Powerful front page from the Daily Mail as UK COVID deaths top 100k – politicalbetting.com

System · January 2021

Powerful front page from the Daily Mail as UK COVID deaths top 100k – politicalbetting.com

Today’s Daily Mail front pages looks set to one of those that will be remembered and referred back to in the time to come. You can see it being used as one of the pics in the biographies that are likely to be written after he has stood down and will also be clipped for posterity by obituary writers.

Read the full story here

Mysticrose · January 2021

Excellent thread from Mike.

I agree with this assessment in its nuances. Boris surprised me yesterday. I didn't think his contrition was an act. He looked and sounded genuinely sorry. He also looks worn and possibly still unwell.

It's a wretched business. I woke at 3.30 am from a covid dream and that was that. Awake now.

Mysticrose · January 2021

On the previous topic, I am really not sure the Democrats should have pushed for impeachment and said so all the way on here. They should have let it go. Trump is, for now, yesterday's man and it's for the Republicans to deal with him.

Sandpit · January 2021

A horribly difficult time for those in charge anywhere, knowing that literally thousands of lives rest on every decision that’s made.

Blair and Cameron both said in their memoirs, that the most difficult thing they ever did was having to make the final call on military operations abroad, knowing that both service and civilian lives were on the line. This past year will have have been constantly like that, in slow motion as every call played out over a period of weeks.

The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.

swing_voter · January 2021

Struck by how tired and worn BJ appears...not really a surprise but I do feel his end of tenure is looking sooner rather than later, whether you feel he has done a good job or not, I personally feel his Premiership is looking tied to the end of this crisis...

rcs1000 · January 2021

Mysticrose said:
On the previous topic, I am really not sure the Democrats should have pushed for impeachment and said so all the way on here. They should have let it go. Trump is, for now, yesterday's man and it's for the Republicans to deal with him.

I agree: Trump is and was over. He's now starved of the oxygen of publicity. Conviction was always a long shot: what do they (the Dems) have to gain? And how is the country brought together?

They should have held their fire and moved on.

(Of course, McConnell wanted the Dems to waste their time on impeachment. Smart man, Mitch.)

Black_Rook · January 2021

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.

Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?

RochdalePioneers · January 2021

He isn't taking full responsibility. He isn't deeply sorry.

swing_voter · January 2021

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?

Whats to stop a traveller from Lisbon flying into Dublin and then popping into UK from there.....?

rcs1000 · January 2021

Sandpit said:
A horribly difficult time for those in charge anywhere, knowing that literally thousands of lives rest on every decision that’s made.

Blair and Cameron both said in their memoirs, that the most difficult thing they ever did was having to make the final call on military operations abroad, knowing that both service and civilian lives were on the line. This past year will have have been constantly like that, in slow motion as every call played out over a period of weeks.

The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.

Now, I may be talking my own book (in that I'd like to come and visit my parents), but I yelled and screamed for travel restrictions in the spring and summer. Now, their effect is likely limited.

I mean, you can do it. And there's probably little harm (given tourism and things are shutdown anyway). But...

The way I look at this is simple.

We're vaccinating 3 million people a week. It's going to be 5 million when J&J, Moderna and others are approved. In Israel all the data is that this has an extraordinary effect on hospitalisations and deaths.

The people dying now, then were infected in December.

In just three weeks time, 10 million more people will have been vaccinated. It's entirely possibly 20 million people will have been jabbed by the end of February.

Look at Israel. While cases continue to be high, hospitalisations are down more than 60%.

If we keep up current vaccination trends, and I suspect we'll do better than that, then we're going to have fewer people being hospitalised in just six or seven weeks time than at the trough last summer.

Now, against that, the vaccine may be less effective against new strains (which is a good reason to be cautious). But I can't help fear this is a case of us choosing to do something that should have been done last summer, at a time when it will have little benefit. Frankly, if cases are collapsing, the vulnerable are protected, and the number of people the virus could spread to are shrinking, then... it's a lot of hassle for little benefit.

rcs1000 · January 2021

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?

Because 20 million people, accounting for 95% of deaths, are going to be vaccinated by the end of February?

Black_Rook · January 2021

swing_voter said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Whats to stop a traveller from Lisbon flying into Dublin and then popping into UK from there.....?

It would not be that hard to pick up the phone to the Taoiseach and agree a common approach, either. I believe that the Republic of Ireland has been hit at least as hard as we have just lately, they would probably be receptive.

In the unlikely event of non-cooperation, however, then we slap quarantine on travel from the whole of Ireland as well. It's not as if this would be a particularly radical move. Scotland and Wales have both already attempted to cut themselves off from England to various degrees during this crisis.

(EDIT: actually, the Irish have at various points put in place stricter measures than we have, and they may already be contemplating hotel quarantine themselves, but I don't know enough about what's going on over there to say.)

Cyclefree · January 2021

Mysticrose said:
Excellent thread from Mike.

I agree with this assessment in its nuances. Boris surprised me yesterday. I didn't think his contrition was an act. He looked and sounded genuinely sorry. He also looks worn and possibly still unwell.

It's a wretched business. I woke at 3.30 am from a covid dream and that was that. Awake now.

Agreed.

The PM has made plenty of mistakes. Though on vaccines the British government and the NHS have done well. I have no doubt he is genuinely sorry. How could anyone not be.

I would like to see China's leader apologise to the world for the actions they took and failed to take which unleashed this pandemic on the world. China's mistakes at the start of this made this pandemic a whole lot worse than it might have been. China should not be allowed to forget its responsibility for this pandemic and all the deaths and suffering that have ensued.

Sandpit · January 2021

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?

They have to do it as a short whitelist of countries, otherwise it’s pointless doing it at all. They are also politically easier than blacklists to operate.

Start with Australia, NZ and Korea, and build it out from there based on case numbers and local quarantine rules. Direct flights only, with the crew and passengers all having quarantined and tested at the departure point, and with no-one allowed to board the plane during any tech stop.

In practice we are talking a few dozen flights a week, from carefully controlled counties, and at a higher cost than usual due to the number of crew required.

Saying it’s only flights from Brazil and SA that have to quarantine is asking for massive trouble, as you say.

Also, no more than 12 hours between announcement and effect, we don’t want people rushing to airports to get back early.

Also, why are people fined £500 for not giving contact address form to the authorities still allowed in? They should be fined the £500 then given the form to complete properly.

(Oh, and are we even allowed to say whitelist and blacklist any more?)

Black_Rook · January 2021

rcs1000 said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Because 20 million people, accounting for 95% of deaths, are going to be vaccinated by the end of February?

Which does no flipping good at all if rampaging Covid anywhere else in the world gives rise to a vaccine resistant mutation that then gets loose in this country. We would have to start all over again. That's the main point of shutting ourselves off and protecting the gains.

Besides which, even if we don't import a resistant form we could very easily bring in something even more transmissible than the Kentish strain, which would be bad enough in and of itself. Vaccination of the most vulnerable groups will cut down the death toll considerably, but (i) vaccines are not 100% effective and (ii) most of the population still won't have been lanced by the end of next month anyway, nor for many months after that. Until the program is complete we are still at risk of the hospitals getting swamped by younger patients and the wretched lockdown dragging on for even longer than it otherwise would.

No. Pull up the drawbridge. Now.

Cyclefree · January 2021

Sandpit said:
A horribly difficult time for those in charge anywhere, knowing that literally thousands of lives rest on every decision that’s made.

Blair and Cameron both said in their memoirs, that the most difficult thing they ever did was having to make the final call on military operations abroad, knowing that both service and civilian lives were on the line. This past year will have have been constantly like that, in slow motion as every call played out over a period of weeks.

The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.

Quite. My daughter's business cannot operate. The ban preventing her from selling alcohol on a takeaway basis with a takeaway meal (which she could do until 30 December) is costing her ca. £400 per week. That's the difference between closure and just about hanging on.

But some Z-list celebrity is allowed to fly half-way round the world to take pictures of them hanging round a pool with a pina colada.....? Come off it! That's not work and it's a risk to our health. So shut down those borders until we really have this under control and prioritise businesses here not celebrity twaddle.

Sandpit · January 2021

rcs1000 said:

Sandpit said:
A horribly difficult time for those in charge anywhere, knowing that literally thousands of lives rest on every decision that’s made.

Blair and Cameron both said in their memoirs, that the most difficult thing they ever did was having to make the final call on military operations abroad, knowing that both service and civilian lives were on the line. This past year will have have been constantly like that, in slow motion as every call played out over a period of weeks.

The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Now, I may be talking my own book (in that I'd like to come and visit my parents), but I yelled and screamed for travel restrictions in the spring and summer. Now, their effect is likely limited.

I mean, you can do it. And there's probably little harm (given tourism and things are shutdown anyway). But...

The way I look at this is simple.

We're vaccinating 3 million people a week. It's going to be 5 million when J&J, Moderna and others are approved. In Israel all the data is that this has an extraordinary effect on hospitalisations and deaths.

The people dying now, then were infected in December.

In just three weeks time, 10 million more people will have been vaccinated. It's entirely possibly 20 million people will have been jabbed by the end of February.

Look at Israel. While cases continue to be high, hospitalisations are down more than 60%.

If we keep up current vaccination trends, and I suspect we'll do better than that, then we're going to have fewer people being hospitalised in just six or seven weeks time than at the trough last summer.

Now, against that, the vaccine may be less effective against new strains (which is a good reason to be cautious). But I can't help fear this is a case of us choosing to do something that should have been done last summer, at a time when it will have little benefit. Frankly, if cases are collapsing, the vulnerable are protected, and the number of people the virus could spread to are shrinking, then... it's a lot of hassle for little benefit.

Oh, it should definitely have been done last summer!

UK is 7m vaccine doses through a 100m programme, stopping all incoming traffic until that programme completes could make a huge difference to the final outcome at comparatively little cost.

The elephant in the room, as noted in the past couple of days, is that the countries surrounding the UK are having a terrible vaccine programme.

I’d also like to see my parents soon, haven’t seen them for 18 months and am praying this is all over by the summer.

Thankfully my Mum (74) gets her first jab tomorrow

MrEd · January 2021

Cyclefree said:

Mysticrose said:
Excellent thread from Mike.

I agree with this assessment in its nuances. Boris surprised me yesterday. I didn't think his contrition was an act. He looked and sounded genuinely sorry. He also looks worn and possibly still unwell.

It's a wretched business. I woke at 3.30 am from a covid dream and that was that. Awake now.
Agreed.

The PM has made plenty of mistakes. Though on vaccines the British government and the NHS have done well. I have no doubt he is genuinely sorry. How could anyone not be.

I would like to see China's leader apologise to the world for the actions they took and failed to take which unleashed this pandemic on the world. China's mistakes at the start of this made this pandemic a whole lot worse than it might have been. China should not be allowed to forget its responsibility for this pandemic and all the deaths and suffering that have ensued.

More chance of me becoming the Pope.

Mind you, I am Catholic.

Cyclefree · January 2021

rcs1000 said:

Mysticrose said:
On the previous topic, I am really not sure the Democrats should have pushed for impeachment and said so all the way on here. They should have let it go. Trump is, for now, yesterday's man and it's for the Republicans to deal with him.
I agree: Trump is and was over. He's now starved of the oxygen of publicity. Conviction was always a long shot: what do they (the Dems) have to gain? And how is the country brought together?

They should have held their fire and moved on.

(Of course, McConnell wanted the Dems to waste their time on impeachment. Smart man, Mitch.)

If bad, indeed, potentially criminal actions have no consequences for the bad actor, what is the point of law and order? Or any sort of justice system? Or, indeed, the oath of office?

All the arguments you make could just as easily be used by criminals of all types, large and small.

"Moving on" may be necessary, indeed, wise - but only when those involved in the wrongdoing accept that they have indeed done wrong. Trump has not. Nor have his ardent supporters. Nor, frankly, has the Republican Party which is choosing to overlook its own discreditable role in allowing such a man to gain power in its name and supporting him throughout. The tactical backtracking by a few of them at the end does not wipe this out.

The lie - that Trump won and had the election "stolen" from him - needs to be removed from public discourse. It (and all the other lies and actions leading up to this - voter suppression and gerrymandering) needs to be comprehensively and publicly accepted as a lie by the Republican Party and apologised for by them. Not simply forgotten but allowed to fester in the background.

Until the Republicans do this, all their talk of "healing" and "moving on" is so much cant, which has nothing to do with them wanting to unite the country and everything to do with them wanting not to face up to their own inexcusable actions and loss of moral compass these last 4 years.

Sandpit · January 2021

Cyclefree said:

Sandpit said:
A horribly difficult time for those in charge anywhere, knowing that literally thousands of lives rest on every decision that’s made.

Blair and Cameron both said in their memoirs, that the most difficult thing they ever did was having to make the final call on military operations abroad, knowing that both service and civilian lives were on the line. This past year will have have been constantly like that, in slow motion as every call played out over a period of weeks.

The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Quite. My daughter's business cannot operate. The ban preventing her from selling alcohol on a takeaway basis with a takeaway meal (which she could do until 30 December) is costing her ca. £400 per week. That's the difference between closure and just about hanging on.

But some Z-list celebrity is allowed to fly half-way round the world to take pictures of them hanging round a pool with a pina colada.....? Come off it! That's not work and it's a risk to our health. So shut down those borders until we really have this under control and prioritise businesses here not celebrity twaddle.

Agree completely! Your family have I know been badly affected by this, and while your son and husband have more immediate issues which I really hope sort themselves out soon, your daughter’s business (and possibly your own) are best served by getting everyone vaccinated and remaining in the UK for holidays this summer. Best of luck to you all.

Foxy · January 2021

Cyclefree said:

Mysticrose said:
Excellent thread from Mike.

I agree with this assessment in its nuances. Boris surprised me yesterday. I didn't think his contrition was an act. He looked and sounded genuinely sorry. He also looks worn and possibly still unwell.

It's a wretched business. I woke at 3.30 am from a covid dream and that was that. Awake now.
Agreed.

The PM has made plenty of mistakes. Though on vaccines the British government and the NHS have done well. I have no doubt he is genuinely sorry. How could anyone not be.

I would like to see China's leader apologise to the world for the actions they took and failed to take which unleashed this pandemic on the world. China's mistakes at the start of this made this pandemic a whole lot worse than it might have been. China should not be allowed to forget its responsibility for this pandemic and all the deaths and suffering that have ensued.

The BBC2 "54 days in China" documentary last night was interesting, and a cut above the usual covid programming that we see. Well worth a look on catchup.

How is young Mstr Cyclefree doing?

CarlottaVance · January 2021

Looks like Berlaymonster was correct in his assumptions about the EU-AstraZeneca contract:

https://www.berlaymonster.com/post/why-astrazeneca-may-be-shrugging-off-eu-s-vaccine-deal-tantrum

Cyclefree · January 2021

RochdalePioneers said:
He isn't taking full responsibility. He isn't deeply sorry.

Why is the Daily Mail using "was" in the headline?

The deaths have not finished and Boris is still PM, isn't he.....

Sandpit · January 2021

Black_Rook said:

swing_voter said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Whats to stop a traveller from Lisbon flying into Dublin and then popping into UK from there.....?
It would not be that hard to pick up the phone to the Taoiseach and agree a common approach, either. I believe that the Republic of Ireland has been hit at least as hard as we have just lately, they would probably be receptive.

In the unlikely event of non-cooperation, however, then we slap quarantine on travel from the whole of Ireland as well. It's not as if this would be a particularly radical move. Scotland and Wales have both already attempted to cut themselves off from England to various degrees during this crisis.

(EDIT: actually, the Irish have at various points put in place stricter measures than we have, and they may already be contemplating hotel quarantine themselves, but I don't know enough about what's going on over there to say.)

Yes, it’s definitely worth getting an agreement with Ireland, over CTA travel restrictions, and we can agree to help with vaccine supply when UK is on top of the situation. RoI population is only 5m, and we don’t want to have the virus run rampant over there if we can do something about it.

Cyclefree · January 2021

MrEd said:

Cyclefree said:

Mysticrose said:
Excellent thread from Mike.

I agree with this assessment in its nuances. Boris surprised me yesterday. I didn't think his contrition was an act. He looked and sounded genuinely sorry. He also looks worn and possibly still unwell.

It's a wretched business. I woke at 3.30 am from a covid dream and that was that. Awake now.
Agreed.

The PM has made plenty of mistakes. Though on vaccines the British government and the NHS have done well. I have no doubt he is genuinely sorry. How could anyone not be.

I would like to see China's leader apologise to the world for the actions they took and failed to take which unleashed this pandemic on the world. China's mistakes at the start of this made this pandemic a whole lot worse than it might have been. China should not be allowed to forget its responsibility for this pandemic and all the deaths and suffering that have ensued.
More chance of me becoming the Pope.

Mind you, I am Catholic.

Me too. And my chances of becoming Pope are still higher than Xi admitting responsibility and apologising.

But China should not be allowed to forget. It is a repellent regime. Glad to see the Jewish community speaking up about the Uighurs, especially today. "Never again" is a big fat pious lie.

CarlottaVance · January 2021

For those who missed it - extensive interview with the CEO of AstraZeneca:

https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2021/01/26/news/interview_pascal_soriot_ceo_astrazeneca_coronavirus_covid_vaccines-284349628/amp/

Cyclefree · January 2021

Sandpit said:

Cyclefree said:

Sandpit said:
A horribly difficult time for those in charge anywhere, knowing that literally thousands of lives rest on every decision that’s made.

Blair and Cameron both said in their memoirs, that the most difficult thing they ever did was having to make the final call on military operations abroad, knowing that both service and civilian lives were on the line. This past year will have have been constantly like that, in slow motion as every call played out over a period of weeks.

The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Quite. My daughter's business cannot operate. The ban preventing her from selling alcohol on a takeaway basis with a takeaway meal (which she could do until 30 December) is costing her ca. £400 per week. That's the difference between closure and just about hanging on.

But some Z-list celebrity is allowed to fly half-way round the world to take pictures of them hanging round a pool with a pina colada.....? Come off it! That's not work and it's a risk to our health. So shut down those borders until we really have this under control and prioritise businesses here not celebrity twaddle.
Agree completely! Your family have I know been badly affected by this, and while your son and husband have more immediate issues which I really hope sort themselves out soon, your daughter’s business (and possibly your own) are best served by getting everyone vaccinated and remaining in the UK for holidays this summer. Best of luck to you all.

Thank you - and to everyone else for their kind wishes.

Plenty of others on this forum, let alone elsewhere, have suffered far worse.

We just have to KBO.

CarlottaVance · January 2021

https://twitter.com/herszenhorn/status/1354323295647256577?s=20

Cyclefree · January 2021

Foxy said:

Cyclefree said:

Mysticrose said:
Excellent thread from Mike.

I agree with this assessment in its nuances. Boris surprised me yesterday. I didn't think his contrition was an act. He looked and sounded genuinely sorry. He also looks worn and possibly still unwell.

It's a wretched business. I woke at 3.30 am from a covid dream and that was that. Awake now.
Agreed.

The PM has made plenty of mistakes. Though on vaccines the British government and the NHS have done well. I have no doubt he is genuinely sorry. How could anyone not be.

I would like to see China's leader apologise to the world for the actions they took and failed to take which unleashed this pandemic on the world. China's mistakes at the start of this made this pandemic a whole lot worse than it might have been. China should not be allowed to forget its responsibility for this pandemic and all the deaths and suffering that have ensued.
The BBC2 "54 days in China" documentary last night was interesting, and a cut above the usual covid programming that we see. Well worth a look on catchup.

How is young Mstr Cyclefree doing?

A bit better: fever down and oxygen levels up. So hope that things are heading in the right direction.

Husband finding it a bit hard. V tired. Eldest son is the least affected, bizarrely. So far - **crosses fingers and touches wood**.

Dog mightily miffed at not having as much exercise as he would like.

MrEd · January 2021

Cyclefree said:

MrEd said:

Cyclefree said:

Mysticrose said:
Excellent thread from Mike.

I agree with this assessment in its nuances. Boris surprised me yesterday. I didn't think his contrition was an act. He looked and sounded genuinely sorry. He also looks worn and possibly still unwell.

It's a wretched business. I woke at 3.30 am from a covid dream and that was that. Awake now.
Agreed.

The PM has made plenty of mistakes. Though on vaccines the British government and the NHS have done well. I have no doubt he is genuinely sorry. How could anyone not be.

I would like to see China's leader apologise to the world for the actions they took and failed to take which unleashed this pandemic on the world. China's mistakes at the start of this made this pandemic a whole lot worse than it might have been. China should not be allowed to forget its responsibility for this pandemic and all the deaths and suffering that have ensued.
More chance of me becoming the Pope.

Mind you, I am Catholic.
Me too. And my chances of becoming Pope are still higher than Xi admitting responsibility and apologising.

But China should not be allowed to forget. It is a repellent regime. Glad to see the Jewish community speaking up about the Uighurs, especially today. "Never again" is a big fat pious lie.

Unfortunately, it seems as though they will be allowed to forget although I think there has been a lot of subtle damage done to China's reputation from this, and probably to Xi within China. Also, while China has done relatively well, it was running out of time to catch up with the RoW before the crisis given its rapidly ageing population and the crisis has knocked it back by at least 2 years.

Best wishes to you and your family through all of this, it sounds like a shocker but glad to see you and your family have at least the right attitude. Best of wishes.

OldKingCole · January 2021

Thailand has been in and out of lockdown for a year. They sealed the borders..... and they border China. Everyone had to spend 14 days in quarantine, but once in there was quite a lot of freedom. My family there have been on holiday trips a couple of times and had a big party at Christmas.
Now the Tourism Authority of Thailand has announced this:(edited)

'Foreigners who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 could be allowed to visit Thailand without the need to quarantine, according to new proposals from the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT).

The tourism authority says so-called ‘vaccine passports’ would enable foreign tourists to stay in Thailand without needing to spend the first 14 days of their trip in an alternative state quarantine facility.

The ‘vaccine passports’ are one of a number of ideas mooted by TAT governor Yuthasak Supasorn in a bid to revive the country’s decimate tourism industry, which faces the prospect of one million workers left unemployed as a result of the pandemic.

Mr Supasorn said under the proposals, vaccinated tourists from the United States and Europe could start arriving in Thailand as early as March or April, with a focus on what would be the Easter holidays in Europe.

Mr Supasorn said that if the ‘vaccine passports’ get the approval he would expect 10 million tourists to visit the country in 2021.

Mr Supasorn added that TAT have already entered discussions with Emirates Airlines and Qatar Airways about offering tourists all inclusive packages. While details were not specified, it is presumed that the packages would enable vaccinated foreigners to travel to Thailand without restrictions or the need to enter quarantine.

TAT will also ask the tourism authorities in other ASEAN countries to adopt the ‘vaccine passport’ model in order to stimulate tourism across the region.

Meanwhile, Dusit International CEO Suphajee Suthumpun said: “The current quarantine restrictions are crippling our industry and having a massive impact on Thailand’s economy. With foreign tourists accounting for around 70% of the total industry, and with tourism representing around 22% of GDP, it’s clear that we need to open the borders to vaccinated travellers as soon as possible.”

Suthumpun said that people working in the hospitality sector should be given the vaccine as a priority in order to help protect locals and foreigners by limiting the risk of infection.]

Thailand, which normally welcomes around 40 million tourists, saw tourist arrivals fall by 90 percent in 2020.'

Seems sensible to me.

MrEd · January 2021

rcs1000 said:

Mysticrose said:
On the previous topic, I am really not sure the Democrats should have pushed for impeachment and said so all the way on here. They should have let it go. Trump is, for now, yesterday's man and it's for the Republicans to deal with him.
I agree: Trump is and was over. He's now starved of the oxygen of publicity. Conviction was always a long shot: what do they (the Dems) have to gain? And how is the country brought together?

They should have held their fire and moved on.

(Of course, McConnell wanted the Dems to waste their time on impeachment. Smart man, Mitch.)

I'd agree on the impeachment bit, @rcs1000. There was a two to three day window when the Democrats had a truly golden chance to secure their dominance in US politics (at federal level) for years to come. However, Pelosi and Schumer couldn't get past their dislike of Trump and so had to go full hog. If the Democrats had been smart, the best course of approach would have been to censure Trump. They would have got a lot more Republicans to vote for it and that would really have kicked things off in the GOP - the base would have considered a vote for censure only slightly less treacherous than for impeachment (as would Trump would have done) and you would have had a lot more Republicans facing challenges. As it is, the small number of GOP members voting for impeachment gives off the impression that the GOP is now Trump's party.

As a result of that - and the tech bans, which have had an incredibly galvinising effect on not only the base but the GOP politicians - the Republicans are now coming out fighting. It was interesting that Rand Paul (who is extreme in his own way but not on this) talking about the Republicans spending the next 4 years scrutinising the electoral system and that he thought there were serious flaws in the 2020 election. GOP states are already taking measures.

I'd disagree about Trump fading away. He's opening up his new Office of the Former President in Florida and it's clear he will be very much taking an active role. I'm leaning more towards he won't run again but he will very much want to be seen as the kingmaker in the GOP.

MarqueeMark · January 2021

Black_Rook said:

rcs1000 said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Because 20 million people, accounting for 95% of deaths, are going to be vaccinated by the end of February?
Which does no flipping good at all if rampaging Covid anywhere else in the world gives rise to a vaccine resistant mutation that then gets loose in this country. We would have to start all over again. That's the main point of shutting ourselves off and protecting the gains.

Besides which, even if we don't import a resistant form we could very easily bring in something even more transmissible than the Kentish strain, which would be bad enough in and of itself. Vaccination of the most vulnerable groups will cut down the death toll considerably, but (i) vaccines are not 100% effective and (ii) most of the population still won't have been lanced by the end of next month anyway, nor for many months after that. Until the program is complete we are still at risk of the hospitals getting swamped by younger patients and the wretched lockdown dragging on for even longer than it otherwise would.

No. Pull up the drawbridge. Now.

The other thing to consider is that the people doing the pina colada run to the sun are already a set of people who think that rules don't apply to them in the same way. Lockdowns are for little people. Now, I'm not saying that they are all going to be like the Covid-suffering super-spreader in the Welsh valleys, determined to do a pub-crawl regardless. But they are the people for whom re-routing their return home through Dublin will just seem like one last wheeze to limit the hassle of having to isolate in a hotel room. In their minds, they are important people whose lives should not be encumbered by that shit.

Covid is a sneaky fucker. It will happily exploit ANY area where we are less than 100% vigilant.

Foxy · January 2021

Cyclefree said:

Foxy said:

Cyclefree said:

Mysticrose said:
Excellent thread from Mike.

I agree with this assessment in its nuances. Boris surprised me yesterday. I didn't think his contrition was an act. He looked and sounded genuinely sorry. He also looks worn and possibly still unwell.

It's a wretched business. I woke at 3.30 am from a covid dream and that was that. Awake now.
Agreed.

The PM has made plenty of mistakes. Though on vaccines the British government and the NHS have done well. I have no doubt he is genuinely sorry. How could anyone not be.

I would like to see China's leader apologise to the world for the actions they took and failed to take which unleashed this pandemic on the world. China's mistakes at the start of this made this pandemic a whole lot worse than it might have been. China should not be allowed to forget its responsibility for this pandemic and all the deaths and suffering that have ensued.
The BBC2 "54 days in China" documentary last night was interesting, and a cut above the usual covid programming that we see. Well worth a look on catchup.

How is young Mstr Cyclefree doing?
A bit better: fever down and oxygen levels up. So hope that things are heading in the right direction.

Husband finding it a bit hard. V tired. Eldest son is the least affected, bizarrely. So far - **crosses fingers and touches wood**.

Dog mightily miffed at not having as much exercise as he would like.

Sounds hopeful. Mrs Foxy still gets very tired at times even 2 months later, though is mostly back to normal. She cannot smell the dogs food still (he loves raw minced tripe, which smells vile).

I think the government should be pushing a stay in the UK this summer plan. British tourism needs the boost, and we have so much to see and enjoy. A stress on outdoor activities, even licensed raves, may well be better than the alternatives.

Alistair · January 2021

At 82,127 deaths he wasn't deeply sorry and didn't take full responsibility.

Nice big round number gets the soundbites out

CarlottaVance · January 2021

https://twitter.com/TomMcTague/status/1354330616834248706?s=20

Theuniondivvie · January 2021

RochdalePioneers said:
He isn't taking full responsibility. He isn't deeply sorry.

https://twitter.com/tiernandouieb/status/1354190859479228417?s=21

DavidL · January 2021

rcs1000 said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Because 20 million people, accounting for 95% of deaths, are going to be vaccinated by the end of February?

The vaccine is the get out of jail free card but we still don't know if those vaccinated can be carriers, we still don't know how many will get ill anyway (the trials give some indication but this is enormously scaled up and affect hundreds of thousands with various underlying and complicating conditions that will not have been mirrored in the tests) and we still don't know how many sufferers of long covid are going to be filling our hospitals for the next year.

I think we made a terrible mistake in not having mandatory quarantine for all visitors last February. I very much doubt our deaths would have been half of what they are if we had and it is possible that the lockdowns would have worked to bear down on the disease before the new virulent strain took hold. Is it worth doing, even now? I would say yes because I want life to get back to something like normal in this country as fast as possible and it reduces the risk factors but the opportunity for a massive upside in saved lives is probably gone.

Scott_xP · January 2021

...

Scott_xP · January 2021

https://twitter.com/RobDotHutton/status/1354333489445941249

Theuniondivvie · January 2021

https://twitter.com/gmb/status/1354322187017203714?s=21

Theuniondivvie · January 2021

https://twitter.com/steve_vladeck/status/1354272294688927745?s=21

Dura_Ace · January 2021

MrEd said:
I'm leaning more towards he won't run again but he will very much want to be seen as the kingmaker in the GOP.

Why won't he run again? Has he suddenly developed an aversion to being the centre of attention and other people's money?

Philip_Thompson · January 2021

rcs1000 said:

Sandpit said:
A horribly difficult time for those in charge anywhere, knowing that literally thousands of lives rest on every decision that’s made.

Blair and Cameron both said in their memoirs, that the most difficult thing they ever did was having to make the final call on military operations abroad, knowing that both service and civilian lives were on the line. This past year will have have been constantly like that, in slow motion as every call played out over a period of weeks.

The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Now, I may be talking my own book (in that I'd like to come and visit my parents), but I yelled and screamed for travel restrictions in the spring and summer. Now, their effect is likely limited.

I mean, you can do it. And there's probably little harm (given tourism and things are shutdown anyway). But...

The way I look at this is simple.

We're vaccinating 3 million people a week. It's going to be 5 million when J&J, Moderna and others are approved. In Israel all the data is that this has an extraordinary effect on hospitalisations and deaths.

The people dying now, then were infected in December.

In just three weeks time, 10 million more people will have been vaccinated. It's entirely possibly 20 million people will have been jabbed by the end of February.

Look at Israel. While cases continue to be high, hospitalisations are down more than 60%.

If we keep up current vaccination trends, and I suspect we'll do better than that, then we're going to have fewer people being hospitalised in just six or seven weeks time than at the trough last summer.

Now, against that, the vaccine may be less effective against new strains (which is a good reason to be cautious). But I can't help fear this is a case of us choosing to do something that should have been done last summer, at a time when it will have little benefit. Frankly, if cases are collapsing, the vulnerable are protected, and the number of people the virus could spread to are shrinking, then... it's a lot of hassle for little benefit.

That's fair enough if the choice is borders open, or borders closed - with no other restrictions. With all our "normal" civil liberties. Its not the case though.

We have school children told not to go to school, as a matter of law.
We have businesses, real "essential" work for those whose livelihoods they form shut down, as a matter of law.
We are unable to have loved ones in our homes, as a matter of law.
We have people unable to comfort and say goodbye to loved ones as they die in hospital.

If there's no problems that need dealing with then open schools, open pubs and restaurants, let us see our loved ones. Otherwise if we're still in the middle of a global pandemic then its better late than never to be putting restrictions on at the borders and they should be the last restrictions lifted not the first ones.

Children want and need to go to school. Millions want to go to work. They matter more than a week on the beach.

IanB2 · January 2021

Black_Rook said:

rcs1000 said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Because 20 million people, accounting for 95% of deaths, are going to be vaccinated by the end of February?
Which does no flipping good at all if rampaging Covid anywhere else in the world gives rise to a vaccine resistant mutation that then gets loose in this country. We would have to start all over again. That's the main point of shutting ourselves off and protecting the gains.

Besides which, even if we don't import a resistant form we could very easily bring in something even more transmissible than the Kentish strain, which would be bad enough in and of itself. Vaccination of the most vulnerable groups will cut down the death toll considerably, but (i) vaccines are not 100% effective and (ii) most of the population still won't have been lanced by the end of next month anyway, nor for many months after that. Until the program is complete we are still at risk of the hospitals getting swamped by younger patients and the wretched lockdown dragging on for even longer than it otherwise would.

No. Pull up the drawbridge. Now.

The mutation might just as easily originate next door (as we have probably already demonstrated) and, unless a specific additional risk factor is identified as in the case of SA and Brazil, international travel is no more risky than domestic (by the same mode). Travelling for non-essential reasons is already banned, and otherwise there is no good reason for preventing people moving between countries. Aside from the list of good reasons some people have for doing so, there are jobs and livelihoods that depend on it, the same as every other economic activity, and shutting it down without logic would be gratuitous.

The argument for doing so was a year ago, when the prevalence abroad (China, Italy, Spain) was much higher than here, and we needed the time to get other measures in place such as track and trace.

Foxy · January 2021

DavidL said:

rcs1000 said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Because 20 million people, accounting for 95% of deaths, are going to be vaccinated by the end of February?
The vaccine is the get out of jail free card but we still don't know if those vaccinated can be carriers, we still don't know how many will get ill anyway (the trials give some indication but this is enormously scaled up and affect hundreds of thousands with various underlying and complicating conditions that will not have been mirrored in the tests) and we still don't know how many sufferers of long covid are going to be filling our hospitals for the next year.

I think we made a terrible mistake in not having mandatory quarantine for all visitors last February. I very much doubt our deaths would have been half of what they are if we had and it is possible that the lockdowns would have worked to bear down on the disease before the new virulent strain took hold. Is it worth doing, even now? I would say yes because I want life to get back to something like normal in this country as fast as possible and it reduces the risk factors but the opportunity for a massive upside in saved lives is probably gone.

I am cautious. We are a long way from the final chapter of this story. Vaccines will help with mortality and admissions, but until everyone over 18 has been vaccinated, there will be significant pockets of disease. We need real world data on our population to see how effective disease suppression is. Even when it becomes a less severe illness, requiring a couple of weeks off work in most, it is going to have ongoing impact.

Then there is the lost year of schooling, non-covid healthcare and economic impact on various sectors.

The recovery plans need to start now. For example we are likely to need more inpatient beds for both medical and surgical care in order to catch up. My guess would be a 30% increase in capacity as a minimum, and a strong emphasis on supporting junior medical and nursing staff. They are getting burnt out.

Philip_Thompson · January 2021

MarqueeMark said:

Black_Rook said:

rcs1000 said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Because 20 million people, accounting for 95% of deaths, are going to be vaccinated by the end of February?
Which does no flipping good at all if rampaging Covid anywhere else in the world gives rise to a vaccine resistant mutation that then gets loose in this country. We would have to start all over again. That's the main point of shutting ourselves off and protecting the gains.

Besides which, even if we don't import a resistant form we could very easily bring in something even more transmissible than the Kentish strain, which would be bad enough in and of itself. Vaccination of the most vulnerable groups will cut down the death toll considerably, but (i) vaccines are not 100% effective and (ii) most of the population still won't have been lanced by the end of next month anyway, nor for many months after that. Until the program is complete we are still at risk of the hospitals getting swamped by younger patients and the wretched lockdown dragging on for even longer than it otherwise would.

No. Pull up the drawbridge. Now.
The other thing to consider is that the people doing the pina colada run to the sun are already a set of people who think that rules don't apply to them in the same way. Lockdowns are for little people. Now, I'm not saying that they are all going to be like the Covid-suffering super-spreader in the Welsh valleys, determined to do a pub-crawl regardless. But they are the people for whom re-routing their return home through Dublin will just seem like one last wheeze to limit the hassle of having to isolate in a hotel room. In their minds, they are important people whose lives should not be encumbered by that shit.

Covid is a sneaky fucker. It will happily exploit ANY area where we are less than 100% vigilant.

If we were to do a mandatory hotel quarantine and the Irish were to join us in doing a mandatory hotel quarantine then I'd have no qualms with having an exception for Dublin. Make it a pan-Common Travel Area policy.

Otherwise it should apply to Ireland - and Northern Ireland.

Philip_Thompson · January 2021

Theuniondivvie said:
https://twitter.com/gmb/status/1354322187017203714?s=21

Why, did he go from Tier 3 to a foreign holiday like Piers Moron?

Scott_xP · January 2021

https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1354335765992509440

DavidL · January 2021

Foxy said:

DavidL said:

rcs1000 said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Because 20 million people, accounting for 95% of deaths, are going to be vaccinated by the end of February?
The vaccine is the get out of jail free card but we still don't know if those vaccinated can be carriers, we still don't know how many will get ill anyway (the trials give some indication but this is enormously scaled up and affect hundreds of thousands with various underlying and complicating conditions that will not have been mirrored in the tests) and we still don't know how many sufferers of long covid are going to be filling our hospitals for the next year.

I think we made a terrible mistake in not having mandatory quarantine for all visitors last February. I very much doubt our deaths would have been half of what they are if we had and it is possible that the lockdowns would have worked to bear down on the disease before the new virulent strain took hold. Is it worth doing, even now? I would say yes because I want life to get back to something like normal in this country as fast as possible and it reduces the risk factors but the opportunity for a massive upside in saved lives is probably gone.
I am cautious. We are a long way from the final chapter of this story. Vaccines will help with mortality and admissions, but until everyone over 18 has been vaccinated, there will be significant pockets of disease. We need real world data on our population to see how effective disease suppression is. Even when it becomes a less severe illness, requiring a couple of weeks off work in most, it is going to have ongoing impact.

Then there is the lost year of schooling, non-covid healthcare and economic impact on various sectors.

The recovery plans need to start now. For example we are likely to need more inpatient beds for both medical and surgical care in order to catch up. My guess would be a 30% increase in capacity as a minimum, and a strong emphasis on supporting junior medical and nursing staff. They are getting burnt out.

Your areas of caution reflect my own thinking which is why, even now and a year late, I think we should go for full quarantine for travelers. Even as we go full steam ahead on a remarkably rapid vaccination program we are a long way from being out of the woods here. The sequelae of this wretched illness will be with us for years to come and the debts accrued for even longer.

Roger · January 2021

It would be a great thing for the world if the two populists who have done so much damage to their respective countries were unceremoniously kicked out in the same year.

IanB2 · January 2021

Foxy said:

DavidL said:

rcs1000 said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Because 20 million people, accounting for 95% of deaths, are going to be vaccinated by the end of February?
The vaccine is the get out of jail free card but we still don't know if those vaccinated can be carriers, we still don't know how many will get ill anyway (the trials give some indication but this is enormously scaled up and affect hundreds of thousands with various underlying and complicating conditions that will not have been mirrored in the tests) and we still don't know how many sufferers of long covid are going to be filling our hospitals for the next year.

I think we made a terrible mistake in not having mandatory quarantine for all visitors last February. I very much doubt our deaths would have been half of what they are if we had and it is possible that the lockdowns would have worked to bear down on the disease before the new virulent strain took hold. Is it worth doing, even now? I would say yes because I want life to get back to something like normal in this country as fast as possible and it reduces the risk factors but the opportunity for a massive upside in saved lives is probably gone.
I am cautious. We are a long way from the final chapter of this story. Vaccines will help with mortality and admissions, but until everyone over 18 has been vaccinated, there will be significant pockets of disease. We need real world data on our population to see how effective disease suppression is. Even when it becomes a less severe illness, requiring a couple of weeks off work in most, it is going to have ongoing impact.

Then there is the lost year of schooling, non-covid healthcare and economic impact on various sectors.

The recovery plans need to start now. For example we are likely to need more inpatient beds for both medical and surgical care in order to catch up. My guess would be a 30% increase in capacity as a minimum, and a strong emphasis on supporting junior medical and nursing staff. They are getting burnt out.

Indeed. Your specifically medical points are part of a wider picture where the considerable burden and handicap from having to 'catch up' or restore activity in almost every field are not currently being appreciated. Right now people are just looking forward to being able to go out for eating, drinking and entertainment once again.

On this subject, I am starting to see some financial commentators float the possibility that the real financial crash will happen later this year, for the same reason.

Theuniondivvie · January 2021

Fckn hell, that sockless wee prick Hilton should be locked up for reasons of public safety.

https://twitter.com/johnharris1969/status/1354338158285107200?s=21

Foxy · January 2021

Not being on Instagram or interested in celebrity influences, I had missed out on Sheridan. Watching her in Dubai is profoundly depressing. The arrogant disrespect for local culture in the pouting selfie on a camel is just too much.

https://twitter.com/thismorning/status/1354014175215955969?s=09

MarqueeMark · January 2021

Philip_Thompson said:

MarqueeMark said:

Black_Rook said:

rcs1000 said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Because 20 million people, accounting for 95% of deaths, are going to be vaccinated by the end of February?
Which does no flipping good at all if rampaging Covid anywhere else in the world gives rise to a vaccine resistant mutation that then gets loose in this country. We would have to start all over again. That's the main point of shutting ourselves off and protecting the gains.

Besides which, even if we don't import a resistant form we could very easily bring in something even more transmissible than the Kentish strain, which would be bad enough in and of itself. Vaccination of the most vulnerable groups will cut down the death toll considerably, but (i) vaccines are not 100% effective and (ii) most of the population still won't have been lanced by the end of next month anyway, nor for many months after that. Until the program is complete we are still at risk of the hospitals getting swamped by younger patients and the wretched lockdown dragging on for even longer than it otherwise would.

No. Pull up the drawbridge. Now.
The other thing to consider is that the people doing the pina colada run to the sun are already a set of people who think that rules don't apply to them in the same way. Lockdowns are for little people. Now, I'm not saying that they are all going to be like the Covid-suffering super-spreader in the Welsh valleys, determined to do a pub-crawl regardless. But they are the people for whom re-routing their return home through Dublin will just seem like one last wheeze to limit the hassle of having to isolate in a hotel room. In their minds, they are important people whose lives should not be encumbered by that shit.

Covid is a sneaky fucker. It will happily exploit ANY area where we are less than 100% vigilant.
If we were to do a mandatory hotel quarantine and the Irish were to join us in doing a mandatory hotel quarantine then I'd have no qualms with having an exception for Dublin. Make it a pan-Common Travel Area policy.

Otherwise it should apply to Ireland - and Northern Ireland.

We would not be remotely squeamish in locking down the border from Ireland if this were foot and mouth.

Yet a Bastard Bug which has killed one hundred thousand and counting? Gets to walk over the border without showing a passport.

Morris_Dancer · January 2021

Good morning, everyone.

The 100,000 tombstone comic is dumb.

The Prime Minister has gotten a lot of things very wrong (should've locked down the airports a year ago) and other things very right (for once his instinct to splurge money provided exactly what the country needed for vaccines). As Stannis Baratheon said, the good does not wash out the bad, nor the bad wash out the good.

Criticise the stuff he got wrong and praise the stuff he got right, but trying to wrap it all together as if he's responsible for the Chinese Plague is unwise. It won't persuade those who might be convinced he's an imbecile because he isn't to blame for the disease's existence, and (as with the scattergun approach to rampant criticism of MPs' expenses) it'll let genuine and serious failings slip under the radar.

rottenborough · January 2021

Pascal Soriot the AstraZeneca chief on vaccine production:

"Look, the sites that have the lowest productivity in the network are the sites that are supplying Europe. One of the plants with the highest yield is in the UK because it started earlier."

No messing from him in Telegraph interview this morning. EU slowed things down by two months and UK didn't and are first in the queue.

DavidL · January 2021

IanB2 said:

Foxy said:

DavidL said:

rcs1000 said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Because 20 million people, accounting for 95% of deaths, are going to be vaccinated by the end of February?
The vaccine is the get out of jail free card but we still don't know if those vaccinated can be carriers, we still don't know how many will get ill anyway (the trials give some indication but this is enormously scaled up and affect hundreds of thousands with various underlying and complicating conditions that will not have been mirrored in the tests) and we still don't know how many sufferers of long covid are going to be filling our hospitals for the next year.

I think we made a terrible mistake in not having mandatory quarantine for all visitors last February. I very much doubt our deaths would have been half of what they are if we had and it is possible that the lockdowns would have worked to bear down on the disease before the new virulent strain took hold. Is it worth doing, even now? I would say yes because I want life to get back to something like normal in this country as fast as possible and it reduces the risk factors but the opportunity for a massive upside in saved lives is probably gone.
I am cautious. We are a long way from the final chapter of this story. Vaccines will help with mortality and admissions, but until everyone over 18 has been vaccinated, there will be significant pockets of disease. We need real world data on our population to see how effective disease suppression is. Even when it becomes a less severe illness, requiring a couple of weeks off work in most, it is going to have ongoing impact.

Then there is the lost year of schooling, non-covid healthcare and economic impact on various sectors.

The recovery plans need to start now. For example we are likely to need more inpatient beds for both medical and surgical care in order to catch up. My guess would be a 30% increase in capacity as a minimum, and a strong emphasis on supporting junior medical and nursing staff. They are getting burnt out.
Indeed. Your specifically medical points are part of a wider picture where the considerable burden and handicap from having to 'catch up' or restore activity in almost every field are not currently being appreciated. Right now people are just looking forward to being able to go out for eating, drinking and entertainment once again.

On this subject, I am starting to see some financial commentators float the possibility that the real financial crash will happen later this year, for the same reason.

I think that the economic challenge is the transition from the wall of money that has been thrown at this to something approaching reality and sustainability. As the support is withdrawn, as furlough ends, as domestic pent up demand falters and as Sunak contemplates the ruin that is the public finances there is a real risk of a further lurch downwards in GDP and employment. Many, maybe most people in this country have been getting full wages for part time work. That has kept demand higher than it can realistically be. There is an article in the Times today about how Banks are noting how poor productivity has been this time around. This cannot go on and when it stops it will be bumpy.

Scott_xP · January 2021

https://twitter.com/RobDotHutton/status/1354343229429338115

OnlyLivingBoy · January 2021

Sandpit said:
A horribly difficult time for those in charge anywhere, knowing that literally thousands of lives rest on every decision that’s made.

Blair and Cameron both said in their memoirs, that the most difficult thing they ever did was having to make the final call on military operations abroad, knowing that both service and civilian lives were on the line. This past year will have have been constantly like that, in slow motion as every call played out over a period of weeks.

The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.

Hotel quarantine for all incoming travellers is only a worthwhile policy if we have suppressed the rate of infection to close to zero. In that sense it is a complement to, not a substitute for, continued lockdown measures. I would support it if it were implemented when we had suppressed domestic transmission, but not as a psychological displacement activity aimed at focusing people's ire on z-list celebs rather than government failures.

Scott_xP · January 2021

https://twitter.com/cnni/status/1354128624715243521

Nigelb · January 2021

Cyclefree said:

Mysticrose said:
Excellent thread from Mike.

I agree with this assessment in its nuances. Boris surprised me yesterday. I didn't think his contrition was an act. He looked and sounded genuinely sorry. He also looks worn and possibly still unwell.

It's a wretched business. I woke at 3.30 am from a covid dream and that was that. Awake now.
Agreed.

The PM has made plenty of mistakes. Though on vaccines the British government and the NHS have done well. I have no doubt he is genuinely sorry. How could anyone not be.

I would like to see China's leader apologise to the world for the actions they took and failed to take which unleashed this pandemic on the world. China's mistakes at the start of this made this pandemic a whole lot worse than it might have been. China should not be allowed to forget its responsibility for this pandemic and all the deaths and suffering that have ensued.

Do you think that a government which is conducting an ongoing genocide against part of its population is likely to apologise ?
They are far more likely to point to the success of their lockdown policy and say that the world ought to have followed their example. And alongside that conduct targeted vaccine diplomacy (something they've already started to do).

Autocrats like Xi don't do apologies.

Toms · January 2021

Foxy said: "Not being on Instagram or interested in celebrity influences, I had missed out on Sheridan. Watching her in Dubai is profoundly depressing. The arrogant disrespect for local culture in the pouting selfie on a camel is just too much."

Who is Sheridan?
No, don't tell me.
Does Ignorance have its pluses?

MarqueeMark · January 2021

Scott_xP said:
https://twitter.com/cnni/status/1354128624715243521

A rather sickening tone in your revelling in retweeting anything mentioning 100,000 deaths today.

Stay classy, Scott...

Scott_xP · January 2021

https://twitter.com/DAaronovitch/status/1354345088936267778

CarlottaVance · January 2021

The Scottish Daily Mail has a different front page:

https://twitter.com/Mike_Blackley/status/1354341770998534145?s=20

Nigelb · January 2021

rcs1000 said:

Mysticrose said:
On the previous topic, I am really not sure the Democrats should have pushed for impeachment and said so all the way on here. They should have let it go. Trump is, for now, yesterday's man and it's for the Republicans to deal with him.
I agree: Trump is and was over. He's now starved of the oxygen of publicity. Conviction was always a long shot: what do they (the Dems) have to gain? And how is the country brought together?

They should have held their fire and moved on.

(Of course, McConnell wanted the Dems to waste their time on impeachment. Smart man, Mitch.)

I'm not convinced on either score.
Polling indicates that, for now at least, Republican voters split about 60/40 in favour of MAGA/Trump rather than sanity.
Once moderate Republican state parties are MAGA, too.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/26/pennsylvania-republican-party-trump-support-462843

As for impeachment, it is the appropriate constitutional remedy for Trump's attempt to overturn the Constitution. That only five Republican senators appear to recognise that is disturbing, but it doesn't make impeachment wrong.

Foxy · January 2021

DavidL said:

IanB2 said:

Foxy said:

DavidL said:

rcs1000 said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Because 20 million people, accounting for 95% of deaths, are going to be vaccinated by the end of February?
The vaccine is the get out of jail free card but we still don't know if those vaccinated can be carriers, we still don't know how many will get ill anyway (the trials give some indication but this is enormously scaled up and affect hundreds of thousands with various underlying and complicating conditions that will not have been mirrored in the tests) and we still don't know how many sufferers of long covid are going to be filling our hospitals for the next year.

I think we made a terrible mistake in not having mandatory quarantine for all visitors last February. I very much doubt our deaths would have been half of what they are if we had and it is possible that the lockdowns would have worked to bear down on the disease before the new virulent strain took hold. Is it worth doing, even now? I would say yes because I want life to get back to something like normal in this country as fast as possible and it reduces the risk factors but the opportunity for a massive upside in saved lives is probably gone.
I am cautious. We are a long way from the final chapter of this story. Vaccines will help with mortality and admissions, but until everyone over 18 has been vaccinated, there will be significant pockets of disease. We need real world data on our population to see how effective disease suppression is. Even when it becomes a less severe illness, requiring a couple of weeks off work in most, it is going to have ongoing impact.

Then there is the lost year of schooling, non-covid healthcare and economic impact on various sectors.

The recovery plans need to start now. For example we are likely to need more inpatient beds for both medical and surgical care in order to catch up. My guess would be a 30% increase in capacity as a minimum, and a strong emphasis on supporting junior medical and nursing staff. They are getting burnt out.
Indeed. Your specifically medical points are part of a wider picture where the considerable burden and handicap from having to 'catch up' or restore activity in almost every field are not currently being appreciated. Right now people are just looking forward to being able to go out for eating, drinking and entertainment once again.

On this subject, I am starting to see some financial commentators float the possibility that the real financial crash will happen later this year, for the same reason.
I think that the economic challenge is the transition from the wall of money that has been thrown at this to something approaching reality and sustainability. As the support is withdrawn, as furlough ends, as domestic pent up demand falters and as Sunak contemplates the ruin that is the public finances there is a real risk of a further lurch downwards in GDP and employment. Many, maybe most people in this country have been getting full wages for part time work. That has kept demand higher than it can realistically be. There is an article in the Times today about how Banks are noting how poor productivity has been this time around. This cannot go on and when it stops it will be bumpy.

My example was medical, because that is what I do, but medical productivity is markedly down at present for understandable reasons. We have had 70% fewer new cases of Type 2 diabetes diagnosed in Leics this year, for example. Reasonable parallels can be made for so many conditions. The existing workforce should be able to get back to pre-pandemic productivity, but without the facilities, staffing and capacity, there will be no real dent in waiting lists for years.

Similarly, schools need to address a lot of remedial learning. Merely going back to normal is nowhere near enough. Ditto the courts, etc etc and that is the public sector. The private sector is going to have major changes to cope with too, with whole industries on life support for years. The post pandemic economy and society will look very different. This is a way point in history.

When we look at the post war periods of both WW1 and WW2 we seriously mismanaged the challenges. Certainly some of the social reforms were overdue, but the economic and constitutional policies of both periods were seriously flawed. Or more recently, look at how we made a mess of reconstructing Iraq postwar.

Nigelb · January 2021

rcs1000 said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Because 20 million people, accounting for 95% of deaths, are going to be vaccinated by the end of February?

I think government will wait for a few more weeks of data from the vaccinated (particularly the AZN vaccine) before making policy changes. For the first time in this pandemic, such delay is probably sensible.

Theuniondivvie · January 2021

Another clip with a dildo in it.

https://twitter.com/emmakennedy/status/1354103569755090945?s=21

IanB2 · January 2021

Nigelb said:

rcs1000 said:

Mysticrose said:
On the previous topic, I am really not sure the Democrats should have pushed for impeachment and said so all the way on here. They should have let it go. Trump is, for now, yesterday's man and it's for the Republicans to deal with him.
I agree: Trump is and was over. He's now starved of the oxygen of publicity. Conviction was always a long shot: what do they (the Dems) have to gain? And how is the country brought together?

They should have held their fire and moved on.

(Of course, McConnell wanted the Dems to waste their time on impeachment. Smart man, Mitch.)
I'm not convinced on either score.
Polling indicates that, for now at least, Republican voters split about 60/40 in favour of MAGA/Trump rather than sanity.
Once moderate Republican state parties are MAGA, too.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/26/pennsylvania-republican-party-trump-support-462843

As for impeachment, it is the appropriate constitutional remedy for Trump's attempt to overturn the Constitution. That only five Republican senators appear to recognise that is disturbing, but it doesn't make impeachment wrong.

I agree. It's much easier to be relaxed about letting it go when we are watching from a distance. Imagine a UK political leader had lost an election, whipped up a violent crowd and tried every other trick to stay in office regardless, and only that person's blinkered zealots would be suggesting we just let it go.

Sandpit · January 2021

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Sandpit said:
A horribly difficult time for those in charge anywhere, knowing that literally thousands of lives rest on every decision that’s made.

Blair and Cameron both said in their memoirs, that the most difficult thing they ever did was having to make the final call on military operations abroad, knowing that both service and civilian lives were on the line. This past year will have have been constantly like that, in slow motion as every call played out over a period of weeks.

The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Hotel quarantine for all incoming travellers is only a worthwhile policy if we have suppressed the rate of infection to close to zero. In that sense it is a complement to, not a substitute for, continued lockdown measures. I would support it if it were implemented when we had suppressed domestic transmission, but not as a psychological displacement activity aimed at focusing people's ire on z-list celebs rather than government failures.

We should be focussing on not importing more cases, especially among those predisposed to travel during a pandemic - a group which likely overlaps those unwilling to properly quarantine on their return - especially with a bunch of new, more infectious variants out there in the world.

The choice is to apply more restrictions on travellers, or more restrictions on the domestic population. The absolute priority has to be getting schools back open.

Philip_Thompson · January 2021

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Sandpit said:
A horribly difficult time for those in charge anywhere, knowing that literally thousands of lives rest on every decision that’s made.

Blair and Cameron both said in their memoirs, that the most difficult thing they ever did was having to make the final call on military operations abroad, knowing that both service and civilian lives were on the line. This past year will have have been constantly like that, in slow motion as every call played out over a period of weeks.

The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Hotel quarantine for all incoming travellers is only a worthwhile policy if we have suppressed the rate of infection to close to zero. In that sense it is a complement to, not a substitute for, continued lockdown measures. I would support it if it were implemented when we had suppressed domestic transmission, but not as a psychological displacement activity aimed at focusing people's ire on z-list celebs rather than government failures.

Bollocks.

When we have high transmission figures people say "there's no point" in having quarantine because the virus is here.
When we have low transmission figures people say "there's no point" in having quarantine because the virus is under control, and we deserve a holiday.

The point of lockdown is to cut out everything unnecessary and to stop travel. If that includes children going to school right now it damn well should include people travelling unnecessarily between countries.

Is a child's education worth less than holidays?

Alistair · January 2021

Nigelb said:

rcs1000 said:

Mysticrose said:
On the previous topic, I am really not sure the Democrats should have pushed for impeachment and said so all the way on here. They should have let it go. Trump is, for now, yesterday's man and it's for the Republicans to deal with him.
I agree: Trump is and was over. He's now starved of the oxygen of publicity. Conviction was always a long shot: what do they (the Dems) have to gain? And how is the country brought together?

They should have held their fire and moved on.

(Of course, McConnell wanted the Dems to waste their time on impeachment. Smart man, Mitch.)
I'm not convinced on either score.
Polling indicates that, for now at least, Republican voters split about 60/40 in favour of MAGA/Trump rather than sanity.
Once moderate Republican state parties are MAGA, too.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/26/pennsylvania-republican-party-trump-support-462843

As for impeachment, it is the appropriate constitutional remedy for Trump's attempt to overturn the Constitution. That only five Republican senators appear to recognise that is disturbing, but it doesn't make impeachment wrong.

It's a well known fact that once you hand in your notice at your job you cannot and should not be convicted of any crimes you do in you notice period.

kjh · January 2021

Sandpit said:
A horribly difficult time for those in charge anywhere, knowing that literally thousands of lives rest on every decision that’s made.

Blair and Cameron both said in their memoirs, that the most difficult thing they ever did was having to make the final call on military operations abroad, knowing that both service and civilian lives were on the line. This past year will have have been constantly like that, in slow motion as every call played out over a period of weeks.

The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.

Very well said. I intended making such a post this morning, but couldn't have done it that well. Acknowledging this is difficult stuff, but having hit 100k we are still dithering over over hotel isolation.

SouthamObserver · January 2021

DavidL said:

IanB2 said:

Foxy said:

DavidL said:

rcs1000 said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Because 20 million people, accounting for 95% of deaths, are going to be vaccinated by the end of February?
The vaccine is the get out of jail free card but we still don't know if those vaccinated can be carriers, we still don't know how many will get ill anyway (the trials give some indication but this is enormously scaled up and affect hundreds of thousands with various underlying and complicating conditions that will not have been mirrored in the tests) and we still don't know how many sufferers of long covid are going to be filling our hospitals for the next year.

I think we made a terrible mistake in not having mandatory quarantine for all visitors last February. I very much doubt our deaths would have been half of what they are if we had and it is possible that the lockdowns would have worked to bear down on the disease before the new virulent strain took hold. Is it worth doing, even now? I would say yes because I want life to get back to something like normal in this country as fast as possible and it reduces the risk factors but the opportunity for a massive upside in saved lives is probably gone.
I am cautious. We are a long way from the final chapter of this story. Vaccines will help with mortality and admissions, but until everyone over 18 has been vaccinated, there will be significant pockets of disease. We need real world data on our population to see how effective disease suppression is. Even when it becomes a less severe illness, requiring a couple of weeks off work in most, it is going to have ongoing impact.

Then there is the lost year of schooling, non-covid healthcare and economic impact on various sectors.

The recovery plans need to start now. For example we are likely to need more inpatient beds for both medical and surgical care in order to catch up. My guess would be a 30% increase in capacity as a minimum, and a strong emphasis on supporting junior medical and nursing staff. They are getting burnt out.
Indeed. Your specifically medical points are part of a wider picture where the considerable burden and handicap from having to 'catch up' or restore activity in almost every field are not currently being appreciated. Right now people are just looking forward to being able to go out for eating, drinking and entertainment once again.

On this subject, I am starting to see some financial commentators float the possibility that the real financial crash will happen later this year, for the same reason.
I think that the economic challenge is the transition from the wall of money that has been thrown at this to something approaching reality and sustainability. As the support is withdrawn, as furlough ends, as domestic pent up demand falters and as Sunak contemplates the ruin that is the public finances there is a real risk of a further lurch downwards in GDP and employment. Many, maybe most people in this country have been getting full wages for part time work. That has kept demand higher than it can realistically be. There is an article in the Times today about how Banks are noting how poor productivity has been this time around. This cannot go on and when it stops it will be bumpy.

Spot on. I suspect next year and the year after are going to be incredibly tough. The government has lost any control it may have had over the economic cycle. How it responds to this will decide the next election.

Scott_xP · January 2021

https://twitter.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1354348559957680132

Dura_Ace · January 2021

Theuniondivvie said:
Another clip with a dildo in it.

https://twitter.com/emmakennedy/status/1354103569755090945?s=21

LOL. Hancock is such a try hard twat.

DavidL · January 2021

Foxy said:

DavidL said:

IanB2 said:

Foxy said:

DavidL said:

rcs1000 said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Because 20 million people, accounting for 95% of deaths, are going to be vaccinated by the end of February?
The vaccine is the get out of jail free card but we still don't know if those vaccinated can be carriers, we still don't know how many will get ill anyway (the trials give some indication but this is enormously scaled up and affect hundreds of thousands with various underlying and complicating conditions that will not have been mirrored in the tests) and we still don't know how many sufferers of long covid are going to be filling our hospitals for the next year.

I think we made a terrible mistake in not having mandatory quarantine for all visitors last February. I very much doubt our deaths would have been half of what they are if we had and it is possible that the lockdowns would have worked to bear down on the disease before the new virulent strain took hold. Is it worth doing, even now? I would say yes because I want life to get back to something like normal in this country as fast as possible and it reduces the risk factors but the opportunity for a massive upside in saved lives is probably gone.
I am cautious. We are a long way from the final chapter of this story. Vaccines will help with mortality and admissions, but until everyone over 18 has been vaccinated, there will be significant pockets of disease. We need real world data on our population to see how effective disease suppression is. Even when it becomes a less severe illness, requiring a couple of weeks off work in most, it is going to have ongoing impact.

Then there is the lost year of schooling, non-covid healthcare and economic impact on various sectors.

The recovery plans need to start now. For example we are likely to need more inpatient beds for both medical and surgical care in order to catch up. My guess would be a 30% increase in capacity as a minimum, and a strong emphasis on supporting junior medical and nursing staff. They are getting burnt out.
Indeed. Your specifically medical points are part of a wider picture where the considerable burden and handicap from having to 'catch up' or restore activity in almost every field are not currently being appreciated. Right now people are just looking forward to being able to go out for eating, drinking and entertainment once again.

On this subject, I am starting to see some financial commentators float the possibility that the real financial crash will happen later this year, for the same reason.
I think that the economic challenge is the transition from the wall of money that has been thrown at this to something approaching reality and sustainability. As the support is withdrawn, as furlough ends, as domestic pent up demand falters and as Sunak contemplates the ruin that is the public finances there is a real risk of a further lurch downwards in GDP and employment. Many, maybe most people in this country have been getting full wages for part time work. That has kept demand higher than it can realistically be. There is an article in the Times today about how Banks are noting how poor productivity has been this time around. This cannot go on and when it stops it will be bumpy.
My example was medical, because that is what I do, but medical productivity is markedly down at present for understandable reasons. We have had 70% fewer new cases of Type 2 diabetes diagnosed in Leics this year, for example. Reasonable parallels can be made for so many conditions. The existing workforce should be able to get back to pre-pandemic productivity, but without the facilities, staffing and capacity, there will be no real dent in waiting lists for years.

Similarly, schools need to address a lot of remedial learning. Merely going back to normal is nowhere near enough. Ditto the courts, etc etc and that is the public sector. The private sector is going to have major changes to cope with too, with whole industries on life support for years. The post pandemic economy and society will look very different. This is a way point in history.

When we look at the post war periods of both WW1 and WW2 we seriously mismanaged the challenges. Certainly some of the social reforms were overdue, but the economic and constitutional policies of both periods were seriously flawed. Or more recently, look at how we made a mess of reconstructing Iraq postwar.

The courts is what I know about and it is a mess. There are hundreds of thousands of cases that have not been dealt with which are becoming increasingly stale. Eventually a decision will have to be made to discontinue these cases in which there are real victims. It will simply not be possible to catch up such a backlog.

In the High Court we are dealing with some trials remotely but they are the shorter, simpler trials with 1 accused and few witnesses. The mass of more complicated cases with multiple accused is still to come. A well instructed defence counsel told me recently that the cases he has pending will keep him busy for the next 2 years.

On the civil side we have an enormous backlog of proofs. Many cases have resolved themselves in the absence of judicial determination, often by a despairing party just giving up. Debates etc under the current procedure are awful and the decision making more random (I am not criticising the judges and sheriffs, I have considerable sympathy for them). Given the pressure of criminal business this will go on for years.

Philip_Thompson · January 2021

Scott_xP said:
https://twitter.com/cnni/status/1354128624715243521

"Just now discussing tough border controls"

A bit rich coming from CNN. Has the USA got mandatory hotel quarantines? For that matter does France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain or Sweden?

I apologise if any of them do but as far as I know what we are considering is going further than any other non-Antipodean western nation.

So far in 2021 the UK is the only country in Europe to seriously implement a vaccine rollout. So far it seems to me we're the only country considering seriously mandatory hotel quarantines. That is not slow to react - though its slower than it could have been - compared to our peers it is rather fast to do so.

I hope the interests of foreign travellers are not put first, so we can put the priorities of schoolchildren, businessmen and women, employees, loved ones and more first - but it is not as if the UK is an exception in not doing this yet.

MattW · January 2021

Excellent header, Mike.

I'd say the unmentioned (ie I have not seen it) purpose of hotel quarantine should surely be to allow the UK to manage potential chaos if the EU end up 3-6 months behind in vaccine rollout.

Bad call by Boris.

Quite interested to know how Tigger Boris has been kept largely out of boostering the rollout with his natural tendencies. Has Nadhim Zahawi been sitting on his head?

Sandpit · January 2021

Foxy said:
Not being on Instagram or interested in celebrity influences, I had missed out on Sheridan. Watching her in Dubai is profoundly depressing. The arrogant disrespect for local culture in the pouting selfie on a camel is just too much.
ttps://twitter.com/thismorning/status/1354014175215955969?s=09

Don’t start me!

Guess when the British tourists started arriving?

Foxy · January 2021

DavidL said:

Foxy said:

DavidL said:

IanB2 said:

Foxy said:

DavidL said:

rcs1000 said:

Black_Rook said:

Sandpit said:
The next big call is on hotel quarantines. I say do it with no exceptions, until everyone has been vaccinated. No-one *needs* a summer holiday abroad, and those business travellers who really need to go sign that big deal will happily pay the hotel bill. There needs to be a sense of being all in this together, not of a two-tier ‘lockdown’ where making a social media fitness video from a foreign beach counts as ‘work’.
Except that all the mood music on the news last night and this morning is that it's only going to be applied to arrivals from a list of high risk countries. That'll make some small contribution to reducing the risk, but you can imagine that anyone coming back to Britain from Portugal, for example, will just drive to Spain and fly back from there to get around the rules.

Yet more half-arsed measures, which may have to be paid for in huge amounts of blood, treasure and misery a few months down the line. Why do they always have to do this?
Because 20 million people, accounting for 95% of deaths, are going to be vaccinated by the end of February?
The vaccine is the get out of jail free card but we still don't know if those vaccinated can be carriers, we still don't know how many will get ill anyway (the trials give some indication but this is enormously scaled up and affect hundreds of thousands with various underlying and complicating conditions that will not have been mirrored in the tests) and we still don't know how many sufferers of long covid are going to be filling our hospitals for the next year.

I think we made a terrible mistake in not having mandatory quarantine for all visitors last February. I very much doubt our deaths would have been half of what they are if we had and it is possible that the lockdowns would have worked to bear down on the disease before the new virulent strain took hold. Is it worth doing, even now? I would say yes because I want life to get back to something like normal in this country as fast as possible and it reduces the risk factors but the opportunity for a massive upside in saved lives is probably gone.
I am cautious. We are a long way from the final chapter of this story. Vaccines will help with mortality and admissions, but until everyone over 18 has been vaccinated, there will be significant pockets of disease. We need real world data on our population to see how effective disease suppression is. Even when it becomes a less severe illness, requiring a couple of weeks off work in most, it is going to have ongoing impact.

Then there is the lost year of schooling, non-covid healthcare and economic impact on various sectors.

The recovery plans need to start now. For example we are likely to need more inpatient beds for both medical and surgical care in order to catch up. My guess would be a 30% increase in capacity as a minimum, and a strong emphasis on supporting junior medical and nursing staff. They are getting burnt out.
Indeed. Your specifically medical points are part of a wider picture where the considerable burden and handicap from having to 'catch up' or restore activity in almost every field are not currently being appreciated. Right now people are just looking forward to being able to go out for eating, drinking and entertainment once again.

On this subject, I am starting to see some financial commentators float the possibility that the real financial crash will happen later this year, for the same reason.
I think that the economic challenge is the transition from the wall of money that has been thrown at this to something approaching reality and sustainability. As the support is withdrawn, as furlough ends, as domestic pent up demand falters and as Sunak contemplates the ruin that is the public finances there is a real risk of a further lurch downwards in GDP and employment. Many, maybe most people in this country have been getting full wages for part time work. That has kept demand higher than it can realistically be. There is an article in the Times today about how Banks are noting how poor productivity has been this time around. This cannot go on and when it stops it will be bumpy.
My example was medical, because that is what I do, but medical productivity is markedly down at present for understandable reasons. We have had 70% fewer new cases of Type 2 diabetes diagnosed in Leics this year, for example. Reasonable parallels can be made for so many conditions. The existing workforce should be able to get back to pre-pandemic productivity, but without the facilities, staffing and capacity, there will be no real dent in waiting lists for years.

Similarly, schools need to address a lot of remedial learning. Merely going back to normal is nowhere near enough. Ditto the courts, etc etc and that is the public sector. The private sector is going to have major changes to cope with too, with whole industries on life support for years. The post pandemic economy and society will look very different. This is a way point in history.

When we look at the post war periods of both WW1 and WW2 we seriously mismanaged the challenges. Certainly some of the social reforms were overdue, but the economic and constitutional policies of both periods were seriously flawed. Or more recently, look at how we made a mess of reconstructing Iraq postwar.
The courts is what I know about and it is a mess. There are hundreds of thousands of cases that have not been dealt with which are becoming increasingly stale. Eventually a decision will have to be made to discontinue these cases in which there are real victims. It will simply not be possible to catch up such a backlog.

In the High Court we are dealing with some trials remotely but they are the shorter, simpler trials with 1 accused and few witnesses. The mass of more complicated cases with multiple accused is still to come. A well instructed defence counsel told me recently that the cases he has pending will keep him busy for the next 2 years.

On the civil side we have an enormous backlog of proofs. Many cases have resolved themselves in the absence of judicial determination, often by a despairing party just giving up. Debates etc under the current procedure are awful and the decision making more random (I am not criticising the judges and sheriffs, I have considerable sympathy for them). Given the pressure of criminal business this will go on for years.

The trickiest part is personnel. Building courtrooms, or operating theatres is expensive but training of competent staff takes time, and requires senior instruction and mentoring. These things need careful planning and training, not just a wave of a Johnsonian hand and a promise of a magic money tree.

Carnyx · January 2021

Theuniondivvie said:
Another clip with a dildo in it.

https://twitter.com/emmakennedy/status/1354103569755090945?s=21

I actually considered that it might be one of those synthetic backdrops but it contains so many crappy unwanted reflections glaring out at the viewer. He'd be better with a bedsheet for that reason alone.

Scott_xP · January 2021

https://twitter.com/adamfleming/status/1354351656033525760

Philip_Thompson · January 2021

MattW said:
Excellent header, Mike.

I'd say the unmentioned (ie I have not seen it) purpose of hotel quarantine should surely be to allow the UK to manage potential chaos if the EU end up 3-6 months behind in vaccine rollout.

Bad call by Boris.

Quite interested to know how Tigger Boris has been kept largely out of boostering the rollout with his natural tendencies. Has Nadhim Zahawi been sitting on his head?

Had the rollout been happening without deaths then more boosterism might have been easier. Hard to be booster when lots of people are dying a day - even if the vaccine is entirely positive good news and credit is due and deserved.

I suspect they knew for instance the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths was inevitably coming up and a serious and sombre tone was needed. Can't flip from boosterism to serious and sombre easily.

Once the deaths stop, once lockdown is lifted, then it will be the time for boosterism perhaps. Not yet. Not now.

Casino_Royale · January 2021

On topic, on the raw politics, were it not for the vaccine this tragic milestone might be a real problem for the Government.

As it happens the excellent progress it's making on the vaccine (particularly compared to others) will probably save it.

It might also do other things too, like improve the right/wrong scores on Brexit - and even help the Union a bit - if the UK escapes major constraints earlier than the EU and its economy starts recovering sooner.

Boris may well prove to be a lucky general again.

Morris_Dancer · January 2021

Mr. xP, the desire to avoid firm timelines actually shows some learning by the Government. Criticising them for apparently trying to do better this time is just stupid.

"Mum roast the parsnips for 40 minutes this time. I remember the time she roasted them for 20 minutes and they were a bit too hard."

DecrepiterJohnL · January 2021

Anecdata: Sainsnbury's shelves were pretty empty yesterday. Whether due to Brexit or Covid interfering with delivery, I could not say.

kjh · January 2021

This morning the news covered those who have missed out on the furlough scheme. This is a big issue I think. Sadly the examples given were very poor.

The Govt should have sorted this out by the 2nd lockdown. I also think the furlough was too generous at 80%.

60% but put in the effort to cover those people who have lost their entire income with no benefits whatsoever. I know it isn't easy, but the Govt has had the time to do it.

Philip_Thompson · January 2021

Casino_Royale said:
On topic, on the raw politics, were it not for the vaccine this tragic milestone might be a real problem for the Government.

As it happens the excellent progress it's making on the vaccine (particularly compared to others) will probably save it.

It might also do other things too, like improve the right/wrong scores on Brexit - and even help the Union a bit - if the UK escapes major constraints earlier than the EU and its economy starts recovering sooner.

Boris may well prove to be a lucky general again.

Good management rather than good luck with the vaccines, even his harshest critics should acknowledge that given they signed the vaccine deals first in the world three months before Europe - which is what the CEO of Astrazeneca is putting behind why the British operation is better, they've had three more months to perfect the process.

turbotubbs · January 2021

DecrepiterJohnL said:
Anecdata: Sainsnbury's shelves were pretty empty yesterday. Whether due to Brexit or Covid interfering with delivery, I could not say.

I’ll add mine. Our greengrocer (daily set up market stall) currently very well stocked. Ditto Waitrose. Maybe we are lucky in location, but not seeing issues here (west wilts).

MattW · January 2021

Foxy said:
Not being on Instagram or interested in celebrity influences, I had missed out on Sheridan. Watching her in Dubai is profoundly depressing. The arrogant disrespect for local culture in the pouting selfie on a camel is just too much.

https://twitter.com/thismorning/status/1354014175215955969?s=09

"She will be joining us".

So, it worked.

Philip_Thompson · January 2021

DecrepiterJohnL said:
Anecdata: Sainsnbury's shelves were pretty empty yesterday. Whether due to Brexit or Covid interfering with delivery, I could not say.

I haven't been into a shop since this lockdown began so can't comment on shelves (either had deliveries or our local supermarket does click & collect now) - but we've had no substitutions of fresh food since lockdown began. Only the usual sort of substitutions you often see with online ordering.

Malmesbury · January 2021

Scott_xP said:
https://twitter.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1354348559957680132

The more interesting point is that we have clear evidence, now, as to why you need to spend money on PR for the vain roll out.

PR is one of those things (like management) where everyone goes "you can do without that"

But, countering fake news is PR. Publicising celebrities who get vaccinated and getting the story in the press is PR etc etc

kjh · January 2021

turbotubbs said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:
Anecdata: Sainsnbury's shelves were pretty empty yesterday. Whether due to Brexit or Covid interfering with delivery, I could not say.
I’ll add mine. Our greengrocer (daily set up market stall) currently very well stocked. Ditto Waitrose. Maybe we are lucky in location, but not seeing issues here (west wilts).

Definitely seeing issues with Sainsbury's, but only with fruit and vegetables.

Cyclefree · January 2021

Foxy said:
Not being on Instagram or interested in celebrity influences, I had missed out on Sheridan. Watching her in Dubai is profoundly depressing. The arrogant disrespect for local culture in the pouting selfie on a camel is just too much.

https://twitter.com/thismorning/status/1354014175215955969?s=09

The only "influence" people like Sheridan should be having is as an example of what not to be in life.

DecrepiterJohnL · January 2021

HMG's green homes scheme is in chaos.

HMG subsidises consumers to install heat pumps or other measures to reduce energy consumption. The householder gets a voucher for the work which must be carried out by an improved installer. The American firm administering the scheme has been slow to make payments, slow to give vouchers to consumers. This means the whole industry has ground to a halt.

Government plans to turn England homes green 'in chaos' with debt and job losses
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/26/government-plans-to-turn-england-homes-green-in-chaos-with-debt-and-job-losses

(If it comes up at PMQs, we will know SKS reads the Guardian.)

Casino_Royale · January 2021

Philip_Thompson said:

Casino_Royale said:
On topic, on the raw politics, were it not for the vaccine this tragic milestone might be a real problem for the Government.

As it happens the excellent progress it's making on the vaccine (particularly compared to others) will probably save it.

It might also do other things too, like improve the right/wrong scores on Brexit - and even help the Union a bit - if the UK escapes major constraints earlier than the EU and its economy starts recovering sooner.

Boris may well prove to be a lucky general again.
Good management rather than good luck with the vaccines, even his harshest critics should acknowledge that given they signed the vaccine deals first in the world three months before Europe - which is what the CEO of Astrazeneca is putting behind why the British operation is better, they've had three more months to perfect the process.

The EU have made things far worse for themselves by their strop, which has simply drawn attention to their own failings.

They'd have been far better advised to have gritted their teeth about it and simply redoubled their efforts on rollout. As it happens they've made themselves look petulant, fragile and insecure.

That very public lack of confidence in themselves, and how much they dislike being shown up, won't go unnoticed.

SouthamObserver · January 2021

DecrepiterJohnL said:
Anecdata: Sainsnbury's shelves were pretty empty yesterday. Whether due to Brexit or Covid interfering with delivery, I could not say.

It may be a specifically Sainsbury's issue. When we went to the one in Leamington on Saturday the fresh fruit and veg shelves were noticeably empty. There were also shortages of many other things.

More generally, have lamb prices come down yet? They don't seem to have.

MattW · January 2021

Prof Alice Roberts being kicked on More or Less for this, which they (correctly) point out is very misleading:

https://twitter.com/theAliceRoberts/status/1351962456000704514

She seems to think that Kent Covid was predictable.

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