Thats depressing. It isn't about unlocking now. Its about just how fucked we are. Out of interest if the rest of Europe / the world largely decides to keep us away what will the reaction be...?
Prediction 1: practically every nation in the world that has yet to be overrun by Delta will be so, save for those that have managed to successfully implement the Pacific island model of extreme isolation, and can keep it going until they've completed successful vaccination drives
Prediction 2: those that are hit will all open their economies the nanosecond they think their healthcare systems can cope with it, because they can't afford to do otherwise
We're just in the vanguard of the nations getting whacked because the Government was incautious over the borders and due to our close ties to India. There's not a magical forcefield protecting countries that don't have Tory Prime Ministers which will save them over the coming weeks and months.
*The coronavirus delta variant first discovered in India has now spread around the world, prompting further waves of infections in countries like the U.K.
*Now, there are increasing signs that mainland Europe is seeing a sharp rise in cases too.
*There have been calls to ban British visitors in order to help stop the spread of the variant, but experts say it’s likely already widespread on the continent.
They couldn't escape Alpha, and they aren't going to escape Delta.
As an aside, that's true of the US too.
*HOWEVER*, like the UK, they have probably vaccinated enough of the vulnerable to make a really big difference to hospitalisations and deaths.
The other undercurrent which concerns me is the triumphalism of the anti-maskers. Yes, not having to wear masks on trains, buses, tubes and in supermarkets will be a relief (though I'd like to see the hand sanitiser kept available). However, what worries me is those who, for whatever reason, choose to continue to wear a mask.
It is absolutely their right so to do and that right must be respected - my fear is there will be incidents where individuals with masks are victimised and abused by those not wearing them. I hope I'm wrong but we know how "aggressive" crowds can be, especially when alcohol is involved.
I'm hoping the tolerant good nature of the British public will come to the fore and we'll respect those who choose to be more risk-averse (it's their life after all).
I suspect there will also be plenty of instances of the reverse, of people being harangued for not wearing masks because other folk get irate about it.
Mainly the other way, I think. Once masks are voluntary the statement will be to wear one. And it's people making a statement who stand out and attract praise or hostility rather than those who go with the flow.
Hang on, doesn't this shoot the narrative fox of some on here that people will give up their masks?
The majority of Britons say face masks should continue to be mandatory on both public transport (71%), as well as in shops and some enclosed public spaces (66%) beyond when restrictions are lifted
70% of Britons say they'd feel less safe if in a crowded or un-ventilated place and people were not wearing face masks
This is the case among a majority of all age groups
Then those people can continue to wear them. That's the beauty of the policy. No one is saying you can't wear them if you want to do so.
Err, I think you've missed the entire point. The problem is whether other people are wearing masks.
Frankly I think it's completely barmy not continuing with compulsory masks on public transport, which can be very crowded and where many people don't have any choice but to use it. Also the staff are at risk. It's a virtually cost-free measure, it has zero negative impact on the economy (probably a positive impact, because many higher-risk people will be discouraged from using it if others aren't wearing masks), and it is the most trivial infringement on liberty which it is possible to imagine.
In other places it's a bit more nuanced; people sitting in a restaurant without masks, and having to put them on to find the loo, is a ridiculous charade. Shops should I think be left to the discretion of the owners, but with a strong recommendation for supermarkets to keep masks so that the elderly don't feel unsafe when doing essential shopping.
IT'S NOT COST FREE. If we force people to wear a mask they will make other choices. People who previously got public transport will drive or cycle instead. Public transport is on something of a precipice and needs to be made more attractive, not less.
Similarly shops. I'll continue to shop to stay alive of course. But I'm not going to shop for pleasure if I have to wear a mask to do so. I'll use the internet.
If masks work, and we need to wear them, so be it. But the benefit to the double jabbed is almost nil. We shouldn't have to wear them purely 'to make people feel safe'. This is what happens when you spend 18 months trying to terrify people into submission.
Only a tiny proportion of people are very fussed about wearing masks; it is after all the tiniest of tiny inconveniences. A far greater number are concerned about others NOT wearing masks. (See the polling on this). More importantly, the latter group are rational, the former group, not so much...
But no one's asking them to stop?
No, they are asking for the right to infect others unnecessarily.
Herd immunity remains the only way out of this situation, whether by vaccination or by catching the virus.
Quite possibly so, of course.
But for God's sake, how FOR FUCK'S SAKE wouldn't it make more sense to do it as much as possible by vaccination rather than infection?
Isn't that exactly what has been done? Everyone who wants it can now get it.
This is my problem in comprehending these "learned" discussions.
Do you not know - or do you not care - or what? - that a single dose has much less efficacy than two doses.
Ditto that the virus is currently spreading most rapidly through the age groups that are not being vaccinated, and for which vaccination is not even available here, whether they or their parents want it? In contrast with much of Europe?
But the loony herd mentality here will carry on banging the drum for the crazy policy of casting aside all caution and going for broke. And the crazies will carry on trying to ridicule anyone here with a different opinion. And the crazies now include some of the people running the site, apparently.
It's not crazy. We have reduced the CFR of COVID to approaching that of seasonal flu. Or even less. We have reduced it to an acceptable level of risk. Anyone worried about catching it on public transport can wear an FFP13 mask. Anyone worried about catching it in the pub, can not go to one. Personally I am looking forward to travelling home by train from Newcastle on the 19th unmasked (and having a few non-socially distanced drinks beforehand).
I would just say you really should think before coming out with the "COVID is no worse than flu" mantra.
If you can be vaccinated, and if the vaccine is effective, maybe it is. But what about the people who can't be vaccinated, or for whom the vaccine won't be effective?
Are you really saying it's too much trouble for you to wear a mask to protect people in that situation?
Yes, it's their personal responsibility to wear a mask which protects them. It's sad for them but the nation needs to move on from this and over time we will hit herd immunity and that final bit will go for them too.
I really thought everyone understood that the purpose of wearing masks was to protect other people from infection by the mask-wearer.
Please, please, please. Just be clear and just say "Yes, it's too much trouble to me to wear a mask to protect other people".
"Yes, it's too much trouble to me to wear a mask to protect other people"
Masks are hot, stuffy and uncomfortable. People need to get their vaccine and rely on the vaccine to protect them, instead of relying upon me wearing a mask to protect them.
If you're unvaccinated and I asymptomatically pass you the virus then that's your own damned fault. If you're vaccinated then let the vaccine do its job, not masks.
What if someone is vaccinated and you asymptomatically pass it on to them and they then go down with it? A fried of mine was double vaxxed and still ended up with a nasty case of covid. It will happen to more and more people after restrictions have gone. Surely wearing a mask around Tesco's or wherever for an hour or so is not too great a sacrifice to help prevent that.
Shit happens. People get sick and die. It sucks but so be it.
The risk of someone vaccinated dying now is so miniscule that we'd have never started wearing masks or had a lockdown had that been the original pre-vaccine risk from the virus.
There's a risk of someone dying on the road on the way to Tesco's too. Life has risks.
Thank you Doctor.
Do you honestly disagree?
You stated; "The risk of someone vaccinated dying now is so miniscule that we'd have never started wearing masks or had a lockdown had that been the original pre-vaccine risk from the virus".
Yes! I don't consider double vaccinated people catching the virus and dying at a rate of between 10% and 35% compared to the unvaccinated, depending on which vaccine has been administered and which study one believes, to be "miniscule".
So if wearing a mask drops the above percentages down to say between 8% and 30%, hell yes, it's worth considering wearing a mask. I am around 20 years older than you and thus more susceptible to dropping dead from Covid (or flu for that matter). I have a dog in this race.
I love older people who had the chance to have social lives, find partners and settle down tell me how they have a dog in this fight. How noble they are whilst the young are having a whale of a time.
Do you not have the imagination to manage a social life, find a partner and settle down and wear a mask on the tube or a bus?
I'm not sure if that was a serious comment, but I can say for certain that I being stuck in my bedroom for 8 hours a day on Teams, with pubs, gyms, and other social activities closed has made it a damn sight more challenging.
My point was specific to the anti-maskers. I am more than aware having sons in their early twenties that the last fifteen months has been horrific for many people irrespective of age and circumstance.
This evening's announcements, while not unexpected and not unwelcome, leave me slightly troubled.
The world has changed, whether we like it or want it or not. I sense an undercurrent of trying to put the genie back in the bottle and party like it's on sale for £20.19 but the world has changed.
There won't be a mass return to offices, the way we live has been fundamentally changed not just by the virus but by the opportunities the virus presented to showcase different ways of working, shopping and having fun. That in its turn will have winners and losers and the losers will shout the loudest because they always do while the winners just carry on, er, winning.
Home deliveries, home shopping, home working - all a quite radical revolution which was perhaps happening any way but has been accelerated by the virus much in the same way war accelerates technological process.
The world has changed.
The other undercurrent which concerns me is the triumphalism of the anti-maskers. Yes, not having to wear masks on trains, buses, tubes and in supermarkets will be a relief (though I'd like to see the hand sanitiser kept available). However, what worries me is those who, for whatever reason, choose to continue to wear a mask.
It is absolutely their right so to do and that right must be respected - my fear is there will be incidents where individuals with masks are victimised and abused by those not wearing them. I hope I'm wrong but we know how "aggressive" crowds can be, especially when alcohol is involved.
I'm hoping the tolerant good nature of the British public will come to the fore and we'll respect those who choose to be more risk-averse (it's their life after all).
On a personal level, I quite like table service and ordering via an app at the pub - done it three or four times and much better than a scrum down at the bar. I'm also looking forward to going back horse racing - the horses always beat me - perhaps as soon as month end. The problem is the announcement has come in time to save that catastrophe of the modern age - the evening race meeting with the post-race tribute band. £40 for six moderate races and somebody sounding completely unlike Gary Barlow - it's an abomination, as somebody once said of Entertainment News.
No, I don't think any immediate return to 2019 is likely. Even after July 19th there will be a degree of caution among a large proportion of people. That may lessen over the summer and as the booster programme cycles up. What it does is remove the restrictions on those of us who are fed up and happy to take the minute risk that socialising fully indoors comes with. The tail is no longer wagging the dog, IMO, and as time goes on and the pioneers prove it is fairly safe to go out others will follow. FOMO is a huge motivation.
I actually think that's the one big misstep, the government should have reduced the vaccine gap to 3 and 4 weeks for Pfizer and Moderna and completely phase out AZ for first doses. It would give us significantly better capacity utilisation and the AZ doses can be donated to COVAX until we need to start building up a stockpile for booster jabs.
We should also have reupped the Pfizer order at the same time the EU did. It would have meant we would have been able to open all age ranges to vaccinations from late May.
Spanish food is fantastic. It is absolutely light years ahead of French food and probably about a mile ahead of Italian. It is the best food in the western world at the moment
Italian food is incredible, very tough to beat if you're able to avoid eating pizza and pasta all the time. Calabrian food is, IMO, the best Europe has got to offer.
Calabrian food is indeed superb. As is the food in Trentino, up in the half German north. Overall I’d say Spanish food wins out by a margin tho. At the moment
It is way too easy to eat badly in Italy. Rome, Venice, Milan, Florence, too often it is mediocre. It’s partly tourism of course. It’s like expecting to eat well in Leicester square. Venice is particularly ridiculous. You have to pay £100 a head to get a reasonable meal
Yet much of Spain avoids this even though it is often hugely touristy. Like here, in puerto de Soller. Tons of tourists yet the food is superb (the guide books promised me it would be, and they were right)
I actually think that's the one big misstep, the government should have reduced the vaccine gap to 3 and 4 weeks for Pfizer and Moderna and completely phase out AZ for first doses. It would give us significantly better capacity utilisation and the AZ doses can be donated to COVAX until we need to start building up a stockpile for booster jabs.
We should also have reupped the Pfizer order at the same time the EU did. It would have meant we would have been able to open all age ranges to vaccinations from late May.
Yes and got 50m Moderna which would have more than doubled the delivery rate from about 0.8m per week to around 2m per week.
Spanish food is fantastic. It is absolutely light years ahead of French food and probably about a mile ahead of Italian. It is the best food in the western world at the moment
Three weeks ago, I went to Yountville, home of the French Laundry.
We ate there. And it was good.
But it was nowhere near as good as the Tapas bar we ate at the previous evening.
Good Spanish food is amazing.
For our anniversary, this past weekend we went to Per Se, Thomas Keller's NYC restaurant, which has three Michelin stars. It was good, very good in places, but it wasn't as good as one or two star places we've been to in France and the UK. I do think the theory that the Michelin inspectors go down a star in Europe outside France, and go down two stars outside of Europe has some validity.
Hang on, doesn't this shoot the narrative fox of some on here that people will give up their masks?
The majority of Britons say face masks should continue to be mandatory on both public transport (71%), as well as in shops and some enclosed public spaces (66%) beyond when restrictions are lifted
70% of Britons say they'd feel less safe if in a crowded or un-ventilated place and people were not wearing face masks
This is the case among a majority of all age groups
Then those people can continue to wear them. That's the beauty of the policy. No one is saying you can't wear them if you want to do so.
Err, I think you've missed the entire point. The problem is whether other people are wearing masks.
Frankly I think it's completely barmy not continuing with compulsory masks on public transport, which can be very crowded and where many people don't have any choice but to use it. Also the staff are at risk. It's a virtually cost-free measure, it has zero negative impact on the economy (probably a positive impact, because many higher-risk people will be discouraged from using it if others aren't wearing masks), and it is the most trivial infringement on liberty which it is possible to imagine.
In other places it's a bit more nuanced; people sitting in a restaurant without masks, and having to put them on to find the loo, is a ridiculous charade. Shops should I think be left to the discretion of the owners, but with a strong recommendation for supermarkets to keep masks so that the elderly don't feel unsafe when doing essential shopping.
IT'S NOT COST FREE. If we force people to wear a mask they will make other choices. People who previously got public transport will drive or cycle instead. Public transport is on something of a precipice and needs to be made more attractive, not less.
Similarly shops. I'll continue to shop to stay alive of course. But I'm not going to shop for pleasure if I have to wear a mask to do so. I'll use the internet.
If masks work, and we need to wear them, so be it. But the benefit to the double jabbed is almost nil. We shouldn't have to wear them purely 'to make people feel safe'. This is what happens when you spend 18 months trying to terrify people into submission.
Only a tiny proportion of people are very fussed about wearing masks; it is after all the tiniest of tiny inconveniences. A far greater number are concerned about others NOT wearing masks. (See the polling on this). More importantly, the latter group are rational, the former group, not so much...
But no one's asking them to stop?
No, they are asking for the right to infect others unnecessarily.
Herd immunity remains the only way out of this situation, whether by vaccination or by catching the virus.
Quite possibly so, of course.
But for God's sake, how FOR FUCK'S SAKE wouldn't it make more sense to do it as much as possible by vaccination rather than infection?
Isn't that exactly what has been done? Everyone who wants it can now get it.
This is my problem in comprehending these "learned" discussions.
Do you not know - or do you not care - or what? - that a single dose has much less efficacy than two doses.
Ditto that the virus is currently spreading most rapidly through the age groups that are not being vaccinated, and for which vaccination is not even available here, whether they or their parents want it? In contrast with much of Europe?
But the loony herd mentality here will carry on banging the drum for the crazy policy of casting aside all caution and going for broke. And the crazies will carry on trying to ridicule anyone here with a different opinion. And the crazies now include some of the people running the site, apparently.
It's not crazy. We have reduced the CFR of COVID to approaching that of seasonal flu. Or even less. We have reduced it to an acceptable level of risk. Anyone worried about catching it on public transport can wear an FFP13 mask. Anyone worried about catching it in the pub, can not go to one. Personally I am looking forward to travelling home by train from Newcastle on the 19th unmasked (and having a few non-socially distanced drinks beforehand).
I would just say you really should think before coming out with the "COVID is no worse than flu" mantra.
If you can be vaccinated, and if the vaccine is effective, maybe it is. But what about the people who can't be vaccinated, or for whom the vaccine won't be effective?
Are you really saying it's too much trouble for you to wear a mask to protect people in that situation?
Yes, it's their personal responsibility to wear a mask which protects them. It's sad for them but the nation needs to move on from this and over time we will hit herd immunity and that final bit will go for them too.
I really thought everyone understood that the purpose of wearing masks was to protect other people from infection by the mask-wearer.
Please, please, please. Just be clear and just say "Yes, it's too much trouble to me to wear a mask to protect other people".
"Yes, it's too much trouble to me to wear a mask to protect other people"
Masks are hot, stuffy and uncomfortable. People need to get their vaccine and rely on the vaccine to protect them, instead of relying upon me wearing a mask to protect them.
If you're unvaccinated and I asymptomatically pass you the virus then that's your own damned fault. If you're vaccinated then let the vaccine do its job, not masks.
What if someone is vaccinated and you asymptomatically pass it on to them and they then go down with it? A fried of mine was double vaxxed and still ended up with a nasty case of covid. It will happen to more and more people after restrictions have gone. Surely wearing a mask around Tesco's or wherever for an hour or so is not too great a sacrifice to help prevent that.
Shit happens. People get sick and die. It sucks but so be it.
The risk of someone vaccinated dying now is so miniscule that we'd have never started wearing masks or had a lockdown had that been the original pre-vaccine risk from the virus.
There's a risk of someone dying on the road on the way to Tesco's too. Life has risks.
Thank you Doctor.
Do you honestly disagree?
You stated; "The risk of someone vaccinated dying now is so miniscule that we'd have never started wearing masks or had a lockdown had that been the original pre-vaccine risk from the virus".
Yes! I don't consider double vaccinated people catching the virus and dying at a rate of between 10% and 35% compared to the unvaccinated, depending on which vaccine has been administered and which study one believes, to be "miniscule".
So if wearing a mask drops the above percentages down to say between 8% and 30%, hell yes, it's worth considering wearing a mask. I am around 20 years older than you and thus more susceptible to dropping dead from Covid (or flu for that matter). I have a dog in this race.
I'm sorry but there's no reasonable studies showing death rates at a rate of 10% to 35% compared to the unvaccinated. VE vs hospitalisation is between 94% and 98% not between 65% and 90%. The reduction in death rates is measuring at even higher, closer to 100% with the miniscule deaths of double-vaccinated people that are occuring being a rounding error from zero percent. See the chart in MaxPB's comment earlier: https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/3468376/#Comment_3468376
Even if we go on 98%, the estimated pre-vaccine CFR with our medical knowledge we have now is about 0.7% so now the approximate CFR post vaccines is about 0.014% or one in every more than 7000 people. Even if every single adult in the country got infected from here then that would be a death toll of fewer than 10,000 people which is less than a flu season could be.
If you want to shield then shield, but the level of risk now is at or below normal mainstream risks that every day life has normally.
Your last paragraph!
I have been running the gauntlet with the great unwashed for months now, so I am not shielding. I did regret that, as I was herded onto the OCS terminal bus at Bristol Airport last week (for work) along with another ninety nine people, and the driver yelling "get back, get back", I need to get more on.
It's all well and good you asserting my white-flaggery to Covid as you bang away on your keyboard all day from the safety of your hermetically sealed bunker.
I actually think that's the one big misstep, the government should have reduced the vaccine gap to 3 and 4 weeks for Pfizer and Moderna and completely phase out AZ for first doses. It would give us significantly better capacity utilisation and the AZ doses can be donated to COVAX until we need to start building up a stockpile for booster jabs.
We should also have reupped the Pfizer order at the same time the EU did. It would have meant we would have been able to open all age ranges to vaccinations from late May.
Yes and got 50m Moderna which would have more than doubled the delivery rate from about 0.8m per week to around 2m per week.
As an aside (because it's bugger all use now,) has anyone got any idea in which decade the mythical Novavax unicorn might finally come galloping over the horizon?
Spanish food is fantastic. It is absolutely light years ahead of French food and probably about a mile ahead of Italian. It is the best food in the western world at the moment
Italian food is incredible, very tough to beat if you're able to avoid eating pizza and pasta all the time. Calabrian food is, IMO, the best Europe has got to offer.
Calabrian food is indeed superb. As is the food in Trentino, up in the half German north. Overall I’d say Spanish food wins out by a margin tho. At the moment
It is way too easy to eat badly in Italy. Rome, Venice, Milan, Florence, too often it is mediocre. It’s partly tourism of course. It’s like expecting to eat well in Leicester square. Venice is particularly ridiculous. You have to pay £100 a head to get a reasonable meal
Yet much of Spain avoids this even though it is often hugely touristy. Like here, in puerto de Soller. Tons of tourists yet the food is superb (the guide books promised me it would be, and they were right)
Mysterious
Yeah, I completely agree with the point about being able to eat badly in Italy and get ripped off at the same time. Especially in the tourist traps. One of the reasons Puglia and Calabria are so incredible is that it doesn't have those kinds of restaurants. Additionally both my wife and I speak Italian, she's fluent and I'm pretty handy so it's not easy for us to fall into one of those places.
Venice has got some really amazing restaurants but they're a pretty long walk away from anything touristy.
I actually think that's the one big misstep, the government should have reduced the vaccine gap to 3 and 4 weeks for Pfizer and Moderna and completely phase out AZ for first doses. It would give us significantly better capacity utilisation and the AZ doses can be donated to COVAX until we need to start building up a stockpile for booster jabs.
We should also have reupped the Pfizer order at the same time the EU did. It would have meant we would have been able to open all age ranges to vaccinations from late May.
Yes and got 50m Moderna which would have more than doubled the delivery rate from about 0.8m per week to around 2m per week.
As an aside (because it's bugger all use now,) has anyone got any idea in which decade the mythical Novavax unicorn might finally come galloping over the horizon?
Being submitted to regulators this month apparently. Investors are very unimpressed by their lack of progress.
(When we were there, we were caught in the mother of all rainstorms. It was like being under a power shower).
The port of. Indeed! It’s very touristy even during plague. There’s a weird kind of wartime spirit - if your business hasn’t totally collapsed then it’s time to drink cava!
The train to Soller is awesome. Then the tram down to the port. I love Mallorca.
The Harbour was a bit stinky last time i was there in 2019 and its v expensive to stay in the close to hotels.. beyond my pocket
The other undercurrent which concerns me is the triumphalism of the anti-maskers. Yes, not having to wear masks on trains, buses, tubes and in supermarkets will be a relief (though I'd like to see the hand sanitiser kept available). However, what worries me is those who, for whatever reason, choose to continue to wear a mask.
It is absolutely their right so to do and that right must be respected - my fear is there will be incidents where individuals with masks are victimised and abused by those not wearing them. I hope I'm wrong but we know how "aggressive" crowds can be, especially when alcohol is involved.
I'm hoping the tolerant good nature of the British public will come to the fore and we'll respect those who choose to be more risk-averse (it's their life after all).
I suspect there will also be plenty of instances of the reverse, of people being harangued for not wearing masks because other folk get irate about it.
Mainly the other way, I think. Once masks are voluntary the statement will be to wear one. And it's people making a statement who stand out and attract praise or hostility rather than those who go with the flow.
If all these polls have any grounding in the real world, it still seems like more people will voluntarily wear than won't, in which case it will be more of a statement to not wear one, at least in the immediate future. But I guess we will just have to wait and see what happens.
Yes, the world has changed. It won’t go back to a 2019 like stage for a long while. A lot of people are going to be a lot more cautious, so we don’t really need the state imposing blanket caution on all of us
It will never go back to pre-Covid. It's a different world and we'd better start getting used to it rather than getting nostalgic.
So for the return to the office I suggested to my staff first day back (or the night before) we go to a nice restaurant and have a giggle and drinks, my treat because we've not seen each other for nearly 17 months.
Their suggestion: We all go to to Pizza Hut and about 80% of them order a Hawaiian pizza.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
We're going to unlock now and let it rip. Thanks to our brilliant vaccines when you get it now it will only kill a small percentage of you. if we don't unlock now then "when the virus has an edge, has an advantage in the colder months" we'll have to delay again.
That's true for essentially everywhere. In time almost the entire human race will either get the vaccine or covid. Any country that doesn't want to be lockdown for a very long time will have the same dilemma.
We have a world leading vaccine program, which means that we're in a position to face what we do post-vaccines before other countries lead the way on that.
Some people have taken too seriously the "every death is a tragedy" philosophy and seem to think that we can actually abolish death. Death is part of the circle of life, an average of 1665 people die every single day in this country and 99% of those right now are not from Covid. There are fates worse than death, like spending months or years not living properly because of a crippling paranoid fear that things could get worse.
Spending months not living life to the full isn't really worse than death.
Speak for yourself.
600,000 people die a year from natural causes. From when we went into lockdown to end of July about 800,000 people will have died from entirely natural causes having lost the last months/year of their lives having been incapable of legally seeing their family and friends like normal.
Even looking from just March when we eliminated excess deaths having vaccinated the very vulnerable already, about 200,000 people will have died from natural causes. More people will have died without being able to legally see their family and friends since we eliminated excess deaths, than have died from Covid during the pandemic.
Care homes have become prisons preventing people from seeing their family, friends and loved ones and even now that they do allow visits its very clinical and restricted still even more restricted than the rule of 6 at homes. Again, most care home residents die from natural causes within 12 months of admission to a home, most people admitted 12 months ago will have died without ever being able to normally see their loved ones again even if they never got Covid.
As it stands for every person who dies from Covid right now, 99 are dying not from Covid. 99 to 1 people are dying not living long enough to see the end of lockdown and resuming their lives.
Life is for living. Simply being alive until you're not is not living and we can't get this time back. An order of magnitude more people have lost their lives during lockdown than have died due to the virus.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
Why are you relying on a feeling when perfectly good statistical data exist?
The most depressing thing. It's clear there are people on both sides of the debate who just don't want this thing to end. Covid is their new cause. I can't get my head round it. I'm sick of it. I want it over now. 6:40 PM · Jul 5, 2021·"
Eh? Fresh from his fiasco in Batley and Spen ("impossible for Labour to win"), Hodges now seems to have gone mad. Is there anyone on the planet who is actually enjoying the pandemic and hopes it will continue?
It does seem like it sometimes.
I think there's plenty of people who like it because it gives them the perfect excuse to attack the government.
God knows I'm not fan of the Conservatives but there's no particular reason to think anyone else would have done a better or worse job - it's just a thing that happened, we all muddled through it the best we could, we have a route back to some sort of normal now, move on. Yes, mistakes were made, but is there any reason to suspect other parties wouldn't have made the same mistakes, or different ones? Not really, no.
That's the problem here, people think that politicians can Do Things (TM) and make it all go away, and if it hasn't gone away that's because they didn't do the right Good Things and therefore must be incompetent. They might well be incompetent, but it's pretty unlikely there's anyone else who is competent to do the magic people want.
Well fine, but meanwhile there are a 195 other countries and of those that are most like us a large number have handled the crisis with dramatically fewer deaths. The UK stands out as relatively less successful in their effectiveness both in containing and treating the outbreak. While they did have some successes in the speed of early vaccination, that is now beaten by several European countries and of course the UK now has a total number of active cases greater than the entire EU. One of the reasons for this is the extraordinary complacency which the government adopted on numerous occasions, particularly with regard to quarantine from India a few weeks ago.
While we know that "Yes, Minister" was more a documentary than it seemed at the time, and doubtless any public inquiry will be scuppered and sent into the long grass Sir Humphrey style, the fact is that the Johnson government could learn some powerful lessons.
Spanish food is fantastic. It is absolutely light years ahead of French food and probably about a mile ahead of Italian. It is the best food in the western world at the moment
Three weeks ago, I went to Yountville, home of the French Laundry.
We ate there. And it was good.
But it was nowhere near as good as the Tapas bar we ate at the previous evening.
Good Spanish food is amazing.
For our anniversary, this past weekend we went to Per Se, Thomas Keller's NYC restaurant, which has three Michelin stars. It was good, very good in places, but it wasn't as good as one or two star places we've been to in France and the UK. I do think the theory that the Michelin inspectors go down a star in Europe outside France, and go down two stars outside of Europe has some validity.
Actually I believe it’s the opposite. The French guides give restaurants in France a Michelin star when they would barely get one AA rosette with a question mark in the UK
As long as you do some absurd foam or soil and a ‘tasting menu’ you get one star. In France. I’ve had literally disgusting Michelin starred meals in France.
I am pretty sure this is some patriotic endeavor to keep the flag of French gastronomy flying high. But in the end it is counter productive
This is not Francophobia. Virtually all of my amazing gastronomic experiences as a lad and a young man happened in France. But that was 30 years ago. Very very few in the last 20 years
I do love a grand old fashioned French brasserie however. Oysters and andouillettes and red banquettes and steak frites. They are great
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
One dose of any of those against the Indian variant offers much less protection. Pfizer / Moderna on first dose alone isn't really much better than AZN, two doses is where the is a bigger difference.
No, I don't think any immediate return to 2019 is likely. Even after July 19th there will be a degree of caution among a large proportion of people. That may lessen over the summer and as the booster programme cycles up. What it does is remove the restrictions on those of us who are fed up and happy to take the minute risk that socialising fully indoors comes with. The tail is no longer wagging the dog, IMO, and as time goes on and the pioneers prove it is fairly safe to go out others will follow. FOMO is a huge motivation.
As I pointed out to @isam, this is nothing to do with "caution".
The world has changed because a lot of people have seen the possibilities of doing things differently. The 2-hour commute, the scrum down at the supermarket, all those tiresome chores which took us out - all gone. We can now go out much more for pleasure (whatever form that takes).
We are redefining life at a fundamental level - our perceptions of "home", "work" and "leisure" are all being challenged and overturned. I'd go as far as to argue the 20th Century lifestyle is now ending and the 21st Century lifestyle is emerging.
My colleague, working and living 10 miles from Stornaway, doing everything he used to do when he lived in Dorking and commuted. He and his family have found what they were looking for - he called it "peace". It's not for me or Mrs Stodge but it will appeal to many.
The experience of this has, I believe, caused a lot of us to rethink how we life and who we are and that will change society, community and a whole lot of other things in ways we haven't yet fully grasped.
The most depressing thing. It's clear there are people on both sides of the debate who just don't want this thing to end. Covid is their new cause. I can't get my head round it. I'm sick of it. I want it over now. 6:40 PM · Jul 5, 2021·"
Eh? Fresh from his fiasco in Batley and Spen ("impossible for Labour to win"), Hodges now seems to have gone mad. Is there anyone on the planet who is actually enjoying the pandemic and hopes it will continue?
It does seem like it sometimes.
I think there's plenty of people who like it because it gives them the perfect excuse to attack the government.
God knows I'm not fan of the Conservatives but there's no particular reason to think anyone else would have done a better or worse job - it's just a thing that happened, we all muddled through it the best we could, we have a route back to some sort of normal now, move on. Yes, mistakes were made, but is there any reason to suspect other parties wouldn't have made the same mistakes, or different ones? Not really, no.
That's the problem here, people think that politicians can Do Things (TM) and make it all go away, and if it hasn't gone away that's because they didn't do the right Good Things and therefore must be incompetent. They might well be incompetent, but it's pretty unlikely there's anyone else who is competent to do the magic people want.
Well fine, but meanwhile there are a 195 other countries and of those that are most like us a large number have handled the crisis with dramatically fewer deaths. The UK stands out as relatively less successful in their effectiveness both in containing and treating the outbreak. While they did have some successes in the speed of early vaccination, that is now beaten by several European countries and of course the UK now has a total number of active cases greater than the entire EU. One of the reasons for this is the extraordinary complacency which the government adopted on numerous occasions, particularly with regard to quarantine from India a few weeks ago.
While we know that "Yes, Minister" was more a documentary than it seemed at the time, and doubtless any public inquiry will be scuppered and sent into the long grass Sir Humphrey style, the fact is that the Johnson government could learn some powerful lessons.
But they won´t.
Or the fact that EU countries are testing at like a tenth of the UK level?
Best news by far for over a year.Might even buy a paper tomorrow for the first time in that long. Will look forward to going on public transport on the 19th July (without a mask) . Not sure I want to before that though having to wear a mask does my head in
Spanish food is fantastic. It is absolutely light years ahead of French food and probably about a mile ahead of Italian. It is the best food in the western world at the moment
Three weeks ago, I went to Yountville, home of the French Laundry.
We ate there. And it was good.
But it was nowhere near as good as the Tapas bar we ate at the previous evening.
Good Spanish food is amazing.
For our anniversary, this past weekend we went to Per Se, Thomas Keller's NYC restaurant, which has three Michelin stars. It was good, very good in places, but it wasn't as good as one or two star places we've been to in France and the UK. I do think the theory that the Michelin inspectors go down a star in Europe outside France, and go down two stars outside of Europe has some validity.
I have a number of criticisms of the Michelin guide:
1. They really love stuffy, conservative French cooking. The reality is that The Waterside Inn is good, but it's not inventive or exciting. Louis XVI in Monaco is the same. I could happily pass on either.
2. They are very slow to adjust scores down. A lot of places were once great... are now only OK... and yet seem to cling to a couple of Michelin stars.
3. There seems to be a special "half a star" bump that happens in rural France. A lot of pretty average places seem to get stars because there's nowhere else decent nearby.
4. Some cuisines seem to be totally ignored by the judges: Spanish and Japanese cuisines are both criminally under rated
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
It's a 94% reduction for hospitalisations vs 98% for Pfizer. I think it's pretty good. The big downside is the necessary longer gap to get there and the additional week post second dose. A full course of AZ will need 11 weeks while a full course of Pfizer only needs 5 weeks or 6 weeks for Moderna. What's very interesting is the booster jab study which shows a third dose of AZ in Pfizer or AZ recipients is about the same and extremely strong and has very, very high modelled efficacy based on neutralising antibodies (something like 98% against symptomatic infection).
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
Why are you relying on a feeling when perfectly good statistical data exist?
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
Why are you relying on a feeling when perfectly good statistical data exist?
Well quite. Well put.
One of the absolute worst things about PB this pandemic is the tendency from certain quarters to slide back to trashing the vaccines in the face of all evidence. Sometimes it’s all the vaccines that are the target of their superstition, other times it’s just AZ.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
It seems pretty clear that the mRNA vaccines are better - due to being able to be fully vaccinated more than a month earlier if nothing else.
But the AZ vaccine is certainly "good enough" in the circumstances of a global pandemic where there is still a huge shortfall in available doses.
The English girl has retired from her match at Wimbledon. She looked high as a kite and was physically sick at one stage or so it seemed. Hope she is okay, it wasn’t nice viewing.
Spanish food is fantastic. It is absolutely light years ahead of French food and probably about a mile ahead of Italian. It is the best food in the western world at the moment
Three weeks ago, I went to Yountville, home of the French Laundry.
We ate there. And it was good.
But it was nowhere near as good as the Tapas bar we ate at the previous evening.
Good Spanish food is amazing.
For our anniversary, this past weekend we went to Per Se, Thomas Keller's NYC restaurant, which has three Michelin stars. It was good, very good in places, but it wasn't as good as one or two star places we've been to in France and the UK. I do think the theory that the Michelin inspectors go down a star in Europe outside France, and go down two stars outside of Europe has some validity.
Actually I believe it’s the opposite. The French guides give restaurants in France a Michelin star when they would barely get one AA rosette with a question mark in the UK
As long as you do some absurd foam or soil and a ‘tasting menu’ you get one star. In France. I’ve had literally disgusting Michelin starred meals in France.
I am pretty sure this is some patriotic endeavor to keep the flag of French gastronomy flying high. But in the end it is counter productive
This is not Francophobia. Virtually all of my amazing gastronomic experiences as a lad and a young man happened in France. But that was 30 years ago. Very very few in the last 20 years
I do love a grand old fashioned French brasserie however. Oysters and andouillettes and red banquettes and steak frites. They are great
Oh, there are still a couple of utterly extraordinary French restaurants: Guy Savoy in Paris is absolutely top notch. Pierre Gagnaire is also superb.
But it's not clear to me why - other than history - Le Pré Catelan, with its dated decor and boring food is even rated, let alone given three stars. Still, it's entertaining to be in the middle of Paris's arboreal red light district.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
Except the AZ vaccine is about the same efficiency as the mRNA doses after two doses. Its just a bit slower to work for the first one.
As for the availability to everyone in the USA, that's easier to achieve when so many people don't want the vaccines there. As it stands more than two-thirds of the British public [all people, including kids] have been single-dose vaccinated now, while only 54.5% of Americans have. The UK has a high share of fully-vaccinated public than the USA does, and the gap is only growing day by day.
The major difference between the UK and USA which it comes to vaccinations is vaccine refusal amongst Americans, not supply.
Institutions that try to take everything online will eventually be destroyed by an Amazon College-type thing that provides a superior service at a fraction of the price. A supremely short-sighted approach.
Now that you raise the possibility I'm somewhat surprised this hasn't already happened.
I think there's a widely-held view that online courses or online degrees aren't as good as traditional ones where you go to the lecture hall day in day out. If the traditional universities eschew lectures and do everything online, that view will no longer hold.
Learning at university is about more than just having a person standing at the front of a room speaking and letting you take notes. Hell, if that's all it is they might as well pre-record the whole course at the start of the year and then get rid of all the staff from then on!
There is the interaction with fellow students, the post lecture discussions, the peer to peer learning where things aren't understood. How do you get all that if you're just sat in your room for 90% of the time getting stuff through a video on a laptop?
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
Why are you relying on a feeling when perfectly good statistical data exist?
'Coz I is an innumerate history graduate, innit.
So am I, but it seems pretty overwhelming that AZ is a damn good vaccine. Whether some of the others, particularly Pfizer, are 'better' wouldn't seem to matter much except in planning out timescales, which is an appreciable factor, but doesn't make the other bad.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
It seems pretty clear that the mRNA vaccines are better - due to being able to be fully vaccinated more than a month earlier if nothing else.
But the AZ vaccine is certainly "good enough" in the circumstances of a global pandemic where there is still a huge shortfall in available doses.
AZ is also ramping up production quite nicely too. Output will supposedly hit the 300m per month target later this year, earlier than they had initially forecast. Switching over to a new variant buster vaccine will be easy too as the process should be able to accept it without knowing it's changed very much.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
It's a 94% reduction for hospitalisations vs 98% for Pfizer. I think it's pretty good. The big downside is the necessary longer gap to get there and the additional week post second dose. A full course of AZ will need 11 weeks while a full course of Pfizer only needs 5 weeks or 6 weeks for Moderna. What's very interesting is the booster jab study which shows a third dose of AZ in Pfizer or AZ recipients is about the same and extremely strong and has very, very high modelled efficacy based on neutralising antibodies (something like 98% against symptomatic infection).
All the evidence is that mixing and matching increases efficacy quite significantly, and I'm struggling to see why the UK isn't doing more of it.
Spanish food is fantastic. It is absolutely light years ahead of French food and probably about a mile ahead of Italian. It is the best food in the western world at the moment
Three weeks ago, I went to Yountville, home of the French Laundry.
We ate there. And it was good.
But it was nowhere near as good as the Tapas bar we ate at the previous evening.
Good Spanish food is amazing.
For our anniversary, this past weekend we went to Per Se, Thomas Keller's NYC restaurant, which has three Michelin stars. It was good, very good in places, but it wasn't as good as one or two star places we've been to in France and the UK. I do think the theory that the Michelin inspectors go down a star in Europe outside France, and go down two stars outside of Europe has some validity.
I have a number of criticisms of the Michelin guide:
1. They really love stuffy, conservative French cooking. The reality is that The Waterside Inn is good, but it's not inventive or exciting. Louis XVI in Monaco is the same. I could happily pass on either.
2. They are very slow to adjust scores down. A lot of places were once great... are now only OK... and yet seem to cling to a couple of Michelin stars.
3. There seems to be a special "half a star" bump that happens in rural France. A lot of pretty average places seem to get stars because there's nowhere else decent nearby.
4. Some cuisines seem to be totally ignored by the judges: Spanish and Japanese cuisines are both criminally under rated
1 & 2 I think are two sides of the same coin. There is a tendency to reverence for the big names that is not always justified.
I agree with 3, but 4 is getting somewhat better.
2 star is the sweet spot for me - genuinely good cooking that has not lost touch with reality. 1 star is highly variable. That said, there are some amazing 3 stars - Ducasse at Plaza Athenee was incredible.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
It's a 94% reduction for hospitalisations vs 98% for Pfizer. I think it's pretty good. The big downside is the necessary longer gap to get there and the additional week post second dose. A full course of AZ will need 11 weeks while a full course of Pfizer only needs 5 weeks or 6 weeks for Moderna. What's very interesting is the booster jab study which shows a third dose of AZ in Pfizer or AZ recipients is about the same and extremely strong and has very, very high modelled efficacy based on neutralising antibodies (something like 98% against symptomatic infection).
All the evidence is that mixing and matching increases efficacy quite significantly, and I'm struggling to see why the UK isn't doing more of it.
Lack of private sector experience at the top IMO. We're forced to maximise output with what we have in the private sector. The public sector doesn't have to do that so will stay within its straitjacket.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
It's a 94% reduction for hospitalisations vs 98% for Pfizer. I think it's pretty good. The big downside is the necessary longer gap to get there and the additional week post second dose. A full course of AZ will need 11 weeks while a full course of Pfizer only needs 5 weeks or 6 weeks for Moderna. What's very interesting is the booster jab study which shows a third dose of AZ in Pfizer or AZ recipients is about the same and extremely strong and has very, very high modelled efficacy based on neutralising antibodies (something like 98% against symptomatic infection).
Mixing is likely to be the best. Pfizer is faster to develop immunity, but AZ seems to produce a stronger t-cell response, and different vaccines stimulate the immune system differently even if they all target the spike proteins. If we had the time we would undoubtedly trial all of these sort of things to get an optimal sequence and dosing interval for all the different cohorts and different stages of the pandemic.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
It seems pretty clear that the mRNA vaccines are better - due to being able to be fully vaccinated more than a month earlier if nothing else.
But the AZ vaccine is certainly "good enough" in the circumstances of a global pandemic where there is still a huge shortfall in available doses.
Doesn't AZ give a better T cell boost and so potentially longer lasting protection ?
And there's the option of giving a booster shot with a mRNA vaccine which is a combo very possibly better than mRNA alone.
No, I don't think any immediate return to 2019 is likely. Even after July 19th there will be a degree of caution among a large proportion of people. That may lessen over the summer and as the booster programme cycles up. What it does is remove the restrictions on those of us who are fed up and happy to take the minute risk that socialising fully indoors comes with. The tail is no longer wagging the dog, IMO, and as time goes on and the pioneers prove it is fairly safe to go out others will follow. FOMO is a huge motivation.
As I pointed out to @isam, this is nothing to do with "caution".
The world has changed because a lot of people have seen the possibilities of doing things differently. The 2-hour commute, the scrum down at the supermarket, all those tiresome chores which took us out - all gone. We can now go out much more for pleasure (whatever form that takes).
We are redefining life at a fundamental level - our perceptions of "home", "work" and "leisure" are all being challenged and overturned. I'd go as far as to argue the 20th Century lifestyle is now ending and the 21st Century lifestyle is emerging.
My colleague, working and living 10 miles from Stornaway, doing everything he used to do when he lived in Dorking and commuted. He and his family have found what they were looking for - he called it "peace". It's not for me or Mrs Stodge but it will appeal to many.
The experience of this has, I believe, caused a lot of us to rethink how we life and who we are and that will change society, community and a whole lot of other things in ways we haven't yet fully grasped.
I worked with a chap who commuted weekly down from Yorkshire to London, while a friend did the same from Scotland. So for them, savings in time and money were considerable as they enjoyed lower living costs on London salaries.
How long will that last? Some American employers are already looking to cut salaries of employees WFH in cheap states. Actual cuts might not come here but lower starting salaries probably will.
So while work is in transition, it might be distorted by the comfortable, middle-aged, middle class office workers who are well paid and have the space to work remotely.
We will also surely see employers increasing worried by security aspects of WFH and imposing more restrictions.
The most depressing thing. It's clear there are people on both sides of the debate who just don't want this thing to end. Covid is their new cause. I can't get my head round it. I'm sick of it. I want it over now. 6:40 PM · Jul 5, 2021·"
Eh? Fresh from his fiasco in Batley and Spen ("impossible for Labour to win"), Hodges now seems to have gone mad. Is there anyone on the planet who is actually enjoying the pandemic and hopes it will continue?
It does seem like it sometimes.
I think there's plenty of people who like it because it gives them the perfect excuse to attack the government.
God knows I'm not fan of the Conservatives but there's no particular reason to think anyone else would have done a better or worse job - it's just a thing that happened, we all muddled through it the best we could, we have a route back to some sort of normal now, move on. Yes, mistakes were made, but is there any reason to suspect other parties wouldn't have made the same mistakes, or different ones? Not really, no.
That's the problem here, people think that politicians can Do Things (TM) and make it all go away, and if it hasn't gone away that's because they didn't do the right Good Things and therefore must be incompetent. They might well be incompetent, but it's pretty unlikely there's anyone else who is competent to do the magic people want.
Well fine, but meanwhile there are a 195 other countries and of those that are most like us a large number have handled the crisis with dramatically fewer deaths. The UK stands out as relatively less successful in their effectiveness both in containing and treating the outbreak. While they did have some successes in the speed of early vaccination, that is now beaten by several European countries and of course the UK now has a total number of active cases greater than the entire EU. One of the reasons for this is the extraordinary complacency which the government adopted on numerous occasions, particularly with regard to quarantine from India a few weeks ago.
While we know that "Yes, Minister" was more a documentary than it seemed at the time, and doubtless any public inquiry will be scuppered and sent into the long grass Sir Humphrey style, the fact is that the Johnson government could learn some powerful lessons.
But they won´t.
Focusing purely on this country, what has the opposition actually argued for in the pandemic? Basically all they've done is said they'd have done things "better". They'd have made test and trace better, they'd have had a better vaccine rollout, they'd have had a better furlough scheme, they'd have had better border controls, they'd have made better decisions based on "the science". It's just cheap talk. I'm not sure at any point they've ever really contributed much original to the whole handling of the pandemic, or even explained how those things could actually have been done better, just that they ought to have been.
Hey, maybe they really would have just done everything better, or maybe it'd have just been exactly the same but with different personalities. We'll never know.
Spanish food is fantastic. It is absolutely light years ahead of French food and probably about a mile ahead of Italian. It is the best food in the western world at the moment
Three weeks ago, I went to Yountville, home of the French Laundry.
We ate there. And it was good.
But it was nowhere near as good as the Tapas bar we ate at the previous evening.
Good Spanish food is amazing.
For our anniversary, this past weekend we went to Per Se, Thomas Keller's NYC restaurant, which has three Michelin stars. It was good, very good in places, but it wasn't as good as one or two star places we've been to in France and the UK. I do think the theory that the Michelin inspectors go down a star in Europe outside France, and go down two stars outside of Europe has some validity.
I have a number of criticisms of the Michelin guide:
1. They really love stuffy, conservative French cooking. The reality is that The Waterside Inn is good, but it's not inventive or exciting. Louis XVI in Monaco is the same. I could happily pass on either.
2. They are very slow to adjust scores down. A lot of places were once great... are now only OK... and yet seem to cling to a couple of Michelin stars.
3. There seems to be a special "half a star" bump that happens in rural France. A lot of pretty average places seem to get stars because there's nowhere else decent nearby.
4. Some cuisines seem to be totally ignored by the judges: Spanish and Japanese cuisines are both criminally under rated
1 & 2 I think are two sides of the same coin. There is a tendency to reverence for the big names that is not always justified.
I agree with 3, but 4 is getting somewhat better.
2 star is the sweet spot for me - genuinely good cooking that has not lost touch with reality. 1 star is highly variable. That said, there are some amazing 3 stars - Ducasse at Plaza Athenee was incredible.
Personally, I think Le Gavroche is the best restaurant in London - it's inventive and amazingly consistent. It also bears out your "two Michelin stars are best" theory.
All the evidence is that mixing and matching increases efficacy quite significantly, and I'm struggling to see why the UK isn't doing more of it.
The people in charge are idiots
Be honest, if the government had proposed this in January when it would have made a difference would you have been for or against it? Would you not have gone and found some random blue tick twatter idiot from iSage to quote about how the government are killing everyone.
The most depressing thing. It's clear there are people on both sides of the debate who just don't want this thing to end. Covid is their new cause. I can't get my head round it. I'm sick of it. I want it over now. 6:40 PM · Jul 5, 2021·"
Eh? Fresh from his fiasco in Batley and Spen ("impossible for Labour to win"), Hodges now seems to have gone mad. Is there anyone on the planet who is actually enjoying the pandemic and hopes it will continue?
It does seem like it sometimes.
I think there's plenty of people who like it because it gives them the perfect excuse to attack the government.
God knows I'm not fan of the Conservatives but there's no particular reason to think anyone else would have done a better or worse job - it's just a thing that happened, we all muddled through it the best we could, we have a route back to some sort of normal now, move on. Yes, mistakes were made, but is there any reason to suspect other parties wouldn't have made the same mistakes, or different ones? Not really, no.
That's the problem here, people think that politicians can Do Things (TM) and make it all go away, and if it hasn't gone away that's because they didn't do the right Good Things and therefore must be incompetent. They might well be incompetent, but it's pretty unlikely there's anyone else who is competent to do the magic people want.
Well fine, but meanwhile there are a 195 other countries and of those that are most like us a large number have handled the crisis with dramatically fewer deaths. The UK stands out as relatively less successful in their effectiveness both in containing and treating the outbreak. While they did have some successes in the speed of early vaccination, that is now beaten by several European countries and of course the UK now has a total number of active cases greater than the entire EU. One of the reasons for this is the extraordinary complacency which the government adopted on numerous occasions, particularly with regard to quarantine from India a few weeks ago.
While we know that "Yes, Minister" was more a documentary than it seemed at the time, and doubtless any public inquiry will be scuppered and sent into the long grass Sir Humphrey style, the fact is that the Johnson government could learn some powerful lessons.
But they won´t.
You may think that shows the EU in a better light. I think you either don't understand the statistics or are being deliberately obtuse.
Great that the EU is catching up on vaccinations. Hopefully for them they'll be where we are in a couple of months time.
Best news by far for over a year.Might even buy a paper tomorrow for the first time in that long. Will look forward to going on public transport on the 19th July (without a mask) . Not sure I want to before that though having to wear a mask does my head in
Totally agree with you. Women love wearing masks and will go on wearing Covid masks for years to come. But for us blokes it’s a total embarrassment, it makes us look scared of the dark.
We need to get rid of car seatbelts and crash helmets for motorbikes next, they are huge authoritarian squeeze on our civil liberties.
Hang on, doesn't this shoot the narrative fox of some on here that people will give up their masks?
The majority of Britons say face masks should continue to be mandatory on both public transport (71%), as well as in shops and some enclosed public spaces (66%) beyond when restrictions are lifted
70% of Britons say they'd feel less safe if in a crowded or un-ventilated place and people were not wearing face masks
This is the case among a majority of all age groups
Then those people can continue to wear them. That's the beauty of the policy. No one is saying you can't wear them if you want to do so.
Err, I think you've missed the entire point. The problem is whether other people are wearing masks.
Frankly I think it's completely barmy not continuing with compulsory masks on public transport, which can be very crowded and where many people don't have any choice but to use it. Also the staff are at risk. It's a virtually cost-free measure, it has zero negative impact on the economy (probably a positive impact, because many higher-risk people will be discouraged from using it if others aren't wearing masks), and it is the most trivial infringement on liberty which it is possible to imagine.
In other places it's a bit more nuanced; people sitting in a restaurant without masks, and having to put them on to find the loo, is a ridiculous charade. Shops should I think be left to the discretion of the owners, but with a strong recommendation for supermarkets to keep masks so that the elderly don't feel unsafe when doing essential shopping.
IT'S NOT COST FREE. If we force people to wear a mask they will make other choices. People who previously got public transport will drive or cycle instead. Public transport is on something of a precipice and needs to be made more attractive, not less.
Similarly shops. I'll continue to shop to stay alive of course. But I'm not going to shop for pleasure if I have to wear a mask to do so. I'll use the internet.
If masks work, and we need to wear them, so be it. But the benefit to the double jabbed is almost nil. We shouldn't have to wear them purely 'to make people feel safe'. This is what happens when you spend 18 months trying to terrify people into submission.
Only a tiny proportion of people are very fussed about wearing masks; it is after all the tiniest of tiny inconveniences. A far greater number are concerned about others NOT wearing masks. (See the polling on this). More importantly, the latter group are rational, the former group, not so much...
But no one's asking them to stop?
No, they are asking for the right to infect others unnecessarily.
Herd immunity remains the only way out of this situation, whether by vaccination or by catching the virus.
Quite possibly so, of course.
But for God's sake, how FOR FUCK'S SAKE wouldn't it make more sense to do it as much as possible by vaccination rather than infection?
Isn't that exactly what has been done? Everyone who wants it can now get it.
This is my problem in comprehending these "learned" discussions.
Do you not know - or do you not care - or what? - that a single dose has much less efficacy than two doses.
Ditto that the virus is currently spreading most rapidly through the age groups that are not being vaccinated, and for which vaccination is not even available here, whether they or their parents want it? In contrast with much of Europe?
But the loony herd mentality here will carry on banging the drum for the crazy policy of casting aside all caution and going for broke. And the crazies will carry on trying to ridicule anyone here with a different opinion. And the crazies now include some of the people running the site, apparently.
It's not crazy. We have reduced the CFR of COVID to approaching that of seasonal flu. Or even less. We have reduced it to an acceptable level of risk. Anyone worried about catching it on public transport can wear an FFP13 mask. Anyone worried about catching it in the pub, can not go to one. Personally I am looking forward to travelling home by train from Newcastle on the 19th unmasked (and having a few non-socially distanced drinks beforehand).
I would just say you really should think before coming out with the "COVID is no worse than flu" mantra.
If you can be vaccinated, and if the vaccine is effective, maybe it is. But what about the people who can't be vaccinated, or for whom the vaccine won't be effective?
Are you really saying it's too much trouble for you to wear a mask to protect people in that situation?
Yes, it's their personal responsibility to wear a mask which protects them. It's sad for them but the nation needs to move on from this and over time we will hit herd immunity and that final bit will go for them too.
I really thought everyone understood that the purpose of wearing masks was to protect other people from infection by the mask-wearer.
Please, please, please. Just be clear and just say "Yes, it's too much trouble to me to wear a mask to protect other people".
"Yes, it's too much trouble to me to wear a mask to protect other people"
Masks are hot, stuffy and uncomfortable. People need to get their vaccine and rely on the vaccine to protect them, instead of relying upon me wearing a mask to protect them.
If you're unvaccinated and I asymptomatically pass you the virus then that's your own damned fault. If you're vaccinated then let the vaccine do its job, not masks.
What if someone is vaccinated and you asymptomatically pass it on to them and they then go down with it? A fried of mine was double vaxxed and still ended up with a nasty case of covid. It will happen to more and more people after restrictions have gone. Surely wearing a mask around Tesco's or wherever for an hour or so is not too great a sacrifice to help prevent that.
Shit happens. People get sick and die. It sucks but so be it.
The risk of someone vaccinated dying now is so miniscule that we'd have never started wearing masks or had a lockdown had that been the original pre-vaccine risk from the virus.
There's a risk of someone dying on the road on the way to Tesco's too. Life has risks.
Thank you Doctor.
Do you honestly disagree?
You stated; "The risk of someone vaccinated dying now is so miniscule that we'd have never started wearing masks or had a lockdown had that been the original pre-vaccine risk from the virus".
Yes! I don't consider double vaccinated people catching the virus and dying at a rate of between 10% and 35% compared to the unvaccinated, depending on which vaccine has been administered and which study one believes, to be "miniscule".
So if wearing a mask drops the above percentages down to say between 8% and 30%, hell yes, it's worth considering wearing a mask. I am around 20 years older than you and thus more susceptible to dropping dead from Covid (or flu for that matter). I have a dog in this race.
I love older people who had the chance to have social lives, find partners and settle down tell me how they have a dog in this fight. How noble they are whilst the young are having a whale of a time.
Let the old, the fat, and the stupid, die
Enough now. It’s just Darwinism. Otherwise we all starve
From what I gather we are of a similar age, we may even have brushed past each other in the Litchfield Vaults some forty years ago. So if my lack of youth takes me down, you could be next!
Ah yes, the "Lich". Didn't venture in there through most of my school days as it was the haunt of the Belmont boys, but when they merged with us we got to check it out. Nice place. (I am evidently 10 years younger than the other Herefordians on here).
Perusing Twitter this evening, and I really shouldn't have, the wall of doom was quite something. It's the most downbeat I can remember things for a long time. Almost as if, with the current government's history of managing Covid, the very act of opening up on the 19th is casting an evil jinx on this pandemic. That and the abominable weather.
I do think people need to keep looking at the stats, and the stats say that the epidemic is hitting primarily the unvaxxed (there will always be examples of the opposite, of course), the CFR continues to fall, and with every day that passes about 10x as many people develop antibodies as a result of vaccination vs those getting them through infection.
I think it's first and foremost the psychological effect of upwards trending graphs, and the feeling they could go on forever. If we had hospitalisations and deaths at 5x their current level but the weekly rates were falling, I bet the mood would be more upbeat.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
It's a 94% reduction for hospitalisations vs 98% for Pfizer. I think it's pretty good. The big downside is the necessary longer gap to get there and the additional week post second dose. A full course of AZ will need 11 weeks while a full course of Pfizer only needs 5 weeks or 6 weeks for Moderna. What's very interesting is the booster jab study which shows a third dose of AZ in Pfizer or AZ recipients is about the same and extremely strong and has very, very high modelled efficacy based on neutralising antibodies (something like 98% against symptomatic infection).
All the evidence is that mixing and matching increases efficacy quite significantly, and I'm struggling to see why the UK isn't doing more of it.
Lack of private sector experience at the top IMO. We're forced to maximise output with what we have in the private sector. The public sector doesn't have to do that so will stay within its straitjacket.
It's a shame, because I suspect that AZ plus Pfizer/Moderna probably increases protection from hospitalisation up to 99%, and would allow us to be much more efficient in getting through our existing vaccine stocks.
All the evidence is that mixing and matching increases efficacy quite significantly, and I'm struggling to see why the UK isn't doing more of it.
The people in charge are idiots
Small scale research for mix and match has only been published in the past few weeks....
Indeed and I'm pretty sure when the JCVI made a similar decision to delay the second dose from 4 weeks to 12 weeks our least favourite tweet bot was copying and pasting basically all of the blue tick wankers saying it would kill everyone.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
It's a 94% reduction for hospitalisations vs 98% for Pfizer. I think it's pretty good. The big downside is the necessary longer gap to get there and the additional week post second dose. A full course of AZ will need 11 weeks while a full course of Pfizer only needs 5 weeks or 6 weeks for Moderna. What's very interesting is the booster jab study which shows a third dose of AZ in Pfizer or AZ recipients is about the same and extremely strong and has very, very high modelled efficacy based on neutralising antibodies (something like 98% against symptomatic infection).
All the evidence is that mixing and matching increases efficacy quite significantly, and I'm struggling to see why the UK isn't doing more of it.
Because with the groups we're currently vaccinating mixing and matching [ie using AZ in the young] is deadlier than the pandemic according to the JCVI. So why the hell would you do that?
Because 98% efficacy for Pfizer for under-40s which is all we have left to jab is quite frankly good enough.
Eeking out a marginal increased gain in efficacy from 98% as a starting point isn't worth risking avoidable deaths from clots when the people we're vaccinating aren't at real risk of death from Covid and are eligible for a 98% efficacy vaccine anyway.
The most depressing thing. It's clear there are people on both sides of the debate who just don't want this thing to end. Covid is their new cause. I can't get my head round it. I'm sick of it. I want it over now. 6:40 PM · Jul 5, 2021·"
Eh? Fresh from his fiasco in Batley and Spen ("impossible for Labour to win"), Hodges now seems to have gone mad. Is there anyone on the planet who is actually enjoying the pandemic and hopes it will continue?
It does seem like it sometimes.
I think there's plenty of people who like it because it gives them the perfect excuse to attack the government.
God knows I'm not fan of the Conservatives but there's no particular reason to think anyone else would have done a better or worse job - it's just a thing that happened, we all muddled through it the best we could, we have a route back to some sort of normal now, move on. Yes, mistakes were made, but is there any reason to suspect other parties wouldn't have made the same mistakes, or different ones? Not really, no.
That's the problem here, people think that politicians can Do Things (TM) and make it all go away, and if it hasn't gone away that's because they didn't do the right Good Things and therefore must be incompetent. They might well be incompetent, but it's pretty unlikely there's anyone else who is competent to do the magic people want.
Well fine, but meanwhile there are a 195 other countries and of those that are most like us a large number have handled the crisis with dramatically fewer deaths. The UK stands out as relatively less successful in their effectiveness both in containing and treating the outbreak. While they did have some successes in the speed of early vaccination, that is now beaten by several European countries and of course the UK now has a total number of active cases greater than the entire EU. One of the reasons for this is the extraordinary complacency which the government adopted on numerous occasions, particularly with regard to quarantine from India a few weeks ago.
While we know that "Yes, Minister" was more a documentary than it seemed at the time, and doubtless any public inquiry will be scuppered and sent into the long grass Sir Humphrey style, the fact is that the Johnson government could learn some powerful lessons.
But they won´t.
You may think that shows the EU in a better light. I think you either don't understand the statistics or are being deliberately obtuse.
Great that the EU is catching up on vaccinations. Hopefully for them they'll be where we are in a couple of months time.
To be fair, it should probably be on a population adjusted basis.
The most depressing thing. It's clear there are people on both sides of the debate who just don't want this thing to end. Covid is their new cause. I can't get my head round it. I'm sick of it. I want it over now. 6:40 PM · Jul 5, 2021·"
Eh? Fresh from his fiasco in Batley and Spen ("impossible for Labour to win"), Hodges now seems to have gone mad. Is there anyone on the planet who is actually enjoying the pandemic and hopes it will continue?
It does seem like it sometimes.
I think there's plenty of people who like it because it gives them the perfect excuse to attack the government.
God knows I'm not fan of the Conservatives but there's no particular reason to think anyone else would have done a better or worse job - it's just a thing that happened, we all muddled through it the best we could, we have a route back to some sort of normal now, move on. Yes, mistakes were made, but is there any reason to suspect other parties wouldn't have made the same mistakes, or different ones? Not really, no.
That's the problem here, people think that politicians can Do Things (TM) and make it all go away, and if it hasn't gone away that's because they didn't do the right Good Things and therefore must be incompetent. They might well be incompetent, but it's pretty unlikely there's anyone else who is competent to do the magic people want.
Well fine, but meanwhile there are a 195 other countries and of those that are most like us a large number have handled the crisis with dramatically fewer deaths. The UK stands out as relatively less successful in their effectiveness both in containing and treating the outbreak. While they did have some successes in the speed of early vaccination, that is now beaten by several European countries and of course the UK now has a total number of active cases greater than the entire EU. One of the reasons for this is the extraordinary complacency which the government adopted on numerous occasions, particularly with regard to quarantine from India a few weeks ago.
While we know that "Yes, Minister" was more a documentary than it seemed at the time, and doubtless any public inquiry will be scuppered and sent into the long grass Sir Humphrey style, the fact is that the Johnson government could learn some powerful lessons.
But they won´t.
This is one of these things where an outdated perception sticks. We did have the worst death rate in Europe but don't any longer. If you take out microstates then our rate is 13th of 40 in Europe.
If we compare against the median country Sweden our rate is 30% higher. On the other hand if you compare against the worst West European countries, Belgium and Italy then we are 15% lower
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who has suffered from COVID-19 for more than a week, is in “serious but stable” condition,
On a ventilator
It seems he hadn't had his second (AZ) jab yet.
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
It seems pretty clear that the mRNA vaccines are better - due to being able to be fully vaccinated more than a month earlier if nothing else.
But the AZ vaccine is certainly "good enough" in the circumstances of a global pandemic where there is still a huge shortfall in available doses.
AZ is also ramping up production quite nicely too. Output will supposedly hit the 300m per month target later this year, earlier than they had initially forecast. Switching over to a new variant buster vaccine will be easy too as the process should be able to accept it without knowing it's changed very much.
I find it hard to forgive those politicians and their apologists who did so much to trash the reputation of the AZ vaccine. Maybe I won't.
I was glad to see that Ireland changed its policy on using AZ, and made it available to those youngsters who wanted it.
Few weeks....so 6 weeks ..and just 600 people...the german one was what 2-3 weeks ago and again very small.
I think it will work, but 600 people for a new vaccine would be just the first initial human trial stage wouldn't it. The only government willing to risk results from tiny trials like that is Russia.
Especially when we a) have effective vaccines and b) fairly easy to retool mRNA to target the new variants.
The most depressing thing. It's clear there are people on both sides of the debate who just don't want this thing to end. Covid is their new cause. I can't get my head round it. I'm sick of it. I want it over now. 6:40 PM · Jul 5, 2021·"
Eh? Fresh from his fiasco in Batley and Spen ("impossible for Labour to win"), Hodges now seems to have gone mad. Is there anyone on the planet who is actually enjoying the pandemic and hopes it will continue?
It does seem like it sometimes.
I think there's plenty of people who like it because it gives them the perfect excuse to attack the government.
God knows I'm not fan of the Conservatives but there's no particular reason to think anyone else would have done a better or worse job - it's just a thing that happened, we all muddled through it the best we could, we have a route back to some sort of normal now, move on. Yes, mistakes were made, but is there any reason to suspect other parties wouldn't have made the same mistakes, or different ones? Not really, no.
That's the problem here, people think that politicians can Do Things (TM) and make it all go away, and if it hasn't gone away that's because they didn't do the right Good Things and therefore must be incompetent. They might well be incompetent, but it's pretty unlikely there's anyone else who is competent to do the magic people want.
Well fine, but meanwhile there are a 195 other countries and of those that are most like us a large number have handled the crisis with dramatically fewer deaths. The UK stands out as relatively less successful in their effectiveness both in containing and treating the outbreak. While they did have some successes in the speed of early vaccination, that is now beaten by several European countries and of course the UK now has a total number of active cases greater than the entire EU. One of the reasons for this is the extraordinary complacency which the government adopted on numerous occasions, particularly with regard to quarantine from India a few weeks ago.
While we know that "Yes, Minister" was more a documentary than it seemed at the time, and doubtless any public inquiry will be scuppered and sent into the long grass Sir Humphrey style, the fact is that the Johnson government could learn some powerful lessons.
But they won´t.
This is one of these things where an outdated perception sticks. We did have the worst death rate in Europe but don't any longer. If you take out microstates then our rate is 13th of 40 in Europe.
If we compare against the median country Sweden our rate is 30% higher. On the other hand if you compare against the worst West European countries, Belgium and Italy then we are 15% lower
And that's assuming the data from other countries is as accurate and honest as the UK's.
We're going to unlock now and let it rip. Thanks to our brilliant vaccines when you get it now it will only kill a small percentage of you. if we don't unlock now then "when the virus has an edge, has an advantage in the colder months" we'll have to delay again.
That's true for essentially everywhere. In time almost the entire human race will either get the vaccine or covid. Any country that doesn't want to be lockdown for a very long time will have the same dilemma.
We have a world leading vaccine program, which means that we're in a position to face what we do post-vaccines before other countries lead the way on that.
Some people have taken too seriously the "every death is a tragedy" philosophy and seem to think that we can actually abolish death. Death is part of the circle of life, an average of 1665 people die every single day in this country and 99% of those right now are not from Covid. There are fates worse than death, like spending months or years not living properly because of a crippling paranoid fear that things could get worse.
Spending months not living life to the full isn't really worse than death.
Speak for yourself.
600,000 people die a year from natural causes. From when we went into lockdown to end of July about 800,000 people will have died from entirely natural causes having lost the last months/year of their lives having been incapable of legally seeing their family and friends like normal.
Even looking from just March when we eliminated excess deaths having vaccinated the very vulnerable already, about 200,000 people will have died from natural causes. More people will have died without being able to legally see their family and friends since we eliminated excess deaths, than have died from Covid during the pandemic.
Care homes have become prisons preventing people from seeing their family, friends and loved ones and even now that they do allow visits its very clinical and restricted still even more restricted than the rule of 6 at homes. Again, most care home residents die from natural causes within 12 months of admission to a home, most people admitted 12 months ago will have died without ever being able to normally see their loved ones again even if they never got Covid.
As it stands for every person who dies from Covid right now, 99 are dying not from Covid. 99 to 1 people are dying not living long enough to see the end of lockdown and resuming their lives.
Life is for living. Simply being alive until you're not is not living and we can't get this time back. An order of magnitude more people have lost their lives during lockdown than have died due to the virus.
Yes but given the choice between living half cock for a year or so or dying, almost all would go for the not dying option.
The most depressing thing. It's clear there are people on both sides of the debate who just don't want this thing to end. Covid is their new cause. I can't get my head round it. I'm sick of it. I want it over now. 6:40 PM · Jul 5, 2021·"
Eh? Fresh from his fiasco in Batley and Spen ("impossible for Labour to win"), Hodges now seems to have gone mad. Is there anyone on the planet who is actually enjoying the pandemic and hopes it will continue?
It does seem like it sometimes.
I think there's plenty of people who like it because it gives them the perfect excuse to attack the government.
God knows I'm not fan of the Conservatives but there's no particular reason to think anyone else would have done a better or worse job - it's just a thing that happened, we all muddled through it the best we could, we have a route back to some sort of normal now, move on. Yes, mistakes were made, but is there any reason to suspect other parties wouldn't have made the same mistakes, or different ones? Not really, no.
That's the problem here, people think that politicians can Do Things (TM) and make it all go away, and if it hasn't gone away that's because they didn't do the right Good Things and therefore must be incompetent. They might well be incompetent, but it's pretty unlikely there's anyone else who is competent to do the magic people want.
Well fine, but meanwhile there are a 195 other countries and of those that are most like us a large number have handled the crisis with dramatically fewer deaths. The UK stands out as relatively less successful in their effectiveness both in containing and treating the outbreak. While they did have some successes in the speed of early vaccination, that is now beaten by several European countries and of course the UK now has a total number of active cases greater than the entire EU. One of the reasons for this is the extraordinary complacency which the government adopted on numerous occasions, particularly with regard to quarantine from India a few weeks ago.
While we know that "Yes, Minister" was more a documentary than it seemed at the time, and doubtless any public inquiry will be scuppered and sent into the long grass Sir Humphrey style, the fact is that the Johnson government could learn some powerful lessons.
It certainly could, it cannot be argued there have been optimal outcomes all the way through, but is it actually the case 'those that are most like us' have had 'dramatically fewer deaths'. I haven't seen the excess death figures for awhile, but on declared ones Italy, UK, Spain, France and Poland, the bigger nations, all seem broadly similar, with only Germany appreciably better. So I'm curious if on a more global comparison of 'simiar' nations the UK is much worse - possibly, as Europe's figures are bad compared to other places.
It doesn't obviate the need to learn lessons or speak to the overall success, or not, of the government's strategies, but if there is to be a judgement based on proportionate deaths, I'm not sure if the government won't be able to claim a middling outcome in the end.
As for the speed of vaccination vs the start, well, that's sort of missing the point I think - all European nations likely have the ability to vaccinate lots of people very quickly, and if they don't they really should, getting it rolled out quickly was the critical thing early in 2021, not whether people would be able to go fast eventually.
Spanish food is fantastic. It is absolutely light years ahead of French food and probably about a mile ahead of Italian. It is the best food in the western world at the moment
Italian food is incredible, very tough to beat if you're able to avoid eating pizza and pasta all the time. Calabrian food is, IMO, the best Europe has got to offer.
Calabrian food is indeed superb. As is the food in Trentino, up in the half German north. Overall I’d say Spanish food wins out by a margin tho. At the moment
It is way too easy to eat badly in Italy. Rome, Venice, Milan, Florence, too often it is mediocre. It’s partly tourism of course. It’s like expecting to eat well in Leicester square. Venice is particularly ridiculous. You have to pay £100 a head to get a reasonable meal
Mysterious
I don’t think that’s true; you just have to go where the locals do and be willing to order in italian.
Bit too late to make any difference though, we'd need to have done it in January but the research was still in its infancy back then. Look at how the media and blue tick wankers responded to the JCVI decision to delay second doses by 12 weeks. It would have been that x10 for mixing vaccines. I mean we had the whole furore over that PHE paper saying that in rare cases where they couldn't locate the first dose record or the patient didn't have their vaccine card a different jab may end up being given. Turn that into actual policy. Good luck.
The other undercurrent which concerns me is the triumphalism of the anti-maskers. Yes, not having to wear masks on trains, buses, tubes and in supermarkets will be a relief (though I'd like to see the hand sanitiser kept available). However, what worries me is those who, for whatever reason, choose to continue to wear a mask.
It is absolutely their right so to do and that right must be respected - my fear is there will be incidents where individuals with masks are victimised and abused by those not wearing them. I hope I'm wrong but we know how "aggressive" crowds can be, especially when alcohol is involved.
I'm hoping the tolerant good nature of the British public will come to the fore and we'll respect those who choose to be more risk-averse (it's their life after all).
I suspect there will also be plenty of instances of the reverse, of people being harangued for not wearing masks because other folk get irate about it.
Mainly the other way, I think. Once masks are voluntary the statement will be to wear one. And it's people making a statement who stand out and attract praise or hostility rather than those who go with the flow.
If all these polls have any grounding in the real world, it still seems like more people will voluntarily wear than won't, in which case it will be more of a statement to not wear one, at least in the immediate future. But I guess we will just have to wait and see what happens.
I don't believe for a moment that more people will coluntarily wear one than not. They said that in America. And as soon as the mandate went, so did the masks. If people genuinely thought it the right thing to do, they would mask up even where they don't have to. They don't@ wherever people have a choice, the vast majority discard their masks.
The most depressing thing. It's clear there are people on both sides of the debate who just don't want this thing to end. Covid is their new cause. I can't get my head round it. I'm sick of it. I want it over now. 6:40 PM · Jul 5, 2021·"
Eh? Fresh from his fiasco in Batley and Spen ("impossible for Labour to win"), Hodges now seems to have gone mad. Is there anyone on the planet who is actually enjoying the pandemic and hopes it will continue?
It does seem like it sometimes.
I think there's plenty of people who like it because it gives them the perfect excuse to attack the government.
God knows I'm not fan of the Conservatives but there's no particular reason to think anyone else would have done a better or worse job - it's just a thing that happened, we all muddled through it the best we could, we have a route back to some sort of normal now, move on. Yes, mistakes were made, but is there any reason to suspect other parties wouldn't have made the same mistakes, or different ones? Not really, no.
That's the problem here, people think that politicians can Do Things (TM) and make it all go away, and if it hasn't gone away that's because they didn't do the right Good Things and therefore must be incompetent. They might well be incompetent, but it's pretty unlikely there's anyone else who is competent to do the magic people want.
Well fine, but meanwhile there are a 195 other countries and of those that are most like us a large number have handled the crisis with dramatically fewer deaths. The UK stands out as relatively less successful in their effectiveness both in containing and treating the outbreak. While they did have some successes in the speed of early vaccination, that is now beaten by several European countries and of course the UK now has a total number of active cases greater than the entire EU. One of the reasons for this is the extraordinary complacency which the government adopted on numerous occasions, particularly with regard to quarantine from India a few weeks ago.
While we know that "Yes, Minister" was more a documentary than it seemed at the time, and doubtless any public inquiry will be scuppered and sent into the long grass Sir Humphrey style, the fact is that the Johnson government could learn some powerful lessons.
But they won´t.
You may think that shows the EU in a better light. I think you either don't understand the statistics or are being deliberately obtuse.
Great that the EU is catching up on vaccinations. Hopefully for them they'll be where we are in a couple of months time.
To be fair, it should probably be on a population adjusted basis.
We will also surely see employers increasing worried by security aspects of WFH and imposing more restrictions.
The client for the project I am working on at the moment wanted to install some app on my phone that would have allowed them to remotely restore it to factory defaults. Ostensibly this was to be able to delete company data in case I lost it, but no way I was giving their IT department that power over my private property.
So now I don't see their teams messages or emails on my phone.
Bit too late to make any difference though, we'd need to have done it in January but the research was still in its infancy back then. Look at how the media and blue tick wankers responded to the JCVI decision to delay second doses by 12 weeks. It would have been that x10 for mixing vaccines. I mean we had the whole furore over that PHE paper saying that in rare cases where they couldn't locate the first dose record or the patient didn't have their vaccine card a different jab may end up being given. Turn that into actual policy. Good luck.
Focusing purely on this country, what has the opposition actually argued for in the pandemic? Basically all they've done is said they'd have done things "better". They'd have made test and trace better, they'd have had a better vaccine rollout, they'd have had a better furlough scheme, they'd have had better border controls, they'd have made better decisions based on "the science". It's just cheap talk. I'm not sure at any point they've ever really contributed much original to the whole handling of the pandemic, or even explained how those things could actually have been done better, just that they ought to have been.
Hey, maybe they really would have just done everything better, or maybe it'd have just been exactly the same but with different personalities. We'll never know.
The opposition has been consistently shit, and has made essentially no useful contributions at all. I think given the job the opposition would have actually been worse than the Tories, because Boris doesn't do micro-managing or follow any doctrine, so to an extent his lack of principles and laziness has at least enabled competent people to get on with the job without the PM messing them around. I think any opposition government would have interfered quite a bit more.
As we contemplate an autumn of elections across Europe, into the pot we can now throw the Czech Republic which goes to the polls on 8/9 October.
The latest Median poll (changes from the 2017 election):
ANO 2011: 26% (-4) Pirates & Mayors: 22% (+6) Together: 20% (-2.5) Freedom & Direct Democracy: 8% (-2.5) The Oath Movement: 6% (+6) Communist Party: 6% (-2) Social Democrats: 5% (-2) Tricolour Citizens Movement: 3.5% (+3.5) Greens: 2% (+0.5)
The current Government is made up of ANO 2011, led by Prime Minister Andrej Babis and the Social Democrats and supported in terms of supply & confidence by the Communists. In 2017, the governing parties won 37% but are now on 31% with the main gainers not the centre-right Together (SPOLU) grouping but the Pirates & Mayors led by Ivan Bartos.
As for some of the minor parties, The Oath Movement (Prisaha) was launched earlier this year as an anti-corruption party by Robert Slachta, a former senior Police officer and head of Czech customs.
Tricolour is the party led by the son of Vaclav Klaus, who is unimaginatively called Vaclav Klaus Junior. His father was Czech President from 2003 to 2013 having succeeded Vaclav Havel, arguably the founder of the modern Czech state having led the Velvet Revolution against the Communists in 1989.
The general standard of food in France is in my experience far better than the general standard in Italy. There is a lot of overpriced trash in Italian cities. France is expensive but there are fewer tourist traps blocking up entire streets with rubbish.
Few weeks....so 6 weeks ..and just 600 people...the german one was what 2-3 weeks ago and again very small.
I think it will work, but 600 people for a new vaccine would be just the first initial human trial stage wouldn't it.
We already know the safety profiles of the individual vaccines, though, so all we care about is stimulating a greater immune response.
And 600 is a good first trial....more research required, which is happening.
If AZN is thought to be too risky by the JCVI, they aren't going to approve something on the back of one 600 person trial...not when we have other options that are 90 odd percentage effective against serious illness.
I think it will work, but 600 people for a new vaccine would be just the first initial human trial stage wouldn't it. The only government willing to risk results from tiny trials like that is Russia.
Bit too late to make any difference though, we'd need to have done it in January but the research was still in its infancy back then. Look at how the media and blue tick wankers responded to the JCVI decision to delay second doses by 12 weeks. It would have been that x10 for mixing vaccines. I mean we had the whole furore over that PHE paper saying that in rare cases where they couldn't locate the first dose record or the patient didn't have their vaccine card a different jab may end up being given. Turn that into actual policy. Good luck.
Fair point.
Like you I think as soon as we found out we should have just done it and kept out fingers crossed because ultimately it's a pandemic and the risks of not doing it are higher because you get less or worse overall efficacy. To me it's about getting as many people to 99% efficacy against hospitalisation as quickly as possible. If AZ followed by Pfizer 4 weeks later is the way to do then do that for all over 40s. In fact any nation which hasn't advanced their vaccine programme to our level should do it now. Do Pfizer and Moderna for under 40s once the mixed doses are done. It wouldn't even take that long and we'd have had close to 100% utilisation of AZ and more Pfizer leftover for under 40s from our 40m order.
The general standard of food in France is in my experience far better than the general standard in Italy. There is a lot of overpriced trash in Italian cities. France is expensive but there are fewer tourist traps blocking up entire streets with rubbish.
I think anyone who goes to Italy should know not to eat on the main street or near any tourist place.
The most depressing thing. It's clear there are people on both sides of the debate who just don't want this thing to end. Covid is their new cause. I can't get my head round it. I'm sick of it. I want it over now. 6:40 PM · Jul 5, 2021·"
Eh? Fresh from his fiasco in Batley and Spen ("impossible for Labour to win"), Hodges now seems to have gone mad. Is there anyone on the planet who is actually enjoying the pandemic and hopes it will continue?
It does seem like it sometimes.
I think there's plenty of people who like it because it gives them the perfect excuse to attack the government.
God knows I'm not fan of the Conservatives but there's no particular reason to think anyone else would have done a better or worse job - it's just a thing that happened, we all muddled through it the best we could, we have a route back to some sort of normal now, move on. Yes, mistakes were made, but is there any reason to suspect other parties wouldn't have made the same mistakes, or different ones? Not really, no.
That's the problem here, people think that politicians can Do Things (TM) and make it all go away, and if it hasn't gone away that's because they didn't do the right Good Things and therefore must be incompetent. They might well be incompetent, but it's pretty unlikely there's anyone else who is competent to do the magic people want.
Well fine, but meanwhile there are a 195 other countries and of those that are most like us a large number have handled the crisis with dramatically fewer deaths. The UK stands out as relatively less successful in their effectiveness both in containing and treating the outbreak. While they did have some successes in the speed of early vaccination, that is now beaten by several European countries and of course the UK now has a total number of active cases greater than the entire EU. One of the reasons for this is the extraordinary complacency which the government adopted on numerous occasions, particularly with regard to quarantine from India a few weeks ago.
While we know that "Yes, Minister" was more a documentary than it seemed at the time, and doubtless any public inquiry will be scuppered and sent into the long grass Sir Humphrey style, the fact is that the Johnson government could learn some powerful lessons.
But they won´t.
You may think that shows the EU in a better light. I think you either don't understand the statistics or are being deliberately obtuse.
Great that the EU is catching up on vaccinations. Hopefully for them they'll be where we are in a couple of months time.
To be fair, it should probably be on a population adjusted basis.
Like this? Doesn't really change the point.
I wasn't trying to change the point, merely emphasising that it's a bit misleading to use absolute numbers when one entity is a lot bigger than another.
If I claimed that Ireland was doing really well because they had zero deaths today or yesterday, I'd hope you'd shoot me down on the basis that Ireland has one twelfth the number of people as the UK.
Spanish food is fantastic. It is absolutely light years ahead of French food and probably about a mile ahead of Italian. It is the best food in the western world at the moment
Italian food is incredible, very tough to beat if you're able to avoid eating pizza and pasta all the time. Calabrian food is, IMO, the best Europe has got to offer.
Calabrian food is indeed superb. As is the food in Trentino, up in the half German north. Overall I’d say Spanish food wins out by a margin tho. At the moment
It is way too easy to eat badly in Italy. Rome, Venice, Milan, Florence, too often it is mediocre. It’s partly tourism of course. It’s like expecting to eat well in Leicester square. Venice is particularly ridiculous. You have to pay £100 a head to get a reasonable meal
Mysterious
I don’t think that’s true; you just have to go where the locals do and be willing to order in italian.
Funny how that rule seems to hold in most European countries but falls down completely in small town UK. Eat where the locals do and you'll be enjoying Cajun chicken with skin-on jacket shells and a 250 mil fishbowl of Pinot Grigio. It is also a shaky approach at best in the USA, even in the big cities.
Focusing purely on this country, what has the opposition actually argued for in the pandemic? Basically all they've done is said they'd have done things "better". They'd have made test and trace better, they'd have had a better vaccine rollout, they'd have had a better furlough scheme, they'd have had better border controls, they'd have made better decisions based on "the science". It's just cheap talk. I'm not sure at any point they've ever really contributed much original to the whole handling of the pandemic, or even explained how those things could actually have been done better, just that they ought to have been.
Hey, maybe they really would have just done everything better, or maybe it'd have just been exactly the same but with different personalities. We'll never know.
The opposition has been consistently shit, and has made essentially no useful contributions at all. I think given the job the opposition would have actually been worse than the Tories, because Boris doesn't do micro-managing or follow any doctrine, so to an extent his lack of principles and laziness has at least enabled competent people to get on with the job without the PM messing them around. I think any opposition government would have interfered quite a bit more.
you, Pirate Britain Libertarian Right Wing Populists. You deserve a proper talking down to on the politics and science of this.
Where the government are this evening is ignorant and wrong. Where Starmer and Labour are this evening is spot on. Clear pandemic water between the two main party’s now. The government are no longer following science at all, this simply about the politics of over promising in the first place and having too many looneys on the back benches.
Here’s scientific fact for you, we need masks and other measures to protect the vaccines, just allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines. That is science fact.
It’s totally irresponsible of government not to lead on mask wearing, and to open up so quickly. They are simply sloping shoulders onto business how to protect employees and customers, not taking the lead. The government are murdering the still much needed test and trace and isolating, and that is disgraceful at this stage.
Spanish food is fantastic. It is absolutely light years ahead of French food and probably about a mile ahead of Italian. It is the best food in the western world at the moment
Three weeks ago, I went to Yountville, home of the French Laundry.
We ate there. And it was good.
But it was nowhere near as good as the Tapas bar we ate at the previous evening.
Good Spanish food is amazing.
For our anniversary, this past weekend we went to Per Se, Thomas Keller's NYC restaurant, which has three Michelin stars. It was good, very good in places, but it wasn't as good as one or two star places we've been to in France and the UK. I do think the theory that the Michelin inspectors go down a star in Europe outside France, and go down two stars outside of Europe has some validity.
I have a number of criticisms of the Michelin guide:
1. They really love stuffy, conservative French cooking. The reality is that The Waterside Inn is good, but it's not inventive or exciting. Louis XVI in Monaco is the same. I could happily pass on either.
2. They are very slow to adjust scores down. A lot of places were once great... are now only OK... and yet seem to cling to a couple of Michelin stars.
3. There seems to be a special "half a star" bump that happens in rural France. A lot of pretty average places seem to get stars because there's nowhere else decent nearby.
4. Some cuisines seem to be totally ignored by the judges: Spanish and Japanese cuisines are both criminally under rated
1 & 2 I think are two sides of the same coin. There is a tendency to reverence for the big names that is not always justified.
I agree with 3, but 4 is getting somewhat better.
2 star is the sweet spot for me - genuinely good cooking that has not lost touch with reality. 1 star is highly variable. That said, there are some amazing 3 stars - Ducasse at Plaza Athenee was incredible.
Personally, I think Le Gavroche is the best restaurant in London - it's inventive and amazingly consistent. It also bears out your "two Michelin stars are best" theory.
If you haven't tried Core by Clare Smyth that's well worth a visit. 3 star now, but 2 star when I went pre-covid.
Focusing purely on this country, what has the opposition actually argued for in the pandemic? Basically all they've done is said they'd have done things "better". They'd have made test and trace better, they'd have had a better vaccine rollout, they'd have had a better furlough scheme, they'd have had better border controls, they'd have made better decisions based on "the science". It's just cheap talk. I'm not sure at any point they've ever really contributed much original to the whole handling of the pandemic, or even explained how those things could actually have been done better, just that they ought to have been.
Hey, maybe they really would have just done everything better, or maybe it'd have just been exactly the same but with different personalities. We'll never know.
The opposition has been consistently shit, and has made essentially no useful contributions at all. I think given the job the opposition would have actually been worse than the Tories, because Boris doesn't do micro-managing or follow any doctrine, so to an extent his lack of principles and laziness has at least enabled competent people to get on with the job without the PM messing them around. I think any opposition government would have interfered quite a bit more.
you, Pirate Britain Libertarian Right Wing Populists. You deserve a proper talking down to on the politics and science of this.
Where the government are this evening is ignorant and wrong. Where Starmer and Labour are this evening is spot on. Clear pandemic water between the two main party’s now. The government are no longer following science at all, this simply about the politics of over promising in the first place and having too many looneys on the back benches.
Here’s scientific fact for you, we need masks and other measures to protect the vaccines, just allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines. That is science fact.
It’s totally irresponsible of government not to lead on mask wearing, and to open up so quickly. They are simply sloping shoulders onto business how to protect employees and customers, not taking the lead. The government are murdering the still much needed test and trace and isolating, and that is disgraceful at this stage.
"allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines"
Spanish food is fantastic. It is absolutely light years ahead of French food and probably about a mile ahead of Italian. It is the best food in the western world at the moment
Italian food is incredible, very tough to beat if you're able to avoid eating pizza and pasta all the time. Calabrian food is, IMO, the best Europe has got to offer.
Calabrian food is indeed superb. As is the food in Trentino, up in the half German north. Overall I’d say Spanish food wins out by a margin tho. At the moment
It is way too easy to eat badly in Italy. Rome, Venice, Milan, Florence, too often it is mediocre. It’s partly tourism of course. It’s like expecting to eat well in Leicester square. Venice is particularly ridiculous. You have to pay £100 a head to get a reasonable meal
Yet much of Spain avoids this even though it is often hugely touristy. Like here, in puerto de Soller. Tons of tourists yet the food is superb (the guide books promised me it would be, and they were right)
Mysterious
One of the best meals I ever had was a simple Caprese Salad at Le Grottelle in Capri
The general standard of food in France is in my experience far better than the general standard in Italy. There is a lot of overpriced trash in Italian cities. France is expensive but there are fewer tourist traps blocking up entire streets with rubbish.
Particularly the roadside stuff. Better a salade lyonnaise or even a croque monsieur than a dry panini or oily arancini.
The general standard of food in France is in my experience far better than the general standard in Italy. There is a lot of overpriced trash in Italian cities. France is expensive but there are fewer tourist traps blocking up entire streets with rubbish.
I spent a lot of time in Milan at one point and struggled to find good eating experiences. Hampered by not being a big pasta fan.
I think it will work, but 600 people for a new vaccine would be just the first initial human trial stage wouldn't it. The only government willing to risk results from tiny trials like that is Russia.
Canada - mix and match, long dosing gap to get through as much as the population as possible, 12+, good takeup. After a slow start it's the best rollout in the world.
Spanish food is fantastic. It is absolutely light years ahead of French food and probably about a mile ahead of Italian. It is the best food in the western world at the moment
Three weeks ago, I went to Yountville, home of the French Laundry.
We ate there. And it was good.
But it was nowhere near as good as the Tapas bar we ate at the previous evening.
Good Spanish food is amazing.
For our anniversary, this past weekend we went to Per Se, Thomas Keller's NYC restaurant, which has three Michelin stars. It was good, very good in places, but it wasn't as good as one or two star places we've been to in France and the UK. I do think the theory that the Michelin inspectors go down a star in Europe outside France, and go down two stars outside of Europe has some validity.
I wasn’t that impressed by Per Se and I’m a fan of Keller’s work
Focusing purely on this country, what has the opposition actually argued for in the pandemic? Basically all they've done is said they'd have done things "better". They'd have made test and trace better, they'd have had a better vaccine rollout, they'd have had a better furlough scheme, they'd have had better border controls, they'd have made better decisions based on "the science". It's just cheap talk. I'm not sure at any point they've ever really contributed much original to the whole handling of the pandemic, or even explained how those things could actually have been done better, just that they ought to have been.
Hey, maybe they really would have just done everything better, or maybe it'd have just been exactly the same but with different personalities. We'll never know.
The opposition has been consistently shit, and has made essentially no useful contributions at all. I think given the job the opposition would have actually been worse than the Tories, because Boris doesn't do micro-managing or follow any doctrine, so to an extent his lack of principles and laziness has at least enabled competent people to get on with the job without the PM messing them around. I think any opposition government would have interfered quite a bit more.
you, Pirate Britain Libertarian Right Wing Populists. You deserve a proper talking down to on the politics and science of this.
Where the government are this evening is ignorant and wrong. Where Starmer and Labour are this evening is spot on. Clear pandemic water between the two main party’s now. The government are no longer following science at all, this simply about the politics of over promising in the first place and having too many looneys on the back benches.
Here’s scientific fact for you, we need masks and other measures to protect the vaccines, just allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines. That is science fact.
It’s totally irresponsible of government not to lead on mask wearing, and to open up so quickly. They are simply sloping shoulders onto business how to protect employees and customers, not taking the lead. The government are murdering the still much needed test and trace and isolating, and that is disgraceful at this stage.
Hilariously it does the exact opposite. An infection after two doses acts as an effective booster.
As we contemplate an autumn of elections across Europe, into the pot we can now throw the Czech Republic which goes to the polls on 8/9 October.
The latest Median poll (changes from the 2017 election):
ANO 2011: 26% (-4) Pirates & Mayors: 22% (+6) Together: 20% (-2.5) Freedom & Direct Democracy: 8% (-2.5) The Oath Movement: 6% (+6) Communist Party: 6% (-2) Social Democrats: 5% (-2) Tricolour Citizens Movement: 3.5% (+3.5) Greens: 2% (+0.5)
The current Government is made up of ANO 2011, led by Prime Minister Andrej Babis and the Social Democrats and supported in terms of supply & confidence by the Communists. In 2017, the governing parties won 37% but are now on 31% with the main gainers not the centre-right Together (SPOLU) grouping but the Pirates & Mayors led by Ivan Bartos.
As for some of the minor parties, The Oath Movement (Prisaha) was launched earlier this year as an anti-corruption party by Robert Slachta, a former senior Police officer and head of Czech customs.
Tricolour is the party led by the son of Vaclav Klaus, who is unimaginatively called Vaclav Klaus Junior. His father was Czech President from 2003 to 2013 having succeeded Vaclav Havel, arguably the founder of the modern Czech state having led the Velvet Revolution against the Communists in 1989.
"Pirates & Mayors" sounds like an interesting variation on Vicars & Tarts for a party theme.
On the great foodie debate: yes, Spanish can be superb. But there are also some truly dire tourist-trap restaurants in Spain.
If you can afford it, London can be excellent. Latest find: Sola Soho. Mediterranean/Californian. A real treat.
That looks excellent, will book it for our wedding anniversary next month!
Agreed. I’d never heard of it, but just checked it out and it looks superb. Bookmarked. Thanks to @Richard_Nabavi for the tip.
To be clear, it's not cheap! I wouldn't bother with the tasting menu, the ' Prix fixe' is quite sufficient. (Actually I think most tasting menus are too long and get tedious). The Californian wine list is exceptionally good. Good service, informal style.
Best news by far for over a year.Might even buy a paper tomorrow for the first time in that long. Will look forward to going on public transport on the 19th July (without a mask) . Not sure I want to before that though having to wear a mask does my head in
Totally agree with you. Women love wearing masks and will go on wearing Covid masks for years to come. But for us blokes it’s a total embarrassment, it makes us look scared of the dark.
We need to get rid of car seatbelts and crash helmets for motorbikes next, they are huge authoritarian squeeze on our civil liberties.
State state go away! We want our freedom back.
i presume you are being sarcastic but also weirdly bringing perceived sexism into it? Strange .
Comments
*HOWEVER*, like the UK, they have probably vaccinated enough of the vulnerable to make a really big difference to hospitalisations and deaths.
It is way too easy to eat badly in Italy. Rome, Venice, Milan, Florence, too often it is mediocre. It’s partly tourism of course. It’s like expecting to eat well in Leicester square. Venice is particularly ridiculous. You have to pay £100 a head to get a reasonable meal
Yet much of Spain avoids this even though it is often hugely touristy. Like here, in puerto de Soller. Tons of tourists yet the food is superb (the guide books promised me it would be, and they were right)
Mysterious
I have been running the gauntlet with the great unwashed for months now, so I am not shielding. I did regret that, as I was herded onto the OCS terminal bus at Bristol Airport last week (for work) along with another ninety nine people, and the driver yelling "get back, get back", I need to get more on.
It's all well and good you asserting my white-flaggery to Covid as you bang away on your keyboard all day from the safety of your hermetically sealed bunker.
Venice has got some really amazing restaurants but they're a pretty long walk away from anything touristy.
Nice enough out of season
No doubt I will incur the ire of PB, especially that of the PB Tories, but I just can't shake off the feeling that the AZ vaccine just isn't good enough. Here in the US it's been almost exclusively the two mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna, plus < 10% on the one-shot J&J vaccine). Here the gap between the two shots has been just two to three weeks, and pretty much everyone who wants the vaccine could be done now. So far it seems that around 99% of new cases we're getting are among unvaccinated people.
600,000 people die a year from natural causes. From when we went into lockdown to end of July about 800,000 people will have died from entirely natural causes having lost the last months/year of their lives having been incapable of legally seeing their family and friends like normal.
Even looking from just March when we eliminated excess deaths having vaccinated the very vulnerable already, about 200,000 people will have died from natural causes. More people will have died without being able to legally see their family and friends since we eliminated excess deaths, than have died from Covid during the pandemic.
Care homes have become prisons preventing people from seeing their family, friends and loved ones and even now that they do allow visits its very clinical and restricted still even more restricted than the rule of 6 at homes. Again, most care home residents die from natural causes within 12 months of admission to a home, most people admitted 12 months ago will have died without ever being able to normally see their loved ones again even if they never got Covid.
As it stands for every person who dies from Covid right now, 99 are dying not from Covid. 99 to 1 people are dying not living long enough to see the end of lockdown and resuming their lives.
Life is for living. Simply being alive until you're not is not living and we can't get this time back. An order of magnitude more people have lost their lives during lockdown than have died due to the virus.
While we know that "Yes, Minister" was more a documentary than it seemed at the time, and doubtless any public inquiry will be scuppered and sent into the long grass Sir Humphrey style, the fact is that the Johnson government could learn some powerful lessons.
But they won´t.
As long as you do some absurd foam or soil and a ‘tasting menu’ you get one star. In France. I’ve had literally disgusting Michelin starred meals in France.
I am pretty sure this is some patriotic endeavor to keep the flag of French gastronomy flying high. But in the end it is counter productive
This is not Francophobia. Virtually all of my amazing gastronomic experiences as a lad and a young man happened in France. But that was 30 years ago. Very very few in the last 20 years
I do love a grand old fashioned French brasserie however. Oysters and andouillettes and red banquettes and steak frites. They are great
The world has changed because a lot of people have seen the possibilities of doing things differently. The 2-hour commute, the scrum down at the supermarket, all those tiresome chores which took us out - all gone. We can now go out much more for pleasure (whatever form that takes).
We are redefining life at a fundamental level - our perceptions of "home", "work" and "leisure" are all being challenged and overturned. I'd go as far as to argue the 20th Century lifestyle is now ending and the 21st Century lifestyle is emerging.
My colleague, working and living 10 miles from Stornaway, doing everything he used to do when he lived in Dorking and commuted. He and his family have found what they were looking for - he called it "peace". It's not for me or Mrs Stodge but it will appeal to many.
The experience of this has, I believe, caused a lot of us to rethink how we life and who we are and that will change society, community and a whole lot of other things in ways we haven't yet fully grasped.
1. They really love stuffy, conservative French cooking. The reality is that The Waterside Inn is good, but it's not inventive or exciting. Louis XVI in Monaco is the same. I could happily pass on either.
2. They are very slow to adjust scores down. A lot of places were once great... are now only OK... and yet seem to cling to a couple of Michelin stars.
3. There seems to be a special "half a star" bump that happens in rural France. A lot of pretty average places seem to get stars because there's nowhere else decent nearby.
4. Some cuisines seem to be totally ignored by the judges: Spanish and Japanese cuisines are both criminally under rated
One of the absolute worst things about PB this pandemic is the tendency from certain quarters to slide back to trashing the vaccines in the face of all evidence. Sometimes it’s all the vaccines that are the target of their superstition, other times it’s just AZ.
But the AZ vaccine is certainly "good enough" in the circumstances of a global pandemic where there is still a huge shortfall in available doses.
But it's not clear to me why - other than history - Le Pré Catelan, with its dated decor and boring food is even rated, let alone given three stars. Still, it's entertaining to be in the middle of Paris's arboreal red light district.
As for the availability to everyone in the USA, that's easier to achieve when so many people don't want the vaccines there. As it stands more than two-thirds of the British public [all people, including kids] have been single-dose vaccinated now, while only 54.5% of Americans have. The UK has a high share of fully-vaccinated public than the USA does, and the gap is only growing day by day.
The major difference between the UK and USA which it comes to vaccinations is vaccine refusal amongst Americans, not supply.
There is the interaction with fellow students, the post lecture discussions, the peer to peer learning where things aren't understood. How do you get all that if you're just sat in your room for 90% of the time getting stuff through a video on a laptop?
I agree with 3, but 4 is getting somewhat better.
2 star is the sweet spot for me - genuinely good cooking that has not lost touch with reality. 1 star is highly variable. That said, there are some amazing 3 stars - Ducasse at Plaza Athenee was incredible.
And there's the option of giving a booster shot with a mRNA vaccine which is a combo very possibly better than mRNA alone.
I expect time will tell.
How long will that last? Some American employers are already looking to cut salaries of employees WFH in cheap states. Actual cuts might not come here but lower starting salaries probably will.
So while work is in transition, it might be distorted by the comfortable, middle-aged, middle class office workers who are well paid and have the space to work remotely.
We will also surely see employers increasing worried by security aspects of WFH and imposing more restrictions.
Hey, maybe they really would have just done everything better, or maybe it'd have just been exactly the same but with different personalities. We'll never know.
You may think that shows the EU in a better light. I think you either don't understand the statistics or are being deliberately obtuse.
Great that the EU is catching up on vaccinations. Hopefully for them they'll be where we are in a couple of months time.
We need to get rid of car seatbelts and crash helmets for motorbikes next, they are huge authoritarian squeeze on our civil liberties.
State state go away! We want our freedom back.
Perusing Twitter this evening, and I really shouldn't have, the wall of doom was quite something. It's the most downbeat I can remember things for a long time. Almost as if, with the current government's history of managing Covid, the very act of opening up on the 19th is casting an evil jinx on this pandemic. That and the abominable weather.
I do think people need to keep looking at the stats, and the stats say that the epidemic is hitting primarily the unvaxxed (there will always be examples of the opposite, of course), the CFR continues to fall, and with every day that passes about 10x as many people develop antibodies as a result of vaccination vs those getting them through infection.
I think it's first and foremost the psychological effect of upwards trending graphs, and the feeling they could go on forever. If we had hospitalisations and deaths at 5x their current level but the weekly rates were falling, I bet the mood would be more upbeat.
When it comes generally research into COVID, the UK has done a huge amount, not just vaccine, but via things like REACT trials.
If you can afford it, London can be excellent. Latest find: Sola Soho. Mediterranean/Californian. A real treat.
Because 98% efficacy for Pfizer for under-40s which is all we have left to jab is quite frankly good enough.
Eeking out a marginal increased gain in efficacy from 98% as a starting point isn't worth risking avoidable deaths from clots when the people we're vaccinating aren't at real risk of death from Covid and are eligible for a 98% efficacy vaccine anyway.
If we compare against the median country Sweden our rate is 30% higher. On the other hand if you compare against the worst West European countries, Belgium and Italy then we are 15% lower
I was glad to see that Ireland changed its policy on using AZ, and made it available to those youngsters who wanted it.
I think it will work, but 600 people for a new vaccine would be just the first initial human trial stage wouldn't it. The only government willing to risk results from tiny trials like that is Russia.
Especially when we a) have effective vaccines and b) fairly easy to retool mRNA to target the new variants.
It doesn't obviate the need to learn lessons or speak to the overall success, or not, of the government's strategies, but if there is to be a judgement based on proportionate deaths, I'm not sure if the government won't be able to claim a middling outcome in the end.
As for the speed of vaccination vs the start, well, that's sort of missing the point I think - all European nations likely have the ability to vaccinate lots of people very quickly, and if they don't they really should, getting it rolled out quickly was the critical thing early in 2021, not whether people would be able to go fast eventually.
They said that in America. And as soon as the mandate went, so did the masks.
If people genuinely thought it the right thing to do, they would mask up even where they don't have to. They don't@ wherever people have a choice, the vast majority discard their masks.
So now I don't see their teams messages or emails on my phone.
The latest Median poll (changes from the 2017 election):
ANO 2011: 26% (-4)
Pirates & Mayors: 22% (+6)
Together: 20% (-2.5)
Freedom & Direct Democracy: 8% (-2.5)
The Oath Movement: 6% (+6)
Communist Party: 6% (-2)
Social Democrats: 5% (-2)
Tricolour Citizens Movement: 3.5% (+3.5)
Greens: 2% (+0.5)
The current Government is made up of ANO 2011, led by Prime Minister Andrej Babis and the Social Democrats and supported in terms of supply & confidence by the Communists. In 2017, the governing parties won 37% but are now on 31% with the main gainers not the centre-right Together (SPOLU) grouping but the Pirates & Mayors led by Ivan Bartos.
As for some of the minor parties, The Oath Movement (Prisaha) was launched earlier this year as an anti-corruption party by Robert Slachta, a former senior Police officer and head of Czech customs.
Tricolour is the party led by the son of Vaclav Klaus, who is unimaginatively called Vaclav Klaus Junior. His father was Czech President from 2003 to 2013 having succeeded Vaclav Havel, arguably the founder of the modern Czech state having led the Velvet Revolution against the Communists in 1989.
If AZN is thought to be too risky by the JCVI, they aren't going to approve something on the back of one 600 person trial...not when we have other options that are 90 odd percentage effective against serious illness.
If I claimed that Ireland was doing really well because they had zero deaths today or yesterday, I'd hope you'd shoot me down on the basis that Ireland has one twelfth the number of people as the UK.
Where the government are this evening is ignorant and wrong. Where Starmer and Labour are this evening is spot on. Clear pandemic water between the two main party’s now. The government are no longer following science at all, this simply about the politics of over promising in the first place and having too many looneys on the back benches.
Here’s scientific fact for you, we need masks and other measures to protect the vaccines, just allowing infections to rip in a mostly doubled jabbed population erodes the efficacy of the vaccines. That is science fact.
It’s totally irresponsible of government not to lead on mask wearing, and to open up so quickly. They are simply sloping shoulders onto business how to protect employees and customers, not taking the lead. The government are murdering the still much needed test and trace and isolating, and that is disgraceful at this stage.
How does that work?
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g187783-d1034460-Reviews-Le_Grottelle-Capri_Island_of_Capri_Province_of_Naples_Campania.html
After a slow start it's the best rollout in the world.
I'll come as H'Angus the Monkey.