"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
Many Scots with chips on their shoulders love saying this, because it plays to the idea of "Infamy, infamy, the English have all got it in for me". But "Sutton United Win the FA Cup" would be front-page British news, whereas "Sutton United Get Knocked Out in the Preliminaries" would only make the local press.
Trust me. You're not being picked on.
Don't tell him that. He bizarrely likes to wallow in a phoney sense of Scottish inferiority to appeal to an equally phoney sense of injustice. The inconvenient truth for the Nats is that Scots have been a driving force behind the British establishment. Their universities and schools have provided a disproportionate amount of leading politicians who are either Scottish or of Scottish decent. The Blair government was a leading example. The Scots were enthusiastic promoters of Empire, and their troops used to repress the genuinely oppressed around the world. Nats promote a false history, just like all nationalists and their close cousins, fascists.
The 'colonised' claims some SNATs use are fascinating given that there were no end to the Scottish settlers / soldiers / traders / explorers during the British Empire days.
And before that there was Scotland's own attempts at colonies most notably the Darien debacle.
And before that there were the Scottish invasions of Ireland and plantations in Ulster (and the Hebrides).
That’s history. I get more pissed off at his peddling demonstrably false claims about current events.
Yes indeed, but most Nats are so used to lying to try and promote their cause that the two things are heavily linked. Their approach is not that dissimilar to Trump supporters.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve posted that article reporting on the Dundee study that debunked the Murray “Scottish/British” myth but to no avail.
The reality is that when Murray was young he made the stupid "anyone but England" quote. That was hardly going to endear him. And while he is very admirable and an amazing athlete he isn't exactly likeable. In spite of all of that masses of English people supported him, including myself. the Nats like to try and spin the lie though.
I have always found him funny and likeable, even when he was a moody teenage reluctant star.
Andy Murray has done Mock the Week several times. He has a sense of humour.
I think his soh can be safely described as deadpan.
There are some utterly moronic posts this morning from ostensibly intelligent posters who really ought to know better. Leaving aside the teeth-grindingly awful childish patois that some employ “the pox”, the antivax trashing of AZ and the absolutely imbecilic straw men “people are wishing covid away”, the grasp of conditional probabilities is truly embarrassing for what should be a mathematical site.
Those that wish to lock themselves away forever are free to do so. Much of the country has decided that it is happy to live with the slim risk to the vaccinated and get on with its lives. Unless you are preaching total lockdown with the main vector - schools - closed permanently and life barely worth living, other interventions are fairly marginal.
Enough.
Question. If "much of the has decided that it is happy to live with the slim risk to the vaccinated and get on with its lives" then why do repeated polls show the opposite is true? As for people wishing to "lock themselves away forever" who is suggesting that? Today is Friday, the sun is shining, people are getting out and about and that is before Monday's "freedom day". In what way are we locked down at the moment?
You may have decided that deleting the shark detector app removes the shark, but the majority as yet have not. For the morally outraged of you this summer is not going to be fun. A summer of headlines as pox tears out of control, with a long list if restrictions being maintained in the UK and a longer list of countries refusing to let us waltz over from plague island without restrictions.
RP, you make good points, then ruin them with hyperbole like “plague island”. As Delta takes off everywhere throughout the world it just makes you look parochial. The Netherlands’ rate of increase is far worse than ours and I’d be more worried about France and the Beta variant at the moment.
The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.
To answer the Spectator's question: I think the Tories failed to listen to the players' own explanation for why they were taking the knee. If they had listened and taken the players seriously they would have seen that taking the opposite side would land them in hot water, because most reasonable people listening to what the players were saying with an open mind would be on their side. Why didn't they do that? Snobbishness is probably part of the story. When Southgate penned his excellent and moving "Dear England" letter, there were complaints from Downing Street suggesting it must have been ghostwritten. Because obviously nobody in football (not even a man intelligent enough to have been tasked with managing the national team) could be smart enough to write in proper English, right? The reflexive elitism of the English ruling class is a problem. The other obvious explanation is that they are just unaware or deliberately blind to the extent of racism in English society, and so are conditioned to downplay the very thing that the England players were protesting against. If you don't think racism is a problem, you will tend to assume that anti-racist actions are just 'gesture politics' or 'wokery'. I sincerely hope the Tories learn something from this because we need as many people as possible to be on board in the fight to create a society free from the poison of racism, and the comments coming from the Cabinet, right from the top in fact, on this topic were unhelpful towards that cause, in my opinion.
All the Tories need to say is taking the knee is personal choice, not something we would do ourselves (we prefer more practical anti racism measures) but don't boo it.
GB news may have signed its own death warrant however and led to a mass boycott (and most of its viewers are Boris voting Leavers who do not back taking the knee) because one of its presenters took the knee on air.
Only 38% of Tory voters back taking the knee compared to 78% of Labour voters
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
If you say so Charles. Vaccine efficacy of 70.4% doesn’t sound too impressive to my layman’s ears, and you quite literally can’t give away Oxford/AZ in most countries.
I’m delighted to be double-Pfizered and to have my EU vaccine passport clearly stating this fact. It certainly made my Cretan trip last week a very relaxing and pleasant affair. (There were virtually zero UK people there: we bumped in to a total of two Englishmen in the packed Denmark-supporting pub, and they were both residents, not visitors.)
70% is great for vaccines. Flu is often around 50%
Flu tends to be one jab rather than two doesn't it?
I wonder whether if we had two jabs for flu, like two for Covid, whether we might significantly improve protection against the flu?
I wonder if in the future mRNA etc might help produce better flu vaccines too?
Problem is that flu is a tender business - margins are terrible and complexity/risk high so very few companies are involved.
The big problem with GB News is not if it is not right leaning enough, or too right leaning, it is that ultimately it is just shit...and no app, no YouTube stream, both of which essential for any modern media outlet, and all in a market that has never been big in the UK and is declining e.g Sky News regularly struggles to get 50k viewers.
It is just a shitter version of Sky News, with a wokeism gone mad slant on lots of stories.
If i wanted uninformed and consistently wrong news, I can just watch BBC or Sky. And in the YouTube space already plenty of competition from much better long form interviews or informative videos right through to wokeism gone mad outrage bus stuff.
I think an *Andrew Neil interviews" YouTube channel would have done much better and much cheaper
There are some utterly moronic posts this morning from ostensibly intelligent posters who really ought to know better. Leaving aside the teeth-grindingly awful childish patois that some employ “the pox”, the antivax trashing of AZ and the absolutely imbecilic straw men “people are wishing covid away”, the grasp of conditional probabilities is truly embarrassing for what should be a mathematical site.
Those that wish to lock themselves away forever are free to do so. Much of the country has decided that it is happy to live with the slim risk to the vaccinated and get on with its lives. Unless you are preaching total lockdown with the main vector - schools - closed permanently and life barely worth living, other interventions are fairly marginal.
Enough.
Question. If "much of the has decided that it is happy to live with the slim risk to the vaccinated and get on with its lives" then why do repeated polls show the opposite is true? As for people wishing to "lock themselves away forever" who is suggesting that? Today is Friday, the sun is shining, people are getting out and about and that is before Monday's "freedom day". In what way are we locked down at the moment?
You may have decided that deleting the shark detector app removes the shark, but the majority as yet have not. For the morally outraged of you this summer is not going to be fun. A summer of headlines as pox tears out of control, with a long list if restrictions being maintained in the UK and a longer list of countries refusing to let us waltz over from plague island without restrictions.
Sharks are a good example. People fear sharks out of all proportion to their threat.
Especially if you are of an age where Jaws was a seminal experience.
There are some utterly moronic posts this morning from ostensibly intelligent posters who really ought to know better. Leaving aside the teeth-grindingly awful childish patois that some employ “the pox”, the antivax trashing of AZ and the absolutely imbecilic straw men “people are wishing covid away”, the grasp of conditional probabilities is truly embarrassing for what should be a mathematical site.
Those that wish to lock themselves away forever are free to do so. Much of the country has decided that it is happy to live with the slim risk to the vaccinated and get on with its lives. Unless you are preaching total lockdown with the main vector - schools - closed permanently and life barely worth living, other interventions are fairly marginal.
Enough.
Question. If "much of the has decided that it is happy to live with the slim risk to the vaccinated and get on with its lives" then why do repeated polls show the opposite is true? As for people wishing to "lock themselves away forever" who is suggesting that? Today is Friday, the sun is shining, people are getting out and about and that is before Monday's "freedom day". In what way are we locked down at the moment?
You may have decided that deleting the shark detector app removes the shark, but the majority as yet have not. For the morally outraged of you this summer is not going to be fun. A summer of headlines as pox tears out of control, with a long list if restrictions being maintained in the UK and a longer list of countries refusing to let us waltz over from plague island without restrictions.
I said much not most (again a basic maths fail on your part). And your final paragraph stinks of hysteria and hyperbole - as usual.
My final paragraph that upsets you is based on reality.
"long list of restrictions" - the companies requiring mandatory mask wearing gets longer and longer "countries not letting us in without restrictions". We are on the red list of many places we may want to go, by their choice.
I will take "hysteria and hyperbole" under advisement. Enjoy your time with the shark.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
It is not a dud. It is a fantastic vaccine developed in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna are even better
If you say so Charles. Vaccine efficacy of 70.4% doesn’t sound too impressive to my layman’s ears, and you quite literally can’t give away Oxford/AZ in most countries.
I’m delighted to be double-Pfizered and to have my EU vaccine passport clearly stating this fact. It certainly made my Cretan trip last week a very relaxing and pleasant affair. (There were virtually zero UK people there: we bumped in to a total of two Englishmen in the packed Denmark-supporting pub, and they were both residents, not visitors.)
70% is great for vaccines. Flu is often around 50%
Flu tends to be one jab rather than two doesn't it?
I wonder whether if we had two jabs for flu, like two for Covid, whether we might significantly improve protection against the flu?
I wonder if in the future mRNA etc might help produce better flu vaccines too?
J&J is one jab, that is now approved.
You don't want to have just 1 jab of J&J against delta. I think it would be a great booster though.
Yeah, J&J should definitely be a shot - chaser vaccine. I'd be pretty upset if I got offered it instead of AZ/Pfizer/Moderna and probably refuse it and ask for one of the other three.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
A moronic post that does you no credit Stuart.
Back to trashing the vaccines on PB.
Have to say it is correct though, you rarely if ever hear anything about "Oxford vaccine" nowadays.
So speaks the king of moronic posts. Let's say this very slowly so even you might understand. It is called the AZ vaccine because that is the company that has taken it into mass production. It has been largely known as this since well before anti-vaxxers and morons like Macron tried to suggest there was a problem with it.
Personally I would rather take the view of the MHRA than Mr Macron, or for that matter some thick as pig shit anti-English Scottish nationalists
The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.
To answer the Spectator's question: I think the Tories failed to listen to the players' own explanation for why they were taking the knee. If they had listened and taken the players seriously they would have seen that taking the opposite side would land them in hot water, because most reasonable people listening to what the players were saying with an open mind would be on their side. Why didn't they do that? Snobbishness is probably part of the story. When Southgate penned his excellent and moving "Dear England" letter, there were complaints from Downing Street suggesting it must have been ghostwritten. Because obviously nobody in football (not even a man intelligent enough to have been tasked with managing the national team) could be smart enough to write in proper English, right? The reflexive elitism of the English ruling class is a problem. The other obvious explanation is that they are just unaware or deliberately blind to the extent of racism in English society, and so are conditioned to downplay the very thing that the England players were protesting against. If you don't think racism is a problem, you will tend to assume that anti-racist actions are just 'gesture politics' or 'wokery'. I sincerely hope the Tories learn something from this because we need as many people as possible to be on board in the fight to create a society free from the poison of racism, and the comments coming from the Cabinet, right from the top in fact, on this topic were unhelpful towards that cause, in my opinion.
All the Tories need to say is taking the knee is personal choice, not something we would do ourselves (we prefer more practical anti racism measures) but don't boo it.
GB news may have signed its own death warrant however and led to a mass boycott (and most of its viewers are Boris voting Leavers who do not back taking the knee) because one of its presenters took the knee on air.
Only 38% of Tory voters back taking the knee compared to 78% of Labour voters
There are some utterly moronic posts this morning from ostensibly intelligent posters who really ought to know better. Leaving aside the teeth-grindingly awful childish patois that some employ “the pox”, the antivax trashing of AZ and the absolutely imbecilic straw men “people are wishing covid away”, the grasp of conditional probabilities is truly embarrassing for what should be a mathematical site.
Those that wish to lock themselves away forever are free to do so. Much of the country has decided that it is happy to live with the slim risk to the vaccinated and get on with its lives. Unless you are preaching total lockdown with the main vector - schools - closed permanently and life barely worth living, other interventions are fairly marginal.
Enough.
Question. If "much of the has decided that it is happy to live with the slim risk to the vaccinated and get on with its lives" then why do repeated polls show the opposite is true? As for people wishing to "lock themselves away forever" who is suggesting that? Today is Friday, the sun is shining, people are getting out and about and that is before Monday's "freedom day". In what way are we locked down at the moment?
You may have decided that deleting the shark detector app removes the shark, but the majority as yet have not. For the morally outraged of you this summer is not going to be fun. A summer of headlines as pox tears out of control, with a long list if restrictions being maintained in the UK and a longer list of countries refusing to let us waltz over from plague island without restrictions.
I said much not most (again a basic maths fail on your part). And your final paragraph stinks of hysteria and hyperbole - as usual.
My final paragraph that upsets you is based on reality.
"long list of restrictions" - the companies requiring mandatory mask wearing gets longer and longer "countries not letting us in without restrictions". We are on the red list of many places we may want to go, by their choice.
I will take "hysteria and hyperbole" under advisement. Enjoy your time with the shark.
“Plague Island” is hyperbolic. What are you calling the Netherlands “Plague Flatlands”?
The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.
To answer the Spectator's question: I think the Tories failed to listen to the players' own explanation for why they were taking the knee. If they had listened and taken the players seriously they would have seen that taking the opposite side would land them in hot water, because most reasonable people listening to what the players were saying with an open mind would be on their side. Why didn't they do that? Snobbishness is probably part of the story. When Southgate penned his excellent and moving "Dear England" letter, there were complaints from Downing Street suggesting it must have been ghostwritten. Because obviously nobody in football (not even a man intelligent enough to have been tasked with managing the national team) could be smart enough to write in proper English, right? The reflexive elitism of the English ruling class is a problem. The other obvious explanation is that they are just unaware or deliberately blind to the extent of racism in English society, and so are conditioned to downplay the very thing that the England players were protesting against. If you don't think racism is a problem, you will tend to assume that anti-racist actions are just 'gesture politics' or 'wokery'. I sincerely hope the Tories learn something from this because we need as many people as possible to be on board in the fight to create a society free from the poison of racism, and the comments coming from the Cabinet, right from the top in fact, on this topic were unhelpful towards that cause, in my opinion.
Plus some political calculation imo. An unwillingness to get on the wrong side of a significant part of their base - those who (for whatever reason) are so intensely irritated by the Knee as to be psychologically onside with the booing of it at the football.
Having played the 'culture war' for votes, the Cons are stuck with the voters who delivered those votes. They can't just abandon them. Hence the prevarication over that issue. The PM unable to quickly and clearly condemn a bunch of racists booing the England football team. Amazing really when you think about it.
And it would probably have worked out ok for them but for the 3 black players missing from the spot in the final. Cue the inevitable torrent of racial abuse on social media and then all the obfuscating crap melts away and the issue can be seen as the black/white, good/bad, dark/light one it really is.
There are some utterly moronic posts this morning from ostensibly intelligent posters who really ought to know better. Leaving aside the teeth-grindingly awful childish patois that some employ “the pox”, the antivax trashing of AZ and the absolutely imbecilic straw men “people are wishing covid away”, the grasp of conditional probabilities is truly embarrassing for what should be a mathematical site.
Those that wish to lock themselves away forever are free to do so. Much of the country has decided that it is happy to live with the slim risk to the vaccinated and get on with its lives. Unless you are preaching total lockdown with the main vector - schools - closed permanently and life barely worth living, other interventions are fairly marginal.
Enough.
Depressing, isn’t it. Like a Facebook politics group at times.
The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.
To answer the Spectator's question: I think the Tories failed to listen to the players' own explanation for why they were taking the knee. If they had listened and taken the players seriously they would have seen that taking the opposite side would land them in hot water, because most reasonable people listening to what the players were saying with an open mind would be on their side. Why didn't they do that? Snobbishness is probably part of the story. When Southgate penned his excellent and moving "Dear England" letter, there were complaints from Downing Street suggesting it must have been ghostwritten. Because obviously nobody in football (not even a man intelligent enough to have been tasked with managing the national team) could be smart enough to write in proper English, right? The reflexive elitism of the English ruling class is a problem. The other obvious explanation is that they are just unaware or deliberately blind to the extent of racism in English society, and so are conditioned to downplay the very thing that the England players were protesting against. If you don't think racism is a problem, you will tend to assume that anti-racist actions are just 'gesture politics' or 'wokery'. I sincerely hope the Tories learn something from this because we need as many people as possible to be on board in the fight to create a society free from the poison of racism, and the comments coming from the Cabinet, right from the top in fact, on this topic were unhelpful towards that cause, in my opinion.
Well this conservative is on board and backing the comments of Steve Baker to his colleagues
No doubt as a Man Utd supporter of near 70 years you will understand that I admired Marcus Rashford as a player but his background story and his fight for free school meals has been inspirational and done in a non political way and successfully
I called out the likes of Natalie Elphicke and others whose involvement in the free school meal debate was embarrassing and it is a lesson to the conservative party and its leaders that they need to rid themselves of their deafness to this subject
On taking the knee, I do not like anyone doing it and to be fair there are black premiership footballers who object to it, but the one thing these vile racists have done is to power up support for taking the knee and I am with the players on this
Indeed the three players targeted by the rascists have been an example of the very best of our country in their response
I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here. Are we sure that the outburst of racial hatred against the three players has been as widespread as made out?
I ask because, as someone posted on here earlier, it now looks as though the Police are treating the graffiti on the Marcus Rashford mural as non-racist and, while there has been the Savill's estate agent posted all over news sites as well as one or two others, it doesn't seem like there have been mass expulsions of individuals from social media sites (which the sites themselves would be only too keen to share to show they are taking action) and / or there have not been that many arrests etc. Moreover, any such individuals are likely to be relatively thick as pig sh1t so I would not imagine they have been great at hiding their details.
Taking this a bit further and going a bit Leon-esque. If we accept the Chinese and Russian states are willing to spread disinformation via social media, why would they not take advantage of a situation like this to spread hate like this? They know the atmosphere reached fever pitch in England when it came to the final and they know the whole debate around BLM, racism, the culture wars etc etc are stoking tensions in society (BTW, if this was the case, the social media companies would have a vested interest in NOT disclosing this as it raises questions over their stated number of users, which is crucial for attracting advertising).
I may have missed a lot of newsflow around mass arrests, large numbers of people being fired from their jobs after being found out to have posted vile material etc etc but it doesn't feel like it.
Indeed. And when the rest of Europe catches us up we won't be singled out on their red lists. At the moment we are - "plague island" is me trying to make light of a shit situation.
Again I ask the question of the pray it away people (not you) who insist people like me want "lockdown forever". Today is Friday, 3 days before freedom day. How are we locked down right now? Where in the UK can I not go, what can I not do? A handful of things are closed, but the idea that we are locked down is laughable.
The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.
To answer the Spectator's question: I think the Tories failed to listen to the players' own explanation for why they were taking the knee. If they had listened and taken the players seriously they would have seen that taking the opposite side would land them in hot water, because most reasonable people listening to what the players were saying with an open mind would be on their side. Why didn't they do that? Snobbishness is probably part of the story. When Southgate penned his excellent and moving "Dear England" letter, there were complaints from Downing Street suggesting it must have been ghostwritten. Because obviously nobody in football (not even a man intelligent enough to have been tasked with managing the national team) could be smart enough to write in proper English, right? The reflexive elitism of the English ruling class is a problem. The other obvious explanation is that they are just unaware or deliberately blind to the extent of racism in English society, and so are conditioned to downplay the very thing that the England players were protesting against. If you don't think racism is a problem, you will tend to assume that anti-racist actions are just 'gesture politics' or 'wokery'. I sincerely hope the Tories learn something from this because we need as many people as possible to be on board in the fight to create a society free from the poison of racism, and the comments coming from the Cabinet, right from the top in fact, on this topic were unhelpful towards that cause, in my opinion.
Plus some political calculation imo. An unwillingness to get on the wrong side of a significant part of their base - those who (for whatever reason) are so intensely irritated by the Knee as to be psychologically onside with the booing of it at the football.
Having played the 'culture war' for votes, the Cons are stuck with the voters who delivered those votes. They can't just abandon them. Hence the prevarication over that issue. The PM unable to quickly and clearly condemn a bunch of racists booing the England football team. Amazing really when you think about it.
And it would probably have worked out ok for them but for the 3 black players missing from the spot in the final. Cue the inevitable torrent of racial abuse on social media and then all the obfuscating crap melts away and the issue can be seen as the black/white, good/bad, dark/light one it really is.
So - rotten luck for the Tories here.
And yet a 13 point lead in the poll yesterday....and past 5 polls no change in their average vote share, with average lead of ~9-10 points.
Given Hancock scandal, rising covid cases that are scaring people, its quite something they are still so far ahead, and no sign Labour are picking up. Its Lib Dems that seem to be nicking a few points from here and there.
There are some utterly moronic posts this morning from ostensibly intelligent posters who really ought to know better. Leaving aside the teeth-grindingly awful childish patois that some employ “the pox”, the antivax trashing of AZ and the absolutely imbecilic straw men “people are wishing covid away”, the grasp of conditional probabilities is truly embarrassing for what should be a mathematical site.
Those that wish to lock themselves away forever are free to do so. Much of the country has decided that it is happy to live with the slim risk to the vaccinated and get on with its lives. Unless you are preaching total lockdown with the main vector - schools - closed permanently and life barely worth living, other interventions are fairly marginal.
Enough.
Depressing, isn’t it. Like a Facebook politics group at times.
It is very sad. Covid Derangement Syndrome has taken hold among many posters - the first casualties being any sense of rationality and proportion.
Indeed. And when the rest of Europe catches us up we won't be singled out on their red lists. At the moment we are - "plague island" is me trying to make light of a shit situation.
Again I ask the question of the pray it away people (not you) who insist people like me want "lockdown forever". Today is Friday, 3 days before freedom day. How are we locked down right now? Where in the UK can I not go, what can I not do? A handful of things are closed, but the idea that we are locked down is laughable.
Until you are free to decide how many people you want to invite into your home you are still locked down.
There are some utterly moronic posts this morning from ostensibly intelligent posters who really ought to know better. Leaving aside the teeth-grindingly awful childish patois that some employ “the pox”, the antivax trashing of AZ and the absolutely imbecilic straw men “people are wishing covid away”, the grasp of conditional probabilities is truly embarrassing for what should be a mathematical site.
Those that wish to lock themselves away forever are free to do so. Much of the country has decided that it is happy to live with the slim risk to the vaccinated and get on with its lives. Unless you are preaching total lockdown with the main vector - schools - closed permanently and life barely worth living, other interventions are fairly marginal.
Enough.
Question. If "much of the has decided that it is happy to live with the slim risk to the vaccinated and get on with its lives" then why do repeated polls show the opposite is true? As for people wishing to "lock themselves away forever" who is suggesting that? Today is Friday, the sun is shining, people are getting out and about and that is before Monday's "freedom day". In what way are we locked down at the moment?
You may have decided that deleting the shark detector app removes the shark, but the majority as yet have not. For the morally outraged of you this summer is not going to be fun. A summer of headlines as pox tears out of control, with a long list if restrictions being maintained in the UK and a longer list of countries refusing to let us waltz over from plague island without restrictions.
Sharks are a good example. People fear sharks out of all proportion to their threat.
Especially if you are of an age where Jaws was a seminal experience.
Well said.
First time I went scuba diving was at the Great Barrier Reef. We were all kitted out, in our wetsuits and in the water when the instructor said basically 'Just before we go down just know there are sharks in the water. These sharks don't attack people so don't be afraid, don't react and keep breathing normally. We just want to warn people at this point so they don't panic'.
I went down, had a great time looking at the Barrier Reef and the person I was swimming with took a picture of me using an underwater disposable camera (this was the 90s) and just as he pressed click a shark swam past inbetween myself and the camera. The photo that came out of that was absolutely incredible, due to the perspective difference the shark looked much bigger than it actually was. Most sharks are actually much smaller than you see in Jaws and not terrifying.
The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.
To answer the Spectator's question: I think the Tories failed to listen to the players' own explanation for why they were taking the knee. If they had listened and taken the players seriously they would have seen that taking the opposite side would land them in hot water, because most reasonable people listening to what the players were saying with an open mind would be on their side. Why didn't they do that? Snobbishness is probably part of the story. When Southgate penned his excellent and moving "Dear England" letter, there were complaints from Downing Street suggesting it must have been ghostwritten. Because obviously nobody in football (not even a man intelligent enough to have been tasked with managing the national team) could be smart enough to write in proper English, right? The reflexive elitism of the English ruling class is a problem. The other obvious explanation is that they are just unaware or deliberately blind to the extent of racism in English society, and so are conditioned to downplay the very thing that the England players were protesting against. If you don't think racism is a problem, you will tend to assume that anti-racist actions are just 'gesture politics' or 'wokery'. I sincerely hope the Tories learn something from this because we need as many people as possible to be on board in the fight to create a society free from the poison of racism, and the comments coming from the Cabinet, right from the top in fact, on this topic were unhelpful towards that cause, in my opinion.
Fantastic post.
As a Tory seeing so many on 'my own side' fall down here with closed-minded ignorance of what people were protesting against and a pig-headed refusal to listen to what the gesture meant to the people making it has been downright frustrating.
Whatever mainstream gesture people make, whether it be flying the flag or bending the knee, to be arrogantly telling other people what that gesture means rather than listening to those making it is hubristic, rude and ignorant.
It was not just (some) Tories banging on about BLM being Marxists, so much as they even got that wrong because taking the knee as a protest against racism comes from American football and not originally from BLM.
But the slightly odd thing is that, however ill-informed or out of touch they might be, professional politicians – people who get elected for a living – did not stop to reflect that actually the England football team is very, very popular (at least in England) so attacking it for any reason at all might not play well.
The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.
To answer the Spectator's question: I think the Tories failed to listen to the players' own explanation for why they were taking the knee. If they had listened and taken the players seriously they would have seen that taking the opposite side would land them in hot water, because most reasonable people listening to what the players were saying with an open mind would be on their side. Why didn't they do that? Snobbishness is probably part of the story. When Southgate penned his excellent and moving "Dear England" letter, there were complaints from Downing Street suggesting it must have been ghostwritten. Because obviously nobody in football (not even a man intelligent enough to have been tasked with managing the national team) could be smart enough to write in proper English, right? The reflexive elitism of the English ruling class is a problem. The other obvious explanation is that they are just unaware or deliberately blind to the extent of racism in English society, and so are conditioned to downplay the very thing that the England players were protesting against. If you don't think racism is a problem, you will tend to assume that anti-racist actions are just 'gesture politics' or 'wokery'. I sincerely hope the Tories learn something from this because we need as many people as possible to be on board in the fight to create a society free from the poison of racism, and the comments coming from the Cabinet, right from the top in fact, on this topic were unhelpful towards that cause, in my opinion.
Well this conservative is on board and backing the comments of Steve Baker to his colleagues
No doubt as a Man Utd supporter of near 70 years you will understand that I admired Marcus Rashford as a player but his background story and his fight for free school meals has been inspirational and done in a non political way and successfully
I called out the likes of Natalie Elphicke and others whose involvement in the free school meal debate was embarrassing and it is a lesson to the conservative party and its leaders that they need to rid themselves of their deafness to this subject
On taking the knee, I do not like anyone doing it and to be fair there are black premiership footballers who object to it, but the one thing these vile racists have done is to power up support for taking the knee and I am with the players on this
Indeed the three players targeted by the rascists have been an example of the very best of our country in their response
I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here. Are we sure that the outburst of racial hatred against the three players has been as widespread as made out?
I ask because, as someone posted on here earlier, it now looks as though the Police are treating the graffiti on the Marcus Rashford mural as non-racist and, while there has been the Savill's estate agent posted all over news sites as well as one or two others, it doesn't seem like there have been mass expulsions of individuals from social media sites (which the sites themselves would be only too keen to share to show they are taking action) and / or there have not been that many arrests etc. Moreover, any such individuals are likely to be relatively thick as pig sh1t so I would not imagine they have been great at hiding their details.
Taking this a bit further and going a bit Leon-esque. If we accept the Chinese and Russian states are willing to spread disinformation via social media, why would they not take advantage of a situation like this to spread hate like this? They know the atmosphere reached fever pitch in England when it came to the final and they know the whole debate around BLM, racism, the culture wars etc etc are stoking tensions in society (BTW, if this was the case, the social media companies would have a vested interest in NOT disclosing this as it raises questions over their stated number of users, which is crucial for attracting advertising).
I may have missed a lot of newsflow around mass arrests, large numbers of people being fired from their jobs after being found out to have posted vile material etc etc but it doesn't feel like it.
None of that is controversial imo. The press coverage is indeed out of line with actual confirmed cases of racist abuse. Some of it is almost certainly driven by Russia and perhaps other nation states. It doesnt change the fact that the PM picked the wrong side on this one, both morally and tactically.
The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.
To answer the Spectator's question: I think the Tories failed to listen to the players' own explanation for why they were taking the knee. If they had listened and taken the players seriously they would have seen that taking the opposite side would land them in hot water, because most reasonable people listening to what the players were saying with an open mind would be on their side. Why didn't they do that? Snobbishness is probably part of the story. When Southgate penned his excellent and moving "Dear England" letter, there were complaints from Downing Street suggesting it must have been ghostwritten. Because obviously nobody in football (not even a man intelligent enough to have been tasked with managing the national team) could be smart enough to write in proper English, right? The reflexive elitism of the English ruling class is a problem. The other obvious explanation is that they are just unaware or deliberately blind to the extent of racism in English society, and so are conditioned to downplay the very thing that the England players were protesting against. If you don't think racism is a problem, you will tend to assume that anti-racist actions are just 'gesture politics' or 'wokery'. I sincerely hope the Tories learn something from this because we need as many people as possible to be on board in the fight to create a society free from the poison of racism, and the comments coming from the Cabinet, right from the top in fact, on this topic were unhelpful towards that cause, in my opinion.
All the Tories need to say is taking the knee is personal choice, not something we would do ourselves (we prefer more practical anti racism measures) but don't boo it.
GB news may have signed its own death warrant however and led to a mass boycott (and most of its viewers are Boris voting Leavers who do not back taking the knee) because one of its presenters took the knee on air.
Only 38% of Tory voters back taking the knee compared to 78% of Labour voters
I think that's right. The timing of football's en masse commencement of this cringe-fest is irredeemably intertwined with the attempted import of racial tensions from the States. which aims to ratchet-up racial tensions here. To claim it is nothing to do with this is risible and a transparent re-writing of history. It would be a remarkable coincidence if this were not so. The footballers are now claiming this is their choice and it is purely a protest against racism in the crowds - which we all abhor obviously. Fair enough. We need to move on and accept this. Personally, I think the footballers should carry on with their campaign because it is heartfelt and important, especially in the light of the disgusting recent Euro events, but perhaps alter the symbolism to completely separate it from the structural issues in the States.
This may not be of interest to anyone here beyond an academic sense, but in case any posters or readers are also Amazon employees and thinking of dabbling in videogames, there's some really scummy stuff you need to know about, courtesy of LoadingReadyRun's Checkpoint:
I'm missing @BluestBlue 's posts. Anyone know if he is OK?
Not seen since before Hancock departure from the charivari. You don't think..
Nah, uses Latin, makes the odd jolly jape but little of substance and uses hyperbole to get blue likes and wind up the libs. If he were in the cabinet would surely be its leader.
The big problem with GB News is not if it is not right leaning enough, or too right leaning, it is that ultimately it is just shit...and no app, no YouTube stream, both of which essential for any modern media outlet, and all in a market that has never been big in the UK and is declining e.g Sky News regularly struggles to get 50k viewers.
It is just a shitter version of Sky News, with a wokeism gone mad slant on lots of stories.
If i wanted uninformed and consistently wrong news, I can just watch BBC or Sky. And in the YouTube space already plenty of competition from much better long form interviews or informative videos right through to wokeism gone mad outrage bus stuff.
I think an *Andrew Neil interviews" YouTube channel would have done much better and much cheaper
It was obvious with the duffers they hired that it was a dead duck before it even started , Neil and that clown Oliver for a start, that is enough to resign it to the bin.
Indeed. And when the rest of Europe catches us up we won't be singled out on their red lists. At the moment we are - "plague island" is me trying to make light of a shit situation.
Again I ask the question of the pray it away people (not you) who insist people like me want "lockdown forever". Today is Friday, 3 days before freedom day. How are we locked down right now? Where in the UK can I not go, what can I not do? A handful of things are closed, but the idea that we are locked down is laughable.
Still bemused as to why the US isn't taking off more given the very low vaccination rates in many states, but perhaps because those states are also generally the less internationally (or even domestically) connected ones, they are just a few weeks behind the curve. The last 2 big US waves started in NY, California and other coastal states and worked their way inland.
"On a personal level I know of several people I have regular dealings with who have had to self isolate because they were pinged even though they have been double jabbed."
And why not? AstraZeneca is estimated to have only about 60% efficacy against symptomatic infection, where the Delta variant is concerned. Its efficacy against asymptomatic infection is expected to be lower. The "double jabbed" can still get the disease and pass on the disease.
Whatever anyone thinks the best strategy is for dealing with this, please let's not mislead anyone into thinking otherwise.
I love how when it was launched, amid much boke-inducing hype, it was boastingly called the “Oxford” vaccine (sticking out of chest compulsory). Now that the planet universally acknowledges it as a dud, it is the “AstraZeneca” vaccine, a product of a dodgy EU company, based in Sweden.
Shades of that other phenomenon: - Andy Murray winning =British success - Andy Murray losing = Scottish failure
A moronic post that does you no credit Stuart.
Back to trashing the vaccines on PB.
Have to say it is correct though, you rarely if ever hear anything about "Oxford vaccine" nowadays.
So speaks the king of moronic posts. Let's say this very slowly so even you might understand. It is called the AZ vaccine because that is the company that has taken it into mass production. It has been largely known as this since well before anti-vaxxers and morons like Macron tried to suggest there was a problem with it.
Personally I would rather take the view of the MHRA than Mr Macron, or for that matter some thick as pig shit anti-English Scottish nationalists
Jog on sad sack
Kinder politics nationalist style
Join him even sadder sack, you two will suit each other.
There are some utterly moronic posts this morning from ostensibly intelligent posters who really ought to know better. Leaving aside the teeth-grindingly awful childish patois that some employ “the pox”, the antivax trashing of AZ and the absolutely imbecilic straw men “people are wishing covid away”, the grasp of conditional probabilities is truly embarrassing for what should be a mathematical site.
Those that wish to lock themselves away forever are free to do so. Much of the country has decided that it is happy to live with the slim risk to the vaccinated and get on with its lives. Unless you are preaching total lockdown with the main vector - schools - closed permanently and life barely worth living, other interventions are fairly marginal.
Enough.
Depressing, isn’t it. Like a Facebook politics group at times.
It is very sad. Covid Derangement Syndrome has taken hold among many posters - the first casualties being any sense of rationality and proportion.
People who disagree with me are deranged, an old PB favourite.
The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.
To answer the Spectator's question: I think the Tories failed to listen to the players' own explanation for why they were taking the knee. If they had listened and taken the players seriously they would have seen that taking the opposite side would land them in hot water, because most reasonable people listening to what the players were saying with an open mind would be on their side. Why didn't they do that? Snobbishness is probably part of the story. When Southgate penned his excellent and moving "Dear England" letter, there were complaints from Downing Street suggesting it must have been ghostwritten. Because obviously nobody in football (not even a man intelligent enough to have been tasked with managing the national team) could be smart enough to write in proper English, right? The reflexive elitism of the English ruling class is a problem. The other obvious explanation is that they are just unaware or deliberately blind to the extent of racism in English society, and so are conditioned to downplay the very thing that the England players were protesting against. If you don't think racism is a problem, you will tend to assume that anti-racist actions are just 'gesture politics' or 'wokery'. I sincerely hope the Tories learn something from this because we need as many people as possible to be on board in the fight to create a society free from the poison of racism, and the comments coming from the Cabinet, right from the top in fact, on this topic were unhelpful towards that cause, in my opinion.
Fantastic post.
As a Tory seeing so many on 'my own side' fall down here with closed-minded ignorance of what people were protesting against and a pig-headed refusal to listen to what the gesture meant to the people making it has been downright frustrating.
Whatever mainstream gesture people make, whether it be flying the flag or bending the knee, to be arrogantly telling other people what that gesture means rather than listening to those making it is hubristic, rude and ignorant.
It was not just (some) Tories banging on about BLM being Marxists, so much as they even got that wrong because taking the knee as a protest against racism comes from American football and not originally from BLM.
But the slightly odd thing is that, however ill-informed or out of touch they might be, professional politicians – people who get elected for a living – did not stop to reflect that actually the England football team is very, very popular (at least in England) so attacking it for any reason at all might not play well.
The England team is only popular when it does well.
I got pinged last week. The most frustrating thing is having no clue where or when the supposed close contact happened. Not that it made much difference to my fairly sedentary weekday lifestyle of sitting working at my home desk and pottering around the garden.
Then my daughter's entire school year got sent home to isolate because a child had a positive test - parents are anti-vaxxer / anti-masker types who had been taking every opportunity to moan about the rules and walk around performatively hugging people. Well their whole family has it now. But the whole year, and that's the end of school for them until September. So annoying.
The big problem with GB News is not if it is not right leaning enough, or too right leaning, it is that ultimately it is just shit...and no app, no YouTube stream, both of which essential for any modern media outlet, and all in a market that has never been big in the UK and is declining e.g Sky News regularly struggles to get 50k viewers.
It is just a shitter version of Sky News, with a wokeism gone mad slant on lots of stories.
If i wanted uninformed and consistently wrong news, I can just watch BBC or Sky. And in the YouTube space already plenty of competition from much better long form interviews or informative videos right through to wokeism gone mad outrage bus stuff.
I think an *Andrew Neil interviews" YouTube channel would have done much better and much cheaper
It was obvious with the duffers they hired that it was a dead duck before it even started , Neil and that clown Oliver for a start, that is enough to resign it to the bin.
I find it's position amusing because it's being hoist by it's own petard. When you pitch yourself to one particular ideological group then you immediately open yourself up to charges of not being ideologically pure enough. The right is no different to the left in that regard.
Indeed. And when the rest of Europe catches us up we won't be singled out on their red lists. At the moment we are - "plague island" is me trying to make light of a shit situation.
Again I ask the question of the pray it away people (not you) who insist people like me want "lockdown forever". Today is Friday, 3 days before freedom day. How are we locked down right now? Where in the UK can I not go, what can I not do? A handful of things are closed, but the idea that we are locked down is laughable.
Still bemused as to why the US isn't taking off more given the very low vaccination rates in many states, but perhaps because those states are also generally the less internationally (or even domestically) connected ones, they are just a few weeks behind the curve. The last 2 big US waves started in NY, California and other coastal states and worked their way inland.
I got pinged last week. The most frustrating thing is having no clue where or when the supposed close contact happened. Not that it made much difference to my fairly sedentary weekday lifestyle of sitting working at my home desk and pottering around the garden.
Then my daughter's entire school year got sent home to isolate because a child had a positive test - parents are anti-vaxxer / anti-masker types who had been taking every opportunity to moan about the rules and walk around performatively hugging people. Well their whole family has it now. But the whole year, and that's the end of school for them until September. So annoying.
On this the government can't really win. They wanted a system where they could see who got pinged, where, with whom etc, Google and Apple knew better and said no that isn't acceptable, we aren't going to allow our phones to be able to do this.
If the government had then said well no point in an app then, as its can't really enable proper test and trace, they would have been bashed from pillar to post.
The big mistake they did make is making stupid OTT promises about how good it would be.
Some of us said way back, the only way you get this to work is South Korean style state spying in youe every move, your every transaction, etc, which is never going to fly in the likes of the UK, where even talk of having to deep into a restaurant or gym with your phone generates massive outrage.
The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.
To answer the Spectator's question: I think the Tories failed to listen to the players' own explanation for why they were taking the knee. If they had listened and taken the players seriously they would have seen that taking the opposite side would land them in hot water, because most reasonable people listening to what the players were saying with an open mind would be on their side. Why didn't they do that? Snobbishness is probably part of the story. When Southgate penned his excellent and moving "Dear England" letter, there were complaints from Downing Street suggesting it must have been ghostwritten. Because obviously nobody in football (not even a man intelligent enough to have been tasked with managing the national team) could be smart enough to write in proper English, right? The reflexive elitism of the English ruling class is a problem. The other obvious explanation is that they are just unaware or deliberately blind to the extent of racism in English society, and so are conditioned to downplay the very thing that the England players were protesting against. If you don't think racism is a problem, you will tend to assume that anti-racist actions are just 'gesture politics' or 'wokery'. I sincerely hope the Tories learn something from this because we need as many people as possible to be on board in the fight to create a society free from the poison of racism, and the comments coming from the Cabinet, right from the top in fact, on this topic were unhelpful towards that cause, in my opinion.
Well this conservative is on board and backing the comments of Steve Baker to his colleagues
No doubt as a Man Utd supporter of near 70 years you will understand that I admired Marcus Rashford as a player but his background story and his fight for free school meals has been inspirational and done in a non political way and successfully
I called out the likes of Natalie Elphicke and others whose involvement in the free school meal debate was embarrassing and it is a lesson to the conservative party and its leaders that they need to rid themselves of their deafness to this subject
On taking the knee, I do not like anyone doing it and to be fair there are black premiership footballers who object to it, but the one thing these vile racists have done is to power up support for taking the knee and I am with the players on this
Indeed the three players targeted by the rascists have been an example of the very best of our country in their response
I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here. Are we sure that the outburst of racial hatred against the three players has been as widespread as made out?
I ask because, as someone posted on here earlier, it now looks as though the Police are treating the graffiti on the Marcus Rashford mural as non-racist and, while there has been the Savill's estate agent posted all over news sites as well as one or two others, it doesn't seem like there have been mass expulsions of individuals from social media sites (which the sites themselves would be only too keen to share to show they are taking action) and / or there have not been that many arrests etc. Moreover, any such individuals are likely to be relatively thick as pig sh1t so I would not imagine they have been great at hiding their details.
Taking this a bit further and going a bit Leon-esque. If we accept the Chinese and Russian states are willing to spread disinformation via social media, why would they not take advantage of a situation like this to spread hate like this? They know the atmosphere reached fever pitch in England when it came to the final and they know the whole debate around BLM, racism, the culture wars etc etc are stoking tensions in society (BTW, if this was the case, the social media companies would have a vested interest in NOT disclosing this as it raises questions over their stated number of users, which is crucial for attracting advertising).
I may have missed a lot of newsflow around mass arrests, large numbers of people being fired from their jobs after being found out to have posted vile material etc etc but it doesn't feel like it.
We only have the word of the media. There's no official statistics when it comes to online abuse and the security services don't want to get involved. The Guardian report that four people have been arrested in relation to online abuse over the Euro 2020 final:
I got pinged last week. The most frustrating thing is having no clue where or when the supposed close contact happened. Not that it made much difference to my fairly sedentary weekday lifestyle of sitting working at my home desk and pottering around the garden.
Then my daughter's entire school year got sent home to isolate because a child had a positive test - parents are anti-vaxxer / anti-masker types who had been taking every opportunity to moan about the rules and walk around performatively hugging people. Well their whole family has it now. But the whole year, and that's the end of school for them until September. So annoying.
Its really frustrating that one person being stupid can punish so many people. If someone is positive they should be at home, not the entire year.
I've been homeschooling my daughter again this week because someone in her class is positive so the whole class is home. She gets to go back just for her final day next week so at least they're not breaking up today like much of the country is and she will have a final day back - unless someone else tests positive resetting the clock.
Three of the school's year groups are all at home right now.
This madness needs to be abolished by September. When they go back it needs to be the case that if someone is off with Covid the rest of the school can continue without them.
The continued expansion of the former red wall into the already increasingly blue West Midlands. We're witnessing a once in a century realignment of this country's electoral map at the moment and it's fascinating.
I swear I am not making this up given my posts this morning...
Update from our medical practice. A member of staff has tested positive, which means almost everyone there needs to isolate.
Should these doctors and nurses (a) isolate even though I assume they are double jabbed, or (b) still operate and change my Sis-in-law's wound dressing as planned?
Indeed. And when the rest of Europe catches us up we won't be singled out on their red lists. At the moment we are - "plague island" is me trying to make light of a shit situation.
Again I ask the question of the pray it away people (not you) who insist people like me want "lockdown forever". Today is Friday, 3 days before freedom day. How are we locked down right now? Where in the UK can I not go, what can I not do? A handful of things are closed, but the idea that we are locked down is laughable.
Still bemused as to why the US isn't taking off more given the very low vaccination rates in many states, but perhaps because those states are also generally the less internationally (or even domestically) connected ones, they are just a few weeks behind the curve. The last 2 big US waves started in NY, California and other coastal states and worked their way inland.
56% of New Yorkers have been double vaccinated now as have 51% of Californians may have something to do with it.
By contrast only 33% of those in Alabama and Mississippi have been double vaccinated.
In fact every US state with more than 50% double vaccinated voted for Biden and 9 of the 10 US states with the fewest double vaccinated all voted for Trump (Georgia the only exception)
I got pinged last week. The most frustrating thing is having no clue where or when the supposed close contact happened. Not that it made much difference to my fairly sedentary weekday lifestyle of sitting working at my home desk and pottering around the garden.
Then my daughter's entire school year got sent home to isolate because a child had a positive test - parents are anti-vaxxer / anti-masker types who had been taking every opportunity to moan about the rules and walk around performatively hugging people. Well their whole family has it now. But the whole year, and that's the end of school for them until September. So annoying.
On this the government can't really win. They wanted a system where they could see who got pinged, where, with whom etc, Google and Apple knew better and said no that isn't acceptable, we aren't going to allow our phones to be able to do this.
If the government had then said well no point in an app then, as its can't really enable proper test and trace, they would have been bashed from pillar to post.
The big mistake they did make is making stupid OTT promises about how good it would be.
I don't know, I think the problem is not reacting quick enough to changing circumstances.
A lot of things were developed - millions of tests per day, the app etc - prior to knowing whether the vaccines would work. Now that we know vaccines work we should have been clearer to be saying "by this point we're not going to try to suppress the virus anymore. If you don't want to be sick, get your vaccine, otherwise you'll have to take your chances with the virus".
On thread: Not sure if this has been discussed yet, but there are examples of people getting pinged from being in the next house to someone who tests positive. Close proximity, yes, but surely a wall being in the way makes it difficult for the bug? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/15/neighbours-pinged-walls-nhs-covid-app/
My gut feeling over the past week is that there is something weird happening with the app. This is partly because lots of not especially raver type mates (generally bookish introverts) have been getting pinged without knowing anyone else who had.
In blocks of flats and offices in particular, 2m proximity for over 15m is definitely imaginable....
Um, this is probably a really stupid suggestion but could there be a 2D effect here? By which I mean, is the app locating people in only two dimensions so that it decides you are in the same place as someone 10 floors above you?
I assume the phones use a combination of GPS and mobile cell triangulation... not sure how well GPS will work inside, say, a block of flats, which only leaves the triangulation.
If someone actually knows how this works it would be interesting to hear.
No, it works by proximity of the bluetooth signal, which cares about all three dimensions.
Indeed. And when the rest of Europe catches us up we won't be singled out on their red lists. At the moment we are - "plague island" is me trying to make light of a shit situation.
Again I ask the question of the pray it away people (not you) who insist people like me want "lockdown forever". Today is Friday, 3 days before freedom day. How are we locked down right now? Where in the UK can I not go, what can I not do? A handful of things are closed, but the idea that we are locked down is laughable.
Still bemused as to why the US isn't taking off more given the very low vaccination rates in many states, but perhaps because those states are also generally the less internationally (or even domestically) connected ones, they are just a few weeks behind the curve. The last 2 big US waves started in NY, California and other coastal states and worked their way inland.
Not as densely populated?
Unless they are also less sociable with close contacts or less inclined to go to shopping malls, sports events etc I don't think population density is a big deal. After all we always hear about the anonymity and loneliness of living in a big crowded city. Less connected to the rest of the country and world though, yes. So I suspect the seeding comes later.
There are some utterly moronic posts this morning from ostensibly intelligent posters who really ought to know better. Leaving aside the teeth-grindingly awful childish patois that some employ “the pox”, the antivax trashing of AZ and the absolutely imbecilic straw men “people are wishing covid away”, the grasp of conditional probabilities is truly embarrassing for what should be a mathematical site.
Those that wish to lock themselves away forever are free to do so. Much of the country has decided that it is happy to live with the slim risk to the vaccinated and get on with its lives. Unless you are preaching total lockdown with the main vector - schools - closed permanently and life barely worth living, other interventions are fairly marginal.
Enough.
Depressing, isn’t it. Like a Facebook politics group at times.
It is very sad. Covid Derangement Syndrome has taken hold among many posters - the first casualties being any sense of rationality and proportion.
People who disagree with me are deranged, an old PB favourite.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m talking about posts calling Britain “Plague Island” and AZ “a dud”.
I swear I am not making this up given my posts this morning...
Update from our medical practice. A member of staff has tested positive, which means almost everyone there needs to isolate.
Should these doctors and nurses (a) isolate even though I assume they are double jabbed, or (b) still operate and change my Sis-in-law's wound dressing as planned?
Indeed. And when the rest of Europe catches us up we won't be singled out on their red lists. At the moment we are - "plague island" is me trying to make light of a shit situation.
Again I ask the question of the pray it away people (not you) who insist people like me want "lockdown forever". Today is Friday, 3 days before freedom day. How are we locked down right now? Where in the UK can I not go, what can I not do? A handful of things are closed, but the idea that we are locked down is laughable.
I agree with this. The problem with those saying it should now be a matter of personal responsibility is that my health is no longer in my hands. I have to go back to commuting because the work from home advice has ended as has the mask mandate. Sure I can carry on wearing a mask but as has been said a million times masks mostly protect other people. If no one else on the train wears them then it's not much good me doing so.
I think if the government had kept the above two measures in place then everyone would be able to make their own choice with very little impact to the economy.
I swear I am not making this up given my posts this morning...
Update from our medical practice. A member of staff has tested positive, which means almost everyone there needs to isolate.
Should these doctors and nurses (a) isolate even though I assume they are double jabbed, or (b) still operate and change my Sis-in-law's wound dressing as planned?
Indeed. And when the rest of Europe catches us up we won't be singled out on their red lists. At the moment we are - "plague island" is me trying to make light of a shit situation.
Again I ask the question of the pray it away people (not you) who insist people like me want "lockdown forever". Today is Friday, 3 days before freedom day. How are we locked down right now? Where in the UK can I not go, what can I not do? A handful of things are closed, but the idea that we are locked down is laughable.
Still bemused as to why the US isn't taking off more given the very low vaccination rates in many states, but perhaps because those states are also generally the less internationally (or even domestically) connected ones, they are just a few weeks behind the curve. The last 2 big US waves started in NY, California and other coastal states and worked their way inland.
Not as densely populated?
Very much so. Covid rates in the USA started dropping off a cliff at a much lower vaccination rate than in the UK and pop density is a big factor in that.
That said we are definitely seeing the uptick start of happen and it is happening in the states with the lowest vaccination rates.
I got pinged last week. The most frustrating thing is having no clue where or when the supposed close contact happened. Not that it made much difference to my fairly sedentary weekday lifestyle of sitting working at my home desk and pottering around the garden.
Then my daughter's entire school year got sent home to isolate because a child had a positive test - parents are anti-vaxxer / anti-masker types who had been taking every opportunity to moan about the rules and walk around performatively hugging people. Well their whole family has it now. But the whole year, and that's the end of school for them until September. So annoying.
Its really frustrating that one person being stupid can punish so many people. If someone is positive they should be at home, not the entire year.
I've been homeschooling my daughter again this week because someone in her class is positive so the whole class is home. She gets to go back just for her final day next week so at least they're not breaking up today like much of the country is and she will have a final day back - unless someone else tests positive resetting the clock.
Three of the school's year groups are all at home right now.
This madness needs to be abolished by September. When they go back it needs to be the case that if someone is off with Covid the rest of the school can continue without them.
I agree, it's unworkable during a period of epidemic growth and the worst of both worlds. Either schools need to be closed, like they were during the lockdowns, or open with only the Covid-positive person (and their siblings) isolating. I've always felt schools closing should only ever be the last resort. Education has to be a priority over almost everything else.
I swear I am not making this up given my posts this morning...
Update from our medical practice. A member of staff has tested positive, which means almost everyone there needs to isolate.
Should these doctors and nurses (a) isolate even though I assume they are double jabbed, or (b) still operate and change my Sis-in-law's wound dressing as planned?
They should all take the gold standard PCR test and if negative (b).
I swear I am not making this up given my posts this morning...
Update from our medical practice. A member of staff has tested positive, which means almost everyone there needs to isolate.
Should these doctors and nurses (a) isolate even though I assume they are double jabbed, or (b) still operate and change my Sis-in-law's wound dressing as planned?
Very sorry to hear about the position you are now (all) in.
But this is the payoff. From your posts it would be reasonable to think that you wanted everyone to be sent home and your sister's procedure cancelled. But we are now in the practical, not theoretical world.
The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.
To answer the Spectator's question: I think the Tories failed to listen to the players' own explanation for why they were taking the knee. If they had listened and taken the players seriously they would have seen that taking the opposite side would land them in hot water, because most reasonable people listening to what the players were saying with an open mind would be on their side. Why didn't they do that? Snobbishness is probably part of the story. When Southgate penned his excellent and moving "Dear England" letter, there were complaints from Downing Street suggesting it must have been ghostwritten. Because obviously nobody in football (not even a man intelligent enough to have been tasked with managing the national team) could be smart enough to write in proper English, right? The reflexive elitism of the English ruling class is a problem. The other obvious explanation is that they are just unaware or deliberately blind to the extent of racism in English society, and so are conditioned to downplay the very thing that the England players were protesting against. If you don't think racism is a problem, you will tend to assume that anti-racist actions are just 'gesture politics' or 'wokery'. I sincerely hope the Tories learn something from this because we need as many people as possible to be on board in the fight to create a society free from the poison of racism, and the comments coming from the Cabinet, right from the top in fact, on this topic were unhelpful towards that cause, in my opinion.
Plus some political calculation imo. An unwillingness to get on the wrong side of a significant part of their base - those who (for whatever reason) are so intensely irritated by the Knee as to be psychologically onside with the booing of it at the football.
Having played the 'culture war' for votes, the Cons are stuck with the voters who delivered those votes. They can't just abandon them. Hence the prevarication over that issue. The PM unable to quickly and clearly condemn a bunch of racists booing the England football team. Amazing really when you think about it.
And it would probably have worked out ok for them but for the 3 black players missing from the spot in the final. Cue the inevitable torrent of racial abuse on social media and then all the obfuscating crap melts away and the issue can be seen as the black/white, good/bad, dark/light one it really is.
So - rotten luck for the Tories here.
And yet a 13 point lead in the poll yesterday....and past 5 polls no change in their average vote share, with average lead of ~9-10 points.
Given Hancock scandal, rising covid cases that are scaring people, its quite something they are still so far ahead, and no sign Labour are picking up. Its Lib Dems that seem to be nicking a few points from here and there.
Until you are free to decide how many people you want to invite into your home you are still locked down.
Another three days for us lot down here.
But lockdown it is.
No - its a stupid thing to have no gradation between only leaving your house once a day for exercise in lockdown and having a limit (that no one is checking or observing) on house guests, who are allowed to stay overnight etc and calling it lockdown. Yes - there are still legal restrictions on our lives that would have horrified all of us in 2019, but these are extraordinary times. No - we are not in lockdown still.
I swear I am not making this up given my posts this morning...
Update from our medical practice. A member of staff has tested positive, which means almost everyone there needs to isolate.
Should these doctors and nurses (a) isolate even though I assume they are double jabbed, or (b) still operate and change my Sis-in-law's wound dressing as planned?
If it was up to me (a) No, (b) Yes.
If it was up to me - anyone of the staff who tests negative (lateral flow) - should carry on as normal. Anyone testing positive (lateral flow) should isolate and seek a confirmatory PCR test.
No - its a stupid thing to have no gradation between only leaving your house once a day for exercise in lockdown and having a limit (that no one is checking or observing) on house guests, who are allowed to stay overnight etc and calling it lockdown. Yes - there are still legal restrictions on our lives that would have horrified all of us in 2019, but these are extraordinary times. No - we are not in lockdown still.
I am using lockdown as a generic term to denote those restrictions on liberty.
What do RP and his fellow travellers do when invited to a friend’s barbecue, or a wedding, or a birthday party at the pub?
Do they decline the invitation?
If asked to go on holiday with a few friends, would they go?
Do they send their children to school?
I have no idea what their real lives must be like, as unless it’s all an act they seem to be in an eternal state of extreme fearfulness.
On the assumption the SAGE people and others advising the government know more about it than me, I try to follow the rules. I'm not a virologist, an epidemiologist or an atmospheric physicist.
Trouble is, HMG has gone cakeist. It is lifting all the restrictions but still wants them observed by the public and reimposed by businesses. For instance, we no longer have to wear masks but we should wear masks when encountering strangers in closed places, which is pretty much where we were before: we never had to wear masks to walk down the street. I think many people just heard FREEDOM and missed all the qualifications from Boris and The Saj.
No - its a stupid thing to have no gradation between only leaving your house once a day for exercise in lockdown and having a limit (that no one is checking or observing) on house guests, who are allowed to stay overnight etc and calling it lockdown. Yes - there are still legal restrictions on our lives that would have horrified all of us in 2019, but these are extraordinary times. No - we are not in lockdown still.
I am using lockdown as a generic term to denote those restrictions on liberty.
We are still in lockdown.
I think lockdown should not be used in that way - you do see the difference don't you? You can go to the pub or restaurant, go to work, see a movie, see a play, go to watch sport. The list goes on. This is not consistent with lockdown (see March 2020 for details).
I swear I am not making this up given my posts this morning...
Update from our medical practice. A member of staff has tested positive, which means almost everyone there needs to isolate.
Should these doctors and nurses (a) isolate even though I assume they are double jabbed, or (b) still operate and change my Sis-in-law's wound dressing as planned?
They should all take the gold standard PCR test and if negative (b).
Good - this is the kind of logical progression that is needed. We don't want Doctors treating patients if they have Covid. They *may* have Covid. So do we (a) delete the app and hope for the best, or (b) test them?
The problem with going back to testing is two-fold. If we still need to test then it rather highlights to people that Covid is everywhere and remains a problem - the reverse of what message the government want to convey. And our testing programme was never anything less than a disorganised shambles, so a return to sending people 200 miles for a test would be Bad.
Or - radical idea. To support the reduction in restrictions which we all want, we don't deny there is a Covid problem, we resource up the testing programme again, and we implore people to be careful. Masks and testing allows everyone to largely go about their normal lives surely.
What do RP and his fellow travellers do when invited to a friend’s barbecue, or a wedding, or a birthday party at the pub?
Do they decline the invitation?
If asked to go on holiday with a few friends, would they go?
Do they send their children to school?
I have no idea what their real lives must be like, as unless it’s all an act they seem to be in an eternal state of extreme fearfulness.
On the assumption the SAGE people and others advising the government know more about it than me, I try to follow the rules. I'm not a virologist, an epidemiologist or an atmospheric physicist.
Trouble is, HMG has gone cakeist. It is lifting all the restrictions but still wants them observed by the public and reimposed by businesses.
Imagine that, a government that trusts the judgement of the people that elected it.
The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.
To answer the Spectator's question: I think the Tories failed to listen to the players' own explanation for why they were taking the knee. If they had listened and taken the players seriously they would have seen that taking the opposite side would land them in hot water, because most reasonable people listening to what the players were saying with an open mind would be on their side. Why didn't they do that? Snobbishness is probably part of the story. When Southgate penned his excellent and moving "Dear England" letter, there were complaints from Downing Street suggesting it must have been ghostwritten. Because obviously nobody in football (not even a man intelligent enough to have been tasked with managing the national team) could be smart enough to write in proper English, right? The reflexive elitism of the English ruling class is a problem. The other obvious explanation is that they are just unaware or deliberately blind to the extent of racism in English society, and so are conditioned to downplay the very thing that the England players were protesting against. If you don't think racism is a problem, you will tend to assume that anti-racist actions are just 'gesture politics' or 'wokery'. I sincerely hope the Tories learn something from this because we need as many people as possible to be on board in the fight to create a society free from the poison of racism, and the comments coming from the Cabinet, right from the top in fact, on this topic were unhelpful towards that cause, in my opinion.
Plus some political calculation imo. An unwillingness to get on the wrong side of a significant part of their base - those who (for whatever reason) are so intensely irritated by the Knee as to be psychologically onside with the booing of it at the football.
Having played the 'culture war' for votes, the Cons are stuck with the voters who delivered those votes. They can't just abandon them. Hence the prevarication over that issue. The PM unable to quickly and clearly condemn a bunch of racists booing the England football team. Amazing really when you think about it.
And it would probably have worked out ok for them but for the 3 black players missing from the spot in the final. Cue the inevitable torrent of racial abuse on social media and then all the obfuscating crap melts away and the issue can be seen as the black/white, good/bad, dark/light one it really is.
So - rotten luck for the Tories here.
And yet a 13 point lead in the poll yesterday....and past 5 polls no change in their average vote share, with average lead of ~9-10 points.
Given Hancock scandal, rising covid cases that are scaring people, its quite something they are still so far ahead, and no sign Labour are picking up. Its Lib Dems that seem to be nicking a few points from here and there.
But is the water pressing on the dam?
I don't think things shift meaningfully until and unless people start feeling economic pain. Ultimately that's all electoral politics is about: do people feel financially comfortable. It's why Brexit being a chaotic clusterf**k hasn't really shifted the polls, because people aren't really feeling immediate financial distress from it.
No - its a stupid thing to have no gradation between only leaving your house once a day for exercise in lockdown and having a limit (that no one is checking or observing) on house guests, who are allowed to stay overnight etc and calling it lockdown. Yes - there are still legal restrictions on our lives that would have horrified all of us in 2019, but these are extraordinary times. No - we are not in lockdown still.
I am using lockdown as a generic term to denote those restrictions on liberty.
We are still in lockdown.
I think lockdown should not be used in that way - you do see the difference don't you? You can go to the pub or restaurant, go to work, see a movie, see a play, go to watch sport. The list goes on. This is not consistent with lockdown (see March 2020 for details).
Exactly. Lockdown was "you must stay at home". Being able to go on holiday or to the beach with your friends or on a pissed up flare in anus rampage is not "lockdown".
No - its a stupid thing to have no gradation between only leaving your house once a day for exercise in lockdown and having a limit (that no one is checking or observing) on house guests, who are allowed to stay overnight etc and calling it lockdown. Yes - there are still legal restrictions on our lives that would have horrified all of us in 2019, but these are extraordinary times. No - we are not in lockdown still.
I am using lockdown as a generic term to denote those restrictions on liberty.
We are still in lockdown.
I think lockdown should not be used in that way - you do see the difference don't you? You can go to the pub or restaurant, go to work, see a movie, see a play, go to watch sport. The list goes on. This is not consistent with lockdown (see March 2020 for details).
Yeah I get it. So what pithy term would you use. Happy to consider it.
What do RP and his fellow travellers do when invited to a friend’s barbecue, or a wedding, or a birthday party at the pub?
Do they decline the invitation?
If asked to go on holiday with a few friends, would they go?
Do they send their children to school?
I have no idea what their real lives must be like, as unless it’s all an act they seem to be in an eternal state of extreme fearfulness.
On the assumption the SAGE people and others advising the government know more about it than me, I try to follow the rules. I'm not a virologist, an epidemiologist or an atmospheric physicist.
Trouble is, HMG has gone cakeist. It is lifting all the restrictions but still wants them observed by the public and reimposed by businesses. For instance, we no longer have to wear masks but we should wear masks when encountering strangers in closed places. I think many people just heard FREEDOM and missed all the qualifications from Boris and The Saj.
'I'm not a virologist, an epidemiologist or an atmospheric physicist.'
Judging by various contributions on here I gather that make you something of an exception.
An infinite increase in their vote share which means they will win every seat in parliament if reproduced. Re discussion a few days ago see what happens when you don't understand or misrepresent the maths.
The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.
To answer the Spectator's question: I think the Tories failed to listen to the players' own explanation for why they were taking the knee. If they had listened and taken the players seriously they would have seen that taking the opposite side would land them in hot water, because most reasonable people listening to what the players were saying with an open mind would be on their side. Why didn't they do that? Snobbishness is probably part of the story. When Southgate penned his excellent and moving "Dear England" letter, there were complaints from Downing Street suggesting it must have been ghostwritten. Because obviously nobody in football (not even a man intelligent enough to have been tasked with managing the national team) could be smart enough to write in proper English, right? The reflexive elitism of the English ruling class is a problem. The other obvious explanation is that they are just unaware or deliberately blind to the extent of racism in English society, and so are conditioned to downplay the very thing that the England players were protesting against. If you don't think racism is a problem, you will tend to assume that anti-racist actions are just 'gesture politics' or 'wokery'. I sincerely hope the Tories learn something from this because we need as many people as possible to be on board in the fight to create a society free from the poison of racism, and the comments coming from the Cabinet, right from the top in fact, on this topic were unhelpful towards that cause, in my opinion.
Plus some political calculation imo. An unwillingness to get on the wrong side of a significant part of their base - those who (for whatever reason) are so intensely irritated by the Knee as to be psychologically onside with the booing of it at the football.
Having played the 'culture war' for votes, the Cons are stuck with the voters who delivered those votes. They can't just abandon them. Hence the prevarication over that issue. The PM unable to quickly and clearly condemn a bunch of racists booing the England football team. Amazing really when you think about it.
And it would probably have worked out ok for them but for the 3 black players missing from the spot in the final. Cue the inevitable torrent of racial abuse on social media and then all the obfuscating crap melts away and the issue can be seen as the black/white, good/bad, dark/light one it really is.
So - rotten luck for the Tories here.
And yet a 13 point lead in the poll yesterday....and past 5 polls no change in their average vote share, with average lead of ~9-10 points.
Given Hancock scandal, rising covid cases that are scaring people, its quite something they are still so far ahead, and no sign Labour are picking up. Its Lib Dems that seem to be nicking a few points from here and there.
But is the water pressing on the dam?
What will do for the Tory number is not taking the knee, it will be if covid cases continue to spiral resulting in lots of deaths and if we ever have to reintroduce restrictions. Again Boris has overstated the vaccine rollout as if covid problem solved, now onto wibbling about levelling up etc.
What we have seen is the public seem fine with restrictions, it is dicking about of yes you can all go on holiday, wait no, no you can't.... everybody round for Christmas, no no wait, no you can't.
Boris has now gone for full unlock (he hasn't, but that's the spin) and it is irreversible (but it might well not be when we hit autumn / winter).
There are quite a lot of posts from around June 14th that have aged abysmally when it comes to calling peak Covid and what the cases/hospital numbers can or cannot possibly do.
All spoken with the confidence of Vince Cable predicting the next recession.
I swear I am not making this up given my posts this morning...
Update from our medical practice. A member of staff has tested positive, which means almost everyone there needs to isolate.
Should these doctors and nurses (a) isolate even though I assume they are double jabbed, or (b) still operate and change my Sis-in-law's wound dressing as planned?
If it was up to me (a) No, (b) Yes.
If it was up to me - anyone of the staff who tests negative (lateral flow) - should carry on as normal. Anyone testing positive (lateral flow) should isolate and seek a confirmatory PCR test.
On what day or every day? the reason people are asked to isolate for x days is that we don't know what day(s) people may be infectious - the only thing I think we do know is that you can be infectious prior to symptoms appearing which means you may be infectious before the any test flags you as having covid.
The one thing I've really learnt over this is that people cannot understand the timescales involved.
I swear I am not making this up given my posts this morning...
Update from our medical practice. A member of staff has tested positive, which means almost everyone there needs to isolate.
Should these doctors and nurses (a) isolate even though I assume they are double jabbed, or (b) still operate and change my Sis-in-law's wound dressing as planned?
They should all take the gold standard PCR test and if negative (b).
Good - this is the kind of logical progression that is needed. We don't want Doctors treating patients if they have Covid. They *may* have Covid. So do we (a) delete the app and hope for the best, or (b) test them?
The problem with going back to testing is two-fold. If we still need to test then it rather highlights to people that Covid is everywhere and remains a problem - the reverse of what message the government want to convey. And our testing programme was never anything less than a disorganised shambles, so a return to sending people 200 miles for a test would be Bad.
Or - radical idea. To support the reduction in restrictions which we all want, we don't deny there is a Covid problem, we resource up the testing programme again, and we implore people to be careful. Masks and testing allows everyone to largely go about their normal lives surely.
The problem with your rhetorical flourishes is that our testing programme, in terms of capacity, is already world leading by a pretty big margin. If a million a day every day isn't enough then this isn't something testing can solve.
No - its a stupid thing to have no gradation between only leaving your house once a day for exercise in lockdown and having a limit (that no one is checking or observing) on house guests, who are allowed to stay overnight etc and calling it lockdown. Yes - there are still legal restrictions on our lives that would have horrified all of us in 2019, but these are extraordinary times. No - we are not in lockdown still.
I am using lockdown as a generic term to denote those restrictions on liberty.
We are still in lockdown.
I think lockdown should not be used in that way - you do see the difference don't you? You can go to the pub or restaurant, go to work, see a movie, see a play, go to watch sport. The list goes on. This is not consistent with lockdown (see March 2020 for details).
Exactly. Lockdown was "you must stay at home". Being able to go on holiday or to the beach with your friends or on a pissed up flare in anus rampage is not "lockdown".
Bet that bloke with a rocket up his arse won't be wearing a mask in Tesco.
A thought on the polls saying a majority support restrictions still
Less than half the country downloaded the app (25 million). Of those only 2/3 activated the app (16 million) and that 2/3 includes those who activated the app then turned off tracing or have since removed the app.
Judge what people really think by what they do not what they say seems something to consider
I swear I am not making this up given my posts this morning...
Update from our medical practice. A member of staff has tested positive, which means almost everyone there needs to isolate.
Should these doctors and nurses (a) isolate even though I assume they are double jabbed, or (b) still operate and change my Sis-in-law's wound dressing as planned?
If it was up to me (a) No, (b) Yes.
If it was up to me - anyone of the staff who tests negative (lateral flow) - should carry on as normal. Anyone testing positive (lateral flow) should isolate and seek a confirmatory PCR test.
On what day or every day? the reason people are asked to isolate for x days is that we don't know what day(s) people may be infectious - the only thing I think we do know is that you can be infectious prior to symptoms appearing which means you may be infectious before the any test flags you as having covid.
The one thing I've really learnt over this is that people cannot understand the timescales involved.
Every work day, before they start. Takes 10 mins (not the 30 min bollocks I kept hearing back in the day).
A thought on the polls saying a majority support restrictions still
Less than half the country downloaded the app (25 million). Of those only 2/3 activated the app (16 million) and that 2/3 includes those who activated the app then turned off tracing or have since removed the app.
Judge what people really think by what they do not what they say seems something to consider
No - its a stupid thing to have no gradation between only leaving your house once a day for exercise in lockdown and having a limit (that no one is checking or observing) on house guests, who are allowed to stay overnight etc and calling it lockdown. Yes - there are still legal restrictions on our lives that would have horrified all of us in 2019, but these are extraordinary times. No - we are not in lockdown still.
I am using lockdown as a generic term to denote those restrictions on liberty.
We are still in lockdown.
I think lockdown should not be used in that way - you do see the difference don't you? You can go to the pub or restaurant, go to work, see a movie, see a play, go to watch sport. The list goes on. This is not consistent with lockdown (see March 2020 for details).
Exactly. Lockdown was "you must stay at home". Being able to go on holiday or to the beach with your friends or on a pissed up flare in anus rampage is not "lockdown".
You and @turbotubbs are carving your initials on one tree. We are in the woods.
"Lockdown" evolves. It is illegal for you to invite more than six people into your home.
What would you call that? You have until Monday (in England) to respond.
The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.
To answer the Spectator's question: I think the Tories failed to listen to the players' own explanation for why they were taking the knee. If they had listened and taken the players seriously they would have seen that taking the opposite side would land them in hot water, because most reasonable people listening to what the players were saying with an open mind would be on their side. Why didn't they do that? Snobbishness is probably part of the story. When Southgate penned his excellent and moving "Dear England" letter, there were complaints from Downing Street suggesting it must have been ghostwritten. Because obviously nobody in football (not even a man intelligent enough to have been tasked with managing the national team) could be smart enough to write in proper English, right? The reflexive elitism of the English ruling class is a problem. The other obvious explanation is that they are just unaware or deliberately blind to the extent of racism in English society, and so are conditioned to downplay the very thing that the England players were protesting against. If you don't think racism is a problem, you will tend to assume that anti-racist actions are just 'gesture politics' or 'wokery'. I sincerely hope the Tories learn something from this because we need as many people as possible to be on board in the fight to create a society free from the poison of racism, and the comments coming from the Cabinet, right from the top in fact, on this topic were unhelpful towards that cause, in my opinion.
Plus some political calculation imo. An unwillingness to get on the wrong side of a significant part of their base - those who (for whatever reason) are so intensely irritated by the Knee as to be psychologically onside with the booing of it at the football.
Having played the 'culture war' for votes, the Cons are stuck with the voters who delivered those votes. They can't just abandon them. Hence the prevarication over that issue. The PM unable to quickly and clearly condemn a bunch of racists booing the England football team. Amazing really when you think about it.
And it would probably have worked out ok for them but for the 3 black players missing from the spot in the final. Cue the inevitable torrent of racial abuse on social media and then all the obfuscating crap melts away and the issue can be seen as the black/white, good/bad, dark/light one it really is.
So - rotten luck for the Tories here.
And yet a 13 point lead in the poll yesterday....and past 5 polls no change in their average vote share, with average lead of ~9-10 points.
Given Hancock scandal, rising covid cases that are scaring people, its quite something they are still so far ahead, and no sign Labour are picking up. Its Lib Dems that seem to be nicking a few points from here and there.
Tory voters used to have alternatives. The LDs were a centrist place to go. Then UKIP, Brexit and all that on the centre right in addition in more recent times.
Now it is fairly clear the LDs would not prop up a Tory government but would sustain a centre left one. So there is only one place to go if you think there are reasons to keep the centre right in and the Labour party + its rainbow coalition out. I think this explains the stickiness of the Tory figures. To have no political friends is a twist or bust policy, but it concentrates the mind.
The other thing is that the centre left incursion into Tory ground is massively exaggerated. It does not match the revolution happening in the north and midlands.
There are quite a lot of posts from around June 14th that have aged abysmally when it comes to calling peak Covid and what the cases/hospital numbers can or cannot possibly do.
All spoken with the confidence of Vince Cable predicting the next recession.
Not really. We have passed peak Covid, we did so many months ago.
The virus is filling in the few gaps remaining where people haven't got the vaccine etc but it's nothing to be concerned about. 50k infections from a population of 67 million, post vaccines, is pretty insignificant and inconsequential.
What do RP and his fellow travellers do when invited to a friend’s barbecue, or a wedding, or a birthday party at the pub?
Do they decline the invitation?
If asked to go on holiday with a few friends, would they go?
Do they send their children to school?
I have no idea what their real lives must be like, as unless it’s all an act they seem to be in an eternal state of extreme fearfulness.
On the assumption the SAGE people and others advising the government know more about it than me, I try to follow the rules. I'm not a virologist, an epidemiologist or an atmospheric physicist.
Trouble is, HMG has gone cakeist. It is lifting all the restrictions but still wants them observed by the public and reimposed by businesses.
Imagine that, a government that trusts the judgement of the people that elected it.
Imagine that, the people are in general not qualified to judge which is why we have SAGE, JCVI and the rest of the alphabet soup.
There are quite a lot of posts from around June 14th that have aged abysmally when it comes to calling peak Covid and what the cases/hospital numbers can or cannot possibly do.
All spoken with the confidence of Vince Cable predicting the next recession.
'The numbers aren't as bad as I'd expected' with no reference to what numbers were expected is a handy get out.
I swear I am not making this up given my posts this morning...
Update from our medical practice. A member of staff has tested positive, which means almost everyone there needs to isolate.
Should these doctors and nurses (a) isolate even though I assume they are double jabbed, or (b) still operate and change my Sis-in-law's wound dressing as planned?
If it was up to me (a) No, (b) Yes.
If it was up to me - anyone of the staff who tests negative (lateral flow) - should carry on as normal. Anyone testing positive (lateral flow) should isolate and seek a confirmatory PCR test.
On what day or every day? the reason people are asked to isolate for x days is that we don't know what day(s) people may be infectious - the only thing I think we do know is that you can be infectious prior to symptoms appearing which means you may be infectious before the any test flags you as having covid.
The one thing I've really learnt over this is that people cannot understand the timescales involved.
Every work day, before they start. Takes 10 mins (not the 30 min bollocks I kept hearing back in the day).
In which case you've missed my second point - you take the test are negative so go out and about.
The following day you test positive - problem now is that there is a high risk you were infectious the day before so you may have infected everyone you met that day.
What do RP and his fellow travellers do when invited to a friend’s barbecue, or a wedding, or a birthday party at the pub?
Do they decline the invitation?
If asked to go on holiday with a few friends, would they go?
Do they send their children to school?
I have no idea what their real lives must be like, as unless it’s all an act they seem to be in an eternal state of extreme fearfulness.
On the assumption the SAGE people and others advising the government know more about it than me, I try to follow the rules. I'm not a virologist, an epidemiologist or an atmospheric physicist.
Trouble is, HMG has gone cakeist. It is lifting all the restrictions but still wants them observed by the public and reimposed by businesses.
Imagine that, a government that trusts the judgement of the people that elected it.
Imagine that, the people are in general not qualified to judge which is why we have SAGE, JCVI and the rest of the alphabet soup.
Absolutely. Expecting people to use their judgement is wrong.
All restrictions should be enshrined in law and enforced by armed police. Which discretion or exception.
For your own safety, Cressida Dick will "Learn lessons" about why you were shot for sneezing in a public street.
A thought on the polls saying a majority support restrictions still
Less than half the country downloaded the app (25 million). Of those only 2/3 activated the app (16 million) and that 2/3 includes those who activated the app then turned off tracing or have since removed the app.
Judge what people really think by what they do not what they say seems something to consider
Do you need to have the app to remain socially distanced or wear a mask or not go on a million pissheads march down Wembley Way? Using or not using the app is not the same following the restrictions on gatherings and masks etc etc
No - its a stupid thing to have no gradation between only leaving your house once a day for exercise in lockdown and having a limit (that no one is checking or observing) on house guests, who are allowed to stay overnight etc and calling it lockdown. Yes - there are still legal restrictions on our lives that would have horrified all of us in 2019, but these are extraordinary times. No - we are not in lockdown still.
I am using lockdown as a generic term to denote those restrictions on liberty.
We are still in lockdown.
I think lockdown should not be used in that way - you do see the difference don't you? You can go to the pub or restaurant, go to work, see a movie, see a play, go to watch sport. The list goes on. This is not consistent with lockdown (see March 2020 for details).
Exactly. Lockdown was "you must stay at home". Being able to go on holiday or to the beach with your friends or on a pissed up flare in anus rampage is not "lockdown".
You and @turbotubbs are carving your initials on one tree. We are in the woods.
"Lockdown" evolves. It is illegal for you to invite more than six people into your home.
What would you call that? You have until Monday (in England) to respond.
If 6 people can come from their homes to my home in what way are they locked down?
No - its a stupid thing to have no gradation between only leaving your house once a day for exercise in lockdown and having a limit (that no one is checking or observing) on house guests, who are allowed to stay overnight etc and calling it lockdown. Yes - there are still legal restrictions on our lives that would have horrified all of us in 2019, but these are extraordinary times. No - we are not in lockdown still.
I am using lockdown as a generic term to denote those restrictions on liberty.
We are still in lockdown.
I think lockdown should not be used in that way - you do see the difference don't you? You can go to the pub or restaurant, go to work, see a movie, see a play, go to watch sport. The list goes on. This is not consistent with lockdown (see March 2020 for details).
Exactly. Lockdown was "you must stay at home". Being able to go on holiday or to the beach with your friends or on a pissed up flare in anus rampage is not "lockdown".
You and @turbotubbs are carving your initials on one tree. We are in the woods.
"Lockdown" evolves. It is illegal for you to invite more than six people into your home.
What would you call that? You have until Monday (in England) to respond.
The war situation has developed not necessarily to our advantage.
To answer the Spectator's question: I think the Tories failed to listen to the players' own explanation for why they were taking the knee. If they had listened and taken the players seriously they would have seen that taking the opposite side would land them in hot water, because most reasonable people listening to what the players were saying with an open mind would be on their side. Why didn't they do that? Snobbishness is probably part of the story. When Southgate penned his excellent and moving "Dear England" letter, there were complaints from Downing Street suggesting it must have been ghostwritten. Because obviously nobody in football (not even a man intelligent enough to have been tasked with managing the national team) could be smart enough to write in proper English, right? The reflexive elitism of the English ruling class is a problem. The other obvious explanation is that they are just unaware or deliberately blind to the extent of racism in English society, and so are conditioned to downplay the very thing that the England players were protesting against. If you don't think racism is a problem, you will tend to assume that anti-racist actions are just 'gesture politics' or 'wokery'. I sincerely hope the Tories learn something from this because we need as many people as possible to be on board in the fight to create a society free from the poison of racism, and the comments coming from the Cabinet, right from the top in fact, on this topic were unhelpful towards that cause, in my opinion.
Plus some political calculation imo. An unwillingness to get on the wrong side of a significant part of their base - those who (for whatever reason) are so intensely irritated by the Knee as to be psychologically onside with the booing of it at the football.
Having played the 'culture war' for votes, the Cons are stuck with the voters who delivered those votes. They can't just abandon them. Hence the prevarication over that issue. The PM unable to quickly and clearly condemn a bunch of racists booing the England football team. Amazing really when you think about it.
And it would probably have worked out ok for them but for the 3 black players missing from the spot in the final. Cue the inevitable torrent of racial abuse on social media and then all the obfuscating crap melts away and the issue can be seen as the black/white, good/bad, dark/light one it really is.
So - rotten luck for the Tories here.
And yet a 13 point lead in the poll yesterday....and past 5 polls no change in their average vote share, with average lead of ~9-10 points.
Given Hancock scandal, rising covid cases that are scaring people, its quite something they are still so far ahead, and no sign Labour are picking up. Its Lib Dems that seem to be nicking a few points from here and there.
But is the water pressing on the dam?
What will do for the Tory number is not taking the knee, it will be if covid cases continue to spiral resulting in lots of deaths and if we ever have to reintroduce restrictions. Again Boris has overstated the vaccine rollout as if covid problem solved, now onto wibbling about levelling up etc.
What we have seen is the public seem fine with restrictions, it is dicking about of yes you can all go on holiday, wait no, no you can't.... everybody round for Christmas, no no wait, no you can't.
Boris has now gone for full unlock (he hasn't, but that's the spin) and it is irreversible (but it might well not be when we hit autumn / winter).
Yes. Possibly underestimating this little sod of a virus yet again.
There are quite a lot of posts from around June 14th that have aged abysmally when it comes to calling peak Covid and what the cases/hospital numbers can or cannot possibly do.
All spoken with the confidence of Vince Cable predicting the next recession.
Not really. We have passed peak Covid, we did so many months ago.
The virus is filling in the few gaps remaining where people haven't got the vaccine etc but it's nothing to be concerned about. 50k infections from a population of 67 million, post vaccines, is pretty insignificant and inconsequential.
You'd think people might wait for hospital numbers to hit the bottom confidence interval of the SPI-M models before they start crowing
No - its a stupid thing to have no gradation between only leaving your house once a day for exercise in lockdown and having a limit (that no one is checking or observing) on house guests, who are allowed to stay overnight etc and calling it lockdown. Yes - there are still legal restrictions on our lives that would have horrified all of us in 2019, but these are extraordinary times. No - we are not in lockdown still.
I am using lockdown as a generic term to denote those restrictions on liberty.
We are still in lockdown.
I think lockdown should not be used in that way - you do see the difference don't you? You can go to the pub or restaurant, go to work, see a movie, see a play, go to watch sport. The list goes on. This is not consistent with lockdown (see March 2020 for details).
Exactly. Lockdown was "you must stay at home". Being able to go on holiday or to the beach with your friends or on a pissed up flare in anus rampage is not "lockdown".
Bet that bloke with a rocket up his arse won't be wearing a mask in Tesco.
He'll be wearing shorts, so no fear of being recognised, no?
No - its a stupid thing to have no gradation between only leaving your house once a day for exercise in lockdown and having a limit (that no one is checking or observing) on house guests, who are allowed to stay overnight etc and calling it lockdown. Yes - there are still legal restrictions on our lives that would have horrified all of us in 2019, but these are extraordinary times. No - we are not in lockdown still.
I am using lockdown as a generic term to denote those restrictions on liberty.
We are still in lockdown.
I think lockdown should not be used in that way - you do see the difference don't you? You can go to the pub or restaurant, go to work, see a movie, see a play, go to watch sport. The list goes on. This is not consistent with lockdown (see March 2020 for details).
Exactly. Lockdown was "you must stay at home". Being able to go on holiday or to the beach with your friends or on a pissed up flare in anus rampage is not "lockdown".
You and @turbotubbs are carving your initials on one tree. We are in the woods.
"Lockdown" evolves. It is illegal for you to invite more than six people into your home.
What would you call that? You have until Monday (in England) to respond.
No doubt we are still in a public health emergency and there are 'restrictions' on what we can do. BTW you are nor allowed to steal, or attack people, or drive faster than 70 mph too. These are also restrictions on how you might want to behave. Its partly the direction of travel. If, in 2019, the government suddenly introduced the restrictions we have today, there would have been uproar. (Especially without context). Now, after 150,000 have died from covid in the UK alone, and the restrictions have moved from real lockdown (see March 2020) to essentially wearing a mask in some indoor and transport settings and a restriction on indoor gatherings (widely not observed, and certainly not prosecuted in recent months) people see things a bit different.
I swear I am not making this up given my posts this morning...
Update from our medical practice. A member of staff has tested positive, which means almost everyone there needs to isolate.
Should these doctors and nurses (a) isolate even though I assume they are double jabbed, or (b) still operate and change my Sis-in-law's wound dressing as planned?
If it was up to me (a) No, (b) Yes.
If it was up to me - anyone of the staff who tests negative (lateral flow) - should carry on as normal. Anyone testing positive (lateral flow) should isolate and seek a confirmatory PCR test.
On what day or every day? the reason people are asked to isolate for x days is that we don't know what day(s) people may be infectious - the only thing I think we do know is that you can be infectious prior to symptoms appearing which means you may be infectious before the any test flags you as having covid.
The one thing I've really learnt over this is that people cannot understand the timescales involved.
Every work day, before they start. Takes 10 mins (not the 30 min bollocks I kept hearing back in the day).
In which case you've missed my second point - you take the test are negative so go out and about.
The following day you test positive - problem now is that there is a high risk you were infectious the day before so you may have infected everyone you met that day.
Of course there is a chance that you become positive after testing negative. But you cannot let perfect be the enemy of good (enough). What would you version be? Test every hour?
I swear I am not making this up given my posts this morning...
Update from our medical practice. A member of staff has tested positive, which means almost everyone there needs to isolate.
Should these doctors and nurses (a) isolate even though I assume they are double jabbed, or (b) still operate and change my Sis-in-law's wound dressing as planned?
They should all take the gold standard PCR test and if negative (b).
Good - this is the kind of logical progression that is needed. We don't want Doctors treating patients if they have Covid. They *may* have Covid. So do we (a) delete the app and hope for the best, or (b) test them?
The problem with going back to testing is two-fold. If we still need to test then it rather highlights to people that Covid is everywhere and remains a problem - the reverse of what message the government want to convey. And our testing programme was never anything less than a disorganised shambles, so a return to sending people 200 miles for a test would be Bad.
Or - radical idea. To support the reduction in restrictions which we all want, we don't deny there is a Covid problem, we resource up the testing programme again, and we implore people to be careful. Masks and testing allows everyone to largely go about their normal lives surely.
The problem with your rhetorical flourishes is that our testing programme, in terms of capacity, is already world leading by a pretty big margin. If a million a day every day isn't enough then this isn't something testing can solve.
It is a bit like asking the government to do more on getting people vaccinated. Which is down to people not taking advantage of the myriad ways to freely get a vaccination. The reasons that people are not getting vaccinated are known. The opinion poll data matches the take up - use the MSOA data on vaccination vs the social mix in the area. The correlation is nearly perfect.....
The tests are there. Capacity well in excess of the usage.
The issue with test and trace was (and is) refusal to self isolate.
On the subject of COVID, incidentally... The admission rate per case seems to have stabilised at around 2%
Comments
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/france-red-list-travel-b946083.html
https://twitter.com/TSting18/status/1415956512263049221?s=20
GB news may have signed its own death warrant however and led to a mass boycott (and most of its viewers are Boris voting Leavers who do not back taking the knee) because one of its presenters took the knee on air.
Only 38% of Tory voters back taking the knee compared to 78% of Labour voters
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1414951623437193224?s=20
It is just a shitter version of Sky News, with a wokeism gone mad slant on lots of stories.
If i wanted uninformed and consistently wrong news, I can just watch BBC or Sky. And in the YouTube space already plenty of competition from much better long form interviews or informative videos right through to wokeism gone mad outrage bus stuff.
I think an *Andrew Neil interviews" YouTube channel would have done much better and much cheaper
Especially if you are of an age where Jaws was a seminal experience.
"long list of restrictions" - the companies requiring mandatory mask wearing gets longer and longer
"countries not letting us in without restrictions". We are on the red list of many places we may want to go, by their choice.
I will take "hysteria and hyperbole" under advisement. Enjoy your time with the shark.
Having played the 'culture war' for votes, the Cons are stuck with the voters who delivered those votes. They can't just abandon them. Hence the prevarication over that issue. The PM unable to quickly and clearly condemn a bunch of racists booing the England football team. Amazing really when you think about it.
And it would probably have worked out ok for them but for the 3 black players missing from the spot in the final. Cue the inevitable torrent of racial abuse on social media and then all the obfuscating crap melts away and the issue can be seen as the black/white, good/bad, dark/light one it really is.
So - rotten luck for the Tories here.
I ask because, as someone posted on here earlier, it now looks as though the Police are treating the graffiti on the Marcus Rashford mural as non-racist and, while there has been the Savill's estate agent posted all over news sites as well as one or two others, it doesn't seem like there have been mass expulsions of individuals from social media sites (which the sites themselves would be only too keen to share to show they are taking action) and / or there have not been that many arrests etc. Moreover, any such individuals are likely to be relatively thick as pig sh1t so I would not imagine they have been great at hiding their details.
Taking this a bit further and going a bit Leon-esque. If we accept the Chinese and Russian states are willing to spread disinformation via social media, why would they not take advantage of a situation like this to spread hate like this? They know the atmosphere reached fever pitch in England when it came to the final and they know the whole debate around BLM, racism, the culture wars etc etc are stoking tensions in society (BTW, if this was the case, the social media companies would have a vested interest in NOT disclosing this as it raises questions over their stated number of users, which is crucial for attracting advertising).
I may have missed a lot of newsflow around mass arrests, large numbers of people being fired from their jobs after being found out to have posted vile material etc etc but it doesn't feel like it.
Again I ask the question of the pray it away people (not you) who insist people like me want "lockdown forever". Today is Friday, 3 days before freedom day. How are we locked down right now? Where in the UK can I not go, what can I not do? A handful of things are closed, but the idea that we are locked down is laughable.
Given Hancock scandal, rising covid cases that are scaring people, its quite something they are still so far ahead, and no sign Labour are picking up. Its Lib Dems that seem to be nicking a few points from here and there.
Another three days for us lot down here.
But lockdown it is.
First time I went scuba diving was at the Great Barrier Reef. We were all kitted out, in our wetsuits and in the water when the instructor said basically 'Just before we go down just know there are sharks in the water. These sharks don't attack people so don't be afraid, don't react and keep breathing normally. We just want to warn people at this point so they don't panic'.
I went down, had a great time looking at the Barrier Reef and the person I was swimming with took a picture of me using an underwater disposable camera (this was the 90s) and just as he pressed click a shark swam past inbetween myself and the camera. The photo that came out of that was absolutely incredible, due to the perspective difference the shark looked much bigger than it actually was. Most sharks are actually much smaller than you see in Jaws and not terrifying.
You don't think..
But the slightly odd thing is that, however ill-informed or out of touch they might be, professional politicians – people who get elected for a living – did not stop to reflect that actually the England football team is very, very popular (at least in England) so attacking it for any reason at all might not play well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeF04JkwDLs
Then my daughter's entire school year got sent home to isolate because a child had a positive test - parents are anti-vaxxer / anti-masker types who had been taking every opportunity to moan about the rules and walk around performatively hugging people. Well their whole family has it now. But the whole year, and that's the end of school for them until September. So annoying.
Britain Elects
@BritainElects
·
24m
Tividale (Sandwell) result:
CON: 52.6% (+20.7)
LAB: 43.2% (-13.7)
IND: 2.1% (+2.1)
LDEM: 1.6% (+1.6)
TUSC: 0.5% (+0.5)
Conservative GAIN from Labour.
No Grn (-11.3) as prev.
Chgs. w/ 2018
If the government had then said well no point in an app then, as its can't really enable proper test and trace, they would have been bashed from pillar to post.
The big mistake they did make is making stupid OTT promises about how good it would be.
Some of us said way back, the only way you get this to work is South Korean style state spying in youe every move, your every transaction, etc, which is never going to fly in the likes of the UK, where even talk of having to deep into a restaurant or gym with your phone generates massive outrage.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/15/four-arrested-over-online-racist-abuse-england-footballers
I've been homeschooling my daughter again this week because someone in her class is positive so the whole class is home. She gets to go back just for her final day next week so at least they're not breaking up today like much of the country is and she will have a final day back - unless someone else tests positive resetting the clock.
Three of the school's year groups are all at home right now.
This madness needs to be abolished by September. When they go back it needs to be the case that if someone is off with Covid the rest of the school can continue without them.
Update from our medical practice. A member of staff has tested positive, which means almost everyone there needs to isolate.
Should these doctors and nurses (a) isolate even though I assume they are double jabbed, or (b) still operate and change my Sis-in-law's wound dressing as planned?
By contrast only 33% of those in Alabama and Mississippi have been double vaccinated.
In fact every US state with more than 50% double vaccinated voted for Biden and 9 of the 10 US states with the fewest double vaccinated all voted for Trump (Georgia the only exception)
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/states-ranked-by-percentage-of-population-vaccinated-march-15.html
A lot of things were developed - millions of tests per day, the app etc - prior to knowing whether the vaccines would work. Now that we know vaccines work we should have been clearer to be saying "by this point we're not going to try to suppress the virus anymore. If you don't want to be sick, get your vaccine, otherwise you'll have to take your chances with the virus".
Sounds like direction finding is mostly going to be up to date phones so possibly the issue is people with older phones
What do RP and his fellow travellers do when invited to a friend’s barbecue, or a wedding, or a birthday party at the pub?
Do they decline the invitation?
If asked to go on holiday with a few friends, would they go?
Do they send their children to school?
I have no idea what their real lives must be like, as unless it’s all an act they seem to be in an eternal state of extreme fearfulness.
I think if the government had kept the above two measures in place then everyone would be able to make their own choice with very little impact to the economy.
That said we are definitely seeing the uptick start of happen and it is happening in the states with the lowest vaccination rates.
But this is the payoff. From your posts it would be reasonable to think that you wanted everyone to be sent home and your sister's procedure cancelled. But we are now in the practical, not theoretical world.
What is your view?
Yes - there are still legal restrictions on our lives that would have horrified all of us in 2019, but these are extraordinary times. No - we are not in lockdown still.
2. Wedding haven't been invited but yes
3. Pub yes, done
4. Kids in school yes, done
What are you on about? "Extreme fearfulness" is as stupid as your previous "lockdown forever". Nobody is arguing for that.
We are still in lockdown.
Trouble is, HMG has gone cakeist. It is lifting all the restrictions but still wants them observed by the public and reimposed by businesses. For instance, we no longer have to wear masks but we should wear masks when encountering strangers in closed places, which is pretty much where we were before: we never had to wear masks to walk down the street. I think many people just heard FREEDOM and missed all the qualifications from Boris and The Saj.
The problem with going back to testing is two-fold. If we still need to test then it rather highlights to people that Covid is everywhere and remains a problem - the reverse of what message the government want to convey. And our testing programme was never anything less than a disorganised shambles, so a return to sending people 200 miles for a test would be Bad.
Or - radical idea. To support the reduction in restrictions which we all want, we don't deny there is a Covid problem, we resource up the testing programme again, and we implore people to be careful. Masks and testing allows everyone to largely go about their normal lives surely.
Judging by various contributions on here I gather that make you something of an exception.
What we have seen is the public seem fine with restrictions, it is dicking about of yes you can all go on holiday, wait no, no you can't.... everybody round for Christmas, no no wait, no you can't.
Boris has now gone for full unlock (he hasn't, but that's the spin) and it is irreversible (but it might well not be when we hit autumn / winter).
All spoken with the confidence of Vince Cable predicting the next recession.
The one thing I've really learnt over this is that people cannot understand the timescales involved.
Less than half the country downloaded the app (25 million). Of those only 2/3 activated the app (16 million) and that 2/3 includes those who activated the app then turned off tracing or have since removed the app.
Judge what people really think by what they do not what they say seems something to consider
Source
https://www.publictechnology.net/articles/news/data-suggests-millions-users-have-not-enabled-nhs-contact-tracing-app
"Lockdown" evolves. It is illegal for you to invite more than six people into your home.
What would you call that? You have until Monday (in England) to respond.
Now it is fairly clear the LDs would not prop up a Tory government but would sustain a centre left one. So there is only one place to go if you think there are reasons to keep the centre right in and the Labour party + its rainbow coalition out. I think this explains the stickiness of the Tory figures. To have no political friends is a twist or bust policy, but it concentrates the mind.
The other thing is that the centre left incursion into Tory ground is massively exaggerated. It does not match the revolution happening in the north and midlands.
The virus is filling in the few gaps remaining where people haven't got the vaccine etc but it's nothing to be concerned about. 50k infections from a population of 67 million, post vaccines, is pretty insignificant and inconsequential.
So I ask again, what are you on about?
The following day you test positive - problem now is that there is a high risk you were infectious the day before so you may have infected everyone you met that day.
All restrictions should be enshrined in law and enforced by armed police. Which discretion or exception.
For your own safety, Cressida Dick will "Learn lessons" about why you were shot for sneezing in a public street.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/covid-masks-continue-sage-scientist-b1863955.html
It all depends if they have a treehouse ...
Its partly the direction of travel. If, in 2019, the government suddenly introduced the restrictions we have today, there would have been uproar. (Especially without context). Now, after 150,000 have died from covid in the UK alone, and the restrictions have moved from real lockdown (see March 2020) to essentially wearing a mask in some indoor and transport settings and a restriction on indoor gatherings (widely not observed, and certainly not prosecuted in recent months) people see things a bit different.
The tests are there. Capacity well in excess of the usage.
The issue with test and trace was (and is) refusal to self isolate.
On the subject of COVID, incidentally... The admission rate per case seems to have stabilised at around 2%