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The LDs have a better than 6% chance of taking Chesham & Amersham – politicalbetting.com

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  • BigRichBigRich Posts: 3,492
    rcs1000 said:

    Maffew said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    Having a go at some workings of my own:

    Peak in January was about 4,000 hospitalisations a day with no vaccinations.
    Deaths peaked at roughly 1,250 a day.

    Let's assume a 0.7% fatality rate, since that seems to be the number I've seen floating around.

    That gives approximately 180,000 infections per day (1,250/0.007).

    So, in an unvaccinated population you would need around 450,000 infections per day to get 10,000 admissions.

    Let's say vaccination is about 75% effective at preventing hospitalisation across the population. It's a bit finger in the air, but basically discounting actual effectiveness by a bit to account for the young not being vaccinated and a low level of vaccine hesitancy.

    That means you then need approximately 1,800,000 infections per day to get 10,000 hospitalisations. So a little under 3% of the population needing to be infected every day. This feels... implausible even with no restrictions (or self-imposed restrictions given people would react to rising case rates and hospitalisations).

    Even if you say our current level of vaccination would only prevent 50% of hospitalisations across the population (hugely pessimistic I'd think). You'd still need to see 900,000 people a day being infected to get 10,000 a day hospitalisations.

    Of course, all of the above is based on vaccinations having 0% efficacy in preventing infections, which is stupid.

    It also doesn't take into account that the unvaccinated population will be considerably smaller in a few weeks' time.
    Also.

    0.7% is for the population as a whole. Which is something like 10% for the 80+ group, and 0.05% for the under 20s.

    The most vulnerable people are all vaccinated. And efficacy against hospitalisation and death is much higher than 91% - it's more like 99%.

    So, I simply can't see how they can possibly have the assumptions they do - even ignoring the other massive elephant in the room, which is that the virus can't spread *that* quickly as there aren't that many people for it to infect any more.
    I don't know if I am alone in my position. but I am absolutely for ending all restrictions on everything, masks, night clubs, travel, the works.

    I suspect the reported cases, hospitalisations and deaths, would most likely keep falling, all be it as a slightly slower paces that would happen otherwise, but ok there could also be a small rise,

    but all the venerable have been offered a vaccine, if they chose not to take it, that's sad but their chose, if they haven't been offered one yet, then they are not venerable, and can chose not to go on holiday or to a night club, until its available, to then in a few weeks time.

    But the nonsenses to think that there could be a wave big enough to overload the NHS is just an inability to look at data and do maths.

    and you know what, if there is a big rise, then in 3 weeks go back to the state we are in now.

  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,950
    dixiedean said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    89% [78,95] effectiveness against symptomatic disease.

    Oxford/AstraZeneca vax, post 14 days from 2nd dose (will be vs predominantly B117)

    Well that's certainly good news, much higher than trial data. Avg dose interval longer here.


    https://twitter.com/DevanSinha/status/1395369672992870406?s=20

    Despite the rise of variants, including Kent and SA, real world efficacy is extremely high.
    I have a friend whose 70+ mother is in SA and has no idea when she'll be jabbed and is mightily p*ssed off at the SA government for flogging off their AZ on the basis of a small trial.....
    Oh, the trial completely missed the fact that efficacy of AZ builds over time. They were including those people who'd got Covid a week after the first dose and including it in the efficacy numbers.

    The chart that EVERYONE needs to see is this one:



    Efficacy of the adenovirus based vaccines rises substantially over time. It's why real world studies demonstrate much higher efficacy than trials.
    I'm semi convinced.
    I'd like to see some more really hard evidence
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,098

    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimS said:

    By-elections are great opportunities for dog-whistles, and I wonder if there are a few subtle dog-whistles that could be at play in this one.

    We associate the term with hidden appeals to the bigoted views on race or culture but that needn't be the case. A dog whistle can be useful any time you want to appeal to the instincts of certain voters but can't publicly say so in such terms for fear of atracting opprobrium.

    NIMBYism is a perennial example. So is remainerism - you needn't promise to rejoin or re-enter the single market, and seeing as the LDs are nowhere near government it would be pointless anyway. You just need to indicate through your language and demeanour that you are, at heart, one of "us".

    And alongside the remainer dog whistle there's the even subtler, but possibly powerful in the home counties, snobbery dog-whistle. That the Tories have of late become a bit non-U. A tad vulgar, with their red wall obsession and that tasteless wallpaper and slandering of John Lewis. Slightly spivvy. Not to mention that awful Gavin Williamson with his dislike of "dead end subjects".

    Will be interesting to see if any of that plays a part.

    Yes, if you are a snobby small c voter in the Home Counties, even in 1997 while you were a minority nationally you knew you were still in the low tax, posh party of the South, idllyic country life villages etc.

    Now you may be in power but have to share it with Northern working class oiks, while the government seems to want to expand building over the fields surrounding said idyllic country life villages and take more of your funds in tax to fund spending on working class ex industrial towns in the North you would not be seen dead going anywhere near, the only parts of the North you have ever visited being Harrogate and the Lake District and dropping your son off at Durham.

    Gaining the RedWall has certainly boosted the Tories overall but as the locals showed there is some backlash in the posher parts of the South
    I wonder if we're going through a similar re-alignment as happened in the US with the GOP and Dems. In thirty years people may be amazed to learn that Labour West Sussex was once a Tory stronghold.
    The only reason I can't see that happening is the word 'labour'. It's not a nice word. It's not a cheery 'could-mean-anything' word. It means either hard physical work, or the painful process women go through when giving birth. It's not a word which can easily be transitioned for other uses like 'Democrat'.
    I often think this is a fundamental branding issue the Labour Party have. That and their horrible red and yellow colour schemes (use red and white - much less angry looking).
    It also means work of any kind, not just physical work. Labour are level with people working, but losing heavily with the retired. Labour could move to a decent lead with people working if they focus on work, but work in general, not just their traditional ground of zero hours contracts, minimum wage, public sector pay and benefits. Focus instead on r&d to bring investment to good companies, especially in green tech and updating education to suit the workplace of the 2030s not the 1980s.
    The Tory domination of the grey vote is a massive barrier to La ... to the Progressives winning an election.

    I rack my brains for killer policies to turn this around (untory ones which therefore wouldn't be stolen) but to no avail as yet.
    Defend the BBC. Apparently I'm the only person under 70 who watches it. (Big fan of Frock-Off). Labour should say that the Tories want to shut it down and force everyone to subscribe to a whole load of complex web-based content providers that cost a fortune.
    Yes that's good. Speaks to tradition and community at the same time.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    When the entire barbell is bad apples what do you do?

    https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1395401561816412166?s=19
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimS said:

    By-elections are great opportunities for dog-whistles, and I wonder if there are a few subtle dog-whistles that could be at play in this one.

    We associate the term with hidden appeals to the bigoted views on race or culture but that needn't be the case. A dog whistle can be useful any time you want to appeal to the instincts of certain voters but can't publicly say so in such terms for fear of atracting opprobrium.

    NIMBYism is a perennial example. So is remainerism - you needn't promise to rejoin or re-enter the single market, and seeing as the LDs are nowhere near government it would be pointless anyway. You just need to indicate through your language and demeanour that you are, at heart, one of "us".

    And alongside the remainer dog whistle there's the even subtler, but possibly powerful in the home counties, snobbery dog-whistle. That the Tories have of late become a bit non-U. A tad vulgar, with their red wall obsession and that tasteless wallpaper and slandering of John Lewis. Slightly spivvy. Not to mention that awful Gavin Williamson with his dislike of "dead end subjects".

    Will be interesting to see if any of that plays a part.

    Yes, if you are a snobby small c voter in the Home Counties, even in 1997 while you were a minority nationally you knew you were still in the low tax, posh party of the South, idllyic country life villages etc.

    Now you may be in power but have to share it with Northern working class oiks, while the government seems to want to expand building over the fields surrounding said idyllic country life villages and take more of your funds in tax to fund spending on working class ex industrial towns in the North you would not be seen dead going anywhere near, the only parts of the North you have ever visited being Harrogate and the Lake District and dropping your son off at Durham.

    Gaining the RedWall has certainly boosted the Tories overall but as the locals showed there is some backlash in the posher parts of the South
    I wonder if we're going through a similar re-alignment as happened in the US with the GOP and Dems. In thirty years people may be amazed to learn that Labour West Sussex was once a Tory stronghold.
    You mean the Party's names will be nearly as descriptive of their actual policies and supporters as Australia's Liberals?
    Australia's Liberals aren't misnamed.

    Like me they are right wing free market liberals.
    Only briefly under Turnbull, Scott Morrison is a social conservative even if an economic liberal
    Yes, but economic liberalism is what unites the party.

    There are social conservatives and social liberals within the party, but its a party for economic liberals. So its an apt name.

    Unlike the name Conservatives in the UK. Many UK Conservatives are liberals like myself, who aren't remotely conservative.
    The UK Conservatives are not just a party for liberals like you.

    Northern Red Wall Conservatives want more spending for them and their services and their area and back a harder Brexit and tight immigration controls, southern Conservatives tend to support lower tax and spending and many even if they backed Brexit were happy to stay in the single market.

    Wealthy property developers who are big donors to the Tory Party want no restrictions on development, traditional Home Counties Tories tend to be Nimbys and want no development near their house or village at all.

    Even on the Australian trade deal there are differences of opinion between George Eustice representing traditional farmers who are wary of cheap Australian food imports if all tariffs are removed and Liz Truss who is a liberal free trader.

    Plus even in Australia the Liberals are in coalition with the Nationals who tend to be more protectionist and dependent on the farming vote.
    I'm not the one who plays the "you're not a true Tory" game, am I?

    The party is a big tent. Its not just a party for socially conservative NIMBYs like you either.
    It is not just for libertarians who want to concrete all over the greenbelt like you either
    It is a wide church and you are part of it, but by no means the dominant part, especially as I do not know any conservative who wants to send tanks to the Scottish border
    It is not me who actively advocates breaking up the Union as Philip Thompson does and given the SNP did not win a majority at Holyrood and Unionist parties won most votes on the constituency vote there is no need for any indyref2 to be allowed by this Tory government anyway
    There is one thing about the rights and wrongs of allowing indyref2, but I do not know any conservative who has threatened Scotland with tanks other than yourself
    I never actually threatened the SNP with tanks, I did say the government could go down the Madrid route with Catalonia, though even that did not involve tanks.

    However as it is without even an SNP majority I expect a simple No from the UK government will do given Union matters are reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998
    Really? Surprised by your take on this TBH.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,758

    glw said:

    R4 "AZ highly effective against the Indian variant" - real world data from India.

    So AZ is a top-notch vaccine, effective against current variants, and the 12 week dosing was a very good idea. Of course AZ is also cheap and easy to deploy. Could the many critics of the UK's approach to vaccination — including all sorts of prestigous bodies — have been more wrong? No, they are chumps.
    Be quiet spreading all your pseudo-science.....we all know it is only quasi effective.
    It's a brilliant vaccine. It may turn out that there are other vaccines that are better, but to call it quasi-effective isn't on really.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimS said:

    By-elections are great opportunities for dog-whistles, and I wonder if there are a few subtle dog-whistles that could be at play in this one.

    We associate the term with hidden appeals to the bigoted views on race or culture but that needn't be the case. A dog whistle can be useful any time you want to appeal to the instincts of certain voters but can't publicly say so in such terms for fear of atracting opprobrium.

    NIMBYism is a perennial example. So is remainerism - you needn't promise to rejoin or re-enter the single market, and seeing as the LDs are nowhere near government it would be pointless anyway. You just need to indicate through your language and demeanour that you are, at heart, one of "us".

    And alongside the remainer dog whistle there's the even subtler, but possibly powerful in the home counties, snobbery dog-whistle. That the Tories have of late become a bit non-U. A tad vulgar, with their red wall obsession and that tasteless wallpaper and slandering of John Lewis. Slightly spivvy. Not to mention that awful Gavin Williamson with his dislike of "dead end subjects".

    Will be interesting to see if any of that plays a part.

    Yes, if you are a snobby small c voter in the Home Counties, even in 1997 while you were a minority nationally you knew you were still in the low tax, posh party of the South, idllyic country life villages etc.

    Now you may be in power but have to share it with Northern working class oiks, while the government seems to want to expand building over the fields surrounding said idyllic country life villages and take more of your funds in tax to fund spending on working class ex industrial towns in the North you would not be seen dead going anywhere near, the only parts of the North you have ever visited being Harrogate and the Lake District and dropping your son off at Durham.

    Gaining the RedWall has certainly boosted the Tories overall but as the locals showed there is some backlash in the posher parts of the South
    I wonder if we're going through a similar re-alignment as happened in the US with the GOP and Dems. In thirty years people may be amazed to learn that Labour West Sussex was once a Tory stronghold.
    You mean the Party's names will be nearly as descriptive of their actual policies and supporters as Australia's Liberals?
    Australia's Liberals aren't misnamed.

    Like me they are right wing free market liberals.
    Only briefly under Turnbull, Scott Morrison is a social conservative even if an economic liberal
    Yes, but economic liberalism is what unites the party.

    There are social conservatives and social liberals within the party, but its a party for economic liberals. So its an apt name.

    Unlike the name Conservatives in the UK. Many UK Conservatives are liberals like myself, who aren't remotely conservative.
    The UK Conservatives are not just a party for liberals like you.

    Northern Red Wall Conservatives want more spending for them and their services and their area and back a harder Brexit and tight immigration controls, southern Conservatives tend to support lower tax and spending and many even if they backed Brexit were happy to stay in the single market.

    Wealthy property developers who are big donors to the Tory Party want no restrictions on development, traditional Home Counties Tories tend to be Nimbys and want no development near their house or village at all.

    Even on the Australian trade deal there are differences of opinion between George Eustice representing traditional farmers who are wary of cheap Australian food imports if all tariffs are removed and Liz Truss who is a liberal free trader.

    Plus even in Australia the Liberals are in coalition with the Nationals who tend to be more protectionist and dependent on the farming vote.
    I'm not the one who plays the "you're not a true Tory" game, am I?

    The party is a big tent. Its not just a party for socially conservative NIMBYs like you either.
    It is not just for libertarians who want to concrete all over the greenbelt like you either
    It is a wide church and you are part of it, but by no means the dominant part, especially as I do not know any conservative who wants to send tanks to the Scottish border
    It is not me who actively advocates breaking up the Union as Philip Thompson does and given the SNP did not win a majority at Holyrood and Unionist parties won most votes on the constituency vote there is no need for any indyref2 to be allowed by this Tory government anyway
    More Tories would be content to let the SNP go than to send tanks to suppress them.
    52% of Tory voters oppose allowing the SNP to hold an indyref2, only 27% of Tories support allowing them to hold a referendum
    https://leftfootforward.org/2021/05/exclusive-scots-have-right-to-another-indy-referendum-say-voters-in-england/
    So I'm in the 27% - which is millions of Tory voters.

    What percentage support sending tanks to Scotland? 🤔
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    edited May 2021

    rcs1000 said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    What's particularly infuriating is that the EU is opening up now, despite not having anywhere near the vaccine protection we do.

    We had this massive lead, that we're in the process of squandering due to a bunch of zero Covid nutters.
    Unfortunately, that's a consequence of the history of the last year in the UK.

    Those who have argued for earlier, harder lockdowns have been shown to be right last March, last autumn, last December. Anti-lockdown types called it wrong each time, to tragic effect.

    So on the occasion where we probably do have leeway to unlock faster, the public confidence isn't there- and one has to wonder if the PM has the confidence to go faster.

    It's kind of the boy who cried wolf in reverse.

    (The three month vaccination lead the UK had was always going to close a fair bit, but even I'm surprised at how much the reopening gap is closing.)
    Whilst the point about December/Xmas is fair, it could be noted that countries like Germany were almost just as bad in the second wave. And still posting numbers closing the gap and a reasonable rate. Their lower death rates are almost entirely a consequence of their “first wave” success.

    It defies sense that the EU should be claiming fear of what’s currently happening in the U.K. as a reason to restrict foreign travel.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,213
    edited May 2021
    Maffew said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Maffew said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    Having a go at some workings of my own:

    Peak in January was about 4,000 hospitalisations a day with no vaccinations.
    Deaths peaked at roughly 1,250 a day.

    Let's assume a 0.7% fatality rate, since that seems to be the number I've seen floating around.

    That gives approximately 180,000 infections per day (1,250/0.007).

    So, in an unvaccinated population you would need around 450,000 infections per day to get 10,000 admissions.

    Let's say vaccination is about 75% effective at preventing hospitalisation across the population. It's a bit finger in the air, but basically discounting actual effectiveness by a bit to account for the young not being vaccinated and a low level of vaccine hesitancy.

    That means you then need approximately 1,800,000 infections per day to get 10,000 hospitalisations. So a little under 3% of the population needing to be infected every day. This feels... implausible even with no restrictions (or self-imposed restrictions given people would react to rising case rates and hospitalisations).

    Even if you say our current level of vaccination would only prevent 50% of hospitalisations across the population (hugely pessimistic I'd think). You'd still need to see 900,000 people a day being infected to get 10,000 a day hospitalisations.

    Of course, all of the above is based on vaccinations having 0% efficacy in preventing infections, which is stupid.

    It also doesn't take into account that the unvaccinated population will be considerably smaller in a few weeks' time.
    Also.

    0.7% is for the population as a whole. Which is something like 10% for the 80+ group, and 0.05% for the under 20s.

    The most vulnerable people are all vaccinated. And efficacy against hospitalisation and death is much higher than 91% - it's more like 99%.

    So, I simply can't see how they can possibly have the assumptions they do - even ignoring the other massive elephant in the room, which is that the virus can't spread *that* quickly as there aren't that many people for it to infect any more.
    I deliberately chose pessimistic figures for hospitalisation and death rates. As you say, it's difficult to see how you can get to 10,000 admissions a day unless your assumptions are basically:

    a) Everyone is a perfect sphere in a single room.
    b) Vaccines have no effect on tranmission.
    c) Indian variant is super deadly.
    From the CFR data from 1 December 2020, percentage probability of death given infection was

    0-14 0.0001
    15-44 0.0004
    45-64 0.0066
    65-74 0.0711
    75-84 0.1889
    85+ 0.3055

    I took the number of people unvaccinated (as of todays update).

    With a bit of forcing numbers together I got that if every single unvaccinated person caught COVID, we should expect -

    Age, Unvaccinated, Deaths for 100% infection
    0-44, 16,908,941, 6,897
    45-64, 4,537,066, 29,842
    65-74, 418,129, 29,714
    75-84, 101,661, 19,203
    85+, 142,568, 43,556

    I rather think that it is the unprotected elderly that is causing worry, looking at those numbers.

  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,978
    edited May 2021
    Omnium said:

    glw said:

    R4 "AZ highly effective against the Indian variant" - real world data from India.

    So AZ is a top-notch vaccine, effective against current variants, and the 12 week dosing was a very good idea. Of course AZ is also cheap and easy to deploy. Could the many critics of the UK's approach to vaccination — including all sorts of prestigous bodies — have been more wrong? No, they are chumps.
    Be quiet spreading all your pseudo-science.....we all know it is only quasi effective.
    It's a brilliant vaccine. It may turn out that there are other vaccines that are better, but to call it quasi-effective isn't on really.
    You better address your criticisms to a Mr E Macron of Paris, France.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,128
    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Xtrain said:

    Is it official LibDem policy to be against HS2 and new housing development or is it just for the C & A by election?

    It seems to be Lib Dem position to support free movement and increasing the UK's population, but to be in favour of NIMBYism and against having houses or infrastructure built for the people they want to live here.
    It's the LibDem policy to support whichever local policies are most likely to result in them winning a byelection.

    I don't think that is particularly nefarious.
    For Tories to be complaining about populism in the pursuit of votes is .... notable.
    We usually complain about the dodgy bar charts and "Lib Dems winning here" slogans when there isn't another Lib Dem within 1000 Square miles !
    Point of pedantry: can one express a distance away in square miles?

    (I realise you are square root, so you have a love of squares...)
    18 miles in any direction surely as any fule kno?
    My nearest Lib Dem Councillor is about 12 away miles as the crow flies (assume a non-drunk crow).

    Where is it 18 miles?

    (Places with lower population density that NL do not count)
  • glwglw Posts: 9,906

    glw said:

    R4 "AZ highly effective against the Indian variant" - real world data from India.

    So AZ is a top-notch vaccine, effective against current variants, and the 12 week dosing was a very good idea. Of course AZ is also cheap and easy to deploy. Could the many critics of the UK's approach to vaccination — including all sorts of prestigous bodies — have been more wrong? No, they are chumps.
    Be quiet spreading all your pseudo-science.....we all know it is only quasi effective.
    Essentially every criticism of what the UK chose to do, and the effectiveness of the AZ vaccine in particular, has proven to be unfounded. Do you think a single one of the scaremongerers will ever admit to being wrong? I doubt it.

    Come the next New Years Honours I expect a lot of gongs to be dished out amongst the CMOs, JCVI, MHRA, PHE, NHS, etc. They have done a spectacularly good job with the vaccination programme, and undoubtedly saved many lives, and had to do it in the face of all sorts of nonsense from people and organisations that are meant to be peers.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,700
    BigRich said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Maffew said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    Having a go at some workings of my own:

    Peak in January was about 4,000 hospitalisations a day with no vaccinations.
    Deaths peaked at roughly 1,250 a day.

    Let's assume a 0.7% fatality rate, since that seems to be the number I've seen floating around.

    That gives approximately 180,000 infections per day (1,250/0.007).

    So, in an unvaccinated population you would need around 450,000 infections per day to get 10,000 admissions.

    Let's say vaccination is about 75% effective at preventing hospitalisation across the population. It's a bit finger in the air, but basically discounting actual effectiveness by a bit to account for the young not being vaccinated and a low level of vaccine hesitancy.

    That means you then need approximately 1,800,000 infections per day to get 10,000 hospitalisations. So a little under 3% of the population needing to be infected every day. This feels... implausible even with no restrictions (or self-imposed restrictions given people would react to rising case rates and hospitalisations).

    Even if you say our current level of vaccination would only prevent 50% of hospitalisations across the population (hugely pessimistic I'd think). You'd still need to see 900,000 people a day being infected to get 10,000 a day hospitalisations.

    Of course, all of the above is based on vaccinations having 0% efficacy in preventing infections, which is stupid.

    It also doesn't take into account that the unvaccinated population will be considerably smaller in a few weeks' time.
    Also.

    0.7% is for the population as a whole. Which is something like 10% for the 80+ group, and 0.05% for the under 20s.

    The most vulnerable people are all vaccinated. And efficacy against hospitalisation and death is much higher than 91% - it's more like 99%.

    So, I simply can't see how they can possibly have the assumptions they do - even ignoring the other massive elephant in the room, which is that the virus can't spread *that* quickly as there aren't that many people for it to infect any more.
    I don't know if I am alone in my position. but I am absolutely for ending all restrictions on everything, masks, night clubs, travel, the works.

    I suspect the reported cases, hospitalisations and deaths, would most likely keep falling, all be it as a slightly slower paces that would happen otherwise, but ok there could also be a small rise,

    but all the venerable have been offered a vaccine, if they chose not to take it, that's sad but their chose, if they haven't been offered one yet, then they are not venerable, and can chose not to go on holiday or to a night club, until its available, to then in a few weeks time.

    But the nonsenses to think that there could be a wave big enough to overload the NHS is just an inability to look at data and do maths.

    and you know what, if there is a big rise, then in 3 weeks go back to the state we are in now.

    "I simply can't see how they can possibly have the assumptions they do"

    Nor can anyone else outside SAGE as far as I can see.

    Did no one in the room when this model was put on the powerpoint say 'What a minute, that is f*cking ludicrous given where we are with vaccinating the vulnerable. Can you have another look at it'?

  • BigRichBigRich Posts: 3,492
    alex_ said:

    Maffew said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    Having a go at some workings of my own:

    Peak in January was about 4,000 hospitalisations a day with no vaccinations.
    Deaths peaked at roughly 1,250 a day.

    Let's assume a 0.7% fatality rate, since that seems to be the number I've seen floating around.

    That gives approximately 180,000 infections per day (1,250/0.007).

    So, in an unvaccinated population you would need around 450,000 infections per day to get 10,000 admissions.

    Let's say vaccination is about 75% effective at preventing hospitalisation across the population. It's a bit finger in the air, but basically discounting actual effectiveness by a bit to account for the young not being vaccinated and a low level of vaccine hesitancy.

    That means you then need approximately 1,800,000 infections per day to get 10,000 hospitalisations. So a little under 3% of the population needing to be infected every day. This feels... implausible even with no restrictions (or self-imposed restrictions given people would react to rising case rates and hospitalisations).

    Even if you say our current level of vaccination would only prevent 50% of hospitalisations across the population (hugely pessimistic I'd think). You'd still need to see 900,000 people a day being infected to get 10,000 a day hospitalisations.

    Of course, all of the above is based on vaccinations having 0% efficacy in preventing infections, which is stupid.

    It also doesn't take into account that the unvaccinated population will be considerably smaller in a few weeks' time.
    AND you’ve even missed out the reasonable probability that “unvaccinated” does not equal “unprotected” given that many will have probably gained a measure of protection through prior infection.

    And there’s the big unknown that a proportion of the population may have some level of base immunity in the first place!
    I would go further than that, to a large extent the anti-vexes are also anti-lockdown, and have been taking the biggest risks up to this point so a large proportion will have had it, according to Office for National Statistics data, based on there weekly servays over 34% of the nation has had it, so I would guess much higher in the Anti-Vax population, (at least compared to others of there age group.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559
    dixiedean said:

    Endillion said:

    I assume the local Labour party are on the hunt for a candidate called John Conservative.

    Seriously, I wonder if Ms Green could actually lose because voters are confused which party she's standing for.

    The Mayor of Toronto is John Tory. Close enough!
    Currently (as per wiki) number of Conservative MPs from Toronto in Canadian federal parliament = 0

    However, Progressive Conservative Party has 11 MLPs out of 25 from Toronto in the Ontario provincial legislature, including Premier Doug Ford.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,758

    Omnium said:

    glw said:

    R4 "AZ highly effective against the Indian variant" - real world data from India.

    So AZ is a top-notch vaccine, effective against current variants, and the 12 week dosing was a very good idea. Of course AZ is also cheap and easy to deploy. Could the many critics of the UK's approach to vaccination — including all sorts of prestigous bodies — have been more wrong? No, they are chumps.
    Be quiet spreading all your pseudo-science.....we all know it is only quasi effective.
    It's a brilliant vaccine. It may turn out that there are other vaccines that are better, but to call it quasi-effective isn't on really.
    You better address your criticisms to a Mr E Macron of Paris, France.
    Yes, he said that, but you've also done so. And I'm sure you won't really want to defend the point. AZ should be rightly proud of their fantastic work in getting their vaccine into so many arms in such a short space of time. They've saved lives - possibly ours.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,950
    This is peak catnip for a certain demographic. Can the EU be dragged into it somehow?


  • Cookie said:

    Of course the problem with outsiders telling locals that they are no longer Lancastrians / Yorkshire / Durham is that it tends to provoke all kinds of nasty reactions. Durham runs from the Tyne to the Tees, always has, always will do. Yorkshire is North, West and East despite South also being a new Ceremonial county. Same thing with T&W - giving it a Lord Lieutenant doesn't suddenly give it value.

    A ceremonial county is not a historic country. Twatting around with borders is a touchy subject in my part of England that seems to drive the natives absolutely mental. Did have to laugh though when His Eminence the Mayor for Life of Thornaby-on-Tees gobbed off about county names and had his sizeable arse handed to him by the Chair of the Yorkshire Ridings Socirty.

    LOL. Wishful thinking.

    I actually have a lot of time for the traditional counties but putting boundaries down the middle of rivers in the middle of big cities is senseless. Just as London is rightfully one unit (rather than split between Surrey and Middlesex) so should be Newcastle.

    By the way, guess what, it's generational? In his excellent book Engel's England Matthew Engels was dismayed to find younger people baffled by the idea that Barnoldswick* was in Yorkshire.

    Engels asked 10 people which county it was in:

    Four said Lancashire, three said Yorkshire and three didn't care... A teenage girl kindly switched off her iPad to talk to me and looked disgusted."Yorkshire? It's just the elderly people who think that."


    (*It's been in Lancashire since 1974, whatever the 'Yorkshire Riding Society' – er, who? – might wish to be the case)

    Of course the problem with outsiders telling locals that they are no longer Lancastrians / Yorkshire / Durham is that it tends to provoke all kinds of nasty reactions. Durham runs from the Tyne to the Tees, always has, always will do. Yorkshire is North, West and East despite South also being a new Ceremonial county. Same thing with T&W - giving it a Lord Lieutenant doesn't suddenly give it value.

    A ceremonial county is not a historic country. Twatting around with borders is a touchy subject in my part of England that seems to drive the natives absolutely mental. Did have to laugh though when His Eminence the Mayor for Life of Thornaby-on-Tees gobbed off about county names and had his sizeable arse handed to him by the Chair of the Yorkshire Ridings Socirty.

    LOL. Wishful thinking.

    I actually have a lot of time for the traditional counties but putting boundaries down the middle of rivers in the middle of big cities is senseless. Just as London is rightfully one unit (rather than split between Surrey and Middlesex) so should be Newcastle.

    By the way, guess what, it's generational? In his excellent book Engel's England Matthew Engels was dismayed to find younger people baffled by the idea that Barnoldswick* was in Yorkshire.

    Engels asked 10 people which county it was in:

    Four said Lancashire, three said Yorkshire and three didn't care... A teenage girl kindly switched off her iPad to talk to me and looked disgusted."Yorkshire? It's just the elderly people who think that."


    (*It's been in Lancashire since 1974, whatever the 'Yorkshire Riding Society' – er, who? – might wish to be the case)
    But local government boundaries don't need to match county boundaries. I have no qualms with dividing Cheshire/Lancashire down the Mersey while letting Trafford Council collect the bins on both sides.
    It makes no sense for me whatsoever to have Cheshire/Lancashire divided down the Mersey when it comes to eg Warrington which spans both sides of the water now.

    Warrington itself originally may be north of the river, but whether north or south of it, its one town, and it makes far more sense for me to consider Warrington as part of Cheshire than Lancashire.
    I still consider Liverpool to be in Lancashire.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    glw said:

    R4 "AZ highly effective against the Indian variant" - real world data from India.

    So AZ is a top-notch vaccine, effective against current variants, and the 12 week dosing was a very good idea. Of course AZ is also cheap and easy to deploy. Could the many critics of the UK's approach to vaccination — including all sorts of prestigous bodies — have been more wrong? No, they are chumps.
    Be quiet spreading all your pseudo-science.....we all know it is only quasi effective.
    It's a brilliant vaccine. It may turn out that there are other vaccines that are better, but to call it quasi-effective isn't on really.
    You better address your criticisms to a Mr E Macron of Paris, France.
    Yes, he said that, but you've also done so. And I'm sure you won't really want to defend the point. AZ should be rightly proud of their fantastic work in getting their vaccine into so many arms in such a short space of time. They've saved lives - possibly ours.
    Amazes me that some people’s irony detector is so poor.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Cookie said:

    Of course the problem with outsiders telling locals that they are no longer Lancastrians / Yorkshire / Durham is that it tends to provoke all kinds of nasty reactions. Durham runs from the Tyne to the Tees, always has, always will do. Yorkshire is North, West and East despite South also being a new Ceremonial county. Same thing with T&W - giving it a Lord Lieutenant doesn't suddenly give it value.

    A ceremonial county is not a historic country. Twatting around with borders is a touchy subject in my part of England that seems to drive the natives absolutely mental. Did have to laugh though when His Eminence the Mayor for Life of Thornaby-on-Tees gobbed off about county names and had his sizeable arse handed to him by the Chair of the Yorkshire Ridings Socirty.

    LOL. Wishful thinking.

    I actually have a lot of time for the traditional counties but putting boundaries down the middle of rivers in the middle of big cities is senseless. Just as London is rightfully one unit (rather than split between Surrey and Middlesex) so should be Newcastle.

    By the way, guess what, it's generational? In his excellent book Engel's England Matthew Engels was dismayed to find younger people baffled by the idea that Barnoldswick* was in Yorkshire.

    Engels asked 10 people which county it was in:

    Four said Lancashire, three said Yorkshire and three didn't care... A teenage girl kindly switched off her iPad to talk to me and looked disgusted."Yorkshire? It's just the elderly people who think that."


    (*It's been in Lancashire since 1974, whatever the 'Yorkshire Riding Society' – er, who? – might wish to be the case)

    Of course the problem with outsiders telling locals that they are no longer Lancastrians / Yorkshire / Durham is that it tends to provoke all kinds of nasty reactions. Durham runs from the Tyne to the Tees, always has, always will do. Yorkshire is North, West and East despite South also being a new Ceremonial county. Same thing with T&W - giving it a Lord Lieutenant doesn't suddenly give it value.

    A ceremonial county is not a historic country. Twatting around with borders is a touchy subject in my part of England that seems to drive the natives absolutely mental. Did have to laugh though when His Eminence the Mayor for Life of Thornaby-on-Tees gobbed off about county names and had his sizeable arse handed to him by the Chair of the Yorkshire Ridings Socirty.

    LOL. Wishful thinking.

    I actually have a lot of time for the traditional counties but putting boundaries down the middle of rivers in the middle of big cities is senseless. Just as London is rightfully one unit (rather than split between Surrey and Middlesex) so should be Newcastle.

    By the way, guess what, it's generational? In his excellent book Engel's England Matthew Engels was dismayed to find younger people baffled by the idea that Barnoldswick* was in Yorkshire.

    Engels asked 10 people which county it was in:

    Four said Lancashire, three said Yorkshire and three didn't care... A teenage girl kindly switched off her iPad to talk to me and looked disgusted."Yorkshire? It's just the elderly people who think that."


    (*It's been in Lancashire since 1974, whatever the 'Yorkshire Riding Society' – er, who? – might wish to be the case)
    But local government boundaries don't need to match county boundaries. I have no qualms with dividing Cheshire/Lancashire down the Mersey while letting Trafford Council collect the bins on both sides.
    It makes no sense for me whatsoever to have Cheshire/Lancashire divided down the Mersey when it comes to eg Warrington which spans both sides of the water now.

    Warrington itself originally may be north of the river, but whether north or south of it, its one town, and it makes far more sense for me to consider Warrington as part of Cheshire than Lancashire.
    I still consider Liverpool to be in Lancashire.
    I consider it to be in Merseyside, with Birkenhead.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,789

    Maffew said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Maffew said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    Having a go at some workings of my own:

    Peak in January was about 4,000 hospitalisations a day with no vaccinations.
    Deaths peaked at roughly 1,250 a day.

    Let's assume a 0.7% fatality rate, since that seems to be the number I've seen floating around.

    That gives approximately 180,000 infections per day (1,250/0.007).

    So, in an unvaccinated population you would need around 450,000 infections per day to get 10,000 admissions.

    Let's say vaccination is about 75% effective at preventing hospitalisation across the population. It's a bit finger in the air, but basically discounting actual effectiveness by a bit to account for the young not being vaccinated and a low level of vaccine hesitancy.

    That means you then need approximately 1,800,000 infections per day to get 10,000 hospitalisations. So a little under 3% of the population needing to be infected every day. This feels... implausible even with no restrictions (or self-imposed restrictions given people would react to rising case rates and hospitalisations).

    Even if you say our current level of vaccination would only prevent 50% of hospitalisations across the population (hugely pessimistic I'd think). You'd still need to see 900,000 people a day being infected to get 10,000 a day hospitalisations.

    Of course, all of the above is based on vaccinations having 0% efficacy in preventing infections, which is stupid.

    It also doesn't take into account that the unvaccinated population will be considerably smaller in a few weeks' time.
    Also.

    0.7% is for the population as a whole. Which is something like 10% for the 80+ group, and 0.05% for the under 20s.

    The most vulnerable people are all vaccinated. And efficacy against hospitalisation and death is much higher than 91% - it's more like 99%.

    So, I simply can't see how they can possibly have the assumptions they do - even ignoring the other massive elephant in the room, which is that the virus can't spread *that* quickly as there aren't that many people for it to infect any more.
    I deliberately chose pessimistic figures for hospitalisation and death rates. As you say, it's difficult to see how you can get to 10,000 admissions a day unless your assumptions are basically:

    a) Everyone is a perfect sphere in a single room.
    b) Vaccines have no effect on tranmission.
    c) Indian variant is super deadly.
    From the CFR data from 1 December 2020, percentage probability of death given infection was

    0-14 0.0001
    15-44 0.0004
    45-64 0.0066
    65-74 0.0711
    75-84 0.1889
    85+ 0.3055

    I took the number of people unvaccinated (as of todays update).

    With a bit of forcing numbers together I got that if every single unvaccinated person caught COVID, we should expect -

    Age, Unvaccinated, Deaths for 100% infection
    0-44, 16,908,941, 6,897
    45-64, 4,537,066, 29,842
    65-74, 418,129, 29,714
    75-84, 101,661, 19,203
    85+, 142,568, 43,556

    I rather think that it is the unprotected elderly that is causing worry, looking at those numbers.

    But those numbers will never happen because the vaccines will cause a gigantic reduction in spread. That gives a cumulative reduction in hospitalisations as it means the virus needs a significantly higher R0 to find enough viable. The Indian variant and Kent variants don't even get close to that level to be able sustain viral spread with only 1/20 people being susceptible to infection and only 3/10 being able to spread it.

    Also, if those vaccine refusers die, that's really no one's fault but their own. Whatever wanky liberals want to write about the vaccines being racist will get laughed out of the room.
  • AnExileinD4AnExileinD4 Posts: 337
    Per the header, why might losing a by-election cause BJ to suffer a political crisis? It seems a slightly over-refreshed statement.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    glw said:

    R4 "AZ highly effective against the Indian variant" - real world data from India.

    So AZ is a top-notch vaccine, effective against current variants, and the 12 week dosing was a very good idea. Of course AZ is also cheap and easy to deploy. Could the many critics of the UK's approach to vaccination — including all sorts of prestigous bodies — have been more wrong? No, they are chumps.
    Be quiet spreading all your pseudo-science.....we all know it is only quasi effective.
    It's a brilliant vaccine. It may turn out that there are other vaccines that are better, but to call it quasi-effective isn't on really.
    You better address your criticisms to a Mr E Macron of Paris, France.
    Yes, he said that, but you've also done so. And I'm sure you won't really want to defend the point. AZ should be rightly proud of their fantastic work in getting their vaccine into so many arms in such a short space of time. They've saved lives - possibly ours.
    LOL.

  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,723

    Does anyone actually give a feck about this Diana interview shit that appears to be wall-to-wall on the news channels today?

    Why can't they be discussing UAPs or the shite weather like us normal folk.

    Been pissing it down in this part of the West Riding of Yorkshire for the past 7 hours, btw.

    Actually it is a story of a BBC journalist acting disgracefully and the consequences are still being played out even today with Harry's serious issues

    Does anyone seriously think Diana would have publically said 'there are three people in my marriage' without this interview
    Diana was brilliant at manipulating the media. That interview is a great example. She dropped exactly what she wanted to say, at the precise moment she wanted to say it.

    The notion that she was the naive victim of a predatory journo is fanciful.

    Correct... but he behaved disgracefully and should be pilloried for it.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559

    dixiedean said:

    Endillion said:

    I assume the local Labour party are on the hunt for a candidate called John Conservative.

    Seriously, I wonder if Ms Green could actually lose because voters are confused which party she's standing for.

    The Mayor of Toronto is John Tory. Close enough!
    Currently (as per wiki) number of Conservative MPs from Toronto in Canadian federal parliament = 0

    However, Progressive Conservative Party has 11 MLPs out of 25 from Toronto in the Ontario provincial legislature, including Premier Doug Ford.
    In same line of country, a professor years ago told my class that at some point in Bohemia (think just before WW1) one of the leaders of the local Germans was Dr. Tschech, while one of the leaders of the Czechs was Dr. Deutsch.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    .

    Maffew said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Maffew said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    Having a go at some workings of my own:

    Peak in January was about 4,000 hospitalisations a day with no vaccinations.
    Deaths peaked at roughly 1,250 a day.

    Let's assume a 0.7% fatality rate, since that seems to be the number I've seen floating around.

    That gives approximately 180,000 infections per day (1,250/0.007).

    So, in an unvaccinated population you would need around 450,000 infections per day to get 10,000 admissions.

    Let's say vaccination is about 75% effective at preventing hospitalisation across the population. It's a bit finger in the air, but basically discounting actual effectiveness by a bit to account for the young not being vaccinated and a low level of vaccine hesitancy.

    That means you then need approximately 1,800,000 infections per day to get 10,000 hospitalisations. So a little under 3% of the population needing to be infected every day. This feels... implausible even with no restrictions (or self-imposed restrictions given people would react to rising case rates and hospitalisations).

    Even if you say our current level of vaccination would only prevent 50% of hospitalisations across the population (hugely pessimistic I'd think). You'd still need to see 900,000 people a day being infected to get 10,000 a day hospitalisations.

    Of course, all of the above is based on vaccinations having 0% efficacy in preventing infections, which is stupid.

    It also doesn't take into account that the unvaccinated population will be considerably smaller in a few weeks' time.
    Also.

    0.7% is for the population as a whole. Which is something like 10% for the 80+ group, and 0.05% for the under 20s.

    The most vulnerable people are all vaccinated. And efficacy against hospitalisation and death is much higher than 91% - it's more like 99%.

    So, I simply can't see how they can possibly have the assumptions they do - even ignoring the other massive elephant in the room, which is that the virus can't spread *that* quickly as there aren't that many people for it to infect any more.
    I deliberately chose pessimistic figures for hospitalisation and death rates. As you say, it's difficult to see how you can get to 10,000 admissions a day unless your assumptions are basically:

    a) Everyone is a perfect sphere in a single room.
    b) Vaccines have no effect on tranmission.
    c) Indian variant is super deadly.
    From the CFR data from 1 December 2020, percentage probability of death given infection was

    0-14 0.0001
    15-44 0.0004
    45-64 0.0066
    65-74 0.0711
    75-84 0.1889
    85+ 0.3055

    I took the number of people unvaccinated (as of todays update).

    With a bit of forcing numbers together I got that if every single unvaccinated person caught COVID, we should expect -

    Age, Unvaccinated, Deaths for 100% infection
    0-44, 16,908,941, 6,897
    45-64, 4,537,066, 29,842
    65-74, 418,129, 29,714
    75-84, 101,661, 19,203
    85+, 142,568, 43,556

    I rather think that it is the unprotected elderly that is causing worry, looking at those numbers.

    There are no unprotected elderly that haven't been offered the vaccine.

    If vaccine refusers get sick and die then that's on them.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,213
    MaxPB said:

    Maffew said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Maffew said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    Having a go at some workings of my own:

    Peak in January was about 4,000 hospitalisations a day with no vaccinations.
    Deaths peaked at roughly 1,250 a day.

    Let's assume a 0.7% fatality rate, since that seems to be the number I've seen floating around.

    That gives approximately 180,000 infections per day (1,250/0.007).

    So, in an unvaccinated population you would need around 450,000 infections per day to get 10,000 admissions.

    Let's say vaccination is about 75% effective at preventing hospitalisation across the population. It's a bit finger in the air, but basically discounting actual effectiveness by a bit to account for the young not being vaccinated and a low level of vaccine hesitancy.

    That means you then need approximately 1,800,000 infections per day to get 10,000 hospitalisations. So a little under 3% of the population needing to be infected every day. This feels... implausible even with no restrictions (or self-imposed restrictions given people would react to rising case rates and hospitalisations).

    Even if you say our current level of vaccination would only prevent 50% of hospitalisations across the population (hugely pessimistic I'd think). You'd still need to see 900,000 people a day being infected to get 10,000 a day hospitalisations.

    Of course, all of the above is based on vaccinations having 0% efficacy in preventing infections, which is stupid.

    It also doesn't take into account that the unvaccinated population will be considerably smaller in a few weeks' time.
    Also.

    0.7% is for the population as a whole. Which is something like 10% for the 80+ group, and 0.05% for the under 20s.

    The most vulnerable people are all vaccinated. And efficacy against hospitalisation and death is much higher than 91% - it's more like 99%.

    So, I simply can't see how they can possibly have the assumptions they do - even ignoring the other massive elephant in the room, which is that the virus can't spread *that* quickly as there aren't that many people for it to infect any more.
    I deliberately chose pessimistic figures for hospitalisation and death rates. As you say, it's difficult to see how you can get to 10,000 admissions a day unless your assumptions are basically:

    a) Everyone is a perfect sphere in a single room.
    b) Vaccines have no effect on tranmission.
    c) Indian variant is super deadly.
    From the CFR data from 1 December 2020, percentage probability of death given infection was

    0-14 0.0001
    15-44 0.0004
    45-64 0.0066
    65-74 0.0711
    75-84 0.1889
    85+ 0.3055

    I took the number of people unvaccinated (as of todays update).

    With a bit of forcing numbers together I got that if every single unvaccinated person caught COVID, we should expect -

    Age, Unvaccinated, Deaths for 100% infection
    0-44, 16,908,941, 6,897
    45-64, 4,537,066, 29,842
    65-74, 418,129, 29,714
    75-84, 101,661, 19,203
    85+, 142,568, 43,556

    I rather think that it is the unprotected elderly that is causing worry, looking at those numbers.

    But those numbers will never happen because the vaccines will cause a gigantic reduction in spread. That gives a cumulative reduction in hospitalisations as it means the virus needs a significantly higher R0 to find enough viable. The Indian variant and Kent variants don't even get close to that level to be able sustain viral spread with only 1/20 people being susceptible to infection and only 3/10 being able to spread it.

    Also, if those vaccine refusers die, that's really no one's fault but their own. Whatever wanky liberals want to write about the vaccines being racist will get laughed out of the room.
    Well, we know the *virus* is racist and misandrist - there are graphs and everything.

    As to the numbers - yes, they won't happen. A major reason is that the non-vaccinated in the older groups are not sitting in one great big football crowd. They are sprinkled all over the place, with lots of vaccinated people in between....
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,098
    Sean_F said:

    Rhodes Commission report. Interestingly, a majority of Oxford alumni and of present university staff and academics were opposed to its removal - which surprised me - as well as a clear majority of the public. Only 15% of the 511 enrolled Oriel students replied, and only 62 supported removal about 10%.

    In other words, it was always just a few loudmouths:

    "5.52: Contributions were initially requested by 30 September 2020, but the Commission decided to continue accepting submissions as its work continued. The total number of submissions from all sources received was 1447, (not all of which took an explicit position on the future of the memorials.) These included 338 submissions from alumni, of which 95 supported and 222 opposed moving the statue; 83 submissions from students, of which 62 supported, and 15 opposed removing the statue, and 37 submissions from academics and staff, of which 15 supported and 20 opposed moving the statue. Seven submissions were made by organisations, five of which opposed moving the statue. 982 submissions were made by members of the general public, of which 966 opposed moving the statue. 490 of these were received on two days in March 2021 following an appeal to its supporters by the organisation Save Our Statues (which had issued a similar appeal to its supporters at the end of the initial consultation period)."

    https://www.oriel.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/oriel_rhodes_commission_full_report.pdf

    It’s good that these whining arseholes have been shat over.
    Ooo. Butch.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,213
    Vaccination takeup (England only)

    Under 40 24.23%
    40-44 64.23%
    45-49 75.32%
    50-54 83.70%
    55-59 86.47%
    60-64 88.78%
    65-69 91.60%
    70-74 94.09%
    75-79 95.13%
    80+ 94.87%

    Change in the last week

    Under 40 2.73%
    40-44 7.94%
    45-49 2.59%
    50-54 0.40%
    55-59 0.29%
    60-64 0.22%
    65-69 0.13%
    70-74 0.05%
    75-79 0.00%
    80+ 0.00%

  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Vaccination takeup (England only)

    Under 40 24.23%
    40-44 64.23%
    45-49 75.32%
    50-54 83.70%
    55-59 86.47%
    60-64 88.78%
    65-69 91.60%
    70-74 94.09%
    75-79 95.13%
    80+ 94.87%

    Change in the last week

    Under 40 2.73%
    40-44 7.94%
    45-49 2.59%
    50-54 0.40%
    55-59 0.29%
    60-64 0.22%
    65-69 0.13%
    70-74 0.05%
    75-79 0.00%
    80+ 0.00%

    Confirms that the vaccine rollout is finished in groups 1-9, barring people who change their minds now.

    We can't wait for the ~10% of people who don't want the vaccine to take it.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,128
    eek said:

    eek said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Xtrain said:

    Is it official LibDem policy to be against HS2 and new housing development or is it just for the C & A by election?

    It seems to be Lib Dem position to support free movement and increasing the UK's population, but to be in favour of NIMBYism and against having houses or infrastructure built for the people they want to live here.
    It's the LibDem policy to support whichever local policies are most likely to result in them winning a byelection.

    I don't think that is particularly nefarious.
    I do. It is fundamentally dishonest.

    Their policy is to strongly support free movement - but to oppose constructing houses for people that come to live here to live in.

    I am OK with mass immigration every bit as much as the LDs are. But I support constructing homes and infrastructure to go with that. To support one without the other is dishonest.
    Look, you may think that's a stupid policy (because it's pretty disastrous for those at the bottom of the property ladder). But it's going to resonate well with people in C&A who own expensive homes, and want the value of those homes to rise.
    If you want the biggest annoyance in Amersham at the moment, it's Aldi's desire to build a supermarket on the edge of Amersham old town where the Jaguar garage was.
    Presumably they are annoyed because it is Aldi, rather than Waitrose?
    You might think that I can't possibly comment.

    There is a small Waitrose in Amersham on the Hill where (from memory) Woolworths was.

    It's not Booths so I'm not particularly bothered about shopping there...
    It's Lib Dem policy to say whatever they think will get them votes.

    If that involves putting themselves at the head of a mob of slavering Nimbys, or creating one from scratch, that is what they will do.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,213

    Vaccination takeup (England only)

    Under 40 24.23%
    40-44 64.23%
    45-49 75.32%
    50-54 83.70%
    55-59 86.47%
    60-64 88.78%
    65-69 91.60%
    70-74 94.09%
    75-79 95.13%
    80+ 94.87%

    Change in the last week

    Under 40 2.73%
    40-44 7.94%
    45-49 2.59%
    50-54 0.40%
    55-59 0.29%
    60-64 0.22%
    65-69 0.13%
    70-74 0.05%
    75-79 0.00%
    80+ 0.00%

    Confirms that the vaccine rollout is finished in groups 1-9, barring people who change their minds now.

    We can't wait for the ~10% of people who don't want the vaccine to take it.
    The annoying bit is that it looks like that we won't get the 94% take-up in the 50-64 group, given how they've slowed down.
  • Time_to_LeaveTime_to_Leave Posts: 2,547

    Vaccination takeup (England only)

    Under 40 24.23%
    40-44 64.23%
    45-49 75.32%
    50-54 83.70%
    55-59 86.47%
    60-64 88.78%
    65-69 91.60%
    70-74 94.09%
    75-79 95.13%
    80+ 94.87%

    Change in the last week

    Under 40 2.73%
    40-44 7.94%
    45-49 2.59%
    50-54 0.40%
    55-59 0.29%
    60-64 0.22%
    65-69 0.13%
    70-74 0.05%
    75-79 0.00%
    80+ 0.00%

    Confirms that the vaccine rollout is finished in groups 1-9, barring people who change their minds now.

    We can't wait for the ~10% of people who don't want the vaccine to take it.
    Loud though the anti-vaxers are, this does rather emphasise that there aren’t very many of them in the real world.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Vaccination takeup (England only)

    Under 40 24.23%
    40-44 64.23%
    45-49 75.32%
    50-54 83.70%
    55-59 86.47%
    60-64 88.78%
    65-69 91.60%
    70-74 94.09%
    75-79 95.13%
    80+ 94.87%

    Change in the last week

    Under 40 2.73%
    40-44 7.94%
    45-49 2.59%
    50-54 0.40%
    55-59 0.29%
    60-64 0.22%
    65-69 0.13%
    70-74 0.05%
    75-79 0.00%
    80+ 0.00%

    Confirms that the vaccine rollout is finished in groups 1-9, barring people who change their minds now.

    We can't wait for the ~10% of people who don't want the vaccine to take it.
    The annoying bit is that it looks like that we won't get the 94% take-up in the 50-64 group, given how they've slowed down.
    Its stopped not slowed down effectively.

    Either the estimated denominator is wrong (since you're using an inflated estimated one rather than one via counting), or there's a significant chunk of refuseniks. But that's on them, if they get sick then that's their choice.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    MaxPB said:

    .

    Maffew said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Maffew said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    Having a go at some workings of my own:

    Peak in January was about 4,000 hospitalisations a day with no vaccinations.
    Deaths peaked at roughly 1,250 a day.

    Let's assume a 0.7% fatality rate, since that seems to be the number I've seen floating around.

    That gives approximately 180,000 infections per day (1,250/0.007).

    So, in an unvaccinated population you would need around 450,000 infections per day to get 10,000 admissions.

    Let's say vaccination is about 75% effective at preventing hospitalisation across the population. It's a bit finger in the air, but basically discounting actual effectiveness by a bit to account for the young not being vaccinated and a low level of vaccine hesitancy.

    That means you then need approximately 1,800,000 infections per day to get 10,000 hospitalisations. So a little under 3% of the population needing to be infected every day. This feels... implausible even with no restrictions (or self-imposed restrictions given people would react to rising case rates and hospitalisations).

    Even if you say our current level of vaccination would only prevent 50% of hospitalisations across the population (hugely pessimistic I'd think). You'd still need to see 900,000 people a day being infected to get 10,000 a day hospitalisations.

    Of course, all of the above is based on vaccinations having 0% efficacy in preventing infections, which is stupid.

    It also doesn't take into account that the unvaccinated population will be considerably smaller in a few weeks' time.
    Also.

    0.7% is for the population as a whole. Which is something like 10% for the 80+ group, and 0.05% for the under 20s.

    The most vulnerable people are all vaccinated. And efficacy against hospitalisation and death is much higher than 91% - it's more like 99%.

    So, I simply can't see how they can possibly have the assumptions they do - even ignoring the other massive elephant in the room, which is that the virus can't spread *that* quickly as there aren't that many people for it to infect any more.
    I deliberately chose pessimistic figures for hospitalisation and death rates. As you say, it's difficult to see how you can get to 10,000 admissions a day unless your assumptions are basically:

    a) Everyone is a perfect sphere in a single room.
    b) Vaccines have no effect on tranmission.
    c) Indian variant is super deadly.
    From the CFR data from 1 December 2020, percentage probability of death given infection was

    0-14 0.0001
    15-44 0.0004
    45-64 0.0066
    65-74 0.0711
    75-84 0.1889
    85+ 0.3055

    I took the number of people unvaccinated (as of todays update).

    With a bit of forcing numbers together I got that if every single unvaccinated person caught COVID, we should expect -

    Age, Unvaccinated, Deaths for 100% infection
    0-44, 16,908,941, 6,897
    45-64, 4,537,066, 29,842
    65-74, 418,129, 29,714
    75-84, 101,661, 19,203
    85+, 142,568, 43,556

    I rather think that it is the unprotected elderly that is causing worry, looking at those numbers.

    There are no unprotected elderly that haven't been offered the vaccine.

    If vaccine refusers get sick and die then that's on them.
    I was watching something earlier where a black diversity inclusion person was banging on about how it's fair for black people to refuse the vaccine and still expect to be protected by the state because of historical trust issues. This is the kind of shite that needs to be completey destroyed. 37m people have had the vaccine in this country, white, black, brown, old, young, men, women, even a few kids who have got severe health issues. It's safer effective and the roll out has not discriminated against any race, it's been a huge success story for everyone involved.
    That attitude is shocking. What that person called out for their bullshit or did they get away with saying it unchallenged?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,213

    Vaccination takeup (England only)

    Under 40 24.23%
    40-44 64.23%
    45-49 75.32%
    50-54 83.70%
    55-59 86.47%
    60-64 88.78%
    65-69 91.60%
    70-74 94.09%
    75-79 95.13%
    80+ 94.87%

    Change in the last week

    Under 40 2.73%
    40-44 7.94%
    45-49 2.59%
    50-54 0.40%
    55-59 0.29%
    60-64 0.22%
    65-69 0.13%
    70-74 0.05%
    75-79 0.00%
    80+ 0.00%

    Confirms that the vaccine rollout is finished in groups 1-9, barring people who change their minds now.

    We can't wait for the ~10% of people who don't want the vaccine to take it.
    The annoying bit is that it looks like that we won't get the 94% take-up in the 50-64 group, given how they've slowed down.
    Its stopped not slowed down effectively.

    Either the estimated denominator is wrong (since you're using an inflated estimated one rather than one via counting), or there's a significant chunk of refuseniks. But that's on them, if they get sick then that's their choice.
    They are still vaccinating in those groups - but slowly. Changes -

    50-54 0.40%
    55-59 0.29%
    60-64 0.22%

    I'm using the NIMS data for population, since it is, in effect, a re-census of the population.
  • Time_to_LeaveTime_to_Leave Posts: 2,547

    Vaccination takeup (England only)

    Under 40 24.23%
    40-44 64.23%
    45-49 75.32%
    50-54 83.70%
    55-59 86.47%
    60-64 88.78%
    65-69 91.60%
    70-74 94.09%
    75-79 95.13%
    80+ 94.87%

    Change in the last week

    Under 40 2.73%
    40-44 7.94%
    45-49 2.59%
    50-54 0.40%
    55-59 0.29%
    60-64 0.22%
    65-69 0.13%
    70-74 0.05%
    75-79 0.00%
    80+ 0.00%

    Confirms that the vaccine rollout is finished in groups 1-9, barring people who change their minds now.

    We can't wait for the ~10% of people who don't want the vaccine to take it.
    The annoying bit is that it looks like that we won't get the 94% take-up in the 50-64 group, given how they've slowed down.
    Its stopped not slowed down effectively.

    Either the estimated denominator is wrong (since you're using an inflated estimated one rather than one via counting), or there's a significant chunk of refuseniks. But that's on them, if they get sick then that's their choice.
    It saddened me for a moment yesterday in the press conference when it occurred to me that the over-80s won’t all get their second dose, simply because a number of them are quite a lot over 80 and will have died from something else. The difference between first and second jabs in that age group will be quite sad.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,758

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    glw said:

    R4 "AZ highly effective against the Indian variant" - real world data from India.

    So AZ is a top-notch vaccine, effective against current variants, and the 12 week dosing was a very good idea. Of course AZ is also cheap and easy to deploy. Could the many critics of the UK's approach to vaccination — including all sorts of prestigous bodies — have been more wrong? No, they are chumps.
    Be quiet spreading all your pseudo-science.....we all know it is only quasi effective.
    It's a brilliant vaccine. It may turn out that there are other vaccines that are better, but to call it quasi-effective isn't on really.
    You better address your criticisms to a Mr E Macron of Paris, France.
    Yes, he said that, but you've also done so. And I'm sure you won't really want to defend the point. AZ should be rightly proud of their fantastic work in getting their vaccine into so many arms in such a short space of time. They've saved lives - possibly ours.
    LOL.

    Very misplaced sarcasm.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,789

    MaxPB said:

    .

    Maffew said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Maffew said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    Having a go at some workings of my own:

    Peak in January was about 4,000 hospitalisations a day with no vaccinations.
    Deaths peaked at roughly 1,250 a day.

    Let's assume a 0.7% fatality rate, since that seems to be the number I've seen floating around.

    That gives approximately 180,000 infections per day (1,250/0.007).

    So, in an unvaccinated population you would need around 450,000 infections per day to get 10,000 admissions.

    Let's say vaccination is about 75% effective at preventing hospitalisation across the population. It's a bit finger in the air, but basically discounting actual effectiveness by a bit to account for the young not being vaccinated and a low level of vaccine hesitancy.

    That means you then need approximately 1,800,000 infections per day to get 10,000 hospitalisations. So a little under 3% of the population needing to be infected every day. This feels... implausible even with no restrictions (or self-imposed restrictions given people would react to rising case rates and hospitalisations).

    Even if you say our current level of vaccination would only prevent 50% of hospitalisations across the population (hugely pessimistic I'd think). You'd still need to see 900,000 people a day being infected to get 10,000 a day hospitalisations.

    Of course, all of the above is based on vaccinations having 0% efficacy in preventing infections, which is stupid.

    It also doesn't take into account that the unvaccinated population will be considerably smaller in a few weeks' time.
    Also.

    0.7% is for the population as a whole. Which is something like 10% for the 80+ group, and 0.05% for the under 20s.

    The most vulnerable people are all vaccinated. And efficacy against hospitalisation and death is much higher than 91% - it's more like 99%.

    So, I simply can't see how they can possibly have the assumptions they do - even ignoring the other massive elephant in the room, which is that the virus can't spread *that* quickly as there aren't that many people for it to infect any more.
    I deliberately chose pessimistic figures for hospitalisation and death rates. As you say, it's difficult to see how you can get to 10,000 admissions a day unless your assumptions are basically:

    a) Everyone is a perfect sphere in a single room.
    b) Vaccines have no effect on tranmission.
    c) Indian variant is super deadly.
    From the CFR data from 1 December 2020, percentage probability of death given infection was

    0-14 0.0001
    15-44 0.0004
    45-64 0.0066
    65-74 0.0711
    75-84 0.1889
    85+ 0.3055

    I took the number of people unvaccinated (as of todays update).

    With a bit of forcing numbers together I got that if every single unvaccinated person caught COVID, we should expect -

    Age, Unvaccinated, Deaths for 100% infection
    0-44, 16,908,941, 6,897
    45-64, 4,537,066, 29,842
    65-74, 418,129, 29,714
    75-84, 101,661, 19,203
    85+, 142,568, 43,556

    I rather think that it is the unprotected elderly that is causing worry, looking at those numbers.

    There are no unprotected elderly that haven't been offered the vaccine.

    If vaccine refusers get sick and die then that's on them.
    I was watching something earlier where a black diversity inclusion person was banging on about how it's fair for black people to refuse the vaccine and still expect to be protected by the state because of historical trust issues. This is the kind of shite that needs to be completey destroyed. 37m people have had the vaccine in this country, white, black, brown, old, young, men, women, even a few kids who have got severe health issues. It's safer effective and the roll out has not discriminated against any race, it's been a huge success story for everyone involved.
    That attitude is shocking. What that person called out for their bullshit or did they get away with saying it unchallenged?
    Tbh, I switched off so I don't know. I doubt it though as it was some news channel.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,978
    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    glw said:

    R4 "AZ highly effective against the Indian variant" - real world data from India.

    So AZ is a top-notch vaccine, effective against current variants, and the 12 week dosing was a very good idea. Of course AZ is also cheap and easy to deploy. Could the many critics of the UK's approach to vaccination — including all sorts of prestigous bodies — have been more wrong? No, they are chumps.
    Be quiet spreading all your pseudo-science.....we all know it is only quasi effective.
    It's a brilliant vaccine. It may turn out that there are other vaccines that are better, but to call it quasi-effective isn't on really.
    You better address your criticisms to a Mr E Macron of Paris, France.
    Yes, he said that, but you've also done so. And I'm sure you won't really want to defend the point. AZ should be rightly proud of their fantastic work in getting their vaccine into so many arms in such a short space of time. They've saved lives - possibly ours.
    You have obviously missed all my posts on this over the 3 months....where I repeatedly took the piss out of those saying AZN was not fit for purpose.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Vaccination takeup (England only)

    Under 40 24.23%
    40-44 64.23%
    45-49 75.32%
    50-54 83.70%
    55-59 86.47%
    60-64 88.78%
    65-69 91.60%
    70-74 94.09%
    75-79 95.13%
    80+ 94.87%

    Change in the last week

    Under 40 2.73%
    40-44 7.94%
    45-49 2.59%
    50-54 0.40%
    55-59 0.29%
    60-64 0.22%
    65-69 0.13%
    70-74 0.05%
    75-79 0.00%
    80+ 0.00%

    Confirms that the vaccine rollout is finished in groups 1-9, barring people who change their minds now.

    We can't wait for the ~10% of people who don't want the vaccine to take it.
    The annoying bit is that it looks like that we won't get the 94% take-up in the 50-64 group, given how they've slowed down.
    Its stopped not slowed down effectively.

    Either the estimated denominator is wrong (since you're using an inflated estimated one rather than one via counting), or there's a significant chunk of refuseniks. But that's on them, if they get sick then that's their choice.
    They are still vaccinating in those groups - but slowly. Changes -

    50-54 0.40%
    55-59 0.29%
    60-64 0.22%

    I'm using the NIMS data for population, since it is, in effect, a re-census of the population.
    Those numbers are teeny and negligible. They're effectively people who initially declined the vaccine then choosing to go and get it a couple of weeks later.

    NIMS is an estimate, if the data is wrong then the percentages will be wrong. EG the estimated up to a million EU migrants who were in the UK, registered with a GP, but have gone back to the nation they came from originally during the pandemic as there's no reason to stay in the UK away from their family paying high rents when they can't even work may be included in the NIMS estimates but they won't be getting their vaccine since they're not here.

    That could affect working-age populations more than retired populations.
  • BigRichBigRich Posts: 3,492

    rcs1000 said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    What's particularly infuriating is that the EU is opening up now, despite not having anywhere near the vaccine protection we do.

    We had this massive lead, that we're in the process of squandering due to a bunch of zero Covid nutters.
    Unfortunately, that's a consequence of the history of the last year in the UK.

    Those who have argued for earlier, harder lockdowns have been shown to be right last March, last autumn, last December. Anti-lockdown types called it wrong each time, to tragic effect.

    So on the occasion where we probably do have leeway to unlock faster, the public confidence isn't there- and one has to wonder if the PM has the confidence to go faster.

    It's kind of the boy who cried wolf in reverse.

    (The three month vaccination lead the UK had was always going to close a fair bit, but even I'm surprised at how much the reopening gap is closing.)
    I disagree,

    for each of the 3 lockdowns, cases where falling immediately before they where in place, and could have been expected to continua falling, but logically at a slower rate. If we had not done each then lockdown at all I believe, we would have had lower deaths overall, and while I can not prove that, nobody can.

    I will try to explain,
    if we had not done the first, then yes more would have had it over the summer, but, a) survival rates in summer are generally better than winter for all conditions, b) the original was less deadly then the Kent variety, so would have been better to get more people inoculated with that to then slow the spread.

    If we had not done the second lockdown, when cases where falling and lifted it after cases where rising, then it would have been more apparent that that the rise was as a result of a new more deadly variant, rather than just a bounce back after the Lockdown, and either people would have modified there behaver, or perhaps government action like a better times lockdown in early/mid December. (look at Scotland no lockdown in November, but cases fell almost as much as in England)

    The last lockdown may have saved some lives, but as cases peeked (according to the sample date, not the reported date 29th Dec, and the fall was from a combination of reasons, including the vaccine role out, and improving seasonal change, as well as 'heard immunity' the dramatic fall we have had since is only partially dew to the last lock down.

    I know I must be sounding like a broken record, so sorry, but I feel somebody should be saying this, and its its not to a SAGE meeting then at lease its somewhere.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,128
    edited May 2021

    Does anyone actually give a feck about this Diana interview shit that appears to be wall-to-wall on the news channels today?

    Why can't they be discussing UAPs or the shite weather like us normal folk.

    Been pissing it down in this part of the West Riding of Yorkshire for the past 7 hours, btw.

    I note that they haven't reported their abject apology to James Dyson last week, either.

    Just caught a bit of the Archers by mistake.

    Why has Alice Aldridge been chucking bricks through shop windows?

    (Or was it a flint dildo from Leon?)
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,789

    Vaccination takeup (England only)

    Under 40 24.23%
    40-44 64.23%
    45-49 75.32%
    50-54 83.70%
    55-59 86.47%
    60-64 88.78%
    65-69 91.60%
    70-74 94.09%
    75-79 95.13%
    80+ 94.87%

    Change in the last week

    Under 40 2.73%
    40-44 7.94%
    45-49 2.59%
    50-54 0.40%
    55-59 0.29%
    60-64 0.22%
    65-69 0.13%
    70-74 0.05%
    75-79 0.00%
    80+ 0.00%

    Confirms that the vaccine rollout is finished in groups 1-9, barring people who change their minds now.

    We can't wait for the ~10% of people who don't want the vaccine to take it.
    The annoying bit is that it looks like that we won't get the 94% take-up in the 50-64 group, given how they've slowed down.
    Its stopped not slowed down effectively.

    Either the estimated denominator is wrong (since you're using an inflated estimated one rather than one via counting), or there's a significant chunk of refuseniks. But that's on them, if they get sick then that's their choice.
    They are still vaccinating in those groups - but slowly. Changes -

    50-54 0.40%
    55-59 0.29%
    60-64 0.22%

    I'm using the NIMS data for population, since it is, in effect, a re-census of the population.
    Those numbers are teeny and negligible. They're effectively people who initially declined the vaccine then choosing to go and get it a couple of weeks later.

    NIMS is an estimate, if the data is wrong then the percentages will be wrong. EG the estimated up to a million EU migrants who were in the UK, registered with a GP, but have gone back to the nation they came from originally during the pandemic as there's no reason to stay in the UK away from their family paying high rents when they can't even work may be included in the NIMS estimates but they won't be getting their vaccine since they're not here.

    That could affect working-age populations more than retired populations.
    It also doesn't take into account 2020/21 deaths, not just net emigration.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747
    edited May 2021
    Just watched yesterday’s PMQs. The PM begins the session by stating that fresh data indicates the Indian variant is of no concern to the vaccine programme. Starmerama then asks 5 questions about... the Indian variant.

    Then his last question only serves to remind everyone that the Labour Party has a lingering problem with anti semitism.

    Get him out. Now.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,758

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    glw said:

    R4 "AZ highly effective against the Indian variant" - real world data from India.

    So AZ is a top-notch vaccine, effective against current variants, and the 12 week dosing was a very good idea. Of course AZ is also cheap and easy to deploy. Could the many critics of the UK's approach to vaccination — including all sorts of prestigous bodies — have been more wrong? No, they are chumps.
    Be quiet spreading all your pseudo-science.....we all know it is only quasi effective.
    It's a brilliant vaccine. It may turn out that there are other vaccines that are better, but to call it quasi-effective isn't on really.
    You better address your criticisms to a Mr E Macron of Paris, France.
    Yes, he said that, but you've also done so. And I'm sure you won't really want to defend the point. AZ should be rightly proud of their fantastic work in getting their vaccine into so many arms in such a short space of time. They've saved lives - possibly ours.
    You have obviously missed all my posts on this over the 3 months....where I repeatedly took the piss out of those saying AZN was not fit for purpose.
    I may well have done so.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,978
    edited May 2021
    MaxPB said:

    .

    Maffew said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Maffew said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    Having a go at some workings of my own:

    Peak in January was about 4,000 hospitalisations a day with no vaccinations.
    Deaths peaked at roughly 1,250 a day.

    Let's assume a 0.7% fatality rate, since that seems to be the number I've seen floating around.

    That gives approximately 180,000 infections per day (1,250/0.007).

    So, in an unvaccinated population you would need around 450,000 infections per day to get 10,000 admissions.

    Let's say vaccination is about 75% effective at preventing hospitalisation across the population. It's a bit finger in the air, but basically discounting actual effectiveness by a bit to account for the young not being vaccinated and a low level of vaccine hesitancy.

    That means you then need approximately 1,800,000 infections per day to get 10,000 hospitalisations. So a little under 3% of the population needing to be infected every day. This feels... implausible even with no restrictions (or self-imposed restrictions given people would react to rising case rates and hospitalisations).

    Even if you say our current level of vaccination would only prevent 50% of hospitalisations across the population (hugely pessimistic I'd think). You'd still need to see 900,000 people a day being infected to get 10,000 a day hospitalisations.

    Of course, all of the above is based on vaccinations having 0% efficacy in preventing infections, which is stupid.

    It also doesn't take into account that the unvaccinated population will be considerably smaller in a few weeks' time.
    Also.

    0.7% is for the population as a whole. Which is something like 10% for the 80+ group, and 0.05% for the under 20s.

    The most vulnerable people are all vaccinated. And efficacy against hospitalisation and death is much higher than 91% - it's more like 99%.

    So, I simply can't see how they can possibly have the assumptions they do - even ignoring the other massive elephant in the room, which is that the virus can't spread *that* quickly as there aren't that many people for it to infect any more.
    I deliberately chose pessimistic figures for hospitalisation and death rates. As you say, it's difficult to see how you can get to 10,000 admissions a day unless your assumptions are basically:

    a) Everyone is a perfect sphere in a single room.
    b) Vaccines have no effect on tranmission.
    c) Indian variant is super deadly.
    From the CFR data from 1 December 2020, percentage probability of death given infection was

    0-14 0.0001
    15-44 0.0004
    45-64 0.0066
    65-74 0.0711
    75-84 0.1889
    85+ 0.3055

    I took the number of people unvaccinated (as of todays update).

    With a bit of forcing numbers together I got that if every single unvaccinated person caught COVID, we should expect -

    Age, Unvaccinated, Deaths for 100% infection
    0-44, 16,908,941, 6,897
    45-64, 4,537,066, 29,842
    65-74, 418,129, 29,714
    75-84, 101,661, 19,203
    85+, 142,568, 43,556

    I rather think that it is the unprotected elderly that is causing worry, looking at those numbers.

    There are no unprotected elderly that haven't been offered the vaccine.

    If vaccine refusers get sick and die then that's on them.
    I was watching something earlier where a black diversity inclusion person was banging on about how it's fair for black people to refuse the vaccine and still expect to be protected by the state because of historical trust issues. This is the kind of shite that needs to be completey destroyed. 37m people have had the vaccine in this country, white, black, brown, old, young, men, women, even a few kids who have got severe health issues. It's safer effective and the roll out has not discriminated against any race, it's been a huge success story for everyone involved.
    I saw another one of these bad faith race warrior types the other day trying to claim it was all so unfair to criticise anybody in the black community for not taking it, they might not be able to get to a centre, they have no child care for their kids, yadda yadda yadda yadda....its all because of structural racism meaning too many black people are poor.....

    But we know across all the socio-economic ranges the uptake is absolutely massive, there is no difference between rich and poor....mostly because there is a vaccination centre extremely close to basically everybody and incredible flexibility in when you decide to get jabbed.

    In the very early days, those objections might have held some merit as there was a more limited range of vaccine centres and slots, but not now.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,789

    MaxPB said:

    .

    Maffew said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Maffew said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    Having a go at some workings of my own:

    Peak in January was about 4,000 hospitalisations a day with no vaccinations.
    Deaths peaked at roughly 1,250 a day.

    Let's assume a 0.7% fatality rate, since that seems to be the number I've seen floating around.

    That gives approximately 180,000 infections per day (1,250/0.007).

    So, in an unvaccinated population you would need around 450,000 infections per day to get 10,000 admissions.

    Let's say vaccination is about 75% effective at preventing hospitalisation across the population. It's a bit finger in the air, but basically discounting actual effectiveness by a bit to account for the young not being vaccinated and a low level of vaccine hesitancy.

    That means you then need approximately 1,800,000 infections per day to get 10,000 hospitalisations. So a little under 3% of the population needing to be infected every day. This feels... implausible even with no restrictions (or self-imposed restrictions given people would react to rising case rates and hospitalisations).

    Even if you say our current level of vaccination would only prevent 50% of hospitalisations across the population (hugely pessimistic I'd think). You'd still need to see 900,000 people a day being infected to get 10,000 a day hospitalisations.

    Of course, all of the above is based on vaccinations having 0% efficacy in preventing infections, which is stupid.

    It also doesn't take into account that the unvaccinated population will be considerably smaller in a few weeks' time.
    Also.

    0.7% is for the population as a whole. Which is something like 10% for the 80+ group, and 0.05% for the under 20s.

    The most vulnerable people are all vaccinated. And efficacy against hospitalisation and death is much higher than 91% - it's more like 99%.

    So, I simply can't see how they can possibly have the assumptions they do - even ignoring the other massive elephant in the room, which is that the virus can't spread *that* quickly as there aren't that many people for it to infect any more.
    I deliberately chose pessimistic figures for hospitalisation and death rates. As you say, it's difficult to see how you can get to 10,000 admissions a day unless your assumptions are basically:

    a) Everyone is a perfect sphere in a single room.
    b) Vaccines have no effect on tranmission.
    c) Indian variant is super deadly.
    From the CFR data from 1 December 2020, percentage probability of death given infection was

    0-14 0.0001
    15-44 0.0004
    45-64 0.0066
    65-74 0.0711
    75-84 0.1889
    85+ 0.3055

    I took the number of people unvaccinated (as of todays update).

    With a bit of forcing numbers together I got that if every single unvaccinated person caught COVID, we should expect -

    Age, Unvaccinated, Deaths for 100% infection
    0-44, 16,908,941, 6,897
    45-64, 4,537,066, 29,842
    65-74, 418,129, 29,714
    75-84, 101,661, 19,203
    85+, 142,568, 43,556

    I rather think that it is the unprotected elderly that is causing worry, looking at those numbers.

    There are no unprotected elderly that haven't been offered the vaccine.

    If vaccine refusers get sick and die then that's on them.
    I was watching something earlier where a black diversity inclusion person was banging on about how it's fair for black people to refuse the vaccine and still expect to be protected by the state because of historical trust issues. This is the kind of shite that needs to be completey destroyed. 37m people have had the vaccine in this country, white, black, brown, old, young, men, women, even a few kids who have got severe health issues. It's safer effective and the roll out has not discriminated against any race, it's been a huge success story for everyone involved.
    I saw another one of these bad faith race warrior types the other day trying to claim it was all so unfair to criticise anybody in the black community for not taking it, they might not be able to get to a centre, they have no child care for their kids, yadda yadda yadda yadda....its all because of structural racism meaning too many black people are poor.....

    But we know across all the socio-economic ranges the uptake is absolutely massive, there is no difference between rich and poor....mostly because there is a vaccination centre extremely close to basically everybody and incredible flexibility in when you decide to get jabbed.
    Well and I'm not sure what childcare issues anyone over 70 will have that they can't just hand off to the parents for 30 mins while they go and get jabbed.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,354

    MaxPB said:

    .

    Maffew said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Maffew said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    Having a go at some workings of my own:

    Peak in January was about 4,000 hospitalisations a day with no vaccinations.
    Deaths peaked at roughly 1,250 a day.

    Let's assume a 0.7% fatality rate, since that seems to be the number I've seen floating around.

    That gives approximately 180,000 infections per day (1,250/0.007).

    So, in an unvaccinated population you would need around 450,000 infections per day to get 10,000 admissions.

    Let's say vaccination is about 75% effective at preventing hospitalisation across the population. It's a bit finger in the air, but basically discounting actual effectiveness by a bit to account for the young not being vaccinated and a low level of vaccine hesitancy.

    That means you then need approximately 1,800,000 infections per day to get 10,000 hospitalisations. So a little under 3% of the population needing to be infected every day. This feels... implausible even with no restrictions (or self-imposed restrictions given people would react to rising case rates and hospitalisations).

    Even if you say our current level of vaccination would only prevent 50% of hospitalisations across the population (hugely pessimistic I'd think). You'd still need to see 900,000 people a day being infected to get 10,000 a day hospitalisations.

    Of course, all of the above is based on vaccinations having 0% efficacy in preventing infections, which is stupid.

    It also doesn't take into account that the unvaccinated population will be considerably smaller in a few weeks' time.
    Also.

    0.7% is for the population as a whole. Which is something like 10% for the 80+ group, and 0.05% for the under 20s.

    The most vulnerable people are all vaccinated. And efficacy against hospitalisation and death is much higher than 91% - it's more like 99%.

    So, I simply can't see how they can possibly have the assumptions they do - even ignoring the other massive elephant in the room, which is that the virus can't spread *that* quickly as there aren't that many people for it to infect any more.
    I deliberately chose pessimistic figures for hospitalisation and death rates. As you say, it's difficult to see how you can get to 10,000 admissions a day unless your assumptions are basically:

    a) Everyone is a perfect sphere in a single room.
    b) Vaccines have no effect on tranmission.
    c) Indian variant is super deadly.
    From the CFR data from 1 December 2020, percentage probability of death given infection was

    0-14 0.0001
    15-44 0.0004
    45-64 0.0066
    65-74 0.0711
    75-84 0.1889
    85+ 0.3055

    I took the number of people unvaccinated (as of todays update).

    With a bit of forcing numbers together I got that if every single unvaccinated person caught COVID, we should expect -

    Age, Unvaccinated, Deaths for 100% infection
    0-44, 16,908,941, 6,897
    45-64, 4,537,066, 29,842
    65-74, 418,129, 29,714
    75-84, 101,661, 19,203
    85+, 142,568, 43,556

    I rather think that it is the unprotected elderly that is causing worry, looking at those numbers.

    There are no unprotected elderly that haven't been offered the vaccine.

    If vaccine refusers get sick and die then that's on them.
    I was watching something earlier where a black diversity inclusion person was banging on about how it's fair for black people to refuse the vaccine and still expect to be protected by the state because of historical trust issues. This is the kind of shite that needs to be completey destroyed. 37m people have had the vaccine in this country, white, black, brown, old, young, men, women, even a few kids who have got severe health issues. It's safer effective and the roll out has not discriminated against any race, it's been a huge success story for everyone involved.
    I saw another one of these bad faith race warrior types the other day trying to claim it was all so unfair to criticise anybody in the black community for not taking it, they might not be able to get to a centre, they have no child care for their kids, yadda yadda yadda yadda....its all because of structural racism meaning too many black people are poor.....

    But we know across all the socio-economic ranges the uptake is absolutely massive, there is no difference between rich and poor....mostly because there is a vaccination centre extremely close to basically everybody and incredible flexibility in when you decide to get jabbed.

    In the very early days, those objections might have held some merit as there was a more limited range of vaccine centres and slots, but not now.
    Busy enough at the site in Cannock where I’ve just been jabbed.
  • BigRichBigRich Posts: 3,492
    MaxPB said:

    .

    Maffew said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Maffew said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    Having a go at some workings of my own:

    Peak in January was about 4,000 hospitalisations a day with no vaccinations.
    Deaths peaked at roughly 1,250 a day.

    Let's assume a 0.7% fatality rate, since that seems to be the number I've seen floating around.

    That gives approximately 180,000 infections per day (1,250/0.007).

    So, in an unvaccinated population you would need around 450,000 infections per day to get 10,000 admissions.

    Let's say vaccination is about 75% effective at preventing hospitalisation across the population. It's a bit finger in the air, but basically discounting actual effectiveness by a bit to account for the young not being vaccinated and a low level of vaccine hesitancy.

    That means you then need approximately 1,800,000 infections per day to get 10,000 hospitalisations. So a little under 3% of the population needing to be infected every day. This feels... implausible even with no restrictions (or self-imposed restrictions given people would react to rising case rates and hospitalisations).

    Even if you say our current level of vaccination would only prevent 50% of hospitalisations across the population (hugely pessimistic I'd think). You'd still need to see 900,000 people a day being infected to get 10,000 a day hospitalisations.

    Of course, all of the above is based on vaccinations having 0% efficacy in preventing infections, which is stupid.

    It also doesn't take into account that the unvaccinated population will be considerably smaller in a few weeks' time.
    Also.

    0.7% is for the population as a whole. Which is something like 10% for the 80+ group, and 0.05% for the under 20s.

    The most vulnerable people are all vaccinated. And efficacy against hospitalisation and death is much higher than 91% - it's more like 99%.

    So, I simply can't see how they can possibly have the assumptions they do - even ignoring the other massive elephant in the room, which is that the virus can't spread *that* quickly as there aren't that many people for it to infect any more.
    I deliberately chose pessimistic figures for hospitalisation and death rates. As you say, it's difficult to see how you can get to 10,000 admissions a day unless your assumptions are basically:

    a) Everyone is a perfect sphere in a single room.
    b) Vaccines have no effect on tranmission.
    c) Indian variant is super deadly.
    From the CFR data from 1 December 2020, percentage probability of death given infection was

    0-14 0.0001
    15-44 0.0004
    45-64 0.0066
    65-74 0.0711
    75-84 0.1889
    85+ 0.3055

    I took the number of people unvaccinated (as of todays update).

    With a bit of forcing numbers together I got that if every single unvaccinated person caught COVID, we should expect -

    Age, Unvaccinated, Deaths for 100% infection
    0-44, 16,908,941, 6,897
    45-64, 4,537,066, 29,842
    65-74, 418,129, 29,714
    75-84, 101,661, 19,203
    85+, 142,568, 43,556

    I rather think that it is the unprotected elderly that is causing worry, looking at those numbers.

    There are no unprotected elderly that haven't been offered the vaccine.

    If vaccine refusers get sick and die then that's on them.
    I was watching something earlier where a black diversity inclusion person was banging on about how it's fair for black people to refuse the vaccine and still expect to be protected by the state because of historical trust issues. This is the kind of shite that needs to be completey destroyed. 37m people have had the vaccine in this country, white, black, brown, old, young, men, women, even a few kids who have got severe health issues. It's safer effective and the roll out has not discriminated against any race, it's been a huge success story for everyone involved.
    It depends on what they mean by 'Protected by the state'

    if they mean other people have there freedoms removed i.e. carry on the lock down then NO

    If they mean, not discriminated against by the state, then YES I agree with them, I may not agree with the idea of state healthcare aka NHS, if we have one paid for by all taxpayers, then it should treat all taxpayers, when they need it.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,789
    BigRich said:

    MaxPB said:

    .

    Maffew said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Maffew said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    Having a go at some workings of my own:

    Peak in January was about 4,000 hospitalisations a day with no vaccinations.
    Deaths peaked at roughly 1,250 a day.

    Let's assume a 0.7% fatality rate, since that seems to be the number I've seen floating around.

    That gives approximately 180,000 infections per day (1,250/0.007).

    So, in an unvaccinated population you would need around 450,000 infections per day to get 10,000 admissions.

    Let's say vaccination is about 75% effective at preventing hospitalisation across the population. It's a bit finger in the air, but basically discounting actual effectiveness by a bit to account for the young not being vaccinated and a low level of vaccine hesitancy.

    That means you then need approximately 1,800,000 infections per day to get 10,000 hospitalisations. So a little under 3% of the population needing to be infected every day. This feels... implausible even with no restrictions (or self-imposed restrictions given people would react to rising case rates and hospitalisations).

    Even if you say our current level of vaccination would only prevent 50% of hospitalisations across the population (hugely pessimistic I'd think). You'd still need to see 900,000 people a day being infected to get 10,000 a day hospitalisations.

    Of course, all of the above is based on vaccinations having 0% efficacy in preventing infections, which is stupid.

    It also doesn't take into account that the unvaccinated population will be considerably smaller in a few weeks' time.
    Also.

    0.7% is for the population as a whole. Which is something like 10% for the 80+ group, and 0.05% for the under 20s.

    The most vulnerable people are all vaccinated. And efficacy against hospitalisation and death is much higher than 91% - it's more like 99%.

    So, I simply can't see how they can possibly have the assumptions they do - even ignoring the other massive elephant in the room, which is that the virus can't spread *that* quickly as there aren't that many people for it to infect any more.
    I deliberately chose pessimistic figures for hospitalisation and death rates. As you say, it's difficult to see how you can get to 10,000 admissions a day unless your assumptions are basically:

    a) Everyone is a perfect sphere in a single room.
    b) Vaccines have no effect on tranmission.
    c) Indian variant is super deadly.
    From the CFR data from 1 December 2020, percentage probability of death given infection was

    0-14 0.0001
    15-44 0.0004
    45-64 0.0066
    65-74 0.0711
    75-84 0.1889
    85+ 0.3055

    I took the number of people unvaccinated (as of todays update).

    With a bit of forcing numbers together I got that if every single unvaccinated person caught COVID, we should expect -

    Age, Unvaccinated, Deaths for 100% infection
    0-44, 16,908,941, 6,897
    45-64, 4,537,066, 29,842
    65-74, 418,129, 29,714
    75-84, 101,661, 19,203
    85+, 142,568, 43,556

    I rather think that it is the unprotected elderly that is causing worry, looking at those numbers.

    There are no unprotected elderly that haven't been offered the vaccine.

    If vaccine refusers get sick and die then that's on them.
    I was watching something earlier where a black diversity inclusion person was banging on about how it's fair for black people to refuse the vaccine and still expect to be protected by the state because of historical trust issues. This is the kind of shite that needs to be completey destroyed. 37m people have had the vaccine in this country, white, black, brown, old, young, men, women, even a few kids who have got severe health issues. It's safer effective and the roll out has not discriminated against any race, it's been a huge success story for everyone involved.
    It depends on what they mean by 'Protected by the state'

    if they mean other people have there freedoms removed i.e. carry on the lock down then NO

    If they mean, not discriminated against by the state, then YES I agree with them, I may not agree with the idea of state healthcare aka NHS, if we have one paid for by all taxpayers, then it should treat all taxpayers, when they need it.
    They didn't say but the implication was to extend lockdown measures as that was how the question was framed.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Ooooh just seen who's on Question Time tonight. Got the vaccines minister Zahawi and that stupid Scottish Zero Covidiot Devi Sridhar.

    That could be interesting between those two.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,071
    edited May 2021
    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    glw said:

    R4 "AZ highly effective against the Indian variant" - real world data from India.

    So AZ is a top-notch vaccine, effective against current variants, and the 12 week dosing was a very good idea. Of course AZ is also cheap and easy to deploy. Could the many critics of the UK's approach to vaccination — including all sorts of prestigous bodies — have been more wrong? No, they are chumps.
    Be quiet spreading all your pseudo-science.....we all know it is only quasi effective.
    It's a brilliant vaccine. It may turn out that there are other vaccines that are better, but to call it quasi-effective isn't on really.
    You better address your criticisms to a Mr E Macron of Paris, France.
    Yes, he said that, but you've also done so. And I'm sure you won't really want to defend the point. AZ should be rightly proud of their fantastic work in getting their vaccine into so many arms in such a short space of time. They've saved lives - possibly ours.
    LOL.

    Very misplaced sarcasm.
    What are you even talking about? He sarcastically mocked comments made by the President France, what's misplaced about mocking someone who said something stupid? People have been mocking, and angrily so, Macron for his comments for months.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 63,027
    Poll

    Tells the truth

    Johnson 28%

    Starmer 28%


    Can build a strong economy

    Johnson 51%

    Starmer 24%

    RedfieldWilton
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,758
    kle4 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    glw said:

    R4 "AZ highly effective against the Indian variant" - real world data from India.

    So AZ is a top-notch vaccine, effective against current variants, and the 12 week dosing was a very good idea. Of course AZ is also cheap and easy to deploy. Could the many critics of the UK's approach to vaccination — including all sorts of prestigous bodies — have been more wrong? No, they are chumps.
    Be quiet spreading all your pseudo-science.....we all know it is only quasi effective.
    It's a brilliant vaccine. It may turn out that there are other vaccines that are better, but to call it quasi-effective isn't on really.
    You better address your criticisms to a Mr E Macron of Paris, France.
    Yes, he said that, but you've also done so. And I'm sure you won't really want to defend the point. AZ should be rightly proud of their fantastic work in getting their vaccine into so many arms in such a short space of time. They've saved lives - possibly ours.
    LOL.

    Very misplaced sarcasm.
    What are you even talking about? He sarcastically mocked comments made by the President France, what's misplaced about mocking someone who said something stupid? People have been mocking, and angrily so, Macron for his comments for months.
    Oh I'm just annoyed to be mocked for not spotting that a foolish comment wasn't what it seemed. You'll forgive me for being annoyed I guess.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,129
    edited May 2021
    BigRich said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Maffew said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    Having a go at some workings of my own:

    Peak in January was about 4,000 hospitalisations a day with no vaccinations.
    Deaths peaked at roughly 1,250 a day.

    Let's assume a 0.7% fatality rate, since that seems to be the number I've seen floating around.

    That gives approximately 180,000 infections per day (1,250/0.007).

    So, in an unvaccinated population you would need around 450,000 infections per day to get 10,000 admissions.

    Let's say vaccination is about 75% effective at preventing hospitalisation across the population. It's a bit finger in the air, but basically discounting actual effectiveness by a bit to account for the young not being vaccinated and a low level of vaccine hesitancy.

    That means you then need approximately 1,800,000 infections per day to get 10,000 hospitalisations. So a little under 3% of the population needing to be infected every day. This feels... implausible even with no restrictions (or self-imposed restrictions given people would react to rising case rates and hospitalisations).

    Even if you say our current level of vaccination would only prevent 50% of hospitalisations across the population (hugely pessimistic I'd think). You'd still need to see 900,000 people a day being infected to get 10,000 a day hospitalisations.

    Of course, all of the above is based on vaccinations having 0% efficacy in preventing infections, which is stupid.

    It also doesn't take into account that the unvaccinated population will be considerably smaller in a few weeks' time.
    Also.

    0.7% is for the population as a whole. Which is something like 10% for the 80+ group, and 0.05% for the under 20s.

    The most vulnerable people are all vaccinated. And efficacy against hospitalisation and death is much higher than 91% - it's more like 99%.

    So, I simply can't see how they can possibly have the assumptions they do - even ignoring the other massive elephant in the room, which is that the virus can't spread *that* quickly as there aren't that many people for it to infect any more.
    I don't know if I am alone in my position. but I am absolutely for ending all restrictions on everything, masks, night clubs, travel, the works.

    I suspect the reported cases, hospitalisations and deaths, would most likely keep falling, all be it as a slightly slower paces that would happen otherwise, but ok there could also be a small rise,

    but all the venerable have been offered a vaccine, if they chose not to take it, that's sad but their chose, if they haven't been offered one yet, then they are not venerable, and can chose not to go on holiday or to a night club, until its available, to then in a few weeks time.

    But the nonsenses to think that there could be a wave big enough to overload the NHS is just an inability to look at data and do maths.

    and you know what, if there is a big rise, then in 3 weeks go back to the state we are in now.

    In business, I'm a massive fan of what you might call "incrementalism". That is, you do everything you can to avoid one-off big moves and projects, and instead do small things every week.

    I think we should have done the same thing with CV19 and the lifting of restrictions, because (a) it would have been better for everyone, and (b) it would have been much more obvious that cases were coming down even with the relaxation on restrictions.

    But to your general point, I would remove pretty much all mandatory restrictions. I would encourage people to wear masks on public transport, and I would continue to have restrictions on people coming from abroad, but generally, yes, it's time to let people live their lives.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,128
    edited May 2021
    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    Of course the problem with outsiders telling locals that they are no longer Lancastrians / Yorkshire / Durham is that it tends to provoke all kinds of nasty reactions. Durham runs from the Tyne to the Tees, always has, always will do. Yorkshire is North, West and East despite South also being a new Ceremonial county. Same thing with T&W - giving it a Lord Lieutenant doesn't suddenly give it value.

    A ceremonial county is not a historic country. Twatting around with borders is a touchy subject in my part of England that seems to drive the natives absolutely mental. Did have to laugh though when His Eminence the Mayor for Life of Thornaby-on-Tees gobbed off about county names and had his sizeable arse handed to him by the Chair of the Yorkshire Ridings Socirty.

    LOL. Wishful thinking.

    I actually have a lot of time for the traditional counties but putting boundaries down the middle of rivers in the middle of big cities is senseless. Just as London is rightfully one unit (rather than split between Surrey and Middlesex) so should be Newcastle.

    By the way, guess what, it's generational? In his excellent book Engel's England Matthew Engels was dismayed to find younger people baffled by the idea that Barnoldswick* was in Yorkshire.

    Engels asked 10 people which county it was in:

    Four said Lancashire, three said Yorkshire and three didn't care... A teenage girl kindly switched off her iPad to talk to me and looked disgusted."Yorkshire? It's just the elderly people who think that."


    (*It's been in Lancashire since 1974, whatever the 'Yorkshire Riding Society' – er, who? – might wish to be the case)

    Of course the problem with outsiders telling locals that they are no longer Lancastrians / Yorkshire / Durham is that it tends to provoke all kinds of nasty reactions. Durham runs from the Tyne to the Tees, always has, always will do. Yorkshire is North, West and East despite South also being a new Ceremonial county. Same thing with T&W - giving it a Lord Lieutenant doesn't suddenly give it value.

    A ceremonial county is not a historic country. Twatting around with borders is a touchy subject in my part of England that seems to drive the natives absolutely mental. Did have to laugh though when His Eminence the Mayor for Life of Thornaby-on-Tees gobbed off about county names and had his sizeable arse handed to him by the Chair of the Yorkshire Ridings Socirty.

    LOL. Wishful thinking.

    I actually have a lot of time for the traditional counties but putting boundaries down the middle of rivers in the middle of big cities is senseless. Just as London is rightfully one unit (rather than split between Surrey and Middlesex) so should be Newcastle.

    By the way, guess what, it's generational? In his excellent book Engel's England Matthew Engels was dismayed to find younger people baffled by the idea that Barnoldswick* was in Yorkshire.

    Engels asked 10 people which county it was in:

    Four said Lancashire, three said Yorkshire and three didn't care... A teenage girl kindly switched off her iPad to talk to me and looked disgusted."Yorkshire? It's just the elderly people who think that."


    (*It's been in Lancashire since 1974, whatever the 'Yorkshire Riding Society' – er, who? – might wish to be the case)
    But local government boundaries don't need to match county boundaries. I have no qualms with dividing Cheshire/Lancashire down the Mersey while letting Trafford Council collect the bins on both sides.
    Then what is the point of a "county"?
    Cricket, obvs.

    Essex, cricket wise, includes those parts between the M25 and River Lea, such as Romford and Leyton, which are now part of London
    It may be a niche interest, but I regret the sidelining of the rugby county championship. Before professionalism, it was quite a big deal. The 1980 England grand slam winning side was basically built around the Lancashire County side - Beaumont, Uttley, Colclough, Slemen, Smith, Cotton, Neary ...
    The championship wasn't strictly counties, though, was it. I have fond memories of a reporter remarking on a young spectator shouting 'Come on NottsLincsandDerby!
    Ha ha - that's true. I remember going to a match between NottsLincsDerbys (or 'three counties'), and, I think North Midlands (which I was always puzzled by - if we have NottsLincsDerbys and we also have Staffordshire, who are North Midlands? Turns out - and I have only just thought to look this up 23 years after the event - it's Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Birmingham, which is slightly counter-intuitive.
    Perhaps the North Midlands are the bits of Derbyshire stolen by Sheffield - places like Dore, Totley and the Mosborough Townships?

    That Dan Jarvis wants much of all the surrounding counties. Need to keep an eye on the bugger.

    Or they might just be the bits that are nameless because they can't play cricket.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,239
    We should now go round putting up MORE statues of the great colonial mastermind, Sir Cecil Rhodes

    Thaaaasands of ‘em

    A Rhodes on every road; a Cecil in every square
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,129
    alex_ said:

    rcs1000 said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    What's particularly infuriating is that the EU is opening up now, despite not having anywhere near the vaccine protection we do.

    We had this massive lead, that we're in the process of squandering due to a bunch of zero Covid nutters.
    Unfortunately, that's a consequence of the history of the last year in the UK.

    Those who have argued for earlier, harder lockdowns have been shown to be right last March, last autumn, last December. Anti-lockdown types called it wrong each time, to tragic effect.

    So on the occasion where we probably do have leeway to unlock faster, the public confidence isn't there- and one has to wonder if the PM has the confidence to go faster.

    It's kind of the boy who cried wolf in reverse.

    (The three month vaccination lead the UK had was always going to close a fair bit, but even I'm surprised at how much the reopening gap is closing.)
    Whilst the point about December/Xmas is fair, it could be noted that countries like Germany were almost just as bad in the second wave. And still posting numbers closing the gap and a reasonable rate. Their lower death rates are almost entirely a consequence of their “first wave” success.

    It defies sense that the EU should be claiming fear of what’s currently happening in the U.K. as a reason to restrict foreign travel.
    It defies sense that the EU should be claiming fear of what’s currently happening in the U.K. as a reason to restrict foreign travel

    Errr, that would be because they're doing for domestic political consumption, rather than because of any real fear.

    THAT SAID.

    I foolishly watched MSNBC the other day, and it had a feature on the Indian Covid variant, and it identifed the UK as a hotspot alongside India. Anyone watching it would have assumed the UK was being swamped by hundreds of thousands of new cases of Indian variant CV19.

    Which was, it is fair to say, utterly ridiculous.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    rcs1000 said:

    alex_ said:

    rcs1000 said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    What's particularly infuriating is that the EU is opening up now, despite not having anywhere near the vaccine protection we do.

    We had this massive lead, that we're in the process of squandering due to a bunch of zero Covid nutters.
    Unfortunately, that's a consequence of the history of the last year in the UK.

    Those who have argued for earlier, harder lockdowns have been shown to be right last March, last autumn, last December. Anti-lockdown types called it wrong each time, to tragic effect.

    So on the occasion where we probably do have leeway to unlock faster, the public confidence isn't there- and one has to wonder if the PM has the confidence to go faster.

    It's kind of the boy who cried wolf in reverse.

    (The three month vaccination lead the UK had was always going to close a fair bit, but even I'm surprised at how much the reopening gap is closing.)
    Whilst the point about December/Xmas is fair, it could be noted that countries like Germany were almost just as bad in the second wave. And still posting numbers closing the gap and a reasonable rate. Their lower death rates are almost entirely a consequence of their “first wave” success.

    It defies sense that the EU should be claiming fear of what’s currently happening in the U.K. as a reason to restrict foreign travel.
    It defies sense that the EU should be claiming fear of what’s currently happening in the U.K. as a reason to restrict foreign travel

    Errr, that would be because they're doing for domestic political consumption, rather than because of any real fear.

    THAT SAID.

    I foolishly watched MSNBC the other day, and it had a feature on the Indian Covid variant, and it identifed the UK as a hotspot alongside India. Anyone watching it would have assumed the UK was being swamped by hundreds of thousands of new cases of Indian variant CV19.

    Which was, it is fair to say, utterly ridiculous.
    Of course the UK is actually testing its strains, how many other countries are doing the same even now?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,978

    Ooooh just seen who's on Question Time tonight. Got the vaccines minister Zahawi and that stupid Scottish Zero Covidiot Devi Sridhar.

    That could be interesting between those two.

    I remember some posters on here banging on about how Zahawi would be useless....I think their views might have been tainted by Brexit positions though.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,354

    I have joined the ranks of the first dosed, receiving AZ. They sent me far out into West Lothian for it, and I've heard from friends in Edinburgh who have been sent likewise, so they seem to be pushing hard at the working-age population in Edinburgh.

    Mine was at a hotel on the A5 less than two miles away. Can’t fault that really, hard to imagine how it could have been more local.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Its getting very frustrating hearing the media reporting how many cases of the Indian variant using cumulative rather than new totals.

    Sky talking about how there are nearly 3,500 cases of the Indian variant - which sounds like a lot, until you realise that there were 2,874 daily cases today. So 122% of today's cases sound like they were from the Indian variant.

    What a stupid way of reporting it. Report the increase not the cumulative. 🤦‍♂️
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 5,286
    Leon said:

    We should now go round putting up MORE statues of the great colonial mastermind, Sir Cecil Rhodes

    Thaaaasands of ‘em

    A Rhodes on every road; a Cecil in every square

    The Enver Hoxha approach to culture wars. Nice ☺️!
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 81,978
    edited May 2021
    BioNTech say they think Pfizer is ~70-75% against Indian variant..

    https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1395432987332947974?s=19
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,128

    rcs1000 said:

    alex_ said:

    rcs1000 said:

    alex_ said:

    MaxPB said:

    I'm starting to wonder about the government's strategy now. Is it deliberately giving the zerovidians enough rope? Crank up pressure on the antivaxxers and discredit the zerovidians when their tales of doom fail to materialise.

    Almost certainly a daft conspiracy theory too far. But given hospitalisation rates? Hmm.

    I think they are. It seems to have got a lot of people in Bolton out to get the vaccine that were previously refusing and they will also get to discredit these doom modellers once and for all. It's not even a high risk strategy given what we know about the AZ vaccine having 90% efficacy against infection and Pfizer at 91%. Almost every single person in groups 1-9 will have had both doses in advance of June 21st. Exactly who will end up in hospital?!
    Not just in hospital but 10,000 A DAY in hospital. And that wasn’t even the worst case scenario!
    SAGE should be made to show their workings. Use both sides of the paper.

    What's particularly infuriating is that the EU is opening up now, despite not having anywhere near the vaccine protection we do.

    We had this massive lead, that we're in the process of squandering due to a bunch of zero Covid nutters.
    Unfortunately, that's a consequence of the history of the last year in the UK.

    Those who have argued for earlier, harder lockdowns have been shown to be right last March, last autumn, last December. Anti-lockdown types called it wrong each time, to tragic effect.

    So on the occasion where we probably do have leeway to unlock faster, the public confidence isn't there- and one has to wonder if the PM has the confidence to go faster.

    It's kind of the boy who cried wolf in reverse.

    (The three month vaccination lead the UK had was always going to close a fair bit, but even I'm surprised at how much the reopening gap is closing.)
    Whilst the point about December/Xmas is fair, it could be noted that countries like Germany were almost just as bad in the second wave. And still posting numbers closing the gap and a reasonable rate. Their lower death rates are almost entirely a consequence of their “first wave” success.

    It defies sense that the EU should be claiming fear of what’s currently happening in the U.K. as a reason to restrict foreign travel.
    It defies sense that the EU should be claiming fear of what’s currently happening in the U.K. as a reason to restrict foreign travel

    Errr, that would be because they're doing for domestic political consumption, rather than because of any real fear.

    THAT SAID.

    I foolishly watched MSNBC the other day, and it had a feature on the Indian Covid variant, and it identifed the UK as a hotspot alongside India. Anyone watching it would have assumed the UK was being swamped by hundreds of thousands of new cases of Indian variant CV19.

    Which was, it is fair to say, utterly ridiculous.
    Of course the UK is actually testing its strains, how many other countries are doing the same even now?
    An improved sequencing capacity is in the UVDL plan-for-the-future.

    On that, there seems to be another wave of posturing incoming. Today: "our vaccine programme is catching up the United States", and another set of "we are the only people who export vaccines" claims.

    The current goal is '70% of adults offered first dose by end of July - the same as the US'.

    Which, since we had that many vaccinated (not just offered) 2 days ago, means the EU Rollout is 11-12 weeks behind.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,213
    Pro_Rata said:

    Leon said:

    We should now go round putting up MORE statues of the great colonial mastermind, Sir Cecil Rhodes

    Thaaaasands of ‘em

    A Rhodes on every road; a Cecil in every square

    The Enver Hoxha approach to culture wars. Nice ☺️!
    Shades of the Saki story where someone proposes building thousands of copies of the Albert Memorial, all over Britain.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,468
    kinabalu said:

    Cookie said:

    HYUFD said:

    TimS said:

    By-elections are great opportunities for dog-whistles, and I wonder if there are a few subtle dog-whistles that could be at play in this one.

    We associate the term with hidden appeals to the bigoted views on race or culture but that needn't be the case. A dog whistle can be useful any time you want to appeal to the instincts of certain voters but can't publicly say so in such terms for fear of atracting opprobrium.

    NIMBYism is a perennial example. So is remainerism - you needn't promise to rejoin or re-enter the single market, and seeing as the LDs are nowhere near government it would be pointless anyway. You just need to indicate through your language and demeanour that you are, at heart, one of "us".

    And alongside the remainer dog whistle there's the even subtler, but possibly powerful in the home counties, snobbery dog-whistle. That the Tories have of late become a bit non-U. A tad vulgar, with their red wall obsession and that tasteless wallpaper and slandering of John Lewis. Slightly spivvy. Not to mention that awful Gavin Williamson with his dislike of "dead end subjects".

    Will be interesting to see if any of that plays a part.

    Yes, if you are a snobby small c voter in the Home Counties, even in 1997 while you were a minority nationally you knew you were still in the low tax, posh party of the South, idllyic country life villages etc.

    Now you may be in power but have to share it with Northern working class oiks, while the government seems to want to expand building over the fields surrounding said idyllic country life villages and take more of your funds in tax to fund spending on working class ex industrial towns in the North you would not be seen dead going anywhere near, the only parts of the North you have ever visited being Harrogate and the Lake District and dropping your son off at Durham.

    Gaining the RedWall has certainly boosted the Tories overall but as the locals showed there is some backlash in the posher parts of the South
    I wonder if we're going through a similar re-alignment as happened in the US with the GOP and Dems. In thirty years people may be amazed to learn that Labour West Sussex was once a Tory stronghold.
    The only reason I can't see that happening is the word 'labour'. It's not a nice word. It's not a cheery 'could-mean-anything' word. It means either hard physical work, or the painful process women go through when giving birth. It's not a word which can easily be transitioned for other uses like 'Democrat'.
    I often think this is a fundamental branding issue the Labour Party have. That and their horrible red and yellow colour schemes (use red and white - much less angry looking).
    I like Clear Thinking Progressives. Positive, aspirational, accurate.

    The flaw is the acronym doesn't work. CTP sounds too medical. Like an ointment for something.
    How about Clear Thinking Nerds and Progressives? CATNIP
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,344

    Pro_Rata said:

    Leon said:

    We should now go round putting up MORE statues of the great colonial mastermind, Sir Cecil Rhodes

    Thaaaasands of ‘em

    A Rhodes on every road; a Cecil in every square

    The Enver Hoxha approach to culture wars. Nice ☺️!
    Shades of the Saki story where someone proposes building thousands of copies of the Albert Memorial, all over Britain.
    Have a statue of Rhodes trampling his boot into the face of a scrofulous student - forever.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747
    @Leon

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-jTiKNR_euQ

    Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat, New Mexico

    Member of Senate Intelligence Committee and Member of Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

    The two areas of government most closely associated with UAP investigation.
  • ping said:

    Hmm.

    Not convinced screwing our farmers with mountains of imports of cheap hormone-injected Australian beef and lamb is a good idea.

    Another bad policy/idea bought to you by Liz Truss.

    It’s becoming a pattern…

    Absolutely stupid policy which will be deeply unpopular, and rightly so. Why does Truss ride these daft hobby horses?
    I would be very happy to buy cheaper meat. We will see if it will be deeply unpopular by the sales it makes. Those who object to this are probably identical to those who object to an Aldi in Amersham.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    moonshine said:

    @Leon

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-jTiKNR_euQ

    Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat, New Mexico

    Member of Senate Intelligence Committee and Member of Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

    The two areas of government most closely associated with UAP investigation.

    LOL he's clearly humouring the guy! 😂
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    ping said:

    Hmm.

    Not convinced screwing our farmers with mountains of imports of cheap hormone-injected Australian beef and lamb is a good idea.

    Another bad policy/idea bought to you by Liz Truss.

    It’s becoming a pattern…

    Absolutely stupid policy which will be deeply unpopular, and rightly so. Why does Truss ride these daft hobby horses?
    I would be very happy to buy cheaper meat. We will see if it will be deeply unpopular by the sales it makes. Those who object to this are probably identical to those who object to an Aldi in Amersham.
    Australian meat is very good quality meat, just like Australian wine.

    If British and Aussie beef were next to each other in the supermarket at the same price I'd probably be tempted to get the Aussie beef. Others would go for the British one. Free choice.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,986
    Government spokesperson said no final decisions have been taken: “Covid-status certification could have an important role to play both domestically and internationally, as a temporary measure."

    https://www.ft.com/content/14aedd1f-3f8d-4743-8eda-f40b3db3149c
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747

    moonshine said:

    @Leon

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-jTiKNR_euQ

    Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat, New Mexico

    Member of Senate Intelligence Committee and Member of Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

    The two areas of government most closely associated with UAP investigation.

    LOL he's clearly humouring the guy! 😂
    Yes that’s it! He’s humouring him so much that he has helped mandate for an urgent high profile report to be put together by the National Intelligence Director for his committee! What a joker!

    Or... Philip Thompson of unspecified northern English suburb has his head in the sand when it comes to the motivations of US senators with high level security clearance.

  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,354

    Its getting very frustrating hearing the media reporting how many cases of the Indian variant using cumulative rather than new totals.

    Sky talking about how there are nearly 3,500 cases of the Indian variant - which sounds like a lot, until you realise that there were 2,874 daily cases today. So 122% of today's cases sound like they were from the Indian variant.

    What a stupid way of reporting it. Report the increase not the cumulative. 🤦‍♂️

    Journalists have throughout this pandemic demonstrated a grasp of mathematics that would make the average civil servant at the DfE blush.

    Any time they run out of fingers they struggle.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,009
    Off topic: Oatly is valued at $13 billion. WTF?!?
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    @Leon

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-jTiKNR_euQ

    Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat, New Mexico

    Member of Senate Intelligence Committee and Member of Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

    The two areas of government most closely associated with UAP investigation.

    LOL he's clearly humouring the guy! 😂
    Yes that’s it! He’s humouring him so much that he has helped mandate for an urgent high profile report to be put together by the National Intelligence Director for his committee! What a joker!

    Or... Philip Thompson of unspecified northern English suburb has his head in the sand when it comes to the motivations of US senators with high level security clearance.

    Oh come on, he's being very careful choosing his words as he goes along talking to TMZ FFS! Good to know you think TMZ is serious journalism, but I'm sure the Senator knows who the audience is!

    You're going to be very disappointed when the report comes out and its a complete damp squib. When people are coming forward with bizarre claims its worth looking into, but when the claims turn out to be nothing - sorry but that's it.
  • AnExileinD4AnExileinD4 Posts: 337

    Ooooh just seen who's on Question Time tonight. Got the vaccines minister Zahawi and that stupid Scottish Zero Covidiot Devi Sridhar.

    That could be interesting between those two.

    I remember some posters on here banging on about how Zahawi would be useless....I think their views might have been tainted by Brexit positions though.
    I’m still waiting for the Sunday Times to apologise for their attempted hit job on Kate Bingham. Their new editor’s editorial standpoint is somewhat transparent.

    I do note that their star political reporter is paying damages for posting lies.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Ooooh just seen who's on Question Time tonight. Got the vaccines minister Zahawi and that stupid Scottish Zero Covidiot Devi Sridhar.

    That could be interesting between those two.

    I remember some posters on here banging on about how Zahawi would be useless....I think their views might have been tainted by Brexit positions though.
    I’m still waiting for the Sunday Times to apologise for their attempted hit job on Kate Bingham. Their new editor’s editorial standpoint is somewhat transparent.

    I do note that their star political reporter is paying damages for posting lies.
    The reporting has gone so far to the extreme that it would seem that they'd been sold to whoever now owns Sky News. Sky have gone extreme far left envirowoke, and the Sunday Times seem to really have it in for the government too, but its still Murdoch AFAIK?
  • AnExileinD4AnExileinD4 Posts: 337

    Off topic: Oatly is valued at $13 billion. WTF?!?

    Brand and first mover advantage
    Perceived as buying for the future
    Absurd amounts of liquidity that need to deployed
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    @Leon

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-jTiKNR_euQ

    Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat, New Mexico

    Member of Senate Intelligence Committee and Member of Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

    The two areas of government most closely associated with UAP investigation.

    LOL he's clearly humouring the guy! 😂
    Yes that’s it! He’s humouring him so much that he has helped mandate for an urgent high profile report to be put together by the National Intelligence Director for his committee! What a joker!

    Or... Philip Thompson of unspecified northern English suburb has his head in the sand when it comes to the motivations of US senators with high level security clearance.

    Oh come on, he's being very careful choosing his words as he goes along talking to TMZ FFS! Good to know you think TMZ is serious journalism, but I'm sure the Senator knows who the audience is!

    You're going to be very disappointed when the report comes out and its a complete damp squib. When people are coming forward with bizarre claims its worth looking into, but when the claims turn out to be nothing - sorry but that's it.
    I am not expecting the report to do anything other then motivate for a rolling programme of investigation and reporting and to confirm what those of us not in total denial already know - that there’s multi point evidence of technology well beyond the means of the Western alliance.

    I’d guess a speech by Biden spelling it out for the thickos that there’s an extraordinary mystery, some time in 2022. No idea on when that mystery is solved. Might not be our lifetime because it’s likely not within our gift to solve it.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,009

    Off topic: Oatly is valued at $13 billion. WTF?!?

    Brand and first mover advantage
    Perceived as buying for the future
    Absurd amounts of liquidity that need to deployed
    And there was me thinking it was the oat equivalent of a micro-brewery!
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559

    moonshine said:

    @Leon

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-jTiKNR_euQ

    Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat, New Mexico

    Member of Senate Intelligence Committee and Member of Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

    The two areas of government most closely associated with UAP investigation.

    LOL he's clearly humouring the guy! 😂
    TMZ is leading entertainment tabloid television show in the USA. Must see TV for huge number of folks, in particular younger viewers and (someday) voters.

    Any politico being interviewed by TMZ who does NOT humor the interviewer would be a flaming idiot.

    PLUS note that Roswell is in Sen. Heinrich's bailiwick.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    moonshine said:

    @Leon

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-jTiKNR_euQ

    Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat, New Mexico

    Member of Senate Intelligence Committee and Member of Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

    The two areas of government most closely associated with UAP investigation.

    LOL he's clearly humouring the guy! 😂
    TMZ is leading entertainment tabloid television show in the USA. Must see TV for huge number of folks, in particular younger viewers and (someday) voters.

    Any politico being interviewed by TMZ who does NOT humor the interviewer would be a flaming idiot.

    PLUS note that Roswell is in Sen. Heinrich's bailiwick.
    Of course! 👽

    Anyone who takes TMZ seriously ... needs help!
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,354

    moonshine said:

    @Leon

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-jTiKNR_euQ

    Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat, New Mexico

    Member of Senate Intelligence Committee and Member of Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

    The two areas of government most closely associated with UAP investigation.

    LOL he's clearly humouring the guy! 😂
    TMZ is leading entertainment tabloid television show in the USA. Must see TV for huge number of folks, in particular younger viewers and (someday) voters.

    Any politico being interviewed by TMZ who does NOT humor the interviewer would be a flaming idiot.

    PLUS note that Roswell is in Sen. Heinrich's bailiwick.
    This whole thing has ballooned alarmingly.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,071
    Omnium said:

    kle4 said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    glw said:

    R4 "AZ highly effective against the Indian variant" - real world data from India.

    So AZ is a top-notch vaccine, effective against current variants, and the 12 week dosing was a very good idea. Of course AZ is also cheap and easy to deploy. Could the many critics of the UK's approach to vaccination — including all sorts of prestigous bodies — have been more wrong? No, they are chumps.
    Be quiet spreading all your pseudo-science.....we all know it is only quasi effective.
    It's a brilliant vaccine. It may turn out that there are other vaccines that are better, but to call it quasi-effective isn't on really.
    You better address your criticisms to a Mr E Macron of Paris, France.
    Yes, he said that, but you've also done so. And I'm sure you won't really want to defend the point. AZ should be rightly proud of their fantastic work in getting their vaccine into so many arms in such a short space of time. They've saved lives - possibly ours.
    LOL.

    Very misplaced sarcasm.
    What are you even talking about? He sarcastically mocked comments made by the President France, what's misplaced about mocking someone who said something stupid? People have been mocking, and angrily so, Macron for his comments for months.
    Oh I'm just annoyed to be mocked for not spotting that a foolish comment wasn't what it seemed. You'll forgive me for being annoyed I guess.
    I get not spotting an injoke, but it was explained afterwards!
  • AnExileinD4AnExileinD4 Posts: 337

    Off topic: Oatly is valued at $13 billion. WTF?!?

    Brand and first mover advantage
    Perceived as buying for the future
    Absurd amounts of liquidity that need to deployed
    And there was me thinking it was the oat equivalent of a micro-brewery!
    The amount of IP protected technology development needed to effectively milk an oat is astounding. It’s a Tesla-seque step change.
  • NemtynakhtNemtynakht Posts: 2,329

    Cookie said:

    Of course the problem with outsiders telling locals that they are no longer Lancastrians / Yorkshire / Durham is that it tends to provoke all kinds of nasty reactions. Durham runs from the Tyne to the Tees, always has, always will do. Yorkshire is North, West and East despite South also being a new Ceremonial county. Same thing with T&W - giving it a Lord Lieutenant doesn't suddenly give it value.

    A ceremonial county is not a historic country. Twatting around with borders is a touchy subject in my part of England that seems to drive the natives absolutely mental. Did have to laugh though when His Eminence the Mayor for Life of Thornaby-on-Tees gobbed off about county names and had his sizeable arse handed to him by the Chair of the Yorkshire Ridings Socirty.

    LOL. Wishful thinking.

    I actually have a lot of time for the traditional counties but putting boundaries down the middle of rivers in the middle of big cities is senseless. Just as London is rightfully one unit (rather than split between Surrey and Middlesex) so should be Newcastle.

    By the way, guess what, it's generational? In his excellent book Engel's England Matthew Engels was dismayed to find younger people baffled by the idea that Barnoldswick* was in Yorkshire.

    Engels asked 10 people which county it was in:

    Four said Lancashire, three said Yorkshire and three didn't care... A teenage girl kindly switched off her iPad to talk to me and looked disgusted."Yorkshire? It's just the elderly people who think that."


    (*It's been in Lancashire since 1974, whatever the 'Yorkshire Riding Society' – er, who? – might wish to be the case)

    Of course the problem with outsiders telling locals that they are no longer Lancastrians / Yorkshire / Durham is that it tends to provoke all kinds of nasty reactions. Durham runs from the Tyne to the Tees, always has, always will do. Yorkshire is North, West and East despite South also being a new Ceremonial county. Same thing with T&W - giving it a Lord Lieutenant doesn't suddenly give it value.

    A ceremonial county is not a historic country. Twatting around with borders is a touchy subject in my part of England that seems to drive the natives absolutely mental. Did have to laugh though when His Eminence the Mayor for Life of Thornaby-on-Tees gobbed off about county names and had his sizeable arse handed to him by the Chair of the Yorkshire Ridings Socirty.

    LOL. Wishful thinking.

    I actually have a lot of time for the traditional counties but putting boundaries down the middle of rivers in the middle of big cities is senseless. Just as London is rightfully one unit (rather than split between Surrey and Middlesex) so should be Newcastle.

    By the way, guess what, it's generational? In his excellent book Engel's England Matthew Engels was dismayed to find younger people baffled by the idea that Barnoldswick* was in Yorkshire.

    Engels asked 10 people which county it was in:

    Four said Lancashire, three said Yorkshire and three didn't care... A teenage girl kindly switched off her iPad to talk to me and looked disgusted."Yorkshire? It's just the elderly people who think that."


    (*It's been in Lancashire since 1974, whatever the 'Yorkshire Riding Society' – er, who? – might wish to be the case)
    But local government boundaries don't need to match county boundaries. I have no qualms with dividing Cheshire/Lancashire down the Mersey while letting Trafford Council collect the bins on both sides.
    It makes no sense for me whatsoever to have Cheshire/Lancashire divided down the Mersey when it comes to eg Warrington which spans both sides of the water now.

    Warrington itself originally may be north of the river, but whether north or south of it, its one town, and it makes far more sense for me to consider Warrington as part of Cheshire than Lancashire.
    I still consider Liverpool to be in Lancashire.
    Warrington is Lancashire.. it was historically in Lancashire just like Liverpool and Manchester. Cheshire Proper is south of the M56
  • rpjsrpjs Posts: 3,787

    Off topic: Oatly is valued at $13 billion. WTF?!?

    Makes sense when you know how much the youngs love their oat milk here in the US.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559
    MR. SPACEMAN
    Roger McGuinn

    Woke up this morning with light in my eyes
    And then realized it was still dark outside
    It was a light coming down from the sky
    I don't know who or why

    Must be those strangers that come every night
    Those saucer-shaped lights put people uptight
    Leave blue-green footprints that glow in the dark
    I hope they get home alright

    Hey, Mr. Spaceman
    Won't you please take me along
    I won't do anything wrong
    Hey, Mr. Spaceman
    Won't you please take me along for a ride

    Woke up this morning, I was feeling quite weird
    Had flies in my beard, my toothpaste was smeared
    Over my window, they'd written my name
    Said, "So long, we'll see you again"

    Hey, Mr. Spaceman
    Won't you please take me along
    I won't do anything wrong
    Hey, Mr. Spaceman
    Won't you please take me along for a ride

    The Byrds - Mr. Spaceman - Smother Bros TV Show, 10/22/67
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KFTm9vmZDI
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,747

    moonshine said:

    @Leon

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-jTiKNR_euQ

    Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat, New Mexico

    Member of Senate Intelligence Committee and Member of Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

    The two areas of government most closely associated with UAP investigation.

    LOL he's clearly humouring the guy! 😂
    TMZ is leading entertainment tabloid television show in the USA. Must see TV for huge number of folks, in particular younger viewers and (someday) voters.

    Any politico being interviewed by TMZ who does NOT humor the interviewer would be a flaming idiot.

    PLUS note that Roswell is in Sen. Heinrich's bailiwick.
    Of course! 👽

    Anyone who takes TMZ seriously ... needs help!
    You’ve spent months talking about weirdos on YouTube not counting. We give you cnn, fox, the NY Times, NBC, 60 mins etc... We give you serving senators, ex presidents, ex CIA heads. Multiple military personnel talking on the record about the same event that has also had video, infrared and telemetrics supporting their story.

    Nothing will ever satisfy you that there’s some extraordinary technology that needs to be explained. Nothing. Not even Leon’s space bassoon. I don’t know whether it’s aliens, it would concern me less than it being earthly at this stage frankly.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559

    moonshine said:

    @Leon

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-jTiKNR_euQ

    Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat, New Mexico

    Member of Senate Intelligence Committee and Member of Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

    The two areas of government most closely associated with UAP investigation.

    LOL he's clearly humouring the guy! 😂
    TMZ is leading entertainment tabloid television show in the USA. Must see TV for huge number of folks, in particular younger viewers and (someday) voters.

    Any politico being interviewed by TMZ who does NOT humor the interviewer would be a flaming idiot.

    PLUS note that Roswell is in Sen. Heinrich's bailiwick.
    Of course! 👽

    Anyone who takes TMZ seriously ... needs help!
    Any politician who FAILS to take TMZ seriously needs help!

    For example, TMZ did more to defeat Trumpsky in 2020 - just by giving him coverage - than Bernie & AOC put together. And them some.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,174
    Evening from a pub !
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559
    ydoethur said:

    Its getting very frustrating hearing the media reporting how many cases of the Indian variant using cumulative rather than new totals.

    Sky talking about how there are nearly 3,500 cases of the Indian variant - which sounds like a lot, until you realise that there were 2,874 daily cases today. So 122% of today's cases sound like they were from the Indian variant.

    What a stupid way of reporting it. Report the increase not the cumulative. 🤦‍♂️

    Journalists have throughout this pandemic demonstrated a grasp of mathematics that would make the average civil servant at the DfE blush.

    Any time they run out of fingers they struggle.
    They should start wearing open-toed sandals year round!
This discussion has been closed.