As far as punters are concerned the Tories are strong odds-on to win the Batley and Spen by-election
Comments
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Nope, we just got lazy.Black_Rook said:
Unfortunately your conclusion will always butt up against the alternative: would we have been any better off going through this with Jeremy Corbyn at the helm?RochdalePioneers said:Have I understood this right? That one doze of Pfizer is only 33% effective defence against Delta vs 80% of original Covid?
I think this is driving their hesitancy. A lot of people out there with one shot in the arm, many of whom (not me) now think they are immune as the 2nd dose is "just a booster".
The solution of course was to vaccinate faster as various people have been pointing out when looking at dropping daily jab rates.
And once again this was avoidable. Not letting in dangerous new strains was the whole purpose in closing borders and having travel restrictions. We still have the latter but liar opted not to red list India despite Delta tearing it up and being told firmly to do so. Because he had to look the Big man and get a trade deal (which they weren't going to offer in a way he could accept but never mind).
Why can't we unlock? Because Boris Johnson is Prime Minister. Suck it up people, you voted for it, remember?
The people of this country must all have been mass murderers in a previous life. Either that or Covid was more lethal than we all realised, we all died of it in March 2020, and we are now in some twisted kind of Hell where lockdown (and the rule of Boris) goes on for eternity.
Go back a generation or two and party memberships were much larger than they are now. At its peak, there were 2.8 million signed-up Conservatives, 1 million Labour members, 5-6 million members of the Labour movement.
https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-britain/parliament-and-elections/partied-out/
Now most of them had little direct input into the running of policy, but it meant that MPs were mixing with a reasonable swathe of people inclined to support their party.
Most of us have decided we have better things to do with our lives. You have to be really committed to be a party member these days. So MPs are chosen by the committed for the committed. Appeal to moderates is something to be done only when you are truly desperate. So you end up with the harrowing of May and Starmer (both flawed but better than their reputations) and a Johnson-Corbyn election.
The loons on both sides made politics disagreeable to too many people, with the result that the loons are in the ascendancy.
(And that includes me. There's no way I could bring myself to unlapse my Conservative membership under its current management.)5 -
We are acting like the petulant child, We demand something, then throw our toys out the pram when we get it and it isn't as good as we wanted. In the olden days a smacked bottom would have occured, but I suspect Boris would enjoy that....squareroot2 said:
Of course it has nothing to do with other countries views, its all Britain's fault..... jeezOnlyLivingBoy said:
The German numbers are a sad reflection on what we have done to our reputation in Europe, especially as most Germans are natural Anglophiles. Fewer than half of Germans now see us as a friend or ally, and a quarter think we are an enemy or competitor.CarlottaVance said:How EU countries view the UK:
https://ecfr.eu/publication/crisis-of-confidence-how-europeans-see-their-place-in-the-world/1 -
Seems to me there is a lot of misunderstanding around the word exponential.DavidL said:
Not necessarily. I have £1k in a bank account receiving 0.1% compound interest. It is growing exponentially but I am not planning on retirement just yet.RobD said:
That's the thing with exponential growth, it happens very quickly.kle4 said:
A few percent makes the difference to the point opening up cannot happen? And since we need booster shots apparently no doubt herd immunity will be argued as not sufficient either.williamglenn said:
That's nuts. Even if you think a delay is overcautious, it doesn't mean there's no end in sight. We're are almost at herd immunity.Black_Rook said:
The one thing that will torpedo this Government below the waterline is economic collapse.rottenborough said:
We need huge numbers of businesses to go to the wall through this. Mass unemployment. The money markets to see that Britain's a turkey and stop lending Sunak the money.
National bankruptcy and a trip to the Gnomes of Zurich, holding out the begging bowl. It's the only way we're ever getting out of this.
Bring it on.
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Bit harsh on the Hurricane, which actually did the heavy lifting. But it isn't as photogenic as those curves of the Spitfire.....Jonathan said:
Farage and co still use spitfires in their politics.MarqueeMark said:
6% of Germans think "For you Tommy, the war is not yet over...we still can go to extra time and penalties for the win!"OnlyLivingBoy said:
The German numbers are a sad reflection on what we have done to our reputation in Europe, especially as most Germans are natural Anglophiles. Fewer than half of Germans now see us as a friend or ally, and a quarter think we are an enemy or competitor.CarlottaVance said:How EU countries view the UK:
https://ecfr.eu/publication/crisis-of-confidence-how-europeans-see-their-place-in-the-world/0 -
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.Scott_xP said:Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
Will the Prime Minister ever learn not to govern by wishful thinking alone? That six week delay in closing borders with India is exactly why we cannot unlock fully now. This is on him. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/11/covid-cases-in-england-rising-at-fastest-rate-since-winter-wave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.6 -
Interesting discussion (and I'd not realised you were a lapsed Conservative). I think it's a bit overstated when it comes to loonery - locally we have 600 members, only one of whom is uncomfortably obsessive, and I meet lots of Tory and LibDem members who seem similarly mild-mannered. It wasn't different in Broxtowe either - the abrasive Anna Soubry was very much the exception, and she was centrist in her politics. Plenty of people are quite far on one spectrum of the left-right axis but not at all unpleasant.Stuartinromford said:
Nope, we just got lazy.
Go back a generation or two and party memberships were much larger than they are now. At its peak, there were 2.8 million signed-up Conservatives, 1 million Labour members, 5-6 million members of the Labour movement.
https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-britain/parliament-and-elections/partied-out/
Now most of them had little direct input into the running of policy, but it meant that MPs were mixing with a reasonable swathe of people inclined to support their party.
Most of us have decided we have better things to do with our lives. You have to be really committed to be a party member these days. So MPs are chosen by the committed for the committed. Appeal to moderates is something to be done only when you are truly desperate. So you end up with the harrowing of May and Starmer (both flawed but better than their reputations) and a Johnson-Corbyn election.
The loons on both sides made politics disagreeable to too many people, with the result that the loons are in the ascendancy.
(And that includes me. There's no way I could bring myself to unlapse my Conservative membership under its current management.)
But it's undoubtedly true that you have to be pretty keen on a specific direction of travel to bother to join a party - Brexit fuelled the Tories, Corbynism fuelled Labour, as initially did Starmer's centre-left appeal, and I won't deny that the lack of direction at present is eroding Labour membership. An inability to give a clear answer to "What are we for?" is fatal to any party, and I suspect that a problem for Tories down the road will be that the current answer is "for Boris and beating the pandemic" will be insufficient when the shine is off the former and the latter has thankfully diminished. It's certainly a problem for Labour and the LIbDems right now, and IMO the main reason for the healthy Green poll rating.5 -
That's interesting.Pulpstar said:There's a walk in event in Mansfield being advertised for anyone over 25 to get a first jab at the weekend and it is guaranteed to be Pfizer interestingly.
Adult jab takeup in Mansfield is 74% first dose, 58% second dose which is a little lower and higher than average respectively. But both a couple of points lower than next door authorities.
There's also the same drive at the Forest Recreation Ground in Nottingham. Both 6am to 8pm Sat and Sun.
I hadn't noticed the decisively lower takeup in Nottingham than the rest of Nottinghamshire. Worrying.
I can think of 2 reasons why Pfizer is being driven:
1 - To get work around any remaining AZ suspicions.
2 - Because 2nd doses can be done much sooner.
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No you simply can't tell that from the chart because it is a snapshot, not a time series. It does not show how things have changed over time. Ten years ago, it could have been that fewer Germans saw us as an ally.OnlyLivingBoy said:
The German numbers are a sad reflection on what we have done to our reputation in Europe, especially as most Germans are natural Anglophiles. Fewer than half of Germans now see us as a friend or ally, and a quarter think we are an enemy or competitor.CarlottaVance said:How EU countries view the UK:
https://ecfr.eu/publication/crisis-of-confidence-how-europeans-see-their-place-in-the-world/1 -
Untrue, I think.DavidL said:
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.Scott_xP said:Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
Will the Prime Minister ever learn not to govern by wishful thinking alone? That six week delay in closing borders with India is exactly why we cannot unlock fully now. This is on him. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/11/covid-cases-in-england-rising-at-fastest-rate-since-winter-wave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
One of the reasons this took hold so quickly is that it seems to have been introduced in dozens of different areas by travellers from India more or less simultaneously.
Restrictions would undoubtedly have slowed the process, even if keeping it out entirely was unlikely. And that would have changed significantly the vaccines given vs growth in infections calculation.2 -
If you say things like that about Soubs she will be after you with a hazel twig.NickPalmer said:
Interesting discussion (and I'd not realised you were a lapsed Conservative). I think it's a bit overstated when it comes to loonery - locally we have 600 members, only one of whom is uncomfortably obsessive, and I meet lots of Tory and LibDem members who seem similarly mild-mannered. It wasn't different in Broxtowe either - the abrasive Anna Soubry was very much the exception, and she was centrist in her politics. Plenty of people are quite far on one spectrum of the left-right axis but not at all unpleasant.Stuartinromford said:
Nope, we just got lazy.
Go back a generation or two and party memberships were much larger than they are now. At its peak, there were 2.8 million signed-up Conservatives, 1 million Labour members, 5-6 million members of the Labour movement.
https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-britain/parliament-and-elections/partied-out/
Now most of them had little direct input into the running of policy, but it meant that MPs were mixing with a reasonable swathe of people inclined to support their party.
Most of us have decided we have better things to do with our lives. You have to be really committed to be a party member these days. So MPs are chosen by the committed for the committed. Appeal to moderates is something to be done only when you are truly desperate. So you end up with the harrowing of May and Starmer (both flawed but better than their reputations) and a Johnson-Corbyn election.
The loons on both sides made politics disagreeable to too many people, with the result that the loons are in the ascendancy.
(And that includes me. There's no way I could bring myself to unlapse my Conservative membership under its current management.)
But it's undoubtedly true that you have to be pretty keen on a specific direction of travel to bother to join a party - Brexit fuelled the Tories, Corbynism fuelled Labour, as initially did Starmer's centre-left appeal, and I won't deny that the lack of direction at present is eroding Labour membership. An inability to give a clear answer to "What are we for?" is fatal to any party, and I suspect that a problem for Tories down the road will be that the current answer is "for Boris and beating the pandemic" will be insufficient when the shine is off the former and the latter has thankfully diminished. It's certainly a problem for Labour and the LIbDems right now, and IMO the main reason for the healthy Green poll rating.
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Quite - it is already over many parts of Europe in countries with few historic or cultural ties to India.DavidL said:
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.Scott_xP said:Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
Will the Prime Minister ever learn not to govern by wishful thinking alone? That six week delay in closing borders with India is exactly why we cannot unlock fully now. This is on him. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/11/covid-cases-in-england-rising-at-fastest-rate-since-winter-wave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
1 -
My first ever post on PB commented on the number of experts in Bangladeshi Nationality Law on the site. I’m equally impressed that we have so many epidemiologists.
The fact is that because Johnson allowed the new variant to be so widely seeded hospitalisations (and numbers of people on ventilation) are still rising fast in the NW as a whole. Bolton is part of the NW, not the whole NW. If those rises continue there and elsewhere the backlog in other NHS functions cannot even start to be cleared. That rise will likely continue in the rest of the country for a while - although there are mini signs that we may get to a plateau soon (the ONS prevalence data didn’t rise as much this week as last and the rate of case increase is slowing). Fingers crossed.
Both the publications that Johnson is most associated with, the Spectator and the Telegraph, are up in arms about this too. I can believe many things but I struggle to believe that he is more interested in being loved by SAGE than by the readership of those journals. However, importantly the front of the Times (I don’t have a sub) suggests that polling supports a delay to Stage 4. That, perhaps, is the clincher.1 -
The WHO's attempt to avoid stigmatising nations by naming virus variants after Greek letters doesn't work on the BBC which now refers to the "delta variant which was first identified in India" as a matter of course.0
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I accept that the number of seedings will affect the speed with which it became the dominant variant. But the fact that it has become so dominant shows that it has an evolutionary advantage over other strains and it would therefore have become dominant fairly rapidly anyway. The 90%+ who are now getting the delta variant did not all go to India or are related to someone who did. It has driven out the other variants and would have done so anyway. No doubt delta will be replaced with another variant within a few weeks. And we can have the same argument again.Nigelb said:
Untrue, I think.DavidL said:
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.Scott_xP said:Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
Will the Prime Minister ever learn not to govern by wishful thinking alone? That six week delay in closing borders with India is exactly why we cannot unlock fully now. This is on him. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/11/covid-cases-in-england-rising-at-fastest-rate-since-winter-wave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
One of the reasons this took hold so quickly is that it seems to have been introduced in dozens of different areas by travellers from India more or less simultaneously.
Restrictions would undoubtedly have slowed the process, even if keeping it out entirely was unlikely. And that would have changed significantly the vaccines given vs growth in infections calculation.
We are probably learning more about have a virus develops than we have ever known before as no virus in history has had this level of real time analysis. I am sure it will keep the biologists and epidemiologists busy for many years.2 -
I would be interested to know how this conclusion is arrived at. Am I missing something, or is this not a function of vaccine effectiveness. If children are only infecting children and young adults (but not older people), and the converse - the vast majority of infections are derived from children/YA - then it is going to look “more transmissible among children and YA”. No?rottenborough said:Science guy on R4 saying that it looks like this delta variant is more transmissible in children and YAs.
If the story was “the variant is more dangerous in children and YA” then that would really be something (and scary). But “more transmissible”?
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Local vaccination rates 1st / 2nd jab % of adults.
Nottingham 50.1% / 35.2%
Nottinghamshire 76.3% / 59.8%
That is a hell of a difference.
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations?areaType=utla&areaName=Nottingham
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations?areaType=utla&areaName=Nottinghamshire0 -
I'm not sure if that's true. 14k Hurricanes were produced, and it was discontinued before the end of the war, while more than 20k Spitfires were, and it was produced for several years after the end of the war. To me they seem about even, or maybe the Spitfire has a slight edge.MarqueeMark said:
Bit harsh on the Hurricane, which actually did the heavy lifting. But it isn't as photogenic as those curves of the Spitfire.....Jonathan said:
Farage and co still use spitfires in their politics.MarqueeMark said:
6% of Germans think "For you Tommy, the war is not yet over...we still can go to extra time and penalties for the win!"OnlyLivingBoy said:
The German numbers are a sad reflection on what we have done to our reputation in Europe, especially as most Germans are natural Anglophiles. Fewer than half of Germans now see us as a friend or ally, and a quarter think we are an enemy or competitor.CarlottaVance said:How EU countries view the UK:
https://ecfr.eu/publication/crisis-of-confidence-how-europeans-see-their-place-in-the-world/0 -
Delta variant - is it ∆ or ∂ ?1
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You are showing signs of being an expert yourself Doug.DougSeal said:My first ever post on PB commented on the number of experts in Bangladeshi Nationality Law on the site. I’m equally impressed that we have so many epidemiologists.
The fact is that because Johnson allowed the new variant to be so widely seeded hospitalisations (and numbers of people on ventilation) are still rising fast in the NW as a whole. Bolton is part of the NW, not the whole NW. If those rises continue there and elsewhere the backlog in other NHS functions cannot even start to be cleared. That rise will likely continue in the rest of the country for a while - although there are mini signs that we may get to a plateau soon (the ONS prevalence data didn’t rise as much this week as last and the rate of case increase is slowing). Fingers crossed.
Both the publications that Johnson is most associated with, the Spectator and the Telegraph, are up in arms about this too. I can believe many things but I struggle to believe that he is more interested in being loved by SAGE than by the readership of those journals. However, importantly the front of the Times (I don’t have a sub) suggests that polling supports a delay to Stage 4. That, perhaps, is the clincher.
I think we all like to consider ourselves reasonably intelligent, involved, better read than most and able to see connections. In the case of many contributors to this site I think that is true which keeps it interesting for the likes of me. I have no doubt at all that my understanding has been greatly enhanced by the likes of @Foxy @MaxPB and many others including yourself. It's why I am here.4 -
Demographic profile?MattW said:Local vaccination rates 1st / 2nd jab % of adults.
Nottingham 50.1% / 35.2%
Nottinghamshire 76.3% / 59.8%
That is a hell of a difference.
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations?areaType=utla&areaName=Nottingham
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations?areaType=utla&areaName=Nottinghamshire0 -
There are a couple of true epidemiologists here, and an awful lot of folk who like and analyse statistics, so the debate is much better informed than the wider media.DougSeal said:My first ever post on PB commented on the number of experts in Bangladeshi Nationality Law on the site. I’m equally impressed that we have so many epidemiologists.
The fact is that because Johnson allowed the new variant to be so widely seeded hospitalisations (and numbers of people on ventilation) are still rising fast in the NW as a whole. Bolton is part of the NW, not the whole NW. If those rises continue there and elsewhere the backlog in other NHS functions cannot even start to be cleared. That rise will likely continue in the rest of the country for a while - although there are mini signs that we may get to a plateau soon (the ONS prevalence data didn’t rise as much this week as last and the rate of case increase is slowing). Fingers crossed.
Both the publications that Johnson is most associated with, the Spectator and the Telegraph, are up in arms about this too. I can believe many things but I struggle to believe that he is more interested in being loved by SAGE than by the readership of those journals. However, importantly the front of the Times (I don’t have a sub) suggests that polling supports a delay to Stage 4. That, perhaps, is the clincher.
I think that the Delta variant is probably on the rise and will cause problems with admissions in some localities. The vaccines seem pretty effective, and I am glad that second doses are now getting priority. We are not far off the point where everyone who wants one has had the opportunity.
Ultimately though this is a political decision, balancing economic and other societal risks. The hospitality sector, performing arts, sports etc need a good summer, and travel needs to resume (no quarantine for the fully vaxxed from amber countries etc).
If the vaccine doesn't work, or people refuse it, there is no other way out than taking it on the chin. We cannot wreck our children's future for much longer3 -
Another Regional Airline goes under:
Aer Lingus cancels all regional flights operated by Stobart Air - which has ceased trading.
https://twitter.com/newschambers/status/1403622449309171715?s=201 -
I’ve just brought my second jab forwardRobD said:
But maybe 14 million is enough to bring the R rate down enough. I think that's why a pause is being considered, and why the duration may not be completely arbitrary as you seem to be suggesting.kle4 said:
So go for eight weeks, buys even more.RobD said:
Four weeks buys another 14 million vaccinations. So even by sitting still you are gaining a lot of extra immunity.kle4 said:
Yeah, I get that. But the question is whether the continued ongoing cost is still appropriate and reasonable even if that occurs now. Given it can apparently be solved with just sitting tight for 4 weeks with a not-really-lockdown, I question that.RobD said:
That's the thing with exponential growth, it happens very quickly.kle4 said:
A few percent makes the difference to the point opening up cannot happen? And since we need booster shots apparently no doubt herd immunity will be argued as not sufficient either.williamglenn said:
That's nuts. Even if you think a delay is overcautious, it doesn't mean there's no end in sight. We're are almost at herd immunity.Black_Rook said:
The one thing that will torpedo this Government below the waterline is economic collapse.rottenborough said:
We need huge numbers of businesses to go to the wall through this. Mass unemployment. The money markets to see that Britain's a turkey and stop lending Sunak the money.
National bankruptcy and a trip to the Gnomes of Zurich, holding out the begging bowl. It's the only way we're ever getting out of this.
Bring it on.
Complete availability from 8 weeks after my first.
N=1, but suggests the issue is demand not supply (AZ, London)0 -
Think about it this way, proper hotel quarantine is basically 100% effective. It has stopped outbreaks in Australia, Singapore, NZ.DavidL said:
I accept that the number of seedings will affect the speed with which it became the dominant variant. But the fact that it has become so dominant shows that it has an evolutionary advantage over other strains and it would therefore have become dominant fairly rapidly anyway. The 90%+ who are now getting the delta variant did not all go to India or are related to someone who did. It has driven out the other variants and would have done so anyway. No doubt delta will be replaced with another variant within a few weeks. And we can have the same argument again.Nigelb said:
Untrue, I think.DavidL said:
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.Scott_xP said:Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
Will the Prime Minister ever learn not to govern by wishful thinking alone? That six week delay in closing borders with India is exactly why we cannot unlock fully now. This is on him. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/11/covid-cases-in-england-rising-at-fastest-rate-since-winter-wave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
One of the reasons this took hold so quickly is that it seems to have been introduced in dozens of different areas by travellers from India more or less simultaneously.
Restrictions would undoubtedly have slowed the process, even if keeping it out entirely was unlikely. And that would have changed significantly the vaccines given vs growth in infections calculation.
We are probably learning more about have a virus develops than we have ever known before as no virus in history has had this level of real time analysis. I am sure it will keep the biologists and epidemiologists busy for many years.
We know that voluntary isolation is not well observed. We know that people isolating at home will still infect their family they share their house with.
If we'd had India on the red list, we would have reduced travel, and caught conservatively 80% of cases. Starting from <2 cases, rather than 10 buys you a lot of time -> over 3 doublings. That's really significant.0 -
Fair point. Although I don’t really consider myself an expert at literally anything. I have a degree of competence in employment law but that’s as far as it goes. I just think the absolute certainty of “cases are flat!”, “hospitalisations don’t matter!” is dangerously reductive.DavidL said:
You are showing signs of being an expert yourself Doug.DougSeal said:My first ever post on PB commented on the number of experts in Bangladeshi Nationality Law on the site. I’m equally impressed that we have so many epidemiologists.
The fact is that because Johnson allowed the new variant to be so widely seeded hospitalisations (and numbers of people on ventilation) are still rising fast in the NW as a whole. Bolton is part of the NW, not the whole NW. If those rises continue there and elsewhere the backlog in other NHS functions cannot even start to be cleared. That rise will likely continue in the rest of the country for a while - although there are mini signs that we may get to a plateau soon (the ONS prevalence data didn’t rise as much this week as last and the rate of case increase is slowing). Fingers crossed.
Both the publications that Johnson is most associated with, the Spectator and the Telegraph, are up in arms about this too. I can believe many things but I struggle to believe that he is more interested in being loved by SAGE than by the readership of those journals. However, importantly the front of the Times (I don’t have a sub) suggests that polling supports a delay to Stage 4. That, perhaps, is the clincher.
I think we all like to consider ourselves reasonably intelligent, involved, better read than most and able to see connections. In the case of many contributors to this site I think that is true which keeps it interesting for the likes of me. I have no doubt at all that my understanding has been greatly enhanced by the likes of @Foxy @MaxPB and many others including yourself. It's why I am here.1 -
Hurricanes were less able, but easier to maintain, being old technology, mostly wood etc. The kill stats in the BoB were surely because the Hurricanes attacked bombers, not fighters while Spitfires did the opposite.Fishing said:
I'm not sure if that's true. 14k Hurricanes were produced, and it was discontinued before the end of the war, while more than 20k Spitfires were, and it was produced for several years after the end of the war. To me they seem about even, or maybe the Spitfire has a slight edge.MarqueeMark said:
Bit harsh on the Hurricane, which actually did the heavy lifting. But it isn't as photogenic as those curves of the Spitfire.....Jonathan said:
Farage and co still use spitfires in their politics.MarqueeMark said:
6% of Germans think "For you Tommy, the war is not yet over...we still can go to extra time and penalties for the win!"OnlyLivingBoy said:
The German numbers are a sad reflection on what we have done to our reputation in Europe, especially as most Germans are natural Anglophiles. Fewer than half of Germans now see us as a friend or ally, and a quarter think we are an enemy or competitor.CarlottaVance said:How EU countries view the UK:
https://ecfr.eu/publication/crisis-of-confidence-how-europeans-see-their-place-in-the-world/
0 -
100% effective? Melbourne waives.rkrkrk said:
Think about it this way, proper hotel quarantine is basically 100% effective. It has stopped outbreaks in Australia, Singapore, NZ.DavidL said:
I accept that the number of seedings will affect the speed with which it became the dominant variant. But the fact that it has become so dominant shows that it has an evolutionary advantage over other strains and it would therefore have become dominant fairly rapidly anyway. The 90%+ who are now getting the delta variant did not all go to India or are related to someone who did. It has driven out the other variants and would have done so anyway. No doubt delta will be replaced with another variant within a few weeks. And we can have the same argument again.Nigelb said:
Untrue, I think.DavidL said:
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.Scott_xP said:Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
Will the Prime Minister ever learn not to govern by wishful thinking alone? That six week delay in closing borders with India is exactly why we cannot unlock fully now. This is on him. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/11/covid-cases-in-england-rising-at-fastest-rate-since-winter-wave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
One of the reasons this took hold so quickly is that it seems to have been introduced in dozens of different areas by travellers from India more or less simultaneously.
Restrictions would undoubtedly have slowed the process, even if keeping it out entirely was unlikely. And that would have changed significantly the vaccines given vs growth in infections calculation.
We are probably learning more about have a virus develops than we have ever known before as no virus in history has had this level of real time analysis. I am sure it will keep the biologists and epidemiologists busy for many years.
We know that voluntary isolation is not well observed. We know that people isolating at home will still infect their family they share their house with.
If we'd had India on the red list, we would have reduced travel, and caught conservatively 80% of cases. Starting from <2 cases, rather than 10 buys you a lot of time -> over 3 doublings. That's really significant.2 -
We know there’s no AZ supply problem. The issue is supply to the U40s, who have been de facto banned from taking AZ.Charles said:
I’ve just brought my second jab forwardRobD said:
But maybe 14 million is enough to bring the R rate down enough. I think that's why a pause is being considered, and why the duration may not be completely arbitrary as you seem to be suggesting.kle4 said:
So go for eight weeks, buys even more.RobD said:
Four weeks buys another 14 million vaccinations. So even by sitting still you are gaining a lot of extra immunity.kle4 said:
Yeah, I get that. But the question is whether the continued ongoing cost is still appropriate and reasonable even if that occurs now. Given it can apparently be solved with just sitting tight for 4 weeks with a not-really-lockdown, I question that.RobD said:
That's the thing with exponential growth, it happens very quickly.kle4 said:
A few percent makes the difference to the point opening up cannot happen? And since we need booster shots apparently no doubt herd immunity will be argued as not sufficient either.williamglenn said:
That's nuts. Even if you think a delay is overcautious, it doesn't mean there's no end in sight. We're are almost at herd immunity.Black_Rook said:
The one thing that will torpedo this Government below the waterline is economic collapse.rottenborough said:
We need huge numbers of businesses to go to the wall through this. Mass unemployment. The money markets to see that Britain's a turkey and stop lending Sunak the money.
National bankruptcy and a trip to the Gnomes of Zurich, holding out the begging bowl. It's the only way we're ever getting out of this.
Bring it on.
Complete availability from 8 weeks after my first.
N=1, but suggests the issue is demand not supply (AZ, London)0 -
Good morning, everyone.
Mr. rkrkrk, I'm inclined to agree. It was bloody stupid, and obviously stupid, to delay putting India into the red category.
The PM remains a vacillating cretin.0 -
It is always good to see contributions from experts in particular areas. I've said that about Foxy before. Of course, the converse is that when you're an expert on something, and you have people correcting you who don't know what they're talking about, it's just dismal.DavidL said:
You are showing signs of being an expert yourself Doug.DougSeal said:My first ever post on PB commented on the number of experts in Bangladeshi Nationality Law on the site. I’m equally impressed that we have so many epidemiologists.
The fact is that because Johnson allowed the new variant to be so widely seeded hospitalisations (and numbers of people on ventilation) are still rising fast in the NW as a whole. Bolton is part of the NW, not the whole NW. If those rises continue there and elsewhere the backlog in other NHS functions cannot even start to be cleared. That rise will likely continue in the rest of the country for a while - although there are mini signs that we may get to a plateau soon (the ONS prevalence data didn’t rise as much this week as last and the rate of case increase is slowing). Fingers crossed.
Both the publications that Johnson is most associated with, the Spectator and the Telegraph, are up in arms about this too. I can believe many things but I struggle to believe that he is more interested in being loved by SAGE than by the readership of those journals. However, importantly the front of the Times (I don’t have a sub) suggests that polling supports a delay to Stage 4. That, perhaps, is the clincher.
I think we all like to consider ourselves reasonably intelligent, involved, better read than most and able to see connections. In the case of many contributors to this site I think that is true which keeps it interesting for the likes of me. I have no doubt at all that my understanding has been greatly enhanced by the likes of @Foxy @MaxPB and many others including yourself. It's why I am here.0 -
True. But that was an error in the direction of being inadequately controlling, not over controlling.Nigelb said:IshmaelZ said:
It is obvious that his instincts are very strongly against lockdown, and that if he is forced into lockdown extensions it will be out of necessity. This site is collectively singing from a hymn sheet which says "Are we nearly there, daddy?" and then "But daddy, you PROMISED we were nearly there" and refuses to recognize the exigencies of life. The Tory Party did not invent the virus and has next to no control over how it behaves. Especially not once lockdown has been removed from its toolkit by pb fiat.kinabalu said:
God yes. The bloke's an utter charlatan. If it worked for him politically he'd reimpose hard lockdown and keep it there for years. I just think you're misreading the situation. A short pause in the roadmap is one thing. A tortured and prolonged twilight to the pandemic is quite another. He won't be doing what you fear. It won't play out like that. I absolutely promise you and that's not something I do lightly. If you won't take my bet, take my promise.Black_Rook said:
I know I do. And I really, REALLY hope I'm wrong. I'd love to be proven totally wrong. I'd delight in it. There would be an explosion of relief and joy from this general direction if the first delay also turns out to be the last.kinabalu said:
You are sounding unhinged again. I will give you odds of 10/1 on their still being legal domestic restrictions by end of Sept.Black_Rook said:
IT DOESN'T FUCKING WELL MATTER ANYMOREwilliamglenn said:
That's nuts. Even if you think a delay is overcautious, it doesn't mean there's no end in sight. We're are almost at herd immunity.Black_Rook said:
The one thing that will torpedo this Government below the waterline is economic collapse.rottenborough said:
We need huge numbers of businesses to go to the wall through this. Mass unemployment. The money markets to see that Britain's a turkey and stop lending Sunak the money.
National bankruptcy and a trip to the Gnomes of Zurich, holding out the begging bowl. It's the only way we're ever getting out of this.
Bring it on.
They're not interested in "herd immunity". In their minds it doesn't even exist. They keep wibbling on about "the vaccines not offering 100% protection." They want Zero Covid. They want Zero Death.
No level of vaccination will ever be good enough. There'll always be an excuse for more restrictions. There'll always be an excuse for more delay.
Lockdown only ends with the destruction of this Government. And I can't see how that happens any other way but broad scale economic ruin.
Negative equity and 15% interest rates killed off John Major. We may need something worse to shift Johnson. Whatever it takes. We need to get rid of him.
Your £1 against my £10.
But you do understand why I don't trust Boris Johnson - surely you must?
They had control over travel restrictions with India, which they failed to exercise.IshmaelZ said:
It is obvious that his instincts are very strongly against lockdown, and that if he is forced into lockdown extensions it will be out of necessity. This site is collectively singing from a hymn sheet which says "Are we nearly there, daddy?" and then "But daddy, you PROMISED we were nearly there" and refuses to recognize the exigencies of life. The Tory Party did not invent the virus and has next to no control over how it behaves. Especially not once lockdown has been removed from its toolkit by pb fiat.kinabalu said:
God yes. The bloke's an utter charlatan. If it worked for him politically he'd reimpose hard lockdown and keep it there for years. I just think you're misreading the situation. A short pause in the roadmap is one thing. A tortured and prolonged twilight to the pandemic is quite another. He won't be doing what you fear. It won't play out like that. I absolutely promise you and that's not something I do lightly. If you won't take my bet, take my promise.Black_Rook said:
I know I do. And I really, REALLY hope I'm wrong. I'd love to be proven totally wrong. I'd delight in it. There would be an explosion of relief and joy from this general direction if the first delay also turns out to be the last.kinabalu said:
You are sounding unhinged again. I will give you odds of 10/1 on their still being legal domestic restrictions by end of Sept.Black_Rook said:
IT DOESN'T FUCKING WELL MATTER ANYMOREwilliamglenn said:
That's nuts. Even if you think a delay is overcautious, it doesn't mean there's no end in sight. We're are almost at herd immunity.Black_Rook said:
The one thing that will torpedo this Government below the waterline is economic collapse.rottenborough said:
We need huge numbers of businesses to go to the wall through this. Mass unemployment. The money markets to see that Britain's a turkey and stop lending Sunak the money.
National bankruptcy and a trip to the Gnomes of Zurich, holding out the begging bowl. It's the only way we're ever getting out of this.
Bring it on.
They're not interested in "herd immunity". In their minds it doesn't even exist. They keep wibbling on about "the vaccines not offering 100% protection." They want Zero Covid. They want Zero Death.
No level of vaccination will ever be good enough. There'll always be an excuse for more restrictions. There'll always be an excuse for more delay.
Lockdown only ends with the destruction of this Government. And I can't see how that happens any other way but broad scale economic ruin.
Negative equity and 15% interest rates killed off John Major. We may need something worse to shift Johnson. Whatever it takes. We need to get rid of him.
Your £1 against my £10.
But you do understand why I don't trust Boris Johnson - surely you must?
I don't incidentally understand the claim it was about protecting the Indian trade deal - more about the Indian heritage UK vote I would have thought.1 -
Its not that significant if the doublings are every 8 days. Its 24 days before you end up where you would have been anyway. We will catch every variant of this virus that has an evolutionary advantage. That is just a fact. What is important is not the catching but the effect. And the effect is determined by the speed and efficacy of our vaccination program.rkrkrk said:
Think about it this way, proper hotel quarantine is basically 100% effective. It has stopped outbreaks in Australia, Singapore, NZ.DavidL said:
I accept that the number of seedings will affect the speed with which it became the dominant variant. But the fact that it has become so dominant shows that it has an evolutionary advantage over other strains and it would therefore have become dominant fairly rapidly anyway. The 90%+ who are now getting the delta variant did not all go to India or are related to someone who did. It has driven out the other variants and would have done so anyway. No doubt delta will be replaced with another variant within a few weeks. And we can have the same argument again.Nigelb said:
Untrue, I think.DavidL said:
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.Scott_xP said:Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
Will the Prime Minister ever learn not to govern by wishful thinking alone? That six week delay in closing borders with India is exactly why we cannot unlock fully now. This is on him. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/11/covid-cases-in-england-rising-at-fastest-rate-since-winter-wave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
One of the reasons this took hold so quickly is that it seems to have been introduced in dozens of different areas by travellers from India more or less simultaneously.
Restrictions would undoubtedly have slowed the process, even if keeping it out entirely was unlikely. And that would have changed significantly the vaccines given vs growth in infections calculation.
We are probably learning more about have a virus develops than we have ever known before as no virus in history has had this level of real time analysis. I am sure it will keep the biologists and epidemiologists busy for many years.
We know that voluntary isolation is not well observed. We know that people isolating at home will still infect their family they share their house with.
If we'd had India on the red list, we would have reduced travel, and caught conservatively 80% of cases. Starting from <2 cases, rather than 10 buys you a lot of time -> over 3 doublings. That's really significant.0 -
Melbourne waives quarantine?DougSeal said:
100% effective? Melbourne waives.rkrkrk said:
Think about it this way, proper hotel quarantine is basically 100% effective. It has stopped outbreaks in Australia, Singapore, NZ.DavidL said:
I accept that the number of seedings will affect the speed with which it became the dominant variant. But the fact that it has become so dominant shows that it has an evolutionary advantage over other strains and it would therefore have become dominant fairly rapidly anyway. The 90%+ who are now getting the delta variant did not all go to India or are related to someone who did. It has driven out the other variants and would have done so anyway. No doubt delta will be replaced with another variant within a few weeks. And we can have the same argument again.Nigelb said:
Untrue, I think.DavidL said:
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.Scott_xP said:Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
Will the Prime Minister ever learn not to govern by wishful thinking alone? That six week delay in closing borders with India is exactly why we cannot unlock fully now. This is on him. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/11/covid-cases-in-england-rising-at-fastest-rate-since-winter-wave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
One of the reasons this took hold so quickly is that it seems to have been introduced in dozens of different areas by travellers from India more or less simultaneously.
Restrictions would undoubtedly have slowed the process, even if keeping it out entirely was unlikely. And that would have changed significantly the vaccines given vs growth in infections calculation.
We are probably learning more about have a virus develops than we have ever known before as no virus in history has had this level of real time analysis. I am sure it will keep the biologists and epidemiologists busy for many years.
We know that voluntary isolation is not well observed. We know that people isolating at home will still infect their family they share their house with.
If we'd had India on the red list, we would have reduced travel, and caught conservatively 80% of cases. Starting from <2 cases, rather than 10 buys you a lot of time -> over 3 doublings. That's really significant.
0 -
-
I agree completely.DavidL said:
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.Scott_xP said:Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
Will the Prime Minister ever learn not to govern by wishful thinking alone? That six week delay in closing borders with India is exactly why we cannot unlock fully now. This is on him. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/11/covid-cases-in-england-rising-at-fastest-rate-since-winter-wave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
The main problem relates to a TSE post last night, which linked to a Times article citing a YouGov poll saying that only 37% of the public think that 21 June should be adhered to, with 53% thinking that restrictions should continue.
In the final analysis, populist governments will follow the polls.
We don't get out of this while people are quite content being paid to work (or not) at home, be paid regardless, or are furloughed, don't have the commute, don't do to mass events or travel themselves and don't give a shit about others, don't feels significant loss of freedoms themselves, are unpracticed and ill-equipped to evaluate risk.
So, as I posted last night, the government is listening to an information-light public, a good proportion which, truth be told, are enjoying all this, at least in a wallowing-in-the-misery, blitz-spirit sense. And, importantly, are relishing the clipping of wings of those who actually had good lives before all this.
In short, views collated in polls measure peoples self-interest and ignorance rather than principle and legality.
I've been bleating on about this for months I know, but one of the biggest problems is Sunak's multiple extensions of financial support.
1 -
Singapore also is having problems with outbreaks....DougSeal said:
100% effective? Melbourne waives.rkrkrk said:
Think about it this way, proper hotel quarantine is basically 100% effective. It has stopped outbreaks in Australia, Singapore, NZ.DavidL said:
I accept that the number of seedings will affect the speed with which it became the dominant variant. But the fact that it has become so dominant shows that it has an evolutionary advantage over other strains and it would therefore have become dominant fairly rapidly anyway. The 90%+ who are now getting the delta variant did not all go to India or are related to someone who did. It has driven out the other variants and would have done so anyway. No doubt delta will be replaced with another variant within a few weeks. And we can have the same argument again.Nigelb said:
Untrue, I think.DavidL said:
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.Scott_xP said:Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
Will the Prime Minister ever learn not to govern by wishful thinking alone? That six week delay in closing borders with India is exactly why we cannot unlock fully now. This is on him. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/11/covid-cases-in-england-rising-at-fastest-rate-since-winter-wave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
One of the reasons this took hold so quickly is that it seems to have been introduced in dozens of different areas by travellers from India more or less simultaneously.
Restrictions would undoubtedly have slowed the process, even if keeping it out entirely was unlikely. And that would have changed significantly the vaccines given vs growth in infections calculation.
We are probably learning more about have a virus develops than we have ever known before as no virus in history has had this level of real time analysis. I am sure it will keep the biologists and epidemiologists busy for many years.
We know that voluntary isolation is not well observed. We know that people isolating at home will still infect their family they share their house with.
If we'd had India on the red list, we would have reduced travel, and caught conservatively 80% of cases. Starting from <2 cases, rather than 10 buys you a lot of time -> over 3 doublings. That's really significant.0 -
Surely our biggest issue is keeping such a long gap after the first booster - which seems
to be entirely the wrong tactic in the face of the Delta variant. It was fine when the first jab offered pretty good protection.
My second jab is on the 18th August - had my first at end of May - and that feels far too long. We are apparently meant to be more nimble outside the EU but we seem to be trudging along rocks around our ankles0 -
Initial infection pool size is really important any why the "no point in stopping international travel as it is already here" was always been an incredibly stupid position from the off.
If your initial infection is one person then after 15 doublings and grand total of 32 thousand people have been infected.
If your initial infection pool is a thousand people then after 15 doublings half the population of the UK has got it.
This has a profound difference on the effect of the Vaccine race.0 -
You believePhilip_Thompson said:
I couldn't give the hairy crack of a rats arse that they're on the rise from virtually zero. Warrington's gone from 1 to 3 - big whoop! Big frigging deal!RobD said:.
I think the trajectories are more important than the instantaneous values. You cannot deny that they are on the rise. All except deaths, thankfully.Philip_Thompson said:
FPT Oh really? 🤔DougSeal said:It’s a difficult decision to make but hospitalisations and, significantly, ventilation beds in the NW are looking ominous. Hopefully things won’t be as bad this time round but a tough decision to make.
There was over 4k in hospital in the Northwest in the peak, there's currently 271.
There were hundreds in hospital in Warrington in the peak, there's currently 3. Not 300, 3.
Liverpool University Hospitals had over 500 in the peak, there's currently 9.
Wirral University Teaching Hospital had nearly 300 in the peak, there's currently 3.
Single digits in hospital Trusts when it was hundreds in hospital most of the pandemic is not awful.
Its not going to go from 3 to 300 because the vulnerable have been double-vaccinated already!
A few weeks extra will give the data to allow that judgement to be made with much greater confidence0 -
A majority of voters support delaying the end of coronavirus restrictions, a poll has found, as Boris Johnson prepares to push back the final stage of lockdown easing for up to a month
https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1403628081215049730?s=200 -
It was working for Alpha but Delta shifted the goalposts. Apparently the over 40s can bring forward their second doses and I will be seeing if I can do that today, I’m due for mine on 1 July as it stands.Razedabode said:Surely our biggest issue is keeping such a long gap after the first booster - which seems
to be entirely the wrong tactic in the face of the Delta variant. It was fine when the first jab offered pretty good protection.
My second jab is on the 18th August - had my first at end of May - and that feels far too long. We are apparently meant to be more nimble outside the EU but we seem to be trudging along rocks around our ankles1 -
I have shared some of those concerns but I have been persuaded that the risk/reward ratio has been swung by our get out of jail free card in the vaccines. It has been worth incurring more economic damage to avoid fairly large numbers of avoidable deaths because we have been able to play that card.Stocky said:
I agree completely.DavidL said:
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.Scott_xP said:Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
Will the Prime Minister ever learn not to govern by wishful thinking alone? That six week delay in closing borders with India is exactly why we cannot unlock fully now. This is on him. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/11/covid-cases-in-england-rising-at-fastest-rate-since-winter-wave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
The main problem relates to a TSE post last night, which linked to a Times article citing a YouGov poll saying that only 37% of the public think that 21 June should be adhered to, with 53% thinking that restrictions should continue.
In the final analysis, populist governments will follow the polls.
We don't get out of this while people are quite content being paid to work (or not) work at home, be paid regardless, or are furloughed, don't have the commute, don't do to mass events or travel themselves and don't give a shit about others, don't feels significant loss of freedoms themselves, are unpracticed and ill-equipped to evaluate risk.
In short, views collated in polls measure peoples self-interest and ignorance rather than principle and legality.
I've been bleating on about this for months I know, but one of the biggest problems is Sunak's multiple extensions of financial support.
But the trade off has not gone away, it never will. There comes a point when a few more thousand deaths is simply not too high a price to pay to avoid economic ruin. I think we should have been at that point by 21st June but we vaccinated too slowly. Any delay will need to be short and a one off.2 -
Yes, but we've moved from state coercion in the face of a national emergency to state coercion "just in case". Legality??Charles said:
You believePhilip_Thompson said:
I couldn't give the hairy crack of a rats arse that they're on the rise from virtually zero. Warrington's gone from 1 to 3 - big whoop! Big frigging deal!RobD said:.
I think the trajectories are more important than the instantaneous values. You cannot deny that they are on the rise. All except deaths, thankfully.Philip_Thompson said:
FPT Oh really? 🤔DougSeal said:It’s a difficult decision to make but hospitalisations and, significantly, ventilation beds in the NW are looking ominous. Hopefully things won’t be as bad this time round but a tough decision to make.
There was over 4k in hospital in the Northwest in the peak, there's currently 271.
There were hundreds in hospital in Warrington in the peak, there's currently 3. Not 300, 3.
Liverpool University Hospitals had over 500 in the peak, there's currently 9.
Wirral University Teaching Hospital had nearly 300 in the peak, there's currently 3.
Single digits in hospital Trusts when it was hundreds in hospital most of the pandemic is not awful.
Its not going to go from 3 to 300 because the vulnerable have been double-vaccinated already!
A few weeks extra will give the data to allow that judgement to be made with much greater confidence
I'm sorry but to borrow and contort a phase of PT's, Johnson can stick his precautionary principle up his hairy arse crack.2 -
A majority might support a delay as a safety first idea.
But those who lose their jobs and businesses, and the customers who find their favourite restaurant/pub is now no more, will vehemently feel otherwise.
Sadly it's not as clear cut as it was before the new variant, but I still think we should unlock.0 -
I avoid this scenario by not being an expert in anything.Fishing said:
It is always good to see contributions from experts in particular areas. I've said that about Foxy before. Of course, the converse is that when you're an expert on something, and you have people correcting you who don't know what they're talking about, it's just dismal.DavidL said:
You are showing signs of being an expert yourself Doug.DougSeal said:My first ever post on PB commented on the number of experts in Bangladeshi Nationality Law on the site. I’m equally impressed that we have so many epidemiologists.
The fact is that because Johnson allowed the new variant to be so widely seeded hospitalisations (and numbers of people on ventilation) are still rising fast in the NW as a whole. Bolton is part of the NW, not the whole NW. If those rises continue there and elsewhere the backlog in other NHS functions cannot even start to be cleared. That rise will likely continue in the rest of the country for a while - although there are mini signs that we may get to a plateau soon (the ONS prevalence data didn’t rise as much this week as last and the rate of case increase is slowing). Fingers crossed.
Both the publications that Johnson is most associated with, the Spectator and the Telegraph, are up in arms about this too. I can believe many things but I struggle to believe that he is more interested in being loved by SAGE than by the readership of those journals. However, importantly the front of the Times (I don’t have a sub) suggests that polling supports a delay to Stage 4. That, perhaps, is the clincher.
I think we all like to consider ourselves reasonably intelligent, involved, better read than most and able to see connections. In the case of many contributors to this site I think that is true which keeps it interesting for the likes of me. I have no doubt at all that my understanding has been greatly enhanced by the likes of @Foxy @MaxPB and many others including yourself. It's why I am here.5 -
I am somewhat dubious with moving my second as it is Pfizer - knowing my luck, I’ll cancel it to rearrange and get a ridiculous new date sometime in OctoberDougSeal said:
It was working for Alpha but Delta shifted the goalposts. Apparently the over 40s can bring forward their second doses and I will be seeing if I can do that today, I’m due for mine on 1 July as it stands.Razedabode said:Surely our biggest issue is keeping such a long gap after the first booster - which seems
to be entirely the wrong tactic in the face of the Delta variant. It was fine when the first jab offered pretty good protection.
My second jab is on the 18th August - had my first at end of May - and that feels far too long. We are apparently meant to be more nimble outside the EU but we seem to be trudging along rocks around our ankles0 -
Why no Greece or Ireland?Jonathan said:
Imagine if the poll was carried out in the UK. A lot more antipathy I expect against countries due to lingering Brexit jingoistic sentiment, except against Bulgaria, who will be popular on account of his work on Wimbledon common.CarlottaVance said:How EU countries view the UK:
https://ecfr.eu/publication/crisis-of-confidence-how-europeans-see-their-place-in-the-world/0 -
The ultracrepidarian response never lurks too far below the surface on pb.com. I've been on the receiving end of a lecture on aircraft carrier deck design.Fishing said:Of course, the converse is that when you're an expert on something, and you have people correcting you who don't know what they're talking about, it's just dismal.
0 -
Infection pool - consider the water lily problem.Alistair said:Initial infection pool size is really important any why the "no point in stopping international travel as it is already here" was always been an incredibly stupid position from the off.
If your initial infection is one person then after 15 doublings and grand total of 32 thousand people have been infected.
If your initial infection pool is a thousand people then after 15 doublings half the population of the UK has got it.
This has a profound difference on the effect of the Vaccine race.
The number of water lilies on a certain lake doubles every two days. If there is exactly one water lily on the lake, it takes 60 days for the lake to be fully covered with water lilies. In how many days will the lake be fully covered with lilies, if initially there were two water lilies on it?1 -
What happens after the short delay?DavidL said:
I have shared some of those concerns but I have been persuaded that the risk/reward ratio has been swung by our get out of jail free card in the vaccines. It has been worth incurring more economic damage to avoid fairly large numbers of avoidable deaths because we have been able to play that card.Stocky said:
I agree completely.DavidL said:
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.Scott_xP said:Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
Will the Prime Minister ever learn not to govern by wishful thinking alone? That six week delay in closing borders with India is exactly why we cannot unlock fully now. This is on him. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/11/covid-cases-in-england-rising-at-fastest-rate-since-winter-wave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
The main problem relates to a TSE post last night, which linked to a Times article citing a YouGov poll saying that only 37% of the public think that 21 June should be adhered to, with 53% thinking that restrictions should continue.
In the final analysis, populist governments will follow the polls.
We don't get out of this while people are quite content being paid to work (or not) work at home, be paid regardless, or are furloughed, don't have the commute, don't do to mass events or travel themselves and don't give a shit about others, don't feels significant loss of freedoms themselves, are unpracticed and ill-equipped to evaluate risk.
In short, views collated in polls measure peoples self-interest and ignorance rather than principle and legality.
I've been bleating on about this for months I know, but one of the biggest problems is Sunak's multiple extensions of financial support.
But the trade off has not gone away, it never will. There comes a point when a few more thousand deaths is simply not too high a price to pay to avoid economic ruin. I think we should have been at that point by 21st June but we vaccinated too slowly. Any delay will need to be short and a one off.
It is very likely that after this short delay new daily infections are slightly up again, hospitalisations slightly up and maybe the same for deaths. The figures will be tiny in proportion to the national population and not remotely comparable to the situation we were in in the past.
An an even greater proportion of new infections are numbers only with few actually getting ill or exhibiting any symptoms. And a good proportion of those that do become ill are unvaccinated by their own agency. And the polls will then, as now, skew in favour of not easing restrictions.
So, if the government don't remove legal restrictions on 21 June why would they after the short delay?0 -
@VictimofMaths on Twitter has done another brilliant map (the data only covers England though). As he says, far too much red here.
0 -
Is that what you did professionally?Dura_Ace said:
The ultracrepidarian response never lurks too far below the surface on pb.com. I've been on the receiving end of a lecture on aircraft carrier deck design.Fishing said:Of course, the converse is that when you're an expert on something, and you have people correcting you who don't know what they're talking about, it's just dismal.
0 -
New - @EmmanuelMacron tells @BorisJohnson (meeting in English) he wants to “reset” UK/France relations but only if Johnson keeps his word on Brexit deal - namely NI. Full story on the PM’s EU meetings at G7 in Cornwall coming soon on @FT0
-
That big blue patch On Greater Manchester isn't good. I hope that is just.a function of original refuseniks crapping their pants when Indian variant took off and recently getting jabbed i.e. too late to protect against it.DougSeal said:@VictimofMaths on Twitter has done another brilliant map (the data only covers England though). As he says, far too much red here.
0 -
Exc: Telegraph has obtained copy of UK’s first post-Brexit fisheries agreement with EU for 2021, revealing EU boats handed unlimited access to non-quota stocks for rest of year.
There is a big backlash from UK fisherman and environmentalists
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/06/11/eu-fishermen-can-plunder-uk-waters-remainder-year/0 -
It's all nonsense. Apart from the enemy 'adversary' category, adopted by no-oneSouthamObserver said:
The Portugal one is the saddest. Our oldest ally.OnlyLivingBoy said:
The German numbers are a sad reflection on what we have done to our reputation in Europe, especially as most Germans are natural Anglophiles. Fewer than half of Germans now see us as a friend or ally, and a quarter think we are an enemy or competitor.CarlottaVance said:How EU countries view the UK:
https://ecfr.eu/publication/crisis-of-confidence-how-europeans-see-their-place-in-the-world/
sane, each of the answers is properly true and compatible with each other. Different 'best' answers would apply whether you are thinking of Nato, politics, commerce, peace making, football, Olympics, ag and fish, overseas development etc.
Nothing to see here.
1 -
It already has but no doubt epsilon, zeta and eta await. So far we have seen only incremental changes in the virus but there remains a risk that one of these variants will be a step change. My money is on theta. its going to be a bitch.Stuartinromford said:0 -
The Germans have a great word: Fachidiot.DavidL said:
I avoid this scenario by not being an expert in anything.Fishing said:
It is always good to see contributions from experts in particular areas. I've said that about Foxy before. Of course, the converse is that when you're an expert on something, and you have people correcting you who don't know what they're talking about, it's just dismal.DavidL said:
You are showing signs of being an expert yourself Doug.DougSeal said:My first ever post on PB commented on the number of experts in Bangladeshi Nationality Law on the site. I’m equally impressed that we have so many epidemiologists.
The fact is that because Johnson allowed the new variant to be so widely seeded hospitalisations (and numbers of people on ventilation) are still rising fast in the NW as a whole. Bolton is part of the NW, not the whole NW. If those rises continue there and elsewhere the backlog in other NHS functions cannot even start to be cleared. That rise will likely continue in the rest of the country for a while - although there are mini signs that we may get to a plateau soon (the ONS prevalence data didn’t rise as much this week as last and the rate of case increase is slowing). Fingers crossed.
Both the publications that Johnson is most associated with, the Spectator and the Telegraph, are up in arms about this too. I can believe many things but I struggle to believe that he is more interested in being loved by SAGE than by the readership of those journals. However, importantly the front of the Times (I don’t have a sub) suggests that polling supports a delay to Stage 4. That, perhaps, is the clincher.
I think we all like to consider ourselves reasonably intelligent, involved, better read than most and able to see connections. In the case of many contributors to this site I think that is true which keeps it interesting for the likes of me. I have no doubt at all that my understanding has been greatly enhanced by the likes of @Foxy @MaxPB and many others including yourself. It's why I am here.
It's how Sage is expressed in German.
3 -
I did it (taking off from them and ideally landing on them). Various commanding officers had a spectrum of opinion on whether I did it 'professionally' or not.Fishing said:
Is that what you did professionally?Dura_Ace said:
The ultracrepidarian response never lurks too far below the surface on pb.com. I've been on the receiving end of a lecture on aircraft carrier deck design.Fishing said:Of course, the converse is that when you're an expert on something, and you have people correcting you who don't know what they're talking about, it's just dismal.
5 -
And the difference between 1 water lily and 1000 lilies on the lake to start with is the difference between 10 days to cover the lake and 60 days to cover the lake.geoffw said:
Infection pool - consider the water lily problem.Alistair said:Initial infection pool size is really important any why the "no point in stopping international travel as it is already here" was always been an incredibly stupid position from the off.
If your initial infection is one person then after 15 doublings and grand total of 32 thousand people have been infected.
If your initial infection pool is a thousand people then after 15 doublings half the population of the UK has got it.
This has a profound difference on the effect of the Vaccine race.
The number of water lilies on a certain lake doubles every two days. If there is exactly one water lily on the lake, it takes 60 days for the lake to be fully covered with water lilies. In how many days will the lake be fully covered with lilies, if initially there were two water lilies on it?
This is relevant because in the real world we take actions to slow and stop the growth and indeed send the lily growth into reverse.
Initial pool is important.0 -
You're presumably still alive, so you can't have made a complete mess of it.Dura_Ace said:
I did it (taking off from them and ideally landing on them). Various commanding officers had a spectrum of opinion on whether I did it 'professionally' or not.Fishing said:
Is that what you did professionally?Dura_Ace said:
The ultracrepidarian response never lurks too far below the surface on pb.com. I've been on the receiving end of a lecture on aircraft carrier deck design.Fishing said:Of course, the converse is that when you're an expert on something, and you have people correcting you who don't know what they're talking about, it's just dismal.
0 -
From @kalmemeg on Twitter. We need to get those second doses out ASAP.
“I knew @JamesWard73 would come up with the VE goods, and boy has he.
This is very reassuring for vaccines but a second dose is crucial 💉
📍VE vs infection: ~35% after 1 dose and ~80% after 2 doses
📍VE vs. hospitalisation/death: ~80% after 1 dose and >95% after 2 doses.”0 -
I was almost born on the parliamentary estate! (My mum’s waters broke while she was there)kle4 said:
Well, there was that canard about it being illegal to die on the parliamentary estate.Leon said:
In the end we cannot abolish deathGideonWise said:Pb epidemiologists are doing a great job on the third wave so far.
Cases are not flat they are going down.
Cases aren't increasing, they are flat.
Cases are only increasing a bit.
Case increases don't matter.
Hospitalisations aren't flat they are going down.
Hospitalisations aren't increasing, they are flat.
Hospitalisations are only increasing a bit.
etc.1 -
A few weeks ago, it was assumed that the UK would get an economic advantage by being able to return to normal ahead of the EU. For some, this was a ‘Brexit dividend’. Now not happening because it appears that the PM was desperate to visit India as a Brexit-justifying exercise.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/14036343349559828500 -
Both were essential, and while the Spitfire was a vastly superior combat aircraft, there were only half as many of them during the critical days of 40/41, there Hurricane having been around much earlier, and being cheaper to produce (and easier to repair).Foxy said:
Hurricanes were less able, but easier to maintain, being old technology, mostly wood etc. The kill stats in the BoB were surely because the Hurricanes attacked bombers, not fighters while Spitfires did the opposite.Fishing said:
I'm not sure if that's true. 14k Hurricanes were produced, and it was discontinued before the end of the war, while more than 20k Spitfires were, and it was produced for several years after the end of the war. To me they seem about even, or maybe the Spitfire has a slight edge.MarqueeMark said:
Bit harsh on the Hurricane, which actually did the heavy lifting. But it isn't as photogenic as those curves of the Spitfire.....Jonathan said:
Farage and co still use spitfires in their politics.MarqueeMark said:
6% of Germans think "For you Tommy, the war is not yet over...we still can go to extra time and penalties for the win!"OnlyLivingBoy said:
The German numbers are a sad reflection on what we have done to our reputation in Europe, especially as most Germans are natural Anglophiles. Fewer than half of Germans now see us as a friend or ally, and a quarter think we are an enemy or competitor.CarlottaVance said:How EU countries view the UK:
https://ecfr.eu/publication/crisis-of-confidence-how-europeans-see-their-place-in-the-world/0 -
What that chart shows is capitalism.....you need to cooperate and compete...shock.algarkirk said:
It's all nonsense. Apart from the enemy 'adversary' category, adopted by no-oneSouthamObserver said:
The Portugal one is the saddest. Our oldest ally.OnlyLivingBoy said:
The German numbers are a sad reflection on what we have done to our reputation in Europe, especially as most Germans are natural Anglophiles. Fewer than half of Germans now see us as a friend or ally, and a quarter think we are an enemy or competitor.CarlottaVance said:How EU countries view the UK:
https://ecfr.eu/publication/crisis-of-confidence-how-europeans-see-their-place-in-the-world/
sane, each of the answers is properly true and compatible with each other. Different 'best' answers would apply whether you are thinking of Nato, politics, commerce, peace making, ag and fish, overseas development etc.
Nothing to see here.
Also the countries, people see us as a direct competitor, which is unsurprisingly, as we are. For lots of business opportunities, the UK is competing with a Germany e.g. financial services. Where as somewhere like Portugal, far more UK drives a good chunk of their economy, and far less overlap in terms of competition.0 -
Because the risk reward ratio changes depending on the number fully vaccinated and largely immune. We are not there yet but it is close. And as that number increases hospitalisations and deaths should both decline.Stocky said:
What happens after the short delay?DavidL said:
I have shared some of those concerns but I have been persuaded that the risk/reward ratio has been swung by our get out of jail free card in the vaccines. It has been worth incurring more economic damage to avoid fairly large numbers of avoidable deaths because we have been able to play that card.Stocky said:
I agree completely.DavidL said:
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.Scott_xP said:Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
Will the Prime Minister ever learn not to govern by wishful thinking alone? That six week delay in closing borders with India is exactly why we cannot unlock fully now. This is on him. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/11/covid-cases-in-england-rising-at-fastest-rate-since-winter-wave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
The main problem relates to a TSE post last night, which linked to a Times article citing a YouGov poll saying that only 37% of the public think that 21 June should be adhered to, with 53% thinking that restrictions should continue.
In the final analysis, populist governments will follow the polls.
We don't get out of this while people are quite content being paid to work (or not) work at home, be paid regardless, or are furloughed, don't have the commute, don't do to mass events or travel themselves and don't give a shit about others, don't feels significant loss of freedoms themselves, are unpracticed and ill-equipped to evaluate risk.
In short, views collated in polls measure peoples self-interest and ignorance rather than principle and legality.
I've been bleating on about this for months I know, but one of the biggest problems is Sunak's multiple extensions of financial support.
But the trade off has not gone away, it never will. There comes a point when a few more thousand deaths is simply not too high a price to pay to avoid economic ruin. I think we should have been at that point by 21st June but we vaccinated too slowly. Any delay will need to be short and a one off.
It is very likely that after this short delay new daily infections are slightly up again, hospitalisations slightly up and maybe the same for deaths. The figures will be tiny in proportion to the national population and not remotely comparable to the situation we were in in the past.
An an even greater proportion of new infections are numbers only with few actually getting ill or exhibiting any symptoms. And a good proportion of those that do become ill are unvaccinated by their own agency. And the polls will then, as now, skew in favour of not easing restrictions.
So, if the government don't remove legal restrictions on 21 June why would they after the short delay?0 -
From the reaction of many on PB to the news Freedom Day is being delayed, I believe one of PB has been caught on camera....
https://youtu.be/6S72qLIqoaQ0 -
I had no idea Delta had even turned up in NZ. Ultimately everywhere will have the problem if it’s as biologically transmissible as everyone says. We just imported a shit ton of it at the wrong time.
0 -
I was just thinking about the politics of this some more, with some possible hopeful signs (for those who think delay means that we will be locked down for ever, although not much comfort for those who will be directly negatively impacted in the next month). The thoughts go like this.
Supposing the Government are pretty confident that the vaccines will do their job, and the wave of the delta variant will be large, have some consequences for hospitalisations and deaths, but really think it will ultimately be pretty manageable. However they want to get some credit for this, and avoid criticism for any mini wave of deaths etc that occur.
Many people have pointed out that if they really believe the scary projections on hospitalisations and deaths, then a simple "delay" to June 21st makes no sense. They should be slamming on the brakes and hitting reverse. So why is that not (apparently) on the radar? Because they don't think there's a problem. But by delaying for a few weeks they think they will get some credit for the "caution" and claim that the caution has prevented the extreme scenarios (which they don't believe in) from playing out. If this is the case then the positive news is that they are not quite as in the hands of the scientists as we fear, and are simply being guided largely by the politics. And if that is true, and the rise in hospitalisations/deaths continues to not be a serious problem, we can at least be confident that there will be a lifting of restrictions on July 5th or July 19th.
On the other hand what we may be seeing is a massive political misjudgement, based on a misunderstanding of "public support" for further restrictions. The Government might be wise to cast their minds back to March 31st 2019. At that time i believe there was no obvious public support for "no deal" Brexit, and indications that the public thought that the Brexit deadline should be extended. But, despite there being no obvious sight of a deal being achieved, public support in the polls for the Government seemed bizarrely high, despite all the claims that the Government were going to give them what logic said they didn't want (ie. Brexit come what may on Mar 31st). And the Government, thinking that their own high level support and expectations of delay coincided - did just that. And their public support collapsed.
Will the same thing happen here? The Government are seeing the polls saying support for delay of June 21st, and seeing polls showing continued high support for the Govt and thinking the two coincide. When in fact they could be completely independent. Will history repeat itself, and support for the Government collapse next week? It's possible. The only obvious difference is that it's not obvious where that support will go. There's no Brexit party. So maybe the only signs will be in the underlying figures.0 -
The thing we know about COVID, unless you go full metal prison island, its coming, just a matter of time, you are sticking fingers in the dam.DougSeal said:I had no idea Delta had even turned up in NZ. Ultimately everywhere will have the problem if it’s as biologically transmissible as everyone says. We just imported a shit ton of it at the wrong time.
1 -
I think Poles flew Hurricanes :-) .Foxy said:
Hurricanes were less able, but easier to maintain, being old technology, mostly wood etc. The kill stats in the BoB were surely because the Hurricanes attacked bombers, not fighters while Spitfires did the opposite.Fishing said:
I'm not sure if that's true. 14k Hurricanes were produced, and it was discontinued before the end of the war, while more than 20k Spitfires were, and it was produced for several years after the end of the war. To me they seem about even, or maybe the Spitfire has a slight edge.MarqueeMark said:
Bit harsh on the Hurricane, which actually did the heavy lifting. But it isn't as photogenic as those curves of the Spitfire.....Jonathan said:
Farage and co still use spitfires in their politics.MarqueeMark said:
6% of Germans think "For you Tommy, the war is not yet over...we still can go to extra time and penalties for the win!"OnlyLivingBoy said:
The German numbers are a sad reflection on what we have done to our reputation in Europe, especially as most Germans are natural Anglophiles. Fewer than half of Germans now see us as a friend or ally, and a quarter think we are an enemy or competitor.CarlottaVance said:How EU countries view the UK:
https://ecfr.eu/publication/crisis-of-confidence-how-europeans-see-their-place-in-the-world/0 -
first dose was 'crucia'l in February.DougSeal said:From @kalmemeg on Twitter. We need to get those second doses out ASAP.
“I knew @JamesWard73 would come up with the VE goods, and boy has he.
This is very reassuring for vaccines but a second dose is crucial 💉
📍VE vs infection: ~35% after 1 dose and ~80% after 2 doses
📍VE vs. hospitalisation/death: ~80% after 1 dose and >95% after 2 doses.”
Over 70s 'crucial' in March
Over 60s 'crucial' in April
Two jabs over 60s in May
Two jabs over 50s in June
Two jabs into teens in July
Two in Embryos in August.
We getting nursed to the autumn, when it will be the booster that is 'crucial'. Zahawi said as much yesterday. If take up isn't sufficient, new lockdown measures will be imposed as a punishment. Not that there will be many pubs or airlines left then anyway.
Something will always be 'crucial'..... There will always be a reason to delay our freedoms.
We ceded them. The people who have them don't want to give them back. We won't get them back until more people start turning against this worst of all governments and its misrule.1 -
Pangolins possibly back in the frame (though the likelihood is that this debate will persist for years).
SARS-CoV-2 spillover transmission due to recombination event
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7884226/
...Using bioinformatics tools, we analyzed the mapping of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, modeling of protein structure, and analyze the evolutionary origin of SARS-CoV-2, as well as potential recombination events. Phylogenetic tree analysis shows that SARS-CoV-2 has the closest evolutionary relationship with Bat-SL-CoV-2 (RaTG13) at the scale of the complete virus genome, and less similarity to Pangolin-CoV. However, the Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 is almost identical to Pangolin-CoV at the aa level, suggesting that spillover transmission probably occurred directly from pangolins, but not bats. Further recombination analysis revealed the pathway for spillover transmission from Bat-SL-CoV-2 and Pangolin-CoV. Here, we provide evidence for recombination event between Bat-SL-CoV-2 and Pangolin-CoV that resulted in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. Nevertheless, the role of mutations should be noted as another influencing factor in the continuing evolution and resurgence of novel SARS-CoV-2 variants...0 -
Politics is as much about tone and sensibility as policy. Johnson gets that and most people on the left do not, which is why they keeps being surprised by how popular he is. The culture clash pits American-style earnestness and piety against British irreverence and perversity. Johnson’s clownishness happens to have found its perfect foil in the grimly humourless, relentlessly prosecutorial, technocratic and yes, deracinated tone of wokeism. Voters do not necessarily believe Johnson is competent, which will in the end be his downfall, but they do know he will never lecture them. He likes them too much.
https://ianleslie.substack.com/p/fights-and-flights4 -
This from The Times provided me with some reassurance -
“Even the most cautious scientific advisers are not arguing for much more than a month’s delay. Opening up at the end of July would mean a peak in August, traditionally the quietest time of year for hospitals. Delaying much further risks pushing a peak into the new school term and then the busier autumn and winter months when the NHS is under more pressure.
Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London believes there is a “sweet spot” — a short delay allowing for more adults to be double vaccinated and schools to break up — that still allows a summer reopening.”
I think that’s right. Based on my newly found expertise and research on the internet it seems to me that a wave in August is far preferable than one in the Autumn. And maybe it will peak earlier.2 -
Ian Leslie is great. I was going to post this myself.CarlottaVance said:Politics is as much about tone and sensibility as policy. Johnson gets that and most people on the left do not, which is why they keeps being surprised by how popular he is. The culture clash pits American-style earnestness and piety against British irreverence and perversity. Johnson’s clownishness happens to have found its perfect foil in the grimly humourless, relentlessly prosecutorial, technocratic and yes, deracinated tone of wokeism. Voters do not necessarily believe Johnson is competent, which will in the end be his downfall, but they do know he will never lecture them. He likes them too much.
https://ianleslie.substack.com/p/fights-and-flights0 -
The quietest time of year for hospitals - and when the largest number of staff are on holiday?DougSeal said:This from The Times provided me with some reassurance -
“Even the most cautious scientific advisers are not arguing for much more than a month’s delay. Opening up at the end of July would mean a peak in August, traditionally the quietest time of year for hospitals. Delaying much further risks pushing a peak into the new school term and then the busier autumn and winter months when the NHS is under more pressure.
Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London believes there is a “sweet spot” — a short delay allowing for more adults to be double vaccinated and schools to break up — that still allows a summer reopening.”
I think that’s right. Based on my newly found expertise and research on the internet it seems to me that a wave in August is far preferable than one in the Autumn. And maybe it will peak earlier.
And when large numbers of people would usually not even be in the country?
Somebody hasn’t quite thought this through.1 -
So the government is GUARANTEEING that Britain is opening up in mid July....?DougSeal said:This from The Times provided me with some reassurance -
“Even the most cautious scientific advisers are not arguing for much more than a month’s delay. Opening up at the end of July would mean a peak in August, traditionally the quietest time of year for hospitals. Delaying much further risks pushing a peak into the new school term and then the busier autumn and winter months when the NHS is under more pressure.
Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London believes there is a “sweet spot” — a short delay allowing for more adults to be double vaccinated and schools to break up — that still allows a summer reopening.”
I think that’s right. Based on my newly found expertise and research on the internet it seems to me that a wave in August is far preferable than one in the Autumn. And maybe it will peak earlier.
''....er.....well.....we rule nothing out.......''
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If you want a picture of the future, imagine a vaccine stamping on a human virus — forever.contrarian said:
first dose was 'crucia'l in February.DougSeal said:From @kalmemeg on Twitter. We need to get those second doses out ASAP.
“I knew @JamesWard73 would come up with the VE goods, and boy has he.
This is very reassuring for vaccines but a second dose is crucial 💉
📍VE vs infection: ~35% after 1 dose and ~80% after 2 doses
📍VE vs. hospitalisation/death: ~80% after 1 dose and >95% after 2 doses.”
Over 70s 'crucial' in March
Over 60s 'crucial' in April
Two jabs over 60s in May
Two jabs over 50s in June
Two jabs into teens in July
Two in Embryos in August.
We getting nursed to the autumn, when it will be the booster that is 'crucial'. Zahawi said as much yesterday. If take up isn't sufficient, new lockdown measures will be imposed as a punishment. Not that there will be many pubs or airlines left then anyway.
Something will always be 'crucial'..... There will always be a reason to delay our freedoms.
We ceded them. The people who have them don't want to give them back. We won't get them back until more people start turning against this worst of all governments and its misrule.0 -
From the same piece -CarlottaVance said:Politics is as much about tone and sensibility as policy. Johnson gets that and most people on the left do not, which is why they keeps being surprised by how popular he is. The culture clash pits American-style earnestness and piety against British irreverence and perversity. Johnson’s clownishness happens to have found its perfect foil in the grimly humourless, relentlessly prosecutorial, technocratic and yes, deracinated tone of wokeism. Voters do not necessarily believe Johnson is competent, which will in the end be his downfall, but they do know he will never lecture them. He likes them too much.
https://ianleslie.substack.com/p/fights-and-flights
The ‘culture war’ is at heart a culture clash, between British traditions and American cultural politics, the latter now exported globally thanks to the internet. Britain’s institutional elites have in recent years swallowed, rather uncritically, a whole set of concepts, slogans and jargon from the US. Many British voters are somewhere between unaware, wary of, or outright resistant to the new discourse, even as it has quickly become second nature to those who have adopted it.3 -
I would like to hear far more of this side from the scientists, and therefore in the media. That delay is not a one way street re Covid (ie. it's not all about "Covid vs the economy", but also about "covid in summer" vs "covid in winter"). If they genuinely believe this stuff (which was of course at some point briefly the basis of Government policy in Feb/Mar 2020) - that there WILL be a third wave, it can't be avoided, but we should have it in summer and not winter, then the public debate will become far more balanced - and the more extreme voices for endless lockdown and zero Covid can be drowned out.DougSeal said:This from The Times provided me with some reassurance -
“Even the most cautious scientific advisers are not arguing for much more than a month’s delay. Opening up at the end of July would mean a peak in August, traditionally the quietest time of year for hospitals. Delaying much further risks pushing a peak into the new school term and then the busier autumn and winter months when the NHS is under more pressure.
Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London believes there is a “sweet spot” — a short delay allowing for more adults to be double vaccinated and schools to break up — that still allows a summer reopening.”
I think that’s right. Based on my newly found expertise and research on the internet it seems to me that a wave in August is far preferable than one in the Autumn. And maybe it will peak earlier.0 -
Looks very much like media saying what media are gonna say. Last 3 paragraphs:Scott_xP said:Exc: Telegraph has obtained copy of UK’s first post-Brexit fisheries agreement with EU for 2021, revealing EU boats handed unlimited access to non-quota stocks for rest of year.
There is a big backlash from UK fisherman and environmentalists
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/06/11/eu-fishermen-can-plunder-uk-waters-remainder-year/
A government spokesman said: "For 2021, the UK and EU have agreed due to the unique situation this year and the need to provide clarity to our respective industries to take a monitoring only approach to the implementation of the [Brexit deal] non-quota provisions.
"This is to provide the opportunity for the development of multi-year strategies for the conservation and management of shared non-quota species via the Specialised Committee on Fisheries."
The spokesman added that the EU and UK had agreed to share data, which they claimed would "allow us to monitor EU fishing activity for non-quota stocks in UK waters and will inform the development of multi-year strategies for the conservation and management of non-quota stocks".
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If you want a picture of the future, imagine a variant undermining a vaccination program that needs a new vaccine that gets a new variant that needs a new vaccine that gets a new variant.....IshmaelZ said:
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a vaccine stamping on a human virus — forever.contrarian said:
first dose was 'crucia'l in February.DougSeal said:From @kalmemeg on Twitter. We need to get those second doses out ASAP.
“I knew @JamesWard73 would come up with the VE goods, and boy has he.
This is very reassuring for vaccines but a second dose is crucial 💉
📍VE vs infection: ~35% after 1 dose and ~80% after 2 doses
📍VE vs. hospitalisation/death: ~80% after 1 dose and >95% after 2 doses.”
Over 70s 'crucial' in March
Over 60s 'crucial' in April
Two jabs over 60s in May
Two jabs over 50s in June
Two jabs into teens in July
Two in Embryos in August.
We getting nursed to the autumn, when it will be the booster that is 'crucial'. Zahawi said as much yesterday. If take up isn't sufficient, new lockdown measures will be imposed as a punishment. Not that there will be many pubs or airlines left then anyway.
Something will always be 'crucial'..... There will always be a reason to delay our freedoms.
We ceded them. The people who have them don't want to give them back. We won't get them back until more people start turning against this worst of all governments and its misrule.
Forever0 -
The opposition will come from within the Tory Party. Ultimately the tent won’t be big enough, as Labour has found.alex_ said:I was just thinking about the politics of this some more, with some possible hopeful signs (for those who think delay means that we will be locked down for ever, although not much comfort for those who will be directly negatively impacted in the next month). The thoughts go like this.
Supposing the Government are pretty confident that the vaccines will do their job, and the wave of the delta variant will be large, have some consequences for hospitalisations and deaths, but really think it will ultimately be pretty manageable. However they want to get some credit for this, and avoid criticism for any mini wave of deaths etc that occur.
Many people have pointed out that if they really believe the scary projections on hospitalisations and deaths, then a simple "delay" to June 21st makes no sense. They should be slamming on the brakes and hitting reverse. So why is that not (apparently) on the radar? Because they don't think there's a problem. But by delaying for a few weeks they think they will get some credit for the "caution" and claim that the caution has prevented the extreme scenarios (which they don't believe in) from playing out. If this is the case then the positive news is that they are not quite as in the hands of the scientists as we fear, and are simply being guided largely by the politics. And if that is true, and the rise in hospitalisations/deaths continues to not be a serious problem, we can at least be confident that there will be a lifting of restrictions on July 5th or July 19th.
On the other hand what we may be seeing is a massive political misjudgement, based on a misunderstanding of "public support" for further restrictions. The Government might be wise to cast their minds back to March 31st 2019. At that time i believe there was no obvious public support for "no deal" Brexit, and indications that the public thought that the Brexit deadline should be extended. But, despite there being no obvious sight of a deal being achieved, public support in the polls for the Government seemed bizarrely high, despite all the claims that the Government were going to give them what logic said they didn't want (ie. Brexit come what may on Mar 31st). And the Government, thinking that their own high level support and expectations of delay coincided - did just that. And their public support collapsed.
Will the same thing happen here? The Government are seeing the polls saying support for delay of June 21st, and seeing polls showing continued high support for the Govt and thinking the two coincide. When in fact they could be completely independent. Will history repeat itself, and support for the Government collapse next week? It's possible. The only obvious difference is that it's not obvious where that support will go. There's no Brexit party. So maybe the only signs will be in the underlying figures.0 -
Animal sales from Wuhan wet markets immediately prior to the COVID-19 pandemic
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2#MOESM1
Here we document 47,381 individuals from 38 species, including 31 protected species sold between May 2017 and November 2019 in Wuhan’s markets. We note that no pangolins (or bats) were traded, supporting reformed opinion that pangolins were not likely the spillover host at the source of the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. While we caution against the misattribution of COVID-19’s origins, the wild animals on sale in Wuhan suffered poor welfare and hygiene conditions and we detail a range of other zoonotic infections they can potentially vector. Nevertheless, in a precautionary response to COVID-19, China’s Ministries temporarily banned all wildlife trade on 26th Jan 2020 until the COVID-19 pandemic concludes, and permanently banned eating and trading terrestrial wild (non-livestock) animals for food on 24th Feb 2020. These interventions, intended to protect human health, redress previous trading and enforcement inconsistencies, and will have collateral benefits for global biodiversity conservation and animal welfare.0 -
Yep. Makes sense. Also what proportion of those polled are actual Tory voters?alex_ said:I was just thinking about the politics of this some more, with some possible hopeful signs (for those who think delay means that we will be locked down for ever, although not much comfort for those who will be directly negatively impacted in the next month). The thoughts go like this.
Supposing the Government are pretty confident that the vaccines will do their job, and the wave of the delta variant will be large, have some consequences for hospitalisations and deaths, but really think it will ultimately be pretty manageable. However they want to get some credit for this, and avoid criticism for any mini wave of deaths etc that occur.
Many people have pointed out that if they really believe the scary projections on hospitalisations and deaths, then a simple "delay" to June 21st makes no sense. They should be slamming on the brakes and hitting reverse. So why is that not (apparently) on the radar? Because they don't think there's a problem. But by delaying for a few weeks they think they will get some credit for the "caution" and claim that the caution has prevented the extreme scenarios (which they don't believe in) from playing out. If this is the case then the positive news is that they are not quite as in the hands of the scientists as we fear, and are simply being guided largely by the politics. And if that is true, and the rise in hospitalisations/deaths continues to not be a serious problem, we can at least be confident that there will be a lifting of restrictions on July 5th or July 19th.
On the other hand what we may be seeing is a massive political misjudgement, based on a misunderstanding of "public support" for further restrictions. The Government might be wise to cast their minds back to March 31st 2019. At that time i believe there was no obvious public support for "no deal" Brexit, and indications that the public thought that the Brexit deadline should be extended. But, despite there being no obvious sight of a deal being achieved, public support in the polls for the Government seemed bizarrely high, despite all the claims that the Government were going to give them what logic said they didn't want (ie. Brexit come what may on Mar 31st). And the Government, thinking that their own high level support and expectations of delay coincided - did just that. And their public support collapsed.
Will the same thing happen here? The Government are seeing the polls saying support for delay of June 21st, and seeing polls showing continued high support for the Govt and thinking the two coincide. When in fact they could be completely independent. Will history repeat itself, and support for the Government collapse next week? It's possible. The only obvious difference is that it's not obvious where that support will go. There's no Brexit party. So maybe the only signs will be in the underlying figures.
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The link to death has been broken by our takeup. If we wait for the link to transmissibility to break you can rule out anything till next spring as it will require boosters, kids.
Will ministers have the courage to reopen fully if cases are still rising by mid July ?1 -
That argument might have more force if anyone actually ever suffered any consequences from cocking things up or getting them wrong. But they don't, do they.Casino_Royale said:
That's a good point.boulay said:A lot of people seem to feel that the experts of sage etc want to keep us locked down as they are enjoying the power. Could it not be instead that the experts are simply (and justifiably) scared that if they advise opening up and things go wrong again that when there is a public enquiry then they are the ones in the firing line?
Maybe they need some sort of indemnification as, whilst to me they have likely done the best they can with the info they had, to a lot of people they will be criminals and the media will be all over them after an inquiry....
If your finger is on the button and you know that if you press it at the wrong time you are going to be scapegoated then you are going to be extra careful about when you press it.
Everyone looking for people to blame can’t help make decision making neutral.
They aren't incentivised to take risks, they have a secure job whilst it lasts but, if they get it wrong, the blowback on them personally could be immense.
So, they'll tend to be very conservative.
At worst they might have to issue some weasel-worded apology. More likely they continue on their upward trajectory, get promoted, given jobs, honours, the lot - see, for example, oh far too many examples to mention - most of the current government, for instance or Dido Harding or all those senior policemen etc etc.1 -
Literally every model I have seen predicts some form of third wave, the only difference is whether it’s a tsunami or a ripple. Lilico, who is far more measured and sensible on Covid than Brexit, has been saying that we need to get it out of the way now rather than in the winter.alex_ said:
I would like to hear far more of this side from the scientists, and therefore in the media. That delay is not a one way street re Covid (ie. it's not all about "Covid vs the economy", but also about "covid in summer" vs "covid in winter"). If they genuinely believe this stuff (which was of course at some point briefly the basis of Government policy in Feb/Mar 2020) - that there WILL be a third wave, it can't be avoided, but we should have it in summer and not winter, then the public debate will become far more balanced - and the more extreme voices for endless lockdown and zero Covid can be drowned out.DougSeal said:This from The Times provided me with some reassurance -
“Even the most cautious scientific advisers are not arguing for much more than a month’s delay. Opening up at the end of July would mean a peak in August, traditionally the quietest time of year for hospitals. Delaying much further risks pushing a peak into the new school term and then the busier autumn and winter months when the NHS is under more pressure.
Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London believes there is a “sweet spot” — a short delay allowing for more adults to be double vaccinated and schools to break up — that still allows a summer reopening.”
I think that’s right. Based on my newly found expertise and research on the internet it seems to me that a wave in August is far preferable than one in the Autumn. And maybe it will peak earlier.0 -
24 days is what... 10m more people fully protected? And about the length of the delay we are reportedly getting? So quite a big difference!DavidL said:
Its not that significant if the doublings are every 8 days. Its 24 days before you end up where you would have been anyway. We will catch every variant of this virus that has an evolutionary advantage. That is just a fact. What is important is not the catching but the effect. And the effect is determined by the speed and efficacy of our vaccination program.rkrkrk said:
Think about it this way, proper hotel quarantine is basically 100% effective. It has stopped outbreaks in Australia, Singapore, NZ.DavidL said:
I accept that the number of seedings will affect the speed with which it became the dominant variant. But the fact that it has become so dominant shows that it has an evolutionary advantage over other strains and it would therefore have become dominant fairly rapidly anyway. The 90%+ who are now getting the delta variant did not all go to India or are related to someone who did. It has driven out the other variants and would have done so anyway. No doubt delta will be replaced with another variant within a few weeks. And we can have the same argument again.Nigelb said:
Untrue, I think.DavidL said:
This is complete nonsense. The idea that we were going to stop the delta variant catching hold in this country is a fantasy unless we turn ourselves into NZ. What has stopped us from going ahead on 21st June is the poor effort with vaccines over the last month. That in turn has been driven by a failure to make the best use of the available resources, specifically AZ. That in turn has been driven by very poor risk assessments and a peculiar lack of urgency in maximising vaccination.Scott_xP said:Dealing with the virus isn’t really a competition but many of us pointed out that the UK’s vaccine rollout was much better than others. The assumption was we’d get out of lockdown ahead of them. But the delay in restricting travel from India means that this now won’t happen.
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1403617838972248065
Will the Prime Minister ever learn not to govern by wishful thinking alone? That six week delay in closing borders with India is exactly why we cannot unlock fully now. This is on him. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/11/covid-cases-in-england-rising-at-fastest-rate-since-winter-wave?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
There is plenty to criticise the government for but failing to stop a more transmissible variant of a virus in broad circulation is not one of them. Something like 90%+ of cases are now delta. If we had started with a lower base by reducing the number of cases imported we would still have got there pretty rapidly.
One of the reasons this took hold so quickly is that it seems to have been introduced in dozens of different areas by travellers from India more or less simultaneously.
Restrictions would undoubtedly have slowed the process, even if keeping it out entirely was unlikely. And that would have changed significantly the vaccines given vs growth in infections calculation.
We are probably learning more about have a virus develops than we have ever known before as no virus in history has had this level of real time analysis. I am sure it will keep the biologists and epidemiologists busy for many years.
We know that voluntary isolation is not well observed. We know that people isolating at home will still infect their family they share their house with.
If we'd had India on the red list, we would have reduced travel, and caught conservatively 80% of cases. Starting from <2 cases, rather than 10 buys you a lot of time -> over 3 doublings. That's really significant.1 -
Miss Vance and Mr. Seal, cheers for that link. Interesting thoughts.2
