Has the two week delay been confirmed? It looks to me like people are voting with their feet and things are going to be opening up whatever the government might say. Social distancing no longer seems to exist, for example.
All very well to say that about individuals. It does not help businesses. They are restricted in what they can do and earn. So we get the worst of all worlds: individuals flouting restrictions and potentially spreading the virus but none of the economic / commercial benefits of easing restrictions.
Absolutely. If the healthcare system isn’t about to be overrun, then it should be up to individual businesses how many tables they want to squeeze into a restaurant, up to the fire limit.
"How we fell for anti-intuition Wear a mask, shut the borders. Sometimes the obvious answers are the true ones"
Around a year ago the panic first began to set in as it dawned on us that this was going to be the Big One. I remember seeing the footage in Lombardy and suddenly realising that the strange illness in far-away China was going to hit us in England, too.
The shock felt all the more real because it was so sudden. Just two weeks earlier, the Mayor of Florence had been organising a “hug a Chinese” day to combat the real danger – prejudice – while the New York health commissioner was urging people to head to Chinatown to show their solidarity.
At the same time, Taiwan was stopping all flights from mainland China....
In the last week, confronted by these and other inconsistencies, Andersen began to quietly delete his old tweets. 4000 of them. He has now deleted his entire Twitter account
In this subject, one of my mates from uni who works for a very major pharma confirmed my theory - if China had been honest in September about the nature of th lab leak of the virus we would have had vaccines fully trialled by the end of May because PIII would have been on going in the first wave from Feb to April.
He's actually extremely angry about it and has scheduled an internal meeting to present some of his findings and what they, as a major pharma, could do to spot these things earlier to prevent this from happening next time.
Would we though? Because we didn't develop vaccines to SARS etc, since there was little reason to do so, the investment wasn't given which was given to this.
Quite possibly if this was a leak in September and they had been honest about it then it would have been more easily contained and would never have become a global pandemic in the first place.
@ydoethur I think @Dura_Ace is a misanthrope who loves animals but hates people.
I like some people (Greta, Bielsa, AOC, Mrs DA, that XF Motorsports guy on YouTube) I just hate tories, cultural conservatives and rich people with shit cars.
I do hope Mrs DA is okay with being placed fourth in your list of likes, behind Greta, Bielsa and AOC. Stiff competition though, I agree.
It was no particular order but I think she knows she's behind Bielsa.
In the last week, confronted by these and other inconsistencies, Andersen began to quietly delete his old tweets. 4000 of them. He has now deleted his entire Twitter account
In this subject, one of my mates from uni who works for AZ confirmed my theory - if China had been honest in September about the nature of th lab leak of the virus we would have had vaccines fully trialled by the end of May because PIII would have been on going in the first wave from Feb to April.
He's actually extremely angry about it and has scheduled an internal meeting to present some of his findings and what they, as a major pharma, could do to spot these things earlier to prevent this from happening next time.
This strikes me as an intelligence failure. What were SIS and the CIA saying and doing when all this was going on? Where were the sources telling them even as late as January or February?
But the way has anyone bothering looking at the “flu” data from winter 2019 in Asia, notably Japan, Taiwan and Singapore, since they keep good numbers. Singapore mortality stays were horrible for 2019 and so I gather we’re Japan’s. Has anyone really delved into the possibilities of why that was?
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Its already caveated by the word collective.
There's a risk to some individuals that they might individually get sick, but there's no collective risk like there was in January or March 2020.
Let’s stick with the over 50s as the data is more complete.
In the three weeks between 9th May and 30th May (ref NIMS population data), the proportional increase in first dose vaccination uptake was:
50-59: 1.2% 60-69: 0.7% 70-79: 0.1%
So broadly speaking, uptake will likely settle at 95% for the 70s, something like 91-92% for the 60s and perhaps just shy of 90% for the 50s. Which leaves 1.6 million courageous contrarians aged over 50.
Assume uniform acquired infection of 40% to date across all age groups and that knocks you down to about a million people over 50 with no immunity.
It will be put to the PM that the new variant eventually puts [x%] of these people in hospital. The key will be understanding from those god awful modellers how many at one time. And then politically, what if anything is to be done about it.
This population of a million (plus whatever the 40s cohort settles at (currently 1.6m unvaxxed) risk being the new bed blockers for the next couple of winters, preventing the clearing of the nhs backlog. They are also this government’s voting coalition.
My expectation is no stern words or measures at all will be levelled at them, and it’s then down to how reliable the herd effect is against whatever variant is most prevalent in November on whether we avoid new “non pharmaceutical interventions” this winter. By 2022 the scandal engulfing the government will not be covid deaths but missed cancer diagnoses.
I reran this using ONS data because NIMS triggers Philip.
With NIMS there are 1.67m people over 50 unvaccinated. With ONS it’s 1.54m. Potatoes potartoes. It doesn’t change the modelling the PM will be shown one jot. It will all come down to the plucked from the air assumptions of R with no restrictions, and the hopefully more scientific proportion of unvaxxed liable to be hospitalised.
Because this then guides whether the NHS will be “overwhelmed” or will be able to clear the cancer and heart disease backlog. Personally I think London is going to have to take one for the team and it will be “our guidance is to remain working from home” if you can, while opening up hospitality.
Bollocks to this analysis.
The UK all but banned Ivermectin, a safe effective drug developed in 1975 - cheap, no pesky patents remaining - that can deal with most COVID-19 cases. (No hospital treatment needed.) The USA has restricted it although many doctors are using it.
No profit in it. Oh dear. We can't use it. We must only recommend vaccines or new 'improved' patented drugs.
Youtube censored Dr Pierre Kory's evidence to the US Senate, including how many lives have needlessly lost
90% of PB users seem to lack the power of critical thinking. Ask why cheap effective treatments get suppressed. Ask again. Sack the people in the NHS who operate this medical corruption, or more likely it's forced on them by corrupt politicians.
The MPs to ask the most awkward questions this year seem to have been David Davis on vitamin D and two Tory backbenchers quizzed Hancock on vaccine deaths. Pathetic ... an official opposition that doesn't oppose, so that the only visible opposition on COVID since March 2020 comes from Tory backbenchers.
I didn't think there was any studies showing Ivermectin had any affect?
No.
Also, how come dexamethasone wasn't "banned"?
Or, indeed, the cheap, effective, non-profit AZN vaccine.
(Ok, it's more or less banned now for youngsters, but 'they' missed a trick letting so many oldies get vaccinated without properly filling big-pharma's pockets)
Just came back from my second vaccination. 8 lanes at the vaccination centre - 4 AZN, 4 Pfizer. Throughput is apparently 1K per day at the moment.
Let’s stick with the over 50s as the data is more complete.
In the three weeks between 9th May and 30th May (ref NIMS population data), the proportional increase in first dose vaccination uptake was:
50-59: 1.2% 60-69: 0.7% 70-79: 0.1%
So broadly speaking, uptake will likely settle at 95% for the 70s, something like 91-92% for the 60s and perhaps just shy of 90% for the 50s. Which leaves 1.6 million courageous contrarians aged over 50.
Assume uniform acquired infection of 40% to date across all age groups and that knocks you down to about a million people over 50 with no immunity.
It will be put to the PM that the new variant eventually puts [x%] of these people in hospital. The key will be understanding from those god awful modellers how many at one time. And then politically, what if anything is to be done about it.
This population of a million (plus whatever the 40s cohort settles at (currently 1.6m unvaxxed) risk being the new bed blockers for the next couple of winters, preventing the clearing of the nhs backlog. They are also this government’s voting coalition.
My expectation is no stern words or measures at all will be levelled at them, and it’s then down to how reliable the herd effect is against whatever variant is most prevalent in November on whether we avoid new “non pharmaceutical interventions” this winter. By 2022 the scandal engulfing the government will not be covid deaths but missed cancer diagnoses.
I reran this using ONS data because NIMS triggers Philip.
With NIMS there are 1.67m people over 50 unvaccinated. With ONS it’s 1.54m. Potatoes potartoes. It doesn’t change the modelling the PM will be shown one jot. It will all come down to the plucked from the air assumptions of R with no restrictions, and the hopefully more scientific proportion of unvaxxed liable to be hospitalised.
Because this then guides whether the NHS will be “overwhelmed” or will be able to clear the cancer and heart disease backlog. Personally I think London is going to have to take one for the team and it will be “our guidance is to remain working from home” if you can, while opening up hospitality.
Bollocks to this analysis.
The UK all but banned Ivermectin, a safe effective drug developed in 1975 - cheap, no pesky patents remaining - that can deal with most COVID-19 cases. (No hospital treatment needed.) The USA has restricted it although many doctors are using it.
No profit in it. Oh dear. We can't use it. We must only recommend vaccines or new 'improved' patented drugs.
Youtube censored Dr Pierre Kory's evidence to the US Senate, including how many lives have needlessly lost
90% of PB users seem to lack the power of critical thinking. Ask why cheap effective treatments get suppressed. Ask again. Sack the people in the NHS who operate this medical corruption, or more likely it's forced on them by corrupt politicians.
The MPs to ask the most awkward questions this year seem to have been David Davis on vitamin D and two Tory backbenchers quizzed Hancock on vaccine deaths. Pathetic ... an official opposition that doesn't oppose, so that the only visible opposition on COVID since March 2020 comes from Tory backbenchers.
The people who were going to set up an Independent Country in 18 months can't transfer powers they were given 5 years ago....for another 3 years:
A senior SNP minister has blamed “technical challenges” for the Scottish government’s failure to take full control over devolved benefits as she demands more powers from Westminster.
Shona Robison, who has pushed this week for Holyrood to have full command over employment rights, said that the snagging issues centred on the “safe and secure” transfer of data.
What is required up there is a proper incentive. 1. A second referendum producing a Yes vote; 2. A declaration from the remainder of the UK that we expect them to be gone in a year.
The Scottish Government can get all of this sorted out if London is no longer willing to hold its hand. And if it can't, well, quite honestly, who gives a fuck?
Repeatedly saying who gives a fuck is a notably convincing way of indicating that one doesn’t give a fuck.
Entirely accurate in this case though. You go, we're rid of each other. Scotland inside the UK has to be looked after, Scotland outside the UK is no different to Denmark. If it has issues then they're for the people who live there to sort out, ultimately.
In that case perhaps time to start criticising the lying, self serving prick who seems intent on blocking the mechanism for making this come to pass, particularly if you voted for him?
Yet just last month the Scottish Conservatives got 23.5% of the vote on the regional list at Holyrood, the highest Scottish Conservative voteshare on either the constituency or regional list vote at Holyrood since it was founded in 1999
My hypothesis though is that the Tories also have high negatives in Scotland. In other words, you either love them or hate them.
Perpetual Tory rule in Westminster, therefore, works as a ratchet toward Scottish independence, as Tory-hating unionists realise they might prefer anything to ongoing Tory hegemony.
This is another reason why it’s so important we have a viable Opposition. It’s better for the Union.
Keir has flunked it already. He needs to shuffle off.
I feel like a broken record as I explained all of this and how important Scotland was to my mate who is high up in the Labour Party but he didn’t really get it.
Yes the SNP failed to get a majority in 2019 despite a Tory majority, yet Salmond got a majority in 2011 when there was no Tory majority
Sure, but pro-Indy sentiment is certainly higher than in 2011.
Not that much more, only 49% of Scots voted for the SNP and Greens on the constituency vote last month despite over 60% of Scots voting Remain in 2016
I’m talking about “Yes” polling. Please don’t be a psephological twit.
Let’s stick with the over 50s as the data is more complete.
In the three weeks between 9th May and 30th May (ref NIMS population data), the proportional increase in first dose vaccination uptake was:
50-59: 1.2% 60-69: 0.7% 70-79: 0.1%
So broadly speaking, uptake will likely settle at 95% for the 70s, something like 91-92% for the 60s and perhaps just shy of 90% for the 50s. Which leaves 1.6 million courageous contrarians aged over 50.
Assume uniform acquired infection of 40% to date across all age groups and that knocks you down to about a million people over 50 with no immunity.
It will be put to the PM that the new variant eventually puts [x%] of these people in hospital. The key will be understanding from those god awful modellers how many at one time. And then politically, what if anything is to be done about it.
This population of a million (plus whatever the 40s cohort settles at (currently 1.6m unvaxxed) risk being the new bed blockers for the next couple of winters, preventing the clearing of the nhs backlog. They are also this government’s voting coalition.
My expectation is no stern words or measures at all will be levelled at them, and it’s then down to how reliable the herd effect is against whatever variant is most prevalent in November on whether we avoid new “non pharmaceutical interventions” this winter. By 2022 the scandal engulfing the government will not be covid deaths but missed cancer diagnoses.
I reran this using ONS data because NIMS triggers Philip.
With NIMS there are 1.67m people over 50 unvaccinated. With ONS it’s 1.54m. Potatoes potartoes. It doesn’t change the modelling the PM will be shown one jot. It will all come down to the plucked from the air assumptions of R with no restrictions, and the hopefully more scientific proportion of unvaxxed liable to be hospitalised.
Because this then guides whether the NHS will be “overwhelmed” or will be able to clear the cancer and heart disease backlog. Personally I think London is going to have to take one for the team and it will be “our guidance is to remain working from home” if you can, while opening up hospitality.
Bollocks to this analysis.
The UK all but banned Ivermectin, a safe effective drug developed in 1975 - cheap, no pesky patents remaining - that can deal with most COVID-19 cases. (No hospital treatment needed.) The USA has restricted it although many doctors are using it.
No profit in it. Oh dear. We can't use it. We must only recommend vaccines or new 'improved' patented drugs.
Youtube censored Dr Pierre Kory's evidence to the US Senate, including how many lives have needlessly lost
90% of PB users seem to lack the power of critical thinking. Ask why cheap effective treatments get suppressed. Ask again. Sack the people in the NHS who operate this medical corruption, or more likely it's forced on them by corrupt politicians.
The MPs to ask the most awkward questions this year seem to have been David Davis on vitamin D and two Tory backbenchers quizzed Hancock on vaccine deaths. Pathetic ... an official opposition that doesn't oppose, so that the only visible opposition on COVID since March 2020 comes from Tory backbenchers.
I didn't think there was any studies showing Ivermectin had any affect?
No.
Also, how come dexamethasone wasn't "banned"?
Or, indeed, the cheap, effective, non-profit AZN vaccine.
(Ok, it's more or less banned now for youngsters, but 'they' missed a trick letting so many oldies get vaccinated without properly filling big-pharma's pockets)
Just came back from my second vaccination. 8 lanes at the vaccination centre - 4 AZN, 4 Pfizer. Throughput is apparently 1K per day at the moment.
Sits longingly having to wait another 4 weeks for my 2nd jab.....
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
In the last week, confronted by these and other inconsistencies, Andersen began to quietly delete his old tweets. 4000 of them. He has now deleted his entire Twitter account
In this subject, one of my mates from uni who works for a very major pharma confirmed my theory - if China had been honest in September about the nature of th lab leak of the virus we would have had vaccines fully trialled by the end of May because PIII would have been on going in the first wave from Feb to April.
He's actually extremely angry about it and has scheduled an internal meeting to present some of his findings and what they, as a major pharma, could do to spot these things earlier to prevent this from happening next time.
China seeding the virus across the world, via its open airports, even as it closed internally, was practically a war crime. They did this in 2020, by which time they knew the nature of the bug all-too-well. And this is true wherever the virus came from
BTW the Nature article can be safely ignored. It is low-energy piffle from a woman, Amy Maxman, who has been hysterically rubbishing the lab leak hypothesis for a year, alongside Andersen, Daszak, etc. The corruption is so overt they barely bother to hide it
Let’s stick with the over 50s as the data is more complete.
In the three weeks between 9th May and 30th May (ref NIMS population data), the proportional increase in first dose vaccination uptake was:
50-59: 1.2% 60-69: 0.7% 70-79: 0.1%
So broadly speaking, uptake will likely settle at 95% for the 70s, something like 91-92% for the 60s and perhaps just shy of 90% for the 50s. Which leaves 1.6 million courageous contrarians aged over 50.
Assume uniform acquired infection of 40% to date across all age groups and that knocks you down to about a million people over 50 with no immunity.
It will be put to the PM that the new variant eventually puts [x%] of these people in hospital. The key will be understanding from those god awful modellers how many at one time. And then politically, what if anything is to be done about it.
This population of a million (plus whatever the 40s cohort settles at (currently 1.6m unvaxxed) risk being the new bed blockers for the next couple of winters, preventing the clearing of the nhs backlog. They are also this government’s voting coalition.
My expectation is no stern words or measures at all will be levelled at them, and it’s then down to how reliable the herd effect is against whatever variant is most prevalent in November on whether we avoid new “non pharmaceutical interventions” this winter. By 2022 the scandal engulfing the government will not be covid deaths but missed cancer diagnoses.
I reran this using ONS data because NIMS triggers Philip.
With NIMS there are 1.67m people over 50 unvaccinated. With ONS it’s 1.54m. Potatoes potartoes. It doesn’t change the modelling the PM will be shown one jot. It will all come down to the plucked from the air assumptions of R with no restrictions, and the hopefully more scientific proportion of unvaxxed liable to be hospitalised.
Because this then guides whether the NHS will be “overwhelmed” or will be able to clear the cancer and heart disease backlog. Personally I think London is going to have to take one for the team and it will be “our guidance is to remain working from home” if you can, while opening up hospitality.
Bollocks to this analysis.
The UK all but banned , a safe effective drug developed in 1975 - cheap, no pesky patents remaining - that can deal with most COVID-19 cases. (No hospital treatment needed.) The USA has restricted it although many doctors are using it.
No profit in it. Oh dear. We can't use it. We must only recommend vaccines or new 'improved' patented drugs.
Youtube censored Dr Pierre Kory's evidence to the US Senate, including how many lives have needlessly lost
90% of PB users seem to lack the power of critical thinking. Ask why cheap effective treatments get suppressed. Ask again. Sack the people in the NHS who operate this medical corruption, or more likely it's forced on them by corrupt politicians.
The MPs to ask the most awkward questions this year seem to have been David Davis on vitamin D and two Tory backbenchers quizzed Hancock on vaccine deaths. Pathetic ... an official opposition that doesn't oppose, so that the only visible opposition on COVID since March 2020 comes from Tory backbenchers.
Where are you seeing Ivermectin is effective at treating covid? There is little to no evidence it is effective, the largest study to date found no effect of using Ivermectin on patients.
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Again, please tell me exactly which group of people will overwhelm the NHS? It's not going to be groups 1-9 they're all fully vaccinated by Friday. It's it going to be partially vaccinated 40+ as they have got a 60% reduction in risk from first doses and they don't exactly end up on hospital in the first place. It's not going to be under 40s, we're all being vaccinated with Moderna and Pfizer which is fast acting and has a 70% reduction in hospitalisations and even without that the risk of hospitalisation is tiny.
The collective risk has always been young people getting it and passing it on to their parents and grandparents. Well Nana and grandad are double jabbed, mum and dad are double jabbed. Who exactly are young people going to pass it onto?
In the last week, confronted by these and other inconsistencies, Andersen began to quietly delete his old tweets. 4000 of them. He has now deleted his entire Twitter account
In this subject, one of my mates from uni who works for a very major pharma confirmed my theory - if China had been honest in September about the nature of th lab leak of the virus we would have had vaccines fully trialled by the end of May because PIII would have been on going in the first wave from Feb to April.
He's actually extremely angry about it and has scheduled an internal meeting to present some of his findings and what they, as a major pharma, could do to spot these things earlier to prevent this from happening next time.
China seeding the virus across the world, via its open airports, even as it closed internally, was practically a war crime. They did this in 2020, by which time they knew the nature of the bug all-too-well. And this is true wherever the virus came from
BTW the Nature article can be safely ignored. It is low-energy piffle from a woman, Amy Maxman, who has been hysterically rubbishing the lab leak hypothesis for a year, alongside Andersen, Daszak, etc. The corruption is so overt they barely bother to hide it
I reckon this would have been beyond much doubt a year ago, were it not for Trump mentioning it and so many people in high places being determined to disagree with him.
A LAW student who was investigated by a Scottish university for saying women have vaginas and are not as strong as men has been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Lisa Keogh, 29, was investigated by Abertay University after classmates complained she had made “offensive” and “discriminatory” remarks at a lecture.
I can't actually read the article due to the paywall, but it seems like the story is someone complained to the university in the way the woke continuously do, but then the University wasn't having any of it. So there doesn't seem to be anything in it.
"How we fell for anti-intuition Wear a mask, shut the borders. Sometimes the obvious answers are the true ones"
Around a year ago the panic first began to set in as it dawned on us that this was going to be the Big One. I remember seeing the footage in Lombardy and suddenly realising that the strange illness in far-away China was going to hit us in England, too.
The shock felt all the more real because it was so sudden. Just two weeks earlier, the Mayor of Florence had been organising a “hug a Chinese” day to combat the real danger – prejudice – while the New York health commissioner was urging people to head to Chinatown to show their solidarity.
At the same time, Taiwan was stopping all flights from mainland China....
In the last week, confronted by these and other inconsistencies, Andersen began to quietly delete his old tweets. 4000 of them. He has now deleted his entire Twitter account
In this subject, one of my mates from uni who works for a very major pharma confirmed my theory - if China had been honest in September about the nature of th lab leak of the virus we would have had vaccines fully trialled by the end of May because PIII would have been on going in the first wave from Feb to April.
He's actually extremely angry about it and has scheduled an internal meeting to present some of his findings and what they, as a major pharma, could do to spot these things earlier to prevent this from happening next time.
China seeding the virus across the world, via its open airports, even as it closed internally, was practically a war crime. They did this in 2020, by which time they knew the nature of the bug all-too-well. And this is true wherever the virus came from
BTW the Nature article can be safely ignored. It is low-energy piffle from a woman, Amy Maxman, who has been hysterically rubbishing the lab leak hypothesis for a year, alongside Andersen, Daszak, etc. The corruption is so overt they barely bother to hide it
When did the CCP first admit there was human-to-human transmission? When did they admit this transmission was airborne?
Let’s stick with the over 50s as the data is more complete.
In the three weeks between 9th May and 30th May (ref NIMS population data), the proportional increase in first dose vaccination uptake was:
50-59: 1.2% 60-69: 0.7% 70-79: 0.1%
So broadly speaking, uptake will likely settle at 95% for the 70s, something like 91-92% for the 60s and perhaps just shy of 90% for the 50s. Which leaves 1.6 million courageous contrarians aged over 50.
Assume uniform acquired infection of 40% to date across all age groups and that knocks you down to about a million people over 50 with no immunity.
It will be put to the PM that the new variant eventually puts [x%] of these people in hospital. The key will be understanding from those god awful modellers how many at one time. And then politically, what if anything is to be done about it.
This population of a million (plus whatever the 40s cohort settles at (currently 1.6m unvaxxed) risk being the new bed blockers for the next couple of winters, preventing the clearing of the nhs backlog. They are also this government’s voting coalition.
My expectation is no stern words or measures at all will be levelled at them, and it’s then down to how reliable the herd effect is against whatever variant is most prevalent in November on whether we avoid new “non pharmaceutical interventions” this winter. By 2022 the scandal engulfing the government will not be covid deaths but missed cancer diagnoses.
If they plan to lock us down this coming winter they will need to use the excuse of vaccine resistant strains rather than we are doing this because 1.6m people didn't get the vax and the NHS needs protection from them.
No way public will accept locking down for refusers.
Maybe I am wrong, but I reckon that no one I know will do it or at least if they do it will be under extreme duress and I don't see them recruiting enough police for that.
It’s quite clear that compliance with any remaining rules is already close to bust. The problem is for an NHS administrator. How do you treat the backlog of regular patients if you have to devote an ordinate amount of resource to the infectious wing, which cannot risk being intermingled with the regular ward? There is one political choice: if you have suspected covid and need hospital, you’re not going to hospital. You’re going to a less well equipped Nightingale tent, where we will do our best for you. Meanwhile most of the nhs gets on with clearing the backlog. And you hope that the noisy signposting of the policy nudges the antivax numbers down a bit.
Is there much evidence for antivax sentiment? Aren't the main non-immune groups those who haven't been invited yet, those waiting for dose 2 and those who can't have the vaccine for medical reasons?
The minority at significant risk of dying horribly of Covid were nearly all jabbed some time ago, but a large number of people multiplied by a low risk is still a non-trivial number. And telling them "you're not going to hospital" when their lack of immunity is probably not their fault just isn't on.
And besides- most of the remaining restrictions are on indoor mixing. It's June. It's a lovely day outside. As my grandmother used to say.
Players’ Tribune do have some really good writers.
The fans are still going to boo the players kneeling before the matches.
Southgate’s piece sounds like a David Cameron leadership pitch, ie empty ‘modernising’ dross.
I don’t think I’ll be booing at the matches as I’m too polite for that but you can tell from the supporters club forum he isn’t winning too many over. Ultimately though he’ll be judged by results on the pitch and I’m not overly optimistic England are in a good place on the eve of the tournament.
My best guess is that England will scrape second place in the group and then go down to a pathetic defeat in the first knockout game. Defeat to Poland in a penalty shootout or something like that.
No, we're winning. Name on the trophy. Remember how the 'dentist's chair' fired up the team in 96 and led to a thrilling run which ended only with a terribly unlucky semi final defeat to Germany? Ok, so same here with 'taking the knee'. This is uniting the players and the manager. It's bringing them together and creating a powerful "us against the gammons" vibe which, given we are better now than 96, should take us all the way. Available at 7 on Betfair. That's value if you share my analysis. Otherwise it looks far too short.
Imagine the photo opportunities for Johnson on the back of a Euros win.
And I have confidence that Rob Page can do it for him!
In the last week, confronted by these and other inconsistencies, Andersen began to quietly delete his old tweets. 4000 of them. He has now deleted his entire Twitter account
In this subject, one of my mates from uni who works for a very major pharma confirmed my theory - if China had been honest in September about the nature of th lab leak of the virus we would have had vaccines fully trialled by the end of May because PIII would have been on going in the first wave from Feb to April.
He's actually extremely angry about it and has scheduled an internal meeting to present some of his findings and what they, as a major pharma, could do to spot these things earlier to prevent this from happening next time.
China seeding the virus across the world, via its open airports, even as it closed internally, was practically a war crime. They did this in 2020, by which time they knew the nature of the bug all-too-well. And this is true wherever the virus came from
BTW the Nature article can be safely ignored. It is low-energy piffle from a woman, Amy Maxman, who has been hysterically rubbishing the lab leak hypothesis for a year, alongside Andersen, Daszak, etc. The corruption is so overt they barely bother to hide it
I reckon this would have been beyond much doubt a year ago, were it not for Trump mentioning it and so many people in high places being determined to disagree with him.
There was definitely an element of Trump Derangement Syndrome...he said it, everything he says is a lie, he is being racist....discredit any just talk as conspiracy theory and have links to it banned on Facebook etc. NYT published so many incorrect stories for similar reasons, Trump said ergo it has to be false, or somebody claims x about Trump, it must be true, because its Trump. And Rachel Maddow, well, makes Carole Conspiracy look balanced.
My guess was that Trump was briefed about the possibility of this from the intelligence agencies, and couldn't help but blurt it out.
For the EU’s part, its belief that checks at ports in Larne and Belfast should be treated as if they were taking place at the border in Calais was at best naive. The view that “the rules are the rules for all third countries and they have to be implemented in the same way” does not transfer well to a post-conflict society like Northern Ireland, where one of the two key communities sees any economic restrictions with the rest of the UK not just as a trade barrier, but an assault on their sense of identity and belonging.
It is possible to hold two facts simultaneously: that the protocol is the only viable solution on the table, and that implementing it is practically, legally and politically difficult, requiring flexibility from both sides.
A LAW student who was investigated by a Scottish university for saying women have vaginas and are not as strong as men has been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Lisa Keogh, 29, was investigated by Abertay University after classmates complained she had made “offensive” and “discriminatory” remarks at a lecture.
In the last week, confronted by these and other inconsistencies, Andersen began to quietly delete his old tweets. 4000 of them. He has now deleted his entire Twitter account
In this subject, one of my mates from uni who works for a very major pharma confirmed my theory - if China had been honest in September about the nature of th lab leak of the virus we would have had vaccines fully trialled by the end of May because PIII would have been on going in the first wave from Feb to April.
He's actually extremely angry about it and has scheduled an internal meeting to present some of his findings and what they, as a major pharma, could do to spot these things earlier to prevent this from happening next time.
China seeding the virus across the world, via its open airports, even as it closed internally, was practically a war crime. They did this in 2020, by which time they knew the nature of the bug all-too-well. And this is true wherever the virus came from
BTW the Nature article can be safely ignored. It is low-energy piffle from a woman, Amy Maxman, who has been hysterically rubbishing the lab leak hypothesis for a year, alongside Andersen, Daszak, etc. The corruption is so overt they barely bother to hide it
The question for me is, if we can prove that China openly let the virus spread internationally, what retaliation is fit and proper?
It places China squarely as a rogue state, but they are a too big and systemic in the global financial system for us to shut them out.
This by the way is independent of whether or not this is a lab leak.
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Its already caveated by the word collective.
There's a risk to some individuals that they might individually get sick, but there's no collective risk like there was in January or March 2020.
I am not an expert on Covid-19, but I think we are some way from being able to say that the collective risk has been eliminated. I think we can say that the vaccines seem to work but there are still a lot of unknowns.
On topic, the suggested delay to Freedom Day is the right move (possibly for the wrong reasons but let's come back to that).
Although more than 77% of adults have had a first jab and over half have had both across the UK, that still leaves a substantial number who haven't had either - around 12m by my reckoning (plus children, who are also well capable of catching and transmitting the virus).
Now, as Mike says, it's true that at the moment there are few deaths resulting from the virus but too often - and this is another example - policy has been decided on how things are now, not how they would be as a result of the policy.
Suppose we open up with 12m adults unvaccinated, including most under-30s. Then stick 200 young adults into an airless, confined nightclub without any social distancing, masks or the like. If one of the 200 has the virus at the start of the evening, how many will have it by the end? The social life of young adults involves a lot of that random mixing, often in that sort of close proximity. In current circumstances, Freedom Day rules would be an invitation to a very substantial third wave.
Now, if it was just under-30s - who seemingly have a high resistance to the virus - perhaps that would be tolerable but of course it wouldn't. Most under-50s have had only one jab and with millions of cases swirling around the country, there'd be many leaking up into those partially-protected older age groups with greater vulnerability (there'd also be cases among unvaccinated anti-vaxxers but, frankly, that's their fault and their problem).
Until we have at least one dose offered to all over-18s, I really don't see how we can go back to status quo ante rules. The capacity for uncontrolled transmission is just too great.
And that goes for foreign travel too. Leave aside that most countries would ban Brits from entering if there was a third wave of the scale described above. One problem last summer (interestingly not experienced that much in the UK but certainly elsewhere in Europe) was that people went to countries with low rates but mixed there with people from countries with high rates - and set off new waves all over. The vaccines can control that to a degree but the risks, including of new variants remains.
Finally, a point on social solidarity. The young - both adults and children - suffered appallingly in this epidemic, through lost education, jobs, incomes, savings and so on. They did so despite the virus posing little risk to them personally. They might well have asked "why should have put up with these restrictions when they hurt me so much for so little personal benefit?". The answer was, of course, that society needs to look after everyone, as best it can. So now in reverse. Those who've had both jabs can damn well put up with the restrictions for a little longer until the young, who've sacrificed so much for their elders, have had their turn.
I'm sorry, but any youngster who is worried about the virus is perfectly free to abstain from nightclubs and commuter trains until they are jabbed.
If this is becoming a question of individual safety, the government needs to come clean about that. But up to now the mantra has been "protect the NHS". As far as I'm concerned, once the threat to the NHS has gone, then this is over.
It's not about individual under-30s being worried about the virus; it's about what the risk of a third wave generated by uncontrolled mixing of under-30s (and, to a lesser extent, partially-vaccinated over-30s), would be to the whole of society - including the NHS (or more accurately, those who need to rely on it).
Right, can you show us some evidence that the final unlocking (and by the way, we are quite unlocked already) would result in lots of under 30s getting COVID and being hospitalised at the same time in numbers sufficient to be of concern to the NHS?
The obvious evidence is the Natural R number for the virus and the experience from Wave 1. It should be obvious that if - as in my example - you stick large numbers of people in confined social spaces (or transport spaces, or work spaces), the majority of whom are not vaccinated, as will be the place in nightclubs and other venues aimed at the young adult market, you will get exponential growth among that group - which will inevitably work up to other age groups.
That second point is crucial in terms of the impact on healthcare. Most (though not all) cases among under-30s will pass relatively mildly, though there does seem to be evidence of higher rates of Long Covid among young adults, but cases in older age groups will produce higher rates of hospitalisations and deaths - and if we're talking about millions of cases in young adults, and we would be, that implies many thousands of hospitalisations overall, based on current vaccine coverage, efficacy and hospitalisation rates from previous waves.
Oops - quick follow up. I said I'd come to why I thought delaying Freedom Day might be the right decision for the wrong reason. While I implied what I thought the right reason was, I forgot to mention the wrong one.
I'm far from convinced that Delta is that much more transmissable. it's notable that Bedford's vaccination rates are some way below the national average. We have to question whether the greater transmission of Delta is because of the virus or because of the people who have it. Are they acting differently from other parts of the country, or from those who don't? Are they following rules and guidance to the same extent - and so on? Are their vaccination rates the same, or higher, or lower, than the areas and groups not suffering outbreaks?
The question underlying all this is why, when Delta is also found in other countries, has its outbreak in the UK grown far faster than elsewhere?
Now, there are tricky issues surrounding the asking of these questions, which is why they probably won't be asked and are even less likely to be answered honestly and openly. All the same, I can't help but think that the governments assumptions about transmission are not looking at the whole picture and, hence, flawed.
Still, as it turns out, it might be for the best.
My guess/worry is that the UK seeded a large outbreak because we have lots of flights coming from India.
So basically... other countries are going to get the same/larger surge in cases, just a bit later because they don't have as much travel from India, so it will take longer for the virus to become dominant for them.
And those other countries are going to be hit very hard, because their vaccination rates are lower, and this variant seems to lead to more hospitalization.
Let’s stick with the over 50s as the data is more complete.
In the three weeks between 9th May and 30th May (ref NIMS population data), the proportional increase in first dose vaccination uptake was:
50-59: 1.2% 60-69: 0.7% 70-79: 0.1%
So broadly speaking, uptake will likely settle at 95% for the 70s, something like 91-92% for the 60s and perhaps just shy of 90% for the 50s. Which leaves 1.6 million courageous contrarians aged over 50.
Assume uniform acquired infection of 40% to date across all age groups and that knocks you down to about a million people over 50 with no immunity.
It will be put to the PM that the new variant eventually puts [x%] of these people in hospital. The key will be understanding from those god awful modellers how many at one time. And then politically, what if anything is to be done about it.
This population of a million (plus whatever the 40s cohort settles at (currently 1.6m unvaxxed) risk being the new bed blockers for the next couple of winters, preventing the clearing of the nhs backlog. They are also this government’s voting coalition.
My expectation is no stern words or measures at all will be levelled at them, and it’s then down to how reliable the herd effect is against whatever variant is most prevalent in November on whether we avoid new “non pharmaceutical interventions” this winter. By 2022 the scandal engulfing the government will not be covid deaths but missed cancer diagnoses.
I reran this using ONS data because NIMS triggers Philip.
With NIMS there are 1.67m people over 50 unvaccinated. With ONS it’s 1.54m. Potatoes potartoes. It doesn’t change the modelling the PM will be shown one jot. It will all come down to the plucked from the air assumptions of R with no restrictions, and the hopefully more scientific proportion of unvaxxed liable to be hospitalised.
Because this then guides whether the NHS will be “overwhelmed” or will be able to clear the cancer and heart disease backlog. Personally I think London is going to have to take one for the team and it will be “our guidance is to remain working from home” if you can, while opening up hospitality.
Bollocks to this analysis.
The UK all but banned , a safe effective drug developed in 1975 - cheap, no pesky patents remaining - that can deal with most COVID-19 cases. (No hospital treatment needed.) The USA has restricted it although many doctors are using it.
No profit in it. Oh dear. We can't use it. We must only recommend vaccines or new 'improved' patented drugs.
Youtube censored Dr Pierre Kory's evidence to the US Senate, including how many lives have needlessly lost
90% of PB users seem to lack the power of critical thinking. Ask why cheap effective treatments get suppressed. Ask again. Sack the people in the NHS who operate this medical corruption, or more likely it's forced on them by corrupt politicians.
The MPs to ask the most awkward questions this year seem to have been David Davis on vitamin D and two Tory backbenchers quizzed Hancock on vaccine deaths. Pathetic ... an official opposition that doesn't oppose, so that the only visible opposition on COVID since March 2020 comes from Tory backbenchers.
Where are you seeing Ivermectin is effective at treating covid? There is little to no evidence it is effective, the largest study to date found no effect of using Ivermectin on patients.
That study neglected to add hot broth to make it a combined treatment. That, and intravenous Ajax.
In the last week, confronted by these and other inconsistencies, Andersen began to quietly delete his old tweets. 4000 of them. He has now deleted his entire Twitter account
In this subject, one of my mates from uni who works for a very major pharma confirmed my theory - if China had been honest in September about the nature of th lab leak of the virus we would have had vaccines fully trialled by the end of May because PIII would have been on going in the first wave from Feb to April.
He's actually extremely angry about it and has scheduled an internal meeting to present some of his findings and what they, as a major pharma, could do to spot these things earlier to prevent this from happening next time.
Would we though? Because we didn't develop vaccines to SARS etc, since there was little reason to do so, the investment wasn't given which was given to this.
Quite possibly if this was a leak in September and they had been honest about it then it would have been more easily contained and would never have become a global pandemic in the first place.
He said that pharma companies actually created the first vaccine candidates within days of receiving the genome. BioNTech famously did it an afternoon, the Jenner institute took 3 days. By November the "definitely just the flu" articles were already in The Times. If China has attributed this honestly in September to a lab leak of a fast spreading SARS like virus then the whole pharma industry would have done what they did in March and April, just in October and November. PII/III trials would have caught the first wave in Europe and the US and those results would have allowed for vaccines to start being jabbed in June.
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Again, please tell me exactly which group of people will overwhelm the NHS? It's not going to be groups 1-9 they're all fully vaccinated by Friday. It's it going to be partially vaccinated 40+ as they have got a 60% reduction in risk from first doses and they don't exactly end up on hospital in the first place. It's not going to be under 40s, we're all being vaccinated with Moderna and Pfizer which is fast acting and has a 70% reduction in hospitalisations and even without that the risk of hospitalisation is tiny.
The collective risk has always been young people getting it and passing it on to their parents and grandparents. Well Nana and grandad are double jabbed, mum and dad are double jabbed. Who exactly are young people going to pass it onto?
The answer is the couple of million over 40s that still do not have immunity because they are courageous independent thinking defenders of liberal democracy. Or vegans. You and I don’t care what happens to them. But we do care that they don’t bed block everyone else with a non-covid serious health issue.
Boris needs to put his nuts on the line and tell these couple of million voters that the British state will be doing the bare minimum for them now.
Oops - quick follow up. I said I'd come to why I thought delaying Freedom Day might be the right decision for the wrong reason. While I implied what I thought the right reason was, I forgot to mention the wrong one.
I'm far from convinced that Delta is that much more transmissable. it's notable that Bedford's vaccination rates are some way below the national average. We have to question whether the greater transmission of Delta is because of the virus or because of the people who have it. Are they acting differently from other parts of the country, or from those who don't? Are they following rules and guidance to the same extent - and so on? Are their vaccination rates the same, or higher, or lower, than the areas and groups not suffering outbreaks?
The question underlying all this is why, when Delta is also found in other countries, has its outbreak in the UK grown far faster than elsewhere?
Now, there are tricky issues surrounding the asking of these questions, which is why they probably won't be asked and are even less likely to be answered honestly and openly. All the same, I can't help but think that the governments assumptions about transmission are not looking at the whole picture and, hence, flawed.
Still, as it turns out, it might be for the best.
My guess/worry is that the UK seeded a large outbreak because we have lots of flights coming from India.
So basically... other countries are going to get the same/larger surge in cases, just a bit later because they don't have as much travel from India, so it will take longer for the virus to become dominant for them.
And those other countries are going to be hit very hard, because their vaccination rates are lower, and this variant seems to lead to more hospitalization.
But that's not happening. I can well see your explanation being right as to why the UK had so many more Delta cases *to begin with* but it doesn't explain why Delta cases have grown so quickly here but not at anything like the same rate in other countries. As you say, given their lower vaccination rates, they should really have grown even faster if the higher R rate is as claimed.
I really wonder how much the decision to exclude the use of AZN among the younger population is hurting us. We could be mass vaccinating the yuff with our 3-4 million a week supply of AZN, rather than being limited by our supply of Pfizer / Moderna.
BBC R4 reporting Palace sources say the Sussexes did NOT consult the Queen over the use of Lilibet - contradicting claims from their “friends” that Harry had discussed it with her beforehand.
At some point, the Sussexes and the Palace need to decide if they want to renormalise peaceful relations, or if they'd prefer this continued low-level bickering. A third choice would be simply to STFU.
The Sussex's behaviour is bonkers. Seems therefore to use Lilibet was deeply offensive without asking first. They can call their child what they like but they lack manners in not having asked (if true)
Your obsession is even more bonkers. I cannot recall you being anything like as angry over Prince Andrew who should be extradited.
Oh come on!
Andrew hasn't been charged with anything. The only time anyone tried to include his name in court proceedings several years ago the US judge threw it out. Apparently, the US authorities would like to ask him questions. There are well-established procedures for questioning people as potential witnesses and they do not involve extradition.
Anyone asked to answer questions by any US authority - be he as pure as the driven snow - would be foolish in the extreme to do so without getting legal advice. The US authorities will ignore all MoUs, foreign laws, their own laws and anything else if they think they can get away with it. They are not beyond grandstanding in public to get publicity for individual officials. I simply would not trust them and would always advise a client to do only that which is legally required and only with the benefit of legal advice and with written agreement on the ground rules. In fact, I have done so on numerous occasions.
I have no idea what Andrew has or has not done. Based on his interviews, he appears to be a bloody fool. But I strongly dislike people being deemed to be guilty of serious crimes simply on the basis of whether people like them or not or other irrational prejudices.
Let’s stick with the over 50s as the data is more complete.
In the three weeks between 9th May and 30th May (ref NIMS population data), the proportional increase in first dose vaccination uptake was:
50-59: 1.2% 60-69: 0.7% 70-79: 0.1%
So broadly speaking, uptake will likely settle at 95% for the 70s, something like 91-92% for the 60s and perhaps just shy of 90% for the 50s. Which leaves 1.6 million courageous contrarians aged over 50.
Assume uniform acquired infection of 40% to date across all age groups and that knocks you down to about a million people over 50 with no immunity.
It will be put to the PM that the new variant eventually puts [x%] of these people in hospital. The key will be understanding from those god awful modellers how many at one time. And then politically, what if anything is to be done about it.
This population of a million (plus whatever the 40s cohort settles at (currently 1.6m unvaxxed) risk being the new bed blockers for the next couple of winters, preventing the clearing of the nhs backlog. They are also this government’s voting coalition.
My expectation is no stern words or measures at all will be levelled at them, and it’s then down to how reliable the herd effect is against whatever variant is most prevalent in November on whether we avoid new “non pharmaceutical interventions” this winter. By 2022 the scandal engulfing the government will not be covid deaths but missed cancer diagnoses.
If they plan to lock us down this coming winter they will need to use the excuse of vaccine resistant strains rather than we are doing this because 1.6m people didn't get the vax and the NHS needs protection from them.
No way public will accept locking down for refusers.
Maybe I am wrong, but I reckon that no one I know will do it or at least if they do it will be under extreme duress and I don't see them recruiting enough police for that.
It’s quite clear that compliance with any remaining rules is already close to bust. The problem is for an NHS administrator. How do you treat the backlog of regular patients if you have to devote an ordinate amount of resource to the infectious wing, which cannot risk being intermingled with the regular ward? There is one political choice: if you have suspected covid and need hospital, you’re not going to hospital. You’re going to a less well equipped Nightingale tent, where we will do our best for you. Meanwhile most of the nhs gets on with clearing the backlog. And you hope that the noisy signposting of the policy nudges the antivax numbers down a bit.
Is there much evidence for antivax sentiment? Aren't the main non-immune groups those who haven't been invited yet, those waiting for dose 2 and those who can't have the vaccine for medical reasons?
The minority at significant risk of dying horribly of Covid were nearly all jabbed some time ago, but a large number of people multiplied by a low risk is still a non-trivial number. And telling them "you're not going to hospital" when their lack of immunity is probably not their fault just isn't on.
And besides- most of the remaining restrictions are on indoor mixing. It's June. It's a lovely day outside. As my grandmother used to say.
I went through the numbers in detail earlier of those who have declined a first jab but are in the group of elevated risk of hospitalisation. Unless you think we’ve hit herd immunity, the next 2-3 winters you’d expect a good chunk of them to catch covid, a percentage of which would need hospital.
The answer hopefully is that we have hit herd immunity. That’s what Boris will gamble on when he opens up.
A LAW student who was investigated by a Scottish university for saying women have vaginas and are not as strong as men has been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Lisa Keogh, 29, was investigated by Abertay University after classmates complained she had made “offensive” and “discriminatory” remarks at a lecture.
Our universities have a real problem with independent thought.
We (and I do mean we, as we all have a responsibility in this) have created the most sensitive generation ever. Pathetic.
The notion that this generation of students is the most closed minded and lacking independent thought ever can been seen in the newspapers of the 1980's, 1960's and 1920's.
I really wonder how much the decision to exclude the use of AZN among the younger population is hurting us. We could be mass vaccinating the yuff with our 3-4 million a week supply of AZN, rather than being limited by our supply of Pfizer / Moderna.
I really wonder how much the decision to exclude the use of AZN among the younger population is hurting us. We could be mass vaccinating the yuff with our 3-4 million a week supply of AZN, rather than being limited by our supply of Pfizer / Moderna.
Yes, that was a really difficult call to make.
The worry must have been that a couple of photogenic young ladies with their pictures on the front pages, with the 60pt headline “killed by the vaccine”, would have caused a panic.
If we had a more responsible media, there likely wouldn’t have been a problem.
I really wonder how much the decision to exclude the use of AZN among the younger population is hurting us. We could be mass vaccinating the yuff with our 3-4 million a week supply of AZN, rather than being limited by our supply of Pfizer / Moderna.
UK AZ production in May was 4 million toto. Where was the rest from?
BBC R4 reporting Palace sources say the Sussexes did NOT consult the Queen over the use of Lilibet - contradicting claims from their “friends” that Harry had discussed it with her beforehand.
At some point, the Sussexes and the Palace need to decide if they want to renormalise peaceful relations, or if they'd prefer this continued low-level bickering. A third choice would be simply to STFU.
The Sussex's behaviour is bonkers. Seems therefore to use Lilibet was deeply offensive without asking first. They can call their child what they like but they lack manners in not having asked (if true)
Your obsession is even more bonkers. I cannot recall you being anything like as angry over Prince Andrew who should be extradited.
Oh come on!
Andrew hasn't been charged with anything. The only time anyone tried to include his name in court proceedings several years ago the US judge threw it out. Apparently, the US authorities would like to ask him questions. There are well-established procedures for questioning people as potential witnesses and they do not involve extradition.
Anyone asked to answer questions by any US authority - be he as pure as the driven snow - would be foolish in the extreme to do so without getting legal advice. The US authorities will ignore all MoUs, foreign laws, their own laws and anything else if they think they can get away with it. They are not beyond grandstanding in public to get publicity for individual officials. I simply would not trust them and would always advise a client to do only that which is legally required and only with the benefit of legal advice and with written agreement on the ground rules. In fact, I have done so on numerous occasions.
I have no idea what Andrew has or has not done. Based on his interviews, he appears to be a bloody fool. But I strongly dislike people being deemed to be guilty of serious crimes simply on the basis of whether people like them or not or other irrational prejudices.
One classic to be aware of in the US - The FBI will repeatedly interview suspects/witnesses. X hours of grilling, repeated questions, over a period days. If you answer slightly differently on one of the questions, they charge you with lying to a Federal Agent, if they feel like it.
Oops - quick follow up. I said I'd come to why I thought delaying Freedom Day might be the right decision for the wrong reason. While I implied what I thought the right reason was, I forgot to mention the wrong one.
I'm far from convinced that Delta is that much more transmissable. it's notable that Bedford's vaccination rates are some way below the national average. We have to question whether the greater transmission of Delta is because of the virus or because of the people who have it. Are they acting differently from other parts of the country, or from those who don't? Are they following rules and guidance to the same extent - and so on? Are their vaccination rates the same, or higher, or lower, than the areas and groups not suffering outbreaks?
The question underlying all this is why, when Delta is also found in other countries, has its outbreak in the UK grown far faster than elsewhere?
Now, there are tricky issues surrounding the asking of these questions, which is why they probably won't be asked and are even less likely to be answered honestly and openly. All the same, I can't help but think that the governments assumptions about transmission are not looking at the whole picture and, hence, flawed.
Still, as it turns out, it might be for the best.
My guess/worry is that the UK seeded a large outbreak because we have lots of flights coming from India.
So basically... other countries are going to get the same/larger surge in cases, just a bit later because they don't have as much travel from India, so it will take longer for the virus to become dominant for them.
And those other countries are going to be hit very hard, because their vaccination rates are lower, and this variant seems to lead to more hospitalization.
But that's not happening. I can well see your explanation being right as to why the UK had so many more Delta cases *to begin with* but it doesn't explain why Delta cases have grown so quickly here but not at anything like the same rate in other countries. As you say, given their lower vaccination rates, they should really have grown even faster if the higher R rate is as claimed.
I think it is rising very fast in other countries, just from a much lower base, so it will take longer to show up in headline figures which are still dominated by other variants.
In the US it is 6% of all cases -> but that will rise very quickly -> then it will become noticeable in the headline case numbers.
Genuine question. Have the “teething troubles” with shellfish exports been sorted out?
I think the answer is "it depends" on what and where. For some there's no issue now, for others there are but the list of the latter is getting smaller by attrition and pulling back from exporting to the EU and instead exporting to other parts of the world.
A LAW student who was investigated by a Scottish university for saying women have vaginas and are not as strong as men has been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Lisa Keogh, 29, was investigated by Abertay University after classmates complained she had made “offensive” and “discriminatory” remarks at a lecture.
Our universities have a real problem with independent thought.
We (and I do mean we, as we all have a responsibility in this) have created the most sensitive generation ever. Pathetic.
Jon Haidts book and Greg Lukianoffs book 'the coddling of the American mind' looked at this issue in 2018, before the woke stuff really took off. It is well worth reading, if nothing else for the accounts of events like the Evergreen university strike in 2016. Their thesis was that the obsession with microagressions etc was setting up a generation for failure, as the 'real world' would intervene as soon as they left college. It was clear at the time to me that they were probably wrong - the success of these ideas and the inability of universities to defeat them would mean that they would simply transport them in to the 'real world' and transform it, as they actually went on to do in 2020.
It is not a happy ending for the woke though, because the parasite is effectively destroying the host. A society lost in this kind of introspection and sensitivity cannot defend itself from external existential threats: russia, china, aliens etc.
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Its already caveated by the word collective.
There's a risk to some individuals that they might individually get sick, but there's no collective risk like there was in January or March 2020.
I am not an expert on Covid-19, but I think we are some way from being able to say that the collective risk has been eliminated. I think we can say that the vaccines seem to work but there are still a lot of unknowns.
No we are not any way from it. We are there.
The vaccine rollout is complete in Groups 1 to 9, double-jabbed. There's nothing more to be done there. Yes there may be some antivaxxers but we could wait weeks, months or years they still won't be vaccinated if they're refusing it and don't change their minds.
So if you think that we are collectively at risk then you need to please answer two questions:
Firstly: Who are we collectively at risk from? Which JCVI groups for instance? Secondly: When will we cease to be at risk from them?
If you can't answer those questions, the collective risk is gone as best as it can ever be.
Oops - quick follow up. I said I'd come to why I thought delaying Freedom Day might be the right decision for the wrong reason. While I implied what I thought the right reason was, I forgot to mention the wrong one.
I'm far from convinced that Delta is that much more transmissable. it's notable that Bedford's vaccination rates are some way below the national average. We have to question whether the greater transmission of Delta is because of the virus or because of the people who have it. Are they acting differently from other parts of the country, or from those who don't? Are they following rules and guidance to the same extent - and so on? Are their vaccination rates the same, or higher, or lower, than the areas and groups not suffering outbreaks?
The question underlying all this is why, when Delta is also found in other countries, has its outbreak in the UK grown far faster than elsewhere?
Now, there are tricky issues surrounding the asking of these questions, which is why they probably won't be asked and are even less likely to be answered honestly and openly. All the same, I can't help but think that the governments assumptions about transmission are not looking at the whole picture and, hence, flawed.
Still, as it turns out, it might be for the best.
My guess/worry is that the UK seeded a large outbreak because we have lots of flights coming from India.
So basically... other countries are going to get the same/larger surge in cases, just a bit later because they don't have as much travel from India, so it will take longer for the virus to become dominant for them.
And those other countries are going to be hit very hard, because their vaccination rates are lower, and this variant seems to lead to more hospitalization.
But that's not happening. I can well see your explanation being right as to why the UK had so many more Delta cases *to begin with* but it doesn't explain why Delta cases have grown so quickly here but not at anything like the same rate in other countries. As you say, given their lower vaccination rates, they should really have grown even faster if the higher R rate is as claimed.
No clue but my completely unsupported hunch that I've had for a while no is that Covid needs quite specific conditions for super spreader events otherwise it just bumbles along at a low reproduction rate.
Avoid a super spreader events and you don't see any explosive growth, hit a couple and then it's chain reaction time.
So having a large seed population has a massively disproportionate effect on later growth as far more early super spreader chances.
Genuine question. Have the “teething troubles” with shellfish exports been sorted out?
I think the answer is "it depends" on what and where. For some there's no issue now, for others there are but the list of the latter is getting smaller by attrition and pulling back from exporting to the EU and instead exporting to other parts of the world.
Didn't the water get reclassified to A-rating, as per EU standards, meaning that the restrictions have been lifted for many?
I'm down to London next week for a couple of days - for the first time in over 15 months. (An in-the-room meeting with the animators for the first time.) Dinner booked at Hide.
Is there anything on that is must-see at the mo?
I'd enjoy a report on Hide.
To each their own, of course. I love my fine dining, but judging by the pics I might privately go Jeremy Clarkson on them.
To me the presentation has a for-instagram feel to it - like the shift from 'stripped out scandi' to 'urban hipster with textures' we have seen in interior decor over the last few years.
Frankly I would punch someone in the face who served me such pretentious shite.
Have you been there and done that ?
I was once taken into a restaurant in Strasbourg (iirc) for a dinner meeting where I saw plates with such rubbish on. I walked out. Food is for eating. It is for sustenance, not for some clown to tell you how clever he is whilst picking your pocket.
Yeah, I'd like an R33 GTR but they are now in the too valuable to track category. I had an R35 for a while but completely overbuilt it (GTR Shop Belgium tuned it and it had 633hp). Great road car with vast mechanical grip but (far) too much midrange torque for most tracks.
The people who were going to set up an Independent Country in 18 months can't transfer powers they were given 5 years ago....for another 3 years:
A senior SNP minister has blamed “technical challenges” for the Scottish government’s failure to take full control over devolved benefits as she demands more powers from Westminster.
Shona Robison, who has pushed this week for Holyrood to have full command over employment rights, said that the snagging issues centred on the “safe and secure” transfer of data.
What is required up there is a proper incentive. 1. A second referendum producing a Yes vote; 2. A declaration from the remainder of the UK that we expect them to be gone in a year.
The Scottish Government can get all of this sorted out if London is no longer willing to hold its hand. And if it can't, well, quite honestly, who gives a fuck?
Repeatedly saying who gives a fuck is a notably convincing way of indicating that one doesn’t give a fuck.
Entirely accurate in this case though. You go, we're rid of each other. Scotland inside the UK has to be looked after, Scotland outside the UK is no different to Denmark. If it has issues then they're for the people who live there to sort out, ultimately.
In that case perhaps time to start criticising the lying, self serving prick who seems intent on blocking the mechanism for making this come to pass, particularly if you voted for him?
Yet just last month the Scottish Conservatives got 23.5% of the vote on the regional list at Holyrood, the highest Scottish Conservative voteshare on either the constituency or regional list vote at Holyrood since it was founded in 1999
My hypothesis though is that the Tories also have high negatives in Scotland. In other words, you either love them or hate them.
Perpetual Tory rule in Westminster, therefore, works as a ratchet toward Scottish independence, as Tory-hating unionists realise they might prefer anything to ongoing Tory hegemony.
This is another reason why it’s so important we have a viable Opposition. It’s better for the Union.
Keir has flunked it already. He needs to shuffle off.
I feel like a broken record as I explained all of this and how important Scotland was to my mate who is high up in the Labour Party but he didn’t really get it.
Yes the SNP failed to get a majority in 2019 despite a Tory majority, yet Salmond got a majority in 2011 when there was no Tory majority
Sure, but pro-Indy sentiment is certainly higher than in 2011.
Not that much more, only 49% of Scots voted for the SNP and Greens on the constituency vote last month despite over 60% of Scots voting Remain in 2016
I’m talking about “Yes” polling. Please don’t be a psephological twit.
Only 43% back Yes, compared to 47% for No with 8% undecided in the latest Scottish Comres poll
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Its already caveated by the word collective.
There's a risk to some individuals that they might individually get sick, but there's no collective risk like there was in January or March 2020.
I am not an expert on Covid-19, but I think we are some way from being able to say that the collective risk has been eliminated. I think we can say that the vaccines seem to work but there are still a lot of unknowns.
"we are some way from being able to say that the collective risk has been eliminated"
is your problem here.
As long as thinking is like that we're never getting out.
@ydoethur I think @Dura_Ace is a misanthrope who loves animals but hates people.
I like some people (Greta, Bielsa, AOC, Mrs DA, that XF Motorsports guy on YouTube) I just hate tories, cultural conservatives and rich people with shit cars.
I don't think you do. It's just a bit of a performance.
A LAW student who was investigated by a Scottish university for saying women have vaginas and are not as strong as men has been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Lisa Keogh, 29, was investigated by Abertay University after classmates complained she had made “offensive” and “discriminatory” remarks at a lecture.
Our universities have a real problem with independent thought.
We (and I do mean we, as we all have a responsibility in this) have created the most sensitive generation ever. Pathetic.
Jon Haidts book and Greg Lukianoffs book 'the coddling of the American mind' looked at this issue in 2018, before the woke stuff really took off. It is well worth reading, if nothing else for the accounts of events like the Evergreen university strike in 2016. Their thesis was that the obsession with microagressions etc was setting up a generation for failure, as the 'real world' would intervene as soon as they left college. It was clear at the time to me that they were probably wrong - the success of these ideas and the inability of universities to defeat them would mean that they would simply transport them in to the 'real world' and transform it, as they actually went on to do in 2020.
It is not a happy ending for the woke though, because the parasite is effectively destroying the host. A society lost in this kind of introspection and sensitivity cannot defend itself from external existential threats: russia, china, aliens etc.
Absolutely. God forbid if we had to face another Hitler. The woke (who are increasingly in charge) would say it is Britain's fault!
I really wonder how much the decision to exclude the use of AZN among the younger population is hurting us. We could be mass vaccinating the yuff with our 3-4 million a week supply of AZN, rather than being limited by our supply of Pfizer / Moderna.
No, the higher neutralising efficacy and potentially quicker time to 2nd dose (I know you're a bit unlucky personally with moderna) mean we're better off with mRNA for u-40s.
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Its already caveated by the word collective.
There's a risk to some individuals that they might individually get sick, but there's no collective risk like there was in January or March 2020.
I am not an expert on Covid-19, but I think we are some way from being able to say that the collective risk has been eliminated. I think we can say that the vaccines seem to work but there are still a lot of unknowns.
No we are not any way from it. We are there.
The vaccine rollout is complete in Groups 1 to 9, double-jabbed. There's nothing more to be done there. Yes there may be some antivaxxers but we could wait weeks, months or years they still won't be vaccinated if they're refusing it and don't change their minds.
So if you think that we are collectively at risk then you need to please answer two questions:
Firstly: Who are we collectively at risk from? Which JCVI groups for instance? Secondly: When will we cease to be at risk from them?
If you can't answer those questions, the collective risk is gone as best as it can ever be.
This is fine. But you need to come up with a practical suggestion on how to stop them fucking up the proper functioning of hospitals this winter, so people like my father in law can have his urgent heart surgery, delayed for 15 months now.
My practical suggestion is to treat them in army field tents, like they did in Wuhan, but with minimal medical spend devoted to them. And to tell them this now in good time.
But without getting ahead of this, you are relying on herd immunity stopping their numbers being a problem (almost certainly requiring the vaccination of children). Which might work. But what you gonna do in Nov if it doesn’t?
People like contrarian should stop and consider that their behaviour is highly likely to require all children to take a vaccine for a disease that is not harmful to them, in order to protect the likes of contrarian who are too selfish and/or thick to protect themselves. Because I doubt the government will have the courage to take my route.
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Its already caveated by the word collective.
There's a risk to some individuals that they might individually get sick, but there's no collective risk like there was in January or March 2020.
I am not an expert on Covid-19, but I think we are some way from being able to say that the collective risk has been eliminated. I think we can say that the vaccines seem to work but there are still a lot of unknowns.
No we are not any way from it. We are there.
The vaccine rollout is complete in Groups 1 to 9, double-jabbed. There's nothing more to be done there. Yes there may be some antivaxxers but we could wait weeks, months or years they still won't be vaccinated if they're refusing it and don't change their minds.
So if you think that we are collectively at risk then you need to please answer two questions:
Firstly: Who are we collectively at risk from? Which JCVI groups for instance? Secondly: When will we cease to be at risk from them?
If you can't answer those questions, the collective risk is gone as best as it can ever be.
About 15-20% of ICU admissions were Phase 2 under the JCVI groups The majority were Groups 5-9. Assume they're downshifted by 60% (most in this group still need a short time before getting the plus-two-weeks protection), and Groups 1-4 are effectively nil.
That would mean that any given infection level would give one third to one half of ICU admissions as before, with the skew being heavily younger.
Hopefully these would progress through faster (albeit some with permanent health issues on discharge).
That's where the risk comes from. The risk diminishes with every jab and with every day after second jab, which is where time does come into the equation. We don't know how great the risk will be, and can hope that Delta has already left it too late to race us to a serious issue, but it's not yet certain and that's where it can come from.
Oops - quick follow up. I said I'd come to why I thought delaying Freedom Day might be the right decision for the wrong reason. While I implied what I thought the right reason was, I forgot to mention the wrong one.
I'm far from convinced that Delta is that much more transmissable. it's notable that Bedford's vaccination rates are some way below the national average. We have to question whether the greater transmission of Delta is because of the virus or because of the people who have it. Are they acting differently from other parts of the country, or from those who don't? Are they following rules and guidance to the same extent - and so on? Are their vaccination rates the same, or higher, or lower, than the areas and groups not suffering outbreaks?
The question underlying all this is why, when Delta is also found in other countries, has its outbreak in the UK grown far faster than elsewhere?
Now, there are tricky issues surrounding the asking of these questions, which is why they probably won't be asked and are even less likely to be answered honestly and openly. All the same, I can't help but think that the governments assumptions about transmission are not looking at the whole picture and, hence, flawed.
Still, as it turns out, it might be for the best.
My guess/worry is that the UK seeded a large outbreak because we have lots of flights coming from India.
So basically... other countries are going to get the same/larger surge in cases, just a bit later because they don't have as much travel from India, so it will take longer for the virus to become dominant for them.
And those other countries are going to be hit very hard, because their vaccination rates are lower, and this variant seems to lead to more hospitalization.
But that's not happening. I can well see your explanation being right as to why the UK had so many more Delta cases *to begin with* but it doesn't explain why Delta cases have grown so quickly here but not at anything like the same rate in other countries. As you say, given their lower vaccination rates, they should really have grown even faster if the higher R rate is as claimed.
I think it is rising very fast in other countries, just from a much lower base, so it will take longer to show up in headline figures which are still dominated by other variants.
In the US it is 6% of all cases -> but that will rise very quickly -> then it will become noticeable in the headline case numbers.
Also its possibly not comparing like-for-like. The UK has a test positivity rate of 0.6%, the USA one of 2.6% - many states are really not prioritising testing anymore like is happening here, so its quite possible the delta variant is on the rise there but just not even being detected due to an absence of testing.
Especially if its spreading amongst people who get it relatively asymptomatically.
Mr. kamski, was there a suggestion HM didn't like the baby's name? I thought the disagreement was whether or not Harry had consulted her.
On-topic: I hope we can unlock far more on schedule. The current situation exceeds the best case scenario when the 21 June date was named as decision day. It's more than odd to say "things far exceed our expectations, which is why we're postponing unlocking".
I do think public consent for the lockdown measures will start eroding significantly if that's the situation.
If the queen likes the name then what on earth is the bleeding problem? I didn't consult my parents about my child's name - never occurred to anyone that that was bad manners.
It’s not that they’ve named the child after the Queen - they’ve expropriated part of her identity. And lied about it.
If they had named her “Elizabeth” and let it be known they would call her Lili that would have been lovely
But they didn’t. They chose a very rare (unique?) pet name, Lilibet, that the Duke of Edinburgh used for the Queen. That’s a microaggression.
And then they said they’d discussed it with the Queen. Which they hadn’t. Effectively trying to bounce the Palace.
Genuine question. Have the “teething troubles” with shellfish exports been sorted out?
I think the answer is "it depends" on what and where. For some there's no issue now, for others there are but the list of the latter is getting smaller by attrition and pulling back from exporting to the EU and instead exporting to other parts of the world.
Didn't the water get reclassified to A-rating, as per EU standards, meaning that the restrictions have been lifted for many?
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Its already caveated by the word collective.
There's a risk to some individuals that they might individually get sick, but there's no collective risk like there was in January or March 2020.
I am not an expert on Covid-19, but I think we are some way from being able to say that the collective risk has been eliminated. I think we can say that the vaccines seem to work but there are still a lot of unknowns.
"we are some way from being able to say that the collective risk has been eliminated"
is your problem here.
As long as thinking is like that we're never getting out.
But the issue here is that no one is willing to answer the question of what the continuing collective risk actually is, they say it exists but provide nothing on what they are.
A LAW student who was investigated by a Scottish university for saying women have vaginas and are not as strong as men has been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Lisa Keogh, 29, was investigated by Abertay University after classmates complained she had made “offensive” and “discriminatory” remarks at a lecture.
Our universities have a real problem with independent thought.
We (and I do mean we, as we all have a responsibility in this) have created the most sensitive generation ever. Pathetic.
The notion that this generation of students is the most closed minded and lacking independent thought ever can been seen in the newspapers of the 1980's, 1960's and 1920's.
It is hilarious and sad how predictable it is.
Perhaps all of those newspapers are right.
Perhaps every generation really has become more overly sensitive than the last. If we start with the theory that neanderthals were not hypersensitive and then every generation from then onwards got more closed minded in terms of hearing different opinion?
"I dont think we should kill the mammoths, they are such beautiful creatures" .
Yeah, I'd like an R33 GTR but they are now in the too valuable to track category. I had an R35 for a while but completely overbuilt it (GTR Shop Belgium tuned it and it had 633hp). Great road car with vast mechanical grip but (far) too much midrange torque for most tracks.
I think you are missing the point here. Stick a bazooka in the back, and a decent head unit and let the good times roll.
I really wonder how much the decision to exclude the use of AZN among the younger population is hurting us. We could be mass vaccinating the yuff with our 3-4 million a week supply of AZN, rather than being limited by our supply of Pfizer / Moderna.
No, the higher neutralising efficacy and potentially quicker time to 2nd dose (I know you're a bit unlucky personally with moderna) mean we're better off with mRNA for u-40s.
Moderna people are the luckiest, we'll have all of them delivered by the middle of July so second doses will commence for them very soon. My wife has got her second dose date just 7 week's after her first dose.
The Gov't gives huge space to antivaxxers if it delays June 21st. The "what was the point of vaccination" memes get legs.
To paraphrase what the message should be: “We have now offered a booking slot for the first dose to all the over 18s and a second dose to everyone considered vulnerable. We are opening up on schedule and on full on June 21st. The people now at risk are those that have declined the vaccine. On behalf of the nation I want to send you a clear message. As far as we are considered you can go fuck yourself”.
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Its already caveated by the word collective.
There's a risk to some individuals that they might individually get sick, but there's no collective risk like there was in January or March 2020.
I am not an expert on Covid-19, but I think we are some way from being able to say that the collective risk has been eliminated. I think we can say that the vaccines seem to work but there are still a lot of unknowns.
No we are not any way from it. We are there.
The vaccine rollout is complete in Groups 1 to 9, double-jabbed. There's nothing more to be done there. Yes there may be some antivaxxers but we could wait weeks, months or years they still won't be vaccinated if they're refusing it and don't change their minds.
So if you think that we are collectively at risk then you need to please answer two questions:
Firstly: Who are we collectively at risk from? Which JCVI groups for instance? Secondly: When will we cease to be at risk from them?
If you can't answer those questions, the collective risk is gone as best as it can ever be.
It seems to me that it is early to arrive at conclusions about the extent to which vaccination limits the risk of hospitalisation in the delta variant cases, which is of concern given the known increase in cases. Obviously there is also a collective risk from new variants, which we might not yet have identified or know about, and the existing vaccines may not be effective against, so there is an argument to keep testing, maintain social distancing, reduce transmission etc which may not be completely compatabile with completely lifting all restrictions.
This is not to say that I disagree with your position (that the restrictions should be removed) but I think there is still a degree of risk and political judgement needed in doing so.
I think it is rising very fast in other countries, just from a much lower base, so it will take longer to show up in headline figures which are still dominated by other variants.
In the US it is 6% of all cases -> but that will rise very quickly -> then it will become noticeable in the headline case numbers.
Given that the Kent variant took over in most places I see no reason why the Indian variant won't do the same. Countries that have low vaccination rates need to be on their guard.
A LAW student who was investigated by a Scottish university for saying women have vaginas and are not as strong as men has been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Lisa Keogh, 29, was investigated by Abertay University after classmates complained she had made “offensive” and “discriminatory” remarks at a lecture.
Our universities have a real problem with independent thought.
We (and I do mean we, as we all have a responsibility in this) have created the most sensitive generation ever. Pathetic.
The notion that this generation of students is the most closed minded and lacking independent thought ever can been seen in the newspapers of the 1980's, 1960's and 1920's.
It is hilarious and sad how predictable it is.
I listened to Jonathan Haidt being interviewed yesterday who did make the point that most students are open minded and wish to hear other points of view. As always, it's the empty vessels that make the most noise.
LONDON — EU officials and diplomats are discussing an emergency plan to solve the impasse over the Brexit settlement in Northern Ireland by restricting Ireland’s access to the bloc’s single market for goods.
The idea, which is causing extreme anxiety in Dublin where officials see it as unfair punishment for its neighbor’s decision to Brexit, is meant as a backup plan to solve the conundrum of where to carry out vital checks on goods. These are designed to protect EU countries from food and plant diseases.
That issue was meant to have been solved by the Northern Ireland protocol, a key part of the Brexit deal, but London is resisting implementing this part of the agreement which it claims is unworkable.
Why would a border between Ireland and the EU be any more “workable” than the border in the Irish Sea?
Or is the theory that having two borders (one EU/Ireland, one in the Irish Sea) makes it easier to justify not enforcing serious controls for either?
Either are workable it’s just the UK understands the sensitivity better than the EU (ex RoI) so is unwilling to inflame tensions in NI
Lol. You’ve started on the crackpipe early, Charles.
Err…
I believe the RoI and the UK have a better understanding of the situation in NI than the European Commission
I believe that a sea border between the UK and NI is workable in theory but at the cost of inflaming tensions in NI
I believe that a sea border between the RoI and the rest of the EU is workable in theory but would be very unpopular in RoI (although that’s just an assumption as I haven’t seen polling data)
You can disagree with any of those contentions but none of them are intrinsically daft (“started on the crackpipe early”)
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Again, please tell me exactly which group of people will overwhelm the NHS? It's not going to be groups 1-9 they're all fully vaccinated by Friday. It's it going to be partially vaccinated 40+ as they have got a 60% reduction in risk from first doses and they don't exactly end up on hospital in the first place. It's not going to be under 40s, we're all being vaccinated with Moderna and Pfizer which is fast acting and has a 70% reduction in hospitalisations and even without that the risk of hospitalisation is tiny.
The collective risk has always been young people getting it and passing it on to their parents and grandparents. Well Nana and grandad are double jabbed, mum and dad are double jabbed. Who exactly are young people going to pass it onto?
You'd be right if the vaccine was 100% effective, but it isn't, is it? My understanding is that a very small proportion of the double-jabbed can still get infected. Logically, the higher the proportion of (young) people infected, the more risk there is to the small minority who are double jabbed but for whom the vaccine is still not effective. I'm not sure your absolute certainty on these matters is justified, but I may have missed something.
Has 'freedom day' been put back two weeks? My news sources are still describing it as in the balance. Have I missed something?
The government are definitely preparing the ground for some kind of delay. I expect it will be a week or two weeks. Essentially 10 days after the end of the programme for groups 1-9 which will be finished in 4-8 days depending on your definition (actually groups 1-9 or 32m people double jabbed). My worry is that the same people banging the delay drum will move the goalposts again when we approach the date and it will be getting all 18+ single jabbed which won't happen until mid July. Then it's complete the programme which will take another 3-4 weeks at least. Then there'll be an interminable argument about vaccines for kids and we'll wait for that, then schools are opening so we have to wait and see whether it's safe to remove the final measures. Then it's October and we need to complete the booster programme for over 50s. Then it's the "24 hours to save the NHS" rubbish we get every year.
There's always going to be a reason to delay. We need to pull the plaster off and deal with the consequences. Would it be better if everyone was double jabbed? Of course. Is our current national vaccine profile going to lead to the NHS being overwhelmed? No. Then it's time to get on with it and call an end to COVID.
Which is why I would go for a partial release - the WFH guidance is the key one
A LAW student who was investigated by a Scottish university for saying women have vaginas and are not as strong as men has been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Lisa Keogh, 29, was investigated by Abertay University after classmates complained she had made “offensive” and “discriminatory” remarks at a lecture.
Our universities have a real problem with independent thought.
We (and I do mean we, as we all have a responsibility in this) have created the most sensitive generation ever. Pathetic.
Jon Haidts book and Greg Lukianoffs book 'the coddling of the American mind' looked at this issue in 2018, before the woke stuff really took off. It is well worth reading, if nothing else for the accounts of events like the Evergreen university strike in 2016. Their thesis was that the obsession with microagressions etc was setting up a generation for failure, as the 'real world' would intervene as soon as they left college. It was clear at the time to me that they were probably wrong - the success of these ideas and the inability of universities to defeat them would mean that they would simply transport them in to the 'real world' and transform it, as they actually went on to do in 2020.
It is not a happy ending for the woke though, because the parasite is effectively destroying the host. A society lost in this kind of introspection and sensitivity cannot defend itself from external existential threats: russia, china, aliens etc.
People like you have been saying this for decades, if not centuries.
If you were around in America the 1960s you would have said the same thing about the "woke" of the day: the anti-Vietnam War protestors, the "counterculture" or hippy protestors, the civil rights marches and so on and so forth. 1960s you would have been against all of that subversive peace and protest loving crap as you would have seen it then.
America is a free society so it has introspection. That's not a weakness its a strength. America ended the decade associated with Vietnam protests etc with both Woodstock and Apollo 11 moon landing - both within a month of each other.
The USSR suppressed any protests and counterculture at that time, unlike the USA.
Decades later the US won the Cold War and the USSR collapsed in failure.
Introspection and counterculture makes us stronger, not weaker.
Mr. kamski, was there a suggestion HM didn't like the baby's name? I thought the disagreement was whether or not Harry had consulted her.
On-topic: I hope we can unlock far more on schedule. The current situation exceeds the best case scenario when the 21 June date was named as decision day. It's more than odd to say "things far exceed our expectations, which is why we're postponing unlocking".
I do think public consent for the lockdown measures will start eroding significantly if that's the situation.
If the queen likes the name then what on earth is the bleeding problem? I didn't consult my parents about my child's name - never occurred to anyone that that was bad manners.
It’s not that they’ve named the child after the Queen - they’ve expropriated part of her identity. And lied about it.
If they had named her “Elizabeth” and let it be known they would call her Lili that would have been lovely
But they didn’t. They chose a very rare (unique?) pet name, Lilibet, that the Duke of Edinburgh used for the Queen. That’s a microaggression.
And then they said they’d discussed it with the Queen. Which they hadn’t. Effectively trying to bounce the Palace.
I think I get it! He must be your buddy from school so you are on Prince William's side.
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Again, please tell me exactly which group of people will overwhelm the NHS? It's not going to be groups 1-9 they're all fully vaccinated by Friday. It's it going to be partially vaccinated 40+ as they have got a 60% reduction in risk from first doses and they don't exactly end up on hospital in the first place. It's not going to be under 40s, we're all being vaccinated with Moderna and Pfizer which is fast acting and has a 70% reduction in hospitalisations and even without that the risk of hospitalisation is tiny.
The collective risk has always been young people getting it and passing it on to their parents and grandparents. Well Nana and grandad are double jabbed, mum and dad are double jabbed. Who exactly are young people going to pass it onto?
You'd be right if the vaccine was 100% effective, but it isn't, is it? My understanding is that a very small proportion of the double-jabbed can still get infected. Logically, the higher the proportion of (young) people infected, the more risk there is to the small minority who are double jabbed but for whom the vaccine is still not effective. I'm not sure your absolute certainty on these matters is justified, but I may have missed something.
I thought it was that effective at preventing serious disease/death?
A LAW student who was investigated by a Scottish university for saying women have vaginas and are not as strong as men has been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Lisa Keogh, 29, was investigated by Abertay University after classmates complained she had made “offensive” and “discriminatory” remarks at a lecture.
Our universities have a real problem with independent thought.
We (and I do mean we, as we all have a responsibility in this) have created the most sensitive generation ever. Pathetic.
The notion that this generation of students is the most closed minded and lacking independent thought ever can been seen in the newspapers of the 1980's, 1960's and 1920's.
I really wonder how much the decision to exclude the use of AZN among the younger population is hurting us. We could be mass vaccinating the yuff with our 3-4 million a week supply of AZN, rather than being limited by our supply of Pfizer / Moderna.
UK AZ production in May was 4 million toto. Where was the rest from?
Paul Mainwood (who has largely been right up to now) had estimated about 2.6 million a week of AZ doses made in the UK, 1.1 million imported mRNA doses per week, fairly steadily since mid-April. Hence the UK averaging somewhat more 500k jabs a day, but not massively accelerating.
Mr. kamski, was there a suggestion HM didn't like the baby's name? I thought the disagreement was whether or not Harry had consulted her.
On-topic: I hope we can unlock far more on schedule. The current situation exceeds the best case scenario when the 21 June date was named as decision day. It's more than odd to say "things far exceed our expectations, which is why we're postponing unlocking".
I do think public consent for the lockdown measures will start eroding significantly if that's the situation.
If the queen likes the name then what on earth is the bleeding problem? I didn't consult my parents about my child's name - never occurred to anyone that that was bad manners.
It’s not that they’ve named the child after the Queen - they’ve expropriated part of her identity. And lied about it.
If they had named her “Elizabeth” and let it be known they would call her Lili that would have been lovely
But they didn’t. They chose a very rare (unique?) pet name, Lilibet, that the Duke of Edinburgh used for the Queen. That’s a microaggression.
And then they said they’d discussed it with the Queen. Which they hadn’t. Effectively trying to bounce the Palace.
My dad was a shit parent to me because you were a shit parent to him. Still, we’ve named our baby after you. Just so no one forgets she’s of royal stock even though you won’t give her a title.
A LAW student who was investigated by a Scottish university for saying women have vaginas and are not as strong as men has been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Lisa Keogh, 29, was investigated by Abertay University after classmates complained she had made “offensive” and “discriminatory” remarks at a lecture.
Our universities have a real problem with independent thought.
We (and I do mean we, as we all have a responsibility in this) have created the most sensitive generation ever. Pathetic.
The notion that this generation of students is the most closed minded and lacking independent thought ever can been seen in the newspapers of the 1980's, 1960's and 1920's.
It is hilarious and sad how predictable it is.
Perhaps all of those newspapers are right.
Perhaps every generation really has become more overly sensitive than the last. If we start with the theory that neanderthals were not hypersensitive and then every generation from then onwards got more closed minded in terms of hearing different opinion?
"I dont think we should kill the mammoths, they are such beautiful creatures" .
Simultaneously it is the most morally corrupted generation ever what with all the moral panics that have happened over the last century and a half:
We've reached the why do Jocks hate the English stage of an international tournament. Thankfully this time the violent end of England fandom is too busy hating on their own team to issue fatwas on anyone being less than enthusiastic about 'ar boys'.
"oversite"
Could be doing it deliberately to discredit Scottish education? Or Occam's razor says just stoopid.
Never mind all that. What about the complete absence of road markings? Is this a Scottish masterplan to make road-users look where they are going, or did the council just run out of money?
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Its already caveated by the word collective.
There's a risk to some individuals that they might individually get sick, but there's no collective risk like there was in January or March 2020.
I am not an expert on Covid-19, but I think we are some way from being able to say that the collective risk has been eliminated. I think we can say that the vaccines seem to work but there are still a lot of unknowns.
"we are some way from being able to say that the collective risk has been eliminated"
is your problem here.
As long as thinking is like that we're never getting out.
But the issue here is that no one is willing to answer the question of what the continuing collective risk actually is, they say it exists but provide nothing on what they are.
Absolutely. The elephant is that the vaccine has broken the link between cases and serious illness/hospitalisations.
But everyone wants "just a few more weeks" before they dare say it. But they are always likely to want that. If anyone thinks that by end-July there won't be some "just in case" they are deluded.
But it has. And if it hasn't, then it matters not we are going to have to manage a larger number of deaths from Covid than hitherto. Balance it out with those who no longer die of smoking or by flying through the windscreen sans seatbelt.
Either we break out now or we're stuck for the foreseeable future or until we have PM Baker.
LONDON — EU officials and diplomats are discussing an emergency plan to solve the impasse over the Brexit settlement in Northern Ireland by restricting Ireland’s access to the bloc’s single market for goods.
The idea, which is causing extreme anxiety in Dublin where officials see it as unfair punishment for its neighbor’s decision to Brexit, is meant as a backup plan to solve the conundrum of where to carry out vital checks on goods. These are designed to protect EU countries from food and plant diseases.
That issue was meant to have been solved by the Northern Ireland protocol, a key part of the Brexit deal, but London is resisting implementing this part of the agreement which it claims is unworkable.
Why would a border between Ireland and the EU be any more “workable” than the border in the Irish Sea?
Or is the theory that having two borders (one EU/Ireland, one in the Irish Sea) makes it easier to justify not enforcing serious controls for either?
Either are workable it’s just the UK understands the sensitivity better than the EU (ex RoI) so is unwilling to inflame tensions in NI
Lol. You’ve started on the crackpipe early, Charles.
Err…
I believe the RoI and the UK have a better understanding of the situation in NI than the European Commission
I believe that a sea border between the UK and NI is workable in theory but at the cost of inflaming tensions in NI
I believe that a sea border between the RoI and the rest of the EU is workable in theory but would be very unpopular in RoI (although that’s just an assumption as I haven’t seen polling data)
You can disagree with any of those contentions but none of them are intrinsically daft (“started on the crackpipe early”)
Perhaps create a sea border between NI and the South? This would create alot of beach front property, and generally improve the economy in the area.
Has 'freedom day' been put back two weeks? My news sources are still describing it as in the balance. Have I missed something?
The government are definitely preparing the ground for some kind of delay. I expect it will be a week or two weeks. Essentially 10 days after the end of the programme for groups 1-9 which will be finished in 4-8 days depending on your definition (actually groups 1-9 or 32m people double jabbed). My worry is that the same people banging the delay drum will move the goalposts again when we approach the date and it will be getting all 18+ single jabbed which won't happen until mid July. Then it's complete the programme which will take another 3-4 weeks at least. Then there'll be an interminable argument about vaccines for kids and we'll wait for that, then schools are opening so we have to wait and see whether it's safe to remove the final measures. Then it's October and we need to complete the booster programme for over 50s. Then it's the "24 hours to save the NHS" rubbish we get every year.
There's always going to be a reason to delay. We need to pull the plaster off and deal with the consequences. Would it be better if everyone was double jabbed? Of course. Is our current national vaccine profile going to lead to the NHS being overwhelmed? No. Then it's time to get on with it and call an end to COVID.
Which is why I would go for a partial release - the WFH guidance is the key one
Replace legislation with guidance, and leave it up to people and organisations to manage their own risk now the vulnerable groups are all vaccinated. Yes, I’d emphasise the WFH guidance, especially in London. TfL will probably keep mask-wearing too.
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Its already caveated by the word collective.
There's a risk to some individuals that they might individually get sick, but there's no collective risk like there was in January or March 2020.
I am not an expert on Covid-19, but I think we are some way from being able to say that the collective risk has been eliminated. I think we can say that the vaccines seem to work but there are still a lot of unknowns.
No we are not any way from it. We are there.
The vaccine rollout is complete in Groups 1 to 9, double-jabbed. There's nothing more to be done there. Yes there may be some antivaxxers but we could wait weeks, months or years they still won't be vaccinated if they're refusing it and don't change their minds.
So if you think that we are collectively at risk then you need to please answer two questions:
Firstly: Who are we collectively at risk from? Which JCVI groups for instance? Secondly: When will we cease to be at risk from them?
If you can't answer those questions, the collective risk is gone as best as it can ever be.
It seems to me that it is early to arrive at conclusions about the extent to which vaccination limits the risk of hospitalisation in the delta variant cases, which is of concern given the known increase in cases. Obviously there is also a collective risk from new variants, which we might not yet have identified or know about, and the existing vaccines may not be effective against, so there is an argument to keep testing, maintain social distancing, reduce transmission etc which may not be completely compatabile with completely lifting all restrictions.
This is not to say that I disagree with your position (that the restrictions should be removed) but I think there is still a degree of risk and political judgement needed in doing so.
Future and unknown variants is a ridiculous reason to keep any measures. If that's what you're basing it on then we'll literally never be out of this. There's always going to be some unknown variant in the future.
PHE have released a preliminary report on the delta variant already, a single dose of either vaccine reduces hospitalisations by 60% after three weeks and two doses reduces it by at least 95%, probably much higher once cumulative factors are taken into account. This is based in actual real world data too, not modelled from binding efficiency dilution.
The vaccines work, they do exactly what we need them to do - they stop people going to hospital to enough of a degree that the NHS won't be overwhelmed. Groups 1-9 are all going to be fully vaccinated by Friday and by the 26th of June all of them will have reached maximum efficacy, even the last few stragglers who get it on Thursday and Friday.
The political risk is vaccine refusing black and Asian people going to hospital after freedom day. Honestly, I don't give a fuck about anyone who has turned down the chance to be vaccinated. They've decided that the risk from vaccines are higher than the risk from COVID. That's their stupid decision and the nation can't wait for them to be cured of stupidity.
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Its already caveated by the word collective.
There's a risk to some individuals that they might individually get sick, but there's no collective risk like there was in January or March 2020.
I am not an expert on Covid-19, but I think we are some way from being able to say that the collective risk has been eliminated. I think we can say that the vaccines seem to work but there are still a lot of unknowns.
"we are some way from being able to say that the collective risk has been eliminated"
is your problem here.
As long as thinking is like that we're never getting out.
But the issue here is that no one is willing to answer the question of what the continuing collective risk actually is, they say it exists but provide nothing on what they are.
Absolutely. The elephant is that the vaccine has broken the link between cases and serious illness/hospitalisations.
But everyone wants "just a few more weeks" before they dare say it. But they are always likely to want that. If anyone thinks that by end-July there won't be some "just in case" they are deluded.
But it has. And if it hasn't, then it matters not we are going to have to manage a larger number of deaths from Covid than hitherto. Balance it out with those who no longer die of smoking or by flying through the windscreen sans seatbelt.
Either we break out now or we're stuck for the foreseeable future or until we have PM Baker.
To be fair by end July everyone will have been vaccinated, which isn't the case today. So that is something that would change between now and then.
Not a reason to delay, I'm 100% against delays, but if there were a delay announced to finish the vaccine rollout then that's not the same thing as delaying indefinitely.
The Gov't gives huge space to antivaxxers if it delays June 21st. The "what was the point of vaccination" memes get legs.
I dont think it will matter if its a short delay. By around 3 weeks or so.
I could cope with up to 3 weeks. You can have a life now. But I have a group holiday with friends in Northumberland from 12 July and it would be a real pain if we still have to book pubs in advance etc
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Again, please tell me exactly which group of people will overwhelm the NHS? It's not going to be groups 1-9 they're all fully vaccinated by Friday. It's it going to be partially vaccinated 40+ as they have got a 60% reduction in risk from first doses and they don't exactly end up on hospital in the first place. It's not going to be under 40s, we're all being vaccinated with Moderna and Pfizer which is fast acting and has a 70% reduction in hospitalisations and even without that the risk of hospitalisation is tiny.
The collective risk has always been young people getting it and passing it on to their parents and grandparents. Well Nana and grandad are double jabbed, mum and dad are double jabbed. Who exactly are young people going to pass it onto?
You'd be right if the vaccine was 100% effective, but it isn't, is it? My understanding is that a very small proportion of the double-jabbed can still get infected. Logically, the higher the proportion of (young) people infected, the more risk there is to the small minority who are double jabbed but for whom the vaccine is still not effective. I'm not sure your absolute certainty on these matters is justified, but I may have missed something.
A very small proportion of three-day event riders and jump jockeys are killed or need hospitalisation. And, counting some of them as my friends, in the national scheme of things and wrt the NHS...so what?
You are falling into the trap of not wanting anyone to get or be ill from Covid.
Take a step back. Is the NHS in danger? Not now. Will it be if a "very small proportion" (admittedly of a very large number) is hospitalised? Maybe. But not sufficient to keep society in chains.
In the last week, confronted by these and other inconsistencies, Andersen began to quietly delete his old tweets. 4000 of them. He has now deleted his entire Twitter account
In this subject, one of my mates from uni who works for a very major pharma confirmed my theory - if China had been honest in September about the nature of th lab leak of the virus we would have had vaccines fully trialled by the end of May because PIII would have been on going in the first wave from Feb to April.
He's actually extremely angry about it and has scheduled an internal meeting to present some of his findings and what they, as a major pharma, could do to spot these things earlier to prevent this from happening next time.
China seeding the virus across the world, via its open airports, even as it closed internally, was practically a war crime. They did this in 2020, by which time they knew the nature of the bug all-too-well. And this is true wherever the virus came from
BTW the Nature article can be safely ignored. It is low-energy piffle from a woman, Amy Maxman, who has been hysterically rubbishing the lab leak hypothesis for a year, alongside Andersen, Daszak, etc. The corruption is so overt they barely bother to hide it
I reckon this would have been beyond much doubt a year ago, were it not for Trump mentioning it and so many people in high places being determined to disagree with him.
I want to see some backpeddaling from some Democrats who rubbished the lab leak theory, but I won't hold my breath.
The UK’s vaccination programme has broken the link between infections, hospital admissions and deaths, and hospitals were reporting fewer and younger patients, according to a senior boss in the NHS.
To me, that's absolutely categoric evidence for opening on 21 June. Hopson has been among the most conservative figures in this pandemic. He is at the frontline. And he thinks it's all over.
Yup, the people asking for extensions are just institutionalised by lockdown. They fear the freedom and change that comes with it. They're so used to this awful new normal that the can't see why the old way was better and are scared of that unknown quantity. I have no issue with that, those people are free to stay home and wear masks all the time. They shouldn't impose that on the rest of us who are happy to take that risk of going out and being free. Freedom necessarily has personal risks. The collective risk from COVID has been eliminated by vaccination.
I have long admired your certainty about various topical issues, but you may want to reconsider or at least caveat the final sentence.
Its already caveated by the word collective.
There's a risk to some individuals that they might individually get sick, but there's no collective risk like there was in January or March 2020.
I am not an expert on Covid-19, but I think we are some way from being able to say that the collective risk has been eliminated. I think we can say that the vaccines seem to work but there are still a lot of unknowns.
"we are some way from being able to say that the collective risk has been eliminated"
is your problem here.
As long as thinking is like that we're never getting out.
But the issue here is that no one is willing to answer the question of what the continuing collective risk actually is, they say it exists but provide nothing on what they are.
Absolutely. The elephant is that the vaccine has broken the link between cases and serious illness/hospitalisations.
But everyone wants "just a few more weeks" before they dare say it. But they are always likely to want that. If anyone thinks that by end-July there won't be some "just in case" they are deluded.
But it has. And if it hasn't, then it matters not we are going to have to manage a larger number of deaths from Covid than hitherto. Balance it out with those who no longer die of smoking or by flying through the windscreen sans seatbelt.
Either we break out now or we're stuck for the foreseeable future or until we have PM Baker.
It's a lamentable state of affairs when Steve Baker is the potential saviour of this nation.
LONDON — EU officials and diplomats are discussing an emergency plan to solve the impasse over the Brexit settlement in Northern Ireland by restricting Ireland’s access to the bloc’s single market for goods.
The idea, which is causing extreme anxiety in Dublin where officials see it as unfair punishment for its neighbor’s decision to Brexit, is meant as a backup plan to solve the conundrum of where to carry out vital checks on goods. These are designed to protect EU countries from food and plant diseases.
That issue was meant to have been solved by the Northern Ireland protocol, a key part of the Brexit deal, but London is resisting implementing this part of the agreement which it claims is unworkable.
Why would a border between Ireland and the EU be any more “workable” than the border in the Irish Sea?
Or is the theory that having two borders (one EU/Ireland, one in the Irish Sea) makes it easier to justify not enforcing serious controls for either?
Either are workable it’s just the UK understands the sensitivity better than the EU (ex RoI) so is unwilling to inflame tensions in NI
Lol. You’ve started on the crackpipe early, Charles.
Err…
I believe the RoI and the UK have a better understanding of the situation in NI than the European Commission
I believe that a sea border between the UK and NI is workable in theory but at the cost of inflaming tensions in NI
I believe that a sea border between the RoI and the rest of the EU is workable in theory but would be very unpopular in RoI (although that’s just an assumption as I haven’t seen polling data)
You can disagree with any of those contentions but none of them are intrinsically daft (“started on the crackpipe early”)
Perhaps create a sea border between NI and the South? This would create alot of beach front property, and generally improve the economy in the area.
Has Dubai been advising them? That’s what they’ve done here in the sandpit.
Comments
Wear a mask, shut the borders. Sometimes the obvious answers are the true ones"
Around a year ago the panic first began to set in as it dawned on us that this was going to be the Big One. I remember seeing the footage in Lombardy and suddenly realising that the strange illness in far-away China was going to hit us in England, too.
The shock felt all the more real because it was so sudden. Just two weeks earlier, the Mayor of Florence had been organising a “hug a Chinese” day to combat the real danger – prejudice – while the New York health commissioner was urging people to head to Chinatown to show their solidarity.
At the same time, Taiwan was stopping all flights from mainland China....
https://edwest.substack.com/p/how-we-fell-for-anti-intuition
Quite possibly if this was a leak in September and they had been honest about it then it would have been more easily contained and would never have become a global pandemic in the first place.
But the way has anyone bothering looking at the “flu” data from winter 2019 in Asia, notably Japan, Taiwan and Singapore, since they keep good numbers. Singapore mortality stays were horrible for 2019 and so I gather we’re Japan’s. Has anyone really delved into the possibilities of why that was?
There's a risk to some individuals that they might individually get sick, but there's no collective risk like there was in January or March 2020.
They've looked at it repeatedly and no existing study has shown useful benefits. There's a large-scale multicentre study ongoing as per this summary: https://www.keele.ac.uk/pharmacy-bioengineering/aboutus/news/2021/april/ivermectin-covid-treatment/not-recommended.php
The most recent metastudies showed no significant benefit https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.21.21257595v2.full-text
But research is ongoing.
There is not a worldwide conspiracy to suppress an effective treatment.
Please don’t be a psephological twit.
BTW the Nature article can be safely ignored. It is low-energy piffle from a woman, Amy Maxman, who has been hysterically rubbishing the lab leak hypothesis for a year, alongside Andersen, Daszak, etc. The corruption is so overt they barely bother to hide it
The collective risk has always been young people getting it and passing it on to their parents and grandparents. Well Nana and grandad are double jabbed, mum and dad are double jabbed. Who exactly are young people going to pass it onto?
The minority at significant risk of dying horribly of Covid were nearly all jabbed some time ago, but a large number of people multiplied by a low risk is still a non-trivial number. And telling them "you're not going to hospital" when their lack of immunity is probably not their fault just isn't on.
And besides- most of the remaining restrictions are on indoor mixing. It's June. It's a lovely day outside. As my grandmother used to say.
And I have confidence that Rob Page can do it for him!
My guess was that Trump was briefed about the possibility of this from the intelligence agencies, and couldn't help but blurt it out.
For the EU’s part, its belief that checks at ports in Larne and Belfast should be treated as if they were taking place at the border in Calais was at best naive. The view that “the rules are the rules for all third countries and they have to be implemented in the same way” does not transfer well to a post-conflict society like Northern Ireland, where one of the two key communities sees any economic restrictions with the rest of the UK not just as a trade barrier, but an assault on their sense of identity and belonging.
It is possible to hold two facts simultaneously: that the protocol is the only viable solution on the table, and that implementing it is practically, legally and politically difficult, requiring flexibility from both sides.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/how-to-make-the-northern-ireland-protocol-work
We (and I do mean we, as we all have a responsibility in this) have created the most sensitive generation ever. Pathetic.
It places China squarely as a rogue state, but they are a too big and systemic in the global financial system for us to shut them out.
This by the way is independent of whether or not this is a lab leak.
That second point is crucial in terms of the impact on healthcare. Most (though not all) cases among under-30s will pass relatively mildly, though there does seem to be evidence of higher rates of Long Covid among young adults, but cases in older age groups will produce higher rates of hospitalisations and deaths - and if we're talking about millions of cases in young adults, and we would be, that implies many thousands of hospitalisations overall, based on current vaccine coverage, efficacy and hospitalisation rates from previous waves.
So basically... other countries are going to get the same/larger surge in cases, just a bit later because they don't have as much travel from India, so it will take longer for the virus to become dominant for them.
And those other countries are going to be hit very hard, because their vaccination rates are lower, and this variant seems to lead to more hospitalization.
Boris needs to put his nuts on the line and tell these couple of million voters that the British state will be doing the bare minimum for them now.
Just wondering...
2021: Please let us sell our sausages.
https://twitter.com/JonJonesSnr/status/1402339369936166914
Andrew hasn't been charged with anything. The only time anyone tried to include his name in court proceedings several years ago the US judge threw it out. Apparently, the US authorities would like to ask him questions. There are well-established procedures for questioning people as potential witnesses and they do not involve extradition.
Anyone asked to answer questions by any US authority - be he as pure as the driven snow - would be foolish in the extreme to do so without getting legal advice. The US authorities will ignore all MoUs, foreign laws, their own laws and anything else if they think they can get away with it. They are not beyond grandstanding in public to get publicity for individual officials. I simply would not trust them and would always advise a client to do only that which is legally required and only with the benefit of legal advice and with written agreement on the ground rules. In fact, I have done so on numerous occasions.
I have no idea what Andrew has or has not done. Based on his interviews, he appears to be a bloody fool. But I strongly dislike people being deemed to be guilty of serious crimes simply on the basis of whether people like them or not or other irrational prejudices.
The answer hopefully is that we have hit herd immunity. That’s what Boris will gamble on when he opens up.
It is hilarious and sad how predictable it is.
The worry must have been that a couple of photogenic young ladies with their pictures on the front pages, with the 60pt headline “killed by the vaccine”, would have caused a panic.
If we had a more responsible media, there likely wouldn’t have been a problem.
Unless someone has better figures.
https://globalcommissionforpostpandemicpolicy.org/covid-19-vaccine-production-to-may-31-2021/
In the US it is 6% of all cases -> but that will rise very quickly -> then it will become noticeable in the headline case numbers.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/06/08/1004597294/the-highly-contagious-delta-variant-of-covid-is-on-the-rise-in-the-u-s
It is not a happy ending for the woke though, because the parasite is effectively destroying the host. A society lost in this kind of introspection and sensitivity cannot defend itself from external existential threats: russia, china, aliens etc.
The vaccine rollout is complete in Groups 1 to 9, double-jabbed. There's nothing more to be done there. Yes there may be some antivaxxers but we could wait weeks, months or years they still won't be vaccinated if they're refusing it and don't change their minds.
So if you think that we are collectively at risk then you need to please answer two questions:
Firstly: Who are we collectively at risk from? Which JCVI groups for instance?
Secondly: When will we cease to be at risk from them?
If you can't answer those questions, the collective risk is gone as best as it can ever be.
Avoid a super spreader events and you don't see any explosive growth, hit a couple and then it's chain reaction time.
So having a large seed population has a massively disproportionate effect on later growth as far more early super spreader chances.
😆 🤣 😂
https://twitter.com/nickgutteridge/status/1402567298712485888?s=20
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scots-split-on-snp-mandate-for-referendum-with-independence-top-priority-for-just-one-in-11-3238015
is your problem here.
As long as thinking is like that we're never getting out.
My practical suggestion is to treat them in army field tents, like they did in Wuhan, but with minimal medical spend devoted to them. And to tell them this now in good time.
But without getting ahead of this, you are relying on herd immunity stopping their numbers being a problem (almost certainly requiring the vaccination of children). Which might work. But what you gonna do in Nov if it doesn’t?
People like contrarian should stop and consider that their behaviour is highly likely to require all children to take a vaccine for a disease that is not harmful to them, in order to protect the likes of contrarian who are too selfish and/or thick to protect themselves. Because I doubt the government will have the courage to take my route.
The majority were Groups 5-9. Assume they're downshifted by 60% (most in this group still need a short time before getting the plus-two-weeks protection), and Groups 1-4 are effectively nil.
That would mean that any given infection level would give one third to one half of ICU admissions as before, with the skew being heavily younger.
Hopefully these would progress through faster (albeit some with permanent health issues on discharge).
That's where the risk comes from. The risk diminishes with every jab and with every day after second jab, which is where time does come into the equation. We don't know how great the risk will be, and can hope that Delta has already left it too late to race us to a serious issue, but it's not yet certain and that's where it can come from.
Especially if its spreading amongst people who get it relatively asymptomatically.
If they had named her “Elizabeth” and let it be known they would call her Lili that would have been lovely
But they didn’t. They chose a very rare (unique?) pet name, Lilibet, that the Duke of Edinburgh used for the Queen. That’s a microaggression.
And then they said they’d discussed it with the Queen. Which they hadn’t. Effectively trying to bounce the Palace.
11% or so?
Perhaps every generation really has become more overly sensitive than the last.
If we start with the theory that neanderthals were not hypersensitive and then every generation from then onwards got more closed minded in terms of hearing different opinion?
"I dont think we should kill the mammoths, they are such beautiful creatures" .
Anything else about cars is, frankly, moot.
“We have now offered a booking slot for the first dose to all the over 18s and a second dose to everyone considered vulnerable. We are opening up on schedule and on full on June 21st. The people now at risk are those that have declined the vaccine. On behalf of the nation I want to send you a clear message. As far as we are considered you can go fuck yourself”.
This is not to say that I disagree with your position (that the restrictions should be removed) but I think there is still a degree of risk and political judgement needed in doing so.
I believe the RoI and the UK have a better understanding of the situation in NI than the European Commission
I believe that a sea border between the UK and NI is workable in theory but at the cost of inflaming tensions in NI
I believe that a sea border between the RoI and the rest of the EU is workable in theory but would be very unpopular in RoI (although that’s just an assumption as I haven’t seen polling data)
You can disagree with any of those contentions but none of them are intrinsically daft (“started on the crackpipe early”)
It's Jamie Murray's question. "Where is the vaccine dividend?"
If you were around in America the 1960s you would have said the same thing about the "woke" of the day: the anti-Vietnam War protestors, the "counterculture" or hippy protestors, the civil rights marches and so on and so forth. 1960s you would have been against all of that subversive peace and protest loving crap as you would have seen it then.
America is a free society so it has introspection. That's not a weakness its a strength. America ended the decade associated with Vietnam protests etc with both Woodstock and Apollo 11 moon landing - both within a month of each other.
The USSR suppressed any protests and counterculture at that time, unlike the USA.
Decades later the US won the Cold War and the USSR collapsed in failure.
Introspection and counterculture makes us stronger, not weaker.
Why else the passion? Makes no sense otherwise.
Good for you for the loyalty.
https://twitter.com/PaulMainwood/status/1402382017178836997?s=19
Anyone know if another supply is about to come on-stream?
What is wrong with that approach? Why does everything have to be a law?
(The WFH guidance isn't a law, and has worked well).
https://twitter.com/PessimistsArc/status/1399344480923365377
A great twitter account for seeing the same shit appearing again and again in slightly different guises since the 1850s
But everyone wants "just a few more weeks" before they dare say it. But they are always likely to want that. If anyone thinks that by end-July there won't be some "just in case" they are deluded.
But it has. And if it hasn't, then it matters not we are going to have to manage a larger number of deaths from Covid than hitherto. Balance it out with those who no longer die of smoking or by flying through the windscreen sans seatbelt.
Either we break out now or we're stuck for the foreseeable future or until we have PM Baker.
Kay Burley back just in time to come up with 25 of these.
PHE have released a preliminary report on the delta variant already, a single dose of either vaccine reduces hospitalisations by 60% after three weeks and two doses reduces it by at least 95%, probably much higher once cumulative factors are taken into account. This is based in actual real world data too, not modelled from binding efficiency dilution.
The vaccines work, they do exactly what we need them to do - they stop people going to hospital to enough of a degree that the NHS won't be overwhelmed. Groups 1-9 are all going to be fully vaccinated by Friday and by the 26th of June all of them will have reached maximum efficacy, even the last few stragglers who get it on Thursday and Friday.
The political risk is vaccine refusing black and Asian people going to hospital after freedom day. Honestly, I don't give a fuck about anyone who has turned down the chance to be vaccinated. They've decided that the risk from vaccines are higher than the risk from COVID. That's their stupid decision and the nation can't wait for them to be cured of stupidity.
Not a reason to delay, I'm 100% against delays, but if there were a delay announced to finish the vaccine rollout then that's not the same thing as delaying indefinitely.
You are falling into the trap of not wanting anyone to get or be ill from Covid.
Take a step back. Is the NHS in danger? Not now. Will it be if a "very small proportion" (admittedly of a very large number) is hospitalised? Maybe. But not sufficient to keep society in chains.