Does anyone believe him? He's a bushitter and liar and when the scientists start banging the drum in three weeks for a further delay he'll give in again and we're stuck in this phase until 2022.
Yes, it will be blurred into the autumn, then extended into next year. It won't ever go away now
It's just a question of whether we have the guts to accept an elevated level of risk, or we cower away
Right, what countries are worth moving to?
Greece, Portugal, Thailand are on my list
Portugal in the lead so far.
Yes. In terms of pure beauty, Greece wins easily. And I love the simple but delicious food.
Portugal is a bit more practical but still lovely
A weird one but not keen on non latin alphabets! Quite restrictive.
It would take you one morning to learn the Greek alphabet; only 20 letters, some you must know anyway (pi for starters) and some look like the Latin equivalent. So say 12 or 13 genuinely new bits of information to ingest.
For Arabic you can have a week
In Arabic, it is fairly easy to get by with a single word "Halas" which means "finished" in a wide variety of contexts, from I am finished negotiating over the carpet, to I am finished eating, can I have the bill please?.
They can ensure the risk is zero by staying in their homes, social distancing and wearing masks or ensuring they only meet people outside their bubble in the open air. That's their choice.
The same logic would argue that if you run around firing a pistol, we can exercise our free choice to stay at home so you don't hit us. We can, but it doesn't make it right.
I'm not so worried about the unvaccinated. The virus will mutate and acquire partial reistance to the vaccines (As is shown with 1 dose AZ against delta). The truth is that it may well end up in a form where it simply spreads through the entire population (Both unvaxxed and vaxxed) but the vaccinated have vastly milder symptons. If the unvaccinated choose to cough up their own lungs that's on them.
Can you explain reasons other than medical corruption for the restrictions on Ivermectin, HCQ and other drugs proven in RCTs to work against COVID and without significant side-effects?
I suggest you watch this video sent me by a friend who used to work in the NHS ... but long retired (she's 69) https://youtu.be/-_NNTVJzqtY
It includes the inventor of mRNA vaccines, who thinks the principle is still fine but these products have been severely botched and launched prematurely.
I'm ~20% of the way through. It seems it could be a larger version of the 1976 H1N1 vaccine disaster. Not that it will be revealed quickly, especially in the UK:
1) MSM censorship is on a scale not envisaged in 1976 2) Larger disasters give more incentive to cover up, to protect even more reputations.
The RCTs do not support Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin. You are selling snake oil.
Well numerous doctors outside the UK do although here the central control is near-total. Is Dr. Pierre Kory selling snake oil? Are the other MDs who have testified to the US Senate quacks? Is trialsitenews run by fraudsters? Is this one disreputable? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33278625/ There are many others.
Have you as a physician watched any talks by people other than PHE, NHS England, Whitty, Vallance or van Tam? They have a narrative to desperately maintain now although Whitty forgot what the party line was on 11 May 2020 and reverted to a period before 23 Mar 2020 when this was deemed not a 'high consequence infectious disease'.
Although the wedding guests limit will be lifted provided social distancing can be maintained from June 21st, dancing at the reception will remain banned
One in 20 of those currently getting infected end up in hospital. That's a massive proportion. They are mostly fairly young, now (because the jabs are doing their magic). Hospitalisations on that scale are not something the government can simply ignore.
This is not now about protecting oldies. It's about protecting the as-yet unvaccinated (and the NHS from overload, again).
That's completely fucking useless without context though, how many of those are unvaxxed by choice? What does 4 weeks buy us if they are vaccine refusers. They aren't going to suddenly take the vaccine.
Why do you seem so convinced that the increase in the 18-54 group is down to the older members of that group who have refused vaccination? We haven’t seen that in the older groups, and we know that the increase in cases is overwhelmingly in younger people - who have never been invulnerable. We’ve had considerable numbers of younger people hospitalised before; why would they not be hospitalised now? They’re significantly less likely to be hospitalised, but that’s not the same as “will not be hospitalised”.
The reduction in the ratio of hospitalisations to cases and the spiralling cases in the youngest adults is exactly what we’d see if they were the primary source of the hospitalisations. Given that the majority of cases is in the under-54s now (unlike before), unless vaccine refusal is hugely different between 45-55 and 55-65, it seems to be the more unlikely option that they’re all antivaxxers.
Andy for the past 15 months there was a small number of young people being hospitalised and almost none dying.
Why is this changing? Delta?
The PHE data confirms that anti vax tendency is startlingly higher in 45-55 than 55-65. For example using ONS, 45-49 have uptake of 84.4% and 60-64 have 99.5%.
There’s unlikely to be too much to a timing lag at this point for 45-49 year olds, uptake only increased by 0.6% in the past week.
The concern for younger population is more long covid isn’t it?
Some statto will have said keep the people paying as they earn working because they are paying for everything?
Although the wedding guests limit will be lifted provided social distancing can be maintained from June 21st, dancing at the reception will remain banned
'If you don't get vaccinated as soon as possible then you're going to die, we're not going lockdown for you antivaxxer fuckers again after the 19th of July,'
They are not locking down for the antivaxxers but the comfortably off, nice house, nice garden, income not impacted already vaccinated Tory frit voters.
Pretty much. Anti-vaxxers will be used as an excuse, but even if take-up were 100% across the board they'd have plenty of others to fall back on.
Although the wedding guests limit will be lifted provided social distancing can be maintained from June 21st, dancing at the reception will remain banned
One in 20 of those currently getting infected end up in hospital. That's a massive proportion. They are mostly fairly young, now (because the jabs are doing their magic). Hospitalisations on that scale are not something the government can simply ignore.
This is not now about protecting oldies. It's about protecting the as-yet unvaccinated (and the NHS from overload, again).
That's completely fucking useless without context though, how many of those are unvaxxed by choice? What does 4 weeks buy us if they are vaccine refusers. They aren't going to suddenly take the vaccine.
Why do you seem so convinced that the increase in the 18-54 group is down to the older members of that group who have refused vaccination? We haven’t seen that in the older groups, and we know that the increase in cases is overwhelmingly in younger people - who have never been invulnerable. We’ve had considerable numbers of younger people hospitalised before; why would they not be hospitalised now? They’re significantly less likely to be hospitalised, but that’s not the same as “will not be hospitalised”.
The reduction in the ratio of hospitalisations to cases and the spiralling cases in the youngest adults is exactly what we’d see if they were the primary source of the hospitalisations. Given that the majority of cases is in the under-54s now (unlike before), unless vaccine refusal is hugely different between 45-55 and 55-65, it seems to be the more unlikely option that they’re all antivaxxers.
Andy for the past 15 months there was a small number of young people being hospitalised and almost none dying.
Why is this changing? Delta?
The PHE data confirms that anti vax tendency is startlingly higher in 45-55 than 55-65. For example using ONS, 45-49 have uptake of 84.4% and 60-64 have 99.5%.
There’s unlikely to be too much to a timing lag at this point for 45-49 year olds, uptake only increased by 0.6% in the past week.
The concern for younger population is more long covid isn’t it?
Some statto will have said keep the people paying as they earn working because they are paying for everything?
I think if you go and speak to a bunch of 20 somethings right now and ask what the biggest problem / risk they are facing in life, the threat of long covid is a long way down the list.
One in 20 of those currently getting infected end up in hospital. That's a massive proportion. They are mostly fairly young, now (because the jabs are doing their magic). Hospitalisations on that scale are not something the government can simply ignore.
This is not now about protecting oldies. It's about protecting the as-yet unvaccinated (and the NHS from overload, again).
That's completely fucking useless without context though, how many of those are unvaxxed by choice? What does 4 weeks buy us if they are vaccine refusers. They aren't going to suddenly take the vaccine.
Why do you seem so convinced that the increase in the 18-54 group is down to the older members of that group who have refused vaccination? We haven’t seen that in the older groups, and we know that the increase in cases is overwhelmingly in younger people - who have never been invulnerable. We’ve had considerable numbers of younger people hospitalised before; why would they not be hospitalised now? They’re significantly less likely to be hospitalised, but that’s not the same as “will not be hospitalised”.
The reduction in the ratio of hospitalisations to cases and the spiralling cases in the youngest adults is exactly what we’d see if they were the primary source of the hospitalisations. Given that the majority of cases is in the under-54s now (unlike before), unless vaccine refusal is hugely different between 45-55 and 55-65, it seems to be the more unlikely option that they’re all antivaxxers.
Andy for the past 15 months there was a small number of young people being hospitalised and almost none dying.
Why is this changing? Delta?
The PHE data confirms that anti vax tendency is startlingly higher in 45-55 than 55-65. For example using ONS, 45-49 have uptake of 84.4% and 60-64 have 99.5%.
There’s unlikely to be too much to a timing lag at this point for 45-49 year olds, uptake only increased by 0.6% in the past week.
But what about in waves one and two? Very few young casualties. So why would that change now?
'If you don't get vaccinated as soon as possible then you're going to die, we're not going lockdown for you antivaxxer fuckers again after the 19th of July,'
To which I would add, like Leon, that they should say to everyone else: your vaccine passport is your price for everything else in your life being free.
It's a very very small price to pay.
Bollocks.
Just let people live their lives. I don't need a nanny state scanning a QR code telling me how to live my life, just lift lockdown and let us choose.
A vaxport allows you to do all of that. You sacrifice one freedom, allowing HMG to know where you are, in return for so many more freedoms, and a liberated economy. Everything could open up to the vaxporters. Theeatres, clubs, bars where you can stand!
Israel did it, and we all admired how well they deconfined. We have to copy. It's the same as ID cards in the war. We got rid of them after the war (eventually)
I wouldn't mind vaccine passports as long as paper certificates were allowed as well as apps, because some of us don't entirely trust electronic methods of tracking people.
Although the wedding guests limit will be lifted provided social distancing can be maintained from June 21st, dancing at the reception will remain banned
I know plenty of older people who have been vaxxed but are wary of a full reopening as it would increase their chances of running into people like you who have chosen not to get vaccinated. Wake up. It’s your f****** fault as much as anyone’s. Unless you have been vaccinated, in my book you lose any right whatsoever to criticise the government for keeping restrictions. And I say this as someone who is sitting here livid with what the government is doing and has written (again) to my MP imploring him to vote against the government.
They can ensure the risk is zero by staying in their homes, social distancing and wearing masks or ensuring they only meet people outside their bubble in the open air. That's their choice.
Well I’ll tell you what I’d do instead. Id have the army pin you down at gunpoint with a needle. And if necessary inject you with AZN into your eyeball. Because while there’s a big body of unvaccinated people out there who are vulnerable to hospitalisation from covid, normal service will not resume in the healthcare sector. If you don’t like it, you’ve got a month to find somewhere else to call home.
FFS Moonshine many other governments are unlocking with much lower levels of vaccination. Its almost like NOT being vaccinated is more a guarantee of freedom that being vaccinated.
It is our government that is devaluing your vaccination currency, not me.
The BMA said this morning no other Country in Europe was unlocking or near to
"Museums, theaters, cinemas and a wide range of other venues can reopen across The Netherlands from June 5, Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced late Friday.
"This is actually the end of the lockdown," he told a news conference.
Restaurants will be allowed to offer indoor dining again and opening hours can be extended until 10pm. The Dutch will also be allowed to invite up to four people to their homes instead of two.
However, employees should still go to workplaces as little as possible, for the time being. "We're not there yet," Rutte cautioned.
A strict lockdown has been in place since mid-December.
Rutte predicted the vaccination campaign will bring more improvements , although the summer will not yet be "completely normal." The government is still warning that travelling entails risks.
If the number of infections and hospitalizations continue to move in the right direction, more restrictions will be relaxed from June 30, Rutte added.
Citizens will then be allowed to host up to eight people in their homes and restaurants and bars will be permitted to stay open until midnight."
It does seem that we're frequently describing our own remaining restrictions as "lockdown" whilst other countries continuing to follow remaining restrictions are "out of lockdown"
I think the term has been hopelessly eroded. I mean, I went to the cinema weeks ago. I've eaten out in restaurants indoors and gone to pubs frequently. And been able to go indoors with more than four people.
A good point. Lockdown = the Stay At Home order plus most things closed.
Anybody describing this current scenario here as us being "locked down", I just switch off and disregard the rest of the comment.
I agree. But I think that "lockdown" is sometimes used lazily to mean government constraints.
Yes, that's true. But I more meant the actual exact phrase that we are "locked down". That's a teeth grinder for me.
Anyway, look, your "set a precedent" concern. I think not - but if July 19th doesn't happen, as stated earlier, I'll be decamping to your side of the argument, because it would mean the calculus between liberty and security has been warped. That's not the case right now imo. This delay has just enough rationale for me (albeit I'm disappointed about it).
And for you and the other posters on here saying "Oh fuck, this is going on forever, the scientists have got us by the balls and won't let go", I have an offer. I think you're all overwrought and wrong. So I'll give EVENS - a straight 50/50 - on July 19th being delayed. If that's what you think is going to happen - Rook, Max, Leon, Rotten, Cycle, Noneof, all you guys - it's got to be the bet of the century.
So hit me!
Nightclubs allowed to open at full capacity without social distancing on the 20th July?
Although the wedding guests limit will be lifted provided social distancing can be maintained from June 21st, dancing at the reception will remain banned
One in 20 of those currently getting infected end up in hospital. That's a massive proportion. They are mostly fairly young, now (because the jabs are doing their magic). Hospitalisations on that scale are not something the government can simply ignore.
This is not now about protecting oldies. It's about protecting the as-yet unvaccinated (and the NHS from overload, again).
That's completely fucking useless without context though, how many of those are unvaxxed by choice? What does 4 weeks buy us if they are vaccine refusers. They aren't going to suddenly take the vaccine.
Why do you seem so convinced that the increase in the 18-54 group is down to the older members of that group who have refused vaccination? We haven’t seen that in the older groups, and we know that the increase in cases is overwhelmingly in younger people - who have never been invulnerable. We’ve had considerable numbers of younger people hospitalised before; why would they not be hospitalised now? They’re significantly less likely to be hospitalised, but that’s not the same as “will not be hospitalised”.
The reduction in the ratio of hospitalisations to cases and the spiralling cases in the youngest adults is exactly what we’d see if they were the primary source of the hospitalisations. Given that the majority of cases is in the under-54s now (unlike before), unless vaccine refusal is hugely different between 45-55 and 55-65, it seems to be the more unlikely option that they’re all antivaxxers.
Andy for the past 15 months there was a small number of young people being hospitalised and almost none dying.
Why is this changing? Delta?
The PHE data confirms that anti vax tendency is startlingly higher in 45-55 than 55-65. For example using ONS, 45-49 have uptake of 84.4% and 60-64 have 99.5%.
There’s unlikely to be too much to a timing lag at this point for 45-49 year olds, uptake only increased by 0.6% in the past week.
The concern for younger population is more long covid isn’t it?
Some statto will have said keep the people paying as they earn working because they are paying for everything?
I think if you go and speak to a bunch of 20 somethings right now and ask what the biggest problem / risk they are facing in life, the threat of long covid is a long way down the list.
Fair enough in their mind. But long covid as threat to economy and tax income?
They can ensure the risk is zero by staying in their homes, social distancing and wearing masks or ensuring they only meet people outside their bubble in the open air. That's their choice.
The same logic would argue that if you run around firing a pistol, we can exercise our free choice to stay at home so you don't hit us. We can, but it doesn't make it right.
I'm not so worried about the unvaccinated. The virus will mutate and acquire partial reistance to the vaccines (As is shown with 1 dose AZ against delta). The truth is that it may well end up in a form where it simply spreads through the entire population (Both unvaxxed and vaxxed) but the vaccinated have vastly milder symptons. If the unvaccinated choose to cough up their own lungs that's on them.
Can you explain reasons other than medical corruption for the restrictions on Ivermectin, HCQ and other drugs proven in RCTs to work against COVID and without significant side-effects?
I suggest you watch this video sent me by a friend who used to work in the NHS ... but long retired (she's 69) https://youtu.be/-_NNTVJzqtY
It includes the inventor of mRNA vaccines, who thinks the principle is still fine but these products have been severely botched and launched prematurely.
I'm ~20% of the way through. It seems it could be a larger version of the 1976 H1N1 vaccine disaster. Not that it will be revealed quickly, especially in the UK:
1) MSM censorship is on a scale not envisaged in 1976 2) Larger disasters give more incentive to cover up, to protect even more reputations.
The RCTs do not support Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin. You are selling snake oil.
Well numerous doctors outside the UK do although here the central control is near-total. Is Dr. Pierre Kory selling snake oil? Are the other MDs who have testified to the US Senate quacks? Is trialsitenews run by fraudsters? Is this one disreputable? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33278625/ There are many others.
Have you as a physician watched any talks by people other than PHE, NHS England, Whitty, Vallance or van Tam? They have a narrative to desperately maintain now although Whitty forgot what the party line was on 11 May 2020 and reverted to a period before 23 Mar 2020 when this was deemed not a 'high consequence infectious disease'.
We are not short of treatments for mild Covid.
You are claiming this is for major life threatening Covid.
I thought Vallance was helpful in explaining their thinking.
Essentially, they became very concerned at cases rising quite so rapidly and thought full easing (nightclubs of unvaccinated 20 year olds) would cause that to accelerate faster. No one quite knows how bad hospitalisations or deaths will be as a result, but they feared it could get out of control.
Delaying 4 weeks means cases will be falling by the time they release things (as vaccines catch up, plus immunity via infection), plus it is timed to match summer holidays (additional downward pressure on infections) meaning things won't accelerate to the same extent.
It sounded like someone explaining how they wanted to ride the exit wave, rather than zero covid nonsense.
I still wish we were reopening next week, but I'm glad at least weddings can go ahead and reassured that they will go ahead with the 19 July reopening.
Two interesting snippets not much commented on - Whitty “cases will be higher than they are now by July 19” and Valance “extending beyond 4 weeks delay didn’t give much additional benefit”
I thought Vallance was helpful in explaining their thinking.
Essentially, they became very concerned at cases rising quite so rapidly and thought full easing (nightclubs of unvaccinated 20 year olds) would cause that to accelerate faster. No one quite knows how bad hospitalisations or deaths will be as a result, but they feared it could get out of control.
Delaying 4 weeks means cases will be falling by the time they release things (as vaccines catch up, plus immunity via infection), plus it is timed to match summer holidays (additional downward pressure on infections) meaning things won't accelerate to the same extent.
It sounded like someone explaining how they wanted to ride the exit wave, rather than zero covid nonsense.
I still wish we were reopening next week, but I'm glad at least weddings can go ahead and reassured that they will go ahead with the 19 July reopening.
I took the first part from that, but not the second. The logic was that not going further in unlocking would limit the rate of the increase rather than lead to an ultimate decrease.
The equivalent of not pressing the accelerator but also not touching the brake.
'If you don't get vaccinated as soon as possible then you're going to die, we're not going lockdown for you antivaxxer fuckers again after the 19th of July,'
To which I would add, like Leon, that they should say to everyone else: your vaccine passport is your price for everything else in your life being free.
It's a very very small price to pay.
Bollocks.
Just let people live their lives. I don't need a nanny state scanning a QR code telling me how to live my life, just lift lockdown and let us choose.
A vaxport allows you to do all of that. You sacrifice one freedom, allowing HMG to know where you are, in return for so many more freedoms, and a liberated economy. Everything could open up to the vaxporters. Theeatres, clubs, bars where you can stand!
Israel did it, and we all admired how well they deconfined. We have to copy. It's the same as ID cards in the war. We got rid of them after the war (eventually)
I wouldn't mind vaccine passports as long as paper certificates were allowed as well as apps, because some of us don't entirely trust electronic methods of tracking people.
Yes, exactly. There's absolutely no need for any kind of tracking. Just a bit of paper or a card (photo if necessary), or a QR code on your phone if you prefer, is all that would be required. Just show it at the door or email it when booking. It hasn't even got to be 100% proof against forgery, this is about reducing probabilities.
But, it's now too late. As a result of the government failing to plan properly and failing to explain things, it's now no longer possible, so venues will have to stay closed to everyone, or operating on unviable numbers. It's a catastrophic blunder, one of many since 2019.
Although the wedding guests limit will be lifted provided social distancing can be maintained from June 21st, dancing at the reception will remain banned
One in 20 of those currently getting infected end up in hospital. That's a massive proportion. They are mostly fairly young, now (because the jabs are doing their magic). Hospitalisations on that scale are not something the government can simply ignore.
This is not now about protecting oldies. It's about protecting the as-yet unvaccinated (and the NHS from overload, again).
That's completely fucking useless without context though, how many of those are unvaxxed by choice? What does 4 weeks buy us if they are vaccine refusers. They aren't going to suddenly take the vaccine.
Why do you seem so convinced that the increase in the 18-54 group is down to the older members of that group who have refused vaccination? We haven’t seen that in the older groups, and we know that the increase in cases is overwhelmingly in younger people - who have never been invulnerable. We’ve had considerable numbers of younger people hospitalised before; why would they not be hospitalised now? They’re significantly less likely to be hospitalised, but that’s not the same as “will not be hospitalised”.
The reduction in the ratio of hospitalisations to cases and the spiralling cases in the youngest adults is exactly what we’d see if they were the primary source of the hospitalisations. Given that the majority of cases is in the under-54s now (unlike before), unless vaccine refusal is hugely different between 45-55 and 55-65, it seems to be the more unlikely option that they’re all antivaxxers.
Andy for the past 15 months there was a small number of young people being hospitalised and almost none dying.
Why is this changing? Delta?
The PHE data confirms that anti vax tendency is startlingly higher in 45-55 than 55-65. For example using ONS, 45-49 have uptake of 84.4% and 60-64 have 99.5%.
There’s unlikely to be too much to a timing lag at this point for 45-49 year olds, uptake only increased by 0.6% in the past week.
99.5% of 60-69 Year olds vaccinated? are you sure, that seems a bit high to me.
Does anyone believe him? He's a bushitter and liar and when the scientists start banging the drum in three weeks for a further delay he'll give in again and we're stuck in this phase until 2022.
Yes, it will be blurred into the autumn, then extended into next year. It won't ever go away now
It's just a question of whether we have the guts to accept an elevated level of risk, or we cower away
As a nation the UK has lost it. The wretched scientists have turned people into craven idiots begging for politicians to keep our freedoms from us under the guise of a few old people dying of a respiratory disease.
Fuck all of those wankers who support this.
Perhaps the "few old people" you mention might have an opinion on that?
They used to die of the flu and no one gave a shit, not even them. COVID has just replaced the flu now they're vaccinated. If they choose not to be then that's really on them.
I used to get a cold or flu now and again in my 50s, and I didn't die, whereas if I had caught the rona I probably would have been pushing up the daisies.
You may not have died of flu (thankfully) but in 2018 25,000 people did.
Now I agreed entirely with the lockdowns to date but it is truly getting ridiculous now.
Will we be locking down in 2023 if we get a bad flu winter? If not then why are we still locking down now given we have a vaccine far more effective than anything we have ever had for flu?
Exactly ... anyone who doesn't think we will have lockdowns or "social distancing, masks, whatever" imposed on us every future flu season is pretty naïve. The will of the country has has been broken ... the 70% who support this delay are not going to resist in the future either.
If ever there was a text book example of a power grab by the state in peacetime, this is it. Scare the country shitless, impose a whole load of news laws / restrictions "to keep us safe" and then move the goalposts so that we can't ever get back all the freedoms we've lost. Unfortunately, now they've got a taste for it, we will see this playbook used again and again ... and this from a so-called conservative government, ugh.
Climate change is next - you can already see the same tactics in play ... from project fear, to the cosy consensus of the mainstream media, to the ridiculing of dissenting voices and the shutting down of debate about any alternative approaches. Through COVID, the politicians (i.e. people who get a kick out of telling others how to live their lives) have stumbled upon how to force behavioural change across the population ... and they are not going to forget how to do that. We can expect to see unaccountable "Behavioural Psychologists" taking an even greater role in communications in the future because they have proved to be devastatingly effective.
Does anyone believe him? He's a bushitter and liar and when the scientists start banging the drum in three weeks for a further delay he'll give in again and we're stuck in this phase until 2022.
Yes, it will be blurred into the autumn, then extended into next year. It won't ever go away now
It's just a question of whether we have the guts to accept an elevated level of risk, or we cower away
Right, what countries are worth moving to?
Greece, Portugal, Thailand are on my list
Portugal in the lead so far.
Yes. In terms of pure beauty, Greece wins easily. And I love the simple but delicious food.
Portugal is a bit more practical but still lovely
A weird one but not keen on non latin alphabets! Quite restrictive.
It would take you one morning to learn the Greek alphabet; only 20 letters, some you must know anyway (pi for starters) and some look like the Latin equivalent. So say 12 or 13 genuinely new bits of information to ingest.
For Arabic you can have a week
In Arabic, it is fairly easy to get by with a single word "Halas" which means "finished" in a wide variety of contexts, from I am finished negotiating over the carpet, to I am finished eating, can I have the bill please?.
Add in "inshallah" and you are sorted...
No, you need the full IBM. Inshallah bukra mumkin/ma9alaash (God willing, tomorrow, maybe/who cares?)
One in 20 of those currently getting infected end up in hospital. That's a massive proportion. They are mostly fairly young, now (because the jabs are doing their magic). Hospitalisations on that scale are not something the government can simply ignore.
This is not now about protecting oldies. It's about protecting the as-yet unvaccinated (and the NHS from overload, again).
That's completely fucking useless without context though, how many of those are unvaxxed by choice? What does 4 weeks buy us if they are vaccine refusers. They aren't going to suddenly take the vaccine.
Why do you seem so convinced that the increase in the 18-54 group is down to the older members of that group who have refused vaccination? We haven’t seen that in the older groups, and we know that the increase in cases is overwhelmingly in younger people - who have never been invulnerable. We’ve had considerable numbers of younger people hospitalised before; why would they not be hospitalised now? They’re significantly less likely to be hospitalised, but that’s not the same as “will not be hospitalised”.
The reduction in the ratio of hospitalisations to cases and the spiralling cases in the youngest adults is exactly what we’d see if they were the primary source of the hospitalisations. Given that the majority of cases is in the under-54s now (unlike before), unless vaccine refusal is hugely different between 45-55 and 55-65, it seems to be the more unlikely option that they’re all antivaxxers.
Andy for the past 15 months there was a small number of young people being hospitalised and almost none dying.
Why is this changing? Delta?
The PHE data confirms that anti vax tendency is startlingly higher in 45-55 than 55-65. For example using ONS, 45-49 have uptake of 84.4% and 60-64 have 99.5%.
There’s unlikely to be too much to a timing lag at this point for 45-49 year olds, uptake only increased by 0.6% in the past week.
But what about in waves one and two? Very few young casualties. So why would that change now?
I don’t think it will, that is exactly my point. Andy seems to be saying that the new variant is causing noise in the hospital stats because the very youngest adults not yet offered a vaccine are all catching it. I doubt that. People talk of the invincibility of youth. But that’s almost certainly not the problem. It’s the middle aged, who are fatter and older than they think are but still think they’re young and invincible. And who then walk around boasting about how they are too tough / libertarian / busy to get vaccinated.
One in 20 of those currently getting infected end up in hospital. That's a massive proportion. They are mostly fairly young, now (because the jabs are doing their magic). Hospitalisations on that scale are not something the government can simply ignore.
This is not now about protecting oldies. It's about protecting the as-yet unvaccinated (and the NHS from overload, again).
That's completely fucking useless without context though, how many of those are unvaxxed by choice? What does 4 weeks buy us if they are vaccine refusers. They aren't going to suddenly take the vaccine.
Why do you seem so convinced that the increase in the 18-54 group is down to the older members of that group who have refused vaccination? We haven’t seen that in the older groups, and we know that the increase in cases is overwhelmingly in younger people - who have never been invulnerable. We’ve had considerable numbers of younger people hospitalised before; why would they not be hospitalised now? They’re significantly less likely to be hospitalised, but that’s not the same as “will not be hospitalised”.
The reduction in the ratio of hospitalisations to cases and the spiralling cases in the youngest adults is exactly what we’d see if they were the primary source of the hospitalisations. Given that the majority of cases is in the under-54s now (unlike before), unless vaccine refusal is hugely different between 45-55 and 55-65, it seems to be the more unlikely option that they’re all antivaxxers.
Andy for the past 15 months there was a small number of young people being hospitalised and almost none dying.
Why is this changing? Delta?
The PHE data confirms that anti vax tendency is startlingly higher in 45-55 than 55-65. For example using ONS, 45-49 have uptake of 84.4% and 60-64 have 99.5%.
There’s unlikely to be too much to a timing lag at this point for 45-49 year olds, uptake only increased by 0.6% in the past week.
But what about in waves one and two? Very few young casualties. So why would that change now?
I thought Vallance was helpful in explaining their thinking.
Essentially, they became very concerned at cases rising quite so rapidly and thought full easing (nightclubs of unvaccinated 20 year olds) would cause that to accelerate faster. No one quite knows how bad hospitalisations or deaths will be as a result, but they feared it could get out of control.
Delaying 4 weeks means cases will be falling by the time they release things (as vaccines catch up, plus immunity via infection), plus it is timed to match summer holidays (additional downward pressure on infections) meaning things won't accelerate to the same extent.
It sounded like someone explaining how they wanted to ride the exit wave, rather than zero covid nonsense.
I still wish we were reopening next week, but I'm glad at least weddings can go ahead and reassured that they will go ahead with the 19 July reopening.
One in 20 of those currently getting infected end up in hospital. That's a massive proportion. They are mostly fairly young, now (because the jabs are doing their magic). Hospitalisations on that scale are not something the government can simply ignore.
This is not now about protecting oldies. It's about protecting the as-yet unvaccinated (and the NHS from overload, again).
That's completely fucking useless without context though, how many of those are unvaxxed by choice? What does 4 weeks buy us if they are vaccine refusers. They aren't going to suddenly take the vaccine.
Why do you seem so convinced that the increase in the 18-54 group is down to the older members of that group who have refused vaccination? We haven’t seen that in the older groups, and we know that the increase in cases is overwhelmingly in younger people - who have never been invulnerable. We’ve had considerable numbers of younger people hospitalised before; why would they not be hospitalised now? They’re significantly less likely to be hospitalised, but that’s not the same as “will not be hospitalised”.
The reduction in the ratio of hospitalisations to cases and the spiralling cases in the youngest adults is exactly what we’d see if they were the primary source of the hospitalisations. Given that the majority of cases is in the under-54s now (unlike before), unless vaccine refusal is hugely different between 45-55 and 55-65, it seems to be the more unlikely option that they’re all antivaxxers.
Andy for the past 15 months there was a small number of young people being hospitalised and almost none dying.
Why is this changing? Delta?
The PHE data confirms that anti vax tendency is startlingly higher in 45-55 than 55-65. For example using ONS, 45-49 have uptake of 84.4% and 60-64 have 99.5%.
There’s unlikely to be too much to a timing lag at this point for 45-49 year olds, uptake only increased by 0.6% in the past week.
The concern for younger population is more long covid isn’t it?
Some statto will have said keep the people paying as they earn working because they are paying for everything?
I think if you go and speak to a bunch of 20 somethings right now and ask what the biggest problem / risk they are facing in life, the threat of long covid is a long way down the list.
Fair enough in their mind. But long covid as threat to economy and tax income?
I would suggest not even a blip on the chart compared to the damage being done right now by continued lockdown.
In the theatre industry alone it is 290,000 people out of work. In Live Music another 35,000.
Does anyone believe him? He's a bushitter and liar and when the scientists start banging the drum in three weeks for a further delay he'll give in again and we're stuck in this phase until 2022.
Yes, it will be blurred into the autumn, then extended into next year. It won't ever go away now
It's just a question of whether we have the guts to accept an elevated level of risk, or we cower away
Right, what countries are worth moving to?
Greece, Portugal, Thailand are on my list
Portugal in the lead so far.
Yes. In terms of pure beauty, Greece wins easily. And I love the simple but delicious food.
Portugal is a bit more practical but still lovely
A weird one but not keen on non latin alphabets! Quite restrictive.
Not if you learn them.
Of course, but it feels a lot more realistic to learn a new language with a familiar alphabet than learning both a language and their alphabet. Lots of moves abroad fail because of language so learning Portuguese would be favourable to learning Greek or Thai for me.
This is how the US State Department rates the difficulty of learning various European languages for a native English speaker.
Though in Malta or Cyprus English is so universal that you can take your time over it.
I have been teaching myself Arabic and Spanish over the last year and completely agree with the map. Two polar opposites when it comes to difficulty.
One in 20 of those currently getting infected end up in hospital. That's a massive proportion. They are mostly fairly young, now (because the jabs are doing their magic). Hospitalisations on that scale are not something the government can simply ignore.
This is not now about protecting oldies. It's about protecting the as-yet unvaccinated (and the NHS from overload, again).
That's completely fucking useless without context though, how many of those are unvaxxed by choice? What does 4 weeks buy us if they are vaccine refusers. They aren't going to suddenly take the vaccine.
Why do you seem so convinced that the increase in the 18-54 group is down to the older members of that group who have refused vaccination? We haven’t seen that in the older groups, and we know that the increase in cases is overwhelmingly in younger people - who have never been invulnerable. We’ve had considerable numbers of younger people hospitalised before; why would they not be hospitalised now? They’re significantly less likely to be hospitalised, but that’s not the same as “will not be hospitalised”.
The reduction in the ratio of hospitalisations to cases and the spiralling cases in the youngest adults is exactly what we’d see if they were the primary source of the hospitalisations. Given that the majority of cases is in the under-54s now (unlike before), unless vaccine refusal is hugely different between 45-55 and 55-65, it seems to be the more unlikely option that they’re all antivaxxers.
Andy for the past 15 months there was a small number of young people being hospitalised and almost none dying.
Why is this changing? Delta?
The PHE data confirms that anti vax tendency is startlingly higher in 45-55 than 55-65. For example using ONS, 45-49 have uptake of 84.4% and 60-64 have 99.5%.
There’s unlikely to be too much to a timing lag at this point for 45-49 year olds, uptake only increased by 0.6% in the past week.
But what about in waves one and two? Very few young casualties. So why would that change now?
I don’t think it will, that is exactly my point. Andy seems to be saying that the new variant is causing noise in the hospital stats because the very youngest adults not yet offered a vaccine are all catching it. I doubt that. People talk of the invincibility of youth. But that’s almost certainly not the problem. It’s the middle aged, who are fatter and older than they think are but still think they’re young and invincible. And who then walk around boasting about how they are too tough / libertarian / busy to get vaccinated.
I thought Vallance was helpful in explaining their thinking.
Essentially, they became very concerned at cases rising quite so rapidly and thought full easing (nightclubs of unvaccinated 20 year olds) would cause that to accelerate faster. No one quite knows how bad hospitalisations or deaths will be as a result, but they feared it could get out of control.
Delaying 4 weeks means cases will be falling by the time they release things (as vaccines catch up, plus immunity via infection), plus it is timed to match summer holidays (additional downward pressure on infections) meaning things won't accelerate to the same extent.
It sounded like someone explaining how they wanted to ride the exit wave, rather than zero covid nonsense.
I still wish we were reopening next week, but I'm glad at least weddings can go ahead and reassured that they will go ahead with the 19 July reopening.
If they are confidant that cases will be falling in 4 weeks time, then open now, in 4 weeks the hospitals will not be over run i9n 4 weeks because they are starting from such a low base, 1000 ish verses 35,000 at Christmas.
'If you don't get vaccinated as soon as possible then you're going to die, we're not going lockdown for you antivaxxer fuckers again after the 19th of July,'
To which I would add, like Leon, that they should say to everyone else: your vaccine passport is your price for everything else in your life being free.
It's a very very small price to pay.
Bollocks.
Just let people live their lives. I don't need a nanny state scanning a QR code telling me how to live my life, just lift lockdown and let us choose.
A vaxport allows you to do all of that. You sacrifice one freedom, allowing HMG to know where you are, in return for so many more freedoms, and a liberated economy. Everything could open up to the vaxporters. Theeatres, clubs, bars where you can stand!
Israel did it, and we all admired how well they deconfined. We have to copy. It's the same as ID cards in the war. We got rid of them after the war (eventually)
I wouldn't mind vaccine passports as long as paper certificates were allowed as well as apps, because some of us don't entirely trust electronic methods of tracking people.
Why not just make them voluntary, FFS?
If you want a vaxport here it is. Take it. If bars and clubs and theatres want to open up, on the basis they only accept vaxport holders, that’s up to them. Everyone is free to choose. Many will say YES
Suddenly loads more places open up, the economy recovers quicker, millions get their usual lives back. Plus there is now huge pressure on the antivaxxers. Get vaxed or you can’t have the vaxport. Tough shit
Does anyone believe him? He's a bushitter and liar and when the scientists start banging the drum in three weeks for a further delay he'll give in again and we're stuck in this phase until 2022.
Yes, it will be blurred into the autumn, then extended into next year. It won't ever go away now
It's just a question of whether we have the guts to accept an elevated level of risk, or we cower away
Right, what countries are worth moving to?
Greece, Portugal, Thailand are on my list
Portugal in the lead so far.
Yes. In terms of pure beauty, Greece wins easily. And I love the simple but delicious food.
Portugal is a bit more practical but still lovely
A weird one but not keen on non latin alphabets! Quite restrictive.
Not if you learn them.
Of course, but it feels a lot more realistic to learn a new language with a familiar alphabet than learning both a language and their alphabet. Lots of moves abroad fail because of language so learning Portuguese would be favourable to learning Greek or Thai for me.
This is how the US State Department rates the difficulty of learning various European languages for a native English speaker.
Though in Malta or Cyprus English is so universal that you can take your time over it.
I really am not certain Finnish or Turkish are easier than Arabic to learn. Arabic has 28 letters, is fully phonetic, has a grammar somewhat easier than German, its verbs are fully regular (even allowing for weak verbs), its syntax is dead simple (Verb, Subject, Object), and once you have learned the trilateral root system, you can guess the meaning of any word you've not seen before if you know the root. The only difficult thing is the size of the vocabulary.
Vaccine Passports would have solved much of this. Forcing people to take the jab if they want to function
This fucking spineless government. Grrrrr
The big mistake was not stopping flights from India immediately.
Yep.
Then how come he gets through daily news conferences unscathed on that, and no glass ceilings to his poll ratings.
The polls over the next few weeks will be interesting
Maybe not. Frothy mouthed Libertarians on here, who I hope are under firm surveillance by the state for how extreme they are, think Boris is making mistakes, such as border policy, the polls show the electorate think he is handling this crisis brilliantly.
I know plenty of older people who have been vaxxed but are wary of a full reopening as it would increase their chances of running into people like you who have chosen not to get vaccinated. Wake up. It’s your f****** fault as much as anyone’s. Unless you have been vaccinated, in my book you lose any right whatsoever to criticise the government for keeping restrictions. And I say this as someone who is sitting here livid with what the government is doing and has written (again) to my MP imploring him to vote against the government.
They can ensure the risk is zero by staying in their homes, social distancing and wearing masks or ensuring they only meet people outside their bubble in the open air. That's their choice.
Well I’ll tell you what I’d do instead. Id have the army pin you down at gunpoint with a needle. And if necessary inject you with AZN into your eyeball. Because while there’s a big body of unvaccinated people out there who are vulnerable to hospitalisation from covid, normal service will not resume in the healthcare sector. If you don’t like it, you’ve got a month to find somewhere else to call home.
FFS Moonshine many other governments are unlocking with much lower levels of vaccination. Its almost like NOT being vaccinated is more a guarantee of freedom that being vaccinated.
It is our government that is devaluing your vaccination currency, not me.
The BMA said this morning no other Country in Europe was unlocking or near to
"Museums, theaters, cinemas and a wide range of other venues can reopen across The Netherlands from June 5, Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced late Friday.
"This is actually the end of the lockdown," he told a news conference.
Restaurants will be allowed to offer indoor dining again and opening hours can be extended until 10pm. The Dutch will also be allowed to invite up to four people to their homes instead of two.
However, employees should still go to workplaces as little as possible, for the time being. "We're not there yet," Rutte cautioned.
A strict lockdown has been in place since mid-December.
Rutte predicted the vaccination campaign will bring more improvements , although the summer will not yet be "completely normal." The government is still warning that travelling entails risks.
If the number of infections and hospitalizations continue to move in the right direction, more restrictions will be relaxed from June 30, Rutte added.
Citizens will then be allowed to host up to eight people in their homes and restaurants and bars will be permitted to stay open until midnight."
It does seem that we're frequently describing our own remaining restrictions as "lockdown" whilst other countries continuing to follow remaining restrictions are "out of lockdown"
I think the term has been hopelessly eroded. I mean, I went to the cinema weeks ago. I've eaten out in restaurants indoors and gone to pubs frequently. And been able to go indoors with more than four people.
A good point. Lockdown = the Stay At Home order plus most things closed.
Anybody describing this current scenario here as us being "locked down", I just switch off and disregard the rest of the comment.
I agree. But I think that "lockdown" is sometimes used lazily to mean government constraints.
Yes, that's true. But I more meant the actual exact phrase that we are "locked down". That's a teeth grinder for me.
Anyway, look, your "set a precedent" concern. I think not - but if July 19th doesn't happen, as stated earlier, I'll be decamping to your side of the argument, because it would mean the calculus between liberty and security has been warped. That's not the case right now imo. This delay has just enough rationale for me (albeit I'm disappointed about it).
And for you and the other posters on here saying "Oh fuck, this is going on forever, the scientists have got us by the balls and won't let go", I have an offer. I think you're all overwrought and wrong. So I'll give EVENS - a straight 50/50 - on July 19th being delayed. If that's what you think is going to happen - Rook, Max, Leon, Rotten, Cycle, Noneof, all you guys - it's got to be the bet of the century.
So hit me!
Nightclubs allowed to open at full capacity without social distancing on the 20th July?
Does anyone believe him? He's a bushitter and liar and when the scientists start banging the drum in three weeks for a further delay he'll give in again and we're stuck in this phase until 2022.
Yes, it will be blurred into the autumn, then extended into next year. It won't ever go away now
It's just a question of whether we have the guts to accept an elevated level of risk, or we cower away
Right, what countries are worth moving to?
Greece, Portugal, Thailand are on my list
Portugal in the lead so far.
Yes. In terms of pure beauty, Greece wins easily. And I love the simple but delicious food.
Portugal is a bit more practical but still lovely
A weird one but not keen on non latin alphabets! Quite restrictive.
Not if you learn them.
Of course, but it feels a lot more realistic to learn a new language with a familiar alphabet than learning both a language and their alphabet. Lots of moves abroad fail because of language so learning Portuguese would be favourable to learning Greek or Thai for me.
This is how the US State Department rates the difficulty of learning various European languages for a native English speaker.
They think we speak the same language as them?? And I thought our FO was useless.
I thought Vallance was helpful in explaining their thinking.
Essentially, they became very concerned at cases rising quite so rapidly and thought full easing (nightclubs of unvaccinated 20 year olds) would cause that to accelerate faster. No one quite knows how bad hospitalisations or deaths will be as a result, but they feared it could get out of control.
Delaying 4 weeks means cases will be falling by the time they release things (as vaccines catch up, plus immunity via infection), plus it is timed to match summer holidays (additional downward pressure on infections) meaning things won't accelerate to the same extent.
It sounded like someone explaining how they wanted to ride the exit wave, rather than zero covid nonsense.
I still wish we were reopening next week, but I'm glad at least weddings can go ahead and reassured that they will go ahead with the 19 July reopening.
Well, we shall see. The obvious risk is that the new variant gradually spreads through the country over the next few weeks - at a low level in many places, to be sure, with the lovely vaccines shielding people and disrupting those chains of transmission - but that the cases and hospitalisations won't be dropping yet come next month.
Cue updated models warning of half-a-million deaths by Christmas if we unlock. And so it's too dangerous, and we have to wait again.
The catastrophist wing of the scientific establishment will be scrabbling around for as many excuses to stall as possible, and they know they probably only have to get to some point in September before crappy weather starts to drive the case loads back up again, and allows the Autumn excuses (flu-Covid nexus crushing the NHS, waning immunity, urgent need for boosters) to take over and power us into a long Winter of restrictions.
Above all, there's a fundamental lack of trust in the Prime Minister's word in operation here. I mean, that obviously applies generally, but he does also have established form for ropey decision making and u-turns when it comes to the Plague. There's no particular reason to suppose that July 19th will be met.
Does anyone believe him? He's a bushitter and liar and when the scientists start banging the drum in three weeks for a further delay he'll give in again and we're stuck in this phase until 2022.
Yes, it will be blurred into the autumn, then extended into next year. It won't ever go away now
It's just a question of whether we have the guts to accept an elevated level of risk, or we cower away
As a nation the UK has lost it. The wretched scientists have turned people into craven idiots begging for politicians to keep our freedoms from us under the guise of a few old people dying of a respiratory disease.
Fuck all of those wankers who support this.
Perhaps the "few old people" you mention might have an opinion on that?
They used to die of the flu and no one gave a shit, not even them. COVID has just replaced the flu now they're vaccinated. If they choose not to be then that's really on them.
I used to get a cold or flu now and again in my 50s, and I didn't die, whereas if I had caught the rona I probably would have been pushing up the daisies.
You may not have died of flu (thankfully) but in 2018 25,000 people did.
Now I agreed entirely with the lockdowns to date but it is truly getting ridiculous now.
Will we be locking down in 2023 if we get a bad flu winter? If not then why are we still locking down now given we have a vaccine far more effective than anything we have ever had for flu?
This is 100% completely accurate.
The notion that this 'could save thousands of lives' means its not even a fraction of a flu season now that's being talked about.
Does anyone believe him? He's a bushitter and liar and when the scientists start banging the drum in three weeks for a further delay he'll give in again and we're stuck in this phase until 2022.
Yes, it will be blurred into the autumn, then extended into next year. It won't ever go away now
It's just a question of whether we have the guts to accept an elevated level of risk, or we cower away
Right, what countries are worth moving to?
Greece, Portugal, Thailand are on my list
Portugal in the lead so far.
Yes. In terms of pure beauty, Greece wins easily. And I love the simple but delicious food.
Portugal is a bit more practical but still lovely
A weird one but not keen on non latin alphabets! Quite restrictive.
Not if you learn them.
Of course, but it feels a lot more realistic to learn a new language with a familiar alphabet than learning both a language and their alphabet. Lots of moves abroad fail because of language so learning Portuguese would be favourable to learning Greek or Thai for me.
This is how the US State Department rates the difficulty of learning various European languages for a native English speaker.
They think we speak the same language as them?? And I thought our FO was useless.
Funny they could not even come up with a classification for the Celtic languages ...
I thought Vallance was helpful in explaining their thinking.
Essentially, they became very concerned at cases rising quite so rapidly and thought full easing (nightclubs of unvaccinated 20 year olds) would cause that to accelerate faster. No one quite knows how bad hospitalisations or deaths will be as a result, but they feared it could get out of control.
Delaying 4 weeks means cases will be falling by the time they release things (as vaccines catch up, plus immunity via infection), plus it is timed to match summer holidays (additional downward pressure on infections) meaning things won't accelerate to the same extent.
It sounded like someone explaining how they wanted to ride the exit wave, rather than zero covid nonsense.
I still wish we were reopening next week, but I'm glad at least weddings can go ahead and reassured that they will go ahead with the 19 July reopening.
If they are confidant that cases will be falling in 4 weeks time, then open now, in 4 weeks the hospitals will not be over run i9n 4 weeks because they are starting from such a low base, 1000 ish verses 35,000 at Christmas.
One in 20 of those currently getting infected end up in hospital. That's a massive proportion. They are mostly fairly young, now (because the jabs are doing their magic). Hospitalisations on that scale are not something the government can simply ignore.
This is not now about protecting oldies. It's about protecting the as-yet unvaccinated (and the NHS from overload, again).
That's completely fucking useless without context though, how many of those are unvaxxed by choice? What does 4 weeks buy us if they are vaccine refusers. They aren't going to suddenly take the vaccine.
Why do you seem so convinced that the increase in the 18-54 group is down to the older members of that group who have refused vaccination? We haven’t seen that in the older groups, and we know that the increase in cases is overwhelmingly in younger people - who have never been invulnerable. We’ve had considerable numbers of younger people hospitalised before; why would they not be hospitalised now? They’re significantly less likely to be hospitalised, but that’s not the same as “will not be hospitalised”.
The reduction in the ratio of hospitalisations to cases and the spiralling cases in the youngest adults is exactly what we’d see if they were the primary source of the hospitalisations. Given that the majority of cases is in the under-54s now (unlike before), unless vaccine refusal is hugely different between 45-55 and 55-65, it seems to be the more unlikely option that they’re all antivaxxers.
Andy for the past 15 months there was a small number of young people being hospitalised and almost none dying.
Why is this changing? Delta?
The PHE data confirms that anti vax tendency is startlingly higher in 45-55 than 55-65. For example using ONS, 45-49 have uptake of 84.4% and 60-64 have 99.5%.
There’s unlikely to be too much to a timing lag at this point for 45-49 year olds, uptake only increased by 0.6% in the past week.
99.5% of 60-69 Year olds vaccinated? are you sure, that seems a bit high to me.
No, it’s of 60-64 year olds. 65-69 is a little lower at 95.0%.
One in 20 of those currently getting infected end up in hospital. That's a massive proportion. They are mostly fairly young, now (because the jabs are doing their magic). Hospitalisations on that scale are not something the government can simply ignore.
This is not now about protecting oldies. It's about protecting the as-yet unvaccinated (and the NHS from overload, again).
That's completely fucking useless without context though, how many of those are unvaxxed by choice? What does 4 weeks buy us if they are vaccine refusers. They aren't going to suddenly take the vaccine.
Why do you seem so convinced that the increase in the 18-54 group is down to the older members of that group who have refused vaccination? We haven’t seen that in the older groups, and we know that the increase in cases is overwhelmingly in younger people - who have never been invulnerable. We’ve had considerable numbers of younger people hospitalised before; why would they not be hospitalised now? They’re significantly less likely to be hospitalised, but that’s not the same as “will not be hospitalised”.
The reduction in the ratio of hospitalisations to cases and the spiralling cases in the youngest adults is exactly what we’d see if they were the primary source of the hospitalisations. Given that the majority of cases is in the under-54s now (unlike before), unless vaccine refusal is hugely different between 45-55 and 55-65, it seems to be the more unlikely option that they’re all antivaxxers.
Andy for the past 15 months there was a small number of young people being hospitalised and almost none dying.
Why is this changing? Delta?
The PHE data confirms that anti vax tendency is startlingly higher in 45-55 than 55-65. For example using ONS, 45-49 have uptake of 84.4% and 60-64 have 99.5%.
There’s unlikely to be too much to a timing lag at this point for 45-49 year olds, uptake only increased by 0.6% in the past week.
But what about in waves one and two? Very few young casualties. So why would that change now?
Delta deadlier.
Not quite - it's seemingly more likely to result in hospital admission (and hospital care) than the previous variants.
On the upside hospital stays are shorter than for older patients.
One in 20 of those currently getting infected end up in hospital. That's a massive proportion. They are mostly fairly young, now (because the jabs are doing their magic). Hospitalisations on that scale are not something the government can simply ignore.
This is not now about protecting oldies. It's about protecting the as-yet unvaccinated (and the NHS from overload, again).
That's completely fucking useless without context though, how many of those are unvaxxed by choice? What does 4 weeks buy us if they are vaccine refusers. They aren't going to suddenly take the vaccine.
Why do you seem so convinced that the increase in the 18-54 group is down to the older members of that group who have refused vaccination? We haven’t seen that in the older groups, and we know that the increase in cases is overwhelmingly in younger people - who have never been invulnerable. We’ve had considerable numbers of younger people hospitalised before; why would they not be hospitalised now? They’re significantly less likely to be hospitalised, but that’s not the same as “will not be hospitalised”.
The reduction in the ratio of hospitalisations to cases and the spiralling cases in the youngest adults is exactly what we’d see if they were the primary source of the hospitalisations. Given that the majority of cases is in the under-54s now (unlike before), unless vaccine refusal is hugely different between 45-55 and 55-65, it seems to be the more unlikely option that they’re all antivaxxers.
Andy for the past 15 months there was a small number of young people being hospitalised and almost none dying.
Why is this changing? Delta?
The PHE data confirms that anti vax tendency is startlingly higher in 45-55 than 55-65. For example using ONS, 45-49 have uptake of 84.4% and 60-64 have 99.5%.
There’s unlikely to be too much to a timing lag at this point for 45-49 year olds, uptake only increased by 0.6% in the past week.
But what about in waves one and two? Very few young casualties. So why would that change now?
I don’t think it will, that is exactly my point. Andy seems to be saying that the new variant is causing noise in the hospital stats because the very youngest adults not yet offered a vaccine are all catching it. I doubt that. People talk of the invincibility of youth. But that’s almost certainly not the problem. It’s the middle aged, who are fatter and older than they think are but still think they’re young and invincible. And who then walk around boasting about how they are too tough / libertarian / busy to get vaccinated.
TSE’s point is bang on.
Describes a friend of mine perfectly. 59 years old. Huge guy, six foot 5, hefty too.
Refused his 2nd jab because he was hungover and decided to skip. ‘It won’t kill me now’
He’s now looked at the dose data and Delta and hastily rebooked his 2nd dose. But for the next four weeks he is at significant and avoidable risk
Does anyone believe him? He's a bushitter and liar and when the scientists start banging the drum in three weeks for a further delay he'll give in again and we're stuck in this phase until 2022.
Yes, it will be blurred into the autumn, then extended into next year. It won't ever go away now
It's just a question of whether we have the guts to accept an elevated level of risk, or we cower away
One in 20 of those currently getting infected end up in hospital. That's a massive proportion. They are mostly fairly young, now (because the jabs are doing their magic). Hospitalisations on that scale are not something the government can simply ignore.
This is not now about protecting oldies. It's about protecting the as-yet unvaccinated (and the NHS from overload, again).
That's completely fucking useless without context though, how many of those are unvaxxed by choice? What does 4 weeks buy us if they are vaccine refusers. They aren't going to suddenly take the vaccine.
Why do you seem so convinced that the increase in the 18-54 group is down to the older members of that group who have refused vaccination? We haven’t seen that in the older groups, and we know that the increase in cases is overwhelmingly in younger people - who have never been invulnerable. We’ve had considerable numbers of younger people hospitalised before; why would they not be hospitalised now? They’re significantly less likely to be hospitalised, but that’s not the same as “will not be hospitalised”.
The reduction in the ratio of hospitalisations to cases and the spiralling cases in the youngest adults is exactly what we’d see if they were the primary source of the hospitalisations. Given that the majority of cases is in the under-54s now (unlike before), unless vaccine refusal is hugely different between 45-55 and 55-65, it seems to be the more unlikely option that they’re all antivaxxers.
Andy for the past 15 months there was a small number of young people being hospitalised and almost none dying.
Why is this changing? Delta?
The PHE data confirms that anti vax tendency is startlingly higher in 45-55 than 55-65. For example using ONS, 45-49 have uptake of 84.4% and 60-64 have 99.5%.
There’s unlikely to be too much to a timing lag at this point for 45-49 year olds, uptake only increased by 0.6% in the past week.
The concern for younger population is more long covid isn’t it?
Some statto will have said keep the people paying as they earn working because they are paying for everything?
I think if you go and speak to a bunch of 20 somethings right now and ask what the biggest problem / risk they are facing in life, the threat of long covid is a long way down the list.
Fair enough in their mind. But long covid as threat to economy and tax income?
I would suggest not even a blip on the chart compared to the damage being done right now by continued lockdown.
In the theatre industry alone it is 290,000 people out of work. In Live Music another 35,000.
Even though what you describe is something we can switch on, long covid not something we can switch off? But will long covid numbers amount to more than a blip in this sense.
Yeah. I tend to agree with you Richard, as with nearly all your posts.
Johnson can’t be confident the extensions won’t be retained beyond July 19th, if he can’t properly articulate the reasons why the extensions aren’t being lifted now.
I think Johnson's whole position is now set on July 19, and if he backs out on that he needs to go or be removed.
Steve Baker needs to start getting the letters ready and building alliances to replace Boris from now. Get all the letter ready and put Boris on notice that the 19th is it, any further delay will result in his ritual sacrifice by the regicidal wing of the party.
The Tory party is primarily about winning, not any particular set of beliefs - as long as you think of them as standing for anything in particular, you risk disappointment. Johnson calculates, correctly, that many of those who are outraged will not vote Labour or LibDem (would you really, in a by-election tomorrow?), and as long as he's 10 points ahead the party will be absolutely fine with him.
I know plenty of older people who have been vaxxed but are wary of a full reopening as it would increase their chances of running into people like you who have chosen not to get vaccinated. Wake up. It’s your f****** fault as much as anyone’s. Unless you have been vaccinated, in my book you lose any right whatsoever to criticise the government for keeping restrictions. And I say this as someone who is sitting here livid with what the government is doing and has written (again) to my MP imploring him to vote against the government.
They can ensure the risk is zero by staying in their homes, social distancing and wearing masks or ensuring they only meet people outside their bubble in the open air. That's their choice.
Well I’ll tell you what I’d do instead. Id have the army pin you down at gunpoint with a needle. And if necessary inject you with AZN into your eyeball. Because while there’s a big body of unvaccinated people out there who are vulnerable to hospitalisation from covid, normal service will not resume in the healthcare sector. If you don’t like it, you’ve got a month to find somewhere else to call home.
FFS Moonshine many other governments are unlocking with much lower levels of vaccination. Its almost like NOT being vaccinated is more a guarantee of freedom that being vaccinated.
It is our government that is devaluing your vaccination currency, not me.
The BMA said this morning no other Country in Europe was unlocking or near to
"Museums, theaters, cinemas and a wide range of other venues can reopen across The Netherlands from June 5, Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced late Friday.
"This is actually the end of the lockdown," he told a news conference.
Restaurants will be allowed to offer indoor dining again and opening hours can be extended until 10pm. The Dutch will also be allowed to invite up to four people to their homes instead of two.
However, employees should still go to workplaces as little as possible, for the time being. "We're not there yet," Rutte cautioned.
A strict lockdown has been in place since mid-December.
Rutte predicted the vaccination campaign will bring more improvements , although the summer will not yet be "completely normal." The government is still warning that travelling entails risks.
If the number of infections and hospitalizations continue to move in the right direction, more restrictions will be relaxed from June 30, Rutte added.
Citizens will then be allowed to host up to eight people in their homes and restaurants and bars will be permitted to stay open until midnight."
It does seem that we're frequently describing our own remaining restrictions as "lockdown" whilst other countries continuing to follow remaining restrictions are "out of lockdown"
I think the term has been hopelessly eroded. I mean, I went to the cinema weeks ago. I've eaten out in restaurants indoors and gone to pubs frequently. And been able to go indoors with more than four people.
A good point. Lockdown = the Stay At Home order plus most things closed.
Anybody describing this current scenario here as us being "locked down", I just switch off and disregard the rest of the comment.
I agree. But I think that "lockdown" is sometimes used lazily to mean government constraints.
Yes, that's true. But I more meant the actual exact phrase that we are "locked down". That's a teeth grinder for me.
Anyway, look, your "set a precedent" concern. I think not - but if July 19th doesn't happen, as stated earlier, I'll be decamping to your side of the argument, because it would mean the calculus between liberty and security has been warped. That's not the case right now imo. This delay has just enough rationale for me (albeit I'm disappointed about it).
And for you and the other posters on here saying "Oh fuck, this is going on forever, the scientists have got us by the balls and won't let go", I have an offer. I think you're all overwrought and wrong. So I'll give EVENS - a straight 50/50 - on July 19th being delayed. If that's what you think is going to happen - Rook, Max, Leon, Rotten, Cycle, Noneof, all you guys - it's got to be the bet of the century.
So hit me!
Nightclubs allowed to open at full capacity without social distancing on the 20th July?
Whatever step 4 is currently defined as.
Its vague and not bet-able imo, its just a hope, that will not be met. I can certainly foresee him removing some restrictions and claiming to have done step 4 but not remove all legal restrictions.
"Social contact By Step 4 which will take place no earlier than 21 June, the government hopes to be in a position to remove all legal limits on social contact.
Business, activities and events We hope to reopen remaining premises, including nightclubs, and ease the restrictions on large events and performances that apply in Step 3. This will be subject to the results of a scientific Events Research Programme to test the outcome of certain pilot events through the spring and summer, where we will trial the use of testing and other techniques to cut the risk of infection. The same Events Research Programme will guide decisions on whether all limits can be removed on weddings and other life events."
'If you don't get vaccinated as soon as possible then you're going to die, we're not going lockdown for you antivaxxer fuckers again after the 19th of July,'
To which I would add, like Leon, that they should say to everyone else: your vaccine passport is your price for everything else in your life being free.
It's a very very small price to pay.
Bollocks.
Just let people live their lives. I don't need a nanny state scanning a QR code telling me how to live my life, just lift lockdown and let us choose.
A vaxport allows you to do all of that. You sacrifice one freedom, allowing HMG to know where you are, in return for so many more freedoms, and a liberated economy. Everything could open up to the vaxporters. Theeatres, clubs, bars where you can stand!
Israel did it, and we all admired how well they deconfined. We have to copy. It's the same as ID cards in the war. We got rid of them after the war (eventually)
I wouldn't mind vaccine passports as long as paper certificates were allowed as well as apps, because some of us don't entirely trust electronic methods of tracking people.
Why not just make them voluntary, FFS?
If you want a vaxport here it is. Take it. If bars and clubs and theatres want to open up, on the basis they only accept vaxport holders, that’s up to them. Everyone is free to choose. Many will say YES
Suddenly loads more places open up, the economy recovers quicker, millions get their usual lives back. Plus there is now huge pressure on the antivaxxers. Get vaxed or you can’t have the vaxport. Tough shit
Win win for everyone
How hard is this?
Domestic vaxports aren't not happening because of liberty. It's because it's too much faff for us to implement a regime like that.
'If you don't get vaccinated as soon as possible then you're going to die, we're not going lockdown for you antivaxxer fuckers again after the 19th of July,'
To which I would add, like Leon, that they should say to everyone else: your vaccine passport is your price for everything else in your life being free.
It's a very very small price to pay.
Bollocks.
Just let people live their lives. I don't need a nanny state scanning a QR code telling me how to live my life, just lift lockdown and let us choose.
A vaxport allows you to do all of that. You sacrifice one freedom, allowing HMG to know where you are, in return for so many more freedoms, and a liberated economy. Everything could open up to the vaxporters. Theeatres, clubs, bars where you can stand!
Israel did it, and we all admired how well they deconfined. We have to copy. It's the same as ID cards in the war. We got rid of them after the war (eventually)
I wouldn't mind vaccine passports as long as paper certificates were allowed as well as apps, because some of us don't entirely trust electronic methods of tracking people.
Why not just make them voluntary, FFS?
If you want a vaxport here it is. Take it. If bars and clubs and theatres want to open up, on the basis they only accept vaxport holders, that’s up to them. Everyone is free to choose. Many will say YES
Suddenly loads more places open up, the economy recovers quicker, millions get their usual lives back. Plus there is now huge pressure on the antivaxxers. Get vaxed or you can’t have the vaxport. Tough shit
Win win for everyone
How hard is this?
No to a biosecurity state.
Discriminatory, give too much power to the state which I fundamentally distrust, and most importantly, unnecessary.
It was all entirely predictable: 1. Government hides behind the scientists when its bad news, sweeps aside the scientists to claim the credit when its good news 2. Shagger hooked on good headlines and frit of making hard / unpopular decisions. Hence the FREEDOM DAY announcement which was always stupid 3. They honestly don't know when Freedom Day now is, but know enough people have decided to fuck it off and enough have seen "shortage of staff" headlines to cancel furlough and thus drive businesses under 4. They also know that the more they fuck up the more people vote for them. So there is zero motive in providing us with good governance as many of you now demand
People get what they vote for. And in the locals people went out and expressed their displeasure in the government by voting Tory. Suck It Up.
Johnson can’t be confident the extensions won’t be retained beyond July 19th, if he can’t properly articulate the reasons why the extensions aren’t being lifted now.
I think Johnson's whole position is now set on July 19, and if he backs out on that he needs to go or be removed.
Steve Baker needs to start getting the letters ready and building alliances to replace Boris from now. Get all the letter ready and put Boris on notice that the 19th is it, any further delay will result in his ritual sacrifice by the regicidal wing of the party.
The Tory party is primarily about winning, not any particular set of beliefs - as long as you think of them as standing for anything in particular, you risk disappointment. Johnson calculates, correctly, that many of those who are outraged will not vote Labour or LibDem (would you really, in a by-election tomorrow?), and as long as he's 10 points ahead the party will be absolutely fine with him.
Today's Tory party.
What are Labour for atm, that said? A lot of guff from SKS this morning on LBC.
It used to be that they weren't the Tories. But that distinction has evaporated.
"I fear that Brits are losing the knack of freedom. Not all of us. Many of us have been gleefully exercising the few freedoms returned to us by the government last month. We’ve been in pubs, in work, at football matches, mingling in a way that was illegal for so much of the past year. But there is unquestionably a sense of trepidation across the land. Do we really want to rush back to the free life, people ask? Maybe we should stay indoors a little longer, to dodge those scary variants. Perhaps lockdown wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe it was good for us.
To my mind, this anxiety about the restoration of liberty, about getting back to the push and shove and autonomy of the free life, is the most worrying thing in the UK right now. It scares me far more than the Delta variant. Sure, we have to keep on top of the variants. Keep studying them, keep ensuring our vaccines can take them down. But that is essentially a technical endeavour. The turn against freedom is something else entirely. It speaks to a growing cultural rejection of the messiness of liberty and to a preference for the easy, ordered, soulless routine of the ‘safe space’. There’s no vaccine for this."
Vaccine Passports would have solved much of this. Forcing people to take the jab if they want to function
This fucking spineless government. Grrrrr
The big mistake was not stopping flights from India immediately.
The Indian variant has scuppered the end of lockdown and pretty much squandered the advantages we gained from being ahead of the game on vaccinations yet Boris sails on politically undamaged despite the fact that the blame for all that sits firmly on his shoulders after his decision to delay adding India to the red list for 3 weeks.
It should be enough to finish him politically but it won't be because his fans don't actually seem to care what he does. It does not bode well for the next few years.
Shouldn't we expect another new variant before then, from an evolutionary point of view?
Possibly more than 1.
I am seriously ambivalent about this. On the one hand I feel that this is an inevitable consequence of the screwups in vaccination over the last month. On the other I think will it really be better in a month? If not, why not now?
There comes a point when we simply cannot pretend that governments can protect us from this virus, not even competent ones, let alone ours. Vaccines give the best protection we can hope for. Its not 100% and many will still become ill and a few unlucky ones will die but that's life. We need to get on. Whether that point is 21st June or 19th July probably doesn't matter hugely in the grand scheme of things but enough is definitely enough.
'If you don't get vaccinated as soon as possible then you're going to die, we're not going lockdown for you antivaxxer fuckers again after the 19th of July,'
To which I would add, like Leon, that they should say to everyone else: your vaccine passport is your price for everything else in your life being free.
It's a very very small price to pay.
Bollocks.
Just let people live their lives. I don't need a nanny state scanning a QR code telling me how to live my life, just lift lockdown and let us choose.
A vaxport allows you to do all of that. You sacrifice one freedom, allowing HMG to know where you are, in return for so many more freedoms, and a liberated economy. Everything could open up to the vaxporters. Theeatres, clubs, bars where you can stand!
Israel did it, and we all admired how well they deconfined. We have to copy. It's the same as ID cards in the war. We got rid of them after the war (eventually)
I wouldn't mind vaccine passports as long as paper certificates were allowed as well as apps, because some of us don't entirely trust electronic methods of tracking people.
Why not just make them voluntary, FFS?
If you want a vaxport here it is. Take it. If bars and clubs and theatres want to open up, on the basis they only accept vaxport holders, that’s up to them. Everyone is free to choose. Many will say YES
Suddenly loads more places open up, the economy recovers quicker, millions get their usual lives back. Plus there is now huge pressure on the antivaxxers. Get vaxed or you can’t have the vaxport. Tough shit
Win win for everyone
How hard is this?
Domestic vaxports aren't not happening because of liberty. It's because it's too much faff for us to implement a regime like that.
Utterly pathetic. We built a vaccine and a vaccine industry from scratch in 9 months. We can offer a QR code and/or a piece of card to anyone that wants it
I already HAVE my proven vax status stored on my iPhone, in the NHS app. It’s already there: use it
Johnson can’t be confident the extensions won’t be retained beyond July 19th, if he can’t properly articulate the reasons why the extensions aren’t being lifted now.
I think Johnson's whole position is now set on July 19, and if he backs out on that he needs to go or be removed.
Steve Baker needs to start getting the letters ready and building alliances to replace Boris from now. Get all the letter ready and put Boris on notice that the 19th is it, any further delay will result in his ritual sacrifice by the regicidal wing of the party.
The Tory party is primarily about winning, not any particular set of beliefs - as long as you think of them as standing for anything in particular, you risk disappointment. Johnson calculates, correctly, that many of those who are outraged will not vote Labour or LibDem (would you really, in a by-election tomorrow?), and as long as he's 10 points ahead the party will be absolutely fine with him.
David Cameron lasted just over a year after winning the 2015 election. The idea that Tory MPs care only about winning is rubbish.
Johnson can’t be confident the extensions won’t be retained beyond July 19th, if he can’t properly articulate the reasons why the extensions aren’t being lifted now.
I think Johnson's whole position is now set on July 19, and if he backs out on that he needs to go or be removed.
Steve Baker needs to start getting the letters ready and building alliances to replace Boris from now. Get all the letter ready and put Boris on notice that the 19th is it, any further delay will result in his ritual sacrifice by the regicidal wing of the party.
The Tory party is primarily about winning, not any particular set of beliefs - as long as you think of them as standing for anything in particular, you risk disappointment. Johnson calculates, correctly, that many of those who are outraged will not vote Labour or LibDem (would you really, in a by-election tomorrow?), and as long as he's 10 points ahead the party will be absolutely fine with him.
David Cameron lasted just over a year after winning the 2015 election. The idea that Tory MPs care only about winning is rubbish.
"I fear that Brits are losing the knack of freedom. Not all of us. Many of us have been gleefully exercising the few freedoms returned to us by the government last month. We’ve been in pubs, in work, at football matches, mingling in a way that was illegal for so much of the past year. But there is unquestionably a sense of trepidation across the land. Do we really want to rush back to the free life, people ask? Maybe we should stay indoors a little longer, to dodge those scary variants. Perhaps lockdown wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe it was good for us.
To my mind, this anxiety about the restoration of liberty, about getting back to the push and shove and autonomy of the free life, is the most worrying thing in the UK right now. It scares me far more than the Delta variant. Sure, we have to keep on top of the variants. Keep studying them, keep ensuring our vaccines can take them down. But that is essentially a technical endeavour. The turn against freedom is something else entirely. It speaks to a growing cultural rejection of the messiness of liberty and to a preference for the easy, ordered, soulless routine of the ‘safe space’. There’s no vaccine for this."
Although the wedding guests limit will be lifted provided social distancing can be maintained from June 21st, dancing at the reception will remain banned
Does anyone believe him? He's a bushitter and liar and when the scientists start banging the drum in three weeks for a further delay he'll give in again and we're stuck in this phase until 2022.
Yes, it will be blurred into the autumn, then extended into next year. It won't ever go away now
It's just a question of whether we have the guts to accept an elevated level of risk, or we cower away
Right, what countries are worth moving to?
Greece, Portugal, Thailand are on my list
Portugal in the lead so far.
Yes. In terms of pure beauty, Greece wins easily. And I love the simple but delicious food.
Portugal is a bit more practical but still lovely
A weird one but not keen on non latin alphabets! Quite restrictive.
Not if you learn them.
Of course, but it feels a lot more realistic to learn a new language with a familiar alphabet than learning both a language and their alphabet. Lots of moves abroad fail because of language so learning Portuguese would be favourable to learning Greek or Thai for me.
This is how the US State Department rates the difficulty of learning various European languages for a native English speaker.
They think we speak the same language as them?? And I thought our FO was useless.
Funny they could not even come up with a classification for the Celtic languages ...
I suppose they couldn't be bothered.
Interesting that German is classified as harder than French. You'd have thought with English being a Germanic language the reverse would be true. German at least sounds like words. French all slides into each other.
Cookie somehow managed an A at GCSE German but continues to be mystified how anyone could speak a language other than their mother tongue.
Does anyone believe him? He's a bushitter and liar and when the scientists start banging the drum in three weeks for a further delay he'll give in again and we're stuck in this phase until 2022.
Yes, it will be blurred into the autumn, then extended into next year. It won't ever go away now
It's just a question of whether we have the guts to accept an elevated level of risk, or we cower away
Right, what countries are worth moving to?
Greece, Portugal, Thailand are on my list
Portugal in the lead so far.
Yes. In terms of pure beauty, Greece wins easily. And I love the simple but delicious food.
Portugal is a bit more practical but still lovely
A weird one but not keen on non latin alphabets! Quite restrictive.
Not if you learn them.
Of course, but it feels a lot more realistic to learn a new language with a familiar alphabet than learning both a language and their alphabet. Lots of moves abroad fail because of language so learning Portuguese would be favourable to learning Greek or Thai for me.
This is how the US State Department rates the difficulty of learning various European languages for a native English speaker.
They think we speak the same language as them?? And I thought our FO was useless.
Funny they could not even come up with a classification for the Celtic languages ...
I suppose they couldn't be bothered.
Interesting that German is classified as harder than French. You'd have thought with English being a Germanic language the reverse would be true. German at least sounds like words. French all slides into each other.
Cookie somehow managed an A at GCSE German but continues to be mystified how anyone could speak a language other than their mother tongue.
German’s got three genders. At least with French you have a 50/50 chance of getting the right one.
Does anyone believe him? He's a bushitter and liar and when the scientists start banging the drum in three weeks for a further delay he'll give in again and we're stuck in this phase until 2022.
Yes, it will be blurred into the autumn, then extended into next year. It won't ever go away now
It's just a question of whether we have the guts to accept an elevated level of risk, or we cower away
Right, what countries are worth moving to?
Greece, Portugal, Thailand are on my list
Portugal in the lead so far.
Yes. In terms of pure beauty, Greece wins easily. And I love the simple but delicious food.
Portugal is a bit more practical but still lovely
A weird one but not keen on non latin alphabets! Quite restrictive.
Not if you learn them.
Of course, but it feels a lot more realistic to learn a new language with a familiar alphabet than learning both a language and their alphabet. Lots of moves abroad fail because of language so learning Portuguese would be favourable to learning Greek or Thai for me.
This is how the US State Department rates the difficulty of learning various European languages for a native English speaker.
They think we speak the same language as them?? And I thought our FO was useless.
Funny they could not even come up with a classification for the Celtic languages ...
I suppose they couldn't be bothered.
Interesting that German is classified as harder than French. You'd have thought with English being a Germanic language the reverse would be true. German at least sounds like words. French all slides into each other.
Cookie somehow managed an A at GCSE German but continues to be mystified how anyone could speak a language other than their mother tongue.
Immersion, preferably where no-one speaks your mother tongue. Took 6 weeks for me to learn creditable Spanish that way. Though that was 30 years ago, so it's more than a little rusty at this point.
It was all entirely predictable: 1. Government hides behind the scientists when its bad news, sweeps aside the scientists to claim the credit when its good news 2. Shagger hooked on good headlines and frit of making hard / unpopular decisions. Hence the FREEDOM DAY announcement which was always stupid 3. They honestly don't know when Freedom Day now is, but know enough people have decided to fuck it off and enough have seen "shortage of staff" headlines to cancel furlough and thus drive businesses under 4. They also know that the more they fuck up the more people vote for them. So there is zero motive in providing us with good governance as many of you now demand
People get what they vote for. And in the locals people went out and expressed their displeasure in the government by voting Tory. Suck It Up.
One in 20 of those currently getting infected end up in hospital. That's a massive proportion. They are mostly fairly young, now (because the jabs are doing their magic). Hospitalisations on that scale are not something the government can simply ignore.
This is not now about protecting oldies. It's about protecting the as-yet unvaccinated (and the NHS from overload, again).
That's completely fucking useless without context though, how many of those are unvaxxed by choice? What does 4 weeks buy us if they are vaccine refusers. They aren't going to suddenly take the vaccine.
Why do you seem so convinced that the increase in the 18-54 group is down to the older members of that group who have refused vaccination? We haven’t seen that in the older groups, and we know that the increase in cases is overwhelmingly in younger people - who have never been invulnerable. We’ve had considerable numbers of younger people hospitalised before; why would they not be hospitalised now? They’re significantly less likely to be hospitalised, but that’s not the same as “will not be hospitalised”.
The reduction in the ratio of hospitalisations to cases and the spiralling cases in the youngest adults is exactly what we’d see if they were the primary source of the hospitalisations. Given that the majority of cases is in the under-54s now (unlike before), unless vaccine refusal is hugely different between 45-55 and 55-65, it seems to be the more unlikely option that they’re all antivaxxers.
Andy for the past 15 months there was a small number of young people being hospitalised and almost none dying.
Why is this changing? Delta?
Have you looked at the figures for that? At the peak, around 20% of hospitalisations were 54 and under, with around 12% of cases hospitalised. Now, with a variant that’s about twice as likely to hospitalise those who catch it as before, we have 65-70% of hospitalisations being 54 and under, with just under 4% of cases being hospitalised.
A non-pant-pissing scientist now pulling the Government's rationale apart on Sky. Says the four week delay is something that the PM is entitled to make, but that he thinks it will come to look overcautious pretty soon.
Talking about Bolton, Blackburn, the hospital cases being fewer and less serious. Basically the arguments of those of us on the opening up faction on PB.
The "NHS needs all the capacity to catch up" argument is also shot down. The capacity needed for Covid will probably be needed for flu later in the year anyway: the NHS needs to maintain a rolling capacity for dealing with respiratory illness, regardless of what other illnesses it has to deal with.
Non-pant-pissing scientist sees little point in delay. Stalling and double-vaxxing younger people doesn't help much because (rather obviously) they're at very low risk of severe illness and death to begin with.
Bravo, Professor Robert Dingwall of NERVTAG! If only you were in the ascendancy, rather than the Susan Michie, gags to be worn forever, brigade, then we might be able to save ourselves many more ruined livelihoods and billions of pounds needlessly flushed down the toilet. But hey-ho, such is life, or at least what passes for it nowadays.
On Sky News? Perhaps they’re more worried about GB News than we thought!
Shouldn't we expect another new variant before then, from an evolutionary point of view?
Possibly more than 1.
I am seriously ambivalent about this. On the one hand I feel that this is an inevitable consequence of the screwups in vaccination over the last month. On the other I think will it really be better in a month? If not, why not now?
There comes a point when we simply cannot pretend that governments can protect us from this virus, not even competent ones, let alone ours. Vaccines give the best protection we can hope for. Its not 100% and many will still become ill and a few unlucky ones will die but that's life. We need to get on. Whether that point is 21st June or 19th July probably doesn't matter hugely in the grand scheme of things but enough is definitely enough.
If the alpha/beta/gamma/delta thing is to be believed, we've had four significant variants in a year and a bit, and none of them have evaded the vaccines so far.
Weight of vaccines will win this, but not quite yet.
Of course, in reality there is a massive difference between the contagion risk of eight double-vaxxed people meeting for a dinner party and eight unvaxxed youngsters meeting for whatever youngsters meet for. It is perverse that the regulations don't recognise this reality. How much will people assess this for themselves?
Reminder to those saying 'this doesn't affect people much', it is currently ILLEGAL to have a dinner party for 7 people, in YOUR OWN HOME.
Outrageous state overreach. We must NEVER allow this to happen again.
The thing is this is what happens during pandemics.
Did you know Mrs Thatcher, during the AIDS pandemic, passed the Public Health (Infectious Diseases) Regulations 1985?
This allowed the state to give you a compulsory medical examination, whether you wanted one or not.
It also allowed for you be detained if you didn't agree to the above or if the state thought you wouldn't act appropriately in trying to reduce the spread of infectious diseases.
Of course, in reality there is a massive difference between the contagion risk of eight double-vaxxed people meeting for a dinner party and eight unvaxxed youngsters meeting for whatever youngsters meet for. It is perverse that the regulations don't recognise this reality. How much will people assess this for themselves?
Of course, in reality there is a massive difference between the contagion risk of eight double-vaxxed people meeting for a dinner party and eight unvaxxed youngsters meeting for whatever youngsters meet for. It is perverse that the regulations don't recognise this reality. How much will people assess this for themselves?
Many people haven't been paying any attention such arbitrary rules for ages.
Good for them, I say. Stupid laws need and deserve to be laughed at.
Of course, in reality there is a massive difference between the contagion risk of eight double-vaxxed people meeting for a dinner party and eight unvaxxed youngsters meeting for whatever youngsters meet for. It is perverse that the regulations don't recognise this reality. How much will people assess this for themselves?
They already have.
All the way back in March so many people I knew went to see their mothers on Mothering Sunday but only if their mothers had been jabbed.
One in 20 of those currently getting infected end up in hospital. That's a massive proportion. They are mostly fairly young, now (because the jabs are doing their magic). Hospitalisations on that scale are not something the government can simply ignore.
This is not now about protecting oldies. It's about protecting the as-yet unvaccinated (and the NHS from overload, again).
That's completely fucking useless without context though, how many of those are unvaxxed by choice? What does 4 weeks buy us if they are vaccine refusers. They aren't going to suddenly take the vaccine.
Why do you seem so convinced that the increase in the 18-54 group is down to the older members of that group who have refused vaccination? We haven’t seen that in the older groups, and we know that the increase in cases is overwhelmingly in younger people - who have never been invulnerable. We’ve had considerable numbers of younger people hospitalised before; why would they not be hospitalised now? They’re significantly less likely to be hospitalised, but that’s not the same as “will not be hospitalised”.
The reduction in the ratio of hospitalisations to cases and the spiralling cases in the youngest adults is exactly what we’d see if they were the primary source of the hospitalisations. Given that the majority of cases is in the under-54s now (unlike before), unless vaccine refusal is hugely different between 45-55 and 55-65, it seems to be the more unlikely option that they’re all antivaxxers.
Andy for the past 15 months there was a small number of young people being hospitalised and almost none dying.
Why is this changing? Delta?
The PHE data confirms that anti vax tendency is startlingly higher in 45-55 than 55-65. For example using ONS, 45-49 have uptake of 84.4% and 60-64 have 99.5%.
There’s unlikely to be too much to a timing lag at this point for 45-49 year olds, uptake only increased by 0.6% in the past week.
… we have age 35-49 going from 68.3% to 76.2% to 84.8% in three weeks for first doses, with the latter being the most recent data. So, yes, that does look like timing lag and does not hint at a massive vax refusal difference.
Politico.eu - German Greens in deep ‘Scheisse’ after leader’s stumbles Expletive adds to doubts over Baerbock’s readiness for government
BERLIN — All she had to do was look in the camera, wave at the small audience and walk off the stage with a big smile that said “mission accomplished.” Instead, Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s Green candidate for chancellor, dropped an s-bomb.
“Scheisse!” she declared into her still-open microphone after delivering a 45-minute convention speech to party faithful Saturday. . . .
That beginner’s mistake was one of several to plague the 40-year-old candidate in recent weeks, sowing doubt over whether she’s really ready for prime time.
Just a few weeks ago, Baerbock led the field of the three leading candidates running to become chancellor. But in a poll last week, she trailed Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, who’s in first place, by 20 percentage points. . . . .
Baerbock, who was nominated to become the Green candidate in April, couldn’t have hoped for a better launch of her campaign.
Her face was on the cover of Germany’s biggest magazines. She was the get on the primetime talk shows that Germans watch obsessively. With the governing Christian Democrats tripping from scandal to screw-up and back again, the Greens looked like the adults in the room.
In some polls, the Greens even surpassed the long-dominant Christian Democrats, triggering speculation that Baerbock might even succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor. . . .
Much of the German media was euphoric in their initial coverage of Baerbock’s candidacy. . . . .
It’s no secret that German journalists (with a few prominent exceptions) skew to the left in their politics. Yet the preference many German reporters showed for Baerbock was so obvious that it triggered a backlash on social media. Much of Germany’s mainstream media has responded to the criticism of bias by casting a much more skeptical eye on the Greens and their candidate.
The best example of that phenomenon might be Der Spiegel. After declaring Baerbock “A Woman for All Seasons” on its cover in April, the news weekly featured her a few weeks later holding a wind-blown sunflower under the headline: “Welcome to Reality.”
For Baerbock, that reality has included uncomfortable scrutiny of her background.
Instead of focusing on how and why she wants to lead Germany, Baerbock has faced difficult questions in recent weeks about her failure to report ancillary income she received from her party.
Even more damaging, she has struggled to explain a series of “mistakes” on her official CV, which the party has been forced to repeatedly revise in recent weeks.
Though none of the inconsistencies rise to the level of outright fabrication, for the leader of a party that advertises itself as a model of transparency and integrity, it’s not a good look. . . .
One in 20 of those currently getting infected end up in hospital. That's a massive proportion. They are mostly fairly young, now (because the jabs are doing their magic). Hospitalisations on that scale are not something the government can simply ignore.
This is not now about protecting oldies. It's about protecting the as-yet unvaccinated (and the NHS from overload, again).
That's completely fucking useless without context though, how many of those are unvaxxed by choice? What does 4 weeks buy us if they are vaccine refusers. They aren't going to suddenly take the vaccine.
Is this the bit where it's revealed you've been chatting shite on here for weeks/months?
Fuck off. Honestly, if you want to stay locked in your house for the rest of you natural life do it. People like you are ruining this country. You're destroying the life chances of millions of under 30s and thousands of businesses with your permanent lockdown attitude. Busy body wanker.
Best-case scenario: Cases plateau, stage 4 is activated, last covid legal restrictions are annulled.
Worst-case scenario: Cases continue to increase (is this likely given what we have seen in Bolton, and with more vaccinations?) Or that variant of the Delta variant with the extra immune-escape mutation picks up. The twilight zone continues indefinitely.
Either way, I wish someone would nail Boris Johnson for failing to slow down the arrival of Delta from India. Huge, obvious failure.
Incidentally, the government continue to screw up in epic fashion over amateur choral singing.
It has now been confirmed that any choir that charges admission to its concerts is under the guidelines a professional choir.
Which is nearly all of them, apart from church choirs where the guidance didn’t apply anyway.
So actually, they have issued guidelines for a non-existent activity and caused a great deal of hassle along the way.
The DDCMS and Oliver Dowden appear to exist for one reason only - to make Gavin Williamson and the DfE look almost competent.
Do you have a link? I am trying to figure out whether it is possible to restart my amateur choir. Rehearsal venues look to be the main problem. I've been asked to sing in several pro concerts that were due to happen soon, but they didn't have any rehearsal other than on the day. (My voice is in bad shape, so I declined!)
Comments
Add in "inshallah" and you are sorted...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33278625/
There are many others.
Have you as a physician watched any talks by people other than PHE, NHS England, Whitty, Vallance or van Tam? They have a narrative to desperately maintain now although Whitty forgot what the party line was on 11 May 2020 and reverted to a period before 23 Mar 2020 when this was deemed not a 'high consequence infectious disease'.
Some statto will have said keep the people paying as they earn working because they are paying for everything?
You are claiming this is for major life threatening Covid.
Essentially, they became very concerned at cases rising quite so rapidly and thought full easing (nightclubs of unvaccinated 20 year olds) would cause that to accelerate faster. No one quite knows how bad hospitalisations or deaths will be as a result, but they feared it could get out of control.
Delaying 4 weeks means cases will be falling by the time they release things (as vaccines catch up, plus immunity via infection), plus it is timed to match summer holidays (additional downward pressure on infections) meaning things won't accelerate to the same extent.
It sounded like someone explaining how they wanted to ride the exit wave, rather than zero covid nonsense.
I still wish we were reopening next week, but I'm glad at least weddings can go ahead and reassured that they will go ahead with the 19 July reopening.
The equivalent of not pressing the accelerator but also not touching the brake.
But, it's now too late. As a result of the government failing to plan properly and failing to explain things, it's now no longer possible, so venues will have to stay closed to everyone, or operating on unviable numbers. It's a catastrophic blunder, one of many since 2019.
If ever there was a text book example of a power grab by the state in peacetime, this is it. Scare the country shitless, impose a whole load of news laws / restrictions "to keep us safe" and then move the goalposts so that we can't ever get back all the freedoms we've lost. Unfortunately, now they've got a taste for it, we will see this playbook used again and again ... and this from a so-called conservative government, ugh.
Climate change is next - you can already see the same tactics in play ... from project fear, to the cosy consensus of the mainstream media, to the ridiculing of dissenting voices and the shutting down of debate about any alternative approaches. Through COVID, the politicians (i.e. people who get a kick out of telling others how to live their lives) have stumbled upon how to force behavioural change across the population ... and they are not going to forget how to do that. We can expect to see unaccountable "Behavioural Psychologists" taking an even greater role in communications in the future because they have proved to be devastatingly effective.
TSE’s point is bang on.
In the theatre industry alone it is 290,000 people out of work. In Live Music another 35,000.
If you want a vaxport here it is. Take it. If bars and clubs and theatres want to open up, on the basis they only accept vaxport holders, that’s up to them. Everyone is free to choose. Many will say YES
Suddenly loads more places open up, the economy recovers quicker, millions get their usual lives back. Plus there is now huge pressure on the antivaxxers. Get vaxed or you can’t have the vaxport. Tough shit
Win win for everyone
How hard is this?
Daniel Kawczynski, who is 6ft 9in tall, was found to have acted in ‘threatening and intimidating manner’ towards two members of staff"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/06/14/uks-tallest-mp-claims-height-partially-contributed-losing-temper/
Cue updated models warning of half-a-million deaths by Christmas if we unlock. And so it's too dangerous, and we have to wait again.
The catastrophist wing of the scientific establishment will be scrabbling around for as many excuses to stall as possible, and they know they probably only have to get to some point in September before crappy weather starts to drive the case loads back up again, and allows the Autumn excuses (flu-Covid nexus crushing the NHS, waning immunity, urgent need for boosters) to take over and power us into a long Winter of restrictions.
Above all, there's a fundamental lack of trust in the Prime Minister's word in operation here. I mean, that obviously applies generally, but he does also have established form for ropey decision making and u-turns when it comes to the Plague. There's no particular reason to suppose that July 19th will be met.
The notion that this 'could save thousands of lives' means its not even a fraction of a flu season now that's being talked about.
Mind bogglingly good point.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/COVID-19-weekly-announced-vaccinations-10-June-2021.xlsx
On the upside hospital stays are shorter than for older patients.
Refused his 2nd jab because he was hungover and decided to skip. ‘It won’t kill me now’
He’s now looked at the dose data and Delta and hastily rebooked his 2nd dose. But for the next four weeks he is at significant and avoidable risk
Yeah. I tend to agree with you Richard, as with nearly all your posts.
"Social contact
By Step 4 which will take place no earlier than 21 June, the government hopes to be in a position to remove all legal limits on social contact.
Business, activities and events
We hope to reopen remaining premises, including nightclubs, and ease the restrictions on large events and performances that apply in Step 3. This will be subject to the results of a scientific Events Research Programme to test the outcome of certain pilot events through the spring and summer, where we will trial the use of testing and other techniques to cut the risk of infection. The same Events Research Programme will guide decisions on whether all limits can be removed on weddings and other life events."
Discriminatory, give too much power to the state which I fundamentally distrust, and most importantly, unnecessary.
1. Government hides behind the scientists when its bad news, sweeps aside the scientists to claim the credit when its good news
2. Shagger hooked on good headlines and frit of making hard / unpopular decisions. Hence the FREEDOM DAY announcement which was always stupid
3. They honestly don't know when Freedom Day now is, but know enough people have decided to fuck it off and enough have seen "shortage of staff" headlines to cancel furlough and thus drive businesses under
4. They also know that the more they fuck up the more people vote for them. So there is zero motive in providing us with good governance as many of you now demand
People get what they vote for. And in the locals people went out and expressed their displeasure in the government by voting Tory. Suck It Up.
What are Labour for atm, that said? A lot of guff from SKS this morning on LBC.
It used to be that they weren't the Tories. But that distinction has evaporated.
"I fear that Brits are losing the knack of freedom. Not all of us. Many of us have been gleefully exercising the few freedoms returned to us by the government last month. We’ve been in pubs, in work, at football matches, mingling in a way that was illegal for so much of the past year. But there is unquestionably a sense of trepidation across the land. Do we really want to rush back to the free life, people ask? Maybe we should stay indoors a little longer, to dodge those scary variants. Perhaps lockdown wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe it was good for us.
To my mind, this anxiety about the restoration of liberty, about getting back to the push and shove and autonomy of the free life, is the most worrying thing in the UK right now. It scares me far more than the Delta variant. Sure, we have to keep on top of the variants. Keep studying them, keep ensuring our vaccines can take them down. But that is essentially a technical endeavour. The turn against freedom is something else entirely. It speaks to a growing cultural rejection of the messiness of liberty and to a preference for the easy, ordered, soulless routine of the ‘safe space’. There’s no vaccine for this."
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/06/14/delaying-freedom-day-would-be-a-disaster/
It should be enough to finish him politically but it won't be because his fans don't actually seem to care what he does. It does not bode well for the next few years.
Outrageous state overreach. We must NEVER allow this to happen again.
I am seriously ambivalent about this. On the one hand I feel that this is an inevitable consequence of the screwups in vaccination over the last month. On the other I think will it really be better in a month? If not, why not now?
There comes a point when we simply cannot pretend that governments can protect us from this virus, not even competent ones, let alone ours. Vaccines give the best protection we can hope for. Its not 100% and many will still become ill and a few unlucky ones will die but that's life. We need to get on. Whether that point is 21st June or 19th July probably doesn't matter hugely in the grand scheme of things but enough is definitely enough.
I already HAVE my proven vax status stored on my iPhone, in the NHS app. It’s already there: use it
So the part vaxxed can stay clear and the fully vaxxed, refuseniks and youngsters can decide for themselves.
What people really mean is “the rules don’t affect me”.
Interesting that German is classified as harder than French. You'd have thought with English being a Germanic language the reverse would be true. German at least sounds like words. French all slides into each other.
Cookie somehow managed an A at GCSE German but continues to be mystified how anyone could speak a language other than their mother tongue.
Meanwhile normal people are having to work out permutations of who can and can't meet at large family gatherings.
At the peak, around 20% of hospitalisations were 54 and under, with around 12% of cases hospitalised.
Now, with a variant that’s about twice as likely to hospitalise those who catch it as before, we have 65-70% of hospitalisations being 54 and under, with just under 4% of cases being hospitalised.
What does that tell you?
Or of course we applaud it.
Without comment.
Weight of vaccines will win this, but not quite yet.
No way will he have that much hair in 2051.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9685169/Newlywed-Boris-Johnson-axes-30-guest-wedding-cap-BANS-dancing.html
Not sure that’s the headline he wanted.
Did you know Mrs Thatcher, during the AIDS pandemic, passed the Public Health (Infectious Diseases) Regulations 1985?
This allowed the state to give you a compulsory medical examination, whether you wanted one or not.
It also allowed for you be detained if you didn't agree to the above or if the state thought you wouldn't act appropriately in trying to reduce the spread of infectious diseases.
Just like they are at present.
Many people haven't been paying any attention such arbitrary rules for ages.
Good for them, I say. Stupid laws need and deserve to be laughed at.
But that doesn't justify extending them.
All the way back in March so many people I knew went to see their mothers on Mothering Sunday but only if their mothers had been jabbed.
… we have age 35-49 going from 68.3% to 76.2% to 84.8% in three weeks for first doses, with the latter being the most recent data.
So, yes, that does look like timing lag and does not hint at a massive vax refusal difference.
It has now been confirmed that any choir that charges admission to its concerts is under the guidelines a professional choir.
Which is nearly all of them, apart from church choirs where the guidance didn’t apply anyway.
So actually, they have issued guidelines for a non-existent activity and caused a great deal of hassle along the way.
The DDCMS and Oliver Dowden appear to exist for one reason only - to make Gavin Williamson and the DfE look almost competent.
Expletive adds to doubts over Baerbock’s readiness for government
BERLIN — All she had to do was look in the camera, wave at the small audience and walk off the stage with a big smile that said “mission accomplished.” Instead, Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s Green candidate for chancellor, dropped an s-bomb.
“Scheisse!” she declared into her still-open microphone after delivering a 45-minute convention speech to party faithful Saturday. . . .
That beginner’s mistake was one of several to plague the 40-year-old candidate in recent weeks, sowing doubt over whether she’s really ready for prime time.
Just a few weeks ago, Baerbock led the field of the three leading candidates running to become chancellor. But in a poll last week, she trailed Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, who’s in first place, by 20 percentage points. . . . .
Baerbock, who was nominated to become the Green candidate in April, couldn’t have hoped for a better launch of her campaign.
Her face was on the cover of Germany’s biggest magazines. She was the get on the primetime talk shows that Germans watch obsessively. With the governing Christian Democrats tripping from scandal to screw-up and back again, the Greens looked like the adults in the room.
In some polls, the Greens even surpassed the long-dominant Christian Democrats, triggering speculation that Baerbock might even succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor. . . .
Much of the German media was euphoric in their initial coverage of Baerbock’s candidacy. . . . .
It’s no secret that German journalists (with a few prominent exceptions) skew to the left in their politics. Yet the preference many German reporters showed for Baerbock was so obvious that it triggered a backlash on social media. Much of Germany’s mainstream media has responded to the criticism of bias by casting a much more skeptical eye on the Greens and their candidate.
The best example of that phenomenon might be Der Spiegel. After declaring Baerbock “A Woman for All Seasons” on its cover in April, the news weekly featured her a few weeks later holding a wind-blown sunflower under the headline: “Welcome to Reality.”
For Baerbock, that reality has included uncomfortable scrutiny of her background.
Instead of focusing on how and why she wants to lead Germany, Baerbock has faced difficult questions in recent weeks about her failure to report ancillary income she received from her party.
Even more damaging, she has struggled to explain a series of “mistakes” on her official CV, which the party has been forced to repeatedly revise in recent weeks.
Though none of the inconsistencies rise to the level of outright fabrication, for the leader of a party that advertises itself as a model of transparency and integrity, it’s not a good look. . . .
Worst-case scenario: Cases continue to increase (is this likely given what we have seen in Bolton, and with more vaccinations?) Or that variant of the Delta variant with the extra immune-escape mutation picks up. The twilight zone continues indefinitely.
Either way, I wish someone would nail Boris Johnson for failing to slow down the arrival of Delta from India. Huge, obvious failure.
--AS