Focusing purely on this country, what has the opposition actually argued for in the pandemic? Basically all they've done is said they'd have done things "better". They'd have made test and trace better, they'd have had a better vaccine rollout, they'd have had a better furlough scheme, they'd have had better border controls, they'd have made better decisions based on "the science". It's just cheap talk. I'm not sure at any point they've ever really contributed much original to the whole handling of the pandemic, or even explained how those things could actually have been done better, just that they ought to have been.
Hey, maybe they really would have just done everything better, or maybe it'd have just been exactly the same but with different personalities. We'll never know.
The opposition has been consistently shit, and has made essentially no useful contributions at all. I think given the job the opposition would have actually been worse than the Tories, because Boris doesn't do micro-managing or follow any doctrine, so to an extent his lack of principles and laziness has at least enabled competent people to get on with the job without the PM messing them around. I think any opposition government would have interfered quite a bit more.
you, Pirate Britain Libertarian Right Wing Populists. You deserve a proper talking down to on the politics and science of this.
Where the government are this evening is ignorant and wrong. Where Starmer and Labour are this evening is spot on. Clear pandemic water between the two main party’s now. The government are no longer following science at all, this simply about the politics of over promising in the first place and having too many looneys on the back benches.
Here’s scientific fact for you, we need masks and other measures to protect the vaccines, just allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines. That is science fact.
It’s totally irresponsible of government not to lead on mask wearing, and to open up so quickly. They are simply sloping shoulders onto business how to protect employees and customers, not taking the lead. The government are murdering the still much needed test and trace and isolating, and that is disgraceful at this stage.
"allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines"
We will also surely see employers increasing worried by security aspects of WFH and imposing more restrictions.
The client for the project I am working on at the moment wanted to install some app on my phone that would have allowed them to remotely restore it to factory defaults. Ostensibly this was to be able to delete company data in case I lost it, but no way I was giving their IT department that power over my private property.
So now I don't see their teams messages or emails on my phone.
Institutions that try to take everything online will eventually be destroyed by an Amazon College-type thing that provides a superior service at a fraction of the price. A supremely short-sighted approach.
Now that you raise the possibility I'm somewhat surprised this hasn't already happened.
I think there's a widely-held view that online courses or online degrees aren't as good as traditional ones where you go to the lecture hall day in day out. If the traditional universities eschew lectures and do everything online, that view will no longer hold.
Learning at university is about more than just having a person standing at the front of a room speaking and letting you take notes. Hell, if that's all it is they might as well pre-record the whole course at the start of the year and then get rid of all the staff from then on!
There is the interaction with fellow students, the post lecture discussions, the peer to peer learning where things aren't understood. How do you get all that if you're just sat in your room for 90% of the time getting stuff through a video on a laptop?
If universities keep online lectures after the end of the pandemic eventually the government will have to stop them through the regulators, such as the Office for Students. Public money is being spent on higher education, and students must get the full benefit of the education that they are paying for. The government has already intervened to protect freedom of speech in universities. I think the universities are making a mistake if they think that they can do this.
Also students will work out which universities are keeping lectures online, and will avoid them.
The general standard of food in France is in my experience far better than the general standard in Italy. There is a lot of overpriced trash in Italian cities. France is expensive but there are fewer tourist traps blocking up entire streets with rubbish.
I think anyone who goes to Italy should know not to eat on the main street or near any tourist place.
Sure, and I do. Absolutely love Italy and eat well there. It’s great. But the tendency to fill entire districts of cities with gastrotrash means *on aggregate* French food is better.
I wonder if there any many unvaccinated people who simply didn't realise that a large exit wave would occur - or at least not of this size - and regret their decision?
I fully support the full re-opening (and did predict it would happen 3 weeks ago!), but if I was over 50 with no vaccine I'd be pretty worried in a few weeks' time when case numbers hit the ceiling.
They can of course just request to be vaccinated now.
For over-50s, are we not now somewhere towards 95% fully vaccinated, so this does not look like a huge issue - perhaps unable-to-be-vaccinated people aside.
Focusing purely on this country, what has the opposition actually argued for in the pandemic? Basically all they've done is said they'd have done things "better". They'd have made test and trace better, they'd have had a better vaccine rollout, they'd have had a better furlough scheme, they'd have had better border controls, they'd have made better decisions based on "the science". It's just cheap talk. I'm not sure at any point they've ever really contributed much original to the whole handling of the pandemic, or even explained how those things could actually have been done better, just that they ought to have been.
Hey, maybe they really would have just done everything better, or maybe it'd have just been exactly the same but with different personalities. We'll never know.
The opposition has been consistently shit, and has made essentially no useful contributions at all. I think given the job the opposition would have actually been worse than the Tories, because Boris doesn't do micro-managing or follow any doctrine, so to an extent his lack of principles and laziness has at least enabled competent people to get on with the job without the PM messing them around. I think any opposition government would have interfered quite a bit more.
Dominic Cummings did interfere more than somewhat. By his telling, that was crucial.
Spanish food is fantastic. It is absolutely light years ahead of French food and probably about a mile ahead of Italian. It is the best food in the western world at the moment
Italian food is incredible, very tough to beat if you're able to avoid eating pizza and pasta all the time. Calabrian food is, IMO, the best Europe has got to offer.
Calabrian food is indeed superb. As is the food in Trentino, up in the half German north. Overall I’d say Spanish food wins out by a margin tho. At the moment
It is way too easy to eat badly in Italy. Rome, Venice, Milan, Florence, too often it is mediocre. It’s partly tourism of course. It’s like expecting to eat well in Leicester square. Venice is particularly ridiculous. You have to pay £100 a head to get a reasonable meal
Yet much of Spain avoids this even though it is often hugely touristy. Like here, in puerto de Soller. Tons of tourists yet the food is superb (the guide books promised me it would be, and they were right)
Mysterious
One of the best meals I ever had was a simple Caprese Salad at Le Grottelle in Capri
On the great foodie debate: yes, Spanish can be superb. But there are also some truly dire tourist-trap restaurants in Spain.
If you can afford it, London can be excellent. Latest find: Sola Soho. Mediterranean/Californian. A real treat.
That looks excellent, will book it for our wedding anniversary next month!
Agreed. I’d never heard of it, but just checked it out and it looks superb. Bookmarked. Thanks to @Richard_Nabavi for the tip.
To be clear, it's not cheap! I wouldn't bother with the tasting menu, the ' Prix fixe' is quite sufficient. (Actually I think most tasting menus are too long and get tedious). The Californian wine list is exceptionally good. Good service, informal style.
The general standard of food in France is in my experience far better than the general standard in Italy. There is a lot of overpriced trash in Italian cities. France is expensive but there are fewer tourist traps blocking up entire streets with rubbish.
I think anyone who goes to Italy should know not to eat on the main street or near any tourist place.
Sure, and I do. Absolutely love Italy and eat well there. It’s great. But the tendency to fill entire districts of cities with gastrotrash means *on aggregate* French food is better.
The highs are higher in Italy than in France (especially which is has never impressed me) and Spain but you've got to know where they are.
We will also surely see employers increasing worried by security aspects of WFH and imposing more restrictions.
The client for the project I am working on at the moment wanted to install some app on my phone that would have allowed them to remotely restore it to factory defaults. Ostensibly this was to be able to delete company data in case I lost it, but no way I was giving their IT department that power over my private property.
So now I don't see their teams messages or emails on my phone.
Glad you told them to eff off
If they want that, they should buy you a separate phone for work.
The most depressing thing. It's clear there are people on both sides of the debate who just don't want this thing to end. Covid is their new cause. I can't get my head round it. I'm sick of it. I want it over now. 6:40 PM · Jul 5, 2021·"
Eh? Fresh from his fiasco in Batley and Spen ("impossible for Labour to win"), Hodges now seems to have gone mad. Is there anyone on the planet who is actually enjoying the pandemic and hopes it will continue?
It does seem like it sometimes.
I think there's plenty of people who like it because it gives them the perfect excuse to attack the government.
God knows I'm not fan of the Conservatives but there's no particular reason to think anyone else would have done a better or worse job - it's just a thing that happened, we all muddled through it the best we could, we have a route back to some sort of normal now, move on. Yes, mistakes were made, but is there any reason to suspect other parties wouldn't have made the same mistakes, or different ones? Not really, no.
That's the problem here, people think that politicians can Do Things (TM) and make it all go away, and if it hasn't gone away that's because they didn't do the right Good Things and therefore must be incompetent. They might well be incompetent, but it's pretty unlikely there's anyone else who is competent to do the magic people want.
Well fine, but meanwhile there are a 195 other countries and of those that are most like us a large number have handled the crisis with dramatically fewer deaths. The UK stands out as relatively less successful in their effectiveness both in containing and treating the outbreak. While they did have some successes in the speed of early vaccination, that is now beaten by several European countries and of course the UK now has a total number of active cases greater than the entire EU. One of the reasons for this is the extraordinary complacency which the government adopted on numerous occasions, particularly with regard to quarantine from India a few weeks ago.
While we know that "Yes, Minister" was more a documentary than it seemed at the time, and doubtless any public inquiry will be scuppered and sent into the long grass Sir Humphrey style, the fact is that the Johnson government could learn some powerful lessons.
But they won´t.
You may think that shows the EU in a better light. I think you either don't understand the statistics or are being deliberately obtuse.
Great that the EU is catching up on vaccinations. Hopefully for them they'll be where we are in a couple of months time.
To be fair, it should probably be on a population adjusted basis.
Like this? Doesn't really change the point.
I wasn't trying to change the point, merely emphasising that it's a bit misleading to use absolute numbers when one entity is a lot bigger than another.
If I claimed that Ireland was doing really well because they had zero deaths today or yesterday, I'd hope you'd shoot me down on the basis that Ireland has one twelfth the number of people as the UK.
Indeed but it was Cicero who chose to compare the entire EU case numbers with the UK's, which is what I was responding to: "While they did have some successes in the speed of early vaccination, that is now beaten by several European countries and of course the UK now has a total number of active cases greater than the entire EU."
Which of course was innumerate gobbledegook. The UK is coming out of lockdown as we're post-vaccine, even our Stage 3 we're already in is much more than many EU nations are at, so its not simply complacency that means we have more cases its a matter of policy to have the exit wave and come out of lockdown combined with the fact we're still doing an insane number of tests per day.
you, Pirate Britain Libertarian Right Wing Populists. You deserve a proper talking down to on the politics and science of this.
Where the government are this evening is ignorant and wrong. Where Starmer and Labour are this evening is spot on. Clear pandemic water between the two main party’s now. The government are no longer following science at all, this simply about the politics of over promising in the first place and having too many looneys on the back benches.
Here’s scientific fact for you, we need masks and other measures to protect the vaccines, just allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines. That is science fact.
It’s totally irresponsible of government not to lead on mask wearing, and to open up so quickly. They are simply sloping shoulders onto business how to protect employees and customers, not taking the lead. The government are murdering the still much needed test and trace and isolating, and that is disgraceful at this stage.
You are wrong about my politics and what I think about the government. All I'm saying is that I think the opposition would be worse still. They'd rely too much on the public sector, interfere too much in decision making, have been slow to procure things, and would have likely followed the EU on vaccines.
Institutions that try to take everything online will eventually be destroyed by an Amazon College-type thing that provides a superior service at a fraction of the price. A supremely short-sighted approach.
Now that you raise the possibility I'm somewhat surprised this hasn't already happened.
I think there's a widely-held view that online courses or online degrees aren't as good as traditional ones where you go to the lecture hall day in day out. If the traditional universities eschew lectures and do everything online, that view will no longer hold.
Learning at university is about more than just having a person standing at the front of a room speaking and letting you take notes. Hell, if that's all it is they might as well pre-record the whole course at the start of the year and then get rid of all the staff from then on!
There is the interaction with fellow students, the post lecture discussions, the peer to peer learning where things aren't understood. How do you get all that if you're just sat in your room for 90% of the time getting stuff through a video on a laptop?
If universities keep online lectures after the end of the pandemic eventually the government will have to stop them through the regulators, such as the Office for Students. Public money is being spent on higher education, and students must get the full benefit of the education that they are paying for. The government has already intervened to protect freedom of speech in universities. I think the universities are making a mistake if they think that they can do this.
Also students will work out which universities are keeping lectures online, and will avoid them.
Many universities are dependent on the students spending all their other money on accomodation (owned by the university/partnered with the developers), bars, restaurants etc. Some universities are now their own not-very-little town.
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
I think it will work, but 600 people for a new vaccine would be just the first initial human trial stage wouldn't it. The only government willing to risk results from tiny trials like that is Russia.
Canada - mix and match, long dosing gap to get through as much as the population as possible, 12+, good takeup. After a slow start it's the best rollout in the world.
I wouldn't go that far.
They're learning from those who've come before, like the UK, but they're still only at 35% fully vaccinated.
But yes they're very rapidly catching up. They're gaining from the fact that American investment in the vaccine and the fact so many Americans are refusing the vaccine - their uplift in doses matches America's drop-off and given the population ratios America dropping off can really put a rocket in Canada's uplift.
Twitter is full of tales of major outbreaks at UK's universities. Oxford, Leeds, Durham, Kent, Reading etc etc.
I didn't even know uni was open in July. My exams finished in mid May and the end of year parties were all over by the middle of June. I only stayed in Cardiff for a bit longer because I had a pretty good job there.
Twitter is full of tales of major outbreaks at UK's universities. Oxford, Leeds, Durham, Kent, Reading etc etc.
Most of them have broken up for summer now so presumably whatever university epidemics there are must be fizzling out (and/or seeding the parents' home towns).
NEW: Israel reports nearly 500 new coronavirus cases, biggest one-day increase since March
Out of interest, why is the reality of Israeli cases starting to rise again any sort of a story? We know cases of delta will spread rapidly in a highly vaccinated country which has largely or totally opened up. Because, UK.
Is it just because they are entirely Pfizer or something?
The general standard of food in France is in my experience far better than the general standard in Italy. There is a lot of overpriced trash in Italian cities. France is expensive but there are fewer tourist traps blocking up entire streets with rubbish.
Back in 2019, definitely had better food when we visited Barcelona than we had in Rome.
NEW: Israel reports nearly 500 new coronavirus cases, biggest one-day increase since March
Out of interest, why is the reality of Israeli cases starting to rise again any sort of a story? We know cases of delta will spread rapidly in a highly vaccinated country which has largely or totally opened up. Because, UK.
Is it just because they are entirely Pfizer or something?
There are plenty of refuseniks in Israel. I think the interesting data will be cases / hospitalisations of the refuseniks vs vaccinated in a totally opened up society.
Twitter is full of tales of major outbreaks at UK's universities. Oxford, Leeds, Durham, Kent, Reading etc etc.
Most of them have broken up for summer now so presumably whatever university epidemics there are must be fizzling out (and/or seeding the parents' home towns).
I thought that. But there seems to be talk of extended terms of extra two weeks. Maybe delayed exams? I don't know.
We're going to unlock now and let it rip. Thanks to our brilliant vaccines when you get it now it will only kill a small percentage of you. if we don't unlock now then "when the virus has an edge, has an advantage in the colder months" we'll have to delay again.
That's true for essentially everywhere. In time almost the entire human race will either get the vaccine or covid. Any country that doesn't want to be lockdown for a very long time will have the same dilemma.
We have a world leading vaccine program, which means that we're in a position to face what we do post-vaccines before other countries lead the way on that.
Some people have taken too seriously the "every death is a tragedy" philosophy and seem to think that we can actually abolish death. Death is part of the circle of life, an average of 1665 people die every single day in this country and 99% of those right now are not from Covid. There are fates worse than death, like spending months or years not living properly because of a crippling paranoid fear that things could get worse.
Spending months not living life to the full isn't really worse than death.
Speak for yourself.
600,000 people die a year from natural causes. From when we went into lockdown to end of July about 800,000 people will have died from entirely natural causes having lost the last months/year of their lives having been incapable of legally seeing their family and friends like normal.
Even looking from just March when we eliminated excess deaths having vaccinated the very vulnerable already, about 200,000 people will have died from natural causes. More people will have died without being able to legally see their family and friends since we eliminated excess deaths, than have died from Covid during the pandemic.
Care homes have become prisons preventing people from seeing their family, friends and loved ones and even now that they do allow visits its very clinical and restricted still even more restricted than the rule of 6 at homes. Again, most care home residents die from natural causes within 12 months of admission to a home, most people admitted 12 months ago will have died without ever being able to normally see their loved ones again even if they never got Covid.
As it stands for every person who dies from Covid right now, 99 are dying not from Covid. 99 to 1 people are dying not living long enough to see the end of lockdown and resuming their lives.
Life is for living. Simply being alive until you're not is not living and we can't get this time back. An order of magnitude more people have lost their lives during lockdown than have died due to the virus.
Yes but given the choice between living half cock for a year or so or dying, almost all would go for the not dying option.
But that's not the choice. As I said 800,000 people have died since lockdown began from natural causes. Add in people who have acquired dementia or seen their dementia deteriorate to the point that they're still alive but no longer themselves and possibly a million or more people in this country didn't survive to see the end of lockdown. Didn't survive to see their families again. Lockdown hasn't saved them.
Or try with some basic maths. If we be incredibly generous and say the <120,000 excess deaths we've had would have had 10 years extra on average then we've lost 1.2 million life years to the virus.
67 million x 1.33 years = 89 million life years lost to lockdown.
Even if we just go based on when excess deaths were eliminated in March, we've lost 0 excess life years to the virus and 22.33 million life years lost to lockdown.
Dragging lockdown on has cost us more than the virus ever did.
NEW: Israel reports nearly 500 new coronavirus cases, biggest one-day increase since March
Out of interest, why is the reality of Israeli cases starting to rise again any sort of a story? We know cases of delta will spread rapidly in a highly vaccinated country which has largely or totally opened up. Because, UK.
Is it just because they are entirely Pfizer or something?
There are plenty of refuseniks in Israel. I think the interesting data will be cases / hospitalisations of the refuseniks vs vaccinated in a totally opened up society.
Yes, and I suspect Israel will be far more forthcoming on that data than the UK government has been. The lack of that comparison being made available is extremely frustrating.
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
Twitter is full of tales of major outbreaks at UK's universities. Oxford, Leeds, Durham, Kent, Reading etc etc.
I didn't even know uni was open in July. My exams finished in mid May and the end of year parties were all over by the middle of June. I only stayed in Cardiff for a bit longer because I had a pretty good job there.
Unis are open in the sense that research carries on and we’ve only just finished finalising exam marking and progression. The undergrads are for the most part not here, and haven’t been for a while.
Twitter is full of tales of major outbreaks at UK's universities. Oxford, Leeds, Durham, Kent, Reading etc etc.
Most of them have broken up for summer now so presumably whatever university epidemics there are must be fizzling out (and/or seeding the parents' home towns).
Perhaps many/most of the students have had quite enough of living at their parent's houses and, provided they've got the accommodation to live in, are perfectly happy carrying on where they are. And it's not as if universities have got anything else to use the accommodation for at the moment. No conferences etc which are normally the mainstay of out-of-term income.
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
Er, what is she on about? Most other countries are doing it.
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
The smartest person on twitter opines! Or has that crown been stolen by Dom?
Twitter is full of tales of major outbreaks at UK's universities. Oxford, Leeds, Durham, Kent, Reading etc etc.
Most of them have broken up for summer now so presumably whatever university epidemics there are must be fizzling out (and/or seeding the parents' home towns).
I thought that. But there seems to be talk of extended terms of extra two weeks. Maybe delayed exams? I don't know.
Focusing purely on this country, what has the opposition actually argued for in the pandemic? Basically all they've done is said they'd have done things "better". They'd have made test and trace better, they'd have had a better vaccine rollout, they'd have had a better furlough scheme, they'd have had better border controls, they'd have made better decisions based on "the science". It's just cheap talk. I'm not sure at any point they've ever really contributed much original to the whole handling of the pandemic, or even explained how those things could actually have been done better, just that they ought to have been.
Hey, maybe they really would have just done everything better, or maybe it'd have just been exactly the same but with different personalities. We'll never know.
The opposition has been consistently shit, and has made essentially no useful contributions at all. I think given the job the opposition would have actually been worse than the Tories, because Boris doesn't do micro-managing or follow any doctrine, so to an extent his lack of principles and laziness has at least enabled competent people to get on with the job without the PM messing them around. I think any opposition government would have interfered quite a bit more.
you, Pirate Britain Libertarian Right Wing Populists. You deserve a proper talking down to on the politics and science of this.
Where the government are this evening is ignorant and wrong. Where Starmer and Labour are this evening is spot on. Clear pandemic water between the two main party’s now. The government are no longer following science at all, this simply about the politics of over promising in the first place and having too many looneys on the back benches.
Here’s scientific fact for you, we need masks and other measures to protect the vaccines, just allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines. That is science fact.
It’s totally irresponsible of government not to lead on mask wearing, and to open up so quickly. They are simply sloping shoulders onto business how to protect employees and customers, not taking the lead. The government are murdering the still much needed test and trace and isolating, and that is disgraceful at this stage.
You were in favour of refusing vaccines to the under 50’s, and giving them away to poor countries. You lack any moral high ground here.
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
Er, what is she on about? Most other countries are doing it.
And the description is an equally good fit for mass vaccination. What a silly woman.
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
Maybe when lambda hits we'll be grateful that everyone's been infected with the less harmful variant...
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
She’s insane. Every country will be going for herd immunity, preferably via vaccination. Including those nations who tried to keep it out such as Australia and NZ.
NEW: Israel reports nearly 500 new coronavirus cases, biggest one-day increase since March
Out of interest, why is the reality of Israeli cases starting to rise again any sort of a story? We know cases of delta will spread rapidly in a highly vaccinated country which has largely or totally opened up. Because, UK.
Is it just because they are entirely Pfizer or something?
Because of the general uselessness of the media in adding 2 + 2 and other advanced mathematics.
Once the Delta variants R number became apparent, it meant 2 things were clear
- The threshold for herd immunity by vaccination had been lifted to a very high level. - This is much higher than Israel (or probably any other country) is likely to achieve through voluntary vaccination.
Therefore Delta will sweep through countries. Even Chinese style lockdowns are unlikely to stop it. The outcome will be a function of the level of vaccination.
Twitter is full of tales of major outbreaks at UK's universities. Oxford, Leeds, Durham, Kent, Reading etc etc.
Most of them have broken up for summer now so presumably whatever university epidemics there are must be fizzling out (and/or seeding the parents' home towns).
Perhaps many/most of the students have had quite enough of living at their parent's houses and, provided they've got the accommodation to live in, are perfectly happy carrying on where they are. And it's not as if universities have got anything else to use the accommodation for at the moment. No conferences etc which are normally the mainstay of out-of-term income.
Usual to have term only rents, or ones that end in June. Allows for refurb over summer then new tenants.
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
No other country? We're following in Israel's footsteps, but there's very few other countries in the world that have had a vaccine program as good as the UK's which is why there's few others to compare to. Carole probably doesn't want to admit or acknowledge that the UK has a best in the world vaccine program which is why other countries can't contemplate what we are yet.
We've vaccinated our population now, we've vaccinated more of our population than Israel has.
NEW: Israel reports nearly 500 new coronavirus cases, biggest one-day increase since March
Out of interest, why is the reality of Israeli cases starting to rise again any sort of a story? We know cases of delta will spread rapidly in a highly vaccinated country which has largely or totally opened up. Because, UK.
Is it just because they are entirely Pfizer or something?
Because of the general uselessness of the media in adding 2 + 2 and other advanced mathematics.
Once the Delta variants R number became apparent, it meant 2 things were clear
- The threshold for herd immunity by vaccination had been lifted to a very high level. - This is much higher than Israel (or probably any other country) is likely to achieve through voluntary vaccination.
Therefore Delta will sweep through countries. Even Chinese style lockdowns are unlikely to stop it. The outcome will be a function of the level of vaccination.
Therefore Delta will sweep through countries. Even Chinese style lockdowns are unlikely to stop it. The outcome will be a function of the level of vaccination.
I've been pondering that a bit, if Chinese lockdowns aren't enough, and if some of the Chinese vaccines aren't so hot, then potentially China has a problem, doesn't it?
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
No other country? We're following in Israel's footsteps, but there's very few other countries in the world that have had a vaccine program as good as the UK's which is why there's few others to compare to. Carole probably doesn't want to admit or acknowledge that the UK has a best in the world vaccine program which is why other countries can't contemplate what we are yet.
We've vaccinated our population now, we've vaccinated more of our population than Israel has.
NEW: Israel reports nearly 500 new coronavirus cases, biggest one-day increase since March
Out of interest, why is the reality of Israeli cases starting to rise again any sort of a story? We know cases of delta will spread rapidly in a highly vaccinated country which has largely or totally opened up. Because, UK.
Is it just because they are entirely Pfizer or something?
Because of the general uselessness of the media in adding 2 + 2 and other advanced mathematics.
Once the Delta variants R number became apparent, it meant 2 things were clear
- The threshold for herd immunity by vaccination had been lifted to a very high level. - This is much higher than Israel (or probably any other country) is likely to achieve through voluntary vaccination.
Therefore Delta will sweep through countries. Even Chinese style lockdowns are unlikely to stop it. The outcome will be a function of the level of vaccination.
The answers 5 right?
I posted the code for that the other day. 2 + 2 = 5 if you are cleverer than Prof. Peston.
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
What does she thinks will happen when places reach their vaccination wall I wonder - lockdown forever?
She and those like her are a gift to the government - it means relevant criticisms get mixed up with the silly ones, and are easier to manage.
Therefore Delta will sweep through countries. Even Chinese style lockdowns are unlikely to stop it. The outcome will be a function of the level of vaccination.
I've been pondering that a bit, if Chinese lockdowns aren't enough, and if some of the Chinese vaccines aren't so hot, then potentially China has a problem, doesn't it?
It will be er.... unpleasant to see what happens, I think.
I've been pondering that a bit, if Chinese lockdowns aren't enough, and if some of the Chinese vaccines aren't so hot, then potentially China has a problem, doesn't it?
Perhaps. How much we'll be told about it is a different matter.
Therefore Delta will sweep through countries. Even Chinese style lockdowns are unlikely to stop it. The outcome will be a function of the level of vaccination.
I've been pondering that a bit, if Chinese lockdowns aren't enough, and if some of the Chinese vaccines aren't so hot, then potentially China has a problem, doesn't it?
It will be er.... unpleasant to see what happens, I think.
Realistically Chinese lockdowns probably are enough. Unless this variant can pass though walls or something.
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
She’s insane. Every country will be going for herd immunity, preferably via vaccination. Including those nations who tried to keep it out such as Australia and NZ.
I suspect that understanding of what herd immunity means is pretty low amongst many in the media.
Therefore Delta will sweep through countries. Even Chinese style lockdowns are unlikely to stop it. The outcome will be a function of the level of vaccination.
I've been pondering that a bit, if Chinese lockdowns aren't enough, and if some of the Chinese vaccines aren't so hot, then potentially China has a problem, doesn't it?
I think Chinese lockdowns can stop it, as they can totally shut off their external and internal borders and enforce absolute home quarantine for all within a certain zone. No other country in the world can do this and no other country has come close.
They literally had block #1, you may come out for 30 mins.....now go back in....block #2 you can have your 30 mins. There was no intermingling.
I've been pondering that a bit, if Chinese lockdowns aren't enough, and if some of the Chinese vaccines aren't so hot, then potentially China has a problem, doesn't it?
Perhaps. How much we'll be told about it is a different matter.
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
Er, what is she on about? Most other countries are doing it.
Rachel Clarke @doctor_oxford · 4h So @BorisJohnson just launched a countrywide experiment and, yes, we are its unwilling guinea pigs.
English exceptionalism of the most arrogant, hubristic & deadly kind.
As another example of the level of debating skills coming from some. Feels a bit like co-ordinated messaging going on here. Maybe I am wrong.
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
She’s insane. Every country will be going for herd immunity, preferably via vaccination. Including those nations who tried to keep it out such as Australia and NZ.
I suspect that understanding of what herd immunity means is pretty low amongst many in the media.
They're trying the same playbook as March/April last year. Where it doesn't matter what "herd immunity" actually means, just the very phrase is sufficient to cause howls of protest. "Treating humans like cattle" etc etc
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
What does she thinks will happen when places reach their vaccination wall I wonder - lockdown forever?
She and those like her are a gift to the government - it means relevant criticisms get mixed up with the silly ones, and are easier to manage.
But that's what this ultimately boils down to. We're pretty much hitting our vaccine wall now. There's few to no first doses left to do in large parts of the country and where there is some demand anyone can walk in and get one whenever they want.
Anyone arguing against July 19th unlockdown is effectively saying the only other way is to keep it basically forever as we're never really going to vaccinate any more than 89-91% of adults and the JCVI are vacillating over vaccines for kids.
The general standard of food in France is in my experience far better than the general standard in Italy. There is a lot of overpriced trash in Italian cities. France is expensive but there are fewer tourist traps blocking up entire streets with rubbish.
I spent a lot of time in Milan at one point and struggled to find good eating experiences. Hampered by not being a big pasta fan.
Milan has WEIRDLY bad food. It’s not even that touristy
Drive an hour out of the city in almost any direction and you’ll get some of the best food in the world
Incidentally that truly sensational meal i had earlier, with endless fine cava and a mind-blowing squid ink pasta with red Soller prawns - with that phenomenal sunset view - cost me £45, including raw tuna taco starter and bread and olives and the works
So about the same as a solo pizza express with salad and a couple of large glasses of red in, say, basingstoke
The most depressing thing. It's clear there are people on both sides of the debate who just don't want this thing to end. Covid is their new cause. I can't get my head round it. I'm sick of it. I want it over now. 6:40 PM · Jul 5, 2021·"
Eh? Fresh from his fiasco in Batley and Spen ("impossible for Labour to win"), Hodges now seems to have gone mad. Is there anyone on the planet who is actually enjoying the pandemic and hopes it will continue?
It does seem like it sometimes.
I think there's plenty of people who like it because it gives them the perfect excuse to attack the government.
God knows I'm not fan of the Conservatives but there's no particular reason to think anyone else would have done a better or worse job - it's just a thing that happened, we all muddled through it the best we could, we have a route back to some sort of normal now, move on. Yes, mistakes were made, but is there any reason to suspect other parties wouldn't have made the same mistakes, or different ones? Not really, no.
That's the problem here, people think that politicians can Do Things (TM) and make it all go away, and if it hasn't gone away that's because they didn't do the right Good Things and therefore must be incompetent. They might well be incompetent, but it's pretty unlikely there's anyone else who is competent to do the magic people want.
Well fine, but meanwhile there are a 195 other countries and of those that are most like us a large number have handled the crisis with dramatically fewer deaths. The UK stands out as relatively less successful in their effectiveness both in containing and treating the outbreak. While they did have some successes in the speed of early vaccination, that is now beaten by several European countries and of course the UK now has a total number of active cases greater than the entire EU. One of the reasons for this is the extraordinary complacency which the government adopted on numerous occasions, particularly with regard to quarantine from India a few weeks ago.
While we know that "Yes, Minister" was more a documentary than it seemed at the time, and doubtless any public inquiry will be scuppered and sent into the long grass Sir Humphrey style, the fact is that the Johnson government could learn some powerful lessons.
But they won´t.
You may think that shows the EU in a better light. I think you either don't understand the statistics or are being deliberately obtuse.
Great that the EU is catching up on vaccinations. Hopefully for them they'll be where we are in a couple of months time.
To be fair, it should probably be on a population adjusted basis.
Like this? Doesn't really change the point.
I wasn't trying to change the point, merely emphasising that it's a bit misleading to use absolute numbers when one entity is a lot bigger than another.
If I claimed that Ireland was doing really well because they had zero deaths today or yesterday, I'd hope you'd shoot me down on the basis that Ireland has one twelfth the number of people as the UK.
Indeed but it was Cicero who chose to compare the entire EU case numbers with the UK's, which is what I was responding to: "While they did have some successes in the speed of early vaccination, that is now beaten by several European countries and of course the UK now has a total number of active cases greater than the entire EU."
Which of course was innumerate gobbledegook. The UK is coming out of lockdown as we're post-vaccine, even our Stage 3 we're already in is much more than many EU nations are at, so its not simply complacency that means we have more cases its a matter of policy to have the exit wave and come out of lockdown combined with the fact we're still doing an insane number of tests per day.
Fair point, and I didn't see the earlier exchange.
I presume Carole Cadswallop doesn't have any issue with EU countries policy of foreign holdiays, despite much lower vaccination rates?
Apparently the German Government is about to lift travel restrictions on incomers from the UK who have been double-jabbed. Ditto for Portugal. And Russia. And India.
However, because Germany is still in the EU it is protected by a magical forcefield of virtue and this is not, therefore, insane recklessness.
Focusing purely on this country, what has the opposition actually argued for in the pandemic? Basically all they've done is said they'd have done things "better". They'd have made test and trace better, they'd have had a better vaccine rollout, they'd have had a better furlough scheme, they'd have had better border controls, they'd have made better decisions based on "the science". It's just cheap talk. I'm not sure at any point they've ever really contributed much original to the whole handling of the pandemic, or even explained how those things could actually have been done better, just that they ought to have been.
Hey, maybe they really would have just done everything better, or maybe it'd have just been exactly the same but with different personalities. We'll never know.
The opposition has been consistently shit, and has made essentially no useful contributions at all. I think given the job the opposition would have actually been worse than the Tories, because Boris doesn't do micro-managing or follow any doctrine, so to an extent his lack of principles and laziness has at least enabled competent people to get on with the job without the PM messing them around. I think any opposition government would have interfered quite a bit more.
you, Pirate Britain Libertarian Right Wing Populists. You deserve a proper talking down to on the politics and science of this.
Where the government are this evening is ignorant and wrong. Where Starmer and Labour are this evening is spot on. Clear pandemic water between the two main party’s now. The government are no longer following science at all, this simply about the politics of over promising in the first place and having too many looneys on the back benches.
Here’s scientific fact for you, we need masks and other measures to protect the vaccines, just allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines. That is science fact.
It’s totally irresponsible of government not to lead on mask wearing, and to open up so quickly. They are simply sloping shoulders onto business how to protect employees and customers, not taking the lead. The government are murdering the still much needed test and trace and isolating, and that is disgraceful at this stage.
"allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines"
How does that work?
I think the ideal scenario to create a vaccine resistant virus would be high rates of transmission in a partially immunized population. Which is not totally different from the situation we have now?
NEW: Israel reports nearly 500 new coronavirus cases, biggest one-day increase since March
Out of interest, why is the reality of Israeli cases starting to rise again any sort of a story? We know cases of delta will spread rapidly in a highly vaccinated country which has largely or totally opened up. Because, UK.
Is it just because they are entirely Pfizer or something?
There are lots of communities in Israel with low levels of vaccine take-up, and also lots of children.
Their vaccination levels were enough to wipe out Covid when R was 3, but are insufficient when it is 6.
The general standard of food in France is in my experience far better than the general standard in Italy. There is a lot of overpriced trash in Italian cities. France is expensive but there are fewer tourist traps blocking up entire streets with rubbish.
I spent a lot of time in Milan at one point and struggled to find good eating experiences. Hampered by not being a big pasta fan.
Milan has WEIRDLY bad food. It’s not even that touristy
Drive an hour out of the city in almost any direction and you’ll get some of the best food in the world
Incidentally that truly sensational meal i had earlier, with endless fine cava and a mind-blowing squid ink pasta with red Soller prawns - with that phenomenal sunset view - cost me £45, including raw tuna taco starter and bread and olives and the works
So about the same as a solo pizza express with salad and a couple of large glasses of red in, say, basingstoke
But without the sheer joie de vivre of Basingstoke.
NEW: Israel reports nearly 500 new coronavirus cases, biggest one-day increase since March
Out of interest, why is the reality of Israeli cases starting to rise again any sort of a story? We know cases of delta will spread rapidly in a highly vaccinated country which has largely or totally opened up. Because, UK.
Is it just because they are entirely Pfizer or something?
There are lots of communities in Israel with low levels of vaccine take-up, and also lots of children.
Their vaccination levels were enough to wipe out Covid when R was 3, but are insufficient when it is 6.
Yes absolutely. But it's not telling us something we don't already know. That the natural R number for delta is much higher than previous versions.
I presume Carole Cadswallop doesn't have any issue with EU countries policy of foreign holdiays, despite much lower vaccination rates?
Apparently the German Government is about to lift travel restrictions on incomers from the UK who have been double-jabbed. Ditto for Portugal. And Russia. And India.
However, because Germany is still in the EU it is protected by a magical forcefield of virtue and this is not, therefore, insane recklessness.
I'm shocked that they're going to do it for Russia given the unproven efficacy of Sputnik V. Good news for India though as it must mean Covishield is to get equivalency to Vaxzevria.
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
Er, what is she on about? Most other countries are doing it.
Rachel Clarke @doctor_oxford · 4h So @BorisJohnson just launched a countrywide experiment and, yes, we are its unwilling guinea pigs.
English exceptionalism of the most arrogant, hubristic & deadly kind.
As another example of the level of debating skills coming from some. Feels a bit like co-ordinated messaging going on here. Maybe I am wrong.
I blocked that Doctor Oxford on twitter yonks age as her nonsense kept being tweeted into my timeline.
NEW: Israel reports nearly 500 new coronavirus cases, biggest one-day increase since March
Out of interest, why is the reality of Israeli cases starting to rise again any sort of a story? We know cases of delta will spread rapidly in a highly vaccinated country which has largely or totally opened up. Because, UK.
Is it just because they are entirely Pfizer or something?
Because of the general uselessness of the media in adding 2 + 2 and other advanced mathematics.
Once the Delta variants R number became apparent, it meant 2 things were clear
- The threshold for herd immunity by vaccination had been lifted to a very high level. - This is much higher than Israel (or probably any other country) is likely to achieve through voluntary vaccination.
Therefore Delta will sweep through countries. Even Chinese style lockdowns are unlikely to stop it. The outcome will be a function of the level of vaccination.
Genuine question: what is the Delta variant's R number reckoned to be and how does that compare with the original SARS-Cov-2 and earlier variants?
Focusing purely on this country, what has the opposition actually argued for in the pandemic? Basically all they've done is said they'd have done things "better". They'd have made test and trace better, they'd have had a better vaccine rollout, they'd have had a better furlough scheme, they'd have had better border controls, they'd have made better decisions based on "the science". It's just cheap talk. I'm not sure at any point they've ever really contributed much original to the whole handling of the pandemic, or even explained how those things could actually have been done better, just that they ought to have been.
Hey, maybe they really would have just done everything better, or maybe it'd have just been exactly the same but with different personalities. We'll never know.
The opposition has been consistently shit, and has made essentially no useful contributions at all. I think given the job the opposition would have actually been worse than the Tories, because Boris doesn't do micro-managing or follow any doctrine, so to an extent his lack of principles and laziness has at least enabled competent people to get on with the job without the PM messing them around. I think any opposition government would have interfered quite a bit more.
you, Pirate Britain Libertarian Right Wing Populists. You deserve a proper talking down to on the politics and science of this.
Where the government are this evening is ignorant and wrong. Where Starmer and Labour are this evening is spot on. Clear pandemic water between the two main party’s now. The government are no longer following science at all, this simply about the politics of over promising in the first place and having too many looneys on the back benches.
Here’s scientific fact for you, we need masks and other measures to protect the vaccines, just allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines. That is science fact.
It’s totally irresponsible of government not to lead on mask wearing, and to open up so quickly. They are simply sloping shoulders onto business how to protect employees and customers, not taking the lead. The government are murdering the still much needed test and trace and isolating, and that is disgraceful at this stage.
Here’s scientific fact for you, we need masks and other measures to protect the vaccines, just allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines. That is science fact.
That's one of the more bizarre things I've read recently.
But not surprising from someone who thought the UK should stop vaccinating at Easter and donate any remaining doses to the third world.
It will be er.... unpleasant to see what happens, I think.
Even China surely can't pretend everything is fine if Delta is spreading fast, but I can see them needing to revaccinate a lot of people with a "booster" that works better than Sinovac.
Focusing purely on this country, what has the opposition actually argued for in the pandemic? Basically all they've done is said they'd have done things "better". They'd have made test and trace better, they'd have had a better vaccine rollout, they'd have had a better furlough scheme, they'd have had better border controls, they'd have made better decisions based on "the science". It's just cheap talk. I'm not sure at any point they've ever really contributed much original to the whole handling of the pandemic, or even explained how those things could actually have been done better, just that they ought to have been.
Hey, maybe they really would have just done everything better, or maybe it'd have just been exactly the same but with different personalities. We'll never know.
The opposition has been consistently shit, and has made essentially no useful contributions at all. I think given the job the opposition would have actually been worse than the Tories, because Boris doesn't do micro-managing or follow any doctrine, so to an extent his lack of principles and laziness has at least enabled competent people to get on with the job without the PM messing them around. I think any opposition government would have interfered quite a bit more.
you, Pirate Britain Libertarian Right Wing Populists. You deserve a proper talking down to on the politics and science of this.
Where the government are this evening is ignorant and wrong. Where Starmer and Labour are this evening is spot on. Clear pandemic water between the two main party’s now. The government are no longer following science at all, this simply about the politics of over promising in the first place and having too many looneys on the back benches.
Here’s scientific fact for you, we need masks and other measures to protect the vaccines, just allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines. That is science fact.
It’s totally irresponsible of government not to lead on mask wearing, and to open up so quickly. They are simply sloping shoulders onto business how to protect employees and customers, not taking the lead. The government are murdering the still much needed test and trace and isolating, and that is disgraceful at this stage.
"allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines"
How does that work?
I think the ideal scenario to create a vaccine resistant virus would be high rates of transmission in a partially immunized population. Which is not totally different from the situation we have now?
I presume Carole Cadswallop doesn't have any issue with EU countries policy of foreign holdiays, despite much lower vaccination rates?
Apparently the German Government is about to lift travel restrictions on incomers from the UK who have been double-jabbed. Ditto for Portugal. And Russia. And India.
However, because Germany is still in the EU it is protected by a magical forcefield of virtue and this is not, therefore, insane recklessness.
I'm shocked that they're going to do it for Russia given the unproven efficacy of Sputnik V. Good news for India though as it must mean Covishield is to get equivalency to Vaxzevria.
I thought the Germans had already said that they were treating the two as equivalent. It is France which is the big country that is currently holding out for EMA approval. It's a bit of a dilemma for anyone going to France. Anecdotal evidence is that they do very little checking of papers at all, which suggests that much of their public pronouncements are for show. But do you risk trying to travel knowing that they *might* actually pick on you for closer attention?
Therefore Delta will sweep through countries. Even Chinese style lockdowns are unlikely to stop it. The outcome will be a function of the level of vaccination.
I've been pondering that a bit, if Chinese lockdowns aren't enough, and if some of the Chinese vaccines aren't so hot, then potentially China has a problem, doesn't it?
I think Chinese lockdowns can stop it, as they can totally shut off their external and internal borders and enforce absolute home quarantine for all within a certain zone. No other country in the world can do this and no other country has come close.
They literally had block #1, you may come out for 30 mins.....now go back in....block #2 you can have your 30 mins. There was no intermingling.
The abuse of the word "lockdown" over the last 18 months has been the biggest casualty of the pandemic.
Welded into your flat == lockdown Able to walk the dog in the park whenever you feel like it == lockdown
NEW: Israel reports nearly 500 new coronavirus cases, biggest one-day increase since March
Out of interest, why is the reality of Israeli cases starting to rise again any sort of a story? We know cases of delta will spread rapidly in a highly vaccinated country which has largely or totally opened up. Because, UK.
Is it just because they are entirely Pfizer or something?
Because of the general uselessness of the media in adding 2 + 2 and other advanced mathematics.
Once the Delta variants R number became apparent, it meant 2 things were clear
- The threshold for herd immunity by vaccination had been lifted to a very high level. - This is much higher than Israel (or probably any other country) is likely to achieve through voluntary vaccination.
Therefore Delta will sweep through countries. Even Chinese style lockdowns are unlikely to stop it. The outcome will be a function of the level of vaccination.
Exactly right. With a R of 3, then it's quite easy to get to herd immunity off voluntary vaccine update in adults. But with an R of 6 it is essentially impossible.
So, you need to do one of two things: boost the number vaccinated (by adding children as France and the US, or by adding some degree of compulsion), or accept that Covid will sweep through unvaccinated communities.
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
She’s insane. Every country will be going for herd immunity, preferably via vaccination. Including those nations who tried to keep it out such as Australia and NZ.
You'd need more context to see what she meant by herd immunity (ie with or without vaccination) but life's too short.
I presume Carole Cadswallop doesn't have any issue with EU countries policy of foreign holdiays, despite much lower vaccination rates?
Apparently the German Government is about to lift travel restrictions on incomers from the UK who have been double-jabbed. Ditto for Portugal. And Russia. And India.
However, because Germany is still in the EU it is protected by a magical forcefield of virtue and this is not, therefore, insane recklessness.
I'm shocked that they're going to do it for Russia given the unproven efficacy of Sputnik V. Good news for India though as it must mean Covishield is to get equivalency to Vaxzevria.
I can see countries making decisions on allowing travel of those vaccinated, not based on evidence of the effective of the vaccine, but worrying about perceived racism. Sputnik have not supplied the required information to the EMA. Lots of developing countries have been widely using Sputnik and the Chinese vaccines.
Therefore Delta will sweep through countries. Even Chinese style lockdowns are unlikely to stop it. The outcome will be a function of the level of vaccination.
I've been pondering that a bit, if Chinese lockdowns aren't enough, and if some of the Chinese vaccines aren't so hot, then potentially China has a problem, doesn't it?
I think Chinese lockdowns can stop it, as they can totally shut off their external and internal borders and enforce absolute home quarantine for all within a certain zone. No other country in the world can do this and no other country has come close.
They literally had block #1, you may come out for 30 mins.....now go back in....block #2 you can have your 30 mins. There was no intermingling.
The abuse of the word "lockdown" over the last 18 months has been the biggest casualty of the pandemic.
Welded into your flat == lockdown Able to walk the dog in the park whenever you feel like it == lockdown
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
What does she thinks will happen when places reach their vaccination wall I wonder - lockdown forever?
She and those like her are a gift to the government - it means relevant criticisms get mixed up with the silly ones, and are easier to manage.
But that's what this ultimately boils down to. We're pretty much hitting our vaccine wall now. There's few to no first doses left to do in large parts of the country and where there is some demand anyone can walk in and get one whenever they want.
Anyone arguing against July 19th unlockdown is effectively saying the only other way is to keep it basically forever as we're never really going to vaccinate any more than 89-91% of adults and the JCVI are vacillating over vaccines for kids.
To be fair to the Pagels of this world, they mainly seem to be all arguing for kids to be jabbed.
NEW: Israel reports nearly 500 new coronavirus cases, biggest one-day increase since March
Out of interest, why is the reality of Israeli cases starting to rise again any sort of a story? We know cases of delta will spread rapidly in a highly vaccinated country which has largely or totally opened up. Because, UK.
Is it just because they are entirely Pfizer or something?
Because of the general uselessness of the media in adding 2 + 2 and other advanced mathematics.
Once the Delta variants R number became apparent, it meant 2 things were clear
- The threshold for herd immunity by vaccination had been lifted to a very high level. - This is much higher than Israel (or probably any other country) is likely to achieve through voluntary vaccination.
Therefore Delta will sweep through countries. Even Chinese style lockdowns are unlikely to stop it. The outcome will be a function of the level of vaccination.
Genuine question: what is the Delta variant's R number reckoned to be and how does that compare with the original SARS-Cov-2 and earlier variants?
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
No other country? We're following in Israel's footsteps, but there's very few other countries in the world that have had a vaccine program as good as the UK's which is why there's few others to compare to. Carole probably doesn't want to admit or acknowledge that the UK has a best in the world vaccine program which is why other countries can't contemplate what we are yet.
We've vaccinated our population now, we've vaccinated more of our population than Israel has.
So what exactly does Codswallop want us to do? 🙄
Israel is still ahead of us in terms of doses per 100 people, but we'll pass them in about two or three weeks time.
I presume Carole Cadswallop doesn't have any issue with EU countries policy of foreign holdiays, despite much lower vaccination rates?
Apparently the German Government is about to lift travel restrictions on incomers from the UK who have been double-jabbed. Ditto for Portugal. And Russia. And India.
However, because Germany is still in the EU it is protected by a magical forcefield of virtue and this is not, therefore, insane recklessness.
I'm shocked that they're going to do it for Russia given the unproven efficacy of Sputnik V. Good news for India though as it must mean Covishield is to get equivalency to Vaxzevria.
I thought the Germans had already said that they were treating the two as equivalent. It is France which is the big country that is currently holding out for EMA approval. It's a bit of a dilemma for anyone going to France. Anecdotal evidence is that they do very little checking of papers at all, which suggests that much of their public pronouncements are for show. But do you risk trying to travel knowing that they *might* actually pick on you for closer attention?
I think anyone with a blue Brexit passport might want to avoid!
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
She’s insane. Every country will be going for herd immunity, preferably via vaccination. Including those nations who tried to keep it out such as Australia and NZ.
I suspect that understanding of what herd immunity means is pretty low amongst many in the media.
They're trying the same playbook as March/April last year. Where it doesn't matter what "herd immunity" actually means, just the very phrase is sufficient to cause howls of protest. "Treating humans like cattle" etc etc
Focusing purely on this country, what has the opposition actually argued for in the pandemic? Basically all they've done is said they'd have done things "better". They'd have made test and trace better, they'd have had a better vaccine rollout, they'd have had a better furlough scheme, they'd have had better border controls, they'd have made better decisions based on "the science". It's just cheap talk. I'm not sure at any point they've ever really contributed much original to the whole handling of the pandemic, or even explained how those things could actually have been done better, just that they ought to have been.
Hey, maybe they really would have just done everything better, or maybe it'd have just been exactly the same but with different personalities. We'll never know.
The opposition has been consistently shit, and has made essentially no useful contributions at all. I think given the job the opposition would have actually been worse than the Tories, because Boris doesn't do micro-managing or follow any doctrine, so to an extent his lack of principles and laziness has at least enabled competent people to get on with the job without the PM messing them around. I think any opposition government would have interfered quite a bit more.
you, Pirate Britain Libertarian Right Wing Populists. You deserve a proper talking down to on the politics and science of this.
Where the government are this evening is ignorant and wrong. Where Starmer and Labour are this evening is spot on. Clear pandemic water between the two main party’s now. The government are no longer following science at all, this simply about the politics of over promising in the first place and having too many looneys on the back benches.
Here’s scientific fact for you, we need masks and other measures to protect the vaccines, just allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines. That is science fact.
It’s totally irresponsible of government not to lead on mask wearing, and to open up so quickly. They are simply sloping shoulders onto business how to protect employees and customers, not taking the lead. The government are murdering the still much needed test and trace and isolating, and that is disgraceful at this stage.
Here’s scientific fact for you, we need masks and other measures to protect the vaccines, just allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines. That is science fact.
That's one of the more bizarre things I've read recently.
But not surprising from someone who thought the UK should stop vaccinating at Easter and donate any remaining doses to the third world.
I wonder if there's much on Codswallop's timeline about stopping vaccination once we went below 50, now apparently the ISage policy is that EVERYONE must be vaccinated before we even think about opening up...
The most depressing thing. It's clear there are people on both sides of the debate who just don't want this thing to end. Covid is their new cause. I can't get my head round it. I'm sick of it. I want it over now. 6:40 PM · Jul 5, 2021·"
Eh? Fresh from his fiasco in Batley and Spen ("impossible for Labour to win"), Hodges now seems to have gone mad. Is there anyone on the planet who is actually enjoying the pandemic and hopes it will continue?
It does seem like it sometimes.
I think there's plenty of people who like it because it gives them the perfect excuse to attack the government.
God knows I'm not fan of the Conservatives but there's no particular reason to think anyone else would have done a better or worse job - it's just a thing that happened, we all muddled through it the best we could, we have a route back to some sort of normal now, move on. Yes, mistakes were made, but is there any reason to suspect other parties wouldn't have made the same mistakes, or different ones? Not really, no.
That's the problem here, people think that politicians can Do Things (TM) and make it all go away, and if it hasn't gone away that's because they didn't do the right Good Things and therefore must be incompetent. They might well be incompetent, but it's pretty unlikely there's anyone else who is competent to do the magic people want.
Well fine, but meanwhile there are a 195 other countries and of those that are most like us a large number have handled the crisis with dramatically fewer deaths. The UK stands out as relatively less successful in their effectiveness both in containing and treating the outbreak. While they did have some successes in the speed of early vaccination, that is now beaten by several European countries and of course the UK now has a total number of active cases greater than the entire EU. One of the reasons for this is the extraordinary complacency which the government adopted on numerous occasions, particularly with regard to quarantine from India a few weeks ago.
While we know that "Yes, Minister" was more a documentary than it seemed at the time, and doubtless any public inquiry will be scuppered and sent into the long grass Sir Humphrey style, the fact is that the Johnson government could learn some powerful lessons.
But they won´t.
You may think that shows the EU in a better light. I think you either don't understand the statistics or are being deliberately obtuse.
Great that the EU is catching up on vaccinations. Hopefully for them they'll be where we are in a couple of months time.
To be fair, it should probably be on a population adjusted basis.
Like this? Doesn't really change the point.
I wasn't trying to change the point, merely emphasising that it's a bit misleading to use absolute numbers when one entity is a lot bigger than another.
If I claimed that Ireland was doing really well because they had zero deaths today or yesterday, I'd hope you'd shoot me down on the basis that Ireland has one twelfth the number of people as the UK.
Indeed but it was Cicero who chose to compare the entire EU case numbers with the UK's, which is what I was responding to: "While they did have some successes in the speed of early vaccination, that is now beaten by several European countries and of course the UK now has a total number of active cases greater than the entire EU."
Which of course was innumerate gobbledegook. The UK is coming out of lockdown as we're post-vaccine, even our Stage 3 we're already in is much more than many EU nations are at, so its not simply complacency that means we have more cases its a matter of policy to have the exit wave and come out of lockdown combined with the fact we're still doing an insane number of tests per day.
We're going to unlock now and let it rip. Thanks to our brilliant vaccines when you get it now it will only kill a small percentage of you. if we don't unlock now then "when the virus has an edge, has an advantage in the colder months" we'll have to delay again.
That's true for essentially everywhere. In time almost the entire human race will either get the vaccine or covid. Any country that doesn't want to be lockdown for a very long time will have the same dilemma.
We have a world leading vaccine program, which means that we're in a position to face what we do post-vaccines before other countries lead the way on that.
Some people have taken too seriously the "every death is a tragedy" philosophy and seem to think that we can actually abolish death. Death is part of the circle of life, an average of 1665 people die every single day in this country and 99% of those right now are not from Covid. There are fates worse than death, like spending months or years not living properly because of a crippling paranoid fear that things could get worse.
Spending months not living life to the full isn't really worse than death.
Speak for yourself.
600,000 people die a year from natural causes. From when we went into lockdown to end of July about 800,000 people will have died from entirely natural causes having lost the last months/year of their lives having been incapable of legally seeing their family and friends like normal.
Even looking from just March when we eliminated excess deaths having vaccinated the very vulnerable already, about 200,000 people will have died from natural causes. More people will have died without being able to legally see their family and friends since we eliminated excess deaths, than have died from Covid during the pandemic.
Care homes have become prisons preventing people from seeing their family, friends and loved ones and even now that they do allow visits its very clinical and restricted still even more restricted than the rule of 6 at homes. Again, most care home residents die from natural causes within 12 months of admission to a home, most people admitted 12 months ago will have died without ever being able to normally see their loved ones again even if they never got Covid.
As it stands for every person who dies from Covid right now, 99 are dying not from Covid. 99 to 1 people are dying not living long enough to see the end of lockdown and resuming their lives.
Life is for living. Simply being alive until you're not is not living and we can't get this time back. An order of magnitude more people have lost their lives during lockdown than have died due to the virus.
Yes but given the choice between living half cock for a year or so or dying, almost all would go for the not dying option.
But that's not the choice. As I said 800,000 people have died since lockdown began from natural causes. Add in people who have acquired dementia or seen their dementia deteriorate to the point that they're still alive but no longer themselves and possibly a million or more people in this country didn't survive to see the end of lockdown. Didn't survive to see their families again. Lockdown hasn't saved them.
Or try with some basic maths. If we be incredibly generous and say the <120,000 excess deaths we've had would have had 10 years extra on average then we've lost 1.2 million life years to the virus.
67 million x 1.33 years = 89 million life years lost to lockdown.
Even if we just go based on when excess deaths were eliminated in March, we've lost 0 excess life years to the virus and 22.33 million life years lost to lockdown.
Dragging lockdown on has cost us more than the virus ever did.</p>
You think a year of being alive during lockdown is exactly the same thing as a year being dead?
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
What does she thinks will happen when places reach their vaccination wall I wonder - lockdown forever?
She and those like her are a gift to the government - it means relevant criticisms get mixed up with the silly ones, and are easier to manage.
But that's what this ultimately boils down to. We're pretty much hitting our vaccine wall now. There's few to no first doses left to do in large parts of the country and where there is some demand anyone can walk in and get one whenever they want.
Anyone arguing against July 19th unlockdown is effectively saying the only other way is to keep it basically forever as we're never really going to vaccinate any more than 89-91% of adults and the JCVI are vacillating over vaccines for kids.
I get, on one level, an argument that July 19th is too soon. BUT, as you suggest, a lot of the arguments against it are in fact arguments against ever reopening, which helps make the case for the reopening. The Cadwalladrs of the world don't make arguments with the necessary nuance, and so miss out on potentially valid points, as when it would be safe becomes entirely unclear.
I have a bit of a pet peeve on people being self defeating or undermining their own professed position when there are opportunities open to make a point, possibly because I do it too often myself.
Therefore Delta will sweep through countries. Even Chinese style lockdowns are unlikely to stop it. The outcome will be a function of the level of vaccination.
I've been pondering that a bit, if Chinese lockdowns aren't enough, and if some of the Chinese vaccines aren't so hot, then potentially China has a problem, doesn't it?
I think Chinese lockdowns can stop it, as they can totally shut off their external and internal borders and enforce absolute home quarantine for all within a certain zone. No other country in the world can do this and no other country has come close.
They literally had block #1, you may come out for 30 mins.....now go back in....block #2 you can have your 30 mins. There was no intermingling.
The abuse of the word "lockdown" over the last 18 months has been the biggest casualty of the pandemic.
Welded into your flat == lockdown Able to walk the dog in the park whenever you feel like it == lockdown
It will be er.... unpleasant to see what happens, I think.
Even China surely can't pretend everything is fine if Delta is spreading fast, but I can see them needing to revaccinate a lot of people with a "booster" that works better than Sinovac.
Three China vaccines seems to get to around 80% efficacy. I'm sure if they mix it with AZ or Pfizer as a third dose it would be above 95%.
I presume Carole Cadswallop doesn't have any issue with EU countries policy of foreign holdiays, despite much lower vaccination rates?
Apparently the German Government is about to lift travel restrictions on incomers from the UK who have been double-jabbed. Ditto for Portugal. And Russia. And India.
However, because Germany is still in the EU it is protected by a magical forcefield of virtue and this is not, therefore, insane recklessness.
I'm shocked that they're going to do it for Russia given the unproven efficacy of Sputnik V. Good news for India though as it must mean Covishield is to get equivalency to Vaxzevria.
Of course, the fact that so many Russians are vaccine-phobic may eliminate the effect of the move somewhat...
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
Er, what is she on about? Most other countries are doing it.
Rachel Clarke @doctor_oxford · 4h So @BorisJohnson just launched a countrywide experiment and, yes, we are its unwilling guinea pigs.
English exceptionalism of the most arrogant, hubristic & deadly kind.
As another example of the level of debating skills coming from some. Feels a bit like co-ordinated messaging going on here. Maybe I am wrong.
"English exceptionalism"... I bet Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland end up doing almost exactly the same thing, just a couple of weeks later and with masks kept on buses and trains.
They can no more keep the restrictions going than us. After all, can you imagine what will happen if we get to September and schoolkids in Wales resume the mass self-isolation hokey-cokey when it's been put a stop to on the other side of the border? The parents would want to fillet Drakeford. So he'll play follow the leader, with some cosmetic changes so he can claim moral superiority.
I'd also wager that we won't get the same demented howling about "Welsh exceptionalism" when it happens. The combination of Boris Derangement Syndrome, Zerocovidianism, and the intellectual hatred of England that Orwell remarked upon is a heady intoxicant.
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
She’s insane. Every country will be going for herd immunity, preferably via vaccination. Including those nations who tried to keep it out such as Australia and NZ.
You'd need more context to see what she meant by herd immunity (ie with or without vaccination) but life's too short.
Given that the UK is vaccinating, vaccination surely plays a part in the herd immunity strategy?
Let’s be honest - the people moaning about not having our hands held by the state anymore are just Boris haters who want Sir Keir to score a political point. Difficult position for those who hate Boris and dug him out for not reopening earlier
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
What does she thinks will happen when places reach their vaccination wall I wonder - lockdown forever?
She and those like her are a gift to the government - it means relevant criticisms get mixed up with the silly ones, and are easier to manage.
But that's what this ultimately boils down to. We're pretty much hitting our vaccine wall now. There's few to no first doses left to do in large parts of the country and where there is some demand anyone can walk in and get one whenever they want.
Anyone arguing against July 19th unlockdown is effectively saying the only other way is to keep it basically forever as we're never really going to vaccinate any more than 89-91% of adults and the JCVI are vacillating over vaccines for kids.
I get, on one level, an argument that July 19th is too soon. BUT, as you suggest, a lot of the arguments against it are in fact arguments against ever reopening, which helps make the case for the reopening. The Cadwalladrs of the world don't make arguments with the necessary nuance, and so miss out on potentially valid points, as when it would be safe becomes entirely unclear.
I have a bit of a pet peeve on people being self defeating or undermining their own professed position when there are opportunities open to make a point, possibly because I do it too often myself.
She's a features writer, not an investigative journalist.
I'll never forget when she tweeted about a Tory donor/Brexiteer having some additional checks involved when opening a new bank account.
Not realising that is standard operating procedure for any high net worth individual thanks to KYC and AML regulations.
I presume Carole Cadswallop doesn't have any issue with EU countries policy of foreign holdiays, despite much lower vaccination rates?
Apparently the German Government is about to lift travel restrictions on incomers from the UK who have been double-jabbed. Ditto for Portugal. And Russia. And India.
However, because Germany is still in the EU it is protected by a magical forcefield of virtue and this is not, therefore, insane recklessness.
I'm shocked that they're going to do it for Russia given the unproven efficacy of Sputnik V. Good news for India though as it must mean Covishield is to get equivalency to Vaxzevria.
I can see countries making decisions on allowing travel of those vaccinated, not based on evidence of the effective of the vaccine, but worrying about perceived racism. Sputnik have not supplied the required information to the EMA. Lots of developing countries have been widely using Sputnik and the Chinese vaccines.
Does this cut both ways? We've seen countries haver about Indian-manufactured vaccines and AZ in general is not approved everywhere. If travel is to be opened up then all countries might need to set lower standards for vaccinated tourists than for sticking in the arms of their own citizens.
One thing I genuinely - and I do mean this genuinely - don’t get is whether the public are oblivious to the fact that daily deaths from covid are very minimal and have been since the early spring. Are people unaware of this?
NEW: Israel reports nearly 500 new coronavirus cases, biggest one-day increase since March
Out of interest, why is the reality of Israeli cases starting to rise again any sort of a story? We know cases of delta will spread rapidly in a highly vaccinated country which has largely or totally opened up. Because, UK.
Is it just because they are entirely Pfizer or something?
Because of the general uselessness of the media in adding 2 + 2 and other advanced mathematics.
Once the Delta variants R number became apparent, it meant 2 things were clear
- The threshold for herd immunity by vaccination had been lifted to a very high level. - This is much higher than Israel (or probably any other country) is likely to achieve through voluntary vaccination.
Therefore Delta will sweep through countries. Even Chinese style lockdowns are unlikely to stop it. The outcome will be a function of the level of vaccination.
Genuine question: what is the Delta variant's R number reckoned to be and how does that compare with the original SARS-Cov-2 and earlier variants?
I presume Carole Cadswallop doesn't have any issue with EU countries policy of foreign holdiays, despite much lower vaccination rates?
Apparently the German Government is about to lift travel restrictions on incomers from the UK who have been double-jabbed. Ditto for Portugal. And Russia. And India.
However, because Germany is still in the EU it is protected by a magical forcefield of virtue and this is not, therefore, insane recklessness.
I'm shocked that they're going to do it for Russia given the unproven efficacy of Sputnik V. Good news for India though as it must mean Covishield is to get equivalency to Vaxzevria.
Of course, the fact that so many Russians are vaccine-phobic may eliminate the effect of the move somewhat...
I think the problem with places like Russia, is as much the lengths people will go to obtain fake vaccination certification to get round the rules. Not something you really have to worry about too much with the UK.
Comments
Also students will work out which universities are keeping lectures online, and will avoid them.
For over-50s, are we not now somewhere towards 95% fully vaccinated, so this does not look like a huge issue - perhaps unable-to-be-vaccinated people aside.
Which of course was innumerate gobbledegook. The UK is coming out of lockdown as we're post-vaccine, even our Stage 3 we're already in is much more than many EU nations are at, so its not simply complacency that means we have more cases its a matter of policy to have the exit wave and come out of lockdown combined with the fact we're still doing an insane number of tests per day.
I'm assuming that none of you have sampled a Parmo? Now THAT is food!
Twitter is full of tales of major outbreaks at UK's universities. Oxford, Leeds, Durham, Kent, Reading etc etc.
They're learning from those who've come before, like the UK, but they're still only at 35% fully vaccinated.
But yes they're very rapidly catching up. They're gaining from the fact that American investment in the vaccine and the fact so many Americans are refusing the vaccine - their uplift in doses matches America's drop-off and given the population ratios America dropping off can really put a rocket in Canada's uplift.
Is it just because they are entirely Pfizer or something?
Cf my frequently made claim that in Paris I often eat at a little place off the boul' Mich' much favoured by the locals - true, but it's a Macdonalds.
Or try with some basic maths. If we be incredibly generous and say the <120,000 excess deaths we've had would have had 10 years extra on average then we've lost 1.2 million life years to the virus.
67 million x 1.33 years = 89 million life years lost to lockdown.
Even if we just go based on when excess deaths were eliminated in March, we've lost 0 excess life years to the virus and 22.33 million life years lost to lockdown.
Dragging lockdown on has cost us more than the virus ever did.
Carole Cadwalladr
@carolecadwalla
·
4h
Herd immunity. Herd immunity. Herd immunity. Herd immunity. Herd immunity.
Can we please now call it by its name? A reckless deliberate population infection strategy with unknown consequences not being contemplated by any other country in the world
Once the Delta variants R number became apparent, it meant 2 things were clear
- The threshold for herd immunity by vaccination had been lifted to a very high level.
- This is much higher than Israel (or probably any other country) is likely to achieve through voluntary vaccination.
Therefore Delta will sweep through countries. Even Chinese style lockdowns are unlikely to stop it. The outcome will be a function of the level of vaccination.
We've vaccinated our population now, we've vaccinated more of our population than Israel has.
So what exactly does Codswallop want us to do? 🙄
Rejoin the EU probably.
And arrest everyone involved in Brexit.
She and those like her are a gift to the government - it means relevant criticisms get mixed up with the silly ones, and are easier to manage.
They literally had block #1, you may come out for 30 mins.....now go back in....block #2 you can have your 30 mins. There was no intermingling.
https://french-iceberg.com/french-tacos-fast-food/
However, the lack of florid bollocks in the naming of the dishes is very encouraging.
@doctor_oxford
·
4h
So
@BorisJohnson
just launched a countrywide experiment and, yes, we are its unwilling guinea pigs.
English exceptionalism of the most arrogant, hubristic & deadly kind.
As another example of the level of debating skills coming from some. Feels a bit like co-ordinated messaging going on here. Maybe I am wrong.
Anyone arguing against July 19th unlockdown is effectively saying the only other way is to keep it basically forever as we're never really going to vaccinate any more than 89-91% of adults and the JCVI are vacillating over vaccines for kids.
Drive an hour out of the city in almost any direction and you’ll get some of the best food in the world
Incidentally that truly sensational meal i had earlier, with endless fine cava and a mind-blowing squid ink pasta with red Soller prawns - with that phenomenal sunset view - cost me £45, including raw tuna taco starter and bread and olives and the works
So about the same as a solo pizza express with salad and a couple of large glasses of red in, say, basingstoke
However, because Germany is still in the EU it is protected by a magical forcefield of virtue and this is not, therefore, insane recklessness.
This seems to be what Sharon Peacock is saying here:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid-19-variants-vaccine-setback-1.6046643
https://mobile.twitter.com/SidKhurana3607/status/1412116569455427584
Their vaccination levels were enough to wipe out Covid when R was 3, but are insufficient when it is 6.
That's one of the more bizarre things I've read recently.
But not surprising from someone who thought the UK should stop vaccinating at Easter and donate any remaining doses to the third world.
Welded into your flat == lockdown
Able to walk the dog in the park whenever you feel like it == lockdown
So, you need to do one of two things: boost the number vaccinated (by adding children as France and the US, or by adding some degree of compulsion), or accept that Covid will sweep through unvaccinated communities.
Population immunity would be better.
You really think that?
I have a bit of a pet peeve on people being self defeating or undermining their own professed position when there are opportunities open to make a point, possibly because I do it too often myself.
They can no more keep the restrictions going than us. After all, can you imagine what will happen if we get to September and schoolkids in Wales resume the mass self-isolation hokey-cokey when it's been put a stop to on the other side of the border? The parents would want to fillet Drakeford. So he'll play follow the leader, with some cosmetic changes so he can claim moral superiority.
I'd also wager that we won't get the same demented howling about "Welsh exceptionalism" when it happens. The combination of Boris Derangement Syndrome, Zerocovidianism, and the intellectual hatred of England that Orwell remarked upon is a heady intoxicant.
I'll never forget when she tweeted about a Tory donor/Brexiteer having some additional checks involved when opening a new bank account.
Not realising that is standard operating procedure for any high net worth individual thanks to KYC and AML regulations.
She rapidly deleted that tweet.
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