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It is even questionable whether we will ever be able to celebrate “Freedom Day” – politicalbetting.c
It is even questionable whether we will ever be able to celebrate “Freedom Day” – politicalbetting.com
The big plan was that today would be dominated by Johnson’s big speech to the nation with all the Churchillian undertones to celebrate how the country had got through the COVID crisis and now, thanks to the vaccination success, we could look forward to a new future. Even the name Freedom Day fits in with the wartime references.
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Time to have faith in the excellent vaccines and adaptable technologies get back to enjoying life.
But it's equally true that the world has put in place extraordinary capabilities to create new vaccines on a never-before known scale.
And sure, we will probably need to tweak our various vaccines to heighten our immune responses to new variants. But that's OK. Let's not forget that in about 15 months, we got locked down, developed a number of vaccines, and have got almost four billion doses into peoples' arms - with more than a billion doses being injected in the last month alone.
It's going to be OK.
Liberalism was always going to be useless in a pandemic
By Ed West"
https://unherd.com/2021/07/are-we-free-on-freedom-day/
This man is a total fraud. Churchill wouldn’t have tolerated a buffoon like him for five minutes.
That Johnson persistently attempts to associate himself with Churchill is a strong indication that the man is not quite right in the head. There’s a screw loose in there. It will not end well.
The first and most important thing that you must learn about Sweden is the heavy bias towards the young. Swedes have a disregard for the upper middle aged and elderly that most other cultures would find utterly shocking. The elderly are *not* regarded as a reservoir of wisdom, automatically deserving respect, even veneration, as in most world cultures. It is not that Swedes dislike older people, it is just that we don’t see them as a group deserving special status. This underlies *everything* about Swedish society, and is probably the reason most foreigners find it difficult to get a grasp on us. They realise we are different, perhaps even odd, but they can’t quite put their finger on it.
Allied to this phenomenon, children and young adults are very highly valued and resources are heavily invested in their welfare and wellbeing.
Further, “the family”, while important, is not the be all and end all of societal structure. And levels of faith are very low by international standards (Scotland and Sweden were the first two countries to consistently measure atheists/agnostics to be in a majority).
Then we have other odd Swedish characteristics, like a strong distrust of melodrama, suspicion of eccentrics and contrarians, a near-unanimous trust in teamwork as a problem solving technique, and remarkable gender equality (feminism is not a characteristic of the left in Sweden; women, and most men, throughout all social groups and all income levels are fundamentalist feminists in a way astonishing to most other cultures). Huge trust in technology, very low population density, small households in low density housing, many single households, very high minimum housing standards, low levels of corruption, a willingness to pay high taxes, high trust in politicians and public bodies, a sane media, etc etc etc
Combine this with an extraordinarily decentralised civil service and political structure, and you might begin to understand our Covid19 response.
We didn’t panic. We acted as a team. We protected the long-term interests of our children and young adults.
It’s not rocket science.
For people interested in the topic, I can recommend this article, which includes a fascinating diagram of world cultures: look how Sweden is way up to the top right (very low resolution and hard to read: better resolution images are available):
‘Sweden, the extreme country’
https://www.iffs.se/en/news/sweden-the-extreme-country/
Complacency, incompetence and sacrificing vulnerable members of society seem to be the hallmarks of the Swedish approach. See the hairraising inquiry last November into their care homes disaster.
(Not that we were any better on care homes, of course).
I think covid is likely to run as a global pandemic for 3 or 4 years.
The UK could have been in a pole position but our vaccination rate has slowed, we were incredibly slack about vaccinating university age students, and we're not vaccinating under 18's at all.
Otherwise that's 14 million reasons why the virus can carry on spreading.
I think I shocked some friends early on, about a year ago, by suggesting that we should vaccinate our children and young first not the elderly. The latter can shut up shop and isolate whereas we needed the young straight back out there, studying in schools, colleges and universities, working the economy, socialising, travelling. It was a theory and I decided not to push it.
Sweden's attitude is refreshing.
You take a whole bunch of variables: mask mandates, population density, travel restrictions, proportion of intergenerational households, etc.
You then have numbers for - say - 40 countries for Covid.
Now, the datasets are *small* for Covid (there aren't that many countries), and there is a massive bit that is hard to measure, which is the level of seeding at the start of the pandmic.
Nevertheless, you then try and work out the equations that fit the data best, using different weightings for each variable, and equations of the equation y = ax + c.
Sweden, Denmark and Norway all have fairly similar demographics, and similar cities which (luckily) eschew really dense urban high-rise.
Anyway... the point is that in Sweden, the view is not that they've done remarkably well.
Now about this thing called "(man made) climate change".
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/18/children-could-yet-get-covid-vaccines-experts-warn-threat-herd/
Our failure to vaccinate under 18's will sink us
Here are 10 mugshots of the thugs, some of whom punched a child and kicked a young Asian man with the words, 'take that you Paki scum'.
Or maybe it was all altered reality by Russian bots?
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15620501/cops-ten-people-wanted-wembley-euros-final/
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pressure-grows-on-fa-over-chaos-at-wembley-as-more-breaches-are-uncovered-kk68z5xh2
We are lagging way behind on this. And we should be getting them immune BEFORE they all return together in September to create the perfect petri dish.
Honestly, the stupidity of this Government beggars belief.
And the Sun says nothing about whether those mugshots include the people who were involved in that incident or those you mention.
Fortunately the Guardian is OK, so I can get the mornings news!
If so, surely they’ll be at the cop shop not the poolside?
I expect that my 11 year old will be jabbed early in September, which will make international travel a whole bunch easier. (I also expect to get a Delta booster in the Autumn.)
I had hoped that the current wave would have burned itself out by now. It clearly hasn't. The decision to remove restrictions today is a finely balanced weighing of risks. I think the overall picture still favours unlocking but its certainly not anything to celebrate. It involves recognition that both our hospitals and our mortuaries will be somewhat busy for a long time yet.
NEW: probably the most important Covid chart I’ve made
As Delta goes global, it’s a tale of two pandemics, as the heavily-vaccinated Western world talks of reopening while deaths across Africa and Asia soar to record highs
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1416805508724502533?s=20
A man of principle who stood up to that twat Cummings.
A man who has now skilfully spared us speechifying from Johnson,
Saj for PM I say.
Have a good morning.
To mark the occasion, I’m supposed to be going to the office for a day this week to say hello. But I dunno… I know I will be seated around anti vaxxers. And there’s been cases on the floor every week the last month from the small number of people there.
I am a little averse to in case I get pinged and need to isolate for what would be the (losing count now) fifth time in the last 18 months? Don’t have the app but presume big employers play by the rules and feed their data to T&T.
https://twitter.com/john_cope/status/1416850870453538819?s=20
(The bigger question might be the one about- if we do want to vaccinate teens, how and when do we get the 10 million or so doses of mRNA vaccine needed?)
'Only' 18.8 here; shall I have to turn the heating back on?
Not much difference for me, same rules as we have grown to know and love remain re social distancing, masks etc in the hospital settings. I hope that Matron has put someone with the hide of a rhino on the door today to deal with the covidiots that refuse to comply with hospital rules.
But since Boris does keep winning elections, it is hard to see there are widespread visceral or reflexive horrors.
As for the planned "aren't I marvellous" Boris-fest, I just scratch my head. Despite the early rapid successes of the vax programme we're no longer way ahead of the pack. All the metrics are going the wrong way, and "its only deaths and hospitalisations that matter" are above where they were last time we added more restrictions.
There is no point arguing about whys and wherefores - we've done it now. The people cheering this one because "there's no risk" or "my liberty comes above your life" need not post "who could have foreseen this" when we reimpose restrictions again.
And seriously, who labels a chart with Jul 1 and Jul 15, when they are from different years!
With modern understanding of pathogens and superior technology, you would think we could be at the point where ventilation and/or air filtration in hospitals could be so good in hospitals that they’d be the safest place to be during a pandemic. I mean it doesn’t need to be silicon chip factory level everywhere necessarily but the principle should be the same. And minimise the need to touch surfaces in public areas too (auto doors and taps, voice lifts etc…).
We’ve got a window of unknown length to sort this stuff out before we get the Big One. A virus that doesn’t age discriminate, is as infectious as delta, which mutates easily and has a slightly higher IFR than covid. We’re damn lucky sars-cov2 is not particularly mutable and has such a low IFR in populations younger than 60.
Then, a few hours later, its disgracefully and shamefully lied about the Prime Minister who it said had planned to dodge lockdown by participating in a "trial", refusing to broadcast the official number 10 announcement that there was never any plan for Boris Johnson to participate in a trial.
That kind of lack of truth and accuracy is what I assume he was referring to.
Will probably be reported in the media as advising against, but that does not seem to be the case, it is wait and see for now.
Because they are broadcasting it....???
Wow. Not even the Daily Telegraph agrees with you. They are with IanB2 and most everyone else in the country on that.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/18/eight-decades-churchills-v-victory-boris-johnsons-freedom-rhetoric/
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations?areaType=ltla&areaName=Aberdeen City
You need to select a local authority area and then at the bottom of the page you'll get a table which shows you vax numbers per local authority for the whole UK.
Top 10 by 1st vax percentage are all Scottish Bottom 10 are all London Almost certainly numerator/denominator issues going onther.
Leaving aside the fact that Zahawi gives different messages by the day, Government ministers are constantly contradicting one another. Often on the same day, even in the same programme.
You like being lied to? Because he's on your side...
Interesting to note that GB is on that map considered closest to . . . Australia and New Zealand. Funny that!
Huge numbers might have had it, there would have been little disruption to schooling, and the debate about vaccination might have been largely academic...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/18/narrow-unbalanced-sage-leaves-government-lockdown-bind/
It comes after a dozen more fraud complaints were revealed yesterday.
https://twitter.com/Mike_Blackley/status/1417012077835788288?s=20
This here is why the government are still comfortably ahead in the polls. "Stop attacking Boris" says the commentator in response to Boris lying. So you check if the commentator thinks Boris is telling the truth. "no, he obviously lied".
But you still support him. We have ended up with a polity where people support a Prime Minister who lies to their face because he thinks they are stupid - despite knowing that he is lying to them because he thinks they are stupid.
Eugh, you lot attack Boris before anything else! You are so biased!
Erm, we're pointing out that he is lying and treating people like fools.
Yeah he does that. But he's winding you lot up so thats ok
I don't get the mentality of people who dislike people calling the PM Liar because he is a liar, yet recognise that he is lying to them.
That's not the case anymore. Now it is academic and the solution to the pingdemic is to stop pinging people and by the time kids return in September its going to be a case of do not disrupt schools.
UK-wide, it was shown that there were 1200+ NHS hospitals, which made the numbers look small. However, over 500 of those were cottage hospitals (usually without critical care facilities and certainly should not be used for covid patients outside of utter crisis), 55 were psychiatric hospitals, and an unknown proportion of the several hundred private hospitals turned out to be under the NHS umbrella as well.
Add to that the issue that the acute care hospitals tend to be considerably larger than the cottage hospitals, so a proportionate decrease would be inaccurate on the over-pessimistic side.
I did find a number of hospital beds in England: 134,000.
Of these, the proportion not available (cottage hospital, psychiatric, private, etc) is unknown but it gave me a prior to use when I cam across a quote from an NHS bod last night that 84,000 acute hospital beds in England was the maximum (ie: that looked pretty much right).
So that gives context.
In the first peak, in England, we peaked at just under 19,000 beds. A touch under one in four acute beds occupied by covid patients, and this hugely stressed the health service (given that operates at high loading normally, then that's understandable). Especially as they weren't evenly distributed (some regions were far higher loaded than others)
In the second peak, in England, we peaked at just over 34,000 beds. That was 40% of ALL acute beds in England, and that's really bad. Given that the case fatality rate increased during that peak, arguably, the health service was clearly past the point of being overwhelmed (thinking of the uneven distribution, some regions must have run well into majority covid levels)
As of the 16th of July, we were at 3,367. That's just over 4%. We know that it's unevenly distributed again, and we know that we cannot sustain anywhere near the earlier levels, but on the flip side, it's currently only 4%.
We also know that whilst epidemics deal in doublings, there will only be a certain number of doublings before we reach saturation of the virus (running out of hosts).
The question is how many doublings we do have left. One, and we're fine. Two and we're starting to feel a bit ropey. Three and we're in trouble.
But I do think that the 84,000 number is the important one. And what fraction of that number we are at and that we could theoretically reach before we go tilt.
He thinks it's funny.
https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1417017393004650496?s=20
The Scottish Government? That would be a first!
https://twitter.com/maxwalden_/status/1417018754609803265?s=20
I spent a couple of hours this morning running near the Bedfordshire/Cambridgeshire border. whilst I was running down a track I'd run a few times before, I diverted off a side track for a few metres to find an open-fronted barn (*). I could see some memorials on the wall inside, so I nipped in.
It was just by the site of the old RAF Tempsford, from where the RAF dropped in SOE operatives. There were plaques on he wall commemorating the pilots and operatives who obtained their kit from the barn before the flights, including the likes of Violette Szabo. I stood silent in the barn for a few moments, letting the past wash over me.
A totally unexpected, but wonderful, discovery. I only mention it as I know Szabo and the SOE gets mentioned occasionally on here.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/raf-tempsford-memorial-barn
(*) Yes, this means I'm exceptionally nosy.
Predetermined time frames, not just for games overall, but segments within games, and therefore with limited opportunity for teams to take time to think at key points of games will result in formulaic predetermined strategies with little scope for variation and innovative thinking during the course of games.
They tried this sort of thing originally with 2020 when it was originally seen as just a bit of fun not to be taken seriously. Now the game has moved on (and I accept that part of this is due to the desire to maximise advertising opportunities), it is not unusual for games to take an hour longer than they did originally. Captains need time to think, to debate, to tweak fields - basically to change tactics and strategies as games progress.And that in itself generates excitement and interest from spectators.
The Hundred has actually built in loads of spurious complexity, but not given the teams the time to work out how to respond to it.
Probably because it’s a “seen” thing, but to me it seems to be missing the point.
We’ve had 6 weeks of exponential growth with masks mandates, so I think it’s optimistic to think keep them will stop that growth
https://twitter.com/ThatRyanChap/status/1417019185876586498?s=20
Your frustration is borne out of the fact that the Tories have a massive majority and that the opposition is useless and toothless. With people like Angela Rayner in the top echelon, and Labour fighting itself for the soul of the party , the future isn't bright. . Nor is it orange...
Without hint of irony, adds: “Nobody’s taking anybody for fools”.
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1417021937428140033
They make absolutely no sense whatsoever now.
I will not be wearing mine in shops anymore and am very glad that its gone.
https://twitter.com/beisgovuk/status/1417016791579176966?s=20
It's also becoming clear that the 50+ booster programme is going to be predominantly AZ.