The age breakdown on there is the key one for me, school age people 10-14 and 15-19 are fulling less sharply than the older age groups 20-24 and 25-29, which indicates the big overall drop is let by adults being vaccinated, more than by kids not being tested.
So you're saying that companies in the EU will stop exporting to the UK or that UK companies will stop purchasing from them and vice versa? Again, the rules surrounding importation of agricultural and food products is very tightly defined within the TCA. There is little recourse for them beyond the existing border pedantry they have already implemented.
Everything else you've written is just a load of angry and pointless words, Richard. I think you need to get some perspective here. What you want to happen (Boris to be punished by the EU) vs the reality of what is within the realms of possibility (very little) are two very different things.
Our relationship with the EU is defined by very tight legal agreements, goodwill is not a factor and the sooner you come to terms with that the better off you'll be. The same is true for the EU and every country that isn't in the EU. Goodwill is a worthless commodity.
Don't be silly, goodwill is crucial. What on earth do you think would happen if they insisted on full customs checks rather than waving through most loads as they currently do? What about things like cooperation on illegal migration?
They already do that and what cooperation on illegal immigration? Haven't we just had a month of remainer sneering about how the EU aren't helping because they no longer have to?!
Recognise the situation for what it is and the EU for what it is, not what you'd like it to be.
It's not me that doesn't recognise what the EU is. It's the Brexiteers who totally fail to understand it. It's not some hostile state plotting against us, but it's a legalistic construct which allows 26 countries to work together in an unprecedented way precisely because it is based on enforceable rules. That's why they are not going to change the rules to suit us; not only do they not want to, they have no easy mechanism to do so. If the rules say packs of sausages can't enter the Single Market from third countries, that's pretty much the end of the matter, no matter how much Lord Frost shouts and insults them. We knew that all along. (Well, Boris probably didn't, but he should have done.)
The single biggest factor behind my Leave vote was Angela Merkel unilaterally overriding the Dublin Convention on refugees because she felt sorry for the Syrian kid she saw on the news that morning. That broke forever in my mind the idea that the EU was a "legalistic construct based on enforceable rules". It's not true, because certain other countries aren't bound by those rules if they don't feel like it.
So, I say it is not Brexiteers who don't understand the EU and what it is. On the contrary.
To repeat you were a Remainer who changed their vote to Leave because Merkel felt compassion for a suffering Syrian child. You show all the heart and honesty of a Faragist.
No, I was on the fence, and picked one side because one of the key arguments of the other side turned out to be garbage.
I feel sorry for people all the time. It just doesn't usually make me want to break laws.
Do you routinely shoplift food and other essentials out of supermarkets every time you see a homeless person? If not, why not?
The number of new doses administered yesterday is 236,261 England administered 198K doses compared to 144K last week (FD: 59K, SD: 138K).
I commented earlier today that it seemed the Vaccport plan seems to have had an impact of vaccinations.
We really need to be doing triple those first dose numbers to make a dent in the 4m under 40s that can be easily pushed into getting a vaccine.
I'm not sure what you mean by easily pused in to it?
If you mean make laws and rules deliberately constraining so that there life is meanifuly worsens if they do not do as you wish, that I flat out object to that.
If you mean, find ways to make it easy for them to get a jab, and take time to enplane the benefits as well as the risks then sure.
I think its silly that we are talking about limiting the freedom of an 18 and a half year old if they do not take the jab, but not letting a 17 and a half year old from taking it no mater how much they what it. but the signal that send out is not going to encourage 18 Year olds, there has to be an age group where the vaccine risk and benefits are similar, who get to chose with out being judged, I'm not a medicine expert, I think that's probably 16-17 year olds, but don't know that. but to say its unsafe for somebody even slightly younger than you, but you must take it will not work IMHO.
I am pro vaccine and when I have talked to people not taking it I do try to explain and encourage taking vaccine. but evidence suggest to me, that a large proportion, probably over half and possibly a lot over half have had the viruses already which gives them a lot of protection. we are already passed heard immunity and will be well passed it by the time we give out another 8 million second doses. Why the the determination to pick a fight, lets just be glad cases are falling.
The CDC (And our MHRA) have looked into this and concluded that age is somewhere below 12. I've read the JCVI report and they're not analysing things rationally - of course that the jab is not allowed (In the UK) for their 17 yr old friends may put some 18 yr olds off.
Philip is so deep into the cult that he won't acknowledge that the deal his leader personally negotiated and signed has been a disaster for NI. That's when you know you're deep down the rabbit hole, I found myself there with Corbyn a few times
Maybe you've developed a bit since then but your posts on here show how far you still have to go.
You're young, and your posts make you out to be obviously young like an excited twelve-year old coming out of the cinema having seen the latest Marvel film; "Kewl!"
Be a bit more measured and sober, and you'll be worth reading.
What a patronising post. Embarrassing.
I think it's a wind-up.
I'm not so sure @Casino_Royale has got on his high horse a number of times over the years.
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
My Official Prediction for Peak Cases was tomorrow and 87,000
It looks - God willing - that I am going to be gloriously, spectacularly wrong. Same goes for Neil Ferguson, et al
Did ANY of the experts predict this startling fall? I know a couple of people on here did, and Kudos to them
The important thing is not that the predictions were wrong, but why they were wrong, because working that out will likely help us to make better predictions and decisions in the future.
The best guesses are that people underestimated the extent to which schools and the very special event of England doing well in a major football tournament would increase transmission. Probably we are also overestimating the importance of formal restrictions, as opposed to collective behaviour which is guided more by perceived risk than formal rules.
The implication of this is that vaccinating teenagers is more important than previously thought, encouraging outdoors events as an alternative to indoor events, and an emphasis on political leadership as opposed to mind-numbing legal detail on restrictions.
So, rather than vaxports for nightclubs, I would rather see government support for nightclubs to put on outdoor raves, while the weather allows.
The age breakdown on there is the key one for me, school age people 10-14 and 15-19 are fulling less sharply than the older age groups 20-24 and 25-29, which indicates the big overall drop is let by adults being vaccinated, more than by kids not being tested.
15-19 are practically identical to 20-24....
From what I've been hearing about schools, the sixth formers were getting hit very hard with COVID....
The scope is limited to NI, what punitive measures are you envisaging? You keep saying that the EU will come up with a punitive retaliation but fail to identify what these could entail? I did this for a living for 3 years in the run up to Brexit and for a few months after the TCA was ratified by the UK government. The scope of retaliation is very, very narrow and the room for punitive measures that Ireland will agree to is extremely limited.
You're being naive, Max. The EU doesn't need to do anything very much. Just stop cooperating even more than is currently the case. We are so dependent on their goodwill in so many areas, from illegal migrants to food supplies to data protection to aviation to banking regulation, that they can afford to just sit back and wait for some sanity to leak back into the UK government.
All of that is in scope of the TCA and other agreements. They would need to suspend parts of the TCA in retaliation which just seems extremely unlikely so we come back to what is in scope and that's the NI protocol itself where there are few good options for them.
This is a political matter, not primarily a legal one. It's all about trust, or rather the near-total lack of it thanks to the ludicrous self-harm the UK government has been engaged in. We can't achieve good relations through legal routes, and we desperately need good relations. They don't. It's as simple as that, and has been all along.
But retaliatory measures would need to be legal and proportional. The TCA completely flummoxes the ability of the EU to retaliate in any meaningful sense as it is a separate deal (by their own insistence, no less) which means it is not within the scope of retaliation. So sure, maybe they can huff and puff a bit and call Boris a wanker and rage at Frost a bit more than they usually do and maybe beg for Olly Robbins to come back but ultimately the retaliation available to them is to put up a border in Ireland. On a scale of 1-10 how likely is that?
What retaliatory measures? They can just 'work to rule', in the old 1970s trade union style, and refuse to cooperate in all the large number of areas not covered by the TCA.
Any further collapse in goodwill will hurt us a hell of a lot more than it hurts them. It's already bad enough, for heaven's sake.
Not at all since this bothers them more than us.
If we invoke Article 16, have the TCA and they 'work to rule' and there are no checks whatsoever from GB to NI (because Article 16 has been invoked) then what cards have they got left?
We don't want checks from NI to GB or vice-versa and don't particularly want checks from Eire to NI or vice-versa either.
They don't want checks from NI to Eire or vice-versa but do want checks from GB to NI. In your proposed scenario they're getting absolutely nothing of what they want, and we're getting everything that we want, so how is that hurting us? Its giving us what we want free of charge.
They're powerless and impotent if we invoke Article 16 and they can't properly retaliate. Which is what Frost and Johnson rightly have recognised and why they're letting this play out.
Err, you seem to have forgotten that they supply 40% of our food, are the only customer for much of our fishing, seafood and agricultural sectors, and account for the bulk of our exports.
The idea of invoking Article 16 is for the birds. It's just about conceivable that Boris and Frost are stupid enough to do it, but it's not conceivable that it will work out well. Quite apart from anything else, what on earth are we bitching about? It was AT THE INSISTENCE OF BORIS that border was put down the Irish Sea. Invoking a legal process to complain that this wonderful oven-ready deal is working exactly as he intended it to and signed up to is beyond loopy. They are not going to change the rules of Single Market just because Lord Frost is even more unpleasant than usual, even if they could. With goodwill and trust, they could no doubt tweak it a bit at the edges, but that's the limit of it, and unfortunately, goodwill and trust have been trashed by the UK government.
It's worth being clear here.
We agreed a border in the Irish Sea. That border has been implemented as agreed We wish to use Article 16 because it's been implemented and while it's working as it was supposed to we don't like the result.,
"If the application of this Protocol leads to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade, the Union or the United Kingdom may unilaterally take appropriate safeguard measures."
If diversion of trade was inevitable, why did the EU agree to that clause?
So what about those who can't be jabbed? The clinically extremely vulnerable. Well it is difficult for them but to inflict such extraordinary restrictions on liberty for those people? I don't see how it's justified.
The scope is limited to NI, what punitive measures are you envisaging? You keep saying that the EU will come up with a punitive retaliation but fail to identify what these could entail? I did this for a living for 3 years in the run up to Brexit and for a few months after the TCA was ratified by the UK government. The scope of retaliation is very, very narrow and the room for punitive measures that Ireland will agree to is extremely limited.
You're being naive, Max. The EU doesn't need to do anything very much. Just stop cooperating even more than is currently the case. We are so dependent on their goodwill in so many areas, from illegal migrants to food supplies to data protection to aviation to banking regulation, that they can afford to just sit back and wait for some sanity to leak back into the UK government.
All of that is in scope of the TCA and other agreements. They would need to suspend parts of the TCA in retaliation which just seems extremely unlikely so we come back to what is in scope and that's the NI protocol itself where there are few good options for them.
This is a political matter, not primarily a legal one. It's all about trust, or rather the near-total lack of it thanks to the ludicrous self-harm the UK government has been engaged in. We can't achieve good relations through legal routes, and we desperately need good relations. They don't. It's as simple as that, and has been all along.
But retaliatory measures would need to be legal and proportional. The TCA completely flummoxes the ability of the EU to retaliate in any meaningful sense as it is a separate deal (by their own insistence, no less) which means it is not within the scope of retaliation. So sure, maybe they can huff and puff a bit and call Boris a wanker and rage at Frost a bit more than they usually do and maybe beg for Olly Robbins to come back but ultimately the retaliation available to them is to put up a border in Ireland. On a scale of 1-10 how likely is that?
What retaliatory measures? They can just 'work to rule', in the old 1970s trade union style, and refuse to cooperate in all the large number of areas not covered by the TCA.
Any further collapse in goodwill will hurt us a hell of a lot more than it hurts them. It's already bad enough, for heaven's sake.
Not at all since this bothers them more than us.
If we invoke Article 16, have the TCA and they 'work to rule' and there are no checks whatsoever from GB to NI (because Article 16 has been invoked) then what cards have they got left?
We don't want checks from NI to GB or vice-versa and don't particularly want checks from Eire to NI or vice-versa either.
They don't want checks from NI to Eire or vice-versa but do want checks from GB to NI. In your proposed scenario they're getting absolutely nothing of what they want, and we're getting everything that we want, so how is that hurting us? Its giving us what we want free of charge.
They're powerless and impotent if we invoke Article 16 and they can't properly retaliate. Which is what Frost and Johnson rightly have recognised and why they're letting this play out.
Err, you seem to have forgotten that they supply 40% of our food, are the only customer for much of our fishing, seafood and agricultural sectors, and account for the bulk of our exports.
The idea of invoking Article 16 is for the birds. It's just about conceivable that Boris and Frost are stupid enough to do it, but it's not conceivable that it will work out well. Quite apart from anything else, what on earth are we bitching about? It was AT THE INSISTENCE OF BORIS that border was put down the Irish Sea. Invoking a legal process to complain that this wonderful oven-ready deal is working exactly as he intended it to and signed up to is beyond loopy. They are not going to change the rules of Single Market just because Lord Frost is even more unpleasant than usual, even if they could. With goodwill and trust, they could no doubt tweak it a bit at the edges, but that's the limit of it, and unfortunately, goodwill and trust have been trashed by the UK government.
It's worth being clear here.
We agreed a border in the Irish Sea. That border has been implemented as agreed We wish to use Article 16 because it's been implemented and while it's working as it was supposed to we don't like the result.,
"If the application of this Protocol leads to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade, the Union or the United Kingdom may unilaterally take appropriate safeguard measures."
If diversion of trade was inevitable, why did the EU agree to that clause?
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner.
Certain people here want to make out that it is an automatic certainty that the Protocol leads to serious economic or societal difficulties and diversion of trade, and that it is liable to persist - but that invoking that clause is out of the question.
My Official Prediction for Peak Cases was tomorrow and 87,000
It looks - God willing - that I am going to be gloriously, spectacularly wrong. Same goes for Neil Ferguson, et al
Did ANY of the experts predict this startling fall? I know a couple of people on here did, and Kudos to them
The important thing is not that the predictions were wrong, but why they were wrong, because working that out will likely help us to make better predictions and decisions in the future.
The best guesses are that people underestimated the extent to which schools and the very special event of England doing well in a major football tournament would increase transmission. Probably we are also overestimating the importance of formal restrictions, as opposed to collective behaviour which is guided more by perceived risk than formal rules.
The implication of this is that vaccinating teenagers is more important than previously thought, encouraging outdoors events as an alternative to indoor events, and an emphasis on political leadership as opposed to mind-numbing legal detail on restrictions.
So, rather than vaxports for nightclubs, I would rather see government support for nightclubs to put on outdoor raves, while the weather allows.
The drop in cases is most evident in young adults, not school children - apart from the oldest cohort (15-19).
Cases down c.50% on last week where there were 46.5k.
The speed at which cases are collapsing continues to astonish.
This is what Heard immunity looks like for a highly infections virus,
if a virus has a R0 rate of 10 then
85% with immunity = 50 % growth 90% with immunity = 0% Flat 95% with immunity = 50 % decline
If the viruses has an R rate of 20 then those numbers are 92.5%, 95% and 97.5%
in the week ending 17 August 1.2 million people had there second jab, and the ONS estimate is that 800,000 actually had the viruses based on there random household servery. The week after that had similar number vaccinated and probably slightly more with the viruses but the numbers is not out yet.
I cant find the link but IIRC the ONS also did an anti body servery a couple of weeks ago which indicated 91.5% of the population had antibodies, I can remember if that was all population or just adults.
This is what what heard immunity looks like, and should have been expected. It also brings in to question the silly idea of vaccine passports and any other restriction with the possible exception of hospital visited.
if there is a new variant or evidenced that vaccines (that have been spaced out properly) decrees effectiveness significantly, that different but until then lets get back to normal.
My Official Prediction for Peak Cases was tomorrow and 87,000
It looks - God willing - that I am going to be gloriously, spectacularly wrong. Same goes for Neil Ferguson, et al
Did ANY of the experts predict this startling fall? I know a couple of people on here did, and Kudos to them
The important thing is not that the predictions were wrong, but why they were wrong, because working that out will likely help us to make better predictions and decisions in the future.
The best guesses are that people underestimated the extent to which schools and the very special event of England doing well in a major football tournament would increase transmission. Probably we are also overestimating the importance of formal restrictions, as opposed to collective behaviour which is guided more by perceived risk than formal rules.
The implication of this is that vaccinating teenagers is more important than previously thought, encouraging outdoors events as an alternative to indoor events, and an emphasis on political leadership as opposed to mind-numbing legal detail on restrictions.
So, rather than vaxports for nightclubs, I would rather see government support for nightclubs to put on outdoor raves, while the weather allows.
Quite possibly true. But there is a further possibility - this is what Delta DOES
As others have said, look at India, the Netherlands, and now Jakarta - the "arrowhead pattern". A scarily sharp ascent in cases, and then an equally brisk decline
Perhaps this is what happens with a super infectious variant, and the scientists just don't understand it yet. This is quite plausible - Coronavirus is a novel respiratory virus, and if Delta really has an R0 of 8-10 that makes it infectious to an almost unprecedented degree. So we should expect surprises, and maybe this is a good surprise. For once
And no sign of anything exponential in hospital numbers, if anything the arithmetic growth rate is slowing.
Yes, now at about 20 day doubling time for admissions and 16 days for in hospital, that was 11 days and 9 days when the decision to go ahead with step 4 was made.
Would anyone care to make an educated guess as to what the total number of Covid patients will be in UK hospitals at the peak of the latest wave, and when that will occur?
My uneducated guess is 7,500 in about a week's time. After that, however (based on what's been observed in the early centres of Delta infection,) I think it could oscillate at around about that level for a while, rather than immediately dropping back off again.
There were some studies done, a while back, for buses and trains where pantographs were used to charge batteries for *part* of the route.
The train stuff was especially interesting, since it had the potential to massively drop the cost of electrification.
Given it cost the thick end of £200 million to electrify the 16 mile Chase Line,* that would definitely be desirable.
*Albeit I should note substantial other works were carried out at the same time and I don’t know what proportion was for relaying and realigning tracks as against the electrification itself.
Hang on. I was assured wokeness had finished off our Olympic chances. We have 13 medals in the first four days. Previous record was 6.
Might have to file that in the same bin as 'Marxist footballers taking the knee will see England lose every match in the Euros.'
I for one am bored with moaning reactionaries dissing our proud and impressive sportsmen and women, just because they might be "Woke" - ie admirably sensitive to issues of diviersity.
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
It's a view.
It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else. I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
My Official Prediction for Peak Cases was tomorrow and 87,000
It looks - God willing - that I am going to be gloriously, spectacularly wrong. Same goes for Neil Ferguson, et al
Did ANY of the experts predict this startling fall? I know a couple of people on here did, and Kudos to them
The important thing is not that the predictions were wrong, but why they were wrong, because working that out will likely help us to make better predictions and decisions in the future.
The best guesses are that people underestimated the extent to which schools and the very special event of England doing well in a major football tournament would increase transmission. Probably we are also overestimating the importance of formal restrictions, as opposed to collective behaviour which is guided more by perceived risk than formal rules.
The implication of this is that vaccinating teenagers is more important than previously thought, encouraging outdoors events as an alternative to indoor events, and an emphasis on political leadership as opposed to mind-numbing legal detail on restrictions.
So, rather than vaxports for nightclubs, I would rather see government support for nightclubs to put on outdoor raves, while the weather allows.
Thoughts and prayers for iSAGE.
Please give to charity rather than sending flowers.
Hang on. I was assured wokeness had finished off our Olympic chances. We have 13 medals in the first four days. Previous record was 6.
Like government cuts takes time to see effects filter through....you can see the effects in some sports already, rugby 7s are a shadow of the team last time and that isn't because talent isn't there, it is no funding means they have had to go and play 15s e.g. Will Muir and Ruaridh McConnochie are total beasts at 7s, but had to move to 15s in order to make a living.
Also, Team GB much weaker in things like athletics, so despite a good start, struggle to get many medals on the track.
There were some studies done, a while back, for buses and trains where pantographs were used to charge batteries for *part* of the route.
The train stuff was especially interesting, since it had the potential to massively drop the cost of electrification.
Given it cost the thick end of £200 million to electrify the 16 mile Chase Line,* that would definitely be desirable.
*Albeit I should note substantial other works were carried out at the same time and I don’t know what proportion was for relaying and realigning tracks as against the electrification itself.
At what cost point will using rockets bigger than Saturn 5s to do point-to-point travel be cheaper than railways, in the UK?
My Official Prediction for Peak Cases was tomorrow and 87,000
It looks - God willing - that I am going to be gloriously, spectacularly wrong. Same goes for Neil Ferguson, et al
Did ANY of the experts predict this startling fall? I know a couple of people on here did, and Kudos to them
The peak number of cases was 17th July (54,674).
On 12th July I predicted that the peak would be within a week.
Impressive! Bravo
I suspect Robert Smithson's was the most accurate prediction, however (if it turns out he is right). He called the peak almost perfectly, out by just one day I believe?
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
It's a view.
It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else. I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
On the flip side you also have to conclude that scientists have political agendas as well, look at the whole of independent SAGE. I do wonder how they have taken the body blow of falling cases, they must be tearing up over it and the end of lockdown misery. Commie Michie can see permanent state control slipping away from her already.
Cases down c.50% on last week where there were 46.5k.
The speed at which cases are collapsing continues to astonish.
This is what Heard immunity looks like for a highly infections virus,
if a virus has a R0 rate of 10 then
85% with immunity = 50 % growth 90% with immunity = 0% Flat 95% with immunity = 50 % decline
If the viruses has an R rate of 20 then those numbers are 92.5%, 95% and 97.5%
in the week ending 17 August 1.2 million people had there second jab, and the ONS estimate is that 800,000 actually had the viruses based on there random household servery. The week after that had similar number vaccinated and probably slightly more with the viruses but the numbers is not out yet.
I cant find the link but IIRC the ONS also did an anti body servery a couple of weeks ago which indicated 91.5% of the population had antibodies, I can remember if that was all population or just adults.
This is what what heard immunity looks like, and should have been expected. It also brings in to question the silly idea of vaccine passports and any other restriction with the possible exception of hospital visited.
if there is a new variant or evidenced that vaccines (that have been spaced out properly) decrees effectiveness significantly, that different but until then lets get back to normal.
Hope you are right. Early days.
I haven't found a survey of antibodies in non-adults, for the UK.
My Official Prediction for Peak Cases was tomorrow and 87,000
It looks - God willing - that I am going to be gloriously, spectacularly wrong. Same goes for Neil Ferguson, et al
Did ANY of the experts predict this startling fall? I know a couple of people on here did, and Kudos to them
The important thing is not that the predictions were wrong, but why they were wrong, because working that out will likely help us to make better predictions and decisions in the future.
The best guesses are that people underestimated the extent to which schools and the very special event of England doing well in a major football tournament would increase transmission. Probably we are also overestimating the importance of formal restrictions, as opposed to collective behaviour which is guided more by perceived risk than formal rules.
The implication of this is that vaccinating teenagers is more important than previously thought, encouraging outdoors events as an alternative to indoor events, and an emphasis on political leadership as opposed to mind-numbing legal detail on restrictions.
So, rather than vaxports for nightclubs, I would rather see government support for nightclubs to put on outdoor raves, while the weather allows.
Quite possibly true. But there is a further possibility - this is what Delta DOES
As others have said, look at India, the Netherlands, and now Jakarta - the "arrowhead pattern". A scarily sharp ascent in cases, and then an equally brisk decline
Perhaps this is what happens with a super infectious variant, and the scientists just don't understand it yet. This is quite plausible - Coronavirus is a novel respiratory virus, and if Delta really has an R0 of 8-10 that makes it infectious to an almost unprecedented degree. So we should expect surprises, and maybe this is a good surprise. For once
Things don't just do things, they do things for reasons. Sure we might not always understand those reasons, but respiratory viruses aren't that complicated - they spread from person to person over relatively limited distances.
I don't think we have to reach for some sort of magical explanation.
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
It's a view.
It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else. I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
On the flip side you also have to conclude that scientists have political agendas as well, look at the whole of independent SAGE. I do wonder how they have taken the body blow of falling cases, they must be tearing up over it and the end of lockdown misery. Commie Michie can see permanent state control slipping away from her already.
Yep. The Great Barrington Declaration was strongly supported by the Koch Institute, for a start.
My Official Prediction for Peak Cases was tomorrow and 87,000
It looks - God willing - that I am going to be gloriously, spectacularly wrong. Same goes for Neil Ferguson, et al
Did ANY of the experts predict this startling fall? I know a couple of people on here did, and Kudos to them
The peak number of cases was 17th July (54,674).
On 12th July I predicted that the peak would be within a week.
Impressive! Bravo
I suspect Robert Smithson's was the most accurate prediction, however (if it turns out he is right). He called the peak almost perfectly, out by just one day I believe?
Pretty sure I said that too but will have to dig up the post. I'm also not 100% convinced this is the final peak. I do think that in mid-late August we'll have a big exit wave among the unvaccinated as people lose their fear of it and socialise more.
The number of new doses administered yesterday is 236,261 England administered 198K doses compared to 144K last week (FD: 59K, SD: 138K).
I commented earlier today that it seemed the Vaccport plan seems to have had an impact of vaccinations.
We really need to be doing triple those first dose numbers to make a dent in the 4m under 40s that can be easily pushed into getting a vaccine.
I'm not sure what you mean by easily pused in to it?
If you mean make laws and rules deliberately constraining so that there life is meanifuly worsens if they do not do as you wish, that I flat out object to that.
If you mean, find ways to make it easy for them to get a jab, and take time to enplane the benefits as well as the risks then sure.
I think its silly that we are talking about limiting the freedom of an 18 and a half year old if they do not take the jab, but not letting a 17 and a half year old from taking it no mater how much they what it. but the signal that send out is not going to encourage 18 Year olds, there has to be an age group where the vaccine risk and benefits are similar, who get to chose with out being judged, I'm not a medicine expert, I think that's probably 16-17 year olds, but don't know that. but to say its unsafe for somebody even slightly younger than you, but you must take it will not work IMHO.
I am pro vaccine and when I have talked to people not taking it I do try to explain and encourage taking vaccine. but evidence suggest to me, that a large proportion, probably over half and possibly a lot over half have had the viruses already which gives them a lot of protection. we are already passed heard immunity and will be well passed it by the time we give out another 8 million second doses. Why the the determination to pick a fight, lets just be glad cases are falling.
Great post.
Gove said it's "selfish" not to have the jab. But it is by no means certain that it is selfish. If you are asymptomatic then your viral load will be lower. Plus a huge proportion of those you might give it to will have been jabbed.
So what about those who can't be jabbed? The clinically extremely vulnerable. Well it is difficult for them but to inflict such extraordinary restrictions on liberty for those people? I don't see how it's justified.
Thanks I don't think anybody has sead that about one of my posts.
I have a friend at work who has 2 kids, one of which is immunocompromised, cant have a vaccine but would get very ill if she cough it, her brother was not allowed the jab. its good that the rules are now changing, he wants the jab because he is old enough to understand that he does not what to be the reason she gets sick again. The rules are changing to allow him to do that, but this should have been done much earlier.
I'm only half joking with with this suggestion, we ask the immunocompromised to hide for just a couple of more weeks, and then could allocate a few nightclubs, just for the voluntary unvaccinated, possibly do 0% tax on the drinks to encourage them to go, and also let in a few people who have tested positive in the last few days go in. at the end they will all have it, based on there ages most will be fine, and at the end antibodies just like the vaccinated. based on the numbers it looks to me as if being infected might achaly give better protection than vaccination.
To mad to work? sadly probably but would be a interesting experiment.
My Official Prediction for Peak Cases was tomorrow and 87,000
It looks - God willing - that I am going to be gloriously, spectacularly wrong. Same goes for Neil Ferguson, et al
Did ANY of the experts predict this startling fall? I know a couple of people on here did, and Kudos to them
The peak number of cases was 17th July (54,674).
On 12th July I predicted that the peak would be within a week.
Impressive! Bravo
I suspect Robert Smithson's was the most accurate prediction, however (if it turns out he is right). He called the peak almost perfectly, out by just one day I believe?
Do we have rules for this competition? (He said pedantically). This could be a mini-peak with another surge in early autumn when schools/freshers hits again.
My Official Prediction for Peak Cases was tomorrow and 87,000
It looks - God willing - that I am going to be gloriously, spectacularly wrong. Same goes for Neil Ferguson, et al
Did ANY of the experts predict this startling fall? I know a couple of people on here did, and Kudos to them
The important thing is not that the predictions were wrong, but why they were wrong, because working that out will likely help us to make better predictions and decisions in the future.
The best guesses are that people underestimated the extent to which schools and the very special event of England doing well in a major football tournament would increase transmission. Probably we are also overestimating the importance of formal restrictions, as opposed to collective behaviour which is guided more by perceived risk than formal rules.
The implication of this is that vaccinating teenagers is more important than previously thought, encouraging outdoors events as an alternative to indoor events, and an emphasis on political leadership as opposed to mind-numbing legal detail on restrictions.
So, rather than vaxports for nightclubs, I would rather see government support for nightclubs to put on outdoor raves, while the weather allows.
Thoughts and prayers for iSAGE.
Please give to charity rather than sending flowers.
Haven't they just moved the goalposts again as always....then after covid, its onto climate change.
My Official Prediction for Peak Cases was tomorrow and 87,000
It looks - God willing - that I am going to be gloriously, spectacularly wrong. Same goes for Neil Ferguson, et al
Did ANY of the experts predict this startling fall? I know a couple of people on here did, and Kudos to them
The important thing is not that the predictions were wrong, but why they were wrong, because working that out will likely help us to make better predictions and decisions in the future.
The best guesses are that people underestimated the extent to which schools and the very special event of England doing well in a major football tournament would increase transmission. Probably we are also overestimating the importance of formal restrictions, as opposed to collective behaviour which is guided more by perceived risk than formal rules.
The implication of this is that vaccinating teenagers is more important than previously thought, encouraging outdoors events as an alternative to indoor events, and an emphasis on political leadership as opposed to mind-numbing legal detail on restrictions.
So, rather than vaxports for nightclubs, I would rather see government support for nightclubs to put on outdoor raves, while the weather allows.
Quite possibly true. But there is a further possibility - this is what Delta DOES
As others have said, look at India, the Netherlands, and now Jakarta - the "arrowhead pattern". A scarily sharp ascent in cases, and then an equally brisk decline
Perhaps this is what happens with a super infectious variant, and the scientists just don't understand it yet. This is quite plausible - Coronavirus is a novel respiratory virus, and if Delta really has an R0 of 8-10 that makes it infectious to an almost unprecedented degree. So we should expect surprises, and maybe this is a good surprise. For once
Things don't just do things, they do things for reasons. Sure we might not always understand those reasons, but respiratory viruses aren't that complicated - they spread from person to person over relatively limited distances.
I don't think we have to reach for some sort of magical explanation.
It's not magical, I'm just saying Delta is maybe SO virulent it races through populations quickly - including many asymptomatic people who don't even get tested? - so it briskly runs out of hosts and drops away fast
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
It's a view.
It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else. I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
On the flip side you also have to conclude that scientists have political agendas as well, look at the whole of independent SAGE. I do wonder how they have taken the body blow of falling cases, they must be tearing up over it and the end of lockdown misery. Commie Michie can see permanent state control slipping away from her already.
Yep. The Great Barrington Declaration was strongly supported by the Koch Institute, for a start.
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
It's a view.
It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else. I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
Weren't they were the ones also banging on about false positives last year?
All those false positives leading to all those deaths.
But remember according to Prof Peston the government are actually hiding all the reinfections cases, so perhaps not really cases falling, it is Boris is burying the truth again (like the bodies in the gardens at Chequers) ;-)
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
It's a view.
It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else. I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
On the flip side you also have to conclude that scientists have political agendas as well, look at the whole of independent SAGE. I do wonder how they have taken the body blow of falling cases, they must be tearing up over it and the end of lockdown misery. Commie Michie can see permanent state control slipping away from her already.
Yep. The Great Barrington Declaration was strongly supported by the Koch Institute, for a start.
There's also Goldacre's Law: "There is no claim so stupid that you could not find, somewhere in the world, at least one doctor or academic who was willing to put it forward."
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
It's a view.
It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else. I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
On the flip side you also have to conclude that scientists have political agendas as well, look at the whole of independent SAGE. I do wonder how they have taken the body blow of falling cases, they must be tearing up over it and the end of lockdown misery. Commie Michie can see permanent state control slipping away from her already.
Yep. The Great Barrington Declaration was strongly supported by the Koch Institute, for a start.
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
It's a view.
It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else. I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
On the flip side you also have to conclude that scientists have political agendas as well, look at the whole of independent SAGE. I do wonder how they have taken the body blow of falling cases, they must be tearing up over it and the end of lockdown misery. Commie Michie can see permanent state control slipping away from her already.
Yep. The Great Barrington Declaration was strongly supported by the Koch Institute, for a start.
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
It's a view.
It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else. I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
On the flip side you also have to conclude that scientists have political agendas as well, look at the whole of independent SAGE. I do wonder how they have taken the body blow of falling cases, they must be tearing up over it and the end of lockdown misery. Commie Michie can see permanent state control slipping away from her already.
Yep. The Great Barrington Declaration was strongly supported by the Koch Institute, for a start.
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
It's a view.
It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else. I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
Weren't they were the ones also banging on about false positives last year?
All those false positives leading to all those deaths.
The false positive cases turned into false positive hospitalisations and false positive deaths.
There were some studies done, a while back, for buses and trains where pantographs were used to charge batteries for *part* of the route.
The train stuff was especially interesting, since it had the potential to massively drop the cost of electrification.
Given it cost the thick end of £200 million to electrify the 16 mile Chase Line,* that would definitely be desirable.
*Albeit I should note substantial other works were carried out at the same time and I don’t know what proportion was for relaying and realigning tracks as against the electrification itself.
At what cost point will using rockets bigger than Saturn 5s to do point-to-point travel be cheaper than railways, in the UK?
Instead of making offenders wear high viz jackets in chain gangs, how about helping them get a real job instead? In my shops we employ lots of ex offenders and they wear a shirt and tie. Same people, different approach, a much better outcome.
To switch it around, IF we have seen the peak already (touch wood, Deus Vult, Inshallah etc) then who on PB got it most wrong?
I seem to recall Londonpubman predicted 300,000 a day. But he might have been commenting from the pub
I think that was Londonepubman having a joke. may be wrong.
I think Independent SAGE got it most wrong, on this and everything really.
It would be nice if, at the end of all this (should it ever end) the scientists who got things REALLY wrong came out and said Sorry
They don't have to resign - Covid has confused everyone, since it began - but an admission of error would be nice? Also healthy. If you get something badly wrong it's always better to fess up , then you can draw a line and learn from mistakes
My Official Prediction for Peak Cases was tomorrow and 87,000
It looks - God willing - that I am going to be gloriously, spectacularly wrong. Same goes for Neil Ferguson, et al
Did ANY of the experts predict this startling fall? I know a couple of people on here did, and Kudos to them
The peak number of cases was 17th July (54,674).
On 12th July I predicted that the peak would be within a week.
Impressive! Bravo
I suspect Robert Smithson's was the most accurate prediction, however (if it turns out he is right). He called the peak almost perfectly, out by just one day I believe?
Pretty sure I said that too but will have to dig up the post. I'm also not 100% convinced this is the final peak. I do think that in mid-late August we'll have a big exit wave among the unvaccinated as people lose their fear of it and socialise more.
It would be surprising (in a very positive way) if we don't get climbing cases again - 19 July feeding through, schools reopening (Scotland will give us a clue on that) universities stuarting up again.
At some point we hit herd immunity, if not already. This peak, if not herd immunity, is likely due to a combination of changed behaviours due to the case numbers and schools closing etc (plus resumption of normal socialising after a footie-influenced peak).
We could, conceivably have a series of mini peaks if we have rising cases modifying behaviours a little, in a cycle. But I'm not sure that there will be a big enough peak to really scare people again. It will be interesting to see.
Instead of making offenders wear high viz jackets in chain gangs, how about helping them get a real job instead? In my shops we employ lots of ex offenders and they wear a shirt and tie. Same people, different approach, a much better outcome.
To switch it around, IF we have seen the peak already (touch wood, Deus Vult, Inshallah etc) then who on PB got it most wrong?
I seem to recall Londonpubman predicted 300,000 a day. But he might have been commenting from the pub
I confess I said 101k on August 2nd. Thankfully I was very wrong. In my defence I know nowt about this whatsoever. And now everyone else is fully aware of the fact too.
To switch it around, IF we have seen the peak already (touch wood, Deus Vult, Inshallah etc) then who on PB got it most wrong?
I seem to recall Londonpubman predicted 300,000 a day. But he might have been commenting from the pub
I think that was Londonepubman having a joke. may be wrong.
I think Independent SAGE got it most wrong, on this and everything really.
It would be nice if, at the end of all this (should it ever end) the scientists who got things REALLY wrong came out and said Sorry
They don't have to resign - Covid has confused everyone, since it began - but an admission of error would be nice? Also healthy. If you get something badly wrong it's always better to fess up , then you can draw a line and learn from mistakes
What they will instead say is they need more money to improve the accuracy of their models.....
Other countries with high levels of vaccination are having to reverse easing of restrictions based on vaccination, and strengthen mitigations in schools to control spread. Is the UK learning from global experience, or are we planning to move in the opp. direction on Aug 16th?
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
It's a view.
It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else. I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
On the flip side you also have to conclude that scientists have political agendas as well, look at the whole of independent SAGE. I do wonder how they have taken the body blow of falling cases, they must be tearing up over it and the end of lockdown misery. Commie Michie can see permanent state control slipping away from her already.
Yep. The Great Barrington Declaration was strongly supported by the Koch Institute, for a start.
The scope is limited to NI, what punitive measures are you envisaging? You keep saying that the EU will come up with a punitive retaliation but fail to identify what these could entail? I did this for a living for 3 years in the run up to Brexit and for a few months after the TCA was ratified by the UK government. The scope of retaliation is very, very narrow and the room for punitive measures that Ireland will agree to is extremely limited.
You're being naive, Max. The EU doesn't need to do anything very much. Just stop cooperating even more than is currently the case. We are so dependent on their goodwill in so many areas, from illegal migrants to food supplies to data protection to aviation to banking regulation, that they can afford to just sit back and wait for some sanity to leak back into the UK government.
All of that is in scope of the TCA and other agreements. They would need to suspend parts of the TCA in retaliation which just seems extremely unlikely so we come back to what is in scope and that's the NI protocol itself where there are few good options for them.
This is a political matter, not primarily a legal one. It's all about trust, or rather the near-total lack of it thanks to the ludicrous self-harm the UK government has been engaged in. We can't achieve good relations through legal routes, and we desperately need good relations. They don't. It's as simple as that, and has been all along.
But retaliatory measures would need to be legal and proportional. The TCA completely flummoxes the ability of the EU to retaliate in any meaningful sense as it is a separate deal (by their own insistence, no less) which means it is not within the scope of retaliation. So sure, maybe they can huff and puff a bit and call Boris a wanker and rage at Frost a bit more than they usually do and maybe beg for Olly Robbins to come back but ultimately the retaliation available to them is to put up a border in Ireland. On a scale of 1-10 how likely is that?
What retaliatory measures? They can just 'work to rule', in the old 1970s trade union style, and refuse to cooperate in all the large number of areas not covered by the TCA.
Any further collapse in goodwill will hurt us a hell of a lot more than it hurts them. It's already bad enough, for heaven's sake.
Not at all since this bothers them more than us.
If we invoke Article 16, have the TCA and they 'work to rule' and there are no checks whatsoever from GB to NI (because Article 16 has been invoked) then what cards have they got left?
We don't want checks from NI to GB or vice-versa and don't particularly want checks from Eire to NI or vice-versa either.
They don't want checks from NI to Eire or vice-versa but do want checks from GB to NI. In your proposed scenario they're getting absolutely nothing of what they want, and we're getting everything that we want, so how is that hurting us? Its giving us what we want free of charge.
They're powerless and impotent if we invoke Article 16 and they can't properly retaliate. Which is what Frost and Johnson rightly have recognised and why they're letting this play out.
Err, you seem to have forgotten that they supply 40% of our food, are the only customer for much of our fishing, seafood and agricultural sectors, and account for the bulk of our exports.
The idea of invoking Article 16 is for the birds. It's just about conceivable that Boris and Frost are stupid enough to do it, but it's not conceivable that it will work out well. Quite apart from anything else, what on earth are we bitching about? It was AT THE INSISTENCE OF BORIS that border was put down the Irish Sea. Invoking a legal process to complain that this wonderful oven-ready deal is working exactly as he intended it to and signed up to is beyond loopy. They are not going to change the rules of Single Market just because Lord Frost is even more unpleasant than usual, even if they could. With goodwill and trust, they could no doubt tweak it a bit at the edges, but that's the limit of it, and unfortunately, goodwill and trust have been trashed by the UK government.
It's worth being clear here.
We agreed a border in the Irish Sea. That border has been implemented as agreed We wish to use Article 16 because it's been implemented and while it's working as it was supposed to we don't like the result.,
"If the application of this Protocol leads to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade, the Union or the United Kingdom may unilaterally take appropriate safeguard measures."
If diversion of trade was inevitable, why did the EU agree to that clause?
I'm not sure what the issue is. I would have thought a clause like that would be normal in most agreements. Key words are economic, societal or environment, not Political face saving by an incompetent bunch of fools like Johnson and Frost who couldn't find their own arses without a map.
Interesting comparison of the AZN and J&J vaccines.
Comparative analysis of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and Ad26.COV2.S SARS-CoV-2 vector vaccines https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-736157/v1 Vector-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccines have been associated with vaccine-induced thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (VITT/TTS), but the causative factors are still unresolved. We comprehensively analyzed ChAdOx1 nCov-19 (AstraZeneca) and Ad26.COV2.S (Johnson & Johnson). ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 contains significant amounts of host cell protein impurities, including functionally active proteasomes, and adenoviral proteins. In Ad26.COV2.S much less (sic) impurities were found. Platelet-factor 4 (PF4) formed complexes with ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 constituents, but not with purified virions from ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 or with Ad26.COV2.S. Vascular hyperpermeability was induced by ChAdOx nCoV-19 but not by Ad26.COV2.S.These differences in impurities together with EDTA-induced capillary leakage might contribute to the higher incidence rate of VITT associated with ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 compared to Ad26.COV2.S.
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
It's a view.
It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else. I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
On the flip side you also have to conclude that scientists have political agendas as well, look at the whole of independent SAGE. I do wonder how they have taken the body blow of falling cases, they must be tearing up over it and the end of lockdown misery. Commie Michie can see permanent state control slipping away from her already.
Yep. The Great Barrington Declaration was strongly supported by the Koch Institute, for a start.
Hang on. I was assured wokeness had finished off our Olympic chances. We have 13 medals in the first four days. Previous record was 6.
Might have to file that in the same bin as 'Marxist footballers taking the knee will see England lose every match in the Euros.'
I for one am bored with moaning reactionaries dissing our proud and impressive sportsmen and women, just because they might be "Woke" - ie admirably sensitive to issues of diviersity.
Britain's economy will grow faster than any major economy in Europe as it rebounds from the #COVID19 recession and emerges from lockdown, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted
Philip is so deep into the cult that he won't acknowledge that the deal his leader personally negotiated and signed has been a disaster for NI. That's when you know you're deep down the rabbit hole, I found myself there with Corbyn a few times
Maybe you've developed a bit since then but your posts on here show how far you still have to go.
You're young, and your posts make you out to be obviously young like an excited twelve-year old coming out of the cinema having seen the latest Marvel film; "Kewl!"
Be a bit more measured and sober, and you'll be worth reading.
What a patronising post. Embarrassing.
Not as toe-curling as this one....
"If you had worked for as many years in Europe with Europeans with all their quirks you too might feel as I do. That we are seprating ourselves from the most culturally exciting varied and beautiful continent in the world for no reason other than some very small minded people don't like foreigners makes me want to vomit.
If you'll forgive the name-drop i remember sitting down to lunch in an outdoor restaurant near Cannes when Boris Becker said 'If you could replace all the French with English this would be the nicest country in the world'."
It's encouraging that my archivist is concentrating but careless that they should conflate two posts written months apart.
Instead of making offenders wear high viz jackets in chain gangs, how about helping them get a real job instead? In my shops we employ lots of ex offenders and they wear a shirt and tie. Same people, different approach, a much better outcome.
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
Other countries with high levels of vaccination are having to reverse easing of restrictions based on vaccination, and strengthen mitigations in schools to control spread. Is the UK learning from global experience, or are we planning to move in the opp. direction on Aug 16th?
Instead of making offenders wear high viz jackets in chain gangs, how about helping them get a real job instead? In my shops we employ lots of ex offenders and they wear a shirt and tie. Same people, different approach, a much better outcome.
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
It's a view.
It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else. I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
We where at a form of Hear Imunity last April, given:
lower R0 number for classic Covid compared to Alfa or Delta The then improving weather Voluntary actions being taken, buy almost everybody.
Yes if we did not have the restrictions, then cases would have fallen slowed than happened in our time line, but the NHS would not have been overrun, most of the extra infections (not all) would have been in the young, fit and heathy, who are most likely to have taken risks. and as a result the subsequent waves would not have been as big so would not have been such presser to lockdown a second and third time.
Sweden is not the perfect comparison, but its the best we have, lots of deaths in the first wave, (compared to other Europe nations) but much more, mild by comparison further waves. Sweden has only had one death since the 17th of July.
Other countries with high levels of vaccination are having to reverse easing of restrictions based on vaccination, and strengthen mitigations in schools to control spread. Is the UK learning from global experience, or are we planning to move in the opp. direction on Aug 16th?
I'm in a WhatsApp group with a few people, one person is saying the government are publishing bullshit figures, that cases and deaths are much higher.
It is all based on the fact that over the last 5 days they have not updated them due to "technical reasons". However hospitalisations were up to almost a 1000 from 700 in a week before the sudden technical issues.
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
It's a view.
It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else. I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
Weren't they were the ones also banging on about false positives last year?
All those false positives leading to all those deaths.
The false positive cases turned into false positive hospitalisations and false positive deaths.
Of course we now know that more than 50% of those hospitalisations that you quote were effectively bogus. The patients concerned contracted covid in hospitals that were rampant with it, and not in the community.
Cases down c.50% on last week where there were 46.5k.
The speed at which cases are collapsing continues to astonish.
6 weeks ago I was called a retard on this site by OGH's son for suggesting that the way cases collapsed in India might just be the way that Delta behaves, as social distancing is not really possible in India.
Now look what has happened here and in Scotland and in Holland and in Jakarta.
I called you a retard, because you imbued the virus with mysterious powers.
I would point out that I also forecast a rapid drop off in cases; I just did it based on human behaviour not on woohooo woohooo.
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
It's a view.
It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else. I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
Weren't they were the ones also banging on about false positives last year?
All those false positives leading to all those deaths.
The false positive cases turned into false positive hospitalisations and false positive deaths.
Of course we now know that more than 50% of those hospitalisations that you quote were effectively bogus. The patients concerned contracted covid in hospitals that were rampant with it, and not in the community.
There were some studies done, a while back, for buses and trains where pantographs were used to charge batteries for *part* of the route.
The train stuff was especially interesting, since it had the potential to massively drop the cost of electrification.
Given it cost the thick end of £200 million to electrify the 16 mile Chase Line,* that would definitely be desirable.
*Albeit I should note substantial other works were carried out at the same time and I don’t know what proportion was for relaying and realigning tracks as against the electrification itself.
At what cost point will using rockets bigger than Saturn 5s to do point-to-point travel be cheaper than railways, in the UK?
Other countries with high levels of vaccination are having to reverse easing of restrictions based on vaccination, and strengthen mitigations in schools to control spread. Is the UK learning from global experience, or are we planning to move in the opp. direction on Aug 16th?
I'm in a WhatsApp group with a few people, one person is saying the government are publishing bullshit figures, that cases and deaths are much higher.
It is all based on the fact that over the last 5 days they have not updated them due to "technical reasons". However hospitalisations were up to almost a 1000 from 700 in a week before the sudden technical issues.
I expect ISAGE to come up with similar bullshit.
The gardens at Chequers must be overflowing with hidden bodies by now.
Other countries with high levels of vaccination are having to reverse easing of restrictions based on vaccination, and strengthen mitigations in schools to control spread. Is the UK learning from global experience, or are we planning to move in the opp. direction on Aug 16th?
Lol what a complete wanker. Independent SAGE is just a joke. All of these Zero COVID scientists are given far too much prominence by the idiot media like Peston who just want an anti-government story to get twitter likes.
But remember according to Prof Peston the government are actually hiding all the reinfections cases, so perhaps not really cases falling, it is Boris is burying the truth again (like the bodies in the gardens at Chequers) ;-)
Tut tut.....
Boris is hiding the dead (and the kidnapped not-dead) in the basement of Pizza Express on Dean Street, in Soho...
Because I always hope for the best and prepare for the worst, what do we think happens when schools reopen and universities start having students back on campus?
Britain's economy will grow faster than any major economy in Europe as it rebounds from the #COVID19 recession and emerges from lockdown, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?
It's a view.
It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else. I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
Weren't they were the ones also banging on about false positives last year?
All those false positives leading to all those deaths.
The false positive cases turned into false positive hospitalisations and false positive deaths.
Of course we now know that more than 50% of those hospitalisations that you quote were effectively bogus. The patients concerned contracted covid in hospitals that were rampant with it, and not in the community.
You really don't understand what you've read.
Well it is certainly true for the latest wave. I don;t know about the earlier waves
My Official Prediction for Peak Cases was tomorrow and 87,000
It looks - God willing - that I am going to be gloriously, spectacularly wrong. Same goes for Neil Ferguson, et al
Did ANY of the experts predict this startling fall? I know a couple of people on here did, and Kudos to them
The peak number of cases was 17th July (54,674).
On 12th July I predicted that the peak would be within a week.
Impressive! Bravo
I suspect Robert Smithson's was the most accurate prediction, however (if it turns out he is right). He called the peak almost perfectly, out by just one day I believe?
By reported date yes. By specimen date I think he was bang on but would have to check.
Because I always hope for the best and prepare for the worst, what do we think happens when schools reopen and universities start having students back on campus?
Cases to rise a lot?
That's my uneducated guess. And it will be heading into autumn/winter as well...
Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland. ... Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19). ... In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.
Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.
--AS
The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:
"I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."
The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
gives more reportage on why that approach doesn't work, it would seem.[edit: on the same study as cited].
Except id did work in Sweden and some US sates.
The highly motivated reasoning is all on the side of those who are now trying to defend such a terrible if widely adopted lockdown stratagem.
The Swedes don't think it worked.
I have not seen opinion poles, you may be right. however Sweden has not had nearly as much debt piled on them and there kids have not lost a years education, this might not affect polling short term but it will benefit them greatly going forward. its also posible that if some EU nations start imposine new restictions now becase of the delta wave, they will be glad thats not happening to them.
but the 'right' policy's are not always popular policy's.
Because I always hope for the best and prepare for the worst, what do we think happens when schools reopen and universities start having students back on campus?
Cases to rise a lot?
It will depend to a great degree on how many have already been infected and how low cases are in general.
My guess is we will see a rise but not a skyrocketing in the way we did last year.
Again, that is in itself not serious as long as hospitalisations don’t rise.
Instead of making offenders wear high viz jackets in chain gangs, how about helping them get a real job instead? In my shops we employ lots of ex offenders and they wear a shirt and tie. Same people, different approach, a much better outcome.
The scope is limited to NI, what punitive measures are you envisaging? You keep saying that the EU will come up with a punitive retaliation but fail to identify what these could entail? I did this for a living for 3 years in the run up to Brexit and for a few months after the TCA was ratified by the UK government. The scope of retaliation is very, very narrow and the room for punitive measures that Ireland will agree to is extremely limited.
You're being naive, Max. The EU doesn't need to do anything very much. Just stop cooperating even more than is currently the case. We are so dependent on their goodwill in so many areas, from illegal migrants to food supplies to data protection to aviation to banking regulation, that they can afford to just sit back and wait for some sanity to leak back into the UK government.
All of that is in scope of the TCA and other agreements. They would need to suspend parts of the TCA in retaliation which just seems extremely unlikely so we come back to what is in scope and that's the NI protocol itself where there are few good options for them.
This is a political matter, not primarily a legal one. It's all about trust, or rather the near-total lack of it thanks to the ludicrous self-harm the UK government has been engaged in. We can't achieve good relations through legal routes, and we desperately need good relations. They don't. It's as simple as that, and has been all along.
But retaliatory measures would need to be legal and proportional. The TCA completely flummoxes the ability of the EU to retaliate in any meaningful sense as it is a separate deal (by their own insistence, no less) which means it is not within the scope of retaliation. So sure, maybe they can huff and puff a bit and call Boris a wanker and rage at Frost a bit more than they usually do and maybe beg for Olly Robbins to come back but ultimately the retaliation available to them is to put up a border in Ireland. On a scale of 1-10 how likely is that?
What retaliatory measures? They can just 'work to rule', in the old 1970s trade union style, and refuse to cooperate in all the large number of areas not covered by the TCA.
Any further collapse in goodwill will hurt us a hell of a lot more than it hurts them. It's already bad enough, for heaven's sake.
Not at all since this bothers them more than us.
If we invoke Article 16, have the TCA and they 'work to rule' and there are no checks whatsoever from GB to NI (because Article 16 has been invoked) then what cards have they got left?
We don't want checks from NI to GB or vice-versa and don't particularly want checks from Eire to NI or vice-versa either.
They don't want checks from NI to Eire or vice-versa but do want checks from GB to NI. In your proposed scenario they're getting absolutely nothing of what they want, and we're getting everything that we want, so how is that hurting us? Its giving us what we want free of charge.
They're powerless and impotent if we invoke Article 16 and they can't properly retaliate. Which is what Frost and Johnson rightly have recognised and why they're letting this play out.
Err, you seem to have forgotten that they supply 40% of our food, are the only customer for much of our fishing, seafood and agricultural sectors, and account for the bulk of our exports.
The idea of invoking Article 16 is for the birds. It's just about conceivable that Boris and Frost are stupid enough to do it, but it's not conceivable that it will work out well. Quite apart from anything else, what on earth are we bitching about? It was AT THE INSISTENCE OF BORIS that border was put down the Irish Sea. Invoking a legal process to complain that this wonderful oven-ready deal is working exactly as he intended it to and signed up to is beyond loopy. They are not going to change the rules of Single Market just because Lord Frost is even more unpleasant than usual, even if they could. With goodwill and trust, they could no doubt tweak it a bit at the edges, but that's the limit of it, and unfortunately, goodwill and trust have been trashed by the UK government.
It's worth being clear here.
We agreed a border in the Irish Sea. That border has been implemented as agreed We wish to use Article 16 because it's been implemented and while it's working as it was supposed to we don't like the result.,
"If the application of this Protocol leads to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade, the Union or the United Kingdom may unilaterally take appropriate safeguard measures."
If diversion of trade was inevitable, why did the EU agree to that clause?
I'm not sure what the issue is. I would have thought a clause like that would be normal in most agreements. Key words are economic, societal or environment, not Political face saving by an incompetent bunch of fools like Johnson and Frost who couldn't find their own arses without a map.
"Diversion of trade" is listed separately as a justification for unilateral action. It's there in black and white.
Other countries with high levels of vaccination are having to reverse easing of restrictions based on vaccination, and strengthen mitigations in schools to control spread. Is the UK learning from global experience, or are we planning to move in the opp. direction on Aug 16th?
Lol what a complete wanker. Independent SAGE is just a joke. All of these Zero COVID scientists are given far too much prominence by the idiot media like Peston who just want an anti-government story to get twitter likes.
Its funny, but Any criticism of any scientist whatever would invite a climb on from any number of posters on here only three months ago.
The scope is limited to NI, what punitive measures are you envisaging? You keep saying that the EU will come up with a punitive retaliation but fail to identify what these could entail? I did this for a living for 3 years in the run up to Brexit and for a few months after the TCA was ratified by the UK government. The scope of retaliation is very, very narrow and the room for punitive measures that Ireland will agree to is extremely limited.
You're being naive, Max. The EU doesn't need to do anything very much. Just stop cooperating even more than is currently the case. We are so dependent on their goodwill in so many areas, from illegal migrants to food supplies to data protection to aviation to banking regulation, that they can afford to just sit back and wait for some sanity to leak back into the UK government.
All of that is in scope of the TCA and other agreements. They would need to suspend parts of the TCA in retaliation which just seems extremely unlikely so we come back to what is in scope and that's the NI protocol itself where there are few good options for them.
This is a political matter, not primarily a legal one. It's all about trust, or rather the near-total lack of it thanks to the ludicrous self-harm the UK government has been engaged in. We can't achieve good relations through legal routes, and we desperately need good relations. They don't. It's as simple as that, and has been all along.
But retaliatory measures would need to be legal and proportional. The TCA completely flummoxes the ability of the EU to retaliate in any meaningful sense as it is a separate deal (by their own insistence, no less) which means it is not within the scope of retaliation. So sure, maybe they can huff and puff a bit and call Boris a wanker and rage at Frost a bit more than they usually do and maybe beg for Olly Robbins to come back but ultimately the retaliation available to them is to put up a border in Ireland. On a scale of 1-10 how likely is that?
What retaliatory measures? They can just 'work to rule', in the old 1970s trade union style, and refuse to cooperate in all the large number of areas not covered by the TCA.
Any further collapse in goodwill will hurt us a hell of a lot more than it hurts them. It's already bad enough, for heaven's sake.
Not at all since this bothers them more than us.
If we invoke Article 16, have the TCA and they 'work to rule' and there are no checks whatsoever from GB to NI (because Article 16 has been invoked) then what cards have they got left?
We don't want checks from NI to GB or vice-versa and don't particularly want checks from Eire to NI or vice-versa either.
They don't want checks from NI to Eire or vice-versa but do want checks from GB to NI. In your proposed scenario they're getting absolutely nothing of what they want, and we're getting everything that we want, so how is that hurting us? Its giving us what we want free of charge.
They're powerless and impotent if we invoke Article 16 and they can't properly retaliate. Which is what Frost and Johnson rightly have recognised and why they're letting this play out.
Err, you seem to have forgotten that they supply 40% of our food, are the only customer for much of our fishing, seafood and agricultural sectors, and account for the bulk of our exports.
The idea of invoking Article 16 is for the birds. It's just about conceivable that Boris and Frost are stupid enough to do it, but it's not conceivable that it will work out well. Quite apart from anything else, what on earth are we bitching about? It was AT THE INSISTENCE OF BORIS that border was put down the Irish Sea. Invoking a legal process to complain that this wonderful oven-ready deal is working exactly as he intended it to and signed up to is beyond loopy. They are not going to change the rules of Single Market just because Lord Frost is even more unpleasant than usual, even if they could. With goodwill and trust, they could no doubt tweak it a bit at the edges, but that's the limit of it, and unfortunately, goodwill and trust have been trashed by the UK government.
It's worth being clear here.
We agreed a border in the Irish Sea. That border has been implemented as agreed We wish to use Article 16 because it's been implemented and while it's working as it was supposed to we don't like the result.,
"If the application of this Protocol leads to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade, the Union or the United Kingdom may unilaterally take appropriate safeguard measures."
If diversion of trade was inevitable, why did the EU agree to that clause?
I'm not sure what the issue is. I would have thought a clause like that would be normal in most agreements. Key words are economic, societal or environment, not Political face saving by an incompetent bunch of fools like Johnson and Frost who couldn't find their own arses without a map.
To switch it around, IF we have seen the peak already (touch wood, Deus Vult, Inshallah etc) then who on PB got it most wrong?
I seem to recall Londonpubman predicted 300,000 a day. But he might have been commenting from the pub
I confess I said 101k on August 2nd. Thankfully I was very wrong. In my defence I know nowt about this whatsoever. And now everyone else is fully aware of the fact too.
The number of new doses administered yesterday is 236,261 England administered 198K doses compared to 144K last week (FD: 59K, SD: 138K).
I commented earlier today that it seemed the Vaccport plan seems to have had an impact of vaccinations.
We really need to be doing triple those first dose numbers to make a dent in the 4m under 40s that can be easily pushed into getting a vaccine.
I'm not sure what you mean by easily pused in to it?
If you mean make laws and rules deliberately constraining so that there life is meanifuly worsens if they do not do as you wish, that I flat out object to that.
If you mean, find ways to make it easy for them to get a jab, and take time to enplane the benefits as well as the risks then sure.
I think its silly that we are talking about limiting the freedom of an 18 and a half year old if they do not take the jab, but not letting a 17 and a half year old from taking it no mater how much they what it. but the signal that send out is not going to encourage 18 Year olds, there has to be an age group where the vaccine risk and benefits are similar, who get to chose with out being judged, I'm not a medicine expert, I think that's probably 16-17 year olds, but don't know that. but to say its unsafe for somebody even slightly younger than you, but you must take it will not work IMHO.
I am pro vaccine and when I have talked to people not taking it I do try to explain and encourage taking vaccine. but evidence suggest to me, that a large proportion, probably over half and possibly a lot over half have had the viruses already which gives them a lot of protection. we are already passed heard immunity and will be well passed it by the time we give out another 8 million second doses. Why the the determination to pick a fight, lets just be glad cases are falling.
Great post.
Gove said it's "selfish" not to have the jab. But it is by no means certain that it is selfish. If you are asymptomatic then your viral load will be lower. Plus a huge proportion of those you might give it to will have been jabbed.
So what about those who can't be jabbed? The clinically extremely vulnerable. Well it is difficult for them but to inflict such extraordinary restrictions on liberty for those people? I don't see how it's justified.
Thanks I don't think anybody has sead that about one of my posts.
I have a friend at work who has 2 kids, one of which is immunocompromised, cant have a vaccine but would get very ill if she cough it, her brother was not allowed the jab. its good that the rules are now changing, he wants the jab because he is old enough to understand that he does not what to be the reason she gets sick again. The rules are changing to allow him to do that, but this should have been done much earlier.
I'm only half joking with with this suggestion, we ask the immunocompromised to hide for just a couple of more weeks, and then could allocate a few nightclubs, just for the voluntary unvaccinated, possibly do 0% tax on the drinks to encourage them to go, and also let in a few people who have tested positive in the last few days go in. at the end they will all have it, based on there ages most will be fine, and at the end antibodies just like the vaccinated. based on the numbers it looks to me as if being infected might achaly give better protection than vaccination.
To mad to work? sadly probably but would be a interesting experiment.
I think everything is in the hat at this point in strategies to encourage people.
But I do maintain peoples' right not to have the jab and not to be barred from society as a result.
Other countries with high levels of vaccination are having to reverse easing of restrictions based on vaccination, and strengthen mitigations in schools to control spread. Is the UK learning from global experience, or are we planning to move in the opp. direction on Aug 16th?
Lol what a complete wanker. Independent SAGE is just a joke. All of these Zero COVID scientists are given far too much prominence by the idiot media like Peston who just want an anti-government story to get twitter likes.
Its funny, but Any criticism of any scientist whatever would invite a climb on from any number of posters on here only three months ago.
Yes, because PBers have always been complimentary about that prize goof Sikora and others.
Still I remember your posts about how Whitty and Vallance wouldn't allow us to open pubs and restaurants.
Because I always hope for the best and prepare for the worst, what do we think happens when schools reopen and universities start having students back on campus?
Cases to rise a lot?
And cases lead to hospitalisations right?
Except when you are admitted for something else but catch covid in hospital, but are still a covid admission. IE a bogus covid admission.
So you're saying that companies in the EU will stop exporting to the UK or that UK companies will stop purchasing from them and vice versa? Again, the rules surrounding importation of agricultural and food products is very tightly defined within the TCA. There is little recourse for them beyond the existing border pedantry they have already implemented.
Everything else you've written is just a load of angry and pointless words, Richard. I think you need to get some perspective here. What you want to happen (Boris to be punished by the EU) vs the reality of what is within the realms of possibility (very little) are two very different things.
Our relationship with the EU is defined by very tight legal agreements, goodwill is not a factor and the sooner you come to terms with that the better off you'll be. The same is true for the EU and every country that isn't in the EU. Goodwill is a worthless commodity.
Don't be silly, goodwill is crucial. What on earth do you think would happen if they insisted on full customs checks rather than waving through most loads as they currently do? What about things like cooperation on illegal migration?
They already do that and what cooperation on illegal immigration? Haven't we just had a month of remainer sneering about how the EU aren't helping because they no longer have to?!
Recognise the situation for what it is and the EU for what it is, not what you'd like it to be.
It's not me that doesn't recognise what the EU is. It's the Brexiteers who totally fail to understand it. It's not some hostile state plotting against us, but it's a legalistic construct which allows 26 countries to work together in an unprecedented way precisely because it is based on enforceable rules. That's why they are not going to change the rules to suit us; not only do they not want to, they have no easy mechanism to do so. If the rules say packs of sausages can't enter the Single Market from third countries, that's pretty much the end of the matter, no matter how much Lord Frost shouts and insults them. We knew that all along. (Well, Boris probably didn't, but he should have done.)
This post both gets it and doesn't get it.
Brexiteers know that the EU is not a state, but that over years has had ever increasing ambitions that have a state like look, of which the Euro is only the most obvious.
Because it is a legalistic construct (like states are) the states forming it look increasingly less like states. Unlike Remainers, Brexiteers think both these things are sub optimal.
What the post says about the inflexibility about sausages says it all: Not only are we, the EU, inflexible; other organisations, including states, can't change it and while we negotiate as the EU, heaven forbid that any outside body should do the same to us. Bending other people's red lines is fine but not ours.
Boris is taking this on, and rightly so.
There is no space in EU thinking for the idea that a good settlement in the island of Ireland may be more important than the import of small quantities of high quality, equivalent standard sausages from GB. You could not make this stuff up.
Framed in those terms Boris will continue to have good levels of support.
Britain's economy will grow faster than any major economy in Europe as it rebounds from the #COVID19 recession and emerges from lockdown, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted
Well that's good, it may not tern out like that, but is the prediction not based on the UK having the most severe restrictions of any where in Europe for the first 5 months of the year, meaning that the change will be biggest?
Comments
I feel sorry for people all the time. It just doesn't usually make me want to break laws.
Do you routinely shoplift food and other essentials out of supermarkets every time you see a homeless person? If not, why not?
The CDC (And our MHRA) have looked into this and concluded that age is somewhere below 12. I've read the JCVI report and they're not analysing things rationally - of course that the jab is not allowed (In the UK) for their 17 yr old friends may put some 18 yr olds off.
I was assured wokeness had finished off our Olympic chances.
We have 13 medals in the first four days. Previous record was 6.
It's a view.
The best guesses are that people underestimated the extent to which schools and the very special event of England doing well in a major football tournament would increase transmission. Probably we are also overestimating the importance of formal restrictions, as opposed to collective behaviour which is guided more by perceived risk than formal rules.
The implication of this is that vaccinating teenagers is more important than previously thought, encouraging outdoors events as an alternative to indoor events, and an emphasis on political leadership as opposed to mind-numbing legal detail on restrictions.
So, rather than vaxports for nightclubs, I would rather see government support for nightclubs to put on outdoor raves, while the weather allows.
I refuse to recognise the Russians considered those dope cheats are supposed to be banned.
From what I've been hearing about schools, the sixth formers were getting hit very hard with COVID....
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/27/uk-government-backs-scheme-for-motorway-cables-to-power-lorries
If diversion of trade was inevitable, why did the EU agree to that clause?
The train stuff was especially interesting, since it had the potential to massively drop the cost of electrification.
Certain people here want to make out that it is an automatic certainty that the Protocol leads to serious economic or societal difficulties and diversion of trade, and that it is liable to persist - but that invoking that clause is out of the question.
Strange that.
See
For lorry's surely the solution is something similar to JCB's hydrogen engine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19Q7nAYjAJY has a great overview.
Quite possibly true. But there is a further possibility - this is what Delta DOES
As others have said, look at India, the Netherlands, and now Jakarta - the "arrowhead pattern". A scarily sharp ascent in cases, and then an equally brisk decline
Perhaps this is what happens with a super infectious variant, and the scientists just don't understand it yet. This is quite plausible - Coronavirus is a novel respiratory virus, and if Delta really has an R0 of 8-10 that makes it infectious to an almost unprecedented degree. So we should expect surprises, and maybe this is a good surprise. For once
My uneducated guess is 7,500 in about a week's time. After that, however (based on what's been observed in the early centres of Delta infection,) I think it could oscillate at around about that level for a while, rather than immediately dropping back off again.
*Albeit I should note substantial other works were carried out at the same time and I don’t know what proportion was for relaying and realigning tracks as against the electrification itself.
For God's sake, get behind Team GB. Enough
I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?
"We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
On 12th July I predicted that the peak would be within a week.
Please give to charity rather than sending flowers.
Also, Team GB much weaker in things like athletics, so despite a good start, struggle to get many medals on the track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0
Now *that* would get me interested in commuting, again.
I suspect Robert Smithson's was the most accurate prediction, however (if it turns out he is right). He called the peak almost perfectly, out by just one day I believe?
I don't think we have to reach for some sort of magical explanation.
I seem to recall Londonpubman predicted 300,000 a day. But he might have been commenting from the pub
I have a friend at work who has 2 kids, one of which is immunocompromised, cant have a vaccine but would get very ill if she cough it, her brother was not allowed the jab. its good that the rules are now changing, he wants the jab because he is old enough to understand that he does not what to be the reason she gets sick again. The rules are changing to allow him to do that, but this should have been done much earlier.
I'm only half joking with with this suggestion, we ask the immunocompromised to hide for just a couple of more weeks, and then could allocate a few nightclubs, just for the voluntary unvaccinated, possibly do 0% tax on the drinks to encourage them to go, and also let in a few people who have tested positive in the last few days go in. at the end they will all have it, based on there ages most will be fine, and at the end antibodies just like the vaccinated. based on the numbers it looks to me as if being infected might achaly give better protection than vaccination.
To mad to work? sadly probably but would be a interesting experiment.
So, when are indie SAGE going to announce their emergency summit over plummeting covid cases?
https://twitter.com/skepticalzebra/status/1420042557078319107?s=20
I suspect indie-Sage will go endemic soon, I still expect the odd spike, mostly in winter ...
https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1420054134267449345?s=20
All those false positives leading to all those deaths.
I think Independent SAGE got it most wrong, on this and everything really.
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/10/09/climate-science-denial-network-behind-great-barrington-declaration/
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/10/13/koch-funded-pr-agency-aided-great-barrington-declaration-sponsor/
Would take longer to get through spaceport security than it would to do the flight though. 😂
Instead of making offenders wear high viz jackets in chain gangs, how about helping them get a real job instead? In my shops we employ lots of ex offenders and they wear a shirt and tie. Same people, different approach, a much better outcome.
https://twitter.com/JamesTCobbler/status/1420050062319755270?s=20
They don't have to resign - Covid has confused everyone, since it began - but an admission of error would be nice? Also healthy. If you get something badly wrong it's always better to fess up , then you can draw a line and learn from mistakes
At some point we hit herd immunity, if not already. This peak, if not herd immunity, is likely due to a combination of changed behaviours due to the case numbers and schools closing etc (plus resumption of normal socialising after a footie-influenced peak).
We could, conceivably have a series of mini peaks if we have rising cases modifying behaviours a little, in a cycle. But I'm not sure that there will be a big enough peak to really scare people again. It will be interesting to see.
Stu Meech
@stumeech
·
26m
Replying to
@JamesTCobbler
Thing is James, you & your company have a heart. The current government do not.
In my defence I know nowt about this whatsoever.
And now everyone else is fully aware of the fact too.
Other countries with high levels of vaccination are having to reverse easing of restrictions based on vaccination, and strengthen mitigations in schools to control spread. Is the UK learning from global experience, or are we planning to move in the opp. direction on Aug 16th?
https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1420045685987098633?s=20
But we need to wait just a bit longer. We cannot be sure yet
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/18/covid-herd-immunity-funding-bad-science-anti-lockdown
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/health/coronavirus-great-barrington.html
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/10/21/commentary/world-commentary/herd-immunity-reinfection-great-barrington-declaration/
Comparative analysis of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and Ad26.COV2.S SARS-CoV-2 vector vaccines
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-736157/v1
Vector-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccines have been associated with vaccine-induced thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (VITT/TTS), but the causative factors are still unresolved. We comprehensively analyzed ChAdOx1 nCov-19 (AstraZeneca) and Ad26.COV2.S (Johnson & Johnson). ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 contains significant amounts of host cell protein impurities, including functionally active proteasomes, and adenoviral proteins. In Ad26.COV2.S much less (sic) impurities were found. Platelet-factor 4 (PF4) formed complexes with ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 constituents, but not with purified virions from ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 or with Ad26.COV2.S. Vascular hyperpermeability was induced by ChAdOx nCoV-19 but not by Ad26.COV2.S.These differences in impurities together with EDTA-induced capillary leakage might contribute to the higher incidence rate of VITT associated with ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 compared to Ad26.COV2.S.
Britain's economy will grow faster than any major economy in Europe as it rebounds from the #COVID19 recession and emerges from lockdown, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1420056822677917697?s=20
You're fired!!
lower R0 number for classic Covid compared to Alfa or Delta
The then improving weather
Voluntary actions being taken, buy almost everybody.
Yes if we did not have the restrictions, then cases would have fallen slowed than happened in our time line, but the NHS would not have been overrun, most of the extra infections (not all) would have been in the young, fit and heathy, who are most likely to have taken risks. and as a result the subsequent waves would not have been as big so would not have been such presser to lockdown a second and third time.
Sweden is not the perfect comparison, but its the best we have, lots of deaths in the first wave, (compared to other Europe nations) but much more, mild by comparison further waves. Sweden has only had one death since the 17th of July.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
It is all based on the fact that over the last 5 days they have not updated them due to "technical reasons". However hospitalisations were up to almost a 1000 from 700 in a week before the sudden technical issues.
I expect ISAGE to come up with similar bullshit.
I would point out that I also forecast a rapid drop off in cases; I just did it based on human behaviour not on woohooo woohooo.
But never.
Boris is hiding the dead (and the kidnapped not-dead) in the basement of Pizza Express on Dean Street, in Soho...
Cases to rise a lot?
but the 'right' policy's are not always popular policy's.
My guess is we will see a rise but not a skyrocketing in the way we did last year.
Again, that is in itself not serious as long as hospitalisations don’t rise.
But I do maintain peoples' right not to have the jab and not to be barred from society as a result.
Still I remember your posts about how Whitty and Vallance wouldn't allow us to open pubs and restaurants.
How'd that turn out?
Except when you are admitted for something else but catch covid in hospital, but are still a covid admission. IE a bogus covid admission.
Brexiteers know that the EU is not a state, but that over years has had ever increasing ambitions that have a state like look, of which the Euro is only the most obvious.
Because it is a legalistic construct (like states are) the states forming it look increasingly less like states. Unlike Remainers, Brexiteers think both these things are sub optimal.
What the post says about the inflexibility about sausages says it all: Not only are we, the EU, inflexible; other organisations, including states, can't change it and while we negotiate as the EU, heaven forbid that any outside body should do the same to us. Bending other people's red lines is fine but not ours.
Boris is taking this on, and rightly so.
There is no space in EU thinking for the idea that a good settlement in the island of Ireland may be more important than the import of small quantities of high quality, equivalent standard sausages from GB. You could not make this stuff up.
Framed in those terms Boris will continue to have good levels of support.