On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
In defence of Johnson, any leader would be struggling with a mutating strain of Covid. Successfully handling these problems are NOT in the 10 Downing Street training manual.
Having said that, Johnson is uniquely ill equipped to deal with a national catastrophe. All his Prime Ministerial predecessors in my lifetime would have had the gravitas to communicate solemnity during this time ( even Theresa). Hunt and Starmer also have that skill. That is not to say the outcome would be much better, but at least we could be reassured that sensible people were on the case.
Johnson can easily remove one of the monkeys from his back and extend the EU trade transition period for a year. We may be more able to handle the shock of no deal or bad deal in twelve months time. But Johnson is an infamous dithered and the moment might pass him by, for fear of upsetting critics to the left and the right in his party.
Johnson has based his "Boris Johnson" stage character on Benny Hill. Can I suggest Kenneth Williams would have been more appropriate. "Infamy, infamy, they've all got it infamy".
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
If you can't see why Wednesday's attitude is a problem then I can't help you. However, were someone to try and pull that trick on a client, I would be asking them to explain what evidence they had on Wednesday to justify their attitude that day and considering whether to keep them in that role.
PMQs is Punch and Judy. Always has been. Starmer stokes that by going on the attack every week and Boris feeds into it too. C'est la vie, why get hung up on Punch and Judy gibberish from either side?
The science changed on Thursday. They immediately acted. When the facts change you need to change your mind, he did and acted quickly.
Boris on Wednesday - Christmas is fine Starmer is lying
Boris on Saturday - Christmas is off and it's off in ways you can't imagine 30 seconds earlier.
The fact it's punch and Judy means there are times you should be more careful in what you say and Wednesday was one of those days.
The Government went from possibility of an issue, to nothing to worry about and then to it's Cancelled in under a week.
And it's the middle bit there that is a problem as it wasn't necessary it was there to score points and it rather backfired.
Half my life is spent doing expectation management and Boris last week is a textbook example on how to complete screw it up by building up false hope after the initial there is a potential problem statement has been issued.
NERVTAG reported between Wednesday and Saturday.
When the facts change you change your mind. All you are doing is emphasising how rapidly and agily Boris was able to pivot and adjust to the post-NERVTAG new reality. Kudos Boris, well done.
You are missing the point - we knew there was a problem on Monday - the only thing we didn't know was the scale of it.
When the facts change you change your mind
There are no facts. The 70% quicker transmission of the disease is not a fact. It is still a hypothesis. The strength of the new strain is also completely unknown and will be for weeks.
Minds are being changed on shrill hypotheses from a body that has a track record of form in shrill hypotheses.
How full should the hospitals need to be, of all these false positives, before government enacts further restrictions on movement and socialising?
I think what this exposes most is the government's naivete on vaccine passports and the vaccine scheduling. Key workers, including those in freight who are very likely to go overseas and NHS staff, should have been first in the queue and they should all get a valid photo ID two weeks after their second jab to say they've had it.
I've been banging on about this for months, there's no point in saving all the old people if there's no economy left to function afterwards. Our vaccine strategy is completely wrong and now with this new mutation we've been caught out again.
For months we should have been testing every single person who entered and left the UK and prevented people who test positive from doing so, the complete failure of the government to do this is why the whole world is closing the border to us including shipping and freight.
If we had a working test on exit solution it's unlikely that any of these measures from other countries would continue beyond a day or two. Now the government needs to scramble one together at the ports to reopen freight and shipping and hope that France etc... think it's enough.
This government has failed to meet every single challenge thrown up by the virus. We're now paying the price for it. It's not been an easy situation but frankly amateurs on PB have had a better crisis than every single minister. It hasn't been an impossible task as some are pretending.
I have to agree. Without trying to minimise the difficulty of what was thrown at the government, I am absolutely certain that a MaxPB PM would have done a great deal better. (And that is not me being ironic.)
Lol, I was actually thinking of you mate!
Fwiw, I would have extended the EU transition period by two years in the summer and opted out of the EU recovery fund as part of that so we wouldn't be on the hook.
FTP - I think @Nigelb posted a good article from a scientific magazine last night.
My takeaways:
(1) This virus probably is more contagious but probably not as much as it first looks (first results from raw data are often deceptive) (2) It does mutate fast (once or twice a month, in fact) but we have labs here constantly tracking it and working on that (3) It's probably out in the world already (4) Ending social interactions and having complete physical barriers will stop its spread - even if the R is 100.
So, if we do have a new lockdown it will still be effective it's just there will be different rules. Like 5m spacing. Masks on inside and outside. Full PPE for staff. Far fewer in shops etc.
To add to that is the unknown virulence of this mutated strain. I think I`m correct in saying that the jury is still out on this, though there is expectation in some quarters that that the mutation will prove less virulent that the original. Anyone been following this?
I think mutations towards higher transmissibility also resulting in lower virulence has been observed as a general tendency, but that doesn't mean that it always applies to individual mutations. It's quite possible to get worse in both respects.
But unlikely. Covid - or its strapping offspring - is doing a pretty brilliant job of its one and only task: infecting every human on earth.
What would it gain (yes, I know it isn’t actually sentient) from becoming nastier and killing more hosts, thus reducing its ability to spread? Corpses don’t generally infect other people. And if it becomes more lethal humans will go into ultimate lockdown, which is also a setback for the bug.
I am not a virologist but the evolutionary pressure on a virus like this is not to become nastier.
Or so I hope, up here in Suffolk
Unfortunately, it's not even that, really. Covid is a pattern that can copy itself, so it does. No particular task, no particular target. A more effectively copied pattern will spread faster. If the pattern kills it's host too quickly, it will struggle to spread. Eventually, you end up with viruses that spread well and don't do too much harm to too many of their hosts, but there's no intention there. And certainly no first principles reason to think that Covid 2.0 is going to play more nicely with humans.
The hope is the vaccine, the fact that humans do the right thing when they have to, and that spring will come.
Shapps has presided over one of the UK's most egregious COVID policy failures - its complete failure to mount any sort of effective border control/quarantine.
On R4 this a.m. he told of a wedding party after which one attendee was diagnosed with CV-19 on attending hospital for another matter, then all 11 were contacted and each tested positive. But all were entirely symptom free. It was implied they had caught the new variant. It's an anecdote but the following occurred to me: the new more contagious(?) strain is out-competing the earlier strains; but if it leaves many hosts symptom-free perhaps it is less harmful; this may be a beneficial evolution for the virus; and for humans it may appear like an inverse form of Gresham's Law ("bad money drives out good"), namely faster but milder virus drives out slower but stronger virus. Nature thus delivering a kind of natural immunisation programme. Probably nonsense but I am a glass half-full person.
Unfortunately hospitalisations are soaring in London and the SE where Supercovid is dominant, which strongly implies the new bug is still pretty brutal
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
If you can't see why Wednesday's attitude is a problem then I can't help you. However, were someone to try and pull that trick on a client, I would be asking them to explain what evidence they had on Wednesday to justify their attitude that day and considering whether to keep them in that role.
PMQs is Punch and Judy. Always has been. Starmer stokes that by going on the attack every week and Boris feeds into it too. C'est la vie, why get hung up on Punch and Judy gibberish from either side?
The science changed on Thursday. They immediately acted. When the facts change you need to change your mind, he did and acted quickly.
Boris on Wednesday - Christmas is fine Starmer is lying
Boris on Saturday - Christmas is off and it's off in ways you can't imagine 30 seconds earlier.
The fact it's punch and Judy means there are times you should be more careful in what you say and Wednesday was one of those days.
The Government went from possibility of an issue, to nothing to worry about and then to it's Cancelled in under a week.
And it's the middle bit there that is a problem as it wasn't necessary it was there to score points and it rather backfired.
Half my life is spent doing expectation management and Boris last week is a textbook example on how to complete screw it up by building up false hope after the initial there is a potential problem statement has been issued.
NERVTAG reported between Wednesday and Saturday.
When the facts change you change your mind. All you are doing is emphasising how rapidly and agily Boris was able to pivot and adjust to the post-NERVTAG new reality. Kudos Boris, well done.
You are missing the point - we knew there was a problem on Monday - the only thing we didn't know was the scale of it.
When the facts change you change your mind
There are no facts. The 70% quicker transmission of the disease is not a fact. It is still a hypothesis. The strength of the new strain is also completely unknown and will be for weeks.
Minds are being changed on shrill hypotheses from a body that has a track record of form in shrill hypotheses.
How full should the hospitals need to be, of all these false positives, before government enacts further restrictions on movement and socialising?
FTP - I think @Nigelb posted a good article from a scientific magazine last night.
My takeaways:
(1) This virus probably is more contagious but probably not as much as it first looks (first results from raw data are often deceptive) (2) It does mutate fast (once or twice a month, in fact) but we have labs here constantly tracking it and working on that (3) It's probably out in the world already (4) Ending social interactions and having complete physical barriers will stop its spread - even if the R is 100.
So, if we do have a new lockdown it will still be effective it's just there will be different rules. Like 5m spacing. Masks on inside and outside. Full PPE for staff. Far fewer in shops etc.
To add to that is the unknown virulence of this mutated strain. I think I`m correct in saying that the jury is still out on this, though there is expectation in some quarters that that the mutation will prove less virulent that the original. Anyone been following this?
I think mutations towards higher transmissibility also resulting in lower virulence has been observed as a general tendency, but that doesn't mean that it always applies to individual mutations. It's quite possible to get worse in both respects.
But unlikely. Covid - or its strapping offspring - is doing a pretty brilliant job of its one and only task: infecting every human on earth.
What would it gain (yes, I know it isn’t actually sentient) from becoming nastier and killing more hosts, thus reducing its ability to spread? Corpses don’t generally infect other people. And if it becomes more lethal humans will go into ultimate lockdown, which is also a setback for the bug.
I am not a virologist but the evolutionary pressure on a virus like this is not to become nastier.
Or so I hope, up here in Suffolk
One of the key features of Covid has been that people are infectious in the presymptomatic phase. So if a lot of transmission occurs before someone has symptoms then it matters less to the survival of the virus if the symptoms subsequently developed are fatal to the host.
Add to that, a great deal of the evolutionary mutation we've observed has taken place within chronically sick individuals (though clearly a successful mutation then needs to be passed on to survive).
A point the paper reporting the new variant emphasises: https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisation-of-an-emergent-sars-cov-2-lineage-in-the-uk-defined-by-a-novel-set-of-spike-mutations/563 ...What evolutionary processes or selective pressures might have given rise to lineage B.1.1.7? High rates of mutation accumulation over short time periods have been reported previously in studies of immunodeficient or immunosuppressed patients who are chronically infected with SARS-CoV-2 (Choi et al. 2020; Avanzato et al. 2020; Kemp et al. 2020). These infections exhibit detectable SARS-CoV-2 RNA for 2-4 months or longer (although there are also reports of long infections in some immunocompetent individuals). The patients are treated with convalescent plasma (sometimes more than once) and usually also with the drug remdesivir. Virus genome sequencing of these infections reveals unusually large numbers of nucleotide changes and deletion mutations and often high ratios of non-synonymous to synonymous changes. Convalescent plasma is often given when patient viral loads are high, and Kemp et al. (2020) report that intra-patient virus genetic diversity increased after plasma treatment was given Under such circumstances, the evolutionary dynamics of and selective pressures upon the intra-patient virus population are expected to be very different to those experienced in typical infection. First, selection from natural immune responses in immune-deficient/suppressed patients will be weak or absent. Second, the selection arising from antibody therapy may be strong due to high antibody concentrations. Third, if antibody therapy is administered after many weeks of chronic infection, the virus population may be unusually large and genetically diverse at the time that antibody-mediated selective pressure is applied, creating suitable circumstances for the rapid fixation of multiple virus genetic changes through direct selection and genetic hitchhiking.
These considerations lead us to hypothesise that the unusual genetic divergence of lineage B.1.1.7 may have resulted, at least in part, from virus evolution with a chronically-infected individual. Although such infections are rare, and onward transmission from them presumably even rarer, they are not improbable given the ongoing large number of new infections...
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
If you can't see why Wednesday's attitude is a problem then I can't help you. However, were someone to try and pull that trick on a client, I would be asking them to explain what evidence they had on Wednesday to justify their attitude that day and considering whether to keep them in that role.
PMQs is Punch and Judy. Always has been. Starmer stokes that by going on the attack every week and Boris feeds into it too. C'est la vie, why get hung up on Punch and Judy gibberish from either side?
The science changed on Thursday. They immediately acted. When the facts change you need to change your mind, he did and acted quickly.
Boris on Wednesday - Christmas is fine Starmer is lying
Boris on Saturday - Christmas is off and it's off in ways you can't imagine 30 seconds earlier.
The fact it's punch and Judy means there are times you should be more careful in what you say and Wednesday was one of those days.
The Government went from possibility of an issue, to nothing to worry about and then to it's Cancelled in under a week.
And it's the middle bit there that is a problem as it wasn't necessary it was there to score points and it rather backfired.
Half my life is spent doing expectation management and Boris last week is a textbook example on how to complete screw it up by building up false hope after the initial there is a potential problem statement has been issued.
NERVTAG reported between Wednesday and Saturday.
When the facts change you change your mind. All you are doing is emphasising how rapidly and agily Boris was able to pivot and adjust to the post-NERVTAG new reality. Kudos Boris, well done.
You are missing the point - we knew there was a problem on Monday - the only thing we didn't know was the scale of it.
When the facts change you change your mind
There are no facts. The 70% quicker transmission of the disease is not a fact. It is still a hypothesis. The strength of the new strain is also completely unknown and will be for weeks.
Minds are being changed on shrill hypotheses from a body that has a track record of form in shrill hypotheses.
Again - let's look at the timeline
Monday - problem requiring immediate action Wednesday - nothing to worry about Saturday - it's a problem again requiring immediate action.
Now either it's a real problem or a fake problem but it doesn't explain the flip flop in the middle.
Either Wednesday's reaction is wrong or Saturdays and I know that the easiest fix here was to avoid the everything is 100% OK statement on Wednesday.
Reading the NERVTAG comments, they are....er.....'moderately confident' the strain is up to 70% quicker in transmission.
So our freedoms are being curtailed and our economy smashed on the 'moderate confidence' of a group of scientists whose predictions have often been found to be very, very flawed, and the premise of whose work is profoundly disputed by other in some cases eminent scientists.
Covid is over everyone. Let's get back to normal.
When the government shut us down first, they told us a massive lie. They told us the shutdown was to beef up capacity in the NHS.
Just today, in the BBC's report, nine months on, came the truth from the NHS. We never, ever had the staff to increase NHS capacity, either then or in the near future.
Given the huge lie we were told then, surely we should be questioning everything the government tells us. Everything the SAGE committee tells us. Everything Sky News tells us.
Someone in the Patel mold needs to be stuck in charge of transport. Not a time for the jolly japes of Shapps, need someone who relishes keeping others out.
You mean someone with the ambition of Stalin and the acumen of Mr Bean?
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
If you can't see why Wednesday's attitude is a problem then I can't help you. However, were someone to try and pull that trick on a client, I would be asking them to explain what evidence they had on Wednesday to justify their attitude that day and considering whether to keep them in that role.
PMQs is Punch and Judy. Always has been. Starmer stokes that by going on the attack every week and Boris feeds into it too. C'est la vie, why get hung up on Punch and Judy gibberish from either side?
The science changed on Thursday. They immediately acted. When the facts change you need to change your mind, he did and acted quickly.
Boris on Wednesday - Christmas is fine Starmer is lying
Boris on Saturday - Christmas is off and it's off in ways you can't imagine 30 seconds earlier.
The fact it's punch and Judy means there are times you should be more careful in what you say and Wednesday was one of those days.
The Government went from possibility of an issue, to nothing to worry about and then to it's Cancelled in under a week.
And it's the middle bit there that is a problem as it wasn't necessary it was there to score points and it rather backfired.
Half my life is spent doing expectation management and Boris last week is a textbook example on how to complete screw it up by building up false hope after the initial there is a potential problem statement has been issued.
NERVTAG reported between Wednesday and Saturday.
When the facts change you change your mind. All you are doing is emphasising how rapidly and agily Boris was able to pivot and adjust to the post-NERVTAG new reality. Kudos Boris, well done.
You are missing the point - we knew there was a problem on Monday - the only thing we didn't know was the scale of it.
When the facts change you change your mind
There are no facts. The 70% quicker transmission of the disease is not a fact. It is still a hypothesis. The strength of the new strain is also completely unknown and will be for weeks.
Minds are being changed on shrill hypotheses from a body that has a track record of form in shrill hypotheses.
Again - let's look at the timeline
Monday - problem requiring immediate action Wednesday - nothing to worry about Saturday - it's a problem again requiring immediate action.
Now either it's a real problem or a fake problem but it doesn't explain the flip flop in the middle.
Either Wednesday's reaction is wrong or Saturdays and I know that the easiest fix here was to avoid the everything is 100% OK statement on Wednesday.
Strange you omitted Thursday. Lying by omisson or genuinely ignorant of what came on Thursday? 🤔
To everyone suggesting Bojo is not up to the job - and I agree his upbeat personality is a bad fit with Black Death - they also need to suggest their desired alternative.
Quite frankly, we aren’t blessed with gritty, ballsy, smart, capable, determined, inspiring and unflinching leaders.
The best I can come up with is Jeremy Hunt, which says it all.
Rory Stewart.
That’s a good choice. He looks like a spooked and starving elf, which I find oddly unsettling, but I could get over that.
The person we really need, of course, is Thatcher. She’d probably have killed the virus by now. Personally.
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
If you can't see why Wednesday's attitude is a problem then I can't help you. However, were someone to try and pull that trick on a client, I would be asking them to explain what evidence they had on Wednesday to justify their attitude that day and considering whether to keep them in that role.
PMQs is Punch and Judy. Always has been. Starmer stokes that by going on the attack every week and Boris feeds into it too. C'est la vie, why get hung up on Punch and Judy gibberish from either side?
The science changed on Thursday. They immediately acted. When the facts change you need to change your mind, he did and acted quickly.
Boris on Wednesday - Christmas is fine Starmer is lying
Boris on Saturday - Christmas is off and it's off in ways you can't imagine 30 seconds earlier.
The fact it's punch and Judy means there are times you should be more careful in what you say and Wednesday was one of those days.
The Government went from possibility of an issue, to nothing to worry about and then to it's Cancelled in under a week.
And it's the middle bit there that is a problem as it wasn't necessary it was there to score points and it rather backfired.
Half my life is spent doing expectation management and Boris last week is a textbook example on how to complete screw it up by building up false hope after the initial there is a potential problem statement has been issued.
NERVTAG reported between Wednesday and Saturday.
When the facts change you change your mind. All you are doing is emphasising how rapidly and agily Boris was able to pivot and adjust to the post-NERVTAG new reality. Kudos Boris, well done.
You are missing the point - we knew there was a problem on Monday - the only thing we didn't know was the scale of it.
When the facts change you change your mind
There are no facts. The 70% quicker transmission of the disease is not a fact. It is still a hypothesis. The strength of the new strain is also completely unknown and will be for weeks.
Minds are being changed on shrill hypotheses from a body that has a track record of form in shrill hypotheses.
Added to that, I still think the media are wilful in how they choose their scientists to talk to and bash us with quotes out of context.
This is a 24hr media who made the 2012 rioting much worse by gorging on it. If they are doing a similar thing here it is disgusting.
They just had one geezer on there alarming us this new strain means we are no longer safe at two metres no longer safe with the briefest of contacts. Don’t you agree, if media want to broadcast that message they need to be very careful it is correct?
I think what this exposes most is the government's naivete on vaccine passports and the vaccine scheduling. Key workers, including those in freight who are very likely to go overseas and NHS staff, should have been first in the queue and they should all get a valid photo ID two weeks after their second jab to say they've had it.
I've been banging on about this for months, there's no point in saving all the old people if there's no economy left to function afterwards. Our vaccine strategy is completely wrong and now with this new mutation we've been caught out again.
For months we should have been testing every single person who entered and left the UK and prevented people who test positive from doing so, the complete failure of the government to do this is why the whole world is closing the border to us including shipping and freight.
If we had a working test on exit solution it's unlikely that any of these measures from other countries would continue beyond a day or two. Now the government needs to scramble one together at the ports to reopen freight and shipping and hope that France etc... think it's enough.
This government has failed to meet every single challenge thrown up by the virus. We're now paying the price for it. It's not been an easy situation but frankly amateurs on PB have had a better crisis than every single minister. It hasn't been an impossible task as some are pretending.
I have to agree. Without trying to minimise the difficulty of what was thrown at the government, I am absolutely certain that a MaxPB PM would have done a great deal better. (And that is not me being ironic.)
Lol, I was actually thinking of you mate!
Fwiw, I would have extended the EU transition period by two years in the summer and opted out of the EU recovery fund as part of that so we wouldn't be on the hook.
You two guys plus a bunch of others on here would make a far better coalition than the governments we end up with.
To everyone suggesting Bojo is not up to the job - and I agree his upbeat personality is a bad fit with Black Death - they also need to suggest their desired alternative.
Quite frankly, we aren’t blessed with gritty, ballsy, smart, capable, determined, inspiring and unflinching leaders.
The best I can come up with is Jeremy Hunt, which says it all.
Rory Stewart.
His nine years in parliament were not exactly filled with achievements and by the end he looked like he was cracking up (perhaps understandably).
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
If you can't see why Wednesday's attitude is a problem then I can't help you. However, were someone to try and pull that trick on a client, I would be asking them to explain what evidence they had on Wednesday to justify their attitude that day and considering whether to keep them in that role.
PMQs is Punch and Judy. Always has been. Starmer stokes that by going on the attack every week and Boris feeds into it too. C'est la vie, why get hung up on Punch and Judy gibberish from either side?
The science changed on Thursday. They immediately acted. When the facts change you need to change your mind, he did and acted quickly.
Boris on Wednesday - Christmas is fine Starmer is lying
Boris on Saturday - Christmas is off and it's off in ways you can't imagine 30 seconds earlier.
The fact it's punch and Judy means there are times you should be more careful in what you say and Wednesday was one of those days.
The Government went from possibility of an issue, to nothing to worry about and then to it's Cancelled in under a week.
And it's the middle bit there that is a problem as it wasn't necessary it was there to score points and it rather backfired.
Half my life is spent doing expectation management and Boris last week is a textbook example on how to complete screw it up by building up false hope after the initial there is a potential problem statement has been issued.
NERVTAG reported between Wednesday and Saturday.
When the facts change you change your mind. All you are doing is emphasising how rapidly and agily Boris was able to pivot and adjust to the post-NERVTAG new reality. Kudos Boris, well done.
You are missing the point - we knew there was a problem on Monday - the only thing we didn't know was the scale of it.
When the facts change you change your mind
There are no facts. The 70% quicker transmission of the disease is not a fact. It is still a hypothesis. The strength of the new strain is also completely unknown and will be for weeks.
Minds are being changed on shrill hypotheses from a body that has a track record of form in shrill hypotheses.
How full should the hospitals need to be, of all these false positives, before government enacts further restrictions on movement and socialising?
I don't know, but this is surely the absolutely key point. Numbers like Capacity, occupancy and treatability should be steering government policy on this, not numbers that are not facts.
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
Belgium has got NATO and the EU which means people coming and going with exemptions continuously. It's still been a very poor performance from there though. I think all of Europe has fucked it. Our seeming need to keep borders open and planes flying unrestricted has been our undoing.
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
If you can't see why Wednesday's attitude is a problem then I can't help you. However, were someone to try and pull that trick on a client, I would be asking them to explain what evidence they had on Wednesday to justify their attitude that day and considering whether to keep them in that role.
PMQs is Punch and Judy. Always has been. Starmer stokes that by going on the attack every week and Boris feeds into it too. C'est la vie, why get hung up on Punch and Judy gibberish from either side?
The science changed on Thursday. They immediately acted. When the facts change you need to change your mind, he did and acted quickly.
Boris on Wednesday - Christmas is fine Starmer is lying
Boris on Saturday - Christmas is off and it's off in ways you can't imagine 30 seconds earlier.
The fact it's punch and Judy means there are times you should be more careful in what you say and Wednesday was one of those days.
The Government went from possibility of an issue, to nothing to worry about and then to it's Cancelled in under a week.
And it's the middle bit there that is a problem as it wasn't necessary it was there to score points and it rather backfired.
Half my life is spent doing expectation management and Boris last week is a textbook example on how to complete screw it up by building up false hope after the initial there is a potential problem statement has been issued.
NERVTAG reported between Wednesday and Saturday.
When the facts change you change your mind. All you are doing is emphasising how rapidly and agily Boris was able to pivot and adjust to the post-NERVTAG new reality. Kudos Boris, well done.
You are missing the point - we knew there was a problem on Monday - the only thing we didn't know was the scale of it.
When the facts change you change your mind
There are no facts. The 70% quicker transmission of the disease is not a fact. It is still a hypothesis. The strength of the new strain is also completely unknown and will be for weeks.
Minds are being changed on shrill hypotheses from a body that has a track record of form in shrill hypotheses.
Added to that, I still think the media are wilful in how they choose their scientists to talk to and bash us with quotes out of context.
This is a 24hr media who made the 2012 rioting much worse by gorging on it. If they are doing a similar thing here it is disgusting.
They just had one geezer on there alarming us this new strain means we are no longer safe at two metres no longer safe with the briefest of contacts. Don’t you agree, if media want to broadcast that message they need to be very careful it is correct?
They’re only trying to ramp up panic buying this morning, because pictures of empty shelves are good for their business of generating clicks, and sod everyone affected by it.
The one area over which the UK government does have control is the ability to request an emergency extension of the transition period. Given the current chaos and unpredictability, surely even the most ardent Brexiteer would support that. Inflicting more uncertainty on ourselves at this time makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Given the COVID situation - and you clearly think the French action has fuck all to do with Brexit - it makes no difference.
I am shocked that a Remainer is coming to the conclusion that we need to agree a bad deal.
We do not need to agree any deal to request an extension to the transition.
I am shocked that a Brexit loon does not understand that.
It’s sensible in two ways. It relives immediate pressure, but in a fast changing situation we can hardly be sure what kind of a deal we ultimately will need. Wont happen though, because Brexit is a religion.
Anti-Brexit is also a religion. Just as fervent. In fact, counter-revolutionaries are often worse and more debauched in their methods, which presumably is why there was a chorus of silence on here last night when some were posing the question (even hypothetically) of France and other EU countries banning vaccine carrying flights to us.
Sick. Really really sick.
The only manic person on this forum today seems to be you.
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
If you can't see why Wednesday's attitude is a problem then I can't help you. However, were someone to try and pull that trick on a client, I would be asking them to explain what evidence they had on Wednesday to justify their attitude that day and considering whether to keep them in that role.
PMQs is Punch and Judy. Always has been. Starmer stokes that by going on the attack every week and Boris feeds into it too. C'est la vie, why get hung up on Punch and Judy gibberish from either side?
The science changed on Thursday. They immediately acted. When the facts change you need to change your mind, he did and acted quickly.
Boris on Wednesday - Christmas is fine Starmer is lying
Boris on Saturday - Christmas is off and it's off in ways you can't imagine 30 seconds earlier.
The fact it's punch and Judy means there are times you should be more careful in what you say and Wednesday was one of those days.
The Government went from possibility of an issue, to nothing to worry about and then to it's Cancelled in under a week.
And it's the middle bit there that is a problem as it wasn't necessary it was there to score points and it rather backfired.
Half my life is spent doing expectation management and Boris last week is a textbook example on how to complete screw it up by building up false hope after the initial there is a potential problem statement has been issued.
NERVTAG reported between Wednesday and Saturday.
When the facts change you change your mind. All you are doing is emphasising how rapidly and agily Boris was able to pivot and adjust to the post-NERVTAG new reality. Kudos Boris, well done.
You are missing the point - we knew there was a problem on Monday - the only thing we didn't know was the scale of it.
When the facts change you change your mind
There are no facts. The 70% quicker transmission of the disease is not a fact. It is still a hypothesis. The strength of the new strain is also completely unknown and will be for weeks.
Minds are being changed on shrill hypotheses from a body that has a track record of form in shrill hypotheses.
How full should the hospitals need to be, of all these false positives, before government enacts further restrictions on movement and socialising?
I don't know, but this is surely the absolutely key point. Numbers like Capacity, occupancy and treatability should be steering government policy on this, not numbers that are not facts.
They are. 🤦🏻♂️
There are five key facts they are using to determine the tiers. That's one of them. 🤦🏻♂️
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
SAGE were clearly incensed when we moved out of lockdown in early December. They made sure their latest initiative to restore their power could not be scrutinised by parliament.
And they know that Johnson is a very weak man, happy to sacrifice those who can hurt him least on any given day.
In this case the ordinary people of Britain.
You really do live in a fantasy world.
You live in the fantasy world where SAGE are objective and infallible saints despite a stack of hard evidence to the contrary. You do know that shagger Ferguson is on the NERVTAG team right?
I think what this exposes most is the government's naivete on vaccine passports and the vaccine scheduling. Key workers, including those in freight who are very likely to go overseas and NHS staff, should have been first in the queue and they should all get a valid photo ID two weeks after their second jab to say they've had it.
I've been banging on about this for months, there's no point in saving all the old people if there's no economy left to function afterwards. Our vaccine strategy is completely wrong and now with this new mutation we've been caught out again.
For months we should have been testing every single person who entered and left the UK and prevented people who test positive from doing so, the complete failure of the government to do this is why the whole world is closing the border to us including shipping and freight.
If we had a working test on exit solution it's unlikely that any of these measures from other countries would continue beyond a day or two. Now the government needs to scramble one together at the ports to reopen freight and shipping and hope that France etc... think it's enough.
This government has failed to meet every single challenge thrown up by the virus. We're now paying the price for it. It's not been an easy situation but frankly amateurs on PB have had a better crisis than every single minister. It hasn't been an impossible task as some are pretending.
Re your first paragraph, I submitted a header to OGH yesterday on this very topic.
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
SAGE were clearly incensed when we moved out of lockdown in early December. They made sure their latest initiative to restore their power could not be scrutinised by parliament.
And they know that Johnson is a very weak man, happy to sacrifice those who can hurt him least on any given day.
In this case the ordinary people of Britain.
You really do live in a fantasy world.
You live in the fantasy world where SAGE are objective and infallible saints despite a stack of hard evidence to the contrary. You do know that shagger Ferguson is on the NERVTAG team right?
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
If you can't see why Wednesday's attitude is a problem then I can't help you. However, were someone to try and pull that trick on a client, I would be asking them to explain what evidence they had on Wednesday to justify their attitude that day and considering whether to keep them in that role.
PMQs is Punch and Judy. Always has been. Starmer stokes that by going on the attack every week and Boris feeds into it too. C'est la vie, why get hung up on Punch and Judy gibberish from either side?
The science changed on Thursday. They immediately acted. When the facts change you need to change your mind, he did and acted quickly.
Boris on Wednesday - Christmas is fine Starmer is lying
Boris on Saturday - Christmas is off and it's off in ways you can't imagine 30 seconds earlier.
The fact it's punch and Judy means there are times you should be more careful in what you say and Wednesday was one of those days.
The Government went from possibility of an issue, to nothing to worry about and then to it's Cancelled in under a week.
And it's the middle bit there that is a problem as it wasn't necessary it was there to score points and it rather backfired.
Half my life is spent doing expectation management and Boris last week is a textbook example on how to complete screw it up by building up false hope after the initial there is a potential problem statement has been issued.
NERVTAG reported between Wednesday and Saturday.
When the facts change you change your mind. All you are doing is emphasising how rapidly and agily Boris was able to pivot and adjust to the post-NERVTAG new reality. Kudos Boris, well done.
You are missing the point - we knew there was a problem on Monday - the only thing we didn't know was the scale of it.
When the facts change you change your mind
There are no facts. The 70% quicker transmission of the disease is not a fact. It is still a hypothesis. The strength of the new strain is also completely unknown and will be for weeks.
Minds are being changed on shrill hypotheses from a body that has a track record of form in shrill hypotheses.
How full should the hospitals need to be, of all these false positives, before government enacts further restrictions on movement and socialising?
I don't know, but this is surely the absolutely key point. Numbers like Capacity, occupancy and treatability should be steering government policy on this, not numbers that are not facts.
So when numbers double in a week, as they did last week, and we are looking a fortnight in the rear view mirror, we should start the restrictions when the healthcare capacity is at 25%.
Heading for a three cent fall in a day, which is pretty unusual
Never mind, I am sure someone will be along in a minute to explain why that's a good thing.
Btw, I couldn't open the instagram pic of your dog but will try again later. I am sure it is cute!
Since we do not have a balance of trade surplus the pound falling helps our exporters and hurts importers. It also eases the pressure on FTSE etc which haven't fallen as much as the DAX.
Swings and roundabouts. There's no reason to put some phallic symbolism in the exchange rate as a form of strength or manliness.
You can’t export today.
Oh shit the internet has been shut down? We can't export our services? 😲
We have a trade surplus in services, not a deficit as you posted, so the exchange rate movement hurts us (well, except for all the foreign exchange dealers).
A wider question is why Brexit negotiations concentrated on goods, where we do have a thumping great deficit and not services. That's another cunning EU trap we blundered into.
Same reason that the UK meekly accepted that there would be border checks- the price in pooling of sovereignty was one that Johnson wasn't prepared to contemplate.
Forget the "make them blink" guff- the haggling has been over peanuts compared with what the UK casually chucked away in services and border faff.
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
If you can't see why Wednesday's attitude is a problem then I can't help you. However, were someone to try and pull that trick on a client, I would be asking them to explain what evidence they had on Wednesday to justify their attitude that day and considering whether to keep them in that role.
PMQs is Punch and Judy. Always has been. Starmer stokes that by going on the attack every week and Boris feeds into it too. C'est la vie, why get hung up on Punch and Judy gibberish from either side?
The science changed on Thursday. They immediately acted. When the facts change you need to change your mind, he did and acted quickly.
Boris on Wednesday - Christmas is fine Starmer is lying
Boris on Saturday - Christmas is off and it's off in ways you can't imagine 30 seconds earlier.
The fact it's punch and Judy means there are times you should be more careful in what you say and Wednesday was one of those days.
The Government went from possibility of an issue, to nothing to worry about and then to it's Cancelled in under a week.
And it's the middle bit there that is a problem as it wasn't necessary it was there to score points and it rather backfired.
Half my life is spent doing expectation management and Boris last week is a textbook example on how to complete screw it up by building up false hope after the initial there is a potential problem statement has been issued.
NERVTAG reported between Wednesday and Saturday.
When the facts change you change your mind. All you are doing is emphasising how rapidly and agily Boris was able to pivot and adjust to the post-NERVTAG new reality. Kudos Boris, well done.
You are missing the point - we knew there was a problem on Monday - the only thing we didn't know was the scale of it.
When the facts change you change your mind
There are no facts. The 70% quicker transmission of the disease is not a fact. It is still a hypothesis. The strength of the new strain is also completely unknown and will be for weeks.
Minds are being changed on shrill hypotheses from a body that has a track record of form in shrill hypotheses.
Again - let's look at the timeline
Monday - problem requiring immediate action Wednesday - nothing to worry about Saturday - it's a problem again requiring immediate action.
Now either it's a real problem or a fake problem but it doesn't explain the flip flop in the middle.
Either Wednesday's reaction is wrong or Saturdays and I know that the easiest fix here was to avoid the everything is 100% OK statement on Wednesday.
Strange you omitted Thursday. Lying by omisson or genuinely ignorant of what came on Thursday? 🤔
I'm looking at reporting - if you are aware of a problem on Monday you don't say it's 100% fixed on Wednesday.
You just end up looking like an idiot when Thursday comes around and the truth is revealed.
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
If you can't see why Wednesday's attitude is a problem then I can't help you. However, were someone to try and pull that trick on a client, I would be asking them to explain what evidence they had on Wednesday to justify their attitude that day and considering whether to keep them in that role.
PMQs is Punch and Judy. Always has been. Starmer stokes that by going on the attack every week and Boris feeds into it too. C'est la vie, why get hung up on Punch and Judy gibberish from either side?
The science changed on Thursday. They immediately acted. When the facts change you need to change your mind, he did and acted quickly.
Boris on Wednesday - Christmas is fine Starmer is lying
Boris on Saturday - Christmas is off and it's off in ways you can't imagine 30 seconds earlier.
The fact it's punch and Judy means there are times you should be more careful in what you say and Wednesday was one of those days.
The Government went from possibility of an issue, to nothing to worry about and then to it's Cancelled in under a week.
And it's the middle bit there that is a problem as it wasn't necessary it was there to score points and it rather backfired.
Half my life is spent doing expectation management and Boris last week is a textbook example on how to complete screw it up by building up false hope after the initial there is a potential problem statement has been issued.
NERVTAG reported between Wednesday and Saturday.
When the facts change you change your mind. All you are doing is emphasising how rapidly and agily Boris was able to pivot and adjust to the post-NERVTAG new reality. Kudos Boris, well done.
You are missing the point - we knew there was a problem on Monday - the only thing we didn't know was the scale of it.
When the facts change you change your mind
There are no facts. The 70% quicker transmission of the disease is not a fact. It is still a hypothesis. The strength of the new strain is also completely unknown and will be for weeks.
Minds are being changed on shrill hypotheses from a body that has a track record of form in shrill hypotheses.
Added to that, I still think the media are wilful in how they choose their scientists to talk to and bash us with quotes out of context.
This is a 24hr media who made the 2012 rioting much worse by gorging on it. If they are doing a similar thing here it is disgusting.
They just had one geezer on there alarming us this new strain means we are no longer safe at two metres no longer safe with the briefest of contacts. Don’t you agree, if media want to broadcast that message they need to be very careful it is correct?
Absolutely. There was a post earlier about how Sky were desperately and repeatedly trying to prise a 'get out and panic buy' comment from the mouth of a minister earlier.
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
Belgium has got NATO and the EU which means people coming and going with exemptions continuously. It's still been a very poor performance from there though. I think all of Europe has fucked it. Our seeming need to keep borders open and planes flying unrestricted has been our undoing.
Europe has been screwed by their determination to keep borders open against all logic. USA is the same to some extent, with long-distance internal flights spreading the thing everywhere.
I think what this exposes most is the government's naivete on vaccine passports and the vaccine scheduling. Key workers, including those in freight who are very likely to go overseas and NHS staff, should have been first in the queue and they should all get a valid photo ID two weeks after their second jab to say they've had it.
I've been banging on about this for months, there's no point in saving all the old people if there's no economy left to function afterwards. Our vaccine strategy is completely wrong and now with this new mutation we've been caught out again.
For months we should have been testing every single person who entered and left the UK and prevented people who test positive from doing so, the complete failure of the government to do this is why the whole world is closing the border to us including shipping and freight.
If we had a working test on exit solution it's unlikely that any of these measures from other countries would continue beyond a day or two. Now the government needs to scramble one together at the ports to reopen freight and shipping and hope that France etc... think it's enough.
This government has failed to meet every single challenge thrown up by the virus. We're now paying the price for it. It's not been an easy situation but frankly amateurs on PB have had a better crisis than every single minister. It hasn't been an impossible task as some are pretending.
I have to agree. Without trying to minimise the difficulty of what was thrown at the government, I am absolutely certain that a MaxPB PM would have done a great deal better. (And that is not me being ironic.)
Lol, I was actually thinking of you mate!
Fwiw, I would have extended the EU transition period by two years in the summer and opted out of the EU recovery fund as part of that so we wouldn't be on the hook.
Well I have to get off now and do some work. But I'll check in every so often to see if either of us get the call..
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
Shapps has presided over one of the UK's most egregious COVID policy failures - its complete failure to mount any sort of effective border control/quarantine.
On R4 this a.m. he told of a wedding party after which one attendee was diagnosed with CV-19 on attending hospital for another matter, then all 11 were contacted and each tested positive. But all were entirely symptom free. It was implied they had caught the new variant. It's an anecdote but the following occurred to me: the new more contagious(?) strain is out-competing the earlier strains; but if it leaves many hosts symptom-free perhaps it is less harmful; this may be a beneficial evolution for the virus; and for humans it may appear like an inverse form of Gresham's Law ("bad money drives out good"), namely faster but milder virus drives out slower but stronger virus. Nature thus delivering a kind of natural immunisation programme. Probably nonsense but I am a glass half-full person.
I thought the evolutionary pressure on respiratory viruses to become less virulent was because: a) Diseases of the nose and throat spread better b) Diseases of the lungs are the nasty ones
So if this change makes it replicate better in the nose and throat (like colds) then it might become less of a problem.
I don't know if that applies here though. It seems nobody else is terribly sure either.
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
SAGE were clearly incensed when we moved out of lockdown in early December. They made sure their latest initiative to restore their power could not be scrutinised by parliament.
And they know that Johnson is a very weak man, happy to sacrifice those who can hurt him least on any given day.
In this case the ordinary people of Britain.
You really do live in a fantasy world.
You live in the fantasy world where SAGE are objective and infallible saints despite a stack of hard evidence to the contrary. You do know that shagger Ferguson is on the NERVTAG team right?
If we don't see deaths start to rise very significantly before the end of the year, with this huge number of cases, something will be up. It's always worth staying realistic, rather than having your head in the clouds, and it's a hope rather than a prediction, but I very much hope that's the case.
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
If you can't see why Wednesday's attitude is a problem then I can't help you. However, were someone to try and pull that trick on a client, I would be asking them to explain what evidence they had on Wednesday to justify their attitude that day and considering whether to keep them in that role.
PMQs is Punch and Judy. Always has been. Starmer stokes that by going on the attack every week and Boris feeds into it too. C'est la vie, why get hung up on Punch and Judy gibberish from either side?
The science changed on Thursday. They immediately acted. When the facts change you need to change your mind, he did and acted quickly.
Boris on Wednesday - Christmas is fine Starmer is lying
Boris on Saturday - Christmas is off and it's off in ways you can't imagine 30 seconds earlier.
The fact it's punch and Judy means there are times you should be more careful in what you say and Wednesday was one of those days.
The Government went from possibility of an issue, to nothing to worry about and then to it's Cancelled in under a week.
And it's the middle bit there that is a problem as it wasn't necessary it was there to score points and it rather backfired.
Half my life is spent doing expectation management and Boris last week is a textbook example on how to complete screw it up by building up false hope after the initial there is a potential problem statement has been issued.
NERVTAG reported between Wednesday and Saturday.
When the facts change you change your mind. All you are doing is emphasising how rapidly and agily Boris was able to pivot and adjust to the post-NERVTAG new reality. Kudos Boris, well done.
You are missing the point - we knew there was a problem on Monday - the only thing we didn't know was the scale of it.
When the facts change you change your mind
There are no facts. The 70% quicker transmission of the disease is not a fact. It is still a hypothesis. The strength of the new strain is also completely unknown and will be for weeks.
Minds are being changed on shrill hypotheses from a body that has a track record of form in shrill hypotheses.
Added to that, I still think the media are wilful in how they choose their scientists to talk to and bash us with quotes out of context.
This is a 24hr media who made the 2012 rioting much worse by gorging on it. If they are doing a similar thing here it is disgusting.
They just had one geezer on there alarming us this new strain means we are no longer safe at two metres no longer safe with the briefest of contacts. Don’t you agree, if media want to broadcast that message they need to be very careful it is correct?
Absolutely. There was a post earlier about how Sky were desperately and repeatedly trying to prise a 'get out and panic buy' comment from the mouth of a minister earlier.
Sky's Breaking News banner still talks about travel bans and not the fact that the bans on hauliers will be lifted within hours which is the newer and more relevant news.
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
If you can't see why Wednesday's attitude is a problem then I can't help you. However, were someone to try and pull that trick on a client, I would be asking them to explain what evidence they had on Wednesday to justify their attitude that day and considering whether to keep them in that role.
PMQs is Punch and Judy. Always has been. Starmer stokes that by going on the attack every week and Boris feeds into it too. C'est la vie, why get hung up on Punch and Judy gibberish from either side?
The science changed on Thursday. They immediately acted. When the facts change you need to change your mind, he did and acted quickly.
Boris on Wednesday - Christmas is fine Starmer is lying
Boris on Saturday - Christmas is off and it's off in ways you can't imagine 30 seconds earlier.
The fact it's punch and Judy means there are times you should be more careful in what you say and Wednesday was one of those days.
The Government went from possibility of an issue, to nothing to worry about and then to it's Cancelled in under a week.
And it's the middle bit there that is a problem as it wasn't necessary it was there to score points and it rather backfired.
Half my life is spent doing expectation management and Boris last week is a textbook example on how to complete screw it up by building up false hope after the initial there is a potential problem statement has been issued.
NERVTAG reported between Wednesday and Saturday.
When the facts change you change your mind. All you are doing is emphasising how rapidly and agily Boris was able to pivot and adjust to the post-NERVTAG new reality. Kudos Boris, well done.
You are missing the point - we knew there was a problem on Monday - the only thing we didn't know was the scale of it.
When the facts change you change your mind
There are no facts. The 70% quicker transmission of the disease is not a fact. It is still a hypothesis. The strength of the new strain is also completely unknown and will be for weeks.
Minds are being changed on shrill hypotheses from a body that has a track record of form in shrill hypotheses.
How full should the hospitals need to be, of all these false positives, before government enacts further restrictions on movement and socialising?
The problem would be to attribute it all to covid. Part of the equation is good public opinion polling for opposition parties in the new year, I don’t mean next year but every year, due to annual struggles of the NHS filling news cycle. It’s that + covid, not solely covid.
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
Belgium has got NATO and the EU which means people coming and going with exemptions continuously. It's still been a very poor performance from there though. I think all of Europe has fucked it. Our seeming need to keep borders open and planes flying unrestricted has been our undoing.
Sometimes I look at New Zealand and think "If only we had the natural advantage of being an Island we might have been able to control this"
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
To everyone suggesting Bojo is not up to the job - and I agree his upbeat personality is a bad fit with Black Death - they also need to suggest their desired alternative.
Quite frankly, we aren’t blessed with gritty, ballsy, smart, capable, determined, inspiring and unflinching leaders.
The best I can come up with is Jeremy Hunt, which says it all.
Rory Stewart.
Jeremy Corbyn, ably assisted by Len McLuskey. They could negotiate with Covid over beer and sandwiches.
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
If you can't see why Wednesday's attitude is a problem then I can't help you. However, were someone to try and pull that trick on a client, I would be asking them to explain what evidence they had on Wednesday to justify their attitude that day and considering whether to keep them in that role.
PMQs is Punch and Judy. Always has been. Starmer stokes that by going on the attack every week and Boris feeds into it too. C'est la vie, why get hung up on Punch and Judy gibberish from either side?
The science changed on Thursday. They immediately acted. When the facts change you need to change your mind, he did and acted quickly.
Boris on Wednesday - Christmas is fine Starmer is lying
Boris on Saturday - Christmas is off and it's off in ways you can't imagine 30 seconds earlier.
The fact it's punch and Judy means there are times you should be more careful in what you say and Wednesday was one of those days.
The Government went from possibility of an issue, to nothing to worry about and then to it's Cancelled in under a week.
And it's the middle bit there that is a problem as it wasn't necessary it was there to score points and it rather backfired.
Half my life is spent doing expectation management and Boris last week is a textbook example on how to complete screw it up by building up false hope after the initial there is a potential problem statement has been issued.
NERVTAG reported between Wednesday and Saturday.
When the facts change you change your mind. All you are doing is emphasising how rapidly and agily Boris was able to pivot and adjust to the post-NERVTAG new reality. Kudos Boris, well done.
You are missing the point - we knew there was a problem on Monday - the only thing we didn't know was the scale of it.
When the facts change you change your mind
There are no facts. The 70% quicker transmission of the disease is not a fact. It is still a hypothesis. The strength of the new strain is also completely unknown and will be for weeks.
Minds are being changed on shrill hypotheses from a body that has a track record of form in shrill hypotheses.
Again - let's look at the timeline
Monday - problem requiring immediate action Wednesday - nothing to worry about Saturday - it's a problem again requiring immediate action.
Now either it's a real problem or a fake problem but it doesn't explain the flip flop in the middle.
Either Wednesday's reaction is wrong or Saturdays and I know that the easiest fix here was to avoid the everything is 100% OK statement on Wednesday.
Strange you omitted Thursday. Lying by omisson or genuinely ignorant of what came on Thursday? 🤔
I'm looking at reporting - if you are aware of a problem on Monday you don't say it's 100% fixed on Wednesday.
You just end up looking like an idiot when Thursday comes around and the truth is revealed.
We were aware of a problem on Monday and when was Tier 3 imposed?
Until Nervtag reported on Thursday it was reasonable to believe that Tier 3 would be sufficient.
FTP - I think @Nigelb posted a good article from a scientific magazine last night.
My takeaways:
(1) This virus probably is more contagious but probably not as much as it first looks (first results from raw data are often deceptive) (2) It does mutate fast (once or twice a month, in fact) but we have labs here constantly tracking it and working on that (3) It's probably out in the world already (4) Ending social interactions and having complete physical barriers will stop its spread - even if the R is 100.
So, if we do have a new lockdown it will still be effective it's just there will be different rules. Like 5m spacing. Masks on inside and outside. Full PPE for staff. Far fewer in shops etc.
To add to that is the unknown virulence of this mutated strain. I think I`m correct in saying that the jury is still out on this, though there is expectation in some quarters that that the mutation will prove less virulent that the original. Anyone been following this?
I think mutations towards higher transmissibility also resulting in lower virulence has been observed as a general tendency, but that doesn't mean that it always applies to individual mutations. It's quite possible to get worse in both respects.
But unlikely. Covid - or its strapping offspring - is doing a pretty brilliant job of its one and only task: infecting every human on earth.
What would it gain (yes, I know it isn’t actually sentient) from becoming nastier and killing more hosts, thus reducing its ability to spread? Corpses don’t generally infect other people. And if it becomes more lethal humans will go into ultimate lockdown, which is also a setback for the bug.
I am not a virologist but the evolutionary pressure on a virus like this is not to become nastier.
Or so I hope, up here in Suffolk
One of the key features of Covid has been that people are infectious in the presymptomatic phase. So if a lot of transmission occurs before someone has symptoms then it matters less to the survival of the virus if the symptoms subsequently developed are fatal to the host.
Shapps was on the radio this morning telling a story about a wedding a friend had been to recently. 15 people, 11 of whom had tested positive since, none of whom felt remotely ill. All completely asymptomatic. The impression given, whether intentional or not, and whether true or not, was that this "mutant variant" was thought to be more spreadable but less severe.
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
SAGE were clearly incensed when we moved out of lockdown in early December. They made sure their latest initiative to restore their power could not be scrutinised by parliament.
And they know that Johnson is a very weak man, happy to sacrifice those who can hurt him least on any given day.
In this case the ordinary people of Britain.
You really do live in a fantasy world.
You live in the fantasy world where SAGE are objective and infallible saints despite a stack of hard evidence to the contrary. You do know that shagger Ferguson is on the NERVTAG team right?
But apparently this doesn't change anything since Wednesday's PMQs according to much of today's Brains Trust. 🤔
Were it not for the comments on Monday - I would agree with you. but you don't go from
Monday - we might have an issue Wednesday - everything 100% OK nothing to worry about it's all fake rumours Thursday - F*******
unless you are a complete idiot - you try to keep midweek situation reports neutral so that if you need to change your position you don't look like a fool
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
If you can't see why Wednesday's attitude is a problem then I can't help you. However, were someone to try and pull that trick on a client, I would be asking them to explain what evidence they had on Wednesday to justify their attitude that day and considering whether to keep them in that role.
PMQs is Punch and Judy. Always has been. Starmer stokes that by going on the attack every week and Boris feeds into it too. C'est la vie, why get hung up on Punch and Judy gibberish from either side?
The science changed on Thursday. They immediately acted. When the facts change you need to change your mind, he did and acted quickly.
Boris on Wednesday - Christmas is fine Starmer is lying
Boris on Saturday - Christmas is off and it's off in ways you can't imagine 30 seconds earlier.
The fact it's punch and Judy means there are times you should be more careful in what you say and Wednesday was one of those days.
The Government went from possibility of an issue, to nothing to worry about and then to it's Cancelled in under a week.
And it's the middle bit there that is a problem as it wasn't necessary it was there to score points and it rather backfired.
Half my life is spent doing expectation management and Boris last week is a textbook example on how to complete screw it up by building up false hope after the initial there is a potential problem statement has been issued.
NERVTAG reported between Wednesday and Saturday.
When the facts change you change your mind. All you are doing is emphasising how rapidly and agily Boris was able to pivot and adjust to the post-NERVTAG new reality. Kudos Boris, well done.
You are missing the point - we knew there was a problem on Monday - the only thing we didn't know was the scale of it.
When the facts change you change your mind
There are no facts. The 70% quicker transmission of the disease is not a fact. It is still a hypothesis. The strength of the new strain is also completely unknown and will be for weeks.
Minds are being changed on shrill hypotheses from a body that has a track record of form in shrill hypotheses.
How full should the hospitals need to be, of all these false positives, before government enacts further restrictions on movement and socialising?
I don't know, but this is surely the absolutely key point. Numbers like Capacity, occupancy and treatability should be steering government policy on this, not numbers that are not facts.
So when numbers double in a week, as they did last week, and we are looking a fortnight in the rear view mirror, we should start the restrictions when the healthcare capacity is at 25%.
Our response could and should be more flexible than shut everybody down, surely. We could actually staff a nightingale hospital, for example.
Reading the NERVTAG comments, they are....er.....'moderately confident' the strain is up to 70% quicker in transmission.
So our freedoms are being curtailed and our economy smashed on the 'moderate confidence' of a group of scientists whose predictions have often been found to be very, very flawed, and the premise of whose work is profoundly disputed by other in some cases eminent scientists.
Covid is over everyone. Let's get back to normal.
When the government shut us down first, they told us a massive lie. They told us the shutdown was to beef up capacity in the NHS.
Just today, in the BBC's report, nine months on, came the truth from the NHS. We never, ever had the staff to increase NHS capacity, either then or in the near future.
Given the huge lie we were told then, surely we should be questioning everything the government tells us. Everything the SAGE committee tells us. Everything Sky News tells us.
You sound a bit paranoid - I doubt if anyone is systematically lying. The problem is more the one identified by Johnson's former speechwriter in the header - given uncertainty, Johnson's instinct is to hope for the best and tell people it'll be OK. In a period with great uncertainty, what we need is a "goalkeeper" type, constantly on the alert for possible threats and never relying on good fortune.
The new virus strain is a good example. It appears to be better at spreading. We don't know much more yet - there are scientific reasons to think the vacccinations will still work against it (though we're not yet sure). But it may or may not be more or less likely to kill you, and that will become clear in about 2-3 weeks as the current infections works through. A goalkeeper response to that is to assume it's worse in every way until research shows otherwise. Lock down everywhere, including areas with currently lower levels of infection. Don't hope it'll be no worse and wait to find out.
If it was not for the fact that the government has sovereign immunity, I know several companies and industry organisations who would willingly sue them for the decisions that have been taken. Thousands of businesses will now go under and probably millions will lose their jobs. There will have to be a public inquiry and bluntly there should be legal jeopardy- apart from the contempt of Parliament- if it is proven that BoJo knew ahead of Wednesday about the "new strain".
This is the Black Wednesday of this fiasco of a government and I think that what survives of British business will never forgive the Conservatives for this totally avoidable economic catastrophe.
No deal January is set to be the most serious economic crisis in centuries. If the government does not take immediate emergency action -extending the transition period and further massive help for small businesses for example- then the situation could spiral out of control very quickly.
Good. Allow haulage but nothing else, that would be perfect. Haulage is necessary trade, holiday makers can stay at home.
I would imagine the pressure from EU exporters to the UK including Ireland have a lot to do with that
Plus the fact the overwhelming majority of hauliers are Europeans suddenly trapped within the UK.
They could be used as Human shields. The EU can have them back when they sign the deal, so we get to keep all the fish in European waters.
Many of the stranded Eurostar passengers (and those at airports) will not be frustrated British holidaymakers but continentals whose governments have refused to let them return. I feel particularly sympathetic towards those who came to London for a weekend shopping trip and are now contemplating Christmas, New Year and possibly Easter in a budget hotel.
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
Belgium has got NATO and the EU which means people coming and going with exemptions continuously. It's still been a very poor performance from there though. I think all of Europe has fucked it. Our seeming need to keep borders open and planes flying unrestricted has been our undoing.
Sometimes I look at New Zealand and think "If only we had the natural advantage of being an Island we might have been able to control this"
New Zealand population density 18/km^2 England population density 426/km^2
New Zealand distance to nearest neighbour >2,500km
So @Leon I'm curious, what personality and life are you adopting for your current incarnation?
Don't be so rude to new posters! Now welcome our new friend politely.
Thankyou! I’ve got to go down the mine again today, to knap a special order of flint dildos from an older gentleman in Bedford, and all this personal flak is not making it easier.
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
England is more densely populated than Belgium
Really?
Yes
England: 426 per sq km Belgium: 383 per sq km
Blimey.
Although I see that Brussels is much denser than London.
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
England is more densely populated than Belgium
Really?
Yes
England: 426 per sq km Belgium: 383 per sq km
Blimey.
As has been mentioned many times during this, population density is a strange metric. the reality is that countries tend to be more densely populated than the headline figure. I suspect the effect is more exaggerated for England than for Belgium (i.e. a greater proportion of England is uninhabited compared with Belgium).
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
Belgium has got NATO and the EU which means people coming and going with exemptions continuously. It's still been a very poor performance from there though. I think all of Europe has fucked it. Our seeming need to keep borders open and planes flying unrestricted has been our undoing.
Sometimes I look at New Zealand and think "If only we had the natural advantage of being an Island we might have been able to control this"
From the beginning the UK and Ireland should have coordinated it's external border through the CTA and had common measures for incoming and outgoing travel. It was a failure of leadership by Boris not to suggest this and tough entry restrictions including quarantine flights and 10 day hotel quarantine for all arrivals etc...
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
If you can't see why Wednesday's attitude is a problem then I can't help you. However, were someone to try and pull that trick on a client, I would be asking them to explain what evidence they had on Wednesday to justify their attitude that day and considering whether to keep them in that role.
PMQs is Punch and Judy. Always has been. Starmer stokes that by going on the attack every week and Boris feeds into it too. C'est la vie, why get hung up on Punch and Judy gibberish from either side?
The science changed on Thursday. They immediately acted. When the facts change you need to change your mind, he did and acted quickly.
Boris on Wednesday - Christmas is fine Starmer is lying
Boris on Saturday - Christmas is off and it's off in ways you can't imagine 30 seconds earlier.
The fact it's punch and Judy means there are times you should be more careful in what you say and Wednesday was one of those days.
The Government went from possibility of an issue, to nothing to worry about and then to it's Cancelled in under a week.
And it's the middle bit there that is a problem as it wasn't necessary it was there to score points and it rather backfired.
Half my life is spent doing expectation management and Boris last week is a textbook example on how to complete screw it up by building up false hope after the initial there is a potential problem statement has been issued.
NERVTAG reported between Wednesday and Saturday.
When the facts change you change your mind. All you are doing is emphasising how rapidly and agily Boris was able to pivot and adjust to the post-NERVTAG new reality. Kudos Boris, well done.
You are missing the point - we knew there was a problem on Monday - the only thing we didn't know was the scale of it.
When the facts change you change your mind
There are no facts. The 70% quicker transmission of the disease is not a fact. It is still a hypothesis. The strength of the new strain is also completely unknown and will be for weeks.
Minds are being changed on shrill hypotheses from a body that has a track record of form in shrill hypotheses.
Added to that, I still think the media are wilful in how they choose their scientists to talk to and bash us with quotes out of context.
This is a 24hr media who made the 2012 rioting much worse by gorging on it. If they are doing a similar thing here it is disgusting.
They just had one geezer on there alarming us this new strain means we are no longer safe at two metres no longer safe with the briefest of contacts. Don’t you agree, if media want to broadcast that message they need to be very careful it is correct?
Absolutely. There was a post earlier about how Sky were desperately and repeatedly trying to prise a 'get out and panic buy' comment from the mouth of a minister earlier.
Sky's Breaking News banner still talks about travel bans and not the fact that the bans on hauliers will be lifted within hours which is the newer and more relevant news.
I know I will get huge brickbats on here for saying this but the tories could take a leaf out of Trump's book on dealing with kneejerk media.
He would be making the point you just did into the face of the reporter and asking them why they were not reporting it.
Anyway, with that comment - I;ve caused enough trouble on here. Must sign on for work now
So @Leon I'm curious, what personality and life are you adopting for your current incarnation?
Don't be so rude to new posters! Now welcome our new friend politely.
Thankyou! I’ve got to go down the mine again today, to knap a special order of flint dildos from an older gentleman in Bedford, and all this personal flak is not making it easier.
Flint dildos? Somebody who used to mine them told me they were really hard.
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
England is more densely populated than Belgium
Really?
Yes
England: 426 per sq km Belgium: 383 per sq km
Blimey.
As has been mentioned many times during this, population density is a strange metric. the reality is that countries tend to be more densely populated than the headline figure. I suspect the effect is more exaggerated for England than for Belgium (i.e. a greater proportion of England is uninhabited compared with Belgium).
Population density is the most valid metric that matters.
Uninhabited space is entirely relevant too not just urban areas. Uninhabited space between urban areas serves a function in providing a natural firebreak between the urban areas which is something lacking through much of England especially.
To everyone suggesting Bojo is not up to the job - and I agree his upbeat personality is a bad fit with Black Death - they also need to suggest their desired alternative.
Quite frankly, we aren’t blessed with gritty, ballsy, smart, capable, determined, inspiring and unflinching leaders.
The best I can come up with is Jeremy Hunt, which says it all.
Rory Stewart.
That’s a good choice. He looks like a spooked and starving elf, which I find oddly unsettling, but I could get over that.
The person we really need, of course, is Thatcher. She’d probably have killed the virus by now. Personally.
So @Leon I'm curious, what personality and life are you adopting for your current incarnation?
Don't be so rude to new posters! Now welcome our new friend politely.
Thankyou! I’ve got to go down the mine again today, to knap a special order of flint dildos from an older gentleman in Bedford, and all this personal flak is not making it easier.
I knew it.
Like "newt painting", "Flint knapping" is a euphemism for something.
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
England is more densely populated than Belgium
Really?
Yes
England: 426 per sq km Belgium: 383 per sq km
Blimey.
Although I see that Brussels is much denser than London.
Shapps has presided over one of the UK's most egregious COVID policy failures - its complete failure to mount any sort of effective border control/quarantine.
On R4 this a.m. he told of a wedding party after which one attendee was diagnosed with CV-19 on attending hospital for another matter, then all 11 were contacted and each tested positive. But all were entirely symptom free. It was implied they had caught the new variant. It's an anecdote but the following occurred to me: the new more contagious(?) strain is out-competing the earlier strains; but if it leaves many hosts symptom-free perhaps it is less harmful; this may be a beneficial evolution for the virus; and for humans it may appear like an inverse form of Gresham's Law ("bad money drives out good"), namely faster but milder virus drives out slower but stronger virus. Nature thus delivering a kind of natural immunisation programme. Probably nonsense but I am a glass half-full person.
I thought the evolutionary pressure on respiratory viruses to become less virulent was because: a) Diseases of the nose and throat spread better b) Diseases of the lungs are the nasty ones
So if this change makes it replicate better in the nose and throat (like colds) then it might become less of a problem.
I don't know if that applies here though. It seems nobody else is terribly sure either.
Just speculating ... but maybe that's the history of the common cold? It arrived as a killer but mutated into a nuisance? Is that what happened in the New World? The usual narrative is that the surviving natives eventually developed immunity, but perhaps the virus mutated instead.
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
SAGE were clearly incensed when we moved out of lockdown in early December. They made sure their latest initiative to restore their power could not be scrutinised by parliament.
And they know that Johnson is a very weak man, happy to sacrifice those who can hurt him least on any given day.
In this case the ordinary people of Britain.
You really do live in a fantasy world.
You live in the fantasy world where SAGE are objective and infallible saints despite a stack of hard evidence to the contrary. You do know that shagger Ferguson is on the NERVTAG team right?
But apparently this doesn't change anything since Wednesday's PMQs according to much of today's Brains Trust. 🤔
Were it not for the comments on Monday - I would agree with you. but you don't go from
Monday - we might have an issue Wednesday - everything 100% OK nothing to worry about it's all fake rumours Thursday - F*******
unless you are a complete idiot - you try to keep midweek situation reports neutral so that if you need to change your position you don't look like a fool
Monday: We have an issue so we're dealing with it by doing this.
Wednesday: We dealt with the issue on Monday.
Thursday: The issue is worse than was known. F********
A top Russian scientist with close links to Edinburgh University who was 'working on a Covid-19 vaccine' has been found dead in suspicious circumstances in St Petersburg.
Biologist Alexander 'Sasha' Kagansky, 45, best known for his work on fighting cancer, was reported to have fallen in his underwear from a 14th floor window of a high rise residential building.
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
SAGE were clearly incensed when we moved out of lockdown in early December. They made sure their latest initiative to restore their power could not be scrutinised by parliament.
And they know that Johnson is a very weak man, happy to sacrifice those who can hurt him least on any given day.
In this case the ordinary people of Britain.
You really do live in a fantasy world.
You live in the fantasy world where SAGE are objective and infallible saints despite a stack of hard evidence to the contrary. You do know that shagger Ferguson is on the NERVTAG team right?
But apparently this doesn't change anything since Wednesday's PMQs according to much of today's Brains Trust. 🤔
Were it not for the comments on Monday - I would agree with you. but you don't go from
Monday - we might have an issue Wednesday - everything 100% OK nothing to worry about it's all fake rumours Thursday - F*******
unless you are a complete idiot - you try to keep midweek situation reports neutral so that if you need to change your position you don't look like a fool
Monday: We have an issue so we're dealing with it by doing this.
Wednesday: We dealt with the issue on Monday.
Thursday: The issue is worse than was known. F********
What's wrong with that?
His attempt to score points off Starmer for daring to suggest the issue was worse than the government were saying it the issue.
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
England is more densely populated than Belgium
Really?
Yes
England: 426 per sq km Belgium: 383 per sq km
Blimey.
As has been mentioned many times during this, population density is a strange metric. the reality is that countries tend to be more densely populated than the headline figure. I suspect the effect is more exaggerated for England than for Belgium (i.e. a greater proportion of England is uninhabited compared with Belgium).
Population density is the most valid metric that matters.
Uninhabited space is entirely relevant too not just urban areas. Uninhabited space between urban areas serves a function in providing a natural firebreak between the urban areas which is something lacking through much of England especially.
Well, we do have a big area of open space, but it's beyond our big population centres. So I agree that England is more of a single entity than say France or Germany, but the point I was making was that the denominator can be misleading. The headline figure for Scotland (c.70) is a lot a lower than for England (c.430), but they're not that different in reality given much of Scotland's population lives in the central belt.
When the government made the announcement on Saturday did they expect other countries to stop travel ?
I wonder if they didn't because its not something they would have done if the position was reversed.
I think this is a fair question. To be able to anticipate a reaction you need to think like them. Or be caught by surprise.
Alternatively they may have been so focussed on domestic message, didn’t realise they were talking to the world. “We’ve passed what we know to WHO?” For example. Is that all you share it with and talk to?
A top Russian scientist with close links to Edinburgh University who was 'working on a Covid-19 vaccine' has been found dead in suspicious circumstances in St Petersburg.
Biologist Alexander 'Sasha' Kagansky, 45, best known for his work on fighting cancer, was reported to have fallen in his underwear from a 14th floor window of a high rise residential building.
A top Russian scientist with close links to Edinburgh University who was 'working on a Covid-19 vaccine' has been found dead in suspicious circumstances in St Petersburg.
Biologist Alexander 'Sasha' Kagansky, 45, best known for his work on fighting cancer, was reported to have fallen in his underwear from a 14th floor window of a high rise residential building.
It is remarkable how Covid19 evolves. In the UK we get increased transmission, but have yet to see the defenestration side effect that has been remarkably restrained to just Russian Covid.
A top Russian scientist with close links to Edinburgh University who was 'working on a Covid-19 vaccine' has been found dead in suspicious circumstances in St Petersburg.
Biologist Alexander 'Sasha' Kagansky, 45, best known for his work on fighting cancer, was reported to have fallen in his underwear from a 14th floor window of a high rise residential building.
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
England is more densely populated than Belgium
Really?
England, not the UK
But that has relatively little to do with it - as we see with the US
Firstly, its care homes
Secondly, its poor areas with lots of ethnic minorities on the edge of Brussels and Antwerp
A top Russian scientist with close links to Edinburgh University who was 'working on a Covid-19 vaccine' has been found dead in suspicious circumstances in St Petersburg.
Biologist Alexander 'Sasha' Kagansky, 45, best known for his work on fighting cancer, was reported to have fallen in his underwear from a 14th floor window of a high rise residential building.
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
England is more densely populated than Belgium
Really?
Yes
England: 426 per sq km Belgium: 383 per sq km
Blimey.
As has been mentioned many times during this, population density is a strange metric. the reality is that countries tend to be more densely populated than the headline figure. I suspect the effect is more exaggerated for England than for Belgium (i.e. a greater proportion of England is uninhabited compared with Belgium).
Population density is the most valid metric that matters.
Uninhabited space is entirely relevant too not just urban areas. Uninhabited space between urban areas serves a function in providing a natural firebreak between the urban areas which is something lacking through much of England especially.
Well, we do have a big area of open space, but it's beyond our big population centres. So I agree that England is more of a single entity than say France or Germany, but the point I was making was that the denominator can be misleading. The headline figure for Scotland (c.70) is a lot a lower than for England (c.430), but they're not that different in reality given much of Scotland's population lives in the central belt.
It is still relevant because there are more open spaces. There's a half hour drive of pretty much empty space between Glasgow and Edinburgh for instance. There's a natural firebreak between Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Whereas in the Northwest if you look between Liverpool and Manchester there is no natural firebreak between them. The entire land is lived in contiguously.
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
England is more densely populated than Belgium
Really?
England, not the UK
But that has relatively little to do with it - as we see with the US
If it isn't the UK, my money would be on somewhere like California, where there's been a huge growth in cases. And you'd expect anything from there to arrive in London first.
Where the virus originated is irrelevant - it appears to have emerged from a seriously ill and probably immune-compromised individual who survived long enough for the virus to mutate and reinfect others.
What does matter is its identification and the (emerging, but far from complete) understanding of its properties - in this, the UK has done the world a favour.
Truly, no good deed goes unpunished.
I suspect recent "unexplained" explosions in case numbers in some European countries will find an explanation soon enough.
As to the border closures its what panicking governments not in command of the facts do - so its far from surprising.
Here are the contributions to the understanding of one of the strains:
https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?p=grid&r=country Argentina (6) Australia (329) Bahrain (13) Bangladesh (20) Belgium (1) Botswana (1) Brazil (26) Canada (60) Chile (25) China (56) Colombia (2) Czech Republic (1) Côte d'Ivoire (4) Democratic Republic of the Congo (17) Denmark (54) Ecuador (30) Egypt (5) Finland (1) France (37) Gambia (3) Georgia (1) Germany (6) Ghana (5) Greece (1) Hong Kong (9) Iceland (2) India (92) Indonesia (2) Israel (8) Italy (23) Japan (24) Jordan (1) Kenya (20) Luxembourg (3) Madagascar (1) Malaysia (1) Mexico (3) Morocco (5) Netherlands (75) New Zealand (46) Nigeria (7) North Macedonia (3) Norway (5) Oman (1) Pakistan (4) Palestine (1) Peru (125) Russia (12) Saint Barthélemy (1) Saint Martin (1) Saudi Arabia (24) Senegal (4) Sierra Leone (1) Singapore (36) Slovenia (3) South Africa (389) South Korea (6) Spain (10) Sri Lanka (5) Sweden (8) Switzerland (5) Taiwan (6) Thailand (11) Trinidad (3) Tunisia (11) USA (306) Uganda (1) United Arab Emirates (25) United Kingdom (1547) Uruguay (2) Vietnam (7)
The world's hardest hit country:
Belgium (1).
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
It has a lot to do with the relatively high proportion of the population in care homes. On a population adjusted basis well above ours.
Also a very dense country which is a nexus of European travel I presume.
England is more densely populated than Belgium
Really?
Yes
England: 426 per sq km Belgium: 383 per sq km
Blimey.
Although I see that Brussels is much denser than London.
No, that’s Wallonia.
Are you trying to work in an old old joke by Hack and Spitt the Flemish comedians?
Very interesting point. No one has adequately explained why Belgium is such a tragic outlier. Its death toll is awful and its statistics aren’t collated so very differently.
Belgian Flu 2 it is
Multi-generational living is very common in rural Wallonie. There is zero enforcement on planning and building regulations so adding all sorts of bricolage on to your house to accommodate another generation is very viable.
Also the main truck route from Germany and Eastern Europe to the channel ports (E40) runs right through the middle of it.
The Belgian guy who tuned my R35 GTR in Sint-Truiden last year died of covid this month.
On topic of course today's headlines are going to be poor for Boris and he undoubtedly is not the politician for this crisis.
I doubt Starmer or May would have been any better though I would think that Hunt would be
However, the talk of replacing Boris in reality is hope over expectation unless he resigns and I see very little likelihood of that happening
The news that the impasse on HGVs is on the way to being resolved is good news
The European markets have slumped and more than the UK due to the expectation the mutant virus is across Europe, so lots to worry policymakers today
Neither Starmer or May would have spent Wednesday's PMQs joking about things that then became true 3 days later.
Both would have enough sense to see that that could play out very badly.
Prior to the NERVTAG report that changed everything.
And the PMQs hasn't changed anything. You love to bang on about it but it makes no difference. If Starmer is going to spend every damn PMQs trying to score points off Boris then inevitably Boris is going to respond. It is the Punch and Judy nature of PMQs that always happens.
If NERVTAG is so important I will refer you to the fact the new mutation was explicitly referenced on Monday as London was sent (outside of normal timetable) into tier 3.
That only shows that the issue was known to be very serious.
Serious enough to justify Tier 3 yes.
Not known to be serious enough to justify Tier 4 and worldwide panic.
Probably because the world saw things as:-
Monday - there is a problem but we are working on resolving it.
Wednesday - we've fixed the issue
Thursday - standard tidying up.
Saturday - PANIC..
That's not a good look for any Government and you have to remember that for a lot of the South East it went Friday Tier 2, Saturday Tier 3, Sunday Brand new Tier 4 with zero real notice.
Because NERVTAG reported on Thursday afternoon yes.
But don't let actual facts get in the way with your pointscoring agenda. I'm sure there's enough gullible fools to believe NERVTAG are engaged in this conspiracy you are inventing.
Maybe they really are SCEPTRE. Maybe they invented it. You might be on to something - does Boris own a cat?
SAGE were clearly incensed when we moved out of lockdown in early December. They made sure their latest initiative to restore their power could not be scrutinised by parliament.
And they know that Johnson is a very weak man, happy to sacrifice those who can hurt him least on any given day.
In this case the ordinary people of Britain.
You really do live in a fantasy world.
You live in the fantasy world where SAGE are objective and infallible saints despite a stack of hard evidence to the contrary. You do know that shagger Ferguson is on the NERVTAG team right?
If we don't see deaths start to rise very significantly before the end of the year, with this huge number of cases, something will be up. It's always worth staying realistic, rather than having your head in the clouds, and it's a hope rather than a prediction, but I very much hope that's the case.
The vaccination of the over 80s will help keep the death rate down so this needs to be factored in.
Comments
From what I'm hearing shortly after he'd be strung up from a lamp post
Having said that, Johnson is uniquely ill equipped to deal with a national catastrophe. All his Prime Ministerial predecessors in my lifetime would have had the gravitas to communicate solemnity during this time ( even Theresa). Hunt and Starmer also have that skill. That is not to say the outcome would be much better, but at least we could be reassured that sensible people were on the case.
Johnson can easily remove one of the monkeys from his back and extend the EU trade transition period for a year. We may be more able to handle the shock of no deal or bad deal in twelve months time. But Johnson is an infamous dithered and the moment might pass him by, for fear of upsetting critics to the left and the right in his party.
Johnson has based his "Boris Johnson" stage character on Benny Hill. Can I suggest Kenneth Williams would have been more appropriate. "Infamy, infamy, they've all got it infamy".
Fwiw, I would have extended the EU transition period by two years in the summer and opted out of the EU recovery fund as part of that so we wouldn't be on the hook.
Covid is a pattern that can copy itself, so it does. No particular task, no particular target.
A more effectively copied pattern will spread faster. If the pattern kills it's host too quickly, it will struggle to spread. Eventually, you end up with viruses that spread well and don't do too much harm to too many of their hosts, but there's no intention there. And certainly no first principles reason to think that Covid 2.0 is going to play more nicely with humans.
The hope is the vaccine, the fact that humans do the right thing when they have to, and that spring will come.
A point the paper reporting the new variant emphasises:
https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisation-of-an-emergent-sars-cov-2-lineage-in-the-uk-defined-by-a-novel-set-of-spike-mutations/563
...What evolutionary processes or selective pressures might have given rise to lineage B.1.1.7?
High rates of mutation accumulation over short time periods have been reported previously in studies of immunodeficient or immunosuppressed patients who are chronically infected with SARS-CoV-2 (Choi et al. 2020; Avanzato et al. 2020; Kemp et al. 2020). These infections exhibit detectable SARS-CoV-2 RNA for 2-4 months or longer (although there are also reports of long infections in some immunocompetent individuals). The patients are treated with convalescent plasma (sometimes more than once) and usually also with the drug remdesivir. Virus genome sequencing of these infections reveals unusually large numbers of nucleotide changes and deletion mutations and often high ratios of non-synonymous to synonymous changes. Convalescent plasma is often given when patient viral loads are high, and Kemp et al. (2020) report that intra-patient virus genetic diversity increased after plasma treatment was given
Under such circumstances, the evolutionary dynamics of and selective pressures upon the intra-patient virus population are expected to be very different to those experienced in typical infection. First, selection from natural immune responses in immune-deficient/suppressed patients will be weak or absent. Second, the selection arising from antibody therapy may be strong due to high antibody concentrations. Third, if antibody therapy is administered after many weeks of chronic infection, the virus population may be unusually large and genetically diverse at the time that antibody-mediated selective pressure is applied, creating suitable circumstances for the rapid fixation of multiple virus genetic changes through direct selection and genetic hitchhiking.
These considerations lead us to hypothesise that the unusual genetic divergence of lineage B.1.1.7 may have resulted, at least in part, from virus evolution with a chronically-infected individual. Although such infections are rare, and onward transmission from them presumably even rarer, they are not improbable given the ongoing large number of new infections...
Again - let's look at the timeline
Monday - problem requiring immediate action
Wednesday - nothing to worry about
Saturday - it's a problem again requiring immediate action.
Now either it's a real problem or a fake problem but it doesn't explain the flip flop in the middle.
Either Wednesday's reaction is wrong or Saturdays and I know that the easiest fix here was to avoid the everything is 100% OK statement on Wednesday.
Just today, in the BBC's report, nine months on, came the truth from the NHS. We never, ever had the staff to increase NHS capacity, either then or in the near future.
Given the huge lie we were told then, surely we should be questioning everything the government tells us. Everything the SAGE committee tells us. Everything Sky News tells us.
The person we really need, of course, is Thatcher. She’d probably have killed the virus by now. Personally.
*sigh*
This is a 24hr media who made the 2012 rioting much worse by gorging on it. If they are doing a similar thing here it is disgusting.
They just had one geezer on there alarming us this new strain means we are no longer safe at two metres no longer safe with the briefest of contacts. Don’t you agree, if media want to broadcast that message they need to be very careful it is correct?
When the government made the announcement on Saturday did they expect other countries to stop travel ?
I wonder if they didn't because its not something they would have done if the position was reversed.
There are five key facts they are using to determine the tiers. That's one of them. 🤦🏻♂️
https://twitter.com/SmallRedOne/status/1340796568157515779
https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1340960781727363073
Forget the "make them blink" guff- the haggling has been over peanuts compared with what the UK casually chucked away in services and border faff.
You just end up looking like an idiot when Thursday comes around and the truth is revealed.
But I'll check in every so often to see if either of us get the call..
a) Diseases of the nose and throat spread better
b) Diseases of the lungs are the nasty ones
So if this change makes it replicate better in the nose and throat (like colds) then it might become less of a problem.
I don't know if that applies here though. It seems nobody else is terribly sure either.
England: 426 per sq km
Belgium: 383 per sq km
Until Nervtag reported on Thursday it was reasonable to believe that Tier 3 would be sufficient.
Monday - we might have an issue
Wednesday - everything 100% OK nothing to worry about it's all fake rumours
Thursday - F*******
unless you are a complete idiot - you try to keep midweek situation reports neutral so that if you need to change your position you don't look like a fool
The new virus strain is a good example. It appears to be better at spreading. We don't know much more yet - there are scientific reasons to think the vacccinations will still work against it (though we're not yet sure). But it may or may not be more or less likely to kill you, and that will become clear in about 2-3 weeks as the current infections works through. A goalkeeper response to that is to assume it's worse in every way until research shows otherwise. Lock down everywhere, including areas with currently lower levels of infection. Don't hope it'll be no worse and wait to find out.
This is the Black Wednesday of this fiasco of a government and I think that what survives of British business will never forgive the Conservatives for this totally avoidable economic catastrophe.
No deal January is set to be the most serious economic crisis in centuries. If the government does not take immediate emergency action -extending the transition period and further massive help for small businesses for example- then the situation could spiral out of control very quickly.
England population density 426/km^2
New Zealand distance to nearest neighbour >2,500km
I might see a slight flaw in your plan.
They reported it and it is on their small print ticker that rotates too.
It's been such a huge disaster.
He would be making the point you just did into the face of the reporter and asking them why they were not reporting it.
Anyway, with that comment - I;ve caused enough trouble on here. Must sign on for work now
He insisted he meant the process.
Uninhabited space is entirely relevant too not just urban areas. Uninhabited space between urban areas serves a function in providing a natural firebreak between the urban areas which is something lacking through much of England especially.
Like "newt painting", "Flint knapping" is a euphemism for something.
Wednesday: We dealt with the issue on Monday.
Thursday: The issue is worse than was known. F********
What's wrong with that?
Biologist Alexander 'Sasha' Kagansky, 45, best known for his work on fighting cancer, was reported to have fallen in his underwear from a 14th floor window of a high rise residential building.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9074747/Russian-scientist-falls-death-window-stabbed-latest-mysterious-death.html
Alternatively they may have been so focussed on domestic message, didn’t realise they were talking to the world. “We’ve passed what we know to WHO?” For example. Is that all you share it with and talk to?
I hope her successor, now writing 2021: the Sequel, lacks imagination in comparison
But that has relatively little to do with it - as we see with the US
Firstly, its care homes
Secondly, its poor areas with lots of ethnic minorities on the edge of Brussels and Antwerp
Whereas in the Northwest if you look between Liverpool and Manchester there is no natural firebreak between them. The entire land is lived in contiguously.
If they want a negative covid test before the truckers stuck on the M20 are allowed in, less good news...
Also the main truck route from Germany and Eastern Europe to the channel ports (E40) runs right through the middle of it.
The Belgian guy who tuned my R35 GTR in Sint-Truiden last year died of covid this month.