Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

Punters bet on the 2021 reintroduction of Enlgand COVID restrictions – politicalbetting.com

1234568»

Comments

  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,786

    He'd have struggled with selling it to a sceptical nation though.
    What you really want is a League if National Heroes-

    Thatch for the science and being decisive.
    Major for humanity and concern for the struggling.
    Blair for the motivational speeches.
    Brown for the money.
    Cameron for tucking the nation up and making them feel safe.
    May for the rules.

    Johnson can go and do some colouring in or something.
    Whoops, I briefly misread the third word on your Cameron entry. Or did you mistype?
  • Cyclefree said:

    Had a wisdom tooth out earlier today.

    Mouth still hurts like hell.

    Feeling very sorry for myself.

    Sympathies as I know from personal experience just how painful that can be
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 43,724
    edited October 2021
    HYUFD said:

    Well no surprise there then, you would probably have given the Falklands away free to Argentina in 1982 too
    Mate. Calm down a bit. Take a walk round the block and come back refreshed.

    You've got yourself into a bit of a hole here.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 60,364

    I was involved when Brown introduced working tax credits, the predecessor to that part of UC. The argument for them is this. Say you're unemployed and your skill levels are low, so you're getting £X a week in JSA and no employer really wants you at minimum wage level £Y. Why not give the employer something like £X towards employing you for a while? The cost to the taxpayer is zero as they'd otherwise pay you £X to do nothing. The business is delighted to get you for a mere £Y-£X. And you're getting £Y-£X more per week, and you're back in the workforce, used to the habit of working regularly again and with luck learning new skills.

    In the long term, we'd like employers to create jobs for lower-skilled staff with higher wages, as in Norway, and the market will tend to nudge that along, as we're seeing with some unpopular jobs now, from care workers to parking wardens to lorry drivers. But in the short term, to get people off UC, there's a good case for it - and it does require a generous taper to be attractive.
    I think there is a cost to the taxpayer. Employers that are currently offering the minimum wage for some jobs would be more than happy to further reduce that wage and allow UC to pick up the slack.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 39,823

    Oh, absolutely. We'd be in a very different place without them.

    We're looking at covid being maybe 2-3 times as deadly as influenza for all ages for those vaccinated (versus 20-30x for the unvaccinated). It still causes a significant problem because when it's rampant, it would also end up infecting the majority of the population and doing so in a few months (vice about a quarter to a third for an influenza outbreak).

    So, with the vaxxed, we're looking at a situation about 5-10x as bad as a bad seasonal influenza outbreak. Which can cause considerable damage and unacceptable pressure on hospitals - but in comparison to last year, it's not even in the same league, let alone division.

    Add to that the data from the booster shots looking like they reduce danger/deadliness by over a further factor of ten, and when the booster rollout is done, we're done.

    As it stands, thanks to the vaccines, we actually only need to reduce R by about 20% to hit stability until the booster rollout is done. Could have been done by vaxxing all the teens (and should have been done by now).

    Or maybe masking and encouraging WFH until the booster programme is out might be enough. Certainly no need for a hard lockdown, in my considered opinion.

    Absolute worst-case I can see would be a 4-5 week return to Step 3 of the roadmap, but I suspect the masks/WFH would probably do the trick. It'll take us 4-5 weeks to see the benefit of a much accelerated teen jabs/booster jabs programme, so that should see us emerge from it.
    You're overthinking this. By all accounts (literally every doctor I know) the people with severe COVID are unvaccinated or very old and already in death's waiting room. Suggesting NPIs to halt those deaths seems unwise given the economic hit it entails.
  • HYUFD said:

    Well no surprise there then, you would probably have given the Falklands away free to Argentina in 1982 too
    You are just continuing to make a fool of yourself

    Maybe think before you post
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 127,113

    You are just continuing to make a fool of yourself

    Maybe think before you post
    No surprise at your response either!
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 4,926
    edited October 2021
    BigRich said:

    FWIW,

    COVID numbers look bad at the moment, Its depressing and I understand the calls for Lockdown/passports or other restrictions, But:

    Ironic as this sounds numbers are so high that they cant stay this high for long. in particular I am taking about 10-14 Year olds. in the Office for nautical statistics weekly COVID servery, where they go out and test a random group of people across age range and geography to get an pitcher of what is actually happening, in the last week, which is the week ending 9 October, 8.1% of 10-14 Year olds had COVID, 8.1% that's not a typo, link here:

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/15october2021

    scroll down to fig 4.

    At that rate 12 weeks and 3 days and the whole cohort while have had it, and if you are interested 12 weeks and 3 days means 28th December. but its not going to be like that for 4 reasons:

    1) That rate will not hold steady for 12 weeks, its already gone up, which brings that date forward,

    2) Many many kids have already had it which again brings it forward.

    3) The dammed delayed Vaccine roll out for dins is at last happening if terribly showily, it will again bring it forward.

    4) We will never get to 100% 99% maybe, but not quite 100%

    The last 2 of those are pretty small, but the first 2 will have a big effect. so when will be get to the HIT, I don't know, but maybe soon, if 8.1% had it week ending 9 October, and last week was more than that, and this week seems to be even larger then a quarter of all that age group have had it in 3 weeks, maybe more than a quarter. we could have gone form 50& to 80%.

    The last panic about cases we had was just before the numbers started falling unexpectedly in the summer.

    I reckon this panic about cases is also kicking in just before the numbers start falling.

    It might be next week during half term, or it might even be the end of this week. There doesn't seem to be much transmission between vaccinated groups so once the children have all had it we'll lose a lot of the reservoir of infection.

    It is interesting that the last spike was mostly caused by older children and young adults but this time that group has tracked in a similar way to all the other age groups.

  • I was involved when Brown introduced working tax credits, the predecessor to that part of UC. The argument for them is this. Say you're unemployed and your skill levels are low, so you're getting £X a week in JSA and no employer really wants you at minimum wage level £Y. Why not give the employer something like £X towards employing you for a while? The cost to the taxpayer is zero as they'd otherwise pay you £X to do nothing. The business is delighted to get you for a mere £Y-£X. And you're getting £Y-£X more per week, and you're back in the workforce, used to the habit of working regularly again and with luck learning new skills.

    In the long term, we'd like employers to create jobs for lower-skilled staff with higher wages, as in Norway, and the market will tend to nudge that along, as we're seeing with some unpopular jobs now, from care workers to parking wardens to lorry drivers. But in the short term, to get people off UC, there's a good case for it - and it does require a generous taper to be attractive.
    The problem is the implementation led to a roughly 100% taper in Browns system.

    It's now a roughly 75% taper with UC. Better but still atrocious.

    The taper is anything but generous.

    Also of course combining that system with free movement within Europe meant we ended up paying UC to people who were not claiming unemployment benefits because they weren't unemployed in the UK. Instead they've come to work for a minimum wage job.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,795

    Mr. Leon, I'd refuse both.

    The point of vaccination is to resume normal life, not as a pretext to impose social ostracism on those with the temerity to decline them.

    And yes, yes, I have been double-vaccinated and encourage others to do likewise. But the insanity we're seeing in Italy/France where, it seems, those without their papers are cut adrift from work and society is wholly unacceptable.

    Letting fear make you ready and willing to throw away the freedom to simply go about your business without presenting papers is not something I think conducive to good policy.

    There are also other steps that could be taken, such as resuming social distancing.

    Social distancing is another no. It’s not a benign restriction. It means no team sports, half full stadiums, no dancing or parties. It is deeply abhorrent - anathema to the Social Animal.
  • HYUFD said:

    No surprise at your response either!
    Given in your best interest
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 44,818

    Already had the vaxport discussion with a progressive type. They were all in favour until I pointed out that illegal immigrants, with no papers....
    It's rare that a 'progressive type' comes away intact from an encounter with you, Malmesbury, isn't it?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 45,399

    Sympathies as I know from personal experience just how painful that can be
    Sympathies to Ms Free as well.

    As an aside, having three wisdom teeth removed at once is a happy memory to me. It occurred a short time after Mrs J and I got together, and her reaction to the op - I was put full under - made me realise she was a keeper. ;)She was, and is lovely.

    I doubt I've ever done anything to make her think I'm a keeper ...
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 44,620
    TOPPING said:

    Mate. Calm down a bit. Take a walk round the block and come back refreshed.

    You've got yourself into a bit of a hole here.
    He'll have to join this ...

    https://mpani.org/
  • paulyork64paulyork64 Posts: 2,507
    new thread
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,538
    edited October 2021
    NEW THREAD
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 44,818
    Foxy said:

    The film is just a series of male fantasies strung together.
    Yes, it sort of is. And it's relentlessly trite. However the Thompson storyline does stand out for me as NOT trite. I go with one star (from 5) instead of none solely for this reason.
  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,795
    5m adults still not has the jab...yikes.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 44,818
    Leon said:

    Hahahaha

    HAHAHA
    Did I put the 'joke' symbol on that post? No, I don't think I did. So ...
  • Leon said:

    Hahahaha

    HAHAHA
    No, he is right. Brown did galvanise the international response to the GFC. Major and Blair had BSE and foot and mouth but nothing on this scale. So for the pandemic, Brown for Labour. Possibly Boris, despite the many missteps, for the Conservatives. Yes, Mrs Thatcher did come good over AIDS but would she have been so keen to open the spending taps? Churchill was not an option but "We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be."

    Whatever the cost may be.
  • Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 5,045
    MaxPB said:

    You're overthinking this. By all accounts (literally every doctor I know) the people with severe COVID are unvaccinated or very old and already in death's waiting room. Suggesting NPIs to halt those deaths seems unwise given the economic hit it entails.
    Most recent four weeks on record, serious illness resulting in hospitalisation by age group and vaccination status (they don't add up completely because single jabbed and only-double-jabbed-a-few-days-ago make up the balance):



    And the potential need isn't for the unvaxxed. Personally, I'd say sod them. The problem is that their insistence on relying on natural immunity invariably expires the moment they get seriously ill and they go to unnatural hospitals and take up unnatural beds and require the attention of doctors and nurses giving them unnatural drugs (sometimes experimental) and unnatural ICU support.

    Which screws things up for literally everyone else.

    A&E unavailability, ambulances stacked outside the hospital unable to unload patients, longer and longer waits for everything - the potential for much of the NHS being unavailable to everyone else is the risk.

    If the unvaxxed would have the courage of their convictions and quietly expire at home, we'd be fine.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 5,398
    edited October 2021
    kinabalu said:

    That is 'Plan B'. This "vaccine passports" thing is getting undue focus from both ends imo. It's neither the solution to living with covid nor some slippery slope to a gestapo society. I'm against fwiw, it fails the cost/benefit test unless done properly and we wouldn't do it properly.
    The problem is that the urge to create a centralised ID database is absolutely irresistable for any government. And once it is there, it will never, ever, be removed.
  • NEW THREAD

  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,651
    @HYUFD must be a fiendishly clever creation of our much lamented and departed fiction writer @SeanT.

    Probably a character in some new dystopian thriller involving Catalonia, Scotland and now Antrim. Not quite sure where Epping Forest fits in. Perhaps it is where all the DNA tests for people visiting their overseas families are stored.

    But it has to be the explanation. Surely. I refuse to believe that a real person could talk such utter shite about Ireland. (And Scotland. And Spain.) There again he is - apparently - a member of the Tory party. So that might explain it.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 54,236
    kinabalu said:

    It's rare that a 'progressive type' comes away intact from an encounter with you, Malmesbury, isn't it?
    Bit like fish vs the dynamite fisherman. When you are deliberately dropping hand grenades...

    The point I was making to the person in question is that illiberal measures always sound good. Until one of your "in" groups gets hit by them.

    A year from now, 10, they'll swing back to the belief that they can make people...better. And I do not hold to that.
This discussion has been closed.