On the treaty breach thingammy, am I right in thinking that what the British government are currently legislating for is the *ability* to break the treaty? ie the UK has some responsibilities under the treaty they signed, the law currently requires the government to fulfill those responsibilities, but they're trying to make a new law that would allow them to breach them without breaking British law, but the breach doesn't happen until they do?
Or does the treaty require the legislation to be there, and changing the law breaks the treaty before they do anything to act on it?
According to RTÉ the EU Commission isn't even waiting until the Bill is passed into law to take legal action, on the basis that the publication of the Bill is a breach of the good faith provisions in Article 5 of the Bill.
Thanks, do you know what court can they go to and what remedy the court could impose if it agreed?
The Twitter thread @Richard_Nabavi linked to has the details, but briefly: ECJ, fines, suspension of provisions in the Treaty/any future trade agreement except for citizens rights.
Yes.
In practice presumably the UK would ignore any fines imposed by the ECJ, but what would then happen is that the EU would suspend cooperation with the UK until we'd complied. Eventually the UK would go back to the EU and ask to reopen talks, and you don't need to be an expert in international relations to guess what the first item on the agenda would be.
This is of course utter insanity: no even vaguely responsible government would want to engage in an acrimonious high-profile legal dispute with our closest allies and largest trading partner, which would do immense damage to our reputation and more importantly our economy. So it can't be ruled out.
"Allies"?
The EU isn't respecting our sovereignty in NI, our sovereignty in our waters and our sovereignty on state aid. That doesn't make them allies.
Once they're willing to compromise and be allies, then we can too.
Tiny movement towards Biden on the SI spreads this morning.
First glimpse of planet reality popping through the clouds?
Well maybe but there was a huge number of polls published yesterday and although it was the usual mixed bag you'd have to say the Biden camp would be the happier with them
You'd also just expect a favourite to become a stronger favourite gradually over time in an ongoing event.
If you accept the polls aren't totally wrong and Biden probably does have a narrow lead in key states, then you can still argue that Trump is a proven campaigner and has time to catch up. But every passing day is one less day to catch up... and we're now down to 53 days.
It's just the same as live odds on a football match. If a team is 1-0 up after five minutes in a roughly evenly matched contest, they might be favourites but not strong ones. If the scoreline is the same at 60 minutes, they will be stronger favourites. If it's the same at 89 minutes, they will be very strong favourites indeed.
Yes, of course. Biden can happily run the clock down. There are signs that he is doing just that. As he does so, you would expect his odds to shorten slowly.
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
I share your scepticism, though the government has already put in an order for vaccines from the Oxford/AstraZeneca trial. If this vaccine ever sees the light of day and turns out to have, as you suggest it might, a rare serious side effect then the government would be taking a heck of a risk in deploying it.
So I guess you are right - for multiple reasons a vaccine in the UK is likely to be further away than many people think. And in the meantime what economic and loss of liberty catastrophes we are being forced to endure!
Even with a safe enough and easily available virus, there will , of course, be a sizeable amount of people (25% + ?) who will either refuse it for various reasons or will just not bother.
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
On the treaty breach thingammy, am I right in thinking that what the British government are currently legislating for is the *ability* to break the treaty? ie the UK has some responsibilities under the treaty they signed, the law currently requires the government to fulfill those responsibilities, but they're trying to make a new law that would allow them to breach them without breaking British law, but the breach doesn't happen until they do?
Or does the treaty require the legislation to be there, and changing the law breaks the treaty before they do anything to act on it?
According to RTÉ the EU Commission isn't even waiting until the Bill is passed into law to take legal action, on the basis that the publication of the Bill is a breach of the good faith provisions in Article 5 of the Bill.
Thanks, do you know what court can they go to and what remedy the court could impose if it agreed?
The Twitter thread @Richard_Nabavi linked to has the details, but briefly: ECJ, fines, suspension of provisions in the Treaty/any future trade agreement except for citizens rights.
Yes.
In practice presumably the UK would ignore any fines imposed by the ECJ, but what would then happen is that the EU would suspend cooperation with the UK until we'd complied. Eventually the UK would go back to the EU and ask to reopen talks, and you don't need to be an expert in international relations to guess what the first item on the agenda would be.
This is of course utter insanity: no even vaguely responsible government would want to engage in an acrimonious high-profile legal dispute with our closest allies and largest trading partner, which would do immense damage to our reputation and more importantly our economy. So it can't be ruled out.
LOL.
But it can. Is my opinion. If nothing else Boris might look at what's happened economically over the past few months and while not needing to accept any of the doomsday scenarios, might realise that economic disruption is not just an abstract concept but something very real that money needs to be spent on and, more importantly still, elections fought and won and perhaps lost over.
There is a blithe assumption that a government that rejects international law, curtails Parliament's ability to scrutinise its actions, emascualtes the judiciary and sees lawyers and journalists as the enemy is somehow wedded to the idea of free and fair elections. Experience in other countries where this happens tends to show this is not actually the case.
Call me a reactionary old fool but I do not see this government messing with the elections.
Someone mentioned on here a week or so ago that the FTPA can be repealed and without replacement it could mean Johnson is PM until the 80 strong majority dwindles to a minority.
I thought that was an interesting analysis.
That's technically true as the FTPA repealed the Septennial Act 1715 which provided for seven year Parliaments (and was subsequently amended for five year Parliaments although amusingly the name wasn't changed).
But in practice it is a silly idea as a repeal couldn't pass the Commons and Lords without reinstating in some form the old provision (which was a very simple one-liner).
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
I share your scepticism, though the government has already put in an order for vaccines from the Oxford/AstraZeneca trial. If this vaccine ever sees the light of day and turns out to have, as you suggest it might, a rare serious side effect then the government would be taking a heck of a risk in deploying it.
So I guess you are right - for multiple reasons a vaccine in the UK is likely to be further away than many people think. And in the meantime what economic and loss of liberty catastrophes we are being forced to endure!
Even with a safe enough and easily available virus, there will , of course, be a sizeable amount of people (25% + ?) who will either refuse it for various reasons or will just not bother.
The funniest part is it'll be the loudest lockdown complainers that are unwilling to have the vaccine.
I'm signed up for P3 trials anyway (Doubt I'll meet criteria though)
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk of it myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
The free-rider problem. For this reason there will be a lot of people who say that they have had it but haven`t.
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
I share your scepticism, though the government has already put in an order for vaccines from the Oxford/AstraZeneca trial. If this vaccine ever sees the light of day and turns out to have, as you suggest it might, a rare serious side effect then the government would be taking a heck of a risk in deploying it.
So I guess you are right - for multiple reasons a vaccine in the UK is likely to be further away than many people think. And in the meantime what economic and loss of liberty catastrophes we are being forced to endure!
Even with a safe enough and easily available virus, there will , of course, be a sizeable amount of people (25% + ?) who will either refuse it for various reasons or will just not bother.
The funniest part is it'll be the loudest lockdown complainers that are unwilling to have the vaccine.
You`re right - I never thought of it like that. Many libertarians who are anti-lockdown also tend towards the anti-vax conspiracy theories.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Because you're not an utterly selfish sh1tbag? Well, maybe you are, but why assume everyone else is?
In 2016 SurveyUSA issued a Minnesota state poll done in late October with the headline numbers Clinton: 49% Trump: 39%
The actual result was Clinton: 46.5% Trump: 45%
Bad miss SurveyUSA, bad miss. Now, the main reason given for the Great Big Polling Miss in the Midwest (GBPMM) is that polls undersampled no-college education voters
SurveyUSA have just done a Minnesota poll giving headline figures of Biden 49% Trump 40%
That's basically the same as last time! Have SurveyUSA learnt their lesson? Are they heading for exactly the same GBPMM? Well... Survey USA are actually a decent pollster and release comprehensive cross tabs
In 2016 their education population was High School or less: 17% Some College: 38% 4 year College: 45%
In 2020 their education population is: High School or less: 33% Some College: 35% 4 year College: 32%
If you think the same kind of GBPMM is going to happen again then I think you are barking up the wrong tree,
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
I share your scepticism, though the government has already put in an order for vaccines from the Oxford/AstraZeneca trial. If this vaccine ever sees the light of day and turns out to have, as you suggest it might, a rare serious side effect then the government would be taking a heck of a risk in deploying it.
So I guess you are right - for multiple reasons a vaccine in the UK is likely to be further away than many people think. And in the meantime what economic and loss of liberty catastrophes we are being forced to endure!
Even with a safe enough and easily available virus, there will , of course, be a sizeable amount of people (25% + ?) who will either refuse it for various reasons or will just not bother.
The funniest part is it'll be the loudest lockdown complainers that are unwilling to have the vaccine.
I'm signed up for P3 trials anyway (Doubt I'll meet criteria though)
Trouble is this has moved way beyond funny. The conspiracy theories that are circulating widely at the moment are extremely worrying (by which I mean what they are claiming and the fact people are taking them seriously is very worrying rather than worrying because they might be true). Even ignoring the free rider effect other posters are discussing, I can see a huge backlash against any attempt to force people to have the vaccine.
"Britain has already breached the withdrawal agreement by tabling the internal market bill, prompting Brussels to plan legal action that could lead to financial and trade sanctions, according to a leaked EU legal opinion.
The European commission believes Boris Johnson’s government breached the terms of the treaty just by taking the first steps to pass a new law that would negate key parts of the agreement signed last year.
“Already by tabling the draft bill and pursuing the policy expressed therein, the UK government is in violation of the good faith obligation under the withdrawal agreement (article 5) because this bill jeopardises the attainment of the objectives of the agreement”, the commission lawyers write.
The commission has advised the 27 EU capitals that there are therefore grounds for the bloc to take “legal remedies” through the European court of Justice before the end of the transition period, leading to significant fines or potential trade sanctions."
On the treaty breach thingammy, am I right in thinking that what the British government are currently legislating for is the *ability* to break the treaty? ie the UK has some responsibilities under the treaty they signed, the law currently requires the government to fulfill those responsibilities, but they're trying to make a new law that would allow them to breach them without breaking British law, but the breach doesn't happen until they do?
Or does the treaty require the legislation to be there, and changing the law breaks the treaty before they do anything to act on it?
According to RTÉ the EU Commission isn't even waiting until the Bill is passed into law to take legal action, on the basis that the publication of the Bill is a breach of the good faith provisions in Article 5 of the Bill.
Thanks, do you know what court can they go to and what remedy the court could impose if it agreed?
The Twitter thread @Richard_Nabavi linked to has the details, but briefly: ECJ, fines, suspension of provisions in the Treaty/any future trade agreement except for citizens rights.
Yes.
In practice presumably the UK would ignore any fines imposed by the ECJ, but what would then happen is that the EU would suspend cooperation with the UK until we'd complied. Eventually the UK would go back to the EU and ask to reopen talks, and you don't need to be an expert in international relations to guess what the first item on the agenda would be.
This is of course utter insanity: no even vaguely responsible government would want to engage in an acrimonious high-profile legal dispute with our closest allies and largest trading partner, which would do immense damage to our reputation and more importantly our economy. So it can't be ruled out.
LOL.
But it can. Is my opinion. If nothing else Boris might look at what's happened economically over the past few months and while not needing to accept any of the doomsday scenarios, might realise that economic disruption is not just an abstract concept but something very real that money needs to be spent on and, more importantly still, elections fought and won and perhaps lost over.
There is a blithe assumption that a government that rejects international law, curtails Parliament's ability to scrutinise its actions, emascualtes the judiciary and sees lawyers and journalists as the enemy is somehow wedded to the idea of free and fair elections. Experience in other countries where this happens tends to show this is not actually the case.
Call me a reactionary old fool but I do not see this government messing with the elections.
Someone mentioned on here a week or so ago that the FTPA can be repealed and without replacement it could mean Johnson is PM until the 80 strong majority dwindles to a minority.
I thought that was an interesting analysis.
That's technically true as the FTPA repealed the Septennial Act 1715 which provided for seven year Parliaments (and was subsequently amended for five year Parliaments although amusingly the name wasn't changed).
But in practice it is a silly idea as a repeal couldn't pass the Commons and Lords without reinstating in some form the old provision (which was a very simple one-liner).
Boris could easily get it through the Commons. I know the Lords has the power to veto any bill that extends the lifetime of a parliament (Parliament Act regardless) but can it also veto the repeal of an act?
I wonder whether the gap in the political market is now for an anti Lockdown party. There doesn't seem to be any opposition to the governments policy from any of the opposition parties
Restrcting gatherings to 6 had ~ 75% approval iirc. Seeing as it's (Like Brexit) an issue that doesn't particularly have a right-left ideological bent I'd suggest an anti-lockdown party would have slim pickings ?
75% amongst the kind of people who answer opinion polls!
I think the new measures will cause a lot of anger. But I don't think there has been any politician in the UK that has argued against the governments measures, or the direction of travel, has there?
I think, at the moment, the new measures are still accepted as being temporary and so that reduces the potential for a political backlash.
This could be very different if we're still in the same limbo by next March, one year on from the first restrictions. Won't look so temporary then.
I think they'll still be in place come next June or so. By which point I reckon the vaccine will be starting to be rolled out. One big last hurrah for everyone this weekend.
Perhaps we will end up with an all-postal vote for the myriad 2021 elections. That could be interesting.
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
I share your scepticism, though the government has already put in an order for vaccines from the Oxford/AstraZeneca trial. If this vaccine ever sees the light of day and turns out to have, as you suggest it might, a rare serious side effect then the government would be taking a heck of a risk in deploying it.
So I guess you are right - for multiple reasons a vaccine in the UK is likely to be further away than many people think. And in the meantime what economic and loss of liberty catastrophes we are being forced to endure!
Even with a safe enough and easily available virus, there will , of course, be a sizeable amount of people (25% + ?) who will either refuse it for various reasons or will just not bother.
The funniest part is it'll be the loudest lockdown complainers that are unwilling to have the vaccine.
I'm signed up for P3 trials anyway (Doubt I'll meet criteria though)
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
I share your scepticism, though the government has already put in an order for vaccines from the Oxford/AstraZeneca trial. If this vaccine ever sees the light of day and turns out to have, as you suggest it might, a rare serious side effect then the government would be taking a heck of a risk in deploying it.
So I guess you are right - for multiple reasons a vaccine in the UK is likely to be further away than many people think. And in the meantime what economic and loss of liberty catastrophes we are being forced to endure!
Even with a safe enough and easily available virus, there will , of course, be a sizeable amount of people (25% + ?) who will either refuse it for various reasons or will just not bother.
The funniest part is it'll be the loudest lockdown complainers that are unwilling to have the vaccine.
I'm signed up for P3 trials anyway (Doubt I'll meet criteria though)
Trouble is this has moved way beyond funny. The conspiracy theories that are circulating widely at the moment are extremely worrying (by which I mean what they are claiming and the fact people are taking them seriously is very worrying rather than worrying because they might be true). Even ignoring the free rider effect other posters are discussing, I can see a huge backlash against any attempt to force people to have the vaccine.
I had a chat with a villager the other week who seemed bright enough but is convinced that any vaccine will have a chip in it!? implanted by Bill Gates. Seriously.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Because you're not an utterly selfish sh1tbag? Well, maybe you are, but why assume everyone else is?
Personally, I would take the vaccine (if it was shown to be effective), but experience suggests that many won't. Just look at what has happened with measles, and there's nothing like that degree of risk from MMR.
Surely any vaccine will be distributed first two vulnerable groups – the elderly, the obese, the infirm. Once it has circulated through that segment of the population, much of the remainder will have had it asymptomatically.
It is possible we get the stage where it's not necessary to vaccinate everyone, because herd immunity has been achieved via a combination of vaccination and asymptomatic transmission.
In 2016 SurveyUSA issued a Minnesota state poll done in late October with the headline numbers Clinton: 49% Trump: 39%
The actual result was Clinton: 46.5% Trump: 45%
Bad miss SurveyUSA, bad miss. Now, the main reason given for the Great Big Polling Miss in the Midwest (GBPMM) is that polls undersampled no-college education voters
SurveyUSA have just done a Minnesota poll giving headline figures of Biden 49% Trump 40%
That's basically the same as last time! Have SurveyUSA learnt their lesson? Are they heading for exactly the same GBPMM? Well... Survey USA are actually a decent pollster and release comprehensive cross tabs
In 2016 their education population was High School or less: 17% Some College: 38% 4 year College: 45%
In 2020 their education population is: High School or less: 33% Some College: 35% 4 year College: 32%
If think the same kind of GBPMM is going to happen again then I think you are barking up the wrong tree,
Biden definitely has more working class appeal whilst holding onto the previous Clinton vote. That's basically his coalition. Florida swinging the least Biden due to the large cuban-hispanic vote which isn't replicated anywhere else ? That's why I think NC might flip but not FL.
On the treaty breach thingammy, am I right in thinking that what the British government are currently legislating for is the *ability* to break the treaty? ie the UK has some responsibilities under the treaty they signed, the law currently requires the government to fulfill those responsibilities, but they're trying to make a new law that would allow them to breach them without breaking British law, but the breach doesn't happen until they do?
Or does the treaty require the legislation to be there, and changing the law breaks the treaty before they do anything to act on it?
According to RTÉ the EU Commission isn't even waiting until the Bill is passed into law to take legal action, on the basis that the publication of the Bill is a breach of the good faith provisions in Article 5 of the Bill.
Thanks, do you know what court can they go to and what remedy the court could impose if it agreed?
The Twitter thread @Richard_Nabavi linked to has the details, but briefly: ECJ, fines, suspension of provisions in the Treaty/any future trade agreement except for citizens rights.
Yes.
In practice presumably the UK would ignore any fines imposed by the ECJ, but what would then happen is that the EU would suspend cooperation with the UK until we'd complied. Eventually the UK would go back to the EU and ask to reopen talks, and you don't need to be an expert in international relations to guess what the first item on the agenda would be.
This is of course utter insanity: no even vaguely responsible government would want to engage in an acrimonious high-profile legal dispute with our closest allies and largest trading partner, which would do immense damage to our reputation and more importantly our economy. So it can't be ruled out.
So much for making Britain great again. We are going to be utterly diminished on the world stage
On the treaty breach thingammy, am I right in thinking that what the British government are currently legislating for is the *ability* to break the treaty? ie the UK has some responsibilities under the treaty they signed, the law currently requires the government to fulfill those responsibilities, but they're trying to make a new law that would allow them to breach them without breaking British law, but the breach doesn't happen until they do?
Or does the treaty require the legislation to be there, and changing the law breaks the treaty before they do anything to act on it?
According to RTÉ the EU Commission isn't even waiting until the Bill is passed into law to take legal action, on the basis that the publication of the Bill is a breach of the good faith provisions in Article 5 of the Bill.
Thanks, do you know what court can they go to and what remedy the court could impose if it agreed?
The Twitter thread @Richard_Nabavi linked to has the details, but briefly: ECJ, fines, suspension of provisions in the Treaty/any future trade agreement except for citizens rights.
Yes.
In practice presumably the UK would ignore any fines imposed by the ECJ, but what would then happen is that the EU would suspend cooperation with the UK until we'd complied. Eventually the UK would go back to the EU and ask to reopen talks, and you don't need to be an expert in international relations to guess what the first item on the agenda would be.
This is of course utter insanity: no even vaguely responsible government would want to engage in an acrimonious high-profile legal dispute with our closest allies and largest trading partner, which would do immense damage to our reputation and more importantly our economy. So it can't be ruled out.
So much for making Britain great again. We are going to be utterly diminished on the world stage
Funny looking back at that thread at the assumption that the "softest of soft Brexits" was now inevitable due to the election results and that a Hard Brexit was now "impossible".
On the treaty breach thingammy, am I right in thinking that what the British government are currently legislating for is the *ability* to break the treaty? ie the UK has some responsibilities under the treaty they signed, the law currently requires the government to fulfill those responsibilities, but they're trying to make a new law that would allow them to breach them without breaking British law, but the breach doesn't happen until they do?
Or does the treaty require the legislation to be there, and changing the law breaks the treaty before they do anything to act on it?
According to RTÉ the EU Commission isn't even waiting until the Bill is passed into law to take legal action, on the basis that the publication of the Bill is a breach of the good faith provisions in Article 5 of the Bill.
Thanks, do you know what court can they go to and what remedy the court could impose if it agreed?
The Twitter thread @Richard_Nabavi linked to has the details, but briefly: ECJ, fines, suspension of provisions in the Treaty/any future trade agreement except for citizens rights.
Yes.
In practice presumably the UK would ignore any fines imposed by the ECJ, but what would then happen is that the EU would suspend cooperation with the UK until we'd complied. Eventually the UK would go back to the EU and ask to reopen talks, and you don't need to be an expert in international relations to guess what the first item on the agenda would be.
This is of course utter insanity: no even vaguely responsible government would want to engage in an acrimonious high-profile legal dispute with our closest allies and largest trading partner, which would do immense damage to our reputation and more importantly our economy. So it can't be ruled out.
LOL.
But it can. Is my opinion. If nothing else Boris might look at what's happened economically over the past few months and while not needing to accept any of the doomsday scenarios, might realise that economic disruption is not just an abstract concept but something very real that money needs to be spent on and, more importantly still, elections fought and won and perhaps lost over.
There is a blithe assumption that a government that rejects international law, curtails Parliament's ability to scrutinise its actions, emascualtes the judiciary and sees lawyers and journalists as the enemy is somehow wedded to the idea of free and fair elections. Experience in other countries where this happens tends to show this is not actually the case.
Call me a reactionary old fool but I do not see this government messing with the elections.
Someone mentioned on here a week or so ago that the FTPA can be repealed and without replacement it could mean Johnson is PM until the 80 strong majority dwindles to a minority.
I thought that was an interesting analysis.
That's technically true as the FTPA repealed the Septennial Act 1715 which provided for seven year Parliaments (and was subsequently amended for five year Parliaments although amusingly the name wasn't changed).
But in practice it is a silly idea as a repeal couldn't pass the Commons and Lords without reinstating in some form the old provision (which was a very simple one-liner).
In that circumstance a Prime Minister would still only be able to call an election by passing a bill through Parliament, as Boris did last year. Repealing the FTPA does not restore the royal prerogative.
On the treaty breach thingammy, am I right in thinking that what the British government are currently legislating for is the *ability* to break the treaty? ie the UK has some responsibilities under the treaty they signed, the law currently requires the government to fulfill those responsibilities, but they're trying to make a new law that would allow them to breach them without breaking British law, but the breach doesn't happen until they do?
Or does the treaty require the legislation to be there, and changing the law breaks the treaty before they do anything to act on it?
According to RTÉ the EU Commission isn't even waiting until the Bill is passed into law to take legal action, on the basis that the publication of the Bill is a breach of the good faith provisions in Article 5 of the Bill.
Thanks, do you know what court can they go to and what remedy the court could impose if it agreed?
The Twitter thread @Richard_Nabavi linked to has the details, but briefly: ECJ, fines, suspension of provisions in the Treaty/any future trade agreement except for citizens rights.
Yes.
In practice presumably the UK would ignore any fines imposed by the ECJ, but what would then happen is that the EU would suspend cooperation with the UK until we'd complied. Eventually the UK would go back to the EU and ask to reopen talks, and you don't need to be an expert in international relations to guess what the first item on the agenda would be.
This is of course utter insanity: no even vaguely responsible government would want to engage in an acrimonious high-profile legal dispute with our closest allies and largest trading partner, which would do immense damage to our reputation and more importantly our economy. So it can't be ruled out.
LOL.
But it can. Is my opinion. If nothing else Boris might look at what's happened economically over the past few months and while not needing to accept any of the doomsday scenarios, might realise that economic disruption is not just an abstract concept but something very real that money needs to be spent on and, more importantly still, elections fought and won and perhaps lost over.
There is a blithe assumption that a government that rejects international law, curtails Parliament's ability to scrutinise its actions, emascualtes the judiciary and sees lawyers and journalists as the enemy is somehow wedded to the idea of free and fair elections. Experience in other countries where this happens tends to show this is not actually the case.
Call me a reactionary old fool but I do not see this government messing with the elections.
Someone mentioned on here a week or so ago that the FTPA can be repealed and without replacement it could mean Johnson is PM until the 80 strong majority dwindles to a minority.
I thought that was an interesting analysis.
That's technically true as the FTPA repealed the Septennial Act 1715 which provided for seven year Parliaments (and was subsequently amended for five year Parliaments although amusingly the name wasn't changed).
But in practice it is a silly idea as a repeal couldn't pass the Commons and Lords without reinstating in some form the old provision (which was a very simple one-liner).
I am not suggesting it will come to pass, but I could see this parliament rubber stamping Johnson's every whim, and isn't his plan to pack the HoL with acolytes?
Tiny movement towards Biden on the SI spreads this morning.
First glimpse of planet reality popping through the clouds?
Well maybe but there was a huge number of polls published yesterday and although it was the usual mixed bag you'd have to say the Biden camp would be the happier with them
You'd also just expect a favourite to become a stronger favourite gradually over time in an ongoing event.
If you accept the polls aren't totally wrong and Biden probably does have a narrow lead in key states, then you can still argue that Trump is a proven campaigner and has time to catch up. But every passing day is one less day to catch up... and we're now down to 53 days.
It's just the same as live odds on a football match. If a team is 1-0 up after five minutes in a roughly evenly matched contest, they might be favourites but not strong ones. If the scoreline is the same at 60 minutes, they will be stronger favourites. If it's the same at 89 minutes, they will be very strong favourites indeed.
Yes, of course. Biden can happily run the clock down. There are signs that he is doing just that. As he does so, you would expect his odds to shorten slowly.
If he loses, of course, he'll be slammed brutally for lack of ambition.
But this happens in sport too... teams that lose from a winning position are routinely slammed for falling back onto defence and sitting on the lead. Now it's true you can be too defensive, but I suspect the stats would bear out the view that being a bit boring and low risk when you have a narrow lead and 15 minutes to go is sensible overall. We remember the late winners but quickly forget the many more dull cases where teams were a goal up with 15 minutes to go, and closed it out uneventfully.
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
I think you have a point. However, for many people the risk to the individual from the virus is significant, especially if there is a second wave. There would also be the benefits after the vaccination of peace of mind about getting COVID, and of being able to get out more (assuming that there are no serious long-term side effects).
In 2016 SurveyUSA issued a Minnesota state poll done in late October with the headline numbers Clinton: 49% Trump: 39%
The actual result was Clinton: 46.5% Trump: 45%
Bad miss SurveyUSA, bad miss. Now, the main reason given for the Great Big Polling Miss in the Midwest (GBPMM) is that polls undersampled no-college education voters
SurveyUSA have just done a Minnesota poll giving headline figures of Biden 49% Trump 40%
That's basically the same as last time! Have SurveyUSA learnt their lesson? Are they heading for exactly the same GBPMM? Well... Survey USA are actually a decent pollster and release comprehensive cross tabs
In 2016 their education population was High School or less: 17% Some College: 38% 4 year College: 45%
In 2020 their education population is: High School or less: 33% Some College: 35% 4 year College: 32%
If you think the same kind of GBPMM is going to happen again then I think you are barking up the wrong tree,
Some college is still not no college though is it and it may well be that it is shy Trump's that are still the same problem, just not adding a few more voters to the sample who do not have a 4 year college degree. In 2012 for example Romney won only 35% of non high school graduates and 48% of High school graduates. In 2016 Trump by contrast won 51% of those with only High school education or less, a big shift.
Romney won 48% of those with some college, Trump 52%, not a major shift and Romney won 51% of college graduates, more than the 45% of graduates Trump won.
In that case Trafalgar group's sampling adjusting its headline voting intention by its subsequent question as to what their neighbours think they would do will still be most accurate in the MidWest.
Surely any vaccine will be distributed first two vulnerable groups – the elderly, the obese, the infirm. Once it has circulated through that segment of the population, much of the remainder will have had it asymptomatically.
It is possible we get the stage where it's not necessary to vaccinate everyone, because herd immunity has been achieved via a combination of vaccination and asymptomatic transmission.
Flu jab is BMI > 40, so I'll have to gain 7 stone if you're right.
Tiny movement towards Biden on the SI spreads this morning.
First glimpse of planet reality popping through the clouds?
Well maybe but there was a huge number of polls published yesterday and although it was the usual mixed bag you'd have to say the Biden camp would be the happier with them
You'd also just expect a favourite to become a stronger favourite gradually over time in an ongoing event.
If you accept the polls aren't totally wrong and Biden probably does have a narrow lead in key states, then you can still argue that Trump is a proven campaigner and has time to catch up. But every passing day is one less day to catch up... and we're now down to 53 days.
It's just the same as live odds on a football match. If a team is 1-0 up after five minutes in a roughly evenly matched contest, they might be favourites but not strong ones. If the scoreline is the same at 60 minutes, they will be stronger favourites. If it's the same at 89 minutes, they will be very strong favourites indeed.
Yes, of course. Biden can happily run the clock down. There are signs that he is doing just that. As he does so, you would expect his odds to shorten slowly.
If he loses, of course, he'll be slammed brutally for lack of ambition.
But this happens in sport too... teams that lose from a winning position are routinely slammed for falling back onto defence and sitting on the lead. Now it's true you can be too defensive, but I suspect the stats would bear out the view that being a bit boring and low risk when you have a narrow lead and 15 minutes to go is sensible overall. We remember the late winners but quickly forget the many more dull cases where teams were a goal up with 15 minutes to go, and closed it out uneventfully.
Chelsea famously won the Champions League by parking the bus. 🤷♂️
In 2016 SurveyUSA issued a Minnesota state poll done in late October with the headline numbers Clinton: 49% Trump: 39%
The actual result was Clinton: 46.5% Trump: 45%
Bad miss SurveyUSA, bad miss. Now, the main reason given for the Great Big Polling Miss in the Midwest (GBPMM) is that polls undersampled no-college education voters
SurveyUSA have just done a Minnesota poll giving headline figures of Biden 49% Trump 40%
That's basically the same as last time! Have SurveyUSA learnt their lesson? Are they heading for exactly the same GBPMM? Well... Survey USA are actually a decent pollster and release comprehensive cross tabs
In 2016 their education population was High School or less: 17% Some College: 38% 4 year College: 45%
In 2020 their education population is: High School or less: 33% Some College: 35% 4 year College: 32%
If you think the same kind of GBPMM is going to happen again then I think you are barking up the wrong tree,
Some college is still not no college though is it and it may well be that it is shy Trump's that are still the same problem, just not adding a few more voters to the sample who do not have a 4 year college degree.
In that case Trafalgar group's sampling adjusting its headline voting intention by its subsequent question as to what their neighbours think they would do will still be most accurate in the MidWest
You’re so desperate for Trafalgar to be right, aren’t you?
In 2016 SurveyUSA issued a Minnesota state poll done in late October with the headline numbers Clinton: 49% Trump: 39%
The actual result was Clinton: 46.5% Trump: 45%
Bad miss SurveyUSA, bad miss. Now, the main reason given for the Great Big Polling Miss in the Midwest (GBPMM) is that polls undersampled no-college education voters
SurveyUSA have just done a Minnesota poll giving headline figures of Biden 49% Trump 40%
That's basically the same as last time! Have SurveyUSA learnt their lesson? Are they heading for exactly the same GBPMM? Well... Survey USA are actually a decent pollster and release comprehensive cross tabs
In 2016 their education population was High School or less: 17% Some College: 38% 4 year College: 45%
In 2020 their education population is: High School or less: 33% Some College: 35% 4 year College: 32%
If you think the same kind of GBPMM is going to happen again then I think you are barking up the wrong tree,
Some college is still not no college though is it and it may well be that it is shy Trump's that are still the same problem, just not adding a few more voters to the sample who do not have a 4 year college degree.
In that case Trafalgar group's sampling adjusting its headline voting intention by its subsequent question as to what their neighbours think they would do will still be most accurate in the MidWest
You’re so desperate for Trafalgar to be right, aren’t you?
Not really, I would have voted for Hillary in 2016 as I would vote for Biden now, however my gut tells me Trump will narrowly win the EC again even if Biden wins the popular vote by 3-4%
In 2016 SurveyUSA issued a Minnesota state poll done in late October with the headline numbers Clinton: 49% Trump: 39%
The actual result was Clinton: 46.5% Trump: 45%
Bad miss SurveyUSA, bad miss. Now, the main reason given for the Great Big Polling Miss in the Midwest (GBPMM) is that polls undersampled no-college education voters
SurveyUSA have just done a Minnesota poll giving headline figures of Biden 49% Trump 40%
That's basically the same as last time! Have SurveyUSA learnt their lesson? Are they heading for exactly the same GBPMM? Well... Survey USA are actually a decent pollster and release comprehensive cross tabs
In 2016 their education population was High School or less: 17% Some College: 38% 4 year College: 45%
In 2020 their education population is: High School or less: 33% Some College: 35% 4 year College: 32%
If you think the same kind of GBPMM is going to happen again then I think you are barking up the wrong tree,
Some college is still not no college though is it and it may well be that it is shy Trump's that are still the same problem, just not adding a few more voters to the sample who do not have a 4 year college degree.
In that case Trafalgar group's sampling adjusting its headline voting intention by its subsequent question as to what their neighbours think they would do will still be most accurate in the MidWest
You’re so desperate for Trafalgar to be right, aren’t you?
Not really, I would have voted for Hillary in 2016 as I would vote for Biden now, however my gut tells me Trump will narrowly win the EC again even if Biden wins the popular vote by 3-4%
You are like. You’d love it if Trump won. It’s dripping from your every word.
In 2016 SurveyUSA issued a Minnesota state poll done in late October with the headline numbers Clinton: 49% Trump: 39%
The actual result was Clinton: 46.5% Trump: 45%
Bad miss SurveyUSA, bad miss. Now, the main reason given for the Great Big Polling Miss in the Midwest (GBPMM) is that polls undersampled no-college education voters
SurveyUSA have just done a Minnesota poll giving headline figures of Biden 49% Trump 40%
That's basically the same as last time! Have SurveyUSA learnt their lesson? Are they heading for exactly the same GBPMM? Well... Survey USA are actually a decent pollster and release comprehensive cross tabs
In 2016 their education population was High School or less: 17% Some College: 38% 4 year College: 45%
In 2020 their education population is: High School or less: 33% Some College: 35% 4 year College: 32%
If you think the same kind of GBPMM is going to happen again then I think you are barking up the wrong tree,
Some college is still not no college though is it and it may well be that it is shy Trump's that are still the same problem, just not adding a few more voters to the sample who do not have a 4 year college degree.
In that case Trafalgar group's sampling adjusting its headline voting intention by its subsequent question as to what their neighbours think they would do will still be most accurate in the MidWest
You’re so desperate for Trafalgar to be right, aren’t you?
Not really, I would have voted for Hillary in 2016 as I would vote for Biden now, however my gut tells me Trump will narrowly win the EC again even if Biden wins the popular vote by 3-4%
Internal market bill - I’m surprised more hasn’t been made of this, but in the discussion about the Govt overriding International law, it doesn’t seem to have been much commented that the bill gives ministers the powers to override NATIONAL law as well. The EU seem to have noticed.
In other words, as well as every thing else, it is a blatant power grab from Parliament to the Executive...
There’s no cut-through with the public with this stuff. As far as they are concerned Brexit is done. This is all bubble stuff.
I agree, but with one caveat. Quite often, stuff that initially seems quite esoteric and dry will have implications for stuff the public does care about, and so at some point there will suddenly be massive cut-through. One example is phone-hacking, which was an absolutely massive scandal but was a lonely crusade by the Guardian and Max Moseley until the Millie Dowler revelations when the whole thing exploded and brought down the NotW. In other words, sometimes the public doesn't realise something is important at first, but if it really is important they will realise eventually. Is this a likely example of that? I suspect it is, but as for what the trigger will be for the silent majority to get it, that I don't know.
Usually when it starts costing them money for sure, so not that far away.
In 2016 SurveyUSA issued a Minnesota state poll done in late October with the headline numbers Clinton: 49% Trump: 39%
The actual result was Clinton: 46.5% Trump: 45%
Bad miss SurveyUSA, bad miss. Now, the main reason given for the Great Big Polling Miss in the Midwest (GBPMM) is that polls undersampled no-college education voters
SurveyUSA have just done a Minnesota poll giving headline figures of Biden 49% Trump 40%
That's basically the same as last time! Have SurveyUSA learnt their lesson? Are they heading for exactly the same GBPMM? Well... Survey USA are actually a decent pollster and release comprehensive cross tabs
In 2016 their education population was High School or less: 17% Some College: 38% 4 year College: 45%
In 2020 their education population is: High School or less: 33% Some College: 35% 4 year College: 32%
If you think the same kind of GBPMM is going to happen again then I think you are barking up the wrong tree,
Some college is still not no college though is it and it may well be that it is shy Trump's that are still the same problem, just not adding a few more voters to the sample who do not have a 4 year college degree.
In that case Trafalgar group's sampling adjusting its headline voting intention by its subsequent question as to what their neighbours think they would do will still be most accurate in the MidWest
You’re so desperate for Trafalgar to be right, aren’t you?
Not really, I would have voted for Hillary in 2016 as I would vote for Biden now, however my gut tells me Trump will narrowly win the EC again even if Biden wins the popular vote by 3-4%
You are like. You’d love it if Trump won. It’s dripping from your every word.
No, I would vote for Biden for President but Republican for Congress if I were American.
I might slightly enjoy the fact I am one of the few on here forecasting Trump will be re elected though if proved right, as I was also one of the few on here predicting a clear Boris majority at a general election years before the event I am used to going against the PB herd
In 2016 SurveyUSA issued a Minnesota state poll done in late October with the headline numbers Clinton: 49% Trump: 39%
The actual result was Clinton: 46.5% Trump: 45%
Bad miss SurveyUSA, bad miss. Now, the main reason given for the Great Big Polling Miss in the Midwest (GBPMM) is that polls undersampled no-college education voters
SurveyUSA have just done a Minnesota poll giving headline figures of Biden 49% Trump 40%
That's basically the same as last time! Have SurveyUSA learnt their lesson? Are they heading for exactly the same GBPMM? Well... Survey USA are actually a decent pollster and release comprehensive cross tabs
In 2016 their education population was High School or less: 17% Some College: 38% 4 year College: 45%
In 2020 their education population is: High School or less: 33% Some College: 35% 4 year College: 32%
If you think the same kind of GBPMM is going to happen again then I think you are barking up the wrong tree,
Some college is still not no college though is it and it may well be that it is shy Trump's that are still the same problem, just not adding a few more voters to the sample who do not have a 4 year college degree.
In that case Trafalgar group's sampling adjusting its headline voting intention by its subsequent question as to what their neighbours think they would do will still be most accurate in the MidWest
You’re so desperate for Trafalgar to be right, aren’t you?
Not really, I would have voted for Hillary in 2016 as I would vote for Biden now, however my gut tells me Trump will narrowly win the EC again even if Biden wins the popular vote by 3-4%
You are like. You’d love it if Trump won. It’s dripping from your every word.
On the treaty breach thingammy, am I right in thinking that what the British government are currently legislating for is the *ability* to break the treaty? ie the UK has some responsibilities under the treaty they signed, the law currently requires the government to fulfill those responsibilities, but they're trying to make a new law that would allow them to breach them without breaking British law, but the breach doesn't happen until they do?
Or does the treaty require the legislation to be there, and changing the law breaks the treaty before they do anything to act on it?
According to RTÉ the EU Commission isn't even waiting until the Bill is passed into law to take legal action, on the basis that the publication of the Bill is a breach of the good faith provisions in Article 5 of the Bill.
Thanks, do you know what court can they go to and what remedy the court could impose if it agreed?
The Twitter thread @Richard_Nabavi linked to has the details, but briefly: ECJ, fines, suspension of provisions in the Treaty/any future trade agreement except for citizens rights.
Yes.
In practice presumably the UK would ignore any fines imposed by the ECJ, but what would then happen is that the EU would suspend cooperation with the UK until we'd complied. Eventually the UK would go back to the EU and ask to reopen talks, and you don't need to be an expert in international relations to guess what the first item on the agenda would be.
This is of course utter insanity: no even vaguely responsible government would want to engage in an acrimonious high-profile legal dispute with our closest allies and largest trading partner, which would do immense damage to our reputation and more importantly our economy. So it can't be ruled out.
LOL.
But it can. Is my opinion. If nothing else Boris might look at what's happened economically over the past few months and while not needing to accept any of the doomsday scenarios, might realise that economic disruption is not just an abstract concept but something very real that money needs to be spent on and, more importantly still, elections fought and won and perhaps lost over.
There is a blithe assumption that a government that rejects international law, curtails Parliament's ability to scrutinise its actions, emascualtes the judiciary and sees lawyers and journalists as the enemy is somehow wedded to the idea of free and fair elections. Experience in other countries where this happens tends to show this is not actually the case.
Call me a reactionary old fool but I do not see this government messing with the elections.
Someone mentioned on here a week or so ago that the FTPA can be repealed and without replacement it could mean Johnson is PM until the 80 strong majority dwindles to a minority.
I thought that was an interesting analysis.
That's technically true as the FTPA repealed the Septennial Act 1715 which provided for seven year Parliaments (and was subsequently amended for five year Parliaments although amusingly the name wasn't changed).
But in practice it is a silly idea as a repeal couldn't pass the Commons and Lords without reinstating in some form the old provision (which was a very simple one-liner).
In that circumstance a Prime Minister would still only be able to call an election by passing a bill through Parliament, as Boris did last year. Repealing the FTPA does not restore the royal prerogative.
The point is you don't just repeal the FTPA but replace it. The Commons and Lords simply wouldn't pass a repeal which didn't replace the provisions in some form.
I'd note that, although often spoken of as a Royal prerogative power, the power in the Septennial Act wasn't really a prerogative power as it was a power explicitly given to the King by Parliament (the Act stated "Parliaments shall have Continuance for seven Years, unless sooner dissolved by the King"). So the monarch acted with rather than without the express authority of Parliament (albeit Parliament had seen fit to give wide discretion).
Indeed, there was a bill introduced in the Lords last year by a Tory peer (which died off with the dissolution) which would have repealed AND replaced the FTPA, and I'd expect something similar in due course.
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
Compulsory vaccination of adults would surely be unprecedented, unenforceable, and a shark-jumpingly insane infringement of liberty. Is anyone proposing it?
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
I think you have a point. However, for many people the risk to the individual from the virus is significant, especially if there is a second wave. There would also be the benefits after the vaccination of peace of mind about getting COVID, and of being able to get out more (assuming that there are no serious long-term side effects).
The vaccine has not been stopped. The trial is in a short pause while experts assess whether the person who has become ill is likely to be suffering a reaction to the jab, or it is a coincidence.
As far as I can see from reading today's papers, this is standard stuff.
In 2016 SurveyUSA issued a Minnesota state poll done in late October with the headline numbers Clinton: 49% Trump: 39%
The actual result was Clinton: 46.5% Trump: 45%
Bad miss SurveyUSA, bad miss. Now, the main reason given for the Great Big Polling Miss in the Midwest (GBPMM) is that polls undersampled no-college education voters
SurveyUSA have just done a Minnesota poll giving headline figures of Biden 49% Trump 40%
That's basically the same as last time! Have SurveyUSA learnt their lesson? Are they heading for exactly the same GBPMM? Well... Survey USA are actually a decent pollster and release comprehensive cross tabs
In 2016 their education population was High School or less: 17% Some College: 38% 4 year College: 45%
In 2020 their education population is: High School or less: 33% Some College: 35% 4 year College: 32%
If you think the same kind of GBPMM is going to happen again then I think you are barking up the wrong tree,
Some college is still not no college though is it and it may well be that it is shy Trump's that are still the same problem, just not adding a few more voters to the sample who do not have a 4 year college degree. In 2012 for example Romney won only 35% of non high school graduates and 48% of High school graduates. In 2016 Trump by contrast won 51% of those with only High school education or less, a big shift.
Romney won 48% of those with some college, Trump 52%, not a major shift and Romney won 51% of college graduates, more than the 45% of graduates Trump won.
In that case Trafalgar group's sampling adjusting its headline voting intention by its subsequent question as to what their neighbours think they would do will still be most accurate in the MidWest.
I don't understand what you are saying
Minnesota's education demographics are High School or less: 30% Some College: 33% 4 Year College: 36%
So the 2020 Survey USA poll has not eboigh 4 Year or more college voters and too many High school or less voters.
The 2016 SurveyUsa poll had almost half as many high-school voters than it should have, that was a huge blunder.
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
I think you have a point. However, for many people the risk to the individual from the virus is significant, especially if there is a second wave. There would also be the benefits after the vaccination of peace of mind about getting COVID, and of being able to get out more (assuming that there are no serious long-term side effects).
The vaccine has not been stopped. The trial is in a short pause while experts assess whether the person who has become ill is likely to be suffering a reaction to the jab, or it is a coincidence.
As far as I can see from reading today's papers, this is standard stuff.
Just make it mandatory for any benefits, tax relief , etc and majority will have to voluntarily have it.
On the treaty breach thingammy, am I right in thinking that what the British government are currently legislating for is the *ability* to break the treaty? ie the UK has some responsibilities under the treaty they signed, the law currently requires the government to fulfill those responsibilities, but they're trying to make a new law that would allow them to breach them without breaking British law, but the breach doesn't happen until they do?
Or does the treaty require the legislation to be there, and changing the law breaks the treaty before they do anything to act on it?
According to RTÉ the EU Commission isn't even waiting until the Bill is passed into law to take legal action, on the basis that the publication of the Bill is a breach of the good faith provisions in Article 5 of the Bill.
Thanks, do you know what court can they go to and what remedy the court could impose if it agreed?
The Twitter thread @Richard_Nabavi linked to has the details, but briefly: ECJ, fines, suspension of provisions in the Treaty/any future trade agreement except for citizens rights.
Yes.
In practice presumably the UK would ignore any fines imposed by the ECJ, but what would then happen is that the EU would suspend cooperation with the UK until we'd complied. Eventually the UK would go back to the EU and ask to reopen talks, and you don't need to be an expert in international relations to guess what the first item on the agenda would be.
This is of course utter insanity: no even vaguely responsible government would want to engage in an acrimonious high-profile legal dispute with our closest allies and largest trading partner, which would do immense damage to our reputation and more importantly our economy. So it can't be ruled out.
So much for making Britain great again. We are going to be utterly diminished on the world stage
That was obvious years ago and many of us said so at the time.
You do not increase your influence by erecting barriers. Anyone with more than one functioning brain-cell should be able to figure that one out.... which perhaps explains the ERG.
On the treaty breach thingammy, am I right in thinking that what the British government are currently legislating for is the *ability* to break the treaty? ie the UK has some responsibilities under the treaty they signed, the law currently requires the government to fulfill those responsibilities, but they're trying to make a new law that would allow them to breach them without breaking British law, but the breach doesn't happen until they do?
Or does the treaty require the legislation to be there, and changing the law breaks the treaty before they do anything to act on it?
According to RTÉ the EU Commission isn't even waiting until the Bill is passed into law to take legal action, on the basis that the publication of the Bill is a breach of the good faith provisions in Article 5 of the Bill.
Thanks, do you know what court can they go to and what remedy the court could impose if it agreed?
The Twitter thread @Richard_Nabavi linked to has the details, but briefly: ECJ, fines, suspension of provisions in the Treaty/any future trade agreement except for citizens rights.
Yes.
In practice presumably the UK would ignore any fines imposed by the ECJ, but what would then happen is that the EU would suspend cooperation with the UK until we'd complied. Eventually the UK would go back to the EU and ask to reopen talks, and you don't need to be an expert in international relations to guess what the first item on the agenda would be.
This is of course utter insanity: no even vaguely responsible government would want to engage in an acrimonious high-profile legal dispute with our closest allies and largest trading partner, which would do immense damage to our reputation and more importantly our economy. So it can't be ruled out.
LOL.
But it can. Is my opinion. If nothing else Boris might look at what's happened economically over the past few months and while not needing to accept any of the doomsday scenarios, might realise that economic disruption is not just an abstract concept but something very real that money needs to be spent on and, more importantly still, elections fought and won and perhaps lost over.
There is a blithe assumption that a government that rejects international law, curtails Parliament's ability to scrutinise its actions, emascualtes the judiciary and sees lawyers and journalists as the enemy is somehow wedded to the idea of free and fair elections. Experience in other countries where this happens tends to show this is not actually the case.
Call me a reactionary old fool but I do not see this government messing with the elections.
Someone mentioned on here a week or so ago that the FTPA can be repealed and without replacement it could mean Johnson is PM until the 80 strong majority dwindles to a minority.
I thought that was an interesting analysis.
That's technically true as the FTPA repealed the Septennial Act 1715 which provided for seven year Parliaments (and was subsequently amended for five year Parliaments although amusingly the name wasn't changed).
But in practice it is a silly idea as a repeal couldn't pass the Commons and Lords without reinstating in some form the old provision (which was a very simple one-liner).
I am not suggesting it will come to pass, but I could see this parliament rubber stamping Johnson's every whim, and isn't his plan to pack the HoL with acolytes?
It isn't even vaguely possible, no.
Firstly, highly sceptical though I am about Johnson, I do not seriously doubt that he wants to hold a General Election within five years of the last one (on a day of his choosing). He also knows that not having one within five years would be so massively damaging to his standing that the power not to bother isn't worth having.
Secondly, whilst he has a loyal Parliamentary party in the Commons and wants to create a more reliable HoL, there are in fact limits to that loyalty. And legislating to allow for indefinite Parliaments is a pretty damned hard limit.
So it's a game he probably doesn't want to play, the winning of which brings no practical benefit, and that he'd have negligible chance of winning. And, for all his many flaws, he isn't a total moron.
On the treaty breach thingammy, am I right in thinking that what the British government are currently legislating for is the *ability* to break the treaty? ie the UK has some responsibilities under the treaty they signed, the law currently requires the government to fulfill those responsibilities, but they're trying to make a new law that would allow them to breach them without breaking British law, but the breach doesn't happen until they do?
Or does the treaty require the legislation to be there, and changing the law breaks the treaty before they do anything to act on it?
According to RTÉ the EU Commission isn't even waiting until the Bill is passed into law to take legal action, on the basis that the publication of the Bill is a breach of the good faith provisions in Article 5 of the Bill.
Thanks, do you know what court can they go to and what remedy the court could impose if it agreed?
The Twitter thread @Richard_Nabavi linked to has the details, but briefly: ECJ, fines, suspension of provisions in the Treaty/any future trade agreement except for citizens rights.
Yes.
In practice presumably the UK would ignore any fines imposed by the ECJ, but what would then happen is that the EU would suspend cooperation with the UK until we'd complied. Eventually the UK would go back to the EU and ask to reopen talks, and you don't need to be an expert in international relations to guess what the first item on the agenda would be.
This is of course utter insanity: no even vaguely responsible government would want to engage in an acrimonious high-profile legal dispute with our closest allies and largest trading partner, which would do immense damage to our reputation and more importantly our economy. So it can't be ruled out.
LOL.
But it can. Is my opinion. If nothing else Boris might look at what's happened economically over the past few months and while not needing to accept any of the doomsday scenarios, might realise that economic disruption is not just an abstract concept but something very real that money needs to be spent on and, more importantly still, elections fought and won and perhaps lost over.
There is a blithe assumption that a government that rejects international law, curtails Parliament's ability to scrutinise its actions, emascualtes the judiciary and sees lawyers and journalists as the enemy is somehow wedded to the idea of free and fair elections. Experience in other countries where this happens tends to show this is not actually the case.
Call me a reactionary old fool but I do not see this government messing with the elections.
Someone mentioned on here a week or so ago that the FTPA can be repealed and without replacement it could mean Johnson is PM until the 80 strong majority dwindles to a minority.
I thought that was an interesting analysis.
That's technically true as the FTPA repealed the Septennial Act 1715 which provided for seven year Parliaments (and was subsequently amended for five year Parliaments although amusingly the name wasn't changed).
But in practice it is a silly idea as a repeal couldn't pass the Commons and Lords without reinstating in some form the old provision (which was a very simple one-liner).
In that circumstance a Prime Minister would still only be able to call an election by passing a bill through Parliament, as Boris did last year. Repealing the FTPA does not restore the royal prerogative.
The point is you don't just repeal the FTPA but replace it. The Commons and Lords simply wouldn't pass a repeal which didn't replace the provisions in some form.
I'd note that, although often spoken of as a Royal prerogative power, the power in the Septennial Act wasn't really a prerogative power as it was a power explicitly given to the King by Parliament (the Act stated "Parliaments shall have Continuance for seven Years, unless sooner dissolved by the King"). So the monarch acted with rather than without the express authority of Parliament (albeit Parliament had seen fit to give wide discretion).
Indeed, there was a bill introduced in the Lords last year by a Tory peer (which died off with the dissolution) which would have repealed AND replaced the FTPA, and I'd expect something similar in due course.
I imagine it would just be a bill that empowers the First Lord of the Treasury, or whatever, to set the date of the next election to any time but no later than 5 years after the last one.
In 2016 SurveyUSA issued a Minnesota state poll done in late October with the headline numbers Clinton: 49% Trump: 39%
The actual result was Clinton: 46.5% Trump: 45%
Bad miss SurveyUSA, bad miss. Now, the main reason given for the Great Big Polling Miss in the Midwest (GBPMM) is that polls undersampled no-college education voters
SurveyUSA have just done a Minnesota poll giving headline figures of Biden 49% Trump 40%
That's basically the same as last time! Have SurveyUSA learnt their lesson? Are they heading for exactly the same GBPMM? Well... Survey USA are actually a decent pollster and release comprehensive cross tabs
In 2016 their education population was High School or less: 17% Some College: 38% 4 year College: 45%
In 2020 their education population is: High School or less: 33% Some College: 35% 4 year College: 32%
If you think the same kind of GBPMM is going to happen again then I think you are barking up the wrong tree,
Some college is still not no college though is it and it may well be that it is shy Trump's that are still the same problem, just not adding a few more voters to the sample who do not have a 4 year college degree. In 2012 for example Romney won only 35% of non high school graduates and 48% of High school graduates. In 2016 Trump by contrast won 51% of those with only High school education or less, a big shift.
Romney won 48% of those with some college, Trump 52%, not a major shift and Romney won 51% of college graduates, more than the 45% of graduates Trump won.
In that case Trafalgar group's sampling adjusting its headline voting intention by its subsequent question as to what their neighbours think they would do will still be most accurate in the MidWest.
I don't understand what you are saying
Minnesota's education demographics are High School or less: 30% Some College: 33% 4 Year College: 36%
So the 2020 Survey USA poll has not eboigh 4 Year or more college voters and too many High school or less voters.
The 2016 SurveyUsa poll had almost half as many high-school voters than it should have, that was a huge blunder.
In 2016 all the main swing came from high school or less graduates, there was only a small swing amongst some college voters (who are the most sampled) and even a swing to Hillary with graduates relative to what Obama got with them in 2012. Much as with Brexit in the Midlands in the Midwest some high school or less voters for Trump were voting for the first time and missed from the sampling.
As I also said adjusting sampling alone is not enough, you need to capture 'shy Trump' voters too, it was the 'how will your neighbour vote' adjustment to its headline voting intention which was key to capturing that for Trafalgar in the Midwest and Pennsylvania
On the treaty breach thingammy, am I right in thinking that what the British government are currently legislating for is the *ability* to break the treaty? ie the UK has some responsibilities under the treaty they signed, the law currently requires the government to fulfill those responsibilities, but they're trying to make a new law that would allow them to breach them without breaking British law, but the breach doesn't happen until they do?
Or does the treaty require the legislation to be there, and changing the law breaks the treaty before they do anything to act on it?
According to RTÉ the EU Commission isn't even waiting until the Bill is passed into law to take legal action, on the basis that the publication of the Bill is a breach of the good faith provisions in Article 5 of the Bill.
Thanks, do you know what court can they go to and what remedy the court could impose if it agreed?
The Twitter thread @Richard_Nabavi linked to has the details, but briefly: ECJ, fines, suspension of provisions in the Treaty/any future trade agreement except for citizens rights.
Yes.
In practice presumably the UK would ignore any fines imposed by the ECJ, but what would then happen is that the EU would suspend cooperation with the UK until we'd complied. Eventually the UK would go back to the EU and ask to reopen talks, and you don't need to be an expert in international relations to guess what the first item on the agenda would be.
This is of course utter insanity: no even vaguely responsible government would want to engage in an acrimonious high-profile legal dispute with our closest allies and largest trading partner, which would do immense damage to our reputation and more importantly our economy. So it can't be ruled out.
LOL.
But it can. Is my opinion. If nothing else Boris might look at what's happened economically over the past few months and while not needing to accept any of the doomsday scenarios, might realise that economic disruption is not just an abstract concept but something very real that money needs to be spent on and, more importantly still, elections fought and won and perhaps lost over.
There is a blithe assumption that a government that rejects international law, curtails Parliament's ability to scrutinise its actions, emascualtes the judiciary and sees lawyers and journalists as the enemy is somehow wedded to the idea of free and fair elections. Experience in other countries where this happens tends to show this is not actually the case.
Call me a reactionary old fool but I do not see this government messing with the elections.
Someone mentioned on here a week or so ago that the FTPA can be repealed and without replacement it could mean Johnson is PM until the 80 strong majority dwindles to a minority.
I thought that was an interesting analysis.
That's technically true as the FTPA repealed the Septennial Act 1715 which provided for seven year Parliaments (and was subsequently amended for five year Parliaments although amusingly the name wasn't changed).
But in practice it is a silly idea as a repeal couldn't pass the Commons and Lords without reinstating in some form the old provision (which was a very simple one-liner).
In that circumstance a Prime Minister would still only be able to call an election by passing a bill through Parliament, as Boris did last year. Repealing the FTPA does not restore the royal prerogative.
The point is you don't just repeal the FTPA but replace it. The Commons and Lords simply wouldn't pass a repeal which didn't replace the provisions in some form.
I'd note that, although often spoken of as a Royal prerogative power, the power in the Septennial Act wasn't really a prerogative power as it was a power explicitly given to the King by Parliament (the Act stated "Parliaments shall have Continuance for seven Years, unless sooner dissolved by the King"). So the monarch acted with rather than without the express authority of Parliament (albeit Parliament had seen fit to give wide discretion).
Indeed, there was a bill introduced in the Lords last year by a Tory peer (which died off with the dissolution) which would have repealed AND replaced the FTPA, and I'd expect something similar in due course.
I imagine it would just be a bill that empowers the First Lord of the Treasury, or whatever, to set the date of the next election to any time but no later than 5 years after the last one.
Probably something along those lines. As I say, the 1715 Act was a one-liner. But it'd definitely be replaced rather than just repealed.
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
Compulsory vaccination of adults would surely be unprecedented, unenforceable, and a shark-jumpingly insane infringement of liberty. Is anyone proposing it?
Given that COVID is largely harmless to the vast majority of the population of working age I’m not sure why the purpose of vaccination need be “herd immunity”? If the most at risk are vaccinated and the rest aren’t then the virus basically ceases to become an exceptional public health problem. So why would special measures be needed to combat it. If there is no material risk of the NHS becoming overwhelmed why should taking the risk of contracting the virus not become a matter of personal choice?
It seems to me that we’re in danger of thinking that the actual health consequences of the virus are an irrelevance. If vaccine for the vulnerable backed up by improved treatment results in acceptable health outcomes when set against other public health issues, why does it need to go any further? In the case of flu we only routinely vaccinate the vulnerable (and it’s still a matter of personal choice). Why should this be any different? Yes unfortunately there will be a relatively small number of people who can’t have the vaccination, and are vulnerable - but again that is not a unique situation with vaccines.
On the treaty breach thingammy, am I right in thinking that what the British government are currently legislating for is the *ability* to break the treaty? ie the UK has some responsibilities under the treaty they signed, the law currently requires the government to fulfill those responsibilities, but they're trying to make a new law that would allow them to breach them without breaking British law, but the breach doesn't happen until they do?
Or does the treaty require the legislation to be there, and changing the law breaks the treaty before they do anything to act on it?
According to RTÉ the EU Commission isn't even waiting until the Bill is passed into law to take legal action, on the basis that the publication of the Bill is a breach of the good faith provisions in Article 5 of the Bill.
Thanks, do you know what court can they go to and what remedy the court could impose if it agreed?
The Twitter thread @Richard_Nabavi linked to has the details, but briefly: ECJ, fines, suspension of provisions in the Treaty/any future trade agreement except for citizens rights.
Yes.
In practice presumably the UK would ignore any fines imposed by the ECJ, but what would then happen is that the EU would suspend cooperation with the UK until we'd complied. Eventually the UK would go back to the EU and ask to reopen talks, and you don't need to be an expert in international relations to guess what the first item on the agenda would be.
This is of course utter insanity: no even vaguely responsible government would want to engage in an acrimonious high-profile legal dispute with our closest allies and largest trading partner, which would do immense damage to our reputation and more importantly our economy. So it can't be ruled out.
LOL.
But it can. Is my opinion. If nothing else Boris might look at what's happened economically over the past few months and while not needing to accept any of the doomsday scenarios, might realise that economic disruption is not just an abstract concept but something very real that money needs to be spent on and, more importantly still, elections fought and won and perhaps lost over.
There is a blithe assumption that a government that rejects international law, curtails Parliament's ability to scrutinise its actions, emascualtes the judiciary and sees lawyers and journalists as the enemy is somehow wedded to the idea of free and fair elections. Experience in other countries where this happens tends to show this is not actually the case.
Call me a reactionary old fool but I do not see this government messing with the elections.
Someone mentioned on here a week or so ago that the FTPA can be repealed and without replacement it could mean Johnson is PM until the 80 strong majority dwindles to a minority.
I thought that was an interesting analysis.
That's technically true as the FTPA repealed the Septennial Act 1715 which provided for seven year Parliaments (and was subsequently amended for five year Parliaments although amusingly the name wasn't changed).
But in practice it is a silly idea as a repeal couldn't pass the Commons and Lords without reinstating in some form the old provision (which was a very simple one-liner).
I am not suggesting it will come to pass, but I could see this parliament rubber stamping Johnson's every whim, and isn't his plan to pack the HoL with acolytes?
It isn't even vaguely possible, no.
Firstly, highly sceptical though I am about Johnson, I do not seriously doubt that he wants to hold a General Election within five years of the last one (on a day of his choosing). He also knows that not having one within five years would be so massively damaging to his standing that the power not to bother isn't worth having.
Secondly, whilst he has a loyal Parliamentary party in the Commons and wants to create a more reliable HoL, there are in fact limits to that loyalty. And legislating to allow for indefinite Parliaments is a pretty damned hard limit.
So it's a game he probably doesn't want to play, the winning of which brings no practical benefit, and that he'd have negligible chance of winning. And, for all his many flaws, he isn't a total moron.
I get your gist but for the first time in my life I have doubts. You only have to see the mental gymnastics that some of Boris's admirers on here perform - over proroguing parliament and reneging on international treaties - to realise that it's all too doable.
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
Compulsory vaccination of adults would surely be unprecedented, unenforceable, and a shark-jumpingly insane infringement of liberty. Is anyone proposing it?
No, I'm certainly not, and I can't believe any sane government would.
I was just pointing out that the reason vaccines have to be safer than is required to save lives is because people will have the choice to take them (or not).
Surely any vaccine will be distributed first two vulnerable groups – the elderly, the obese, the infirm. Once it has circulated through that segment of the population, much of the remainder will have had it asymptomatically.
It is possible we get the stage where it's not necessary to vaccinate everyone, because herd immunity has been achieved via a combination of vaccination and asymptomatic transmission.
Flu jab is BMI > 40, so I'll have to gain 7 stone if you're right.
I think you are also under 40 years of age?
Given you are young and fit and have no comorbidities, the risks you face from Covid are minuscule – you might already have had it!!
Don't like the racist overtones of that but let's face Sharia law is a lot better alternative than his Hatred Bill which is opposed by pretty much everyone but with which he is still persisting.
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
Compulsory vaccination of adults would surely be unprecedented, unenforceable, and a shark-jumpingly insane infringement of liberty. Is anyone proposing it?
Well this government is recruiting volunteers to shop neighbours who have seven people eating hotdogs in their back garden.
Aside from the cost and practicalities, I'm not sure we want to enter a world where you have to prove that you don't have a disease.
I don't think that you "have" to do anything but if you want to go to a football match, a disco or a sauna it is not unreasonable that the other participants have some assurance that you are safe to do so.
Why is the LibDem party not making more of fuss about the imposition by ministerial rulings of restrictions to our freedoms without MPs having a say?
I thought the bird of freedom was their party logo?
Well said - I`ve been banging on about this from the start. If LDs aren`t standing up for freedom we are truly fucked. Come on Davey - I supported you.
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
Compulsory vaccination of adults would surely be unprecedented, unenforceable, and a shark-jumpingly insane infringement of liberty. Is anyone proposing it?
No, I'm certainly not, and I can't believe any sane government would.
I was just pointing out that the reason vaccines have to be safer than is required to save lives is because people will have the choice to take them (or not).
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
I think you have a point. However, for many people the risk to the individual from the virus is significant, especially if there is a second wave. There would also be the benefits after the vaccination of peace of mind about getting COVID, and of being able to get out more (assuming that there are no serious long-term side effects).
The vaccine has not been stopped. The trial is in a short pause while experts assess whether the person who has become ill is likely to be suffering a reaction to the jab, or it is a coincidence.
As far as I can see from reading today's papers, this is standard stuff.
Who knew? As ever, the hysterical PB disaster-pornographers were all over the site like a rash declaring catastrophe.
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
Compulsory vaccination of adults would surely be unprecedented, unenforceable, and a shark-jumpingly insane infringement of liberty. Is anyone proposing it?
Well this government is recruiting volunteers to shop neighbours who have seven people eating hotdogs in their back garden.
So, I wouldn't rule it out.
I wouldn`t put it past this government organising the volunteers in groups of 7.
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
Compulsory vaccination of adults would surely be unprecedented, unenforceable, and a shark-jumpingly insane infringement of liberty. Is anyone proposing it?
Given that COVID is largely harmless to the vast majority of the population of working age I’m not sure why the purpose of vaccination need be “herd immunity”? If the most at risk are vaccinated and the rest aren’t then the virus basically ceases to become an exceptional public health problem. So why would special measures be needed to combat it. If there is no material risk of the NHS becoming overwhelmed why should taking the risk of contracting the virus not become a matter of personal choice?
It seems to me that we’re in danger of thinking that the actual health consequences of the virus are an irrelevance. If vaccine for the vulnerable backed up by improved treatment results in acceptable health outcomes when set against other public health issues, why does it need to go any further? In the case of flu we only routinely vaccinate the vulnerable (and it’s still a matter of personal choice). Why should this be any different? Yes unfortunately there will be a relatively small number of people who can’t have the vaccination, and are vulnerable - but again that is not a unique situation with vaccines.
"Why should this be any different?"
Good question. Very good question. We seem to have allowed our politicians to walk us into a zero covid strategy without much discussion.
The strategy in Spring was flatten the curve, stop the NHS being swamped. It was not zero covid.
When did this change? And why was the change not discussed by Parliament?
In 2016 SurveyUSA issued a Minnesota state poll done in late October with the headline numbers Clinton: 49% Trump: 39%
The actual result was Clinton: 46.5% Trump: 45%
Bad miss SurveyUSA, bad miss. Now, the main reason given for the Great Big Polling Miss in the Midwest (GBPMM) is that polls undersampled no-college education voters
SurveyUSA have just done a Minnesota poll giving headline figures of Biden 49% Trump 40%
That's basically the same as last time! Have SurveyUSA learnt their lesson? Are they heading for exactly the same GBPMM? Well... Survey USA are actually a decent pollster and release comprehensive cross tabs
In 2016 their education population was High School or less: 17% Some College: 38% 4 year College: 45%
In 2020 their education population is: High School or less: 33% Some College: 35% 4 year College: 32%
If you think the same kind of GBPMM is going to happen again then I think you are barking up the wrong tree,
Some college is still not no college though is it and it may well be that it is shy Trump's that are still the same problem, just not adding a few more voters to the sample who do not have a 4 year college degree. In 2012 for example Romney won only 35% of non high school graduates and 48% of High school graduates. In 2016 Trump by contrast won 51% of those with only High school education or less, a big shift.
Romney won 48% of those with some college, Trump 52%, not a major shift and Romney won 51% of college graduates, more than the 45% of graduates Trump won.
In that case Trafalgar group's sampling adjusting its headline voting intention by its subsequent question as to what their neighbours think they would do will still be most accurate in the MidWest.
They’ve literally doubled the proportion of their sample with no college.
In 2016 SurveyUSA issued a Minnesota state poll done in late October with the headline numbers Clinton: 49% Trump: 39%
The actual result was Clinton: 46.5% Trump: 45%
Bad miss SurveyUSA, bad miss. Now, the main reason given for the Great Big Polling Miss in the Midwest (GBPMM) is that polls undersampled no-college education voters
SurveyUSA have just done a Minnesota poll giving headline figures of Biden 49% Trump 40%
That's basically the same as last time! Have SurveyUSA learnt their lesson? Are they heading for exactly the same GBPMM? Well... Survey USA are actually a decent pollster and release comprehensive cross tabs
In 2016 their education population was High School or less: 17% Some College: 38% 4 year College: 45%
In 2020 their education population is: High School or less: 33% Some College: 35% 4 year College: 32%
If you think the same kind of GBPMM is going to happen again then I think you are barking up the wrong tree,
Some college is still not no college though is it and it may well be that it is shy Trump's that are still the same problem, just not adding a few more voters to the sample who do not have a 4 year college degree.
In that case Trafalgar group's sampling adjusting its headline voting intention by its subsequent question as to what their neighbours think they would do will still be most accurate in the MidWest
You’re so desperate for Trafalgar to be right, aren’t you?
Not really, I would have voted for Hillary in 2016 as I would vote for Biden now, however my gut tells me Trump will narrowly win the EC again even if Biden wins the popular vote by 3-4%
You are like. You’d love it if Trump won. It’s dripping from your every word.
No, I would vote for Biden for President but Republican for Congress if I were American.
I might slightly enjoy the fact I am one of the few on here forecasting Trump will be re elected though if proved right, as I was also one of the few on here predicting a clear Boris majority at a general election years before the event I am used to going against the PB herd
I AM ALSO FORECASTING HE WILL BE RE-ELECTED AND HAVE BACKED IT ACCORDINGLY.
Actually, not so much a forecast more a SWAG based on your typical (global) voter and incumbency.
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
Compulsory vaccination of adults would surely be unprecedented, unenforceable, and a shark-jumpingly insane infringement of liberty. Is anyone proposing it?
Given that COVID is largely harmless to the vast majority of the population of working age I’m not sure why the purpose of vaccination need be “herd immunity”? If the most at risk are vaccinated and the rest aren’t then the virus basically ceases to become an exceptional public health problem. So why would special measures be needed to combat it. If there is no material risk of the NHS becoming overwhelmed why should taking the risk of contracting the virus not become a matter of personal choice?
It seems to me that we’re in danger of thinking that the actual health consequences of the virus are an irrelevance. If vaccine for the vulnerable backed up by improved treatment results in acceptable health outcomes when set against other public health issues, why does it need to go any further? In the case of flu we only routinely vaccinate the vulnerable (and it’s still a matter of personal choice). Why should this be any different? Yes unfortunately there will be a relatively small number of people who can’t have the vaccination, and are vulnerable - but again that is not a unique situation with vaccines.
Absolutely brilliant post, eloquently put.
That is almost exactly right.
My only slight critique is your use of "in danger of" – I think if you removed those three words, your analysis would be perfect.
Richard Keen has made an extremely successful career out of presenting hopeless cases with exceptional panache and skill, even winning some of them. He'll be fine.
In 2016 SurveyUSA issued a Minnesota state poll done in late October with the headline numbers Clinton: 49% Trump: 39%
The actual result was Clinton: 46.5% Trump: 45%
Bad miss SurveyUSA, bad miss. Now, the main reason given for the Great Big Polling Miss in the Midwest (GBPMM) is that polls undersampled no-college education voters
SurveyUSA have just done a Minnesota poll giving headline figures of Biden 49% Trump 40%
That's basically the same as last time! Have SurveyUSA learnt their lesson? Are they heading for exactly the same GBPMM? Well... Survey USA are actually a decent pollster and release comprehensive cross tabs
In 2016 their education population was High School or less: 17% Some College: 38% 4 year College: 45%
In 2020 their education population is: High School or less: 33% Some College: 35% 4 year College: 32%
If you think the same kind of GBPMM is going to happen again then I think you are barking up the wrong tree,
Some college is still not no college though is it and it may well be that it is shy Trump's that are still the same problem, just not adding a few more voters to the sample who do not have a 4 year college degree. In 2012 for example Romney won only 35% of non high school graduates and 48% of High school graduates. In 2016 Trump by contrast won 51% of those with only High school education or less, a big shift.
Romney won 48% of those with some college, Trump 52%, not a major shift and Romney won 51% of college graduates, more than the 45% of graduates Trump won.
In that case Trafalgar group's sampling adjusting its headline voting intention by its subsequent question as to what their neighbours think they would do will still be most accurate in the MidWest.
They’ve literally doubled the proportion of their sample with no college.
Yes and it might make some difference but also no evidence they added the 'how will your neighbour vote' question they need to capture the shy Trump voters Trafalgar did.
Plus note this sample adjustment is for Minnesota which they correctly forecast for Hillary in 2016 anyway, not Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin which went for Trump
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
Compulsory vaccination of adults would surely be unprecedented, unenforceable, and a shark-jumpingly insane infringement of liberty. Is anyone proposing it?
Given that COVID is largely harmless to the vast majority of the population of working age I’m not sure why the purpose of vaccination need be “herd immunity”? If the most at risk are vaccinated and the rest aren’t then the virus basically ceases to become an exceptional public health problem. So why would special measures be needed to combat it. If there is no material risk of the NHS becoming overwhelmed why should taking the risk of contracting the virus not become a matter of personal choice?
It seems to me that we’re in danger of thinking that the actual health consequences of the virus are an irrelevance. If vaccine for the vulnerable backed up by improved treatment results in acceptable health outcomes when set against other public health issues, why does it need to go any further? In the case of flu we only routinely vaccinate the vulnerable (and it’s still a matter of personal choice). Why should this be any different? Yes unfortunately there will be a relatively small number of people who can’t have the vaccination, and are vulnerable - but again that is not a unique situation with vaccines.
"Why should this be any different?"
Good question. Very good question. We seem to have allowed our politicians to walk us into a zero covid strategy without much discussion.
The strategy in Spring was flatten the curve, stop the NHS being swamped. It was not zero covid.
When did this change? And why was the change not discussed by Parliament?
Sorry that's just not correct.
A zero covid strategy would include the following:
i) Only essential shops open. No pubs or restaurants or churches etc. ii) No guests for anyone, period. iii) Strict limitations on outdoor exercise (Currently unlimited), maybe even zero outside time. iv) All schools shut. All learning being done remotely. v) Working from home to be a Gov't directive rather than down to the employer. Potentially no travel to offices.
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
Compulsory vaccination of adults would surely be unprecedented, unenforceable, and a shark-jumpingly insane infringement of liberty. Is anyone proposing it?
No, I'm certainly not, and I can't believe any sane government would.
I was just pointing out that the reason vaccines have to be safer than is required to save lives is because people will have the choice to take them (or not).
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
Compulsory vaccination of adults would surely be unprecedented, unenforceable, and a shark-jumpingly insane infringement of liberty. Is anyone proposing it?
Well this government is recruiting volunteers to shop neighbours who have seven people eating hotdogs in their back garden.
So, I wouldn't rule it out.
I wouldn`t put it past this government organising the volunteers in groups of 7.
Aside from the cost and practicalities, I'm not sure we want to enter a world where you have to prove that you don't have a disease.
I don't think that you "have" to do anything but if you want to go to a football match, a disco or a sauna it is not unreasonable that the other participants have some assurance that you are safe to do so.
That said, the cost of this is mind blowing.
Lets say it does cost £100bn, thats effectively £1500 each. I think most people, even those who would have to put it on their credit cards, would pay £1500 to get almost back to normal. Of course the govt isnt putting it on credit cards, but long term debt at ultra low interest rates (negative real terms), so will be paying back less than that per person in real terms, and spread over many years.
(I think £100bn is a big overestimate, unless the govt is deliberately overpaying favoured companies, which wouldnt surprise me).
In 2016 SurveyUSA issued a Minnesota state poll done in late October with the headline numbers Clinton: 49% Trump: 39%
The actual result was Clinton: 46.5% Trump: 45%
Bad miss SurveyUSA, bad miss. Now, the main reason given for the Great Big Polling Miss in the Midwest (GBPMM) is that polls undersampled no-college education voters
SurveyUSA have just done a Minnesota poll giving headline figures of Biden 49% Trump 40%
That's basically the same as last time! Have SurveyUSA learnt their lesson? Are they heading for exactly the same GBPMM? Well... Survey USA are actually a decent pollster and release comprehensive cross tabs
In 2016 their education population was High School or less: 17% Some College: 38% 4 year College: 45%
In 2020 their education population is: High School or less: 33% Some College: 35% 4 year College: 32%
If you think the same kind of GBPMM is going to happen again then I think you are barking up the wrong tree,
Some college is still not no college though is it and it may well be that it is shy Trump's that are still the same problem, just not adding a few more voters to the sample who do not have a 4 year college degree. In 2012 for example Romney won only 35% of non high school graduates and 48% of High school graduates. In 2016 Trump by contrast won 51% of those with only High school education or less, a big shift.
Romney won 48% of those with some college, Trump 52%, not a major shift and Romney won 51% of college graduates, more than the 45% of graduates Trump won.
In that case Trafalgar group's sampling adjusting its headline voting intention by its subsequent question as to what their neighbours think they would do will still be most accurate in the MidWest.
They’ve literally doubled the proportion of their sample with no college.
Yes and it might make some difference but also no evidence they added the 'how will your neighbour vote' question they need to capture the shy Trump voters Trafalgar did.
Plus note this sample adjustment is for Minnesota which they correctly forecast for Hillary in 2016 anyway, not Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin which went for Trump
Only 80,000 votes were the difference between Trump winning the EC and Clinton winning the EC. That’s absolutely nothing. Trump got lucky at the end of the day, and thus Trafalgar is only of limited value, and I believe you’re vastly overstating the importance of “shy Trump voters”.
People were asking about the new hospitalisation rates on the previous thread.
Taking the data from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare and plotting the last two months (to avoid swamping the graph with the previous peak) and using England+Wales (directly comparable with ONS death stats if we need to draw comparisons later - and because the Scottish data is not available for the most recent several days), it looks like this:
(raw daily admissions and 7-day average as a line on top).
It does look as though there's been a bit of a change as of a couple of weeks ago (which would equate with an uptick in cases about 3 weeks ago):
From a peak of over 3000 in April the figures are still very low - and at this stage we cannot be certain that the recent rise in hospitalisaton from a low base is something that should generate a panicky response.
Especially as most hospitals remain empty
We are well past the time when authoritarian measures were justified on a "protect the NHS" basis. We`ve slipped into something different. We`re now in a hole we can`t get out of until herd immunity is achieved (probably - hopefully - via a vaccine).
I am sceptical that the vaccine will be first available in the UK, or in a Western country. There is a strong safety culture that is likely to stop any vaccine, as we have just seen with the Oxford vaccine. This has been stopped due to a single person becoming ill, with no proof that the illness has been caused by the vaccine. People get neurological illnesses naturally all the time. I could understand the decision if two or more people had become ill with similar symptoms, but you must expect people to become ill in a large trial. That is the point of doing them, so the trial should continue.
I think it is far more likely that the first vaccine will be deployed in Russia, China or India. The Oxford vaccine trials are still continuing in India, led by the Serum Institute of India.
Consider this. Suppose that you give the vaccine to 100,000 people, knowing that it has a rare side effect that affects 1 in 10,000 people and this kills half of them. You expect 10 people to get this side effect and 5 of them to die.
If these 100,000 are not vaccinated however, eventually many of them will get COVID-19, say 30,000 of them. COVID-19 has a death rate of about 1%, so this will cause around 300 deaths. 300 >> 5, so this is why I believe that a COVID vaccine should not be stopped because of a rare side effect.
I am not optimistic though. Are doctors and scientists who sit on safety bodies going to give up their status and allow safety standards to be redefined in the wider public interest? I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, a vaccine will be developed in an eastern country, and when it has been shown to be effective the UK government will have to negotiate even with Russia or China to get it.
The problem isn't the risk for the 'herd', it is the risk for the individual.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
Except that until we've run the trial, we have no idea what the numbers might be... which is kind of the point.
If you have a population that you can simply instruct to take the vaccine (China), then I guess the effectiveness and safety calculations don't really matter, but they very much do if you rely on people coming forward to get vaccinated.
I don't think that wanting to change the subject from coronavirus in itself makes sense as an explanation. We aren't having an election in November.
I think the problem is that Boris has had no political success since the GE and Sir Keir is increasingly getting under his skin. He was desperate for a political win to satisfy his own sense of self worth if nobody else's.
I don't think that wanting to change the subject from coronavirus in itself makes sense as an explanation. We aren't having an election in November.
I think the problem is that Boris has had no political success since the GE and Sir Keir is increasingly getting under his skin. He was desperate for a political win to satisfy his own sense of self worth if nobody else's.
It doesn't even enter your mind that this might be the right thing to do, does it?
Comments
Then they came for BJ's cast offs and I definitely did nothing.
https://twitter.com/andraswf/status/1304005935078223872?s=20thttps://twitter.com/andraswf/status/1304005935078223872?s=20
The EU isn't respecting our sovereignty in NI, our sovereignty in our waters and our sovereignty on state aid. That doesn't make them allies.
Once they're willing to compromise and be allies, then we can too.
https://runningmagazine.ca/the-scene/watch-worlds-strongest-man-runs-1-5-miles-in-navy-seal-fitness-test/ 11:27 for 1.5 miles, ground included grass too (Which would have slowed him)
Absolute VO2 of 7.6 litres/minute. The man's a complete genetic freak, reckon he'll win the fight with Halfpor.
So I guess you are right - for multiple reasons a vaccine in the UK is likely to be further away than many people think. And in the meantime what economic and loss of liberty catastrophes we are being forced to endure!
Even with a safe enough and easily available virus, there will , of course, be a sizeable amount of people (25% + ?) who will either refuse it for various reasons or will just not bother.
If there is a 1/10000 risk of a bad reaction, then why wouldn't I wait until everyone else has been vaccinated and thus herd immunity has been achieved without taking the risk myself?
Your numbers are of course correct if the vaccination is compulsory.
But in practice it is a silly idea as a repeal couldn't pass the Commons and Lords without reinstating in some form the old provision (which was a very simple one-liner).
I'm signed up for P3 trials anyway (Doubt I'll meet criteria though)
The Minnesota Conundrum
In 2016 SurveyUSA issued a Minnesota state poll done in late October with the headline numbers
Clinton: 49%
Trump: 39%
The actual result was
Clinton: 46.5%
Trump: 45%
Bad miss SurveyUSA, bad miss. Now, the main reason given for the Great Big Polling Miss in the Midwest (GBPMM) is that polls undersampled no-college education voters
SurveyUSA have just done a Minnesota poll giving headline figures of
Biden 49%
Trump 40%
That's basically the same as last time! Have SurveyUSA learnt their lesson? Are they heading for exactly the same GBPMM? Well... Survey USA are actually a decent pollster and release comprehensive cross tabs
In 2016 their education population was
High School or less: 17%
Some College: 38%
4 year College: 45%
In 2020 their education population is:
High School or less: 33%
Some College: 35%
4 year College: 32%
If you think the same kind of GBPMM is going to happen again then I think you are barking up the wrong tree,
"Britain has already breached the withdrawal agreement by tabling the internal market bill, prompting Brussels to plan legal action that could lead to financial and trade sanctions, according to a leaked EU legal opinion.
The European commission believes Boris Johnson’s government breached the terms of the treaty just by taking the first steps to pass a new law that would negate key parts of the agreement signed last year.
“Already by tabling the draft bill and pursuing the policy expressed therein, the UK government is in violation of the good faith obligation under the withdrawal agreement (article 5) because this bill jeopardises the attainment of the objectives of the agreement”, the commission lawyers write.
The commission has advised the 27 EU capitals that there are therefore grounds for the bloc to take “legal remedies” through the European court of Justice before the end of the transition period, leading to significant fines or potential trade sanctions."
So what are these "trade sanctions" going to be ?
It is possible we get the stage where it's not necessary to vaccinate everyone, because herd immunity has been achieved via a combination of vaccination and asymptomatic transmission.
Florida swinging the least Biden due to the large cuban-hispanic vote which isn't replicated anywhere else ?
That's why I think NC might flip but not FL.
Didn't turn out that way did it?
But this happens in sport too... teams that lose from a winning position are routinely slammed for falling back onto defence and sitting on the lead. Now it's true you can be too defensive, but I suspect the stats would bear out the view that being a bit boring and low risk when you have a narrow lead and 15 minutes to go is sensible overall. We remember the late winners but quickly forget the many more dull cases where teams were a goal up with 15 minutes to go, and closed it out uneventfully.
Romney won 48% of those with some college, Trump 52%, not a major shift and Romney won 51% of college graduates, more than the 45% of graduates Trump won.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidential_election#Voter_demographics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election#Voter_demographics
In that case Trafalgar group's sampling adjusting its headline voting intention by its subsequent question as to what their neighbours think they would do will still be most accurate in the MidWest.
I might slightly enjoy the fact I am one of the few on here forecasting Trump will be re elected though if proved right, as I was also one of the few on here predicting a clear Boris majority at a general election years before the event I am used to going against the PB herd
I'd note that, although often spoken of as a Royal prerogative power, the power in the Septennial Act wasn't really a prerogative power as it was a power explicitly given to the King by Parliament (the Act stated "Parliaments shall have Continuance for seven Years, unless sooner dissolved by the King"). So the monarch acted with rather than without the express authority of Parliament (albeit Parliament had seen fit to give wide discretion).
Indeed, there was a bill introduced in the Lords last year by a Tory peer (which died off with the dissolution) which would have repealed AND replaced the FTPA, and I'd expect something similar in due course.
As far as I can see from reading today's papers, this is standard stuff.
Minnesota's education demographics are
High School or less: 30%
Some College: 33%
4 Year College: 36%
So the 2020 Survey USA poll has not eboigh 4 Year or more college voters and too many High school or less voters.
The 2016 SurveyUsa poll had almost half as many high-school voters than it should have, that was a huge blunder.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1304014853372338177
https://twitter.com/edglasgow59/status/1303934107408306177?s=20
I don't think so. He would probably walk and then No 10 will have removed the main alternative (and increasingly competitive) leader to Johnson.
Maybe I am being too Machiavellian?
You do not increase your influence by erecting barriers. Anyone with more than one functioning brain-cell should be able to figure that one out.... which perhaps explains the ERG.
Firstly, highly sceptical though I am about Johnson, I do not seriously doubt that he wants to hold a General Election within five years of the last one (on a day of his choosing). He also knows that not having one within five years would be so massively damaging to his standing that the power not to bother isn't worth having.
Secondly, whilst he has a loyal Parliamentary party in the Commons and wants to create a more reliable HoL, there are in fact limits to that loyalty. And legislating to allow for indefinite Parliaments is a pretty damned hard limit.
So it's a game he probably doesn't want to play, the winning of which brings no practical benefit, and that he'd have negligible chance of winning. And, for all his many flaws, he isn't a total moron.
As I also said adjusting sampling alone is not enough, you need to capture 'shy Trump' voters too, it was the 'how will your neighbour vote' adjustment to its headline voting intention which was key to capturing that for Trafalgar in the Midwest and Pennsylvania
It seems to me that we’re in danger of thinking that the actual health consequences of the virus are an irrelevance. If vaccine for the vulnerable backed up by improved treatment results in acceptable health outcomes when set against other public health issues, why does it need to go any further? In the case of flu we only routinely vaccinate the vulnerable (and it’s still a matter of personal choice). Why should this be any different? Yes unfortunately there will be a relatively small number of people who can’t have the vaccination, and are vulnerable - but again that is not a unique situation with vaccines.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/09/cover-covid-government-has-launched-all-out-assault-british/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-scotland-54010693
I was just pointing out that the reason vaccines have to be safer than is required to save lives is because people will have the choice to take them (or not).
Given you are young and fit and have no comorbidities, the risks you face from Covid are minuscule – you might already have had it!!
I thought the bird of freedom was their party logo?
So, I wouldn't rule it out.
That said, the cost of this is mind blowing.
Good question. Very good question. We seem to have allowed our politicians to walk us into a zero covid strategy without much discussion.
The strategy in Spring was flatten the curve, stop the NHS being swamped. It was not zero covid.
When did this change? And why was the change not discussed by Parliament?
Actually, not so much a forecast more a SWAG based on your typical (global) voter and incumbency.
That is almost exactly right.
My only slight critique is your use of "in danger of" – I think if you removed those three words, your analysis would be perfect.
Plus note this sample adjustment is for Minnesota which they correctly forecast for Hillary in 2016 anyway, not Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin which went for Trump
A zero covid strategy would include the following:
i) Only essential shops open. No pubs or restaurants or churches etc.
ii) No guests for anyone, period.
iii) Strict limitations on outdoor exercise (Currently unlimited), maybe even zero outside time.
iv) All schools shut. All learning being done remotely.
v) Working from home to be a Gov't directive rather than down to the employer. Potentially no travel to offices.
(I think £100bn is a big overestimate, unless the govt is deliberately overpaying favoured companies, which wouldnt surprise me).
If you have a population that you can simply instruct to take the vaccine (China), then I guess the effectiveness and safety calculations don't really matter, but they very much do if you rely on people coming forward to get vaccinated.
https://twitter.com/ashcowburn/status/1304032941656420353
"But experts say there are issues with laboratory capacity for current tests, while the technology for more rapid tests "does not, as yet, exist".
The British Medical Journal says leaked memos show the plan could cost £100bn."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54097050