Liz Truss moves from a 100/1 shot for next PM to 33/1 in just two weeks – politicalbetting.com
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He shouldn't have put so muich pressure oin the devolved admins to "save Xmas" then.Big_G_NorthWales said:
You seem to imply Boris has UK wide powers which he does notCorrectHorseBattery said:
Keir said the two week lockdown should have been over half term - it wasn't - and a working test + trace system with tiers needed to be put into place. They weren't.FrancisUrquhart said:
Not letting you have that. Circuit breaker was a specific policy put forward by SAGE, and Starmer explicitly said he wanted us to follow that. People like me and Max pointed out at the time, the modelling it was based on was.bollocks. It was not a call to repeat the lockdown of March / April, which is what we needed.CorrectHorseBattery said:
The mistake wasn't the lockdown itself, it was it being too short. If we had locked down when Keir said we'd be in a better position, that is unarguable. Wales made the same mistake, should have kept it in place.FrancisUrquhart said:
What do you mean again....the one time he has looked forward he proposed a circuit breaker...that approach that failed massively twice in NI and also in Wales.CorrectHorseBattery said:Keir Starmer will be Captain Foresight again if Johnson ignores him.
Time to get Wales, Scotland, England, NI around the table, cancel this Christmas easing as a unified decision and then implement a unified nationwide lockdown from this weekend.
What he asked for wasn't done - but the idea of locking down he was spot on about. Because of Government incompetence we cocked that up.
And I asked for the lockdown to be extended. It was wrong to open up, that was a mistake both Tories and Labour made.
You say fhe idea of lockdown was spot on but that has spectacularly failed as implemented by Drakeford in Wales1 -
Dad got a letter to ring for a vaccination appointment for Wednesday or Thursday. It arrived in the post on Thursday afternoon, and his preparation time from being disabled precluded going. Told Mum to ring back anyway and see what the score is.
I'm impressed with the speed they're going at, but the need for speed round the Pfizer requirement is going to mean a few misses as well, and I'm obviously a bit disappointed and concerned over that one.0 -
Exactly. There's no such thing as a quick lockdown, you operate at the speed of the virus, and you wait until the chains of infection have ended within the household. In an ideal world the entire population would lock their doors for 4+ weeks and that would be the end of it. Unfortunately we need food, water, electricity and the like, so you can't do a perfect lockdown, but for those that can you want them to stay inside until the virus has done its work in their household. Two weeks does not seem remotely long enough to me, and certainly doesn't fit the sort of timelines the government has set with 14 and now 10 day clocks for each person showing symptoms.FrancisUrquhart said:The circuit breaker crash diet policy was a key part of the problem. It was an attempt to do a quick lockdown, which is flawed thinking from the start.
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Black Rook has always been about the quality not quantity of posts, makes some of us look bad frankly.CorrectHorseBattery said:@Black_Rook is right as usual, I may as well just stop posting and let them represent me
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Pressure Nicola - now that is a keeperCarnyx said:
He shouldn't have put so muich pressure oin the devolved admins to "save Xmas" then.Big_G_NorthWales said:
You seem to imply Boris has UK wide powers which he does notCorrectHorseBattery said:
Keir said the two week lockdown should have been over half term - it wasn't - and a working test + trace system with tiers needed to be put into place. They weren't.FrancisUrquhart said:
Not letting you have that. Circuit breaker was a specific policy put forward by SAGE, and Starmer explicitly said he wanted us to follow that. People like me and Max pointed out at the time, the modelling it was based on was.bollocks. It was not a call to repeat the lockdown of March / April, which is what we needed.CorrectHorseBattery said:
The mistake wasn't the lockdown itself, it was it being too short. If we had locked down when Keir said we'd be in a better position, that is unarguable. Wales made the same mistake, should have kept it in place.FrancisUrquhart said:
What do you mean again....the one time he has looked forward he proposed a circuit breaker...that approach that failed massively twice in NI and also in Wales.CorrectHorseBattery said:Keir Starmer will be Captain Foresight again if Johnson ignores him.
Time to get Wales, Scotland, England, NI around the table, cancel this Christmas easing as a unified decision and then implement a unified nationwide lockdown from this weekend.
What he asked for wasn't done - but the idea of locking down he was spot on about. Because of Government incompetence we cocked that up.
And I asked for the lockdown to be extended. It was wrong to open up, that was a mistake both Tories and Labour made.
You say fhe idea of lockdown was spot on but that has spectacularly failed as implemented by Drakeford in Wales2 -
Nonetheless, top electioneering, mid pandemic from Johnson.CorrectHorseBattery said:
They're just Openreach now, they don't like the BT bitMexicanpete said:Just watching BBC News at ten o' clock. I notice Johnson was out and about in his hi-viz coat, campaigning at BT Openreach in Bolton.
He really is a top campaigner.
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Cole is wrong about one thing. It isn't too late to change the Christmas advice. You can invoke the civil contingencies act or recall parliament for monday to change the law while stating "Christmas is Cancelled" to the public. Dare the loons to vote against it. Labour certainly won't and will certainly support it.CorrectHorseBattery said:https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1340060066200907776
Looks like a U-turn is on the cards, thank God for that. Well done Johnson, if it is done.0 -
Very unlikely unless one traveller from the UK to RSA took it there are vice versa.SandyRentool said:
That suggests a more virulent strain. But is it the same variant as the one in SE England?Foxy said:
New varient in RSA tooIshmaelZ said:
Pedantically, they mutate randomly and those are the mutations that tend to get selected for. Substantively, lethality doesn't really matter when you have an absolutely huge supply of new hosts. Even when it does matter, speed of lethality is the key: you want your host to be milling around infecting others for as long as possible. Whether the host then dies or recovers is immaterial because a recovered and now immune victim and a corpse are of equal value to you.rottenborough said:
iirc virus have a tendency to mutate to more infectious but less fatal.another_richard said:
More infectious but less dangerous wouldn't be a bad combination.rottenborough said:
More infectious is a better way of describing this than more virulent imho.kle4 said:
Bad news, but almost convenient for him politically in giving him cover with the backbenchers and headlines he seems terrified of, without saying it is all the public's fault for being irresponsible.CorrectHorseBattery said:
Though the vulnerable would have to be told to shield while its spreading.
"In addition, clinicians have been providing anecdotal evidence of a shift in the clinical epidemiological picture- in particular noting that they are seeing a larger proportion of younger patients with no co-morbidities presenting with critical illness. The evidence that has been collated, therefore, strongly suggests that that the current second wave we are experiencing is being driven by this new variant."
https://sacoronavirus.co.za/2020/12/18/new-covid-19-variant-identified-in-sa
Check out this site for new strains of COVID: https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?animate=2019-12-21,2020-12-06,0,0,30000&fbclid=IwAR2SKKs1-oAP8rPdqvXJN2NGGo48hMzVOGC43ODxMP6-UZKicwWYFmm5ED80 -
Quite. Ms S made the mistake of not following her instincts ptopertly nd being browbeaten by the snake oil salesman in No. 10. I'm not impressed.Alistair said:
Massively convenient for Boris and Sturgeon here.rottenborough said:Xmas u-turn incoming????
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A sly dig at me was that?kle4 said:
Black Rook has always been about the quality not quantity of posts, makes some of us look bad frankly.CorrectHorseBattery said:@Black_Rook is right as usual, I may as well just stop posting and let them represent me
I just cannot stop, it's like crack cocaine!0 -
It was quite clear at the time she was not at all happy about it.Big_G_NorthWales said:
Pressure Nicola - now that is a keeperCarnyx said:
He shouldn't have put so muich pressure oin the devolved admins to "save Xmas" then.Big_G_NorthWales said:
You seem to imply Boris has UK wide powers which he does notCorrectHorseBattery said:
Keir said the two week lockdown should have been over half term - it wasn't - and a working test + trace system with tiers needed to be put into place. They weren't.FrancisUrquhart said:
Not letting you have that. Circuit breaker was a specific policy put forward by SAGE, and Starmer explicitly said he wanted us to follow that. People like me and Max pointed out at the time, the modelling it was based on was.bollocks. It was not a call to repeat the lockdown of March / April, which is what we needed.CorrectHorseBattery said:
The mistake wasn't the lockdown itself, it was it being too short. If we had locked down when Keir said we'd be in a better position, that is unarguable. Wales made the same mistake, should have kept it in place.FrancisUrquhart said:
What do you mean again....the one time he has looked forward he proposed a circuit breaker...that approach that failed massively twice in NI and also in Wales.CorrectHorseBattery said:Keir Starmer will be Captain Foresight again if Johnson ignores him.
Time to get Wales, Scotland, England, NI around the table, cancel this Christmas easing as a unified decision and then implement a unified nationwide lockdown from this weekend.
What he asked for wasn't done - but the idea of locking down he was spot on about. Because of Government incompetence we cocked that up.
And I asked for the lockdown to be extended. It was wrong to open up, that was a mistake both Tories and Labour made.
You say fhe idea of lockdown was spot on but that has spectacularly failed as implemented by Drakeford in Wales0 -
0
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That's an impressive and scary animation.TimT said:
Very unlikely unless one traveller from the UK to RSA took it there are vice versa.SandyRentool said:
That suggests a more virulent strain. But is it the same variant as the one in SE England?Foxy said:
New varient in RSA tooIshmaelZ said:
Pedantically, they mutate randomly and those are the mutations that tend to get selected for. Substantively, lethality doesn't really matter when you have an absolutely huge supply of new hosts. Even when it does matter, speed of lethality is the key: you want your host to be milling around infecting others for as long as possible. Whether the host then dies or recovers is immaterial because a recovered and now immune victim and a corpse are of equal value to you.rottenborough said:
iirc virus have a tendency to mutate to more infectious but less fatal.another_richard said:
More infectious but less dangerous wouldn't be a bad combination.rottenborough said:
More infectious is a better way of describing this than more virulent imho.kle4 said:
Bad news, but almost convenient for him politically in giving him cover with the backbenchers and headlines he seems terrified of, without saying it is all the public's fault for being irresponsible.CorrectHorseBattery said:
Though the vulnerable would have to be told to shield while its spreading.
"In addition, clinicians have been providing anecdotal evidence of a shift in the clinical epidemiological picture- in particular noting that they are seeing a larger proportion of younger patients with no co-morbidities presenting with critical illness. The evidence that has been collated, therefore, strongly suggests that that the current second wave we are experiencing is being driven by this new variant."
https://sacoronavirus.co.za/2020/12/18/new-covid-19-variant-identified-in-sa
Check out this site for new strains of COVID: https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?animate=2019-12-21,2020-12-06,0,0,30000&fbclid=IwAR2SKKs1-oAP8rPdqvXJN2NGGo48hMzVOGC43ODxMP6-UZKicwWYFmm5ED8
I am sure I don't understand the detail but the impression I get is that (probably unsurprisingly) there are new variants popping up all the time.0 -
That would be somewhat hypocritical of me.CorrectHorseBattery said:
A sly dig at me was that?kle4 said:
Black Rook has always been about the quality not quantity of posts, makes some of us look bad frankly.CorrectHorseBattery said:@Black_Rook is right as usual, I may as well just stop posting and let them represent me
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Herd immunity....CorrectHorseBattery said:0 -
I frankly doubt it. Keir is a lawyer, not a scientist.CorrectHorseBattery said:
Labour are not brilliant, I would never say they were. Have they done brilliant things in Government, absolutely.
Labour are in a better position than year ago, but a long way is still to go.
I think Keir would have handled it better than Johnson, that's all.
Nothing Keir has said about COVID makes me believe Labour would have done much better than e.g., the Socialists in Spain.
Two kinds of politicians have had a really good COVID:
(i) Politicians who are scientists. They are able to understand the data, to question the scientists and to take them on. (See Germany and Taiwan)
(ii) Politicians who are blind panickers. They shut down everything as soon as possible, banned travel, etc (See Norway and NZ). Although no-one could have known this right at the beginning, it turns out that screaming panic in March was the best response.
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Talking of over promise, under deliver...CD Projekt Red....gone so badly, Sony have delisted Cyberpunk 2077 from their own playstation store.0
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I think your posts are fantastic, even if I don't agree with a lot of them - still don't know where you stand politically frankly but that's fine - but they're always interesting and you're never unkind to anyonekle4 said:
That would be somewhat hypocritical of me.CorrectHorseBattery said:
A sly dig at me was that?kle4 said:
Black Rook has always been about the quality not quantity of posts, makes some of us look bad frankly.CorrectHorseBattery said:@Black_Rook is right as usual, I may as well just stop posting and let them represent me
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I agree. DC would have been fine. And Corbyn would probably have knocked it out of the park.MarqueeMark said:
I think Cameron would have been very good. His personal history with Ivan would have allowed him to project to people having to deal with family members in ICU - and do all he could to prevent that. I don't think he would have been at all squeamish about calling lockdowns.stodge said:
It's in Johnson's nature to be optimistic and upbeat. He was like that as Mayor of London and he was like that before Covid. He praises the country and the people to the skies - fair enough, most of the time a bit of inspiration doesn't go amiss. Back in July, he wanted people "cheek by jowl" at Christmas.rottenborough said:
What an f*ing mess. Yet again Johnson and co have made an epic balls up.MaxPB said:Time to cancel this 5 day free pass. It's going to result in so many unnecessary hospitalisations and deaths.
He understands the symbolic nature of Christmas in terms of it being an oasis of normality and hope in an ocean of bad news and anxiety. He wanted to save as much of that as possible - to give people something for which to aspire, to be hopeful, to be optimistic because that's the kind of Britain he wants to lead - upbeat, confident, optimistic.
Instead, he's got a pandemic and millions are frightened, frustrated and worried for the future. Yes, he can trumpet a vaccine all he wants but for the vast majority it's meaningless as they won't be getting it any time soon - 10 million vaccinated by Christmas anyone?
In his desire to keep spirits up, he panders - he treats us like children endlessly promising jam tomorrow if we keep the faith. He's not alone - many other leaders have played that game. Perhaps Merkel is one of the few who hasn't.
The problem is when the hope turns out to be a chimera - when he has to be "honest" and tell his audience what they don't want to hear - his limitations as a Prime Minister become painfully evident. He doesn't want to be the PM who lost Christmas - it would be a millstone round his political career. Quite apart from anything else, why would anyone believe a syllable he utters ever again?
I'll be honest - Theresa May, for all her flaws, would have done this so much better.0 -
I'm not sure he would have done anything very different. If Boris has mostly followed scientific advice it would take huge gumption from Keir to go against it. He might have done some things better than Boris, but equally he might have joined the EU vaccine thing, in which case we might still be waiting to vaccinate people, and he might have imposed a two week lockdown in October like the one which totally failed in Wales.CorrectHorseBattery said:
Labour are not brilliant, I would never say they were. Have they done brilliant things in Government, absolutely.YBarddCwsc said:
You may well be right that the Tories are useless and Labour are brilliant.CorrectHorseBattery said:If we had repeated the March lockdown from Half Term until now we could be slowly opening up for Christmas now.
The Tories are useless.
It is just a pity that all the Labour brilliance did not manifest itself in running a competent COVID response in Wales.
Looking at England and Wales, it doesn't look like a choice between useless and brilliant.
It looks like a choice between a crap bloke with blonde hair and a crap bloke with a personality bypass.
Labour are in a better position than year ago, but a long way is still to go.
I think Keir would have handled it better than Johnson, that's all.
But that's all speculation. What I don't think one can say is that he would have been way better than Boris based on what he's argued at the time, without hindsight.
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With all this talk of whether or not these lockdowns work, is it not worth looking at Spain?
I am not familiar at all with the details but my impression is that their lockdowns have been far more extensive and severe than in Britain and yet they seem to have fared even worse than we have, not just at the start but in the second wave as well. What have they done wrong that means lockdown has not worked?
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Not sure Germany are in the really good category these days....relegated from the Premier League and now in the relegation zone of the Championship.YBarddCwsc said:
I frankly doubt it. Keir is a lawyer, not a scientist.CorrectHorseBattery said:
Labour are not brilliant, I would never say they were. Have they done brilliant things in Government, absolutely.
Labour are in a better position than year ago, but a long way is still to go.
I think Keir would have handled it better than Johnson, that's all.
Nothing Keir has said about COVID makes me believe Labour would have done much better than e.g., the Socialists in Spain.
Two kinds of politicians have had a really good COVID:
(i) Politicians who are scientists. They are able to understand the data, to question the scientists and to take them on. (See Germany and Taiwan)
(ii) Politicians who are blind panickers. They shut down everything as soon as possible, banned travel, etc (See Norway and NZ). Although no-one could have known this right at the beginning, it turns out that screaming panic in March was the best response.0 -
Yes, single stranded RNA viruses are rather prone to mutation, and the greater numbers of virus out there increases the probability of a nasty mutation.Benpointer said:
That's an impressive and scary animation.TimT said:
Very unlikely unless one traveller from the UK to RSA took it there are vice versa.SandyRentool said:
That suggests a more virulent strain. But is it the same variant as the one in SE England?Foxy said:
New varient in RSA tooIshmaelZ said:
Pedantically, they mutate randomly and those are the mutations that tend to get selected for. Substantively, lethality doesn't really matter when you have an absolutely huge supply of new hosts. Even when it does matter, speed of lethality is the key: you want your host to be milling around infecting others for as long as possible. Whether the host then dies or recovers is immaterial because a recovered and now immune victim and a corpse are of equal value to you.rottenborough said:
iirc virus have a tendency to mutate to more infectious but less fatal.another_richard said:
More infectious but less dangerous wouldn't be a bad combination.rottenborough said:
More infectious is a better way of describing this than more virulent imho.kle4 said:
Bad news, but almost convenient for him politically in giving him cover with the backbenchers and headlines he seems terrified of, without saying it is all the public's fault for being irresponsible.CorrectHorseBattery said:
Though the vulnerable would have to be told to shield while its spreading.
"In addition, clinicians have been providing anecdotal evidence of a shift in the clinical epidemiological picture- in particular noting that they are seeing a larger proportion of younger patients with no co-morbidities presenting with critical illness. The evidence that has been collated, therefore, strongly suggests that that the current second wave we are experiencing is being driven by this new variant."
https://sacoronavirus.co.za/2020/12/18/new-covid-19-variant-identified-in-sa
Check out this site for new strains of COVID: https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?animate=2019-12-21,2020-12-06,0,0,30000&fbclid=IwAR2SKKs1-oAP8rPdqvXJN2NGGo48hMzVOGC43ODxMP6-UZKicwWYFmm5ED8
I am sure I don't understand the detail but the impression I get is that (probably unsurprisingly) there are new variants popping up all the time.
It is one reason that vaccination needs to be worldwide, or we would just have a source for new versions.
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Fingers crossed it isn't. But I'm going to continue hiding in my bunker. And I hope the PM orders everyone into theirs.CorrectHorseBattery said:https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1340061782522679296
Seems like a disaster is brewing.1 -
It may be a case of having to leave some people out and mopping them up, perhaps with the Oxford jab instead, at a later date. Quite a lot of folk are going to get missed out because they're called in at very short notice and have mobility issues or, especially in more rural areas, can't obtain or can't afford transport to distant vaccination centres, but we're just going to have to do our best to get as many people lanced as quickly as possible. Getting the vaccine to only 80% of the vulnerable people who want it is very imperfect but, needless to say, still light years better than the 0% situation that prevailed until earlier in the month.Pro_Rata said:Dad got a letter to ring for a vaccination appointment for Wednesday or Thursday. It arrived in the post on Thursday afternoon, and his preparation time from being disabled precluded going. Told Mum to ring back anyway and see what the score is.
I'm impressed with the speed they're going at, but the need for speed round the Pfizer requirement is going to mean a few misses as well, and I'm obviously a bit disappointed and concerned over that one.2 -
It still looks the stand out country in Western Europe, though for sure a bit more tarnished than in the Summer.FrancisUrquhart said:
Not sure Germany are in the really good category these days....relegated from the Premier League and now in the relegation zone of the Championship.YBarddCwsc said:
I frankly doubt it. Keir is a lawyer, not a scientist.CorrectHorseBattery said:
Labour are not brilliant, I would never say they were. Have they done brilliant things in Government, absolutely.
Labour are in a better position than year ago, but a long way is still to go.
I think Keir would have handled it better than Johnson, that's all.
Nothing Keir has said about COVID makes me believe Labour would have done much better than e.g., the Socialists in Spain.
Two kinds of politicians have had a really good COVID:
(i) Politicians who are scientists. They are able to understand the data, to question the scientists and to take them on. (See Germany and Taiwan)
(ii) Politicians who are blind panickers. They shut down everything as soon as possible, banned travel, etc (See Norway and NZ). Although no-one could have known this right at the beginning, it turns out that screaming panic in March was the best response.
Still probably an Arsenal rather than a Sheffield Wednesday, IMO.
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I guess we are looking at a 5pm press event tomorrow evening before the Strictly final. Johnson at his most sombre.CorrectHorseBattery said:
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I fear PM Corbyn might have wanted to vaccinate Palestine before the UKkinabalu said:
I agree. DC would have been fine. And Corbyn would probably have knocked it out of the park.MarqueeMark said:
I think Cameron would have been very good. His personal history with Ivan would have allowed him to project to people having to deal with family members in ICU - and do all he could to prevent that. I don't think he would have been at all squeamish about calling lockdowns.stodge said:
It's in Johnson's nature to be optimistic and upbeat. He was like that as Mayor of London and he was like that before Covid. He praises the country and the people to the skies - fair enough, most of the time a bit of inspiration doesn't go amiss. Back in July, he wanted people "cheek by jowl" at Christmas.rottenborough said:
What an f*ing mess. Yet again Johnson and co have made an epic balls up.MaxPB said:Time to cancel this 5 day free pass. It's going to result in so many unnecessary hospitalisations and deaths.
He understands the symbolic nature of Christmas in terms of it being an oasis of normality and hope in an ocean of bad news and anxiety. He wanted to save as much of that as possible - to give people something for which to aspire, to be hopeful, to be optimistic because that's the kind of Britain he wants to lead - upbeat, confident, optimistic.
Instead, he's got a pandemic and millions are frightened, frustrated and worried for the future. Yes, he can trumpet a vaccine all he wants but for the vast majority it's meaningless as they won't be getting it any time soon - 10 million vaccinated by Christmas anyone?
In his desire to keep spirits up, he panders - he treats us like children endlessly promising jam tomorrow if we keep the faith. He's not alone - many other leaders have played that game. Perhaps Merkel is one of the few who hasn't.
The problem is when the hope turns out to be a chimera - when he has to be "honest" and tell his audience what they don't want to hear - his limitations as a Prime Minister become painfully evident. He doesn't want to be the PM who lost Christmas - it would be a millstone round his political career. Quite apart from anything else, why would anyone believe a syllable he utters ever again?
I'll be honest - Theresa May, for all her flaws, would have done this so much better.4 -
I think you are being harsh on Starmer for the moment, at leastYBarddCwsc said:
You may well be right that the Tories are useless and Labour are brilliant.CorrectHorseBattery said:If we had repeated the March lockdown from Half Term until now we could be slowly opening up for Christmas now.
The Tories are useless.
It is just a pity that all the Labour brilliance did not manifest itself in running a competent COVID response in Wales.
Looking at England and Wales, it doesn't look like a choice between useless and brilliant.
It looks like a choice between a crap bloke with blonde hair and a crap bloke with a personality bypass.
I did see a BBC Wales debate earlier in the week. I was very impressed with Adam Price. Significantly ess so with Paul Davies.0 -
Wise words. Let's also hope that the vaccines cover a broad spectrum of variants.Foxy said:
Yes, single stranded RNA viruses are rather prone to mutation, and the greater numbers of virus out there increases the probability of a nasty mutation.Benpointer said:
That's an impressive and scary animation.TimT said:
Very unlikely unless one traveller from the UK to RSA took it there are vice versa.SandyRentool said:
That suggests a more virulent strain. But is it the same variant as the one in SE England?Foxy said:
New varient in RSA tooIshmaelZ said:
Pedantically, they mutate randomly and those are the mutations that tend to get selected for. Substantively, lethality doesn't really matter when you have an absolutely huge supply of new hosts. Even when it does matter, speed of lethality is the key: you want your host to be milling around infecting others for as long as possible. Whether the host then dies or recovers is immaterial because a recovered and now immune victim and a corpse are of equal value to you.rottenborough said:
iirc virus have a tendency to mutate to more infectious but less fatal.another_richard said:
More infectious but less dangerous wouldn't be a bad combination.rottenborough said:
More infectious is a better way of describing this than more virulent imho.kle4 said:
Bad news, but almost convenient for him politically in giving him cover with the backbenchers and headlines he seems terrified of, without saying it is all the public's fault for being irresponsible.CorrectHorseBattery said:
Though the vulnerable would have to be told to shield while its spreading.
"In addition, clinicians have been providing anecdotal evidence of a shift in the clinical epidemiological picture- in particular noting that they are seeing a larger proportion of younger patients with no co-morbidities presenting with critical illness. The evidence that has been collated, therefore, strongly suggests that that the current second wave we are experiencing is being driven by this new variant."
https://sacoronavirus.co.za/2020/12/18/new-covid-19-variant-identified-in-sa
Check out this site for new strains of COVID: https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?animate=2019-12-21,2020-12-06,0,0,30000&fbclid=IwAR2SKKs1-oAP8rPdqvXJN2NGGo48hMzVOGC43ODxMP6-UZKicwWYFmm5ED8
I am sure I don't understand the detail but the impression I get is that (probably unsurprisingly) there are new variants popping up all the time.
It is one reason that vaccination needs to be worldwide, or we would just have a source for new versions.0 -
Summer holiday vacation decision was disastrous and then coke zero of lockdowns (was even worse than many other European countries). They are both inexcusable wrong think.YBarddCwsc said:
It still looks the stand out country in Western Europe, though for sure a bit more tarnished than in the Summer.FrancisUrquhart said:
Not sure Germany are in the really good category these days....relegated from the Premier League and now in the relegation zone of the Championship.YBarddCwsc said:
I frankly doubt it. Keir is a lawyer, not a scientist.CorrectHorseBattery said:
Labour are not brilliant, I would never say they were. Have they done brilliant things in Government, absolutely.
Labour are in a better position than year ago, but a long way is still to go.
I think Keir would have handled it better than Johnson, that's all.
Nothing Keir has said about COVID makes me believe Labour would have done much better than e.g., the Socialists in Spain.
Two kinds of politicians have had a really good COVID:
(i) Politicians who are scientists. They are able to understand the data, to question the scientists and to take them on. (See Germany and Taiwan)
(ii) Politicians who are blind panickers. They shut down everything as soon as possible, banned travel, etc (See Norway and NZ). Although no-one could have known this right at the beginning, it turns out that screaming panic in March was the best response.
Still probably an Arsenal rather than a Sheffield Wednesday, IMO.
Plus unwillingness to take rapid vaccine approval.
That's worse than Arteta management.1 -
Are you having a late night laugh?kinabalu said:
I agree. DC would have been fine. And Corbyn would probably have knocked it out of the park.MarqueeMark said:
I think Cameron would have been very good. His personal history with Ivan would have allowed him to project to people having to deal with family members in ICU - and do all he could to prevent that. I don't think he would have been at all squeamish about calling lockdowns.stodge said:
It's in Johnson's nature to be optimistic and upbeat. He was like that as Mayor of London and he was like that before Covid. He praises the country and the people to the skies - fair enough, most of the time a bit of inspiration doesn't go amiss. Back in July, he wanted people "cheek by jowl" at Christmas.rottenborough said:
What an f*ing mess. Yet again Johnson and co have made an epic balls up.MaxPB said:Time to cancel this 5 day free pass. It's going to result in so many unnecessary hospitalisations and deaths.
He understands the symbolic nature of Christmas in terms of it being an oasis of normality and hope in an ocean of bad news and anxiety. He wanted to save as much of that as possible - to give people something for which to aspire, to be hopeful, to be optimistic because that's the kind of Britain he wants to lead - upbeat, confident, optimistic.
Instead, he's got a pandemic and millions are frightened, frustrated and worried for the future. Yes, he can trumpet a vaccine all he wants but for the vast majority it's meaningless as they won't be getting it any time soon - 10 million vaccinated by Christmas anyone?
In his desire to keep spirits up, he panders - he treats us like children endlessly promising jam tomorrow if we keep the faith. He's not alone - many other leaders have played that game. Perhaps Merkel is one of the few who hasn't.
The problem is when the hope turns out to be a chimera - when he has to be "honest" and tell his audience what they don't want to hear - his limitations as a Prime Minister become painfully evident. He doesn't want to be the PM who lost Christmas - it would be a millstone round his political career. Quite apart from anything else, why would anyone believe a syllable he utters ever again?
I'll be honest - Theresa May, for all her flaws, would have done this so much better.2 -
0
-
0
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"changed everything" sounds ominously like xmas freebie is about to be cancelled.CorrectHorseBattery said:
Who could have predicted it...1 -
I hope Kay Burley is in a proper enforced quarantine, and not potentially spreading this new strain around Africa.CorrectHorseBattery said:0 -
All the smoke signals are very bad.....just got to pray the vaccines are still.effective against this mutant version otherwise I really don't know what...3
-
Fingers crossed mate.FrancisUrquhart said:All the smoke signals are very bad.....just got to pray the vaccines are still.effective against this mutant version otherwise I really don't know what...
0 -
I don't blame him/her/it. I need a bit of light relief myself on a Friday eveningf like this. This is rather intriguing -CorrectHorseBattery said:@kinabalu has had a few pints just like some of us
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/dec/19/tasmanian-devils-glow-in-the-dark-australian-animals-glowing-platypus-wombat-echidna-bandicoot-scientists-investigate-australia-marsupials-light0 -
Paul Davies has to be a Labour plant. Surely nobody can be as bad as Paul Davies, unless they are doing it deliberately.Mexicanpete said:
I think you are being harsh on Starmer for the moment, at leastYBarddCwsc said:
You may well be right that the Tories are useless and Labour are brilliant.CorrectHorseBattery said:If we had repeated the March lockdown from Half Term until now we could be slowly opening up for Christmas now.
The Tories are useless.
It is just a pity that all the Labour brilliance did not manifest itself in running a competent COVID response in Wales.
Looking at England and Wales, it doesn't look like a choice between useless and brilliant.
It looks like a choice between a crap bloke with blonde hair and a crap bloke with a personality bypass.
I did see a BBC Wales debate earlier in the week. I was very impressed with Adam Price. Significantly ess so with Paul Davies.
My guess is Paul yearns for a Welsh Labour Government, and he is working day and night to make the Welsh Tories look ridiculous and unelectable.2 -
It is possible that they're done nothing in particular wrong. They may have been very unlucky - it certainly looks like we have now, with the rumoured mutant strain - and it's also likely to be the case that imperfect lockdowns (and all lockdowns are by necessity imperfect, because no Government can shut down everything including utilities and the food supply and weld the whole population into their homes for 4-6 weeks,) merely slow down the progress of a disease like this rather than stopping it.Richard_Tyndall said:With all this talk of whether or not these lockdowns work, is it not worth looking at Spain?
I am not familiar at all with the details but my impression is that their lockdowns have been far more extensive and severe than in Britain and yet they seem to have fared even worse than we have, not just at the start but in the second wave as well. What have they done wrong that means lockdown has not worked?
However, if it is true that the thing is now completely out of control and sweeping through the populace like wildfire then it would seem we have little choice but to resort yet again to draconian measures. If there were no prospect of a vaccine then it would be a different matter, because this can't go on forever, but we have one already in use and a second that's much easier to deploy on the way very soon, if reports are to be believed. So, what else can the Government do under the circumstances?0 -
https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1340065863983132677
Why mess around?
Tomorrow evening, 7PM, announce a new English lockdown and cancel the Christmas easing0 -
Are these the real covidiots? Family groups outdoors will presumably spend the rest of their time indoors together, without masks. Groups of children outdoors would yesterday have been at school in even larger groups. Only your group of three families potentially contains covidiots, and that is subject to tiers and Christmas rules.TrèsDifficile said:I think we should set up antiCovidiot Patrols. During my 15 minute walk to the shops and back earlier I encountered 7 groups of fools. 2 groups of kids, around ten in each group, outdoors but stood about a foot between them and blocking pathways through a garden. 4 I presume family groups of 3-5 walking side by side along the pavement, filling its width without masks and shouting to each other. 1 group of I think three families stood outside the main entrance/exit shouting to each other without masks and in the way of everybody else.
I would have loved to have had some official antiCovidiot Patrol power that I could have harangued them, photographed them, and shamed them with.
This is the problem. Regulations and guidelines that are arbitrary, inconsistent and unintuitive.0 -
Generally they target multiple parts of the spike protein to cover these bases so one or two mutations are still unlikely to render them ineffective. You can also quite rapidly tweak them (within weeks) to target any new strain. I don't know what the approval process would be for that change but presumably it would be similar to the flu vaccine changes we make every year.Benpointer said:
Wise words. Let's also hope that the vaccines cover a broad spectrum of variants.Foxy said:
Yes, single stranded RNA viruses are rather prone to mutation, and the greater numbers of virus out there increases the probability of a nasty mutation.Benpointer said:
That's an impressive and scary animation.TimT said:
Very unlikely unless one traveller from the UK to RSA took it there are vice versa.SandyRentool said:
That suggests a more virulent strain. But is it the same variant as the one in SE England?Foxy said:
New varient in RSA tooIshmaelZ said:
Pedantically, they mutate randomly and those are the mutations that tend to get selected for. Substantively, lethality doesn't really matter when you have an absolutely huge supply of new hosts. Even when it does matter, speed of lethality is the key: you want your host to be milling around infecting others for as long as possible. Whether the host then dies or recovers is immaterial because a recovered and now immune victim and a corpse are of equal value to you.rottenborough said:
iirc virus have a tendency to mutate to more infectious but less fatal.another_richard said:
More infectious but less dangerous wouldn't be a bad combination.rottenborough said:
More infectious is a better way of describing this than more virulent imho.kle4 said:
Bad news, but almost convenient for him politically in giving him cover with the backbenchers and headlines he seems terrified of, without saying it is all the public's fault for being irresponsible.CorrectHorseBattery said:
Though the vulnerable would have to be told to shield while its spreading.
"In addition, clinicians have been providing anecdotal evidence of a shift in the clinical epidemiological picture- in particular noting that they are seeing a larger proportion of younger patients with no co-morbidities presenting with critical illness. The evidence that has been collated, therefore, strongly suggests that that the current second wave we are experiencing is being driven by this new variant."
https://sacoronavirus.co.za/2020/12/18/new-covid-19-variant-identified-in-sa
Check out this site for new strains of COVID: https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?animate=2019-12-21,2020-12-06,0,0,30000&fbclid=IwAR2SKKs1-oAP8rPdqvXJN2NGGo48hMzVOGC43ODxMP6-UZKicwWYFmm5ED8
I am sure I don't understand the detail but the impression I get is that (probably unsurprisingly) there are new variants popping up all the time.
It is one reason that vaccination needs to be worldwide, or we would just have a source for new versions.0 -
A new information campaign. That sounds like a real game-changer.CorrectHorseBattery said:0 -
I don't understand why we have all these delays....if I ran my businesses like this, I would be out of business. With Zoom, no reason you can't get together whenever required and make decisions.CorrectHorseBattery said:https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1340065863983132677
Why mess around?
Tomorrow evening, 7PM, announce a new English lockdown and cancel the Christmas easing1 -
This mutant strain thing is such utter balls. It's the get out. It was all due to 'the strain'. Quite funny really.RochdalePioneers said:
Yay! Thank goodness we will be able to get around these new restrictions at ChristmasCorrectHorseBattery said:0 -
1
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Another one to add to the off the deep end list then.Luckyguy1983 said:
This mutant strain thing is such utter balls. It's the get out. It was all due to 'the strain'. Quite funny really.RochdalePioneers said:
Yay! Thank goodness we will be able to get around these new restrictions at ChristmasCorrectHorseBattery said:0 -
To misquote BR of old: the strain takes the strain.Luckyguy1983 said:
This mutant strain thing is such utter balls. It's the get out. It was all due to 'the strain'. Quite funny really.RochdalePioneers said:
Yay! Thank goodness we will be able to get around these new restrictions at ChristmasCorrectHorseBattery said:1 -
Wonder if the new strain is only marginally more transmissible but the relaxation around Christmas and the government's shitty messaging campaign have eroded the edges of the rules and caused people to mix more readily. Depressingly that's probably the best case scenario.CorrectHorseBattery said:https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1340065863983132677
Why mess around?
Tomorrow evening, 7PM, announce a new English lockdown and cancel the Christmas easing
EDIT: also paging @ydoethur turns out the people on the ground were actually right!4 -
Close the Tube too. Now. An "alarmingly infectious" strain is going to whizz around the network otherwise.CorrectHorseBattery said:https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1340065863983132677
Why mess around?
Tomorrow evening, 7PM, announce a new English lockdown and cancel the Christmas easing1 -
They were all blocking the way for other people. Masklessly. When people block walkways they're being massive idiots. Walk behind each other on narrow paths. Stand talking to the side, not in the middle. Don't gather in groups of ten. None of it is complicated.DecrepiterJohnL said:.
Are these the real covidiots? Family groups outdoors will presumably spend the rest of their time indoors together, without masks. Groups of children outdoors would yesterday have been at school in even larger groups. Only your group of three families potentially contains covidiots, and that is subject to tiers and Christmas rules.TrèsDifficile said:I think we should set up antiCovidiot Patrols. During my 15 minute walk to the shops and back earlier I encountered 7 groups of fools. 2 groups of kids, around ten in each group, outdoors but stood about a foot between them and blocking pathways through a garden. 4 I presume family groups of 3-5 walking side by side along the pavement, filling its width without masks and shouting to each other. 1 group of I think three families stood outside the main entrance/exit shouting to each other without masks and in the way of everybody else.
I would have loved to have had some official antiCovidiot Patrol power that I could have harangued them, photographed them, and shamed them with.
This is the problem. Regulations and guidelines that are arbitrary, inconsistent and unintuitive.0 -
The good news is that the current vaccines should be effective against all known variants as the key part of the virus - the spike protein and the RNA that codes for that, is stable. Indeed, chances are that mutations to that part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus would make it less transmissible, given what an efficient binding solution the current variants share.Benpointer said:
Wise words. Let's also hope that the vaccines cover a broad spectrum of variants.Foxy said:
Yes, single stranded RNA viruses are rather prone to mutation, and the greater numbers of virus out there increases the probability of a nasty mutation.Benpointer said:
That's an impressive and scary animation.TimT said:
Very unlikely unless one traveller from the UK to RSA took it there are vice versa.SandyRentool said:
That suggests a more virulent strain. But is it the same variant as the one in SE England?Foxy said:
New varient in RSA tooIshmaelZ said:
Pedantically, they mutate randomly and those are the mutations that tend to get selected for. Substantively, lethality doesn't really matter when you have an absolutely huge supply of new hosts. Even when it does matter, speed of lethality is the key: you want your host to be milling around infecting others for as long as possible. Whether the host then dies or recovers is immaterial because a recovered and now immune victim and a corpse are of equal value to you.rottenborough said:
iirc virus have a tendency to mutate to more infectious but less fatal.another_richard said:
More infectious but less dangerous wouldn't be a bad combination.rottenborough said:
More infectious is a better way of describing this than more virulent imho.kle4 said:
Bad news, but almost convenient for him politically in giving him cover with the backbenchers and headlines he seems terrified of, without saying it is all the public's fault for being irresponsible.CorrectHorseBattery said:
Though the vulnerable would have to be told to shield while its spreading.
"In addition, clinicians have been providing anecdotal evidence of a shift in the clinical epidemiological picture- in particular noting that they are seeing a larger proportion of younger patients with no co-morbidities presenting with critical illness. The evidence that has been collated, therefore, strongly suggests that that the current second wave we are experiencing is being driven by this new variant."
https://sacoronavirus.co.za/2020/12/18/new-covid-19-variant-identified-in-sa
Check out this site for new strains of COVID: https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?animate=2019-12-21,2020-12-06,0,0,30000&fbclid=IwAR2SKKs1-oAP8rPdqvXJN2NGGo48hMzVOGC43ODxMP6-UZKicwWYFmm5ED8
I am sure I don't understand the detail but the impression I get is that (probably unsurprisingly) there are new variants popping up all the time.
It is one reason that vaccination needs to be worldwide, or we would just have a source for new versions.3 -
For sure I am not arguing against another lockdown. I think it is inevitable. I would just want to know whether in fact they are going to work. They certainly don't seem to have succeeded in Spain from what I can see although as I say that is just an outsiders perspective. I was hoping some of our contributors who live there might be able to shine some light on this.Black_Rook said:
It is possible that they're done nothing in particular wrong. They may have been very unlucky - it certainly looks like we have now, with the rumoured mutant strain - and it's also likely to be the case that imperfect lockdowns (and all lockdowns are by necessity imperfect, because no Government can shut down everything including utilities and the food supply and weld the whole population into their homes for 4-6 weeks,) merely slow down the progress of a disease like this rather than stopping it.Richard_Tyndall said:With all this talk of whether or not these lockdowns work, is it not worth looking at Spain?
I am not familiar at all with the details but my impression is that their lockdowns have been far more extensive and severe than in Britain and yet they seem to have fared even worse than we have, not just at the start but in the second wave as well. What have they done wrong that means lockdown has not worked?
However, if it is true that the thing is now completely out of control and sweeping through the populace like wildfire then it would seem we have little choice but to resort yet again to draconian measures. If there were no prospect of a vaccine then it would be a different matter, because this can't go on forever, but we have one already in use and a second that's much easier to deploy on the way very soon, if reports are to be believed. So, what else can the Government do under the circumstances?0 -
-
Open their massive night clubs?Richard_Tyndall said:With all this talk of whether or not these lockdowns work, is it not worth looking at Spain?
I am not familiar at all with the details but my impression is that their lockdowns have been far more extensive and severe than in Britain and yet they seem to have fared even worse than we have, not just at the start but in the second wave as well. What have they done wrong that means lockdown has not worked?1 -
Don't know how these things happen. Further delay would have been bad, sure, and a somewhat buggy release need not have long term repercussions (never done Bethesda any harm), but so bad it needs to be pulled? They built up such a great reputation off The Witcher 3 (when the first game was pretty meh all things considered), and this could hit them hard.FrancisUrquhart said:Talking of over promise, under deliver...CD Projekt Red....gone so badly, Sony have delisted Cyberpunk 2077 from their own playstation store.
0 -
If schools are the vector, they have just broken up for Christmas anyway.CorrectHorseBattery said:https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1340065863983132677
Why mess around?
Tomorrow evening, 7PM, announce a new English lockdown and cancel the Christmas easing1 -
I thought a big concern with this new variant was a mutation on the spike protein?TimT said:
The good news is that the current vaccines should be effective against all known variants as the key part of the virus - the spike protein and the RNA that codes for that, is stable. Indeed, chances are that mutations to that part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus would make it less transmissible, given what an efficient binding solution the virus has.Benpointer said:
Wise words. Let's also hope that the vaccines cover a broad spectrum of variants.Foxy said:
Yes, single stranded RNA viruses are rather prone to mutation, and the greater numbers of virus out there increases the probability of a nasty mutation.Benpointer said:
That's an impressive and scary animation.TimT said:
Very unlikely unless one traveller from the UK to RSA took it there are vice versa.SandyRentool said:
That suggests a more virulent strain. But is it the same variant as the one in SE England?Foxy said:
New varient in RSA tooIshmaelZ said:
Pedantically, they mutate randomly and those are the mutations that tend to get selected for. Substantively, lethality doesn't really matter when you have an absolutely huge supply of new hosts. Even when it does matter, speed of lethality is the key: you want your host to be milling around infecting others for as long as possible. Whether the host then dies or recovers is immaterial because a recovered and now immune victim and a corpse are of equal value to you.rottenborough said:
iirc virus have a tendency to mutate to more infectious but less fatal.another_richard said:
More infectious but less dangerous wouldn't be a bad combination.rottenborough said:
More infectious is a better way of describing this than more virulent imho.kle4 said:
Bad news, but almost convenient for him politically in giving him cover with the backbenchers and headlines he seems terrified of, without saying it is all the public's fault for being irresponsible.CorrectHorseBattery said:
Though the vulnerable would have to be told to shield while its spreading.
"In addition, clinicians have been providing anecdotal evidence of a shift in the clinical epidemiological picture- in particular noting that they are seeing a larger proportion of younger patients with no co-morbidities presenting with critical illness. The evidence that has been collated, therefore, strongly suggests that that the current second wave we are experiencing is being driven by this new variant."
https://sacoronavirus.co.za/2020/12/18/new-covid-19-variant-identified-in-sa
Check out this site for new strains of COVID: https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?animate=2019-12-21,2020-12-06,0,0,30000&fbclid=IwAR2SKKs1-oAP8rPdqvXJN2NGGo48hMzVOGC43ODxMP6-UZKicwWYFmm5ED8
I am sure I don't understand the detail but the impression I get is that (probably unsurprisingly) there are new variants popping up all the time.
It is one reason that vaccination needs to be worldwide, or we would just have a source for new versions.0 -
I agree. But the world is full of wankers who must have their summer holiday or their skiing trip.FrancisUrquhart said:
Summer holiday vacation decision was disastrous and then coke zero of lockdowns (was even worse than many other European countries). They are both inexcusable wrong think.YBarddCwsc said:
It still looks the stand out country in Western Europe, though for sure a bit more tarnished than in the Summer.FrancisUrquhart said:
Not sure Germany are in the really good category these days....relegated from the Premier League and now in the relegation zone of the Championship.YBarddCwsc said:
I frankly doubt it. Keir is a lawyer, not a scientist.CorrectHorseBattery said:
Labour are not brilliant, I would never say they were. Have they done brilliant things in Government, absolutely.
Labour are in a better position than year ago, but a long way is still to go.
I think Keir would have handled it better than Johnson, that's all.
Nothing Keir has said about COVID makes me believe Labour would have done much better than e.g., the Socialists in Spain.
Two kinds of politicians have had a really good COVID:
(i) Politicians who are scientists. They are able to understand the data, to question the scientists and to take them on. (See Germany and Taiwan)
(ii) Politicians who are blind panickers. They shut down everything as soon as possible, banned travel, etc (See Norway and NZ). Although no-one could have known this right at the beginning, it turns out that screaming panic in March was the best response.
Still probably an Arsenal rather than a Sheffield Wednesday, IMO.
So, Merkel (along with every other European leader) probably felt she could not do what was really needed to be done.
My solution is we bill everyone who went skiing or went on summer holidays to Spain the full economic cost of the virus.
Of course, the chavs who went to Magaluf don't have any money, but at least we can reduce the Tyrolean skiers to penury.1 -
Good thing I cancelled might trip to my father's place over Xmas, at this rate I'd have been locked down there unable to return.0
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Urgent refilming for the Queen's Speech incoming? "I hope you are all enjoying the Christmas bubbles..."0
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And maybe the government needs to rip up the vaccine priority list and start jabbing away at schoolchildren who, conveniently enough, gather together in large buildings.DecrepiterJohnL said:
If schools are the vector, they have just broken up for Christmas anyway.CorrectHorseBattery said:https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1340065863983132677
Why mess around?
Tomorrow evening, 7PM, announce a new English lockdown and cancel the Christmas easing0 -
Apparently the game is not only buggy, but lots of last gen tech in what was a supposed next gen game e.g. the AI of the NPCs is like something out of a game from 10 years ago. Which is totally indefensible.kle4 said:
Don't know how these things happen. Further delay would have been bad, sure, and a somewhat buggy release need not have long term repercussions (never done Bethesda any harm), but so bad it needs to be pulled? They built up such a great reputation off The Witcher 3 (when the first game was pretty meh all things considered), and this could hit them hard.FrancisUrquhart said:Talking of over promise, under deliver...CD Projekt Red....gone so badly, Sony have delisted Cyberpunk 2077 from their own playstation store.
0 -
Perhaps pedestrians should adopt traffic rules - e.g. always walk on the left pavement.TrèsDifficile said:
They were all blocking the way for other people. Masklessly. When people block walkways they're being massive idiots. Walk behind each other on narrow paths. Stand talking to the side, not in the middle. Don't gather in groups of ten. None of it is complicated.DecrepiterJohnL said:.
Are these the real covidiots? Family groups outdoors will presumably spend the rest of their time indoors together, without masks. Groups of children outdoors would yesterday have been at school in even larger groups. Only your group of three families potentially contains covidiots, and that is subject to tiers and Christmas rules.TrèsDifficile said:I think we should set up antiCovidiot Patrols. During my 15 minute walk to the shops and back earlier I encountered 7 groups of fools. 2 groups of kids, around ten in each group, outdoors but stood about a foot between them and blocking pathways through a garden. 4 I presume family groups of 3-5 walking side by side along the pavement, filling its width without masks and shouting to each other. 1 group of I think three families stood outside the main entrance/exit shouting to each other without masks and in the way of everybody else.
I would have loved to have had some official antiCovidiot Patrol power that I could have harangued them, photographed them, and shamed them with.
This is the problem. Regulations and guidelines that are arbitrary, inconsistent and unintuitive.
1 -
Yeah the Spanish unlocked too early (like we did) because they desperately wanted the tourist season and between them and the complicity of a lot of other European governments they ended up reseeding infections into countries where the virus was dying embers.dixiedean said:
Open their massive night clubs?Richard_Tyndall said:With all this talk of whether or not these lockdowns work, is it not worth looking at Spain?
I am not familiar at all with the details but my impression is that their lockdowns have been far more extensive and severe than in Britain and yet they seem to have fared even worse than we have, not just at the start but in the second wave as well. What have they done wrong that means lockdown has not worked?3 -
The idiots should certainly be encouraged to avoid five abreast.geoffw said:
Perhaps pedestrians should adopt traffic rules - e.g. always walk on the left pavement.TrèsDifficile said:
They were all blocking the way for other people. Masklessly. When people block walkways they're being massive idiots. Walk behind each other on narrow paths. Stand talking to the side, not in the middle. Don't gather in groups of ten. None of it is complicated.DecrepiterJohnL said:.
Are these the real covidiots? Family groups outdoors will presumably spend the rest of their time indoors together, without masks. Groups of children outdoors would yesterday have been at school in even larger groups. Only your group of three families potentially contains covidiots, and that is subject to tiers and Christmas rules.TrèsDifficile said:I think we should set up antiCovidiot Patrols. During my 15 minute walk to the shops and back earlier I encountered 7 groups of fools. 2 groups of kids, around ten in each group, outdoors but stood about a foot between them and blocking pathways through a garden. 4 I presume family groups of 3-5 walking side by side along the pavement, filling its width without masks and shouting to each other. 1 group of I think three families stood outside the main entrance/exit shouting to each other without masks and in the way of everybody else.
I would have loved to have had some official antiCovidiot Patrol power that I could have harangued them, photographed them, and shamed them with.
This is the problem. Regulations and guidelines that are arbitrary, inconsistent and unintuitive.0 -
I'm enjoying it but there are some baffling things in it which are clearly as a result of "Oh shit out of time" crunch. The most jarring one is that the game simulates tail lights of cars ahead of you on freeways as sprites but they don't align properly with the road so they sort of float. Then you get totally booted from the immersion because the headlights coming towards you just vanish and don't resolve themselves into an actual vehicles.FrancisUrquhart said:
Apparently the game is not only buggy, but lots of last gen tech in what was a supposed next gen game e.g. the AI of the NPCs is like something out of a game from 10 years ago. Which is totally indefensible.kle4 said:
Don't know how these things happen. Further delay would have been bad, sure, and a somewhat buggy release need not have long term repercussions (never done Bethesda any harm), but so bad it needs to be pulled? They built up such a great reputation off The Witcher 3 (when the first game was pretty meh all things considered), and this could hit them hard.FrancisUrquhart said:Talking of over promise, under deliver...CD Projekt Red....gone so badly, Sony have delisted Cyberpunk 2077 from their own playstation store.
0 -
Jupiter and Saturn meet in closest ‘great conjunction’ since 1623 this coming Monday.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/dec/18/jupiter-and-saturn-meet-in-closest-great-conjunction-since-1623
I've consulted my astrology charts and this conjuction is a strong sign of the following events:
- A grate plague will sweep ye whole worlde*.
- The Chief of Men in ye New Worlde will suffer ignomie & defete, & become withall the Great Loser & spouter of ye Sour Grapes*.
- Her Royal Majestie's Chief Minister will seek comfort once again in the remedie of a U-turne & will proclaim that Christ's mass this year be cancelled.
- Her Majestie's Chief Minister will make a Treatie of Trade with the Continent as the clock striketh 11pm on the last day of December, & will proclaim a Great Victory.
(Do thine own re-search.)
(*Some of these projections may be retrospective.)3 -
It's all part of my mysterious allure. Or infuriating tendency to caveat every opinion, take your pick.CorrectHorseBattery said:
still don't know where you stand politicallykle4 said:
That would be somewhat hypocritical of me.CorrectHorseBattery said:
A sly dig at me was that?kle4 said:
Black Rook has always been about the quality not quantity of posts, makes some of us look bad frankly.CorrectHorseBattery said:@Black_Rook is right as usual, I may as well just stop posting and let them represent me
Pleasant evening to all - it truly is a long december.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrsSbjcKCBg0 -
It's a slap on the head moment for me that SA article, which states the variant has turned up in the UK.
I'd been puzzling Kent - saying it must be spreading in places that are not locked down.
I'd been saying that the high-ish rates of infections in secondary children were actually still really low when you considered the level of social contact they'd had.
D'oh, the evolution went where the social contact was. A form better at infecting younger people was favoured with the adults still distancing and the kids not. And even if that's not the whole accurate story quite yet, the hindsight of a form more infectious to kids being favoured was there for all to see.
I don't think I've immediately changed my mind on schools' opening back in September, but the longer holidays call was a good one, and perhaps we should have been alive to this.
It might require some interruption to the new secondary term to assess more fully how it is behaving (I don't know if primary and nursery school kids are more prone yet, perhaps they could yet go back OK, but that might ultimately be the beginning of another forcing).
I guess I'm not entirely sure how I think we should play this turn.0 -
But at least no Councils were permitted to recklessly close schools.Alistair said:
So there is that.0 -
They can't it hasn't been tested in children yet. That's an ethical line we really, really shouldn't cross. The answer is, I'm afraid, back to e-learning for a while.DecrepiterJohnL said:
And maybe the government needs to rip up the vaccine priority list and start jabbing away at schoolchildren who, conveniently enough, gather together in large buildings.DecrepiterJohnL said:
If schools are the vector, they have just broken up for Christmas anyway.CorrectHorseBattery said:https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1340065863983132677
Why mess around?
Tomorrow evening, 7PM, announce a new English lockdown and cancel the Christmas easing0 -
No, the best thing to do is to keep the schools shut until the vulnerable people can be vaccinated. Besides which, if the vaccines haven't been tested in children (and my understanding is that they haven't) then the regulator wouldn't licence them for use anyway.DecrepiterJohnL said:
And maybe the government needs to rip up the vaccine priority list and start jabbing away at schoolchildren who, conveniently enough, gather together in large buildings.DecrepiterJohnL said:
If schools are the vector, they have just broken up for Christmas anyway.CorrectHorseBattery said:https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1340065863983132677
Why mess around?
Tomorrow evening, 7PM, announce a new English lockdown and cancel the Christmas easing
You don't use a medicine on kids that hasn't been tested for its suitability for use on kids, most especially not when the condition it is intended to prevent causes few cases of serious illnesses and practically zero mortality in kids.0 -
It was interesting that London / SE didn't see any increase in hospital admissions, despite increases everywhere else in the UK....some suggestion perhaps some community immunity...then this rapid increase. Could just be coincidence with this new variant.0
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I know this is a snit time and things are really pretty bad but there is really no need to have the sort of breakdown I myself had in May. Variations like this are commonplace. There have already, apparently, been 4000 mutations in the COVID-19 spike protein. They are used to monitor new strains. The British Medical Journal reports as follows -FrancisUrquhart said:
I thought a big concern with this new variant was a mutation on the spike protein?
SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus, and mutations arise naturally as the virus replicates. Many thousands of mutations have already arisen, but only a very small minority are likely to be important and to change the virus in an appreciable way. COG-UK says that there are currently around 4000 mutations in the spike protein.
Sharon Peacock, director of COG-UK, told the Science Media Centre briefing, “Mutations are expected and are a natural part of evolution. Many thousands of mutations have already arisen, and the vast majority have no effect on the virus but can be useful as a barcode to monitor outbreaks.
...
The new variant has mutations to the spike protein that the three leading vaccines are targeting. However, vaccines produce antibodies against many regions in the spike protein, so it’s unlikely that a single change would make the vaccine less effective.
Over time, as more mutations occur, the vaccine may need to be altered. This happens with seasonal flu, which mutates every year, and the vaccine is adjusted accordingly. The SARS-CoV-2 virus doesn’t mutate as quickly as the flu virus, and the vaccines that have so far proved effective in trials are types that can easily be tweaked if necessary
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m48570 -
If we get the over 80s vaccinated.OnboardG1 said:
They can't it hasn't been tested in children yet. That's an ethical line we really, really shouldn't cross. The answer is, I'm afraid, back to e-learning for a while.DecrepiterJohnL said:
And maybe the government needs to rip up the vaccine priority list and start jabbing away at schoolchildren who, conveniently enough, gather together in large buildings.DecrepiterJohnL said:
If schools are the vector, they have just broken up for Christmas anyway.CorrectHorseBattery said:https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1340065863983132677
Why mess around?
Tomorrow evening, 7PM, announce a new English lockdown and cancel the Christmas easing
If we can get enough likely spreaders vaccinated to demonstrate that the vaccines do indeed suppress spread via the vaccinated.
That's when we adjust the priority list.
Give it a month or so on the current path first.0 -
If one London borough had been allowed to get away with closing schools, when the whole system at the moment is based on keeping schools open and screw everything else, wouldn't that have just led to all schools closing again as all authorities took independent action under pressure from teaching unions?dixiedean said:
But at least no Councils were permitted to recklessly close schools.Alistair said:
So there is that.0 -
He's my Assembly Member. Over promoted even as an AM, and that takes some doing. Ought to go back to working in the bank in Haverfordwest.YBarddCwsc said:
Paul Davies has to be a Labour plant. Surely nobody can be as bad as Paul Davies, unless they are doing it deliberately.Mexicanpete said:
I think you are being harsh on Starmer for the moment, at leastYBarddCwsc said:
You may well be right that the Tories are useless and Labour are brilliant.CorrectHorseBattery said:If we had repeated the March lockdown from Half Term until now we could be slowly opening up for Christmas now.
The Tories are useless.
It is just a pity that all the Labour brilliance did not manifest itself in running a competent COVID response in Wales.
Looking at England and Wales, it doesn't look like a choice between useless and brilliant.
It looks like a choice between a crap bloke with blonde hair and a crap bloke with a personality bypass.
I did see a BBC Wales debate earlier in the week. I was very impressed with Adam Price. Significantly ess so with Paul Davies.
My guess is Paul yearns for a Welsh Labour Government, and he is working day and night to make the Welsh Tories look ridiculous and unelectable.0 -
I don't think the prevalence has ever reached the levels needed for community immunity in the UK. They didn't in Stockholm either.FrancisUrquhart said:It was interesting that London / SE didn't see any increase in hospital admissions, despite increases everywhere else in the UK....some suggestion perhaps some community immunity...then this rapid increase. Could just be coincidence with this new variant.
0 -
Makes the recently cancelled one dayers look a bit dodge too.Pro_Rata said:It's a slap on the head moment for me that SA article, which states the variant has turned up in the UK.
I'd been puzzling Kent - saying it must be spreading in places that are not locked down.
I'd been saying that the high-ish rates of infections in secondary children were actually still really low when you considered the level of social contact they'd had.
D'oh, the evolution went where the social contact was. A form better at infecting younger people was favoured with the adults still distancing and the kids not. And even if that's not the whole accurate story quite yet, the hindsight of a form more infectious to kids being favoured was there for all to see.
I don't think I've immediately changed my mind on schools' opening back in September, but the longer holidays call was a good one, and perhaps we should have been alive to this.
It might require some interruption to the new secondary term to assess more fully how it is behaving (I don't know if primary and nursery school kids are more prone yet, perhaps they could yet go back OK, but that might ultimately be the beginning of another forcing).
I guess I'm not entirely sure how I think we should play this turn.0 -
Slough Grammar closing even earlier than Greenwich did not provoke Williamson's ire. Perhaps Eton has friends in high places.TrèsDifficile said:
If one London borough had been allowed to get away with closing schools, when the whole system at the moment is based on keeping schools open and screw everything else, wouldn't that have just led to all schools closing again as all authorities took independent action under pressure from teaching unions?dixiedean said:
But at least no Councils were permitted to recklessly close schools.Alistair said:
So there is that.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-552744370 -
There's going to be seven of us at my parents this Xmas as we're forming a single household bubble this weekend until the 27th now that our 7 day isolation is complete.
That's going to be an interesting week coming up from tomorrow. My wife and I are back into my room which was barely big enough for one teenager. My sister, brother-in-law and niece are in her old room, that means sharing with a 2 year old and my sister is pregnant. It's a big house but it's going to be absolute hell because my mum is going to go insane and basically cook all the food. At least last year it was only two days and we were able to escape to the pub.0 -
Does this mean their lockdown is working or not working?FrancisUrquhart said:0 -
I couldn't agree more.YBarddCwsc said:
I agree. But the world is full of wankers who must have their summer holiday or their skiing trip.FrancisUrquhart said:
Summer holiday vacation decision was disastrous and then coke zero of lockdowns (was even worse than many other European countries). They are both inexcusable wrong think.YBarddCwsc said:
It still looks the stand out country in Western Europe, though for sure a bit more tarnished than in the Summer.FrancisUrquhart said:
Not sure Germany are in the really good category these days....relegated from the Premier League and now in the relegation zone of the Championship.YBarddCwsc said:
I frankly doubt it. Keir is a lawyer, not a scientist.CorrectHorseBattery said:
Labour are not brilliant, I would never say they were. Have they done brilliant things in Government, absolutely.
Labour are in a better position than year ago, but a long way is still to go.
I think Keir would have handled it better than Johnson, that's all.
Nothing Keir has said about COVID makes me believe Labour would have done much better than e.g., the Socialists in Spain.
Two kinds of politicians have had a really good COVID:
(i) Politicians who are scientists. They are able to understand the data, to question the scientists and to take them on. (See Germany and Taiwan)
(ii) Politicians who are blind panickers. They shut down everything as soon as possible, banned travel, etc (See Norway and NZ). Although no-one could have known this right at the beginning, it turns out that screaming panic in March was the best response.
Still probably an Arsenal rather than a Sheffield Wednesday, IMO.
So, Merkel (along with every other European leader) probably felt she could not do what was really needed to be done.
My solution is we bill everyone who went skiing or went on summer holidays to Spain the full economic cost of the virus.
Of course, the chavs who went to Magaluf don't have any money, but at least we can reduce the Tyrolean skiers to penury.
The UK is an island, the easiest thing in the world would be contain the virus by going full Stasi and stopping the indulgent from coming and going.
Another fail from Drakeford.0 -
It only started yesterday!Andy_JS said:
Does this mean their lockdown is working or not working?FrancisUrquhart said:1 -
TV adverts for Cyberpunk 2077 still playing.....0
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Their full fat lockdown only started a couple days ago, so far too soon to make it into the numbers.Andy_JS said:
Does this mean their lockdown is working or not working?FrancisUrquhart said:0 -
That's definitely the same sort of apple and not an orange.DecrepiterJohnL said:
Slough Grammar closing even earlier than Greenwich did not provoke Williamson's ire. Perhaps Eton has friends in high places.TrèsDifficile said:
If one London borough had been allowed to get away with closing schools, when the whole system at the moment is based on keeping schools open and screw everything else, wouldn't that have just led to all schools closing again as all authorities took independent action under pressure from teaching unions?dixiedean said:
But at least no Councils were permitted to recklessly close schools.Alistair said:
So there is that.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-552744370
This discussion has been closed.