Again and again and again. Excuse after excuse after excuse. And it will just carry on.
Makes a change for Corbyn to be in trouble with Islamophobic rather than anti-Semitic issues....
Huh? Its supposed to be a Jew. Looks like it was lifted from the Running of the Jew scene in the first Borat movie.
No its supposed to be Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but they have put the antisemitic devil horn trope on him...its to do with him normalizing Abu Dhab relations with Israel.
Exactly. They have taken an arab and turned him into a devil jew. Its openly anti-semetic.
Do we cut any slack on antisemitism for Palestinians?
By which I mean, is anti-Jewish sentiment expressed by those at the sharp end of Israeli oppression as reprehensible as that expressed by people with no direct involvement?
No we don't. When "Palestinians" want to sweep Israel into the sea they are talking genocide. I am an open critic of the lunatic settlers and politicians like Netanyahu who provide them succour. But Israel has a right to peace and security, and that means not pandering to the lunatics who create a crisis by managing the PA so badly and blockading their part of Gaza and refusing to settle people from multi-generational refugee camps.
So if you heard antisemitic sentiment from a Palestinian who lost his family in an Israeli bomb attack, you'd find that as reprehensible as similar sentiment coming from (say) a hard left Corbynite with no connection to the conflict.
Are you sure?
Would you find islamophobic or anti Irish (during the troubles) statements from someone who lost a loved one in a terrorist attack in the UK less reprehensible?
I see there’s a SAGE member in the Guardian saying he didn’t favour today’s opening up and “we might have to reverse if hospitalisation start to rise”. So basically he’s in favour of never opening up, since he’s not even prepared to open up to find out. And also “if hospitalisation rise”. Well rather depends on how seriously they rise and how I’ll people actually get you would think?
There's this odd sort of mission creep with this that no one should die of COVID but it's fine if they die of anything else. Excess deaths in the UK are still running at a weekly negative. Some of people who died of COVID over the last year were in their last few months, I'm not sure it made a huge difference whether they died of COVID, a heart attack, cancer or the flu. Marking COVID out as some kind of special disease that we're not allowed to ever get or die from needs to be stopped - we have vaccines.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
20-50k deaths, with no restrictions, is our normal experience with flu. I think there's a decent chance of the UK seeing more flu deaths than Covid deaths next winter, because the Covid vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccines and have a higher rate of uptake.
I actually expect there to be a very high uptake of flu/Covid two-fers over coming winters. I will not be entirely surprised if Covid causes the expected flu deaths to plummet over the next few years, with a combination of far more vaccinations and a greater appreciation of prevention measures (including winter mask-wearing).
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
20-50k deaths, with no restrictions, is our normal experience with flu. I think there's a decent chance of the UK seeing more flu deaths than Covid deaths next winter, because the Covid vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccines and have a higher rate of uptake.
I think flu is a bit lower than that in a typical year, those are more the numbers for bad years. But yes I agree covid deaths are likely to be less than flu deaths, but even if they are not it is still worth getting back to normal and accepting that level of increased risk.
And flu deaths should be lower in future anyway with better hand washing, less public transport and more people open to a flu jab (possibly combined with a covid booster).
Glasgow going "fuck it" and just vaccinating everyone in the Southside.
Makes sense to me. 5 months back, risk was highly correlated with age and other medical factors. Now that has been addressed, risk is more highly correlated with geography.
This sort of reactive vaccination strategy only works where you have a vaccine which builds immunity very quickly though! It's a bit tokenistic with the AZ vaccine where you take several weeks to reach immunity, by which time the local mini-wave will be over. But presumably if we're doing the youngsters its all Pfizer/Modena here anyway.
True, but I wouldn't want the roll-out to slow down because we're prioritising people in these areas. After all, what makes us think that younger people in the areas with the worse uptake so far will be any more willing to get vaccinated?
I had this thought too as my fiancee isn't currently vaccinated.
But i) We'd have to live in Bolton ii) The risk to 18-37 in Bolton is considerably higher than Bassetlaw right now iii) The total amount of jabs as a proportion of the entire stock going to hotspot areas is very small, even if it's a large number for the area concerned.
I came to the conclusion surge vaccination was probably worth it.
Probably okay so long as Bolton doesn't become London and Birmingham.
Sadiq Khan lobbying the government to prioritise London.
Glasgow going "fuck it" and just vaccinating everyone in the Southside.
Makes sense to me. 5 months back, risk was highly correlated with age and other medical factors. Now that has been addressed, risk is more highly correlated with geography.
This sort of reactive vaccination strategy only works where you have a vaccine which builds immunity very quickly though! It's a bit tokenistic with the AZ vaccine where you take several weeks to reach immunity, by which time the local mini-wave will be over. But presumably if we're doing the youngsters its all Pfizer/Modena here anyway.
True, but I wouldn't want the roll-out to slow down because we're prioritising people in these areas. After all, what makes us think that younger people in the areas with the worse uptake so far will be any more willing to get vaccinated?
I had this thought too as my fiancee isn't currently vaccinated.
But i) We'd have to live in Bolton ii) The risk to 18-37 in Bolton is considerably higher than Bassetlaw right now iii) The total amount of jabs as a proportion of the entire stock going to hotspot areas is very small, even if it's a large number for the area concerned.
I came to the conclusion surge vaccination was probably worth it.
Probably okay so long as Bolton doesn't become London and Birmingham.
Sadiq Khan lobbying the government to prioritise London.
This is why the decision to just keep on keeping on was made, if you introduce one set of special groups when all of the others crawl out of the woodwork.
Glasgow going "fuck it" and just vaccinating everyone in the Southside.
Makes sense to me. 5 months back, risk was highly correlated with age and other medical factors. Now that has been addressed, risk is more highly correlated with geography.
This sort of reactive vaccination strategy only works where you have a vaccine which builds immunity very quickly though! It's a bit tokenistic with the AZ vaccine where you take several weeks to reach immunity, by which time the local mini-wave will be over. But presumably if we're doing the youngsters its all Pfizer/Modena here anyway.
True, but I wouldn't want the roll-out to slow down because we're prioritising people in these areas. After all, what makes us think that younger people in the areas with the worse uptake so far will be any more willing to get vaccinated?
I had this thought too as my fiancee isn't currently vaccinated.
But i) We'd have to live in Bolton ii) The risk to 18-37 in Bolton is considerably higher than Bassetlaw right now iii) The total amount of jabs as a proportion of the entire stock going to hotspot areas is very small, even if it's a large number for the area concerned.
I came to the conclusion surge vaccination was probably worth it.
Probably okay so long as Bolton doesn't become London and Birmingham.
Sadiq Khan lobbying the government to prioritise London.
Yep. He can fuck right off. And then when he has finished fucking right off, he can fuck off a bit further, then repeat the measure until there is nowhere further for him to fuck off to.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
20-50k deaths, with no restrictions, is our normal experience with flu. I think there's a decent chance of the UK seeing more flu deaths than Covid deaths next winter, because the Covid vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccines and have a higher rate of uptake.
I actually expect there to be a very high uptake of flu/Covid two-fers over coming winters. I will not be entirely surprised if Covid causes the expected flu deaths to plummet over the next few years, with a combination of far more vaccinations and a greater appreciation of prevention measures (including winter mask-wearing).
AZ could brand their combined Flu/Covid jab FCUK. Macron might not be happy about the french connection.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
20-50k deaths, with no restrictions, is our normal experience with flu. I think there's a decent chance of the UK seeing more flu deaths than Covid deaths next winter, because the Covid vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccines and have a higher rate of uptake.
I actually expect there to be a very high uptake of flu/Covid two-fers over coming winters. I will not be entirely surprised if Covid causes the expected flu deaths to plummet over the next few years, with a combination of far more vaccinations and a greater appreciation of prevention measures (including winter mask-wearing).
We should be able to get much better flu vaccines from the mRNA stuff. And it would make sense, just for the NHS loading issue, to push flu jabs out to as much of the population as we can.
First off, if the police are chasing a baddie and they shoot him, they take him to hospital. I doubt the baddie would be able to get an insurance policy protecting him against being shot by plod.
Secondly, yes, if unvaccinated people get the pox (how?) then there is a risk of spreading it to those people who have been vaccinated but are in the 5%-odd where the vaccine is ineffective. That is a bad situation.
Thirdly, while also accepting that, for an unvaccinated society, COVID is nothing like the flu, we are in a vaccinated society and hence once you consider the vaccinated, the likely effect on the NHS will be small, specialist equipment or not.
And finally, we are talking about fundamental freedoms here - the right to refuse the government putting a foreign substance into our bodies for whatever reason.
That is the principle that imo is worth the use of some extra ventilators.
Bollocks to that. Our lives and those of our kids have been turned upside down in the most extraordinary breach of fundamental freedoms it’s possible to conceive. Sending an armed vaccination squad round to your house would pale by comparison, and it would be doing you a favour as well as the rest of us.
I tend to be hardline on this sort of thing, but even i don't favour compulsory vaccination - by all means make life awkward for people who don't have a vaccine card (I don't get at all why this is controversial if it's literally all it's for), but don't actually inject at gunpoint as you suggest. There's plenty still to do in vaccinating all the willing, including children.
I don't think the Government could do this even if it wanted to.
It'd very probably be in contravention of the HRA and, if there were any complications, it would open itself up to lawsuits.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
20-50k deaths, with no restrictions, is our normal experience with flu. I think there's a decent chance of the UK seeing more flu deaths than Covid deaths next winter, because the Covid vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccines and have a higher rate of uptake.
I actually expect there to be a very high uptake of flu/Covid two-fers over coming winters. I will not be entirely surprised if Covid causes the expected flu deaths to plummet over the next few years, with a combination of far more vaccinations and a greater appreciation of prevention measures (including winter mask-wearing).
We should be able to get much better flu vaccines from the mRNA stuff. And it would make sense, just for the NHS loading issue, to push flu jabs out to as much of the population as we can.
Only really pushed for over 50s. Wonder if that'll drop in the future.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
20-50k deaths, with no restrictions, is our normal experience with flu. I think there's a decent chance of the UK seeing more flu deaths than Covid deaths next winter, because the Covid vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccines and have a higher rate of uptake.
I actually expect there to be a very high uptake of flu/Covid two-fers over coming winters. I will not be entirely surprised if Covid causes the expected flu deaths to plummet over the next few years, with a combination of far more vaccinations and a greater appreciation of prevention measures (including winter mask-wearing).
No to mask wearing for normal life (which includes flu).
Glasgow going "fuck it" and just vaccinating everyone in the Southside.
Makes sense to me. 5 months back, risk was highly correlated with age and other medical factors. Now that has been addressed, risk is more highly correlated with geography.
This sort of reactive vaccination strategy only works where you have a vaccine which builds immunity very quickly though! It's a bit tokenistic with the AZ vaccine where you take several weeks to reach immunity, by which time the local mini-wave will be over. But presumably if we're doing the youngsters its all Pfizer/Modena here anyway.
True, but I wouldn't want the roll-out to slow down because we're prioritising people in these areas. After all, what makes us think that younger people in the areas with the worse uptake so far will be any more willing to get vaccinated?
I had this thought too as my fiancee isn't currently vaccinated.
But i) We'd have to live in Bolton ii) The risk to 18-37 in Bolton is considerably higher than Bassetlaw right now iii) The total amount of jabs as a proportion of the entire stock going to hotspot areas is very small, even if it's a large number for the area concerned.
I came to the conclusion surge vaccination was probably worth it.
Probably okay so long as Bolton doesn't become London and Birmingham.
Sadiq Khan lobbying the government to prioritise London.
This is why the decision to just keep on keeping on was made, if you introduce one set of special groups when all of the others crawl out of the woodwork.
He's doing it for the rejection, so he can then mine the grievance.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
20-50k deaths, with no restrictions, is our normal experience with flu. I think there's a decent chance of the UK seeing more flu deaths than Covid deaths next winter, because the Covid vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccines and have a higher rate of uptake.
I actually expect there to be a very high uptake of flu/Covid two-fers over coming winters. I will not be entirely surprised if Covid causes the expected flu deaths to plummet over the next few years, with a combination of far more vaccinations and a greater appreciation of prevention measures (including winter mask-wearing).
We should be able to get much better flu vaccines from the mRNA stuff. And it would make sense, just for the NHS loading issue, to push flu jabs out to as much of the population as we can.
Only really pushed for over 50s. Wonder if that'll drop in the future.
Many companies pay for a flu shot for employees - the reduction in sickness trivially pays for it.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
20-50k deaths, with no restrictions, is our normal experience with flu. I think there's a decent chance of the UK seeing more flu deaths than Covid deaths next winter, because the Covid vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccines and have a higher rate of uptake.
I actually expect there to be a very high uptake of flu/Covid two-fers over coming winters. I will not be entirely surprised if Covid causes the expected flu deaths to plummet over the next few years, with a combination of far more vaccinations and a greater appreciation of prevention measures (including winter mask-wearing).
No to mask wearing for normal life (which includes flu).
Ill probably wear a mask on winter peak hour tube journeys. Cant think of any other settings where I would, but think that does make sense. It should not be mandatory.
I’m seeing a lot of white people in the queue in Bolton.
By 'a lot of white people' do you mean 'very few Asians'? A lot of white people in Bolton would be unsurprising. Very few Asians would be surprising (though it depends on the location of course - very few Asians in Horwich or Egerton wouldn't be that surprising.) Anyway, it doesn't matter - if we get more jabs in arms in Bolton, we reduce the spread. Doesn't matter, yet, whose arms.
So on PB we have broad consensus that your toothbrush doesn't need wifi connectivity if people refuse to be vaccinated with a vaccine that was created within the last 12 months they should be excluded from our health service.
Forget whether or not the NHS is in need of "protection". Just on principle because they don't want a government mandated injection they should be shunned and DNRd.
Absofuckinglutely pathetic.
Oh and we have also learned that prosumer is a thing.
I've got no problem if we can all get on with our lives. The punishment becomes rightly due if they are preventing that through their choice. My life has been locked down for zero personal benefit all year so I don't have much sympathy for the scruples of people trying to extend that.
The government is trying to extend that, not the people who have made a choice not to get vaccinated. As I said earlier, this is where we have ended up after a year of such restrictions. No one seems to question the foundation of what people are accepting lock stock and barrel.
We are talking (ok who knows how seriously) about restricting access to healthcare because people have chosen not to be vaccinated. But there is no risk to the NHS and the danger for them is no different, relatively (it is probably a lot smaller), to a mountaineer, base jumper, jump jockey or motorcyclist.
It is unbelievable. The government has brought us to a place where we don't recognise peoples' sovereignty over their own bodies. By all means let pubs, clubs, whatever exclude those who have not been vaccinated. Fine, the market will work out what happens next. And not getting vaccinated is taking a free rider. But the government? Dear god.
No, the risk is that by having COVID patients it causes a huge drain on hospital resources becuase it requires loads of special measures to contain within specific parts of the hospital and needs special staffing rotations who then can't work on other wards without taking loads of otherwise unnecessary precautions.
Think of it like an insurance policy. No insurance company would cover the cost of treatment for COVID if the patient had refused the chance to not get it in the first place. The NHS won't obviously charge people but it can deprioritise them for treatment if it is not feasible to staff a COVID ward for just one person who has refused the vaccine. That one person will cause a denial of treatment to 3 others who have other issues and have been waiting for the hospitals to go back to normal for a year or longer.
You're giving them a responsibility free way out, I don't think we should. This is the best way to not fuck up everyone else's lives with idiotic vaccine passports and other such things that would be necessary to stop them from going into pubs and bars. You're solution makes their failure to get the vaccine our responsibility to carry a vaccine passport and have our movements tracked by the state. No thanks.
First off, if the police are chasing a baddie and they shoot him, they take him to hospital. I doubt the baddie would be able to get an insurance policy protecting him against being shot by plod.
Secondly, yes, if unvaccinated people get the pox (how?) then there is a risk of spreading it to those people who have been vaccinated but are in the 5%-odd where the vaccine is ineffective. That is a bad situation.
Thirdly, while also accepting that, for an unvaccinated society, COVID is nothing like the flu, we are in a vaccinated society and hence once you consider the vaccinated, the likely effect on the NHS will be small, specialist equipment or not.
And finally, we are talking about fundamental freedoms here - the right to refuse the government putting a foreign substance into our bodies for whatever reason.
That is the principle that imo is worth the use of some extra ventilators.
Actions need to have consequences. I may have the right to be a fool, but am I entitled to expect the government to shield me from the consequences of my folly?
Yes. If you are a fool by trying to scale the Shard and fall off low enough down to hurt but not kill yourself you will be taken to hospital.
Are we really having this conversation?
The difference is that an anti-vaxxer puts everyone else in the hospital at risk when they enter and it requires a disproportionate amount of resources to treat them.
The NHS is resource limited, it has got a waiting list of 6m people for various treatments last time it was counted. We can't create NHS resources from nothing, there is a 2-5 year lead time to do so.
The choice these people have made is that getting the vaccine is worse than getting COVID. Fine, that's up to them. If they then get COVID they need to live with that decision not pass the burden onto the rest of us who have been responsible and done the right thing. It's the same principle as the government not protecting dividend income for directors who used them to avoid paying NI. They made the decision, these are the consequences.
Your reasoning is leading us down a very, very dangerous path.
There are people who cannot control their eating to the extent they are so morbidly obese that they need knee cartilage operations in their 20s.
To quote you, fine that's up to them. They need to live with that decision and not pass the burden on the rest of us who have been responsible and done the right thing.
If you want to freeze me out of the health service, fine, I will go private (which I half do anyway).
But I reserve the right to take my tax revenues with me.
Somebody eating 10,000 surplus calories a day is not a contagious condition. It will not result in MY being in hospital for morbid obesity.
First off, if the police are chasing a baddie and they shoot him, they take him to hospital. I doubt the baddie would be able to get an insurance policy protecting him against being shot by plod.
Secondly, yes, if unvaccinated people get the pox (how?) then there is a risk of spreading it to those people who have been vaccinated but are in the 5%-odd where the vaccine is ineffective. That is a bad situation.
Thirdly, while also accepting that, for an unvaccinated society, COVID is nothing like the flu, we are in a vaccinated society and hence once you consider the vaccinated, the likely effect on the NHS will be small, specialist equipment or not.
And finally, we are talking about fundamental freedoms here - the right to refuse the government putting a foreign substance into our bodies for whatever reason.
That is the principle that imo is worth the use of some extra ventilators.
Bollocks to that. Our lives and those of our kids have been turned upside down in the most extraordinary breach of fundamental freedoms it’s possible to conceive. Sending an armed vaccination squad round to your house would pale by comparison, and it would be doing you a favour as well as the rest of us.
I tend to be hardline on this sort of thing, but even i don't favour compulsory vaccination - by all means make life awkward for people who don't have a vaccine card (I don't get at all why this is controversial if it's literally all it's for), but don't actually inject at gunpoint as you suggest. There's plenty still to do in vaccinating all the willing, including children.
I don't think the Government could do this even if it wanted to.
It'd very probably be in contravention of the HRA and, if there were any complications, it would open itself up to lawsuits.
It probably won't be in contravention of the HRA, one of the top European Courts have already ruled compulsory vaccinations are legal with the ECHR.
I don't think it should be done, because people should have a choice - nor do I think it will be necessary.
I hadn't seen a proper image of the inflatable Corbyn stood next to at the demo. He should be expelled from the Labour Party immediately. Not suspended. Expelled. As should any other Labour MP or member who attended. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1394218824958947328/photo/1
We've got yet another day of the Corbynites claiming Jeremy was present, but not involved. Or didn't see the racist caricature. Or didn't know who else was going to be there. It just goes on. Again and again and again. Excuse after excuse after excuse. And it will just carry on.
Makes a change for Corbyn to be in trouble with Islamophobic rather than anti-Semitic issues....
Huh? Its supposed to be a Jew. Looks like it was lifted from the Running of the Jew scene in the first Borat movie.
No its supposed to be Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but they have put the antisemitic devil horn trope on him...its to do with him normalizing Abu Dhab relations with Israel.
Exactly. They have taken an arab and turned him into a devil jew. Its openly anti-semetic.
Do we cut any slack on antisemitism for Palestinians?
By which I mean, is anti-Jewish sentiment expressed by those at the sharp end of Israeli oppression as reprehensible as that expressed by people with no direct involvement?
That protest was in London, right? Not exactly the sharp end of Israeli oppression.
There will be plenty of people in London with a direct connection to the Arab Israeli conflict. Bound to be. But I wasn't really thinking about that. It's just a question which interests me. The concept of understandable racism. Or even rational racism. Can there be such a thing?
Yep, that is relevant. Islamophobia in response to Islamist terrorism.
Is it equivalent though? Israel is the Jewish state. Half of the world's Jews live there and many of those who don't have a strong emotional connection to it.
So if a Palestinian who has been the direct victim of Israeli oppression expresses antisemitic sentiment, is this as reprehensible as if (say) Ken Livingstone does?
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
20-50k deaths, with no restrictions, is our normal experience with flu. I think there's a decent chance of the UK seeing more flu deaths than Covid deaths next winter, because the Covid vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccines and have a higher rate of uptake.
I actually expect there to be a very high uptake of flu/Covid two-fers over coming winters. I will not be entirely surprised if Covid causes the expected flu deaths to plummet over the next few years, with a combination of far more vaccinations and a greater appreciation of prevention measures (including winter mask-wearing).
No to mask wearing for normal life (which includes flu).
Ill probably wear a mask on winter peak hour tube journeys. Cant think of any other settings where I would, but think that does make sense. It should not be mandatory.
Edit - possibly if going to the GP/hospital?
I don't think people should wear masks in any circumstances once normal life returns.
Glasgow going "fuck it" and just vaccinating everyone in the Southside.
Makes sense to me. 5 months back, risk was highly correlated with age and other medical factors. Now that has been addressed, risk is more highly correlated with geography.
This sort of reactive vaccination strategy only works where you have a vaccine which builds immunity very quickly though! It's a bit tokenistic with the AZ vaccine where you take several weeks to reach immunity, by which time the local mini-wave will be over. But presumably if we're doing the youngsters its all Pfizer/Modena here anyway.
True, but I wouldn't want the roll-out to slow down because we're prioritising people in these areas. After all, what makes us think that younger people in the areas with the worse uptake so far will be any more willing to get vaccinated?
I had this thought too as my fiancee isn't currently vaccinated.
But i) We'd have to live in Bolton ii) The risk to 18-37 in Bolton is considerably higher than Bassetlaw right now iii) The total amount of jabs as a proportion of the entire stock going to hotspot areas is very small, even if it's a large number for the area concerned.
I came to the conclusion surge vaccination was probably worth it.
Probably okay so long as Bolton doesn't become London and Birmingham.
Sadiq Khan lobbying the government to prioritise London.
This is why the decision to just keep on keeping on was made, if you introduce one set of special groups when all of the others crawl out of the woodwork.
He's doing it for the rejection, so he can then mine the grievance.
Pure Khan.
It would be more helpful to focus on reducing vaccine hesitancy in London.
I’m seeing a lot of white people in the queue in Bolton.
By 'a lot of white people' do you mean 'very few Asians'? A lot of white people in Bolton would be unsurprising. Very few Asians would be surprising (though it depends on the location of course - very few Asians in Horwich or Egerton wouldn't be that surprising.) Anyway, it doesn't matter - if we get more jabs in arms in Bolton, we reduce the spread. Doesn't matter, yet, whose arms.
It was completely unscientific and I have no idea of the true proportions.
But I disagree with your view about getting jabs into any arms in Bolton. Surely this being done in part to protect the older anti-vaxxers in multigenerational homes. Won’t do much good if their youngsters don’t get jabbed.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
20-50k deaths, with no restrictions, is our normal experience with flu. I think there's a decent chance of the UK seeing more flu deaths than Covid deaths next winter, because the Covid vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccines and have a higher rate of uptake.
I actually expect there to be a very high uptake of flu/Covid two-fers over coming winters. I will not be entirely surprised if Covid causes the expected flu deaths to plummet over the next few years, with a combination of far more vaccinations and a greater appreciation of prevention measures (including winter mask-wearing).
No to mask wearing for normal life (which includes flu).
Ill probably wear a mask on winter peak hour tube journeys. Cant think of any other settings where I would, but think that does make sense. It should not be mandatory.
Edit - possibly if going to the GP/hospital?
I don't think people should wear masks in any circumstances once normal life returns.
I dont think people should wear leopard print clothing in any circumstances. But I don't expect anyone to care about my preference about what other people freely choose to wear.
Glasgow going "fuck it" and just vaccinating everyone in the Southside.
Makes sense to me. 5 months back, risk was highly correlated with age and other medical factors. Now that has been addressed, risk is more highly correlated with geography.
This sort of reactive vaccination strategy only works where you have a vaccine which builds immunity very quickly though! It's a bit tokenistic with the AZ vaccine where you take several weeks to reach immunity, by which time the local mini-wave will be over. But presumably if we're doing the youngsters its all Pfizer/Modena here anyway.
True, but I wouldn't want the roll-out to slow down because we're prioritising people in these areas. After all, what makes us think that younger people in the areas with the worse uptake so far will be any more willing to get vaccinated?
I had this thought too as my fiancee isn't currently vaccinated.
But i) We'd have to live in Bolton ii) The risk to 18-37 in Bolton is considerably higher than Bassetlaw right now iii) The total amount of jabs as a proportion of the entire stock going to hotspot areas is very small, even if it's a large number for the area concerned.
I came to the conclusion surge vaccination was probably worth it.
Probably okay so long as Bolton doesn't become London and Birmingham.
Sadiq Khan lobbying the government to prioritise London.
This is why the decision to just keep on keeping on was made, if you introduce one set of special groups when all of the others crawl out of the woodwork.
He's doing it for the rejection, so he can then mine the grievance.
Pure Khan.
It would be more helpful to focus on reducing vaccine hesitancy in London.
And given the background of the people who are refusing Sadiq should have some role to play. Unfortunately he's far too useless to actually do anything about it.
First off, if the police are chasing a baddie and they shoot him, they take him to hospital. I doubt the baddie would be able to get an insurance policy protecting him against being shot by plod.
Secondly, yes, if unvaccinated people get the pox (how?) then there is a risk of spreading it to those people who have been vaccinated but are in the 5%-odd where the vaccine is ineffective. That is a bad situation.
Thirdly, while also accepting that, for an unvaccinated society, COVID is nothing like the flu, we are in a vaccinated society and hence once you consider the vaccinated, the likely effect on the NHS will be small, specialist equipment or not.
And finally, we are talking about fundamental freedoms here - the right to refuse the government putting a foreign substance into our bodies for whatever reason.
That is the principle that imo is worth the use of some extra ventilators.
Bollocks to that. Our lives and those of our kids have been turned upside down in the most extraordinary breach of fundamental freedoms it’s possible to conceive. Sending an armed vaccination squad round to your house would pale by comparison, and it would be doing you a favour as well as the rest of us.
I tend to be hardline on this sort of thing, but even i don't favour compulsory vaccination - by all means make life awkward for people who don't have a vaccine card (I don't get at all why this is controversial if it's literally all it's for), but don't actually inject at gunpoint as you suggest. There's plenty still to do in vaccinating all the willing, including children.
I don't think the Government could do this even if it wanted to.
It'd very probably be in contravention of the HRA and, if there were any complications, it would open itself up to lawsuits.
It probably won't be in contravention of the HRA, one of the top European Courts have already ruled compulsory vaccinations are legal with the ECHR.
I don't think it should be done, because people should have a choice - nor do I think it will be necessary.
Glasgow going "fuck it" and just vaccinating everyone in the Southside.
Makes sense to me. 5 months back, risk was highly correlated with age and other medical factors. Now that has been addressed, risk is more highly correlated with geography.
This sort of reactive vaccination strategy only works where you have a vaccine which builds immunity very quickly though! It's a bit tokenistic with the AZ vaccine where you take several weeks to reach immunity, by which time the local mini-wave will be over. But presumably if we're doing the youngsters its all Pfizer/Modena here anyway.
True, but I wouldn't want the roll-out to slow down because we're prioritising people in these areas. After all, what makes us think that younger people in the areas with the worse uptake so far will be any more willing to get vaccinated?
I had this thought too as my fiancee isn't currently vaccinated.
But i) We'd have to live in Bolton ii) The risk to 18-37 in Bolton is considerably higher than Bassetlaw right now iii) The total amount of jabs as a proportion of the entire stock going to hotspot areas is very small, even if it's a large number for the area concerned.
I came to the conclusion surge vaccination was probably worth it.
Probably okay so long as Bolton doesn't become London and Birmingham.
Sadiq Khan lobbying the government to prioritise London.
Yep. He can fuck right off. And then when he has finished fucking right off, he can fuck off a bit further, then repeat the measure until there is nowhere further for him to fuck off to.
I hadn't seen a proper image of the inflatable Corbyn stood next to at the demo. He should be expelled from the Labour Party immediately. Not suspended. Expelled. As should any other Labour MP or member who attended. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1394218824958947328/photo/1
We've got yet another day of the Corbynites claiming Jeremy was present, but not involved. Or didn't see the racist caricature. Or didn't know who else was going to be there. It just goes on. Again and again and again. Excuse after excuse after excuse. And it will just carry on.
Makes a change for Corbyn to be in trouble with Islamophobic rather than anti-Semitic issues....
Huh? Its supposed to be a Jew. Looks like it was lifted from the Running of the Jew scene in the first Borat movie.
No its supposed to be Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but they have put the antisemitic devil horn trope on him...its to do with him normalizing Abu Dhab relations with Israel.
Exactly. They have taken an arab and turned him into a devil jew. Its openly anti-semetic.
Do we cut any slack on antisemitism for Palestinians?
By which I mean, is anti-Jewish sentiment expressed by those at the sharp end of Israeli oppression as reprehensible as that expressed by people with no direct involvement?
Dehumanising opponents is more understandable in a war situation, but surely either it's wrong or it's not, and since it's wrong theres no such slack.
Ok. So racism is clear-cut and binary. Something or somebody either is or isn't racist. And if they are, it's wrong and equally wrong in all cases, regardless of context.
Glasgow going "fuck it" and just vaccinating everyone in the Southside.
Makes sense to me. 5 months back, risk was highly correlated with age and other medical factors. Now that has been addressed, risk is more highly correlated with geography.
This sort of reactive vaccination strategy only works where you have a vaccine which builds immunity very quickly though! It's a bit tokenistic with the AZ vaccine where you take several weeks to reach immunity, by which time the local mini-wave will be over. But presumably if we're doing the youngsters its all Pfizer/Modena here anyway.
True, but I wouldn't want the roll-out to slow down because we're prioritising people in these areas. After all, what makes us think that younger people in the areas with the worse uptake so far will be any more willing to get vaccinated?
I had this thought too as my fiancee isn't currently vaccinated.
But i) We'd have to live in Bolton ii) The risk to 18-37 in Bolton is considerably higher than Bassetlaw right now iii) The total amount of jabs as a proportion of the entire stock going to hotspot areas is very small, even if it's a large number for the area concerned.
I came to the conclusion surge vaccination was probably worth it.
Probably okay so long as Bolton doesn't become London and Birmingham.
Sadiq Khan lobbying the government to prioritise London.
This is why the decision to just keep on keeping on was made, if you introduce one set of special groups when all of the others crawl out of the woodwork.
He's doing it for the rejection, so he can then mine the grievance.
Pure Khan.
It would be more helpful to focus on reducing vaccine hesitancy in London.
And given the background of the people who are refusing Sadiq should have some role to play. Unfortunately he's far too useless to actually do anything about it.
By the sounds of it I think the Government should be blunt. Mine the data, pull up the locations and age groups where vaccine take up is low and suggest to Sadiq that he solves those issues first.
Mine is all running 2-4 weeks late due to a cool, frosty April. Including many of the birds.
Blueberries just getting the start of flowers on some varieties.
Most of our blue-tit chicks are coming along nicely, with good strong wings developing. There's one, possibly two, falling behind, but we expect at least four of the six to fledge. About another week to go, from the look of them. Which, from my diary is maybe a little later than usual.
First off, if the police are chasing a baddie and they shoot him, they take him to hospital. I doubt the baddie would be able to get an insurance policy protecting him against being shot by plod.
Secondly, yes, if unvaccinated people get the pox (how?) then there is a risk of spreading it to those people who have been vaccinated but are in the 5%-odd where the vaccine is ineffective. That is a bad situation.
Thirdly, while also accepting that, for an unvaccinated society, COVID is nothing like the flu, we are in a vaccinated society and hence once you consider the vaccinated, the likely effect on the NHS will be small, specialist equipment or not.
And finally, we are talking about fundamental freedoms here - the right to refuse the government putting a foreign substance into our bodies for whatever reason.
That is the principle that imo is worth the use of some extra ventilators.
Bollocks to that. Our lives and those of our kids have been turned upside down in the most extraordinary breach of fundamental freedoms it’s possible to conceive. Sending an armed vaccination squad round to your house would pale by comparison, and it would be doing you a favour as well as the rest of us.
I tend to be hardline on this sort of thing, but even i don't favour compulsory vaccination - by all means make life awkward for people who don't have a vaccine card (I don't get at all why this is controversial if it's literally all it's for), but don't actually inject at gunpoint as you suggest. There's plenty still to do in vaccinating all the willing, including children.
I don't think the Government could do this even if it wanted to.
It'd very probably be in contravention of the HRA and, if there were any complications, it would open itself up to lawsuits.
It probably won't be in contravention of the HRA, one of the top European Courts have already ruled compulsory vaccinations are legal with the ECHR.
I don't think it should be done, because people should have a choice - nor do I think it will be necessary.
Do you have a link to that judgement please?
European Court of Human Rights judgement last month on mandatory vaccinations for children. Not sure if other cases have been heard: PDF of judgement: https://t.co/hXrZAfQn5P?amp=1
Glasgow going "fuck it" and just vaccinating everyone in the Southside.
Makes sense to me. 5 months back, risk was highly correlated with age and other medical factors. Now that has been addressed, risk is more highly correlated with geography.
This sort of reactive vaccination strategy only works where you have a vaccine which builds immunity very quickly though! It's a bit tokenistic with the AZ vaccine where you take several weeks to reach immunity, by which time the local mini-wave will be over. But presumably if we're doing the youngsters its all Pfizer/Modena here anyway.
True, but I wouldn't want the roll-out to slow down because we're prioritising people in these areas. After all, what makes us think that younger people in the areas with the worse uptake so far will be any more willing to get vaccinated?
I had this thought too as my fiancee isn't currently vaccinated.
But i) We'd have to live in Bolton ii) The risk to 18-37 in Bolton is considerably higher than Bassetlaw right now iii) The total amount of jabs as a proportion of the entire stock going to hotspot areas is very small, even if it's a large number for the area concerned.
I came to the conclusion surge vaccination was probably worth it.
Probably okay so long as Bolton doesn't become London and Birmingham.
Sadiq Khan lobbying the government to prioritise London.
This is why the decision to just keep on keeping on was made, if you introduce one set of special groups when all of the others crawl out of the woodwork.
He's doing it for the rejection, so he can then mine the grievance.
Pure Khan.
It would be more helpful to focus on reducing vaccine hesitancy in London.
And given the background of the people who are refusing Sadiq should have some role to play. Unfortunately he's far too useless to actually do anything about it.
I dare say he's been jabbed already, but taking a cue from Mutti a couple of weeks back, or Elvis in 1954, he could have demonstrated doing so publicly.
I hadn't seen a proper image of the inflatable Corbyn stood next to at the demo. He should be expelled from the Labour Party immediately. Not suspended. Expelled. As should any other Labour MP or member who attended. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1394218824958947328/photo/1
We've got yet another day of the Corbynites claiming Jeremy was present, but not involved. Or didn't see the racist caricature. Or didn't know who else was going to be there. It just goes on. Again and again and again. Excuse after excuse after excuse. And it will just carry on.
Makes a change for Corbyn to be in trouble with Islamophobic rather than anti-Semitic issues....
Huh? Its supposed to be a Jew. Looks like it was lifted from the Running of the Jew scene in the first Borat movie.
No its supposed to be Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but they have put the antisemitic devil horn trope on him...its to do with him normalizing Abu Dhab relations with Israel.
Exactly. They have taken an arab and turned him into a devil jew. Its openly anti-semetic.
Do we cut any slack on antisemitism for Palestinians?
By which I mean, is anti-Jewish sentiment expressed by those at the sharp end of Israeli oppression as reprehensible as that expressed by people with no direct involvement?
That protest was in London, right? Not exactly the sharp end of Israeli oppression.
There will be plenty of people in London with a direct connection to the Arab Israeli conflict. Bound to be. But I wasn't really thinking about that. It's just a question which interests me. The concept of understandable racism. Or even rational racism. Can there be such a thing?
Yep, that is relevant. Islamophobia in response to Islamist terrorism.
Is it equivalent though? Israel is the Jewish state. Half of the world's Jews live there and many of those who don't have a strong emotional connection to it.
So if a Palestinian who has been the direct victim of Israeli oppression expresses antisemitic sentiment, is this as reprehensible as if (say) Ken Livingstone does?
Morning all, happy (nearly) freedom day. It's quite a milestone and imo ought to be celebrated. Whatever you can now do today you should make sure to do, whether you want to or not. I certainly will be. I can't wait to get out there and hug a granny. Don't care whose it is.
Awkward start at Waitrose though. Real foot in mouth job. I got my essentials as usual and (also as usual) asked for a packet of Marlboro Gold killer sticks to round it off. "Don't have any," said Ms Checkout. "They've been suspended."
"Oh," I said. "Strange. Is there some sort of health scare?"
She looked at me quizzically for a second then giggled, giving me the benefit of it being a dry-as-dust joke. Which it wasn't.
Possible the stupidest thing I've said since "Yes, alright," to "Do you want to do some phone canvassing for Jeremy?"
Pro-tip:
You can get L & B Blue for under a tenner
Under a tenner! Where? I'm guessing "underneath the arches"?
Literally nobody I know in Liverpool buys ciggies from the shop now. They all buy either counterfeit (more likely at the moment) or smuggled. This is what punitive taxation which becomes essentially becomes prohibition in all but name happens. It drives people into even more unhealthy options and into the arms of gangsters thus creating more gang culture in the streets.
BTW. I would love to hear some of your “call from Jeremy” stories. I imagine there were some interesting responses.
I have to disappoint you sadly. I got sick (honest guv) and had to cry off.
Mine is all running 2-4 weeks late due to a cool, frosty April. Including many of the birds.
Blueberries just getting the start of flowers on some varieties.
Weathers been just rubbish. No real spring apart from a few days here and there. I remember last year we had many many sunny days during lockdown 1.
May last year had the most sunshine hours of any month since records began. This shouldn't be possible. That record should belong to June, but May last year was so exceptionally, unusually, sunny that it holds that record.
Even if this spring had been average it would have been a bit of a downer in comparison, but it's not managed that.
There's some suggestion, towards the end of the month, that warm air and high pressure is on the way. But if the high pressure stays out to the Atlantic it just pulls more northerly winds down over us.
So on PB we have broad consensus that your toothbrush doesn't need wifi connectivity if people refuse to be vaccinated with a vaccine that was created within the last 12 months they should be excluded from our health service.
Forget whether or not the NHS is in need of "protection". Just on principle because they don't want a government mandated injection they should be shunned and DNRd.
Absofuckinglutely pathetic.
Oh and we have also learned that prosumer is a thing.
I've got no problem if we can all get on with our lives. The punishment becomes rightly due if they are preventing that through their choice. My life has been locked down for zero personal benefit all year so I don't have much sympathy for the scruples of people trying to extend that.
The government is trying to extend that, not the people who have made a choice not to get vaccinated. As I said earlier, this is where we have ended up after a year of such restrictions. No one seems to question the foundation of what people are accepting lock stock and barrel.
We are talking (ok who knows how seriously) about restricting access to healthcare because people have chosen not to be vaccinated. But there is no risk to the NHS and the danger for them is no different, relatively (it is probably a lot smaller), to a mountaineer, base jumper, jump jockey or motorcyclist.
It is unbelievable. The government has brought us to a place where we don't recognise peoples' sovereignty over their own bodies. By all means let pubs, clubs, whatever exclude those who have not been vaccinated. Fine, the market will work out what happens next. And not getting vaccinated is taking a free rider. But the government? Dear god.
No, the risk is that by having COVID patients it causes a huge drain on hospital resources becuase it requires loads of special measures to contain within specific parts of the hospital and needs special staffing rotations who then can't work on other wards without taking loads of otherwise unnecessary precautions.
Think of it like an insurance policy. No insurance company would cover the cost of treatment for COVID if the patient had refused the chance to not get it in the first place. The NHS won't obviously charge people but it can deprioritise them for treatment if it is not feasible to staff a COVID ward for just one person who has refused the vaccine. That one person will cause a denial of treatment to 3 others who have other issues and have been waiting for the hospitals to go back to normal for a year or longer.
You're giving them a responsibility free way out, I don't think we should. This is the best way to not fuck up everyone else's lives with idiotic vaccine passports and other such things that would be necessary to stop them from going into pubs and bars. You're solution makes their failure to get the vaccine our responsibility to carry a vaccine passport and have our movements tracked by the state. No thanks.
First off, if the police are chasing a baddie and they shoot him, they take him to hospital. I doubt the baddie would be able to get an insurance policy protecting him against being shot by plod.
Secondly, yes, if unvaccinated people get the pox (how?) then there is a risk of spreading it to those people who have been vaccinated but are in the 5%-odd where the vaccine is ineffective. That is a bad situation.
Thirdly, while also accepting that, for an unvaccinated society, COVID is nothing like the flu, we are in a vaccinated society and hence once you consider the vaccinated, the likely effect on the NHS will be small, specialist equipment or not.
And finally, we are talking about fundamental freedoms here - the right to refuse the government putting a foreign substance into our bodies for whatever reason.
That is the principle that imo is worth the use of some extra ventilators.
Actions need to have consequences. I may have the right to be a fool, but am I entitled to expect the government to shield me from the consequences of my folly?
Yes. If you are a fool by trying to scale the Shard and fall off low enough down to hurt but not kill yourself you will be taken to hospital.
Are we really having this conversation?
The difference is that an anti-vaxxer puts everyone else in the hospital at risk when they enter and it requires a disproportionate amount of resources to treat them.
The NHS is resource limited, it has got a waiting list of 6m people for various treatments last time it was counted. We can't create NHS resources from nothing, there is a 2-5 year lead time to do so.
The choice these people have made is that getting the vaccine is worse than getting COVID. Fine, that's up to them. If they then get COVID they need to live with that decision not pass the burden onto the rest of us who have been responsible and done the right thing. It's the same principle as the government not protecting dividend income for directors who used them to avoid paying NI. They made the decision, these are the consequences.
Your reasoning is leading us down a very, very dangerous path.
There are people who cannot control their eating to the extent they are so morbidly obese that they need knee cartilage operations in their 20s.
To quote you, fine that's up to them. They need to live with that decision and not pass the burden on the rest of us who have been responsible and done the right thing.
If you want to freeze me out of the health service, fine, I will go private (which I half do anyway).
But I reserve the right to take my tax revenues with me.
Somebody eating 10,000 surplus calories a day is not a contagious condition. It will not result in MY being in hospital for morbid obesity.
No but it might result in you not being treated promptly for a health threatening condition because resources are being devoted elsewhere.
Which, since you have been vaccinated yourself, is arguably a much bigger threat to you now that me not having had a vaccine.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
With no increased transmissibility, his model has long predicted negligible exit waves: ("This identifies a handful of remaining differences, none huge on its own, but collectively enough to ensure that my model predicts no significant exit wave (with under 1k deaths)").
With varying the transmissibility, he's identified that vaccinating teenagers and considering only baseline controls such as "TTI, guidance on masks in crowded spaces, and testing requirements for large events – as well as an assumption of continued cautious behaviour (e.g. WFH)", we can absorb up to 40% or even 60% increased transmissibility without a big exit wave:
And when you take into account the heterogeneity of the population (ie the differential spread of people with different immunity), it further impairs spread:
And summarised with "I’m not currently seeing a compelling case to change track on the roadmap right now. The next few weeks could be bumpy, with more local outbreaks as per Bolton / Blackburn, but I’m not expecting a major wave to start before we open up fully on June 21st."
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
20-50k deaths, with no restrictions, is our normal experience with flu. I think there's a decent chance of the UK seeing more flu deaths than Covid deaths next winter, because the Covid vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccines and have a higher rate of uptake.
I actually expect there to be a very high uptake of flu/Covid two-fers over coming winters. I will not be entirely surprised if Covid causes the expected flu deaths to plummet over the next few years, with a combination of far more vaccinations and a greater appreciation of prevention measures (including winter mask-wearing).
No to mask wearing for normal life (which includes flu).
Ill probably wear a mask on winter peak hour tube journeys. Cant think of any other settings where I would, but think that does make sense. It should not be mandatory.
Edit - possibly if going to the GP/hospital?
I don't think people should wear masks in any circumstances once normal life returns.
Bully for you, if people want to wear masks it has F all to do with you or what you think.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
20-50k deaths, with no restrictions, is our normal experience with flu. I think there's a decent chance of the UK seeing more flu deaths than Covid deaths next winter, because the Covid vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccines and have a higher rate of uptake.
I actually expect there to be a very high uptake of flu/Covid two-fers over coming winters. I will not be entirely surprised if Covid causes the expected flu deaths to plummet over the next few years, with a combination of far more vaccinations and a greater appreciation of prevention measures (including winter mask-wearing).
No to mask wearing for normal life (which includes flu).
Ill probably wear a mask on winter peak hour tube journeys. Cant think of any other settings where I would, but think that does make sense. It should not be mandatory.
Edit - possibly if going to the GP/hospital?
I don't think people should wear masks in any circumstances once normal life returns.
Bully for you, if people want to wear masks it has F all to do with you or what you think.
I agree, I suppose he will stop washing hands as well.....
Glasgow going "fuck it" and just vaccinating everyone in the Southside.
Makes sense to me. 5 months back, risk was highly correlated with age and other medical factors. Now that has been addressed, risk is more highly correlated with geography.
This sort of reactive vaccination strategy only works where you have a vaccine which builds immunity very quickly though! It's a bit tokenistic with the AZ vaccine where you take several weeks to reach immunity, by which time the local mini-wave will be over. But presumably if we're doing the youngsters its all Pfizer/Modena here anyway.
True, but I wouldn't want the roll-out to slow down because we're prioritising people in these areas. After all, what makes us think that younger people in the areas with the worse uptake so far will be any more willing to get vaccinated?
I had this thought too as my fiancee isn't currently vaccinated.
But i) We'd have to live in Bolton ii) The risk to 18-37 in Bolton is considerably higher than Bassetlaw right now iii) The total amount of jabs as a proportion of the entire stock going to hotspot areas is very small, even if it's a large number for the area concerned.
I came to the conclusion surge vaccination was probably worth it.
Probably okay so long as Bolton doesn't become London and Birmingham.
Sadiq Khan lobbying the government to prioritise London.
Yep. He can fuck right off. And then when he has finished fucking right off, he can fuck off a bit further, then repeat the measure until there is nowhere further for him to fuck off to.
It is only ten days since Sadiq was re-elected Mayor of London.
I hadn't seen a proper image of the inflatable Corbyn stood next to at the demo. He should be expelled from the Labour Party immediately. Not suspended. Expelled. As should any other Labour MP or member who attended. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1394218824958947328/photo/1
We've got yet another day of the Corbynites claiming Jeremy was present, but not involved. Or didn't see the racist caricature. Or didn't know who else was going to be there. It just goes on. Again and again and again. Excuse after excuse after excuse. And it will just carry on.
Makes a change for Corbyn to be in trouble with Islamophobic rather than anti-Semitic issues....
Huh? Its supposed to be a Jew. Looks like it was lifted from the Running of the Jew scene in the first Borat movie.
No its supposed to be Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but they have put the antisemitic devil horn trope on him...its to do with him normalizing Abu Dhab relations with Israel.
Exactly. They have taken an arab and turned him into a devil jew. Its openly anti-semetic.
Do we cut any slack on antisemitism for Palestinians?
By which I mean, is anti-Jewish sentiment expressed by those at the sharp end of Israeli oppression as reprehensible as that expressed by people with no direct involvement?
People who really cared for the people of Palestine, I mean REALLY cared, would be asking why there hasn't been an election in Gaza since 2006 and why Abbas recently cancelled the latest one indefinitely.
Perhaps the reason there are no elections is that Palestinians are sick and tired of being used as pawns in Hamas's terror game.
Yes, I'd expect you to be four square behind the hardline Israeli right on this one.
I'll file this under "anybody who REALLY cared about racism in America would be asking themselves why black on black crime is so high in Democrat controlled cities."
Glasgow going "fuck it" and just vaccinating everyone in the Southside.
Makes sense to me. 5 months back, risk was highly correlated with age and other medical factors. Now that has been addressed, risk is more highly correlated with geography.
This sort of reactive vaccination strategy only works where you have a vaccine which builds immunity very quickly though! It's a bit tokenistic with the AZ vaccine where you take several weeks to reach immunity, by which time the local mini-wave will be over. But presumably if we're doing the youngsters its all Pfizer/Modena here anyway.
True, but I wouldn't want the roll-out to slow down because we're prioritising people in these areas. After all, what makes us think that younger people in the areas with the worse uptake so far will be any more willing to get vaccinated?
I had this thought too as my fiancee isn't currently vaccinated.
But i) We'd have to live in Bolton ii) The risk to 18-37 in Bolton is considerably higher than Bassetlaw right now iii) The total amount of jabs as a proportion of the entire stock going to hotspot areas is very small, even if it's a large number for the area concerned.
I came to the conclusion surge vaccination was probably worth it.
Probably okay so long as Bolton doesn't become London and Birmingham.
Sadiq Khan lobbying the government to prioritise London.
This is why the decision to just keep on keeping on was made, if you introduce one set of special groups when all of the others crawl out of the woodwork.
He's doing it for the rejection, so he can then mine the grievance.
Pure Khan.
It would be more helpful to focus on reducing vaccine hesitancy in London.
And given the background of the people who are refusing Sadiq should have some role to play. Unfortunately he's far too useless to actually do anything about it.
I dare say he's been jabbed already, but taking a cue from Mutti a couple of weeks back, or Elvis in 1954, he could have demonstrated doing so publicly.
I hadn't seen a proper image of the inflatable Corbyn stood next to at the demo. He should be expelled from the Labour Party immediately. Not suspended. Expelled. As should any other Labour MP or member who attended. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1394218824958947328/photo/1
We've got yet another day of the Corbynites claiming Jeremy was present, but not involved. Or didn't see the racist caricature. Or didn't know who else was going to be there. It just goes on. Again and again and again. Excuse after excuse after excuse. And it will just carry on.
Makes a change for Corbyn to be in trouble with Islamophobic rather than anti-Semitic issues....
Huh? Its supposed to be a Jew. Looks like it was lifted from the Running of the Jew scene in the first Borat movie.
No its supposed to be Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but they have put the antisemitic devil horn trope on him...its to do with him normalizing Abu Dhab relations with Israel.
Exactly. They have taken an arab and turned him into a devil jew. Its openly anti-semetic.
Do we cut any slack on antisemitism for Palestinians?
By which I mean, is anti-Jewish sentiment expressed by those at the sharp end of Israeli oppression as reprehensible as that expressed by people with no direct involvement?
That protest was in London, right? Not exactly the sharp end of Israeli oppression.
There will be plenty of people in London with a direct connection to the Arab Israeli conflict. Bound to be. But I wasn't really thinking about that. It's just a question which interests me. The concept of understandable racism. Or even rational racism. Can there be such a thing?
Yep, that is relevant. Islamophobia in response to Islamist terrorism.
Is it equivalent though? Israel is the Jewish state. Half of the world's Jews live there and many of those who don't have a strong emotional connection to it.
So if a Palestinian who has been the direct victim of Israeli oppression expresses antisemitic sentiment, is this as reprehensible as if (say) Ken Livingstone does?
I'm willing to bet that most of those expressing antisemitic sentiments have had very cushy lives. Similarly, I wouldn't expect the families of those murdered by Muslim terrorists to hold a grudge against Muslims.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
With no increased transmissibility, his model has long predicted negligible exit waves: ("This identifies a handful of remaining differences, none huge on its own, but collectively enough to ensure that my model predicts no significant exit wave (with under 1k deaths)").
With varying the transmissibility, he's identified that vaccinating teenagers and considering only baseline controls such as "TTI, guidance on masks in crowded spaces, and testing requirements for large events – as well as an assumption of continued cautious behaviour (e.g. WFH)", we can absorb up to 40% or even 60% increased transmissibility without a big exit wave:
And when you take into account the heterogeneity of the population (ie the differential spread of people with different immunity), it further impairs spread:
And summarised with "I’m not currently seeing a compelling case to change track on the roadmap right now. The next few weeks could be bumpy, with more local outbreaks as per Bolton / Blackburn, but I’m not expecting a major wave to start before we open up fully on June 21st."
All of which looked pretty positive to me.
Yes, I agree with his conclusion and most of the data. I think it would be interesting to see what adding teenagers but no NPIs results in and if he could plug in a 45% reduction in spread for all vaccinated people as well as a Pfizer booster programme for groups 1-9 and a possible Novavax one for groups 10 and 11.
The above, to me, is the most likely scenario heading into the winter. I'd be shocked if we had more than a few thousand deaths, concentrated among older people who have refused the vaccine.
I hadn't seen a proper image of the inflatable Corbyn stood next to at the demo. He should be expelled from the Labour Party immediately. Not suspended. Expelled. As should any other Labour MP or member who attended. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1394218824958947328/photo/1
We've got yet another day of the Corbynites claiming Jeremy was present, but not involved. Or didn't see the racist caricature. Or didn't know who else was going to be there. It just goes on. Again and again and again. Excuse after excuse after excuse. And it will just carry on.
Makes a change for Corbyn to be in trouble with Islamophobic rather than anti-Semitic issues....
Huh? Its supposed to be a Jew. Looks like it was lifted from the Running of the Jew scene in the first Borat movie.
No its supposed to be Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but they have put the antisemitic devil horn trope on him...its to do with him normalizing Abu Dhab relations with Israel.
Exactly. They have taken an arab and turned him into a devil jew. Its openly anti-semetic.
Do we cut any slack on antisemitism for Palestinians?
By which I mean, is anti-Jewish sentiment expressed by those at the sharp end of Israeli oppression as reprehensible as that expressed by people with no direct involvement?
People who really cared for the people of Palestine, I mean REALLY cared, would be asking why there hasn't been an election in Gaza since 2006 and why Abbas recently cancelled the latest one indefinitely.
Perhaps the reason there are no elections is that Palestinians are sick and tired of being used as pawns in Hamas's terror game.
Yes, I'd expect you to be four square behind the hardline Israeli right on this one.
I'll file this under "anybody who REALLY cared about racism in America would be asking themselves why black on black crime is so high in Democrat controlled cities."
And I would expect you to be behind the hardline anti-semitic left. Which you clearly are.
Just don't contemplate handing out lessons on racism anytime soon.
I was trying to be charitable, but there really is no good reason for anyone to have answered in that way is there?
The good reason could be people who legitimately believe their side should have won the election but was cheated out of it. So dealing with the cheats is the priority.
In which case, an investment in mental health services seems useful.
I hadn't seen a proper image of the inflatable Corbyn stood next to at the demo. He should be expelled from the Labour Party immediately. Not suspended. Expelled. As should any other Labour MP or member who attended. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1394218824958947328/photo/1
We've got yet another day of the Corbynites claiming Jeremy was present, but not involved. Or didn't see the racist caricature. Or didn't know who else was going to be there. It just goes on. Again and again and again. Excuse after excuse after excuse. And it will just carry on.
Makes a change for Corbyn to be in trouble with Islamophobic rather than anti-Semitic issues....
Huh? Its supposed to be a Jew. Looks like it was lifted from the Running of the Jew scene in the first Borat movie.
No its supposed to be Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but they have put the antisemitic devil horn trope on him...its to do with him normalizing Abu Dhab relations with Israel.
Exactly. They have taken an arab and turned him into a devil jew. Its openly anti-semetic.
Do we cut any slack on antisemitism for Palestinians?
By which I mean, is anti-Jewish sentiment expressed by those at the sharp end of Israeli oppression as reprehensible as that expressed by people with no direct involvement?
People who really cared for the people of Palestine, I mean REALLY cared, would be asking why there hasn't been an election in Gaza since 2006 and why Abbas recently cancelled the latest one indefinitely.
Perhaps the reason there are no elections is that Palestinians are sick and tired of being used as pawns in Hamas's terror game.
Yes, I'd expect you to be four square behind the hardline Israeli right on this one.
I'll file this under "anybody who REALLY cared about racism in America would be asking themselves why black on black crime is so high in Democrat controlled cities."
Anyone who really cared about racism in America, would be asking about the huge amount of racist violence occurring between Black and Asian communities.
But they don’t. Because for many of them it’s all about hating on whites.
Mine is all running 2-4 weeks late due to a cool, frosty April. Including many of the birds.
Blueberries just getting the start of flowers on some varieties.
Most of our blue-tit chicks are coming along nicely, with good strong wings developing. There's one, possibly two, falling behind, but we expect at least four of the six to fledge. About another week to go, from the look of them. Which, from my diary is maybe a little later than usual.
They need to be later - the caterpillars are well behind too.
Labour have announced they would put people in prison longer for some crimes.
Why did they spend the last 30 years telling us that longer sentences/the death penalty are futile?
A while back I had a debate with RCS - my theory was that warehousing the hardcore petty career criminals in prison was cheaper than dealing with their continual crime. The main cost of which is not the value of the goods stolen from the corner shop etc but the cost of the justice system dealing with them. The vast majority of "small" crime is commit by a small number of people, working very hard at it.
In the end I couldn't get a breakout of the costs of the big ticket trials (murders, big fraud cases etc).
Pretty clear compulsory vaccination isn't coming to our shores, nor should it, nor should denial of healthcare to antivaxxers or other ideas that might feel superficially just but would be practically unfeasible and quite possibly counter-productive. Make vaccination compulsory and you give a good kick start to those conspiracy theories that say this is all a government wheeze to control people. Besides which even in the areas with the highest levels of hesitancy our rates of take up are impressive.
As for the weather, it has played a big part in the national experience of Covid and lockdowns and may well do so again. The sunshine and warmth of last spring played into the "nature is healing", fresh air and health feeling of the first lockdown. This spring the speed of decline in cases has seemed to track quite closely the usability of the weather. Remember the pause in decline we saw after the February snowfall, then the tremendous falls we saw in late March after the mini heatwave. I suspect the seasonality is real, and is closely linked to behaviour - whether people spend time outside or inside. Hence why hot countries with unpleasant outside conditions and air conditioned buildings don't seem to have the same seasonal pattern.
Could the utterly awful weather of May 2021 affect people's judgment of the government's competence? If everyone crowds inside in the next 2 weeks and we get super-spreading of the Indian variant among the unvaxxed, does that bring back the incompetent Boris shutting the stable door too late, and displace the heroic Boris leading the world beating vaccine rollout? If the weather turns unexpectedly nice and we all head out of doors, does that mean cases continue flat or declining and we all forget about the border control issues?
Texas ended all covid restrictions 10 weeks ago and as any self respecting SAGE member would tell you, the inevitable has happened. They should have seen it coming, they really should.
And are you planning to do so? Have you been doing so?
A friend (my support bubble) has been using these free home tests. It is possible the PB teachers will be getting regular tests at work.
I certainly am.
Does anyone know whether if you order one of these kits to be sent to home you then get bombarded with txts demanding to know the result?
I am more likely to order a couple to have on hand to test myself say the day before someone came to stay overnight at the house.
No, they are being dished out indiscriminately. You’re probably supposed to report the results, but I can’t say for sure as my boxes of them are still unopened.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
Yes, I think anywhere within that range would be acceptable, we accept 10k-30k flu deaths per year and it's likely that COVID would be competing for the same people. As harsh as it sounds there is an acceptable level of deaths for the resumption of normal life.
That's not strictly true, since we persist in the efforts to find and deploy effective vaccines each year. But yes, in the end it's all about tradeoffs - though over time what's an 'acceptable' level of deaths changes, as interventions become cheaper or easier.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
20-50k deaths, with no restrictions, is our normal experience with flu. I think there's a decent chance of the UK seeing more flu deaths than Covid deaths next winter, because the Covid vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccines and have a higher rate of uptake.
I actually expect there to be a very high uptake of flu/Covid two-fers over coming winters. I will not be entirely surprised if Covid causes the expected flu deaths to plummet over the next few years, with a combination of far more vaccinations and a greater appreciation of prevention measures (including winter mask-wearing).
No to mask wearing for normal life (which includes flu).
Ill probably wear a mask on winter peak hour tube journeys. Cant think of any other settings where I would, but think that does make sense. It should not be mandatory.
Edit - possibly if going to the GP/hospital?
I don't think people should wear masks in any circumstances once normal life returns.
Labour's anti-semitism infestation update. John McDonnell not only was on the march with the Jewish Devil inflatable, but chose to tweet an image with an anti-semitic placard in it.
At which point do Starmer do something? Kick out the racists FFS.
Glasgow going "fuck it" and just vaccinating everyone in the Southside.
Makes sense to me. 5 months back, risk was highly correlated with age and other medical factors. Now that has been addressed, risk is more highly correlated with geography.
This sort of reactive vaccination strategy only works where you have a vaccine which builds immunity very quickly though! It's a bit tokenistic with the AZ vaccine where you take several weeks to reach immunity, by which time the local mini-wave will be over. But presumably if we're doing the youngsters its all Pfizer/Modena here anyway.
True, but I wouldn't want the roll-out to slow down because we're prioritising people in these areas. After all, what makes us think that younger people in the areas with the worse uptake so far will be any more willing to get vaccinated?
I had this thought too as my fiancee isn't currently vaccinated.
But i) We'd have to live in Bolton ii) The risk to 18-37 in Bolton is considerably higher than Bassetlaw right now iii) The total amount of jabs as a proportion of the entire stock going to hotspot areas is very small, even if it's a large number for the area concerned.
I came to the conclusion surge vaccination was probably worth it.
Probably okay so long as Bolton doesn't become London and Birmingham.
Sadiq Khan lobbying the government to prioritise London.
Yep. He can fuck right off. And then when he has finished fucking right off, he can fuck off a bit further, then repeat the measure until there is nowhere further for him to fuck off to.
It is only ten days since Sadiq was re-elected Mayor of London.
Yup he should have fucked right off after he was elected. He has done fuck all as Mayor that I can recall as notable on a positive measure.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
Yes, I think anywhere within that range would be acceptable, we accept 10k-30k flu deaths per year and it's likely that COVID would be competing for the same people. As harsh as it sounds there is an acceptable level of deaths for the resumption of normal life.
That's not strictly true, since we persist in the efforts to find and deploy effective vaccines each year. But yes, in the end it's all about tradeoffs - though over time what's an 'acceptable' level of deaths changes, as interventions become cheaper or easier.
We'd surely do it for COVID too, it's not as if we won't have an annual booster programme for groups 1-9 plus anyone else who wants it starting this winter.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
20-50k deaths, with no restrictions, is our normal experience with flu. I think there's a decent chance of the UK seeing more flu deaths than Covid deaths next winter, because the Covid vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccines and have a higher rate of uptake.
I actually expect there to be a very high uptake of flu/Covid two-fers over coming winters. I will not be entirely surprised if Covid causes the expected flu deaths to plummet over the next few years, with a combination of far more vaccinations and a greater appreciation of prevention measures (including winter mask-wearing).
No to mask wearing for normal life (which includes flu).
Would you actively OUTLAW it? If people want to adopt it in winter now, each to their own.
On modelling, and mindful of the "Going to Twitter for details on science" cliche, a mathematician and risk modeller called James Ward ( https://twitter.com/JamesWard73 ) has been consistently good at reviewing the published models, picking up specifically where there are apparent disconnects or excessive pessimism, and extrapolating from them.
The risk of "going to Twitter" is somewhat mitigated by the fact that a whole bunch of very serious people (from the Covid Actuary's Group, through a bunch of verified immunologists and epidemiologists, to science correspondents) have followed and endorsed his work.
And helped by the fact that the published models have been iterating steadily towards his (considerably more positive) extrapolations and away from the more alarmist interpretations.
I think the issue is the assumption that one COVID death is one too many. The government needs to make it clearer that we accept as a nation people will die of COVID.
I think what's interesting about his models is that they tend to predict a bigger wave at the back end of this year but that doesn't seem likely given that we have got a confirmed booster programme for groups 1-9 and Pfizer vaccines scheduled for September and October delivery specifically for that.
I also think that a lot of models severely underestimate the efficacy of vaccines over the longer term and severely underestimate the cumulative reduction in hospitalisations gained from reducing the spread by vaccinated people by at least 45% with one dose and possibly as much as 90% with two doses of Pfizer.
I'd honestly be shocked if any of these models got close to what we actually end up seeing, and the government has got to be prepared for some number of people to die of COVID in order for normal life to resume. The old normal with no social distancing, no testing, as if COVID never happened.
Even a very pessimistic scenario where we have say 20k-50k excess deaths from covid per year ongoing but normality would be preferable to a world with these restrictions in perpetuity. What would that do to life expectancy, would it even register, given the deaths are heavily skewed by age? I would be surprised it moved it down by more than a year.
And of course 20k-50k deaths seems extremely unlikely in a mostly vaccinated UK.
20-50k deaths, with no restrictions, is our normal experience with flu. I think there's a decent chance of the UK seeing more flu deaths than Covid deaths next winter, because the Covid vaccines are much more effective than the flu vaccines and have a higher rate of uptake.
I actually expect there to be a very high uptake of flu/Covid two-fers over coming winters. I will not be entirely surprised if Covid causes the expected flu deaths to plummet over the next few years, with a combination of far more vaccinations and a greater appreciation of prevention measures (including winter mask-wearing).
No to mask wearing for normal life (which includes flu).
Ill probably wear a mask on winter peak hour tube journeys. Cant think of any other settings where I would, but think that does make sense. It should not be mandatory.
Edit - possibly if going to the GP/hospital?
I don't think people should wear masks in any circumstances once normal life returns.
We should be able to get much better flu vaccines from the mRNA stuff. And it would make sense, just for the NHS loading issue, to push flu jabs out to as much of the population as we can.
Exactly. The NHS has a huge backlog to deal with, so we should do all we can to take the strain off of it. I hope we see a push to vaccinate as many people as possible for influenza.
Mine is all running 2-4 weeks late due to a cool, frosty April. Including many of the birds.
Blueberries just getting the start of flowers on some varieties.
Most of our blue-tit chicks are coming along nicely, with good strong wings developing. There's one, possibly two, falling behind, but we expect at least four of the six to fledge. About another week to go, from the look of them. Which, from my diary is maybe a little later than usual.
They need to be later - the caterpillars are well behind too.
For the 2nd year we have had great tits nesting in a gap in a stack of bricks. Last week a fox (I assume) pulled the front bricks down and got the front half of the nest out, but couldn't get the chicks. I pushed the nest back in and restacked the bricks. They all fledged this week. Very pleased and surprised.
Labour's anti-semitism infestation update. John McDonnell not only was on the march with the Jewish Devil inflatable, but chose to tweet an image with an anti-semitic placard in it.
At which point do Starmer do something? Kick out the racists FFS.
Mine is all running 2-4 weeks late due to a cool, frosty April. Including many of the birds.
Blueberries just getting the start of flowers on some varieties.
Most of our blue-tit chicks are coming along nicely, with good strong wings developing. There's one, possibly two, falling behind, but we expect at least four of the six to fledge. About another week to go, from the look of them. Which, from my diary is maybe a little later than usual.
They need to be later - the caterpillars are well behind too.
My apple tree is being hammered by aphids. I think that the weather has been too cold for ladybirds?
I hadn't seen a proper image of the inflatable Corbyn stood next to at the demo. He should be expelled from the Labour Party immediately. Not suspended. Expelled. As should any other Labour MP or member who attended. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1394218824958947328/photo/1
We've got yet another day of the Corbynites claiming Jeremy was present, but not involved. Or didn't see the racist caricature. Or didn't know who else was going to be there. It just goes on. Again and again and again. Excuse after excuse after excuse. And it will just carry on.
Makes a change for Corbyn to be in trouble with Islamophobic rather than anti-Semitic issues....
Huh? Its supposed to be a Jew. Looks like it was lifted from the Running of the Jew scene in the first Borat movie.
No its supposed to be Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but they have put the antisemitic devil horn trope on him...its to do with him normalizing Abu Dhab relations with Israel.
Exactly. They have taken an arab and turned him into a devil jew. Its openly anti-semetic.
Do we cut any slack on antisemitism for Palestinians?
By which I mean, is anti-Jewish sentiment expressed by those at the sharp end of Israeli oppression as reprehensible as that expressed by people with no direct involvement?
That protest was in London, right? Not exactly the sharp end of Israeli oppression.
There will be plenty of people in London with a direct connection to the Arab Israeli conflict. Bound to be. But I wasn't really thinking about that. It's just a question which interests me. The concept of understandable racism. Or even rational racism. Can there be such a thing?
Yep, that is relevant. Islamophobia in response to Islamist terrorism.
Is it equivalent though? Israel is the Jewish state. Half of the world's Jews live there and many of those who don't have a strong emotional connection to it.
So if a Palestinian who has been the direct victim of Israeli oppression expresses antisemitic sentiment, is this as reprehensible as if (say) Ken Livingstone does?
I'm willing to bet that most of those expressing antisemitic sentiments have had very cushy lives. Similarly, I wouldn't expect the families of those murdered by Muslim terrorists to hold a grudge against Muslims.
Ok, but you dodged my question. Livingstone's antisemitism vs similar from a Palestinian victim of Israeli violence. Would you not judge Livingstone more harshly?
On the general point, it's wrong imo to succumb to prejudice against whole groups based on the actions of some of that group. I'm clear in my mind about that. Still, I think context does matter, and there's room for nuance, eg with the above question.
As another example, is it equally irrational to conflate Jews and Israel as it is to conflate Islamist terrorism and Muslims? Or is one more irrational than the other?
Labour's anti-semitism infestation update. John McDonnell not only was on the march with the Jewish Devil inflatable, but chose to tweet an image with an anti-semitic placard in it.
At which point do Starmer do something? Kick out the racists FFS.
First off, if the police are chasing a baddie and they shoot him, they take him to hospital. I doubt the baddie would be able to get an insurance policy protecting him against being shot by plod.
Secondly, yes, if unvaccinated people get the pox (how?) then there is a risk of spreading it to those people who have been vaccinated but are in the 5%-odd where the vaccine is ineffective. That is a bad situation.
Thirdly, while also accepting that, for an unvaccinated society, COVID is nothing like the flu, we are in a vaccinated society and hence once you consider the vaccinated, the likely effect on the NHS will be small, specialist equipment or not.
And finally, we are talking about fundamental freedoms here - the right to refuse the government putting a foreign substance into our bodies for whatever reason.
That is the principle that imo is worth the use of some extra ventilators.
Bollocks to that. Our lives and those of our kids have been turned upside down in the most extraordinary breach of fundamental freedoms it’s possible to conceive. Sending an armed vaccination squad round to your house would pale by comparison, and it would be doing you a favour as well as the rest of us.
I tend to be hardline on this sort of thing, but even i don't favour compulsory vaccination - by all means make life awkward for people who don't have a vaccine card (I don't get at all why this is controversial if it's literally all it's for), but don't actually inject at gunpoint as you suggest. There's plenty still to do in vaccinating all the willing, including children.
I don't think the Government could do this even if it wanted to.
It'd very probably be in contravention of the HRA and, if there were any complications, it would open itself up to lawsuits.
It probably won't be in contravention of the HRA, one of the top European Courts have already ruled compulsory vaccinations are legal with the ECHR.
I don't think it should be done, because people should have a choice - nor do I think it will be necessary.
Do you have a link to that judgement please?
European Court of Human Rights judgement last month on mandatory vaccinations for children. Not sure if other cases have been heard: PDF of judgement: https://t.co/hXrZAfQn5P?amp=1
The curious thing is that French people are actually vaccinating at much higher rates than that (when they get available doses). What they tell pollsters and what that are actually doing is completely different.
(Albeit I expect UK rates to be higher than France when the dust settles)
Mine is all running 2-4 weeks late due to a cool, frosty April. Including many of the birds.
Blueberries just getting the start of flowers on some varieties.
Weathers been just rubbish. No real spring apart from a few days here and there. I remember last year we had many many sunny days during lockdown 1.
May last year had the most sunshine hours of any month since records began. This shouldn't be possible. That record should belong to June, but May last year was so exceptionally, unusually, sunny that it holds that record.
Even if this spring had been average it would have been a bit of a downer in comparison, but it's not managed that.
There's some suggestion, towards the end of the month, that warm air and high pressure is on the way. But if the high pressure stays out to the Atlantic it just pulls more northerly winds down over us.
There are some hideous forecasts this morning. Wintry air. Single digit maxima. The end of May!
Talking of all those idiots who won't get vaccinated...
I have long pointed out that it is the done thing for politicians to tweet them getting their jab as a public service announcement, especially those who serve diverse communities, and Jezza seems very quiet on the matter.
I've been catching up on the Anna Turley XMP vs Unite / Skwawkbox legal case.
The claim was Turley allegedly having malicious motivations in joining the cheaper section of Unite in order to vote against Mcluskey, rather than the normal section, and doing so in the alleged knowledge of that.
Turley offered a no-cost settlement if they backed down. Nope And to negotiate an arrangement. Nope
To court.
Bang. £75k damages and eventually £1.6m liability for legal fees.
And the chap who oversaw it all is standing to replace Len McCluskey in the next few weeks.
Labour have announced they would put people in prison longer for some crimes.
Why did they spend the last 30 years telling us that longer sentences/the death penalty are futile?
Sadiq Khan 2011
“ Labour made a mistake by "playing tough" on crime and allowing the prison population to soar to record levels during its time in government, instead of tackling sky-high reoffending rates, the shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan, is to acknowledge for the first time on Monday.
In a break with New Labour's hardline rhetoric, Khan is to argue that the party should declare a new policy aim of jailing fewer people.“
Comments
Are you sure?
Surely the fact is that neither side can claim total moral victory, and that is the point.
But how can you 'stand in solidarity' with the Palestinians when their own government is a dictatorship that is no longer representative of their views.
Who knows what the Palestinians really think?
Gym over, had a chat with my wife, did so running repairs on my iPhone. Where the hell did the morning go!
France only 60% - UK 90%
"Sorry I'm late. My tooth brusher was delayed..."
And flu deaths should be lower in future anyway with better hand washing, less public transport and more people open to a flu jab (possibly combined with a covid booster).
What’s wrong with turning up to their local small licenced business, and encouraging people to spend their money there instead?
HIV vaccines would be total game-changers for many parts of the world and at-risk groups.
It'd very probably be in contravention of the HRA and, if there were any complications, it would open itself up to lawsuits.
Pure Khan.
Edit - possibly if going to the GP/hospital?
A lot of white people in Bolton would be unsurprising. Very few Asians would be surprising (though it depends on the location of course - very few Asians in Horwich or Egerton wouldn't be that surprising.)
Anyway, it doesn't matter - if we get more jabs in arms in Bolton, we reduce the spread. Doesn't matter, yet, whose arms.
Perhaps the handles could be in a light tan colour. Sell them in foam lined instrument cases....
I don't think it should be done, because people should have a choice - nor do I think it will be necessary.
Is it equivalent though? Israel is the Jewish state. Half of the world's Jews live there and many of those who don't have a strong emotional connection to it.
So if a Palestinian who has been the direct victim of Israeli oppression expresses antisemitic sentiment, is this as reprehensible as if (say) Ken Livingstone does?
But I disagree with your view about getting jabs into any arms in Bolton. Surely this being done in part to protect the older anti-vaxxers in multigenerational homes. Won’t do much good if their youngsters don’t get jabbed.
Mine is all running 2-4 weeks late due to a cool, frosty April. Including many of the birds.
Blueberries just getting the start of flowers on some varieties.
Is that what you think?
About another week to go, from the look of them. Which, from my diary is maybe a little later than usual.
When given the option between having more popular policies or Jim Crow Republican voters only narrowly endorse better policies.
https://twitter.com/CBSNewsPoll/status/1393938110426275840?s=19
PDF of judgement: https://t.co/hXrZAfQn5P?amp=1
News article: https://www.euronews.com/2021/04/08/mandatory-vaccinations-for-children-necessary-in-a-democratic-society-rules-echr
My view is yes.
*Drank there on occasion
(I'm trying to kick the cigs.)
Even if this spring had been average it would have been a bit of a downer in comparison, but it's not managed that.
There's some suggestion, towards the end of the month, that warm air and high pressure is on the way. But if the high pressure stays out to the Atlantic it just pulls more northerly winds down over us.
Which, since you have been vaccinated yourself, is arguably a much bigger threat to you now that me not having had a vaccine.
I am more likely to order a couple to have on hand to test myself say the day before someone came to stay overnight at the house.
With no increased transmissibility, his model has long predicted negligible exit waves: ("This identifies a handful of remaining differences, none huge on its own, but collectively enough to ensure that my model predicts no significant exit wave (with under 1k deaths)").
With varying the transmissibility, he's identified that vaccinating teenagers and considering only baseline controls such as "TTI, guidance on masks in crowded spaces, and testing requirements for large events – as well as an assumption of continued cautious behaviour (e.g. WFH)", we can absorb up to 40% or even 60% increased transmissibility without a big exit wave:
And when you take into account the heterogeneity of the population (ie the differential spread of people with different immunity), it further impairs spread:
And summarised with "I’m not currently seeing a compelling case to change track on the roadmap right now. The next few weeks could be bumpy, with more local outbreaks as per Bolton / Blackburn, but I’m not expecting a major wave to start before we open up fully on June 21st."
All of which looked pretty positive to me.
Mind you we did collect them from the local vaccine centre (which just happens to be our local pharmacy).
I'll file this under "anybody who REALLY cared about racism in America would be asking themselves why black on black crime is so high in Democrat controlled cities."
Why did they spend the last 30 years telling us that longer sentences/the death penalty are futile?
The above, to me, is the most likely scenario heading into the winter. I'd be shocked if we had more than a few thousand deaths, concentrated among older people who have refused the vaccine.
Just don't contemplate handing out lessons on racism anytime soon.
In which case, an investment in mental health services seems useful.
But they don’t. Because for many of them it’s all about hating on whites.
In the end I couldn't get a breakout of the costs of the big ticket trials (murders, big fraud cases etc).
As for the weather, it has played a big part in the national experience of Covid and lockdowns and may well do so again. The sunshine and warmth of last spring played into the "nature is healing", fresh air and health feeling of the first lockdown. This spring the speed of decline in cases has seemed to track quite closely the usability of the weather. Remember the pause in decline we saw after the February snowfall, then the tremendous falls we saw in late March after the mini heatwave. I suspect the seasonality is real, and is closely linked to behaviour - whether people spend time outside or inside. Hence why hot countries with unpleasant outside conditions and air conditioned buildings don't seem to have the same seasonal pattern.
Could the utterly awful weather of May 2021 affect people's judgment of the government's competence? If everyone crowds inside in the next 2 weeks and we get super-spreading of the Indian variant among the unvaxxed, does that bring back the incompetent Boris shutting the stable door too late, and displace the heroic Boris leading the world beating vaccine rollout? If the weather turns unexpectedly nice and we all head out of doors, does that mean cases continue flat or declining and we all forget about the border control issues?
Texas ended all covid restrictions 10 weeks ago and as any self respecting SAGE member would tell you, the inevitable has happened. They should have seen it coming, they really should.
There are zero covid related deaths.
Hospitalisations are the lowest in almost a year.
Oh.....um......
No, they are being dished out indiscriminately. You’re probably supposed to report the results, but I can’t say for sure as my boxes of them are still unopened.
But yes, in the end it's all about tradeoffs - though over time what's an 'acceptable' level of deaths changes, as interventions become cheaper or easier.
PM's spksmn: "We want to do it as soon as possible... we need time to assess...I'm not going to give a set time for doing that…"
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1394258516848824323
At which point do Starmer do something? Kick out the racists FFS.
We have blue tits and robins much further behind.
https://twitter.com/johnmcdonnellMP/status/1393558381244334082/photo/1
On the general point, it's wrong imo to succumb to prejudice against whole groups based on the actions of some of that group. I'm clear in my mind about that. Still, I think context does matter, and there's room for nuance, eg with the above question.
As another example, is it equally irrational to conflate Jews and Israel as it is to conflate Islamist terrorism and Muslims? Or is one more irrational than the other?
(Albeit I expect UK rates to be higher than France when the dust settles)
I have long pointed out that it is the done thing for politicians to tweet them getting their jab as a public service announcement, especially those who serve diverse communities, and Jezza seems very quiet on the matter.
Sources tell Guido that Jeremy Corbyn is still yet to receive his first vaccine dose, despite his age cohort becoming eligible back in February.
https://order-order.com/2021/05/17/jeremy-corbyn-vaccine-hesitantcy/
Obviously too busy giving speeches next to dodgy inflatables.
The claim was Turley allegedly having malicious motivations in joining the cheaper section of Unite in order to vote against Mcluskey, rather than the normal section, and doing so in the alleged knowledge of that.
Turley offered a no-cost settlement if they backed down. Nope
And to negotiate an arrangement. Nope
To court.
Bang. £75k damages and eventually £1.6m liability for legal fees.
And the chap who oversaw it all is standing to replace Len McCluskey in the next few weeks.
Ouch.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/19/ex-labour-mp-anna-turley-awarded-libel-damages-over-union-story
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/13/unite-blogger-must-pay-former-labour-mp-13m-legal-costs-libel-case
“ Labour made a mistake by "playing tough" on crime and allowing the prison population to soar to record levels during its time in government, instead of tackling sky-high reoffending rates, the shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan, is to acknowledge for the first time on Monday.
In a break with New Labour's hardline rhetoric, Khan is to argue that the party should declare a new policy aim of jailing fewer people.“
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/mar/06/labour-penal-policy-failed-reoffending