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Not making the promised June 21 lockdown end is going to be controversial – politicalbetting.com
Not making the promised June 21 lockdown end is going to be controversial – politicalbetting.com
Many of the fron pages this morning give a taste of the likely reaction if the June 21st lifting has to be put back.
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After a long fallow period, back on form.....
And it won't be as easy a one to break as many of the others!
I posted this last night from todays Guardian front page as I expect it will surprise many
New data from Public Health England(PHE) released yesterday found that the transfer of patients with covid from hospital to care homes resulted in 286 deaths, 96 outbreaks in care homes were related to this problem - about 1.6% of all care home outbreaks
And this confirms Jenny Harries comments today that the release of patients to care homes was a much smaller issue than the introduction of covid into care homes by staff and visitors
I would also suggest this article by Ed Conway of Sky should be read by everyone who listened to, or has an interest in Cummings appearance at the select committee, as I believe this is very prescient and is more than likely to be the conclusion of any enquiry unto the handling of covid 19
http://news.sky.com/story/dominic-cummings-recollection-of-coronavirus-spread-was-seen-through-lens-of-hindsight-12318568
Not a few people might get sick. But the NHS might collapse. That was the threat.
This should have been over months ago. It must end 21/6. No ifs, no buts, no excuses.
Given its seasonality in the UK, I fail to see how we are going to be in a clearly and significantly better position to unlock until next summer at the earliest.
They have a big lead at the moment. So they can run the risks of letting people down only to turn around and say “Liberty matters” in June and get credit from the libertarians plus those who are data driven
And if the data goes the other way they’ve laid the groundwork
We really only have a few days left for vaccines that are going to be effective by 21st June. We have missed an opportunity here to go from a pretty safe 75% to a very safe 80%+. That said, I still think we should proceed with the 21st unless there is a material increase in hospitalisations over the next 14 days. In the last week these have increased by 20%. If that continues at that rate for the next fortnight we have a problem and the government faces some difficult choices.
I think businesses will all be allowed to reopen, but would expect Social Distancing and masks to continue in most settings.
But the path of least resistance is to open up June 21. It would be a big call to accelerate so I don’t see them taking that risk.
What I am suggesting is they will open on June 21 but are being downbeat now for tactical purposes
There does seem to be a concerted effort to sweep the death toll under the vaccinations rug. That we have a fantastic vaccination record was not predicated on the wholesale slaughter of so many by so few. We could have not acted with such irresponsible stupidity AND developed the vaccine programme.
- More than 70% of hospitalisations have previously been from the 2-dosed cohort
- Accordingly, for every 9 people in hospital from outside the 2-dosed cohort, you would expect around 21 from the 2-dosed cohort (if no-one was vaxed).
- Instead, we have only 1 person from the 2-dosed cohort. (9-1 out of every 10)
- So the vaccination reduces the number from c.21 to c.1; 95%+ successful in preventing hospitalisations
But that's ok, because medicine safety is handled by the independent MHRA. I've dealt with them a bit (being on the receiving end of their scrutiny when doing applications for CPRD data - which was much more testing than the scrutiny from the organisation that gave me a few 100k of their money to do the research, despite MHRA standing to gain a few 10k from me for data access if approved) and I don't think I've come across a more impressive organisation. I do trust them.
I also think that, even if our government was engaged in a mass conspiracy about AZN side effects (odd to admit to them at all and phase out AZN for under 40s if so?) then it's unlikely that the US, not needing AZN particularly - and with AZN a threat to the profits of their own companies - would engage in the same. Likewise many EU countries and the EU commission, who have taken every opportunity to trash AZN. Why would they not delight in highlighting a more serious risk.
I'm under 40. I'm an epidemiologist. I've done some work with pharma adverse effects in the past and have many colleagues in that area. I weighed up the risks and took the AZN vaccine when it was offered.
https://mobile.twitter.com/BristOliver/status/1398168871073468416
We need to be realistic about the possibility of a delay. That does not mean we’ll never open up nor does it mean a significant delay. But there is a realistic possibility. We don’t and can’t know for sure yet.
I would say that if you dislike the likely delay to unlocking and the reason for the delay, you should blame the person responsible. But instead you will sing His praises and keep ramping his government. So perhaps they know there are millions of gullible cultists out there who will cheer on anything they do and that is what drives their actions / non-actions.
I would be interested in your observations on Ed Conways rather lengthy piece
The Pfizer production network has scaled up brilliantly- though it's still got a way to go to solve this problem globally. 8 billion people = 16 billion jabs needed from somewhere.
But in terms of Europe, France has got about 20 million Pfizer doses booked in for delivery in June (source: https://covidtracker.fr/vaccintracker/). If you consider that France has done about 34 million jabs so far, that's huge. (For comparison, the UK has done about 61 million doses so far).
So it's swings and roundabouts. Though there's no question that the UK really needed the doses it got earlier in the year.
I know a few on here have lost parents and elderly relatives, may they rest in peace, but for the rest of us it is the testimony of people you know, even virtually or second hand, by which we naturally make our assessments.
So, for me personally a couple of small anecdotes by which I assessed stuff: my wife has an Indian born co-worker, who even though he doesn't originate from one of the hotspot States in the northern plains, has had 3 relatives succumb to COVID.
Secondly, in my youth I sometimes used to frequent or pass through Hyde Market. There was, categorically, no shortage of old ladies, despite some hundred of their number being missing. And though 215 murders is a comprehendible number, spreading that over decades and a mid sized town meant the demographics were hardly touched.
I think Leon is right to an extent, the politics of COVID deaths will ultimately be the politics of 'someone else'. The lockdown affects us all, the deaths are, for most people, second hand (like the bit in High Fidelity where the reaction to a death travels through the different degrees of separation). We know the politics of this: it is politics of mass unemployment in the 80s and the various reactions of single-employer northern towns, multi-employer towns (where typically 5-10% were directly affected), and southern shires. And we know how that played out. For COVID the pain n is spread more evenly.
Anyhow, I've rambled a bit beyond what I intended, so I'll leave it there.
https://twitter.com/changed_gear/status/1398024695878983683?s=21
Of course many mistakes were made and not just in the UK but across the world and lessons have to be learnt
Instead of shouting about law suits and starting wars, the vaccine task force just got on with it.
The upsurge in India ended pretty much any chance of getting further external supplies from there for a while.
The issue is really making good on the "second dose promises" as this makes clear. Overall vaccinations have gone up substantially - if you look before and after the couple of days around 20th March, there is a step change.
From what I can see, the plan was to guarantee the second doses from existing supply lines and anything else would speed up more first doses.
For the same level of population infection this reduces hospitalizations by two-thirds.
This is why countries on the continent are opening up even with higher case rates and lower vaccination rates than us. They know that the vaccination of the most vulnerable gives them the leeway to do so.
From memory a major part of the problem was that, in the absence of large scale testing ability, public health official made guesses about informal signs of infectivity and time periods of incubation. And the level of a symptomatic transmission was simply not understood, or subject to confirmation bias.
I thank you!
Given that in many cases, the infection chain has actually been demonstrated, it should be provable - to the level of a scientific paper.
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/june-2021/the-road-to-hartlepool-pier/
It compares the travails of the current Labour Party with the situation in the 1930s when George Lansbury was leader and the aftermast. There are also references to George Orwell out-Liddling Rod Liddle.
It is a good read.
https://www.ft.com/content/4169ea4b-d6d7-4a2e-bc91-480550c2f539
Sure, everyone would prefer it if positive tests were failing not rising, but if they are not translating into serious illness, surely that’s an important step forward we have to take as a society towards living with an endemic virus?
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/
and there is no cause for concern - flat line of under 100 hospital admissions per day and no rise in total beds occupied still at nugatory levels.
The MPs are going to need evidence of the re-emergence of the Black Death before they let the Government get away with any further general extensions.
Because we don't need any general extensions beyond 21st June. By then, the risk to the population will be a low risk to those who are awaiting their second jab - and the higher risk to refuseniks. It will be very much less than the toll taken from road traffic accidents - a price we pay for going about our lives.
How many BBC presenters are there? Maybe 10k? Say 5k had AZN. So 1/5000 death rate from that sample. A standard approach* to working out the 95% confidence interval for the death rate in the general populaion includes 0 in the lower bound on those data. So the incidence and sampe size combined are not enough for useful information.
If there were 20 deaths in that 5000 sample, then you'd have useful data (and a lower 95%CI that was not compatible** with a 1 in 100k or lower risk). That's why, as someone else posted, high numbers of cases among Iranian politicians was a pointer to official under-reporting there.
*this approach doesn't really work for such a low number of cases (edit: just run the numbers through the proper approach for such low incidence and the 95% CI still comforatble includes 1 in 100k)
**outside the 95% confidence interval - could still be a statistical fluke, probability of seeing such numbers if true incidence was 1/100k would be <5% (if ouside the 99% CI then less than 1% and so on...)
Tis a pity with such a fine collection as mine...
I've been consistently saying that we should keep the border closed until after normal life is resumed and that the border should be the last thing to reopen.
I've been consistently attacking the government for its cowardly and timid reopening of domestic life.
I've been consistently saying there's zero excuses for delay.
I'm saying I will not under any circumstances support the government for any delay.
But other than that . . . yeah well done, I've not cheered on any of that!
If there are delays to 21 June I hope letters get sent to the 1922 Committee. Clear enough for you?
This is important as there is a public perception that tens of thousands died from patents being released to care homes when the number quoted is 286
This is not about politics but genuine fact checking
I understand why the Government have to deny mistakes as having a consequence.
To this day, despite the evidence to the contrary Blair claims he was right over Iraq. He does this because an admission of error makes all the lives lost, lost for nothing.
For example, PHE determine X deaths were due to infected hospital discharges, Y due to staff and Z due to visitors, but there's also a large number of unknown cause (e.g. if someone may have been discharged with infection - not all were tested - and someone visited who later turned out to be infected). The government runs with the X known deaths figure, neglecting to say that it could be much larger if the many unknowns were also due to hospital discharge.
Did Covid spontaneously explode into these care homes when patients were released from hospital? No. The cult will defend literally anything to try and use the hindsight defence that "we did nothing wrong". Tell that to the families of the dead.
As it's turned out you could argue their caution was warranted, which would mean they could keep to the June 21st date because they anticipated shortfalls in vaccine supply.
* For example, I thought I would be double-dosed in time for the Scotland v England football match, but instead I will likely be double-dosed by the 4th Test against India.
and
Here is a tip - use independent data/observations /anything to verify official stats always and if it does not tie up then at least question it
These PHE figures seem to confirm that (in England)
The is exactly my point about the Cult of Boris. People will sit and complain about all the stuff they think the government have done wrong. Of the businesses closes, opportunities gone and loved ones list. And then show their disgust by voting Tory.
That prannock Trump said he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose votes. The Tory equivalent is the government incompetence closing someone's business and killing their granny and them showing their disgust by voting Tory.
It isn't just because Labour have imploded and the LibDems self-destructed in 2015. Its because people have decided they will forgive the liar of literally any transgression. Politically it truly is a phenomenon we haven't seen the likes of before.
The simple fact of the matter is that if the virus is prevalent in the community then staff members who live in the community are going to be infected and they are going to bring it into work with them - and that is essentially unavoidable even with the strictest of restrictions.
The only realistic way to stop the virus from infecting homes is to stop the virus infecting anyone in the community. Which is why notions like "risk stratification" last year were patent codswallop.
@Paristonda got the closest with Johnson I reckon but alas Comrade Corona of the Wuhan Battalion narrowly failed in his glorious mission.
And to be fair you seem to have conflated the two, when my question to you was do you agree with Ed Conway and that his commentary is likely to be prescient to the conclusion of any enquiry
I am not playing politics, I am endeavouring to provide the platform for a sensible debate
There will be a rise, but how rapid and how far?
The unvaxxed are not immune, nor do they have zero or negligible risk of being seriously ill, but their rate of serious illness is considerably less than that of the vaxxed cohorts prior to vaccination. They are also far more likely to pull through - at least to the point of leaving hospital.
There is a real concern about lingering effects - the eightfold rise in organ damage for the hospital survivors and the rate of prolonged symptoms for some of even the "mild" cases - but that will be weighed up in the decision.
It boils down to how many younger and healthier people we will be willing to allow to be seriously ill or chronically affected. This number is, as said, considerably lower than the equivalent number in the older and more vulnerable cohorts, even if it is not zero or negligible. It's all a question of trade-offs.
Then, against that, they'll have to weigh up the expected changes over time of the numbers vaccinated. If each week removes 500k from those left unprotected, that points to a higher economic and freedom cost in delaying until however-many-more are vaxxed; if it's 1.5 million a week, it's a different trade-off; if it's 2.5 million a week, it's another one yet again.
For me, my closest loved-ones should all have been offered at least one dose by 21st June, so I'm not a disinterested judge of this.
My best guess is that they will look at the figures and unless the hospitalisations are skyrocketing - which I very much doubt they will be, given all we know - they'll open up to a considerable degree at least.
Do you think that with the prevalence of Covid in the community there is some sort of magical shield around care home staff that would magically protect them from being infectious and bringing the infection into work with them?
Considering you're using data from the entire pandemic despite the fact that the policy with care homes was changed all the way back in April 2020, you are either being entirely dishonest with your data or you haven't thought this through. It seems like PHE have actually thought it through unlike you.
On Wednesday, Bern announced it was formally withdrawing from negotiations to codify future relations with the EU into a single overarching “framework agreement” — a back-and-forth exchange that has dominated an increasingly fraught relationship with Brussels since 2014.
“You’d never sign a contract like that in business,” said Philip Erzinger, the head of a Kompass Europe, an anti-framework agreement campaign group. “It was one sided. It required us to take on EU law without any mechanism for saying No. It would have been a direct interference in our system of direct democracy and cantons in Switzerland.”
https://www.ft.com/content/10ede16f-0b1e-4f4f-8fd6-4ec6ac090ed0?segmentId=114a04fe-353d-37db-f705-204c9a0a157b
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/mar/06/uk-statistics-authority-rebukes-gove-over-observers-brexit-figures
Jenny Harries has been so wrong on so much.
See this twitter thread, for example.
https://twitter.com/matthewlesh/status/1397962846256967684
Selected highlights.
10 March 2020: Harries resists calls to cancel large events, saying she was "following the science" and downplay the severity of the virus by saying most will just feel "a bit rough".
10 March 2020: Harries admits that the Government's strategy will allow "significant numbers" to die.
She focuses on handwashing, not ventilation, misinforming the public about how the virus spreads.
12 March 2020: Harries says wearing masks "not a good idea" and says that "people can adversely put themselves at more risk" by wearing masks.
20 March 2020: Harries says that the country has a "perfectly adequate supply of PPE"
25 March 2020: Harries is dismissive of the approaches taken by the likes of Singapore (370 times fewer deaths per capita then UK) and South Korea (57 times fewer) when giving evidence before Parliament.
6 March 2020: Harries says that testing is "not an appropriate mechanism as we go forward"
5 May 2020: Harries tells the Commons Health Select Committee that shortages were the reason for stopping testing. This completely contradicts her earlier claims that it was no longer the strategy and foreshadowing that testing would be stopped (5 March)
Please see my other comment
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/3412229#Comment_3412229
on why you can't draw the conclusions you are drawing from the data, but why you could get useful information from a lot of cases.
Yes, you can use a small sample, but only if you have sufficient cases, 20 deaths among BBC presenters (far fewer, probably, I haven't run the numbers as I don't know the sample size, which is also needed) and you start to have some evidence. Your logic is similar to - despite knowing that winning the lottery is very unlikely - buying a ticket anyway because your neighbour just won. It's common and it's how the human mind works (and why Camelot big up the winners and have the whole 'it could be you' slogan). Or, on a darker note, to the woman who was jailed for being unfortunate enough to have a 'statistically improbable' number of her chidren die from cot death. Very rare events happen all the time, because there ae an awful lot of people for them to happen to.
On evidence. Yep, all evidence is important. One death in a post-hoc constructed sample is not evidence. I didn't believe the Iraq claims because there was plenty of evidence to the contrary. I was, naively, luke-warm on the war because I thought it might be worthwhile in the end for the country and the region. Boy was I wrong!
https://www.leicestercityccg.nhs.uk/my-health/coronavirus-advice/coronavirus-vaccine/additional-covid-vaccination-clinics/
This thread on recent trends is good. I am not a lockdown enthusiast, but some of the signals that we are seeing to set off a sense of deja vu.
https://twitter.com/ADMBriggs/status/1397930238642819082?s=19
Have Labour, or the LibDems, or the Wazza Independents or anyone else come out against reopening for holidays? Have any of them said that we should reopen faster? Simply saying in hindsight "oh you should have put India on the red list sooner" doesn't count.
The only people in Parliament who seem to reflect what I am thinking on this now are people like Steve Baker etc who sit in the Tory Party. The Lib Dems get close and seem sometimes like they're on the cusp of actually growing some balls and developing some liberal policies, but then back away or don't push it hard.
2021 as Boris Johnson's exit date is 8.6 over on Betfair.
Not dipping my toe in because I've already got longer odds a while back.
The question is are you disputing PHE figures of 286 transfer deaths in care homes or not
"I am not competent to review the report (pdf linked in next tweet) but I note it does include this disclaimer:
Index hospital-associated cases would not be identified if the admitted patient was not tested for COVID-19 either due to asymptomatic status or testing practices."
https://twitter.com/WillAdamsWriter/status/1398185908264964101?s=19
Considering how hard it was to get a test in the early days of the pandemic, that is quite a select population. It appears those 286 deaths were from people known to have covid, but discharged anyway.