Like a lot of his solutions, Phillips perhaps has a bigger upside than the status quo/Starmer, but comes with an asymmetrically even bigger downside too.
Europe are going to get declining effectiveness of vaccines as they head more properly into the winter. Everyone needs to trust the vaccines though and get jabbed/boosted.
Morocco has just banned flights from UK nl and Germany but not Belgium.
I also think there's other ways of getting people into the vaccine funnel and getting those 4m single jabbed people to get their second doses.
My idea would be a one off £250 for every single fully vaccinated person who has had all of their eligible doses by December 20th with the money paid on December 21st.
The Christmas vaccine dividend. It would probably cost about £16-18bn but compared to the alternatives that's actually a pretty small cost. Give it to kids too if they've had their dose(s).
Even if we get just 3m of those single jabbed into double jabbed and get 2m unvaccinated into fully vaccinated it pushes us towards herd immunity. We need 54m people fully vaccinated to get there, a policy like this would get us most of the way. Add in prior infections and we'd be at the threshold.
What's happening at the moment is our exit wave is filling in the vaccine gaps, that's basically kids and unvaccinated people. The last time I checked it would be 400k hospitalisations overall. Our aim should be policies to either not have them at all (the NHS refusing to treat them) or bring that number down by 80% with vaccines.
We need to, once again, recognise the issue before we start to impose restrictions on people who have done the right thing and got vaccinated.
As I've posted before, I think a payment is the more effective option (or definite restricitions on unvaxxed, like vaccine passports, making life a pain). Many unvaccinated are so due to lethargy and/or seeing Covid as low risk. Bit of hassle, very little perceived benefit. I don't think that a threat to limit healthcare would motivate that much for people who simply think they are not going to get seriously ill.
As you say, low cost compared to alternatives. Even ecnouraging WFH would probably require support packages for city centre businesses screwed again, particularly in the run-up to Christmas.
I guess the other alternative is where does a similar amount of money get you in terms of emergency Covid healthcare facilities. Probably not all that far, I guess...
The other thing that needs pushing is advice to pregnant mothers. Spell out the risks of Covid to the unborn children (there are some studies now on premature birth etc) and there will be an increasing number of pregnancies with Covid vaccine that have completed now, so there should be some reassurance in stats from those. Also spell out the risks to the mothers - less powerful than the risks to the babies for most mothers, in my experience, but family members can play a part. It's distasteful, but focus on the families and children grieving for mothers who did not get a vaccine.
Sky now leading with the BMA accusing HMG of wilful negligence over plan B
This is becoming ridiculous
You can disagree with government action but wilfully negligent is hyperbole
And you could not make if up, their reporter from a school is wearing a mask - below his nose !!!!!
Tory critics of Labour - They haven't opposed the government, it is terrible, we need strong opposition Labour - We oppose the government for once Tory critics of Labour - No not like that!! Quieten down
The quote refers to is from the BMA, no mention of the Labour party at all, Unless you are saying that the BMA is in effect the same as the labour party?
Mea culpa, misread it for some reason. Apologies to BigG.
I also think there's other ways of getting people into the vaccine funnel and getting those 4m single jabbed people to get their second doses.
My idea would be a one off £250 for every single fully vaccinated person who has had all of their eligible doses by December 20th with the money paid on December 21st.
The Christmas vaccine dividend. It would probably cost about £16-18bn but compared to the alternatives that's actually a pretty small cost. Give it to kids too if they've had their dose(s).
Even if we get just 3m of those single jabbed into double jabbed and get 2m unvaccinated into fully vaccinated it pushes us towards herd immunity. We need 54m people fully vaccinated to get there, a policy like this would get us most of the way. Add in prior infections and we'd be at the threshold.
What's happening at the moment is our exit wave is filling in the vaccine gaps, that's basically kids and unvaccinated people. The last time I checked it would be 400k hospitalisations overall. Our aim should be policies to either not have them at all (the NHS refusing to treat them) or bring that number down by 80% with vaccines.
We need to, once again, recognise the issue before we start to impose restrictions on people who have done the right thing and got vaccinated.
That's the best and most productive suggestion so far.
Earlier in the thread it was mentioned how borrowing since April to September is already £43bn less than forecast. That's the boon we get from an open society that some people wish to throw away.
If we were to reinvest that cash as a one-off dividend to the vaccinated then that would avoid hospitalisations far more than any mask mandates, or social distancing etc realistically could. And come at a tiny fraction of the cost of another lockdown.
I'd say £500 for every fully vaccinated person including children.
The "sheer scale of the latest numbers" is down almost entirely to the mixed messaging, heel dragging and completely shit schools/kids rollout.
I don't agree - I think the public must bear some personal responsibility here as well - the rapid abandonment of masks for example, really predated any government actions. The reluctance to tolerate any restrictions on personal freedoms, frequently shown on here, to me seems childish at times. In Spain, where I live masks, for example, remain pretty universal indoors and I sense the attitude of mind is that this is a small sacrifice for staying a little safer. Rather like the attitude to ID cards and Covid certificates - 'not ideal but the benefits outweigh the risks'. The UK attitude seems quite different and that is fair enough, but it is not consequence free.
Just blaming the government/authority all the time just come across as an abdication of personal responsibility.
Because relative to vaccines cloth masks are absolute garbage. Scotland's kept them and what kind of material difference has it made other than making the country a more miserable place than England?
Plenty of people wear masks that are effective. Try comparing Spain & the UK current data. Besides it's not just about mask wearing, it's about attitude. From outside things in the UK are looking quite grim now - a view confirmed by many UK contacts.
From inside thing in the UK are pretty great right now. We've dropped the masks and all the other gibberish and are getting back to normal.
The attitude should be that Covid is an issue for the past. Vaccines saw to that. Get your jab, if required get a booster, and live your life normally.
I have no interest in any precautions other than vaccines. Washing your hands etc is just basic decency and not especially Covid related.
It’s not past Philip, it’s very much still here. We need to flatten the curve in the least intrusive and economically damaging way. That may involve the more widespread use of masks again and more encouragement to WFH. We need tools we can draw on which don’t bring everything to a halt.
Yes , tell that to the families of the 1000 a week that are dying, what an absolute bampot he is.
People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end. Upto ten thousand a week die on average anyway.
What matters isn't that death comes to us all eventually, but what we do with our lives. Ceasing to live our lives because of a paralysing fear of death isn't healthy and is a great waste of life.
Incarcerating people in their homes so they don't see any loved ones and wither away and die of natural causes isn't "better".
How crassly moronic.
"Up to ten thousand a week die on average anyway."
Well, that's fine then. How many extra people are you willing to die just so you can feel the fresh air on your bumfluff-ridden face? Why not twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? All for your 'freedom' ...
I think that question is a bit unfair, a touch of emotional shaming going on, but will give my answer as its an anonymous forum. I probably wouldn't share this view in public but think if there were an extra five thousand a week dying we should have more legal restrictions. At an extra two thousand a week no legal restrictions. So somewhere between those numbers for me.
How about you?
Certainly not 'as many as it takes', which PT said.
The problem with deaths is that it is a lagging factor. Before vaccines, cases went up, then hospitalisations, and then deaths. Now that the link between cases and hospitalisations has been weakened, the first sign we have of trouble is rising hospitalisations.
And I'll therefore swerve your question by saying it's the wrong one, if we're talking about restrictions. The first sign we'll get of big problems is from hospitalisations, and that's what we'd need to react to. So perhaps the 1,200-1,500 daily admissions that we had back in early November would be when we'd have to slam the handbrake on - particularly if they are increasing rapidly.
You asked the question of someone else so a bit of a cop out to now say it is the wrong question. I don't think using wrong questions for emotional shaming will help us get to the right answer.
I'm not 'emotional shaming'. PT's view is that, now we have vaccines, any number of people ("as many as it takes") should die in order to protect his freedom. He said: "People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end."
Which whilst true, could be used to excuse anything causing a life to end. Which is why I asked how many is acceptable. He gave his answer.
What is the alternative?
I believe I gave my view below. We're currently at a manageable, if tragic, level of deaths and hospitalisations. If hospitalisations go up to a certain level - perhaps 1,200 to 1,500 a day, then we need to seriously consider more restrictions.
I'm not saying we need them at the moment. But my view is that we need to be open to the need for more restrictions, and not just callously let any number of people die (and, incidentally, cause the hospital system to fail, potentially affecting all of us).
Until we are in a more stable situation, we've got to be prepared to react.
Again and do what? Whose businesses are you prepared to destroy and lives ruin pursuing an impossible goal?
What's the impossible goal? All we're talking about is managing an epidemic within NHS capacity.
Do you think the government should do whatever it takes to protect the NHS from having a difficult winter? If necessary, should we shut schools? Should we (try to) cancel Christmas?
Everyone keeps postulating these hypothetical (!) extremes.
This isn't a vanilla 'difficult winter' for the NHS - it's a rather special one since they have the usual (flu) PLUS 3rd wave covid PLUS a big pandemic backlog.
And the question is, should plan B (more masks + more wfh) be actioned in order to stop it falling over?
That's a No right now - ok - but why on earth should we rule it out?
What I'm saying is, I don't think masks and WFH will make much difference. And if the government says, we need to do X to help get on top of hospitalisations, what happens if X doesn't work? Does the government say, "ah well, we can't do any more?" I don't think so and certainly the opposition wouldn't accept that as being the right and pragmatic conclusion to come to.
Ok. So your fear is that the only thing to stop the NHS collapsing this winter is the return of Full Lockdown. I don't share that fear but even if I did I'd at least want to try some milder measures first. In fact I'd think it was imperative to try some milder measures first, given the horrors of Full Lockdown. I can't see the logic in wanting these milder measures ruled out.
"I'm comfortable with a permanent 10% rise in death rates so I don't have to wear a mask for 40 minutes in the shop, but I am uncomfortable being emotionally shamed for saying so"
"I'm comfortable damaging the education of kids to keep a few sick oldies alive for a few hours more, but I'm uncomfortable being emotionally shamed for saying so"
"I'm comfortable destroying jobs and damaging people's mental health to delay but not stop anti-vaxxers being infected, but I'm uncomfortable being emotionally shamed for saying so"
Wearing a mask on the bus is destroying your mental health? I'm very sorry to hear that.
Some people might not feel comfortable getting on a bus if there is a mask mandate, because it suggests that it isn't safe. They may therefore become somewhat trapped, which isn't good for anyone.
The reality is that - as we were told at the very beginning - masks might work if used properly, but they very rarely are. The effect is marginal at best.
I went to a meeting recently at which people were wearing masks. Fine. I put one on out of politeness. Then I found that half the people present took them off to speak so that they could be heard. Doh! What was the point of that?
Because if one person in that room was sick, and was wearing a mask, the chances of anyone else in that room becoming sick were reduced. Even more so if they weren't speaking, but even if they only wore the mask for part of the time.
We all really need to get past the false dichotomy, namely that if you can't completely avoid risk, it's pointless trying to even reduce it.
The more masks are used, the lower the rate and severity of transmission. Fact. If a speaker takes a mask off for the duration of their speech, that adds to the risk, but it doesn't go from 0% before to 100% afterwards. Don't be trapped into thinking that "imperfect" is the same as "worthless".
Just because you say "Fact." does not make it a fact.
Scotland and Wales have kept mask mandates. So has TFL. They haven't made a damned bit of difference. So not a fact.
What makes a difference is meaningful restrictions. Vaccines, social distancing, lockdowns etc - and apart from vaccines those are devastating. Masks only partially worn, only part of the time, is just irrelevant gesturism.
PT, you are a tunnel-vision psycho with an allergy to nuance. I can't talk to you about this, or anything, so please fuck off.
For the benefit of everyone else, looking at bulk numbers and single policy decisions proves nothing: simply put, a policy might be making a positive (or negative) impact but other social, policy, demographic, or geographical differences might make it hard to see just by looking at Malmsbury's graphs or similar. Don't be tempted by the siren-song of absolutists who will tell you that something is either brilliant or useless. If you have any doubts at all, ask yourself whether whoever is speaking is likely to be driven mostly by their political ideology. In the case of the Adam Smith Ayatollah, the answer is sadly "yes, always".
Translation: Looking at evidence proves nothing. Simply put I (Farooq) have no evidence for my claims, making it hard to see. So please ignore the evidence and just accept my word as "Fact."
What about your political ideology? Are you immune from that affecting your views? If you have some evidence that mask mandates actually work, real-life evidence not wishful thinking, then please present it. Because we've had a large scale real life trial and the data is not promising.
Can I respectively suggest that the evidence of observation is not really scientific if you don't take into account all the variables. I will wear a mask in shops because I believe that any virus I "may" have would be held back in my mask (partially or fully), rather than emitted into the atmosphere of a shop. I obviuosly don't wear a mask if I am outside and nowhere near any strangers. The figures published include the effect of non-mask usage on public transport, mixing together of children in homes and schools with no masks, boogeying in discotheques with no masks, shouting at each other etc. To say that mask wearing doesn't work just look at the numbers is not the whole story.
Well England, Wales and Scotland have had roughly the same style of population, roughly the same social distancing restrictions etc and the key variable different is that two out of three have required mask mandates and one out of three has not. Wales and Scotland should show the benefits of a mask wearing mandate with England as the control group for not having such a mandate.
If mask wearing made a significant and meaningful difference that should be discernible by now. Is it? And if its not, why should it suddenly be going forwards in England?
On the comments that a minor improvement in transmission reduction won't make much difference.
If we're on an R of 1.1 and a minor change could get us down to 0.9 (eg masks, encouraged wfh), then what's the difference when we start with 50,000 cases after 5 cycles?
It's over 80,000 to under 30,000.
Under 30,000 is a level that's very likely sustainable for hospitalisations in the NHS Over 80,000 is twice the level cases were two weeks ago, giving hospitalisations a week ago which was when the alarm bells started to ring.
It obviously makes a big bloody difference, and those arguing the opposite really damage their case overall.
I do like the dividend to the vaccinated idea as well. Serious carrot time.
HoC - as I predicted yesterday. Javid was quite embarrassed when asked at the press conference why, if the guidance was to wear masks in enclosed or crowded spaces, that didn't apply to Tories in the HoC.
Seems it did not apply at the labour party conference and as has just been evidenced on Sky news, their reporter was wearing a mask - below his nose !!!!!!
So does this whataboutery negate what the BMA are warning about? Because once we've stopped pointing fingers we still need to actually do something.
Wilful negligence is unnecessary hyperbole and mask wearing to be effective needs to be worn properly
We do not know whether it is hyperbole or not. What have the government been told, what data do they have, what recommendations are they avoiding?
They have a track record of saying "we follow the science" when they need political cover for unpopular decisions, and then saying "we make the decisions" when the science says turn left and they are under pressure to turn right.
The "sheer scale of the latest numbers" is down almost entirely to the mixed messaging, heel dragging and completely shit schools/kids rollout.
I don't agree - I think the public must bear some personal responsibility here as well - the rapid abandonment of masks for example, really predated any government actions. The reluctance to tolerate any restrictions on personal freedoms, frequently shown on here, to me seems childish at times. In Spain, where I live masks, for example, remain pretty universal indoors and I sense the attitude of mind is that this is a small sacrifice for staying a little safer. Rather like the attitude to ID cards and Covid certificates - 'not ideal but the benefits outweigh the risks'. The UK attitude seems quite different and that is fair enough, but it is not consequence free.
Just blaming the government/authority all the time just come across as an abdication of personal responsibility.
Because relative to vaccines cloth masks are absolute garbage. Scotland's kept them and what kind of material difference has it made other than making the country a more miserable place than England?
Plenty of people wear masks that are effective. Try comparing Spain & the UK current data. Besides it's not just about mask wearing, it's about attitude. From outside things in the UK are looking quite grim now - a view confirmed by many UK contacts.
From inside thing in the UK are pretty great right now. We've dropped the masks and all the other gibberish and are getting back to normal.
The attitude should be that Covid is an issue for the past. Vaccines saw to that. Get your jab, if required get a booster, and live your life normally.
I have no interest in any precautions other than vaccines. Washing your hands etc is just basic decency and not especially Covid related.
It’s not past Philip, it’s very much still here. We need to flatten the curve in the least intrusive and economically damaging way. That may involve the more widespread use of masks again and more encouragement to WFH. We need tools we can draw on which don’t bring everything to a halt.
Yes , tell that to the families of the 1000 a week that are dying, what an absolute bampot he is.
People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end. Upto ten thousand a week die on average anyway.
What matters isn't that death comes to us all eventually, but what we do with our lives. Ceasing to live our lives because of a paralysing fear of death isn't healthy and is a great waste of life.
Incarcerating people in their homes so they don't see any loved ones and wither away and die of natural causes isn't "better".
How crassly moronic.
"Up to ten thousand a week die on average anyway."
Well, that's fine then. How many extra people are you willing to die just so you can feel the fresh air on your bumfluff-ridden face? Why not twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? All for your 'freedom' ...
I think that question is a bit unfair, a touch of emotional shaming going on, but will give my answer as its an anonymous forum. I probably wouldn't share this view in public but think if there were an extra five thousand a week dying we should have more legal restrictions. At an extra two thousand a week no legal restrictions. So somewhere between those numbers for me.
How about you?
Certainly not 'as many as it takes', which PT said.
The problem with deaths is that it is a lagging factor. Before vaccines, cases went up, then hospitalisations, and then deaths. Now that the link between cases and hospitalisations has been weakened, the first sign we have of trouble is rising hospitalisations.
And I'll therefore swerve your question by saying it's the wrong one, if we're talking about restrictions. The first sign we'll get of big problems is from hospitalisations, and that's what we'd need to react to. So perhaps the 1,200-1,500 daily admissions that we had back in early November would be when we'd have to slam the handbrake on - particularly if they are increasing rapidly.
You asked the question of someone else so a bit of a cop out to now say it is the wrong question. I don't think using wrong questions for emotional shaming will help us get to the right answer.
I'm not 'emotional shaming'. PT's view is that, now we have vaccines, any number of people ("as many as it takes") should die in order to protect his freedom. He said: "People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end."
Which whilst true, could be used to excuse anything causing a life to end. Which is why I asked how many is acceptable. He gave his answer.
What is the alternative?
I believe I gave my view below. We're currently at a manageable, if tragic, level of deaths and hospitalisations. If hospitalisations go up to a certain level - perhaps 1,200 to 1,500 a day, then we need to seriously consider more restrictions.
I'm not saying we need them at the moment. But my view is that we need to be open to the need for more restrictions, and not just callously let any number of people die (and, incidentally, cause the hospital system to fail, potentially affecting all of us).
Until we are in a more stable situation, we've got to be prepared to react.
Again and do what? Whose businesses are you prepared to destroy and lives ruin pursuing an impossible goal?
What's the impossible goal? All we're talking about is managing an epidemic within NHS capacity.
Do you think the government should do whatever it takes to protect the NHS from having a difficult winter? If necessary, should we shut schools? Should we (try to) cancel Christmas?
Everyone keeps postulating these hypothetical (!) extremes.
This isn't a vanilla 'difficult winter' for the NHS - it's a rather special one since they have the usual (flu) PLUS 3rd wave covid PLUS a big pandemic backlog.
And the question is, should plan B (more masks + more wfh) be actioned in order to stop it falling over?
That's a No right now - ok - but why on earth should we rule it out?
What I'm saying is, I don't think masks and WFH will make much difference. And if the government says, we need to do X to help get on top of hospitalisations, what happens if X doesn't work? Does the government say, "ah well, we can't do any more?" I don't think so and certainly the opposition wouldn't accept that as being the right and pragmatic conclusion to come to.
Ok. So your fear is that the only thing to stop the NHS collapsing this winter is the return of Full Lockdown. I don't share that fear but even if I did I'd at least want to try some milder measures first. In fact I'd think it was imperative to try some milder measures first, given the horrors of Full Lockdown. I can't see the logic in wanting these milder measures ruled out.
Its the thin end of the wedge. Give an inch and they'll take a mile.
If you introduce mask mandates they won't do anything to change the course of the pandemic (because they don't) and having accepted the need for "more action" the calls for even more restrictions would become deafening.
By the way, just had my first experience with home PCR tests, and my conclusion is that Test and Trace can't find their arse with both hands.
Four kits ordered in the end to get one that was complete. First two were missing the security seal and address label (so we could take the test but not send it anywhere) and one of the second pair was missing the barcode thing for the test tube (we ended up re-purposing the kit from one of the first pair and transferring the bar code from the (useless) box for that one to the one we needed.
And the number of questions you have to answer to get one and then to register it... don't they know that every extra question/hoop you put into any procedure results in a certain number of people dropping out?
Meanwhile in NZ there is panic over 102 cases in a day. The first time they have ever had that many and there is currently no sign of the increase in cases slowing.
Their adjustment away from zero Covid will be a difficult one for them as they don't have the levels of acquired immunity through infection that we have. One thing also for them to watch out for is that in 6 months time as they head into their winter, vaccine effectiveness will be declining.
Its going to be interesting to see what happens in NZ,
They had a slow start to vaccinations but are now rocketing up, only 12 US States and 10 EU nations have more people vaccinated, But in NZ the number vaccinated keep going up, about 1.3% a day are receiving a first or second jab, and they should pass the UK in the next 48 hours, I don't know where they will max out at but probably amongst the highest in the would.
But then what, cases are still rising now with a lockdown and so many vaccinated: Wait till they have even more vaccinated and hope cases come down? What if they don't, the lockdown could go on for a long time, or open up and accept a more rapid rise in cases?
When Zero COVID has worked so well for them, and still seems tantalisingly close its going to be hard give it up,
"I'm comfortable with a permanent 10% rise in death rates so I don't have to wear a mask for 40 minutes in the shop, but I am uncomfortable being emotionally shamed for saying so"
"I'm comfortable damaging the education of kids to keep a few sick oldies alive for a few hours more, but I'm uncomfortable being emotionally shamed for saying so"
"I'm comfortable destroying jobs and damaging people's mental health to delay but not stop anti-vaxxers being infected, but I'm uncomfortable being emotionally shamed for saying so"
Wearing a mask on the bus is destroying your mental health? I'm very sorry to hear that.
Some people might not feel comfortable getting on a bus if there is a mask mandate, because it suggests that it isn't safe. They may therefore become somewhat trapped, which isn't good for anyone.
The reality is that - as we were told at the very beginning - masks might work if used properly, but they very rarely are. The effect is marginal at best.
I went to a meeting recently at which people were wearing masks. Fine. I put one on out of politeness. Then I found that half the people present took them off to speak so that they could be heard. Doh! What was the point of that?
Because if one person in that room was sick, and was wearing a mask, the chances of anyone else in that room becoming sick were reduced. Even more so if they weren't speaking, but even if they only wore the mask for part of the time.
We all really need to get past the false dichotomy, namely that if you can't completely avoid risk, it's pointless trying to even reduce it.
The more masks are used, the lower the rate and severity of transmission. Fact. If a speaker takes a mask off for the duration of their speech, that adds to the risk, but it doesn't go from 0% before to 100% afterwards. Don't be trapped into thinking that "imperfect" is the same as "worthless".
Just because you say "Fact." does not make it a fact.
Scotland and Wales have kept mask mandates. So has TFL. They haven't made a damned bit of difference. So not a fact.
What makes a difference is meaningful restrictions. Vaccines, social distancing, lockdowns etc - and apart from vaccines those are devastating. Masks only partially worn, only part of the time, is just irrelevant gesturism.
PT, you are a tunnel-vision psycho with an allergy to nuance. I can't talk to you about this, or anything, so please fuck off.
For the benefit of everyone else, looking at bulk numbers and single policy decisions proves nothing: simply put, a policy might be making a positive (or negative) impact but other social, policy, demographic, or geographical differences might make it hard to see just by looking at Malmsbury's graphs or similar. Don't be tempted by the siren-song of absolutists who will tell you that something is either brilliant or useless. If you have any doubts at all, ask yourself whether whoever is speaking is likely to be driven mostly by their political ideology. In the case of the Adam Smith Ayatollah, the answer is sadly "yes, always".
Translation: Looking at evidence proves nothing. Simply put I (Farooq) have no evidence for my claims, making it hard to see. So please ignore the evidence and just accept my word as "Fact."
What about your political ideology? Are you immune from that affecting your views? If you have some evidence that mask mandates actually work, real-life evidence not wishful thinking, then please present it. Because we've had a large scale real life trial and the data is not promising.
Can I respectively suggest that the evidence of observation is not really scientific if you don't take into account all the variables. I will wear a mask in shops because I believe that any virus I "may" have would be held back in my mask (partially or fully), rather than emitted into the atmosphere of a shop. I obviuosly don't wear a mask if I am outside and nowhere near any strangers. The figures published include the effect of non-mask usage on public transport, mixing together of children in homes and schools with no masks, boogeying in discotheques with no masks, shouting at each other etc. To say that mask wearing doesn't work just look at the numbers is not the whole story.
Well England, Wales and Scotland have had roughly the same style of population, roughly the same social distancing restrictions etc and the key variable different is that two out of three have required mask mandates and one out of three has not. Wales and Scotland should show the benefits of a mask wearing mandate with England as the control group for not having such a mandate.
If mask wearing made a significant and meaningful difference that should be discernible by now. Is it? And if its not, why should it suddenly be going forwards in England?
I would say in response that the mask mandate in wales/scotland is in only specific areas, which to be honest, isn't the main problem. There is no mandate in schools or in the home or in pubs or discotheques, so I don't expect the numbers to be that different sadly. It doesn't take away the effectivity of a mask mandate if it's not really being instituted or even enforced. I don't go in anybody else's home, or pubs or discotheques for that matter, (60+), only shops, and I mask up for that.
We also need to boost capacity in the NHS. If we have 100,000 general and acute beds in England, and normally run between 90-95% and typically saturate every winter anyway, then adding a need for a few thousand extra beds (which take out about 20% more than occupied due to needing more space around them), then the obvious answer if we want to live with that level is to have more beds with more people taking care of them.
(The latter is often missed out).
We had twice this number of beds in the Eighties. And yes, I know it takes time, but we're eighteen months into this pandemic - how much time do the Government need to sort out a more permanent solution?
The "sheer scale of the latest numbers" is down almost entirely to the mixed messaging, heel dragging and completely shit schools/kids rollout.
I don't agree - I think the public must bear some personal responsibility here as well - the rapid abandonment of masks for example, really predated any government actions. The reluctance to tolerate any restrictions on personal freedoms, frequently shown on here, to me seems childish at times. In Spain, where I live masks, for example, remain pretty universal indoors and I sense the attitude of mind is that this is a small sacrifice for staying a little safer. Rather like the attitude to ID cards and Covid certificates - 'not ideal but the benefits outweigh the risks'. The UK attitude seems quite different and that is fair enough, but it is not consequence free.
Just blaming the government/authority all the time just come across as an abdication of personal responsibility.
Because relative to vaccines cloth masks are absolute garbage. Scotland's kept them and what kind of material difference has it made other than making the country a more miserable place than England?
Plenty of people wear masks that are effective. Try comparing Spain & the UK current data. Besides it's not just about mask wearing, it's about attitude. From outside things in the UK are looking quite grim now - a view confirmed by many UK contacts.
From inside thing in the UK are pretty great right now. We've dropped the masks and all the other gibberish and are getting back to normal.
The attitude should be that Covid is an issue for the past. Vaccines saw to that. Get your jab, if required get a booster, and live your life normally.
I have no interest in any precautions other than vaccines. Washing your hands etc is just basic decency and not especially Covid related.
It’s not past Philip, it’s very much still here. We need to flatten the curve in the least intrusive and economically damaging way. That may involve the more widespread use of masks again and more encouragement to WFH. We need tools we can draw on which don’t bring everything to a halt.
Yes , tell that to the families of the 1000 a week that are dying, what an absolute bampot he is.
People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end. Upto ten thousand a week die on average anyway.
What matters isn't that death comes to us all eventually, but what we do with our lives. Ceasing to live our lives because of a paralysing fear of death isn't healthy and is a great waste of life.
Incarcerating people in their homes so they don't see any loved ones and wither away and die of natural causes isn't "better".
How crassly moronic.
"Up to ten thousand a week die on average anyway."
Well, that's fine then. How many extra people are you willing to die just so you can feel the fresh air on your bumfluff-ridden face? Why not twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? All for your 'freedom' ...
I think that question is a bit unfair, a touch of emotional shaming going on, but will give my answer as its an anonymous forum. I probably wouldn't share this view in public but think if there were an extra five thousand a week dying we should have more legal restrictions. At an extra two thousand a week no legal restrictions. So somewhere between those numbers for me.
How about you?
Certainly not 'as many as it takes', which PT said.
The problem with deaths is that it is a lagging factor. Before vaccines, cases went up, then hospitalisations, and then deaths. Now that the link between cases and hospitalisations has been weakened, the first sign we have of trouble is rising hospitalisations.
And I'll therefore swerve your question by saying it's the wrong one, if we're talking about restrictions. The first sign we'll get of big problems is from hospitalisations, and that's what we'd need to react to. So perhaps the 1,200-1,500 daily admissions that we had back in early November would be when we'd have to slam the handbrake on - particularly if they are increasing rapidly.
You asked the question of someone else so a bit of a cop out to now say it is the wrong question. I don't think using wrong questions for emotional shaming will help us get to the right answer.
I'm not 'emotional shaming'. PT's view is that, now we have vaccines, any number of people ("as many as it takes") should die in order to protect his freedom. He said: "People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end."
Which whilst true, could be used to excuse anything causing a life to end. Which is why I asked how many is acceptable. He gave his answer.
What is the alternative?
I believe I gave my view below. We're currently at a manageable, if tragic, level of deaths and hospitalisations. If hospitalisations go up to a certain level - perhaps 1,200 to 1,500 a day, then we need to seriously consider more restrictions.
I'm not saying we need them at the moment. But my view is that we need to be open to the need for more restrictions, and not just callously let any number of people die (and, incidentally, cause the hospital system to fail, potentially affecting all of us).
Until we are in a more stable situation, we've got to be prepared to react.
Again and do what? Whose businesses are you prepared to destroy and lives ruin pursuing an impossible goal?
What's the impossible goal? All we're talking about is managing an epidemic within NHS capacity.
Do you think the government should do whatever it takes to protect the NHS from having a difficult winter? If necessary, should we shut schools? Should we (try to) cancel Christmas?
Everyone keeps postulating these hypothetical (!) extremes.
This isn't a vanilla 'difficult winter' for the NHS - it's a rather special one since they have the usual (flu) PLUS 3rd wave covid PLUS a big pandemic backlog.
And the question is, should plan B (more masks + more wfh) be actioned in order to stop it falling over?
That's a No right now - ok - but why on earth should we rule it out?
What I'm saying is, I don't think masks and WFH will make much difference. And if the government says, we need to do X to help get on top of hospitalisations, what happens if X doesn't work? Does the government say, "ah well, we can't do any more?" I don't think so and certainly the opposition wouldn't accept that as being the right and pragmatic conclusion to come to.
Ok. So your fear is that the only thing to stop the NHS collapsing this winter is the return of Full Lockdown. I don't share that fear but even if I did I'd at least want to try some milder measures first. In fact I'd think it was imperative to try some milder measures first, given the horrors of Full Lockdown. I can't see the logic in wanting these milder measures ruled out.
I don’t think the NHS will collapse. FWIW my mum is getting seen to by the NHS and it seems business as normal.
What I’m saying is, if you say the pressure on the NHS is unacceptable, you’re obliged to do whatever it takes. As you say, full lockdown is horrific. We need our politicians (all sides) to agree just how far we should go to protect the NHS.
Javid's line, since first becoming Health Secretary, has seemed to be that it is only to be expected that numbers of Covid infections (and thus hospitalizations and deaths) will increase. If that were true, policy interventions would seem to have little point.
in Denmarl we have no restrictions now and even masks on flights inside the nordic region are gone - I don't think we'll be reintroducing formal measures but there are still requests to keep some distance which on my train are impossible to comply with but in the supermarket are mostly kept to.
This is an endemic disease which currently kills about 2-3 people in Denmark a day (20-30 UK equivalent) and I think for most people here that is just what life is like now - nobody questions anyone wearing a mask but they are not, and never have been, popular here.
That's fair enough, but I think most of us would be a bit more relaxed if we lived in Denmark. Your death rate is 463 per million; the UK's is 2,034 per million. Regardless of explanations for this, clearly Denmark hasn't suffered anywhere near as badly as the UK.
This is true and the UK is a very different place - my point really is that there comes a point where a society will have to decide what the acceptable level of death is and how far are people willing to change their behaviour on a permanent basis - in Denmark there has been a lot of cross-party discussion and public discussion too - I think the UK still seems to be nowhere near being able to make a consensus choice about those things.
"I'm comfortable with a permanent 10% rise in death rates so I don't have to wear a mask for 40 minutes in the shop, but I am uncomfortable being emotionally shamed for saying so"
"I'm comfortable damaging the education of kids to keep a few sick oldies alive for a few hours more, but I'm uncomfortable being emotionally shamed for saying so"
"I'm comfortable destroying jobs and damaging people's mental health to delay but not stop anti-vaxxers being infected, but I'm uncomfortable being emotionally shamed for saying so"
Wearing a mask on the bus is destroying your mental health? I'm very sorry to hear that.
Some people might not feel comfortable getting on a bus if there is a mask mandate, because it suggests that it isn't safe. They may therefore become somewhat trapped, which isn't good for anyone.
The reality is that - as we were told at the very beginning - masks might work if used properly, but they very rarely are. The effect is marginal at best.
I went to a meeting recently at which people were wearing masks. Fine. I put one on out of politeness. Then I found that half the people present took them off to speak so that they could be heard. Doh! What was the point of that?
Because if one person in that room was sick, and was wearing a mask, the chances of anyone else in that room becoming sick were reduced. Even more so if they weren't speaking, but even if they only wore the mask for part of the time.
We all really need to get past the false dichotomy, namely that if you can't completely avoid risk, it's pointless trying to even reduce it.
The more masks are used, the lower the rate and severity of transmission. Fact. If a speaker takes a mask off for the duration of their speech, that adds to the risk, but it doesn't go from 0% before to 100% afterwards. Don't be trapped into thinking that "imperfect" is the same as "worthless".
Just because you say "Fact." does not make it a fact.
Scotland and Wales have kept mask mandates. So has TFL. They haven't made a damned bit of difference. So not a fact.
What makes a difference is meaningful restrictions. Vaccines, social distancing, lockdowns etc - and apart from vaccines those are devastating. Masks only partially worn, only part of the time, is just irrelevant gesturism.
PT, you are a tunnel-vision psycho with an allergy to nuance. I can't talk to you about this, or anything, so please fuck off.
For the benefit of everyone else, looking at bulk numbers and single policy decisions proves nothing: simply put, a policy might be making a positive (or negative) impact but other social, policy, demographic, or geographical differences might make it hard to see just by looking at Malmsbury's graphs or similar. Don't be tempted by the siren-song of absolutists who will tell you that something is either brilliant or useless. If you have any doubts at all, ask yourself whether whoever is speaking is likely to be driven mostly by their political ideology. In the case of the Adam Smith Ayatollah, the answer is sadly "yes, always".
Translation: Looking at evidence proves nothing. Simply put I (Farooq) have no evidence for my claims, making it hard to see. So please ignore the evidence and just accept my word as "Fact."
What about your political ideology? Are you immune from that affecting your views? If you have some evidence that mask mandates actually work, real-life evidence not wishful thinking, then please present it. Because we've had a large scale real life trial and the data is not promising.
Can I respectively suggest that the evidence of observation is not really scientific if you don't take into account all the variables. I will wear a mask in shops because I believe that any virus I "may" have would be held back in my mask (partially or fully), rather than emitted into the atmosphere of a shop. I obviuosly don't wear a mask if I am outside and nowhere near any strangers. The figures published include the effect of non-mask usage on public transport, mixing together of children in homes and schools with no masks, boogeying in discotheques with no masks, shouting at each other etc. To say that mask wearing doesn't work just look at the numbers is not the whole story.
Well England, Wales and Scotland have had roughly the same style of population, roughly the same social distancing restrictions etc and the key variable different is that two out of three have required mask mandates and one out of three has not. Wales and Scotland should show the benefits of a mask wearing mandate with England as the control group for not having such a mandate.
If mask wearing made a significant and meaningful difference that should be discernible by now. Is it? And if its not, why should it suddenly be going forwards in England?
I agree there's a lack of evidence (but I do also note that absence of evidence != evidence of absence). Masks help, I think - there are some studies, although mostly quite limited as it's very hard to measure the population effects of an intervention that - mostly - does not benefit the wearer.
So, if masks help, why don't we see it clearly in the data? Probably because masks are not worn where it really matters, in homes and other private settings. In other places, people don't wear them well. My hairdresser still masks up and asks customers to, too. But she doesn't wear a mask when there are no customers, so her masking up is not all that useful to me - I'm breathing the air she's been breathing out in an enclosed space all day. It also probably means they'd have limited effect if mandated again in England. Plus, increased viral shedding with Delta probably means that whatever % reduction in dose you get from a masked infected person is less useful - say it used to mean, with earlier variants, the mean time to infection would be contact of ten minutes and now it's 30 seconds or so. In a lot of settings, that might mean you'll be exposed to an infectious dose either way (there is still the point that reducing the dose might lead to bette outcomes and less hospital risk).
It is important to untangle two things, I think. Do masks help? Probably. Is there evidence that the policies of Wales and Scotland on masks are very effective in the current situation? Not really.
It would be very hard to enforce, but there's an argument that mandating high efficacy masks for the unvaccinated in public/at work etc could be quite effective (to protect the most vulnerable and most likely to be spreading infection - the unvaccinated in both cases). Might also drive vaccination take-up.
On the comments that a minor improvement in transmission reduction won't make much difference.
If we're on an R of 1.1 and a minor change could get us down to 0.9 (eg masks, encouraged wfh), then what's the difference when we start with 50,000 cases after 5 cycles?
It's over 80,000 to under 30,000.
Under 30,000 is a level that's very likely sustainable for hospitalisations in the NHS Over 80,000 is twice the level cases were two weeks ago, giving hospitalisations a week ago which was when the alarm bells started to ring.
It obviously makes a big bloody difference, and those arguing the opposite really damage their case overall.
I do like the dividend to the vaccinated idea as well. Serious carrot time.
A change of 0.2 in the R rate is relatively large. How much benefit do masks really bring?
It might be a decrease of 0.01 in the R rate, or less.
Fake news. It may be worth looking at Dom's second tweet on that feed:
Ps. No Jess Phillips is NOT the answer.
I did.
ETA, and the second Dom tweet wasn't there when I posted the first one. But I did post it as soon as it came up.
All fine. Now we just have to hunt down the Midlands woman who Dom has in mind (if she exists, which I rather doubt).
I wonder how many are paying to get on to Dom's blog and find out if he does have anyone specific in mind.. I'm a little surprised that he's put it behind a paywall.
By the way, just had my first experience with home PCR tests, and my conclusion is that Test and Trace can't find their arse with both hands.
Four kits ordered in the end to get one that was complete. First two were missing the security seal and address label (so we could take the test but not send it anywhere) and one of the second pair was missing the barcode thing for the test tube (we ended up re-purposing the kit from one of the first pair and transferring the bar code from the (useless) box for that one to the one we needed.
And the number of questions you have to answer to get one and then to register it... don't they know that every extra question/hoop you put into any procedure results in a certain number of people dropping out?
I had relatively little problem getting my tests (which I'm required to do twice a week by my employers). But I've drawn the line at reporting my many negative tests -- as one is supposed to. I cannot believe that many people report their negative tests, and wonder why it should seem a good idea to tell people to report them -- thus introducing another hoop which I imagine puts some people off testing at all.
So if social distancing isn't mandatory what's the point of it? Why suggest that people do it other than to virtue signal?
Your original point was suggesting mask wearing and social distancing be brought back. I'm not going to argue the first one, I'm still unsure over masks, I still wear one if the trains are busy but don't elsewhere, I also have a KN95 one too so I know it makes a difference for me. My issue is with your second point, social distancing is an extremely high cost NPI, both economically and socially and there's no such thing as voluntary social distancing. The whole point of it is to reduce the capacity of indoor spaces, if you're not using it to do that then there's really no point in doing it.
You have steadfastly refused to acknowledge that voluntary social distancing is pointless. It is little more than virtue signalling so unless you are suggesting that the state reintroduce 2m distancing you should probably have a rethink about what is possible.
As for the impending doom of the NHS, tbh, maybe it needs that shake up. The NHS does too much, maybe it needs to learn to do less and one of the things it could stop doing is treatment for unvaccinated by choice COVID patients, send them to the private sector.
Good - we're having a debate rather than you just calling me a moron for disagreeing with you. Progress.
Voluntary social distancing is not pointless. Nor is voluntary WFH or voluntary wash your fucking hands. Every single transmission we block helps keep case numbers down and with it the impact onto health services.
You keep going on about virtue signalling - I have no interest in that. It isn't me saying these things its the people running the NHS. And yesterday the Health Secretary joined it. Several of you have said "its the NHS's fault" and that may well be true. The time to be making sweeping "reforms" (which lets be honest from your perspective means cuts) is not now. We need to get through the winter first.
The NHS has been crocked for years. Of course "the NHS" is going to say lock everyone up or do anything to protect itself. And sadly no Health Secretary can either a) ignore it because it's bollocks and we get a Graun-described "NHS in Crisis" every Christmas; or b) stick more money into the NHS as we the voters aren't having any of it.
So here we are.
Covid plus Flu plus Backlog isn't a normal NHS 'winter crisis'. It's potentially on a different scale. And I haven't seen them demanding everyone be locked up. Plan B is hardly that.
No you're right and I think part of the banner headlines are designed so that if and when masks and wfh do come in everyone will say "is that it?"
But Covid plus Flu plus Backlog needs to be accommodated. Why does the NHS or the government or the taxpayers think that it can or should operate as usual in the time of a pandemic?
Well if they do, they're being unrealistic imo. I think the NHS outcome range this winter is 'bad thru to collapse' and any measures brought in will be in order to stay away from the last one. Does this raise questions about the resilience of the NHS, its funding, its operating model? Yes, it does. But let's deal with this first, is how I see it.
Javid's line, since first becoming Health Secretary, has seemed to be that it is only to be expected that numbers of Covid infections (and thus hospitalizations and deaths) will increase. If that were true, policy interventions would seem to have little point.
Well, the biggest policy intervention has been vaccination, and since it's overwhelmingly the unvaccinated who are dying, I'd say that more intervention there could be exactly what is needed.
How many under 80's who have been double jabbed who were in decent health have died or been forced into hospital with covid in the last few months? Why is it so difficult to get this information?
By the way, just had my first experience with home PCR tests, and my conclusion is that Test and Trace can't find their arse with both hands.
Four kits ordered in the end to get one that was complete. First two were missing the security seal and address label (so we could take the test but not send it anywhere) and one of the second pair was missing the barcode thing for the test tube (we ended up re-purposing the kit from one of the first pair and transferring the bar code from the (useless) box for that one to the one we needed.
And the number of questions you have to answer to get one and then to register it... don't they know that every extra question/hoop you put into any procedure results in a certain number of people dropping out?
Oh I could write pages on that having been through it numerous times because of overseas travel. There are so many flaws. The latest being I was contacted because someone on my flight tested positive. So you get contacted but you don't have to self isolate and you don't need to take another test because you are double vaccinated so what is the point. There is nothing to do. And the 10 day period was up anyway on the day I was contacted so even if I did need to do anything I didn't anyway for that reason also. And that is always going to be the case because of the time line from someone else taking their day 2 test, getting the result and contacting you the time is just about up.
And the Passenger Location Form what a load of nonsense. It is so much nonsense compared to the Portuguese requirement which achieve the same results quickly, easily and much less complicated.
Then there are the day 2 test that never turn up, because the ones offering cheap tests are cowboys yet they are on the Govt web site and there is no follow up whatsoever (again personal experience as well as being well documented, not least by Which).
Nobody checks the documents at the ports properly and they are just airline/ferry staff. You could come through with any stuff you produce and track and trace contact you on a mobile so you could be anywhere even when you did have to self isolate.
Prof Francois Balloux @BallouxFrancois · 49m Interesting data suggesting the Pfizer/BioNTech works best as a three-dose vaccine. Initial 3-dose antibody titres being so much higher than 2-dose ones makes a stronger case than I had anticipated for administrating boosters outside just the most at-risk demographies.
On the comments that a minor improvement in transmission reduction won't make much difference.
If we're on an R of 1.1 and a minor change could get us down to 0.9 (eg masks, encouraged wfh), then what's the difference when we start with 50,000 cases after 5 cycles?
It's over 80,000 to under 30,000.
Under 30,000 is a level that's very likely sustainable for hospitalisations in the NHS Over 80,000 is twice the level cases were two weeks ago, giving hospitalisations a week ago which was when the alarm bells started to ring.
It obviously makes a big bloody difference, and those arguing the opposite really damage their case overall.
I do like the dividend to the vaccinated idea as well. Serious carrot time.
A change of 0.2 in the R rate is relatively large. How much benefit do masks really bring?
It might be a decrease of 0.01 in the R rate, or less.
The balance of the studies I found some time ago suggested around a 20%-25% reduction in transmission overall. Not a silver bullet by any means, but when you're this close to R=1, damn well worth a shot.
"I'm comfortable with a permanent 10% rise in death rates so I don't have to wear a mask for 40 minutes in the shop, but I am uncomfortable being emotionally shamed for saying so"
"I'm comfortable damaging the education of kids to keep a few sick oldies alive for a few hours more, but I'm uncomfortable being emotionally shamed for saying so"
"I'm comfortable destroying jobs and damaging people's mental health to delay but not stop anti-vaxxers being infected, but I'm uncomfortable being emotionally shamed for saying so"
Wearing a mask on the bus is destroying your mental health? I'm very sorry to hear that.
Some people might not feel comfortable getting on a bus if there is a mask mandate, because it suggests that it isn't safe. They may therefore become somewhat trapped, which isn't good for anyone.
The reality is that - as we were told at the very beginning - masks might work if used properly, but they very rarely are. The effect is marginal at best.
I went to a meeting recently at which people were wearing masks. Fine. I put one on out of politeness. Then I found that half the people present took them off to speak so that they could be heard. Doh! What was the point of that?
Because if one person in that room was sick, and was wearing a mask, the chances of anyone else in that room becoming sick were reduced. Even more so if they weren't speaking, but even if they only wore the mask for part of the time.
We all really need to get past the false dichotomy, namely that if you can't completely avoid risk, it's pointless trying to even reduce it.
The more masks are used, the lower the rate and severity of transmission. Fact. If a speaker takes a mask off for the duration of their speech, that adds to the risk, but it doesn't go from 0% before to 100% afterwards. Don't be trapped into thinking that "imperfect" is the same as "worthless".
Just because you say "Fact." does not make it a fact.
Scotland and Wales have kept mask mandates. So has TFL. They haven't made a damned bit of difference. So not a fact.
What makes a difference is meaningful restrictions. Vaccines, social distancing, lockdowns etc - and apart from vaccines those are devastating. Masks only partially worn, only part of the time, is just irrelevant gesturism.
PT, you are a tunnel-vision psycho with an allergy to nuance. I can't talk to you about this, or anything, so please fuck off.
For the benefit of everyone else, looking at bulk numbers and single policy decisions proves nothing: simply put, a policy might be making a positive (or negative) impact but other social, policy, demographic, or geographical differences might make it hard to see just by looking at Malmsbury's graphs or similar. Don't be tempted by the siren-song of absolutists who will tell you that something is either brilliant or useless. If you have any doubts at all, ask yourself whether whoever is speaking is likely to be driven mostly by their political ideology. In the case of the Adam Smith Ayatollah, the answer is sadly "yes, always".
Translation: Looking at evidence proves nothing. Simply put I (Farooq) have no evidence for my claims, making it hard to see. So please ignore the evidence and just accept my word as "Fact."
What about your political ideology? Are you immune from that affecting your views? If you have some evidence that mask mandates actually work, real-life evidence not wishful thinking, then please present it. Because we've had a large scale real life trial and the data is not promising.
Can I respectively suggest that the evidence of observation is not really scientific if you don't take into account all the variables. I will wear a mask in shops because I believe that any virus I "may" have would be held back in my mask (partially or fully), rather than emitted into the atmosphere of a shop. I obviuosly don't wear a mask if I am outside and nowhere near any strangers. The figures published include the effect of non-mask usage on public transport, mixing together of children in homes and schools with no masks, boogeying in discotheques with no masks, shouting at each other etc. To say that mask wearing doesn't work just look at the numbers is not the whole story.
Well England, Wales and Scotland have had roughly the same style of population, roughly the same social distancing restrictions etc and the key variable different is that two out of three have required mask mandates and one out of three has not. Wales and Scotland should show the benefits of a mask wearing mandate with England as the control group for not having such a mandate.
If mask wearing made a significant and meaningful difference that should be discernible by now. Is it? And if its not, why should it suddenly be going forwards in England?
I agree there's a lack of evidence (but I do also note that absence of evidence != evidence of absence). Masks help, I think - there are some studies, although mostly quite limited as it's very hard to measure the population effects of an intervention that - mostly - does not benefit the wearer.
So, if masks help, why don't we see it clearly in the data? Probably because masks are not worn where it really matters, in homes and other private settings. In other places, people don't wear them well. My hairdresser still masks up and asks customers to, too. But she doesn't wear a mask when there are no customers, so her masking up is not all that useful to me - I'm breathing the air she's been breathing out in an enclosed space all day. It also probably means they'd have limited effect if mandated again in England. Plus, increased viral shedding with Delta probably means that whatever % reduction in dose you get from a masked infected person is less useful - say it used to mean, with earlier variants, the mean time to infection would be contact of ten minutes and now it's 30 seconds or so. In a lot of settings, that might mean you'll be exposed to an infectious dose either way (there is still the point that reducing the dose might lead to bette outcomes and less hospital risk).
It is important to untangle two things, I think. Do masks help? Probably. Is there evidence that the policies of Wales and Scotland on masks are very effective in the current situation? Not really.
It would be very hard to enforce, but there's an argument that mandating high efficacy masks for the unvaccinated in public/at work etc could be quite effective (to protect the most vulnerable and most likely to be spreading infection - the unvaccinated in both cases). Might also drive vaccination take-up.
Exactly. Even if masks in theory help, mask mandates don't because they simply don't work with how people actually behave.
Any conversations about mask wearing, as opposed to getting the unvaccinated vaccinated, is a pure waste of time.
Sky now leading with the BMA accusing HMG of wilful negligence over plan B
This is becoming ridiculous
You can disagree with government action but wilfully negligent is hyperbole
And you could not make if up, their reporter from a school is wearing a mask - below his nose !!!!!
Tory critics of Labour - They haven't opposed the government, it is terrible, we need strong opposition Labour - We oppose the government for once Tory critics of Labour - No not like that!! Quieten down
"There's no opposition!" usually means Starmer is not proposing what the sayer wants to see happen. I can't help but notice this.
By the way, just had my first experience with home PCR tests, and my conclusion is that Test and Trace can't find their arse with both hands.
Four kits ordered in the end to get one that was complete. First two were missing the security seal and address label (so we could take the test but not send it anywhere) and one of the second pair was missing the barcode thing for the test tube (we ended up re-purposing the kit from one of the first pair and transferring the bar code from the (useless) box for that one to the one we needed.
And the number of questions you have to answer to get one and then to register it... don't they know that every extra question/hoop you put into any procedure results in a certain number of people dropping out?
I had relatively little problem getting my tests (which I'm required to do twice a week by my employers). But I've drawn the line at reporting my many negative tests -- as one is supposed to. I cannot believe that many people report their negative tests, and wonder why it should seem a good idea to tell people to report them -- thus introducing another hoop which I imagine puts some people off testing at all.
Presumably you are not talking about PCR as you don't do the testing of those which have to be sent away so they are being reported by the lab (or not as the case may be).
Sky now leading with the BMA accusing HMG of wilful negligence over plan B
This is becoming ridiculous
You can disagree with government action but wilfully negligent is hyperbole
And you could not make if up, their reporter from a school is wearing a mask - below his nose !!!!!
Tory critics of Labour - They haven't opposed the government, it is terrible, we need strong opposition Labour - We oppose the government for once Tory critics of Labour - No not like that!! Quieten down
"There's no opposition!" usually means Starmer is not proposing what the sayer wants to see happen. I can't help but notice this.
My definition of "There's no opposition" is that Starmer is voting with the government. I mean obviously it's not disagreeing on Twitter or on LBC but the way our democracy is structured it is sort of the main way of opposing. Should he be so minded.
I’m on @LumoTravel’s inaugural train today - and I’ll be racing @SimonCalder from London to Edinburgh. A 4.5 hour train ride versus a 1 hour flight? Simon is confident. But I don’t think it’ll be the walkover those numbers suggest…
Prof Francois Balloux @BallouxFrancois · 49m Interesting data suggesting the Pfizer/BioNTech works best as a three-dose vaccine. Initial 3-dose antibody titres being so much higher than 2-dose ones makes a stronger case than I had anticipated for administrating boosters outside just the most at-risk demographies.
Javid's line, since first becoming Health Secretary, has seemed to be that it is only to be expected that numbers of Covid infections (and thus hospitalizations and deaths) will increase. If that were true, policy interventions would seem to have little point.
I think his position from the presser yesterday (of which I only heard about the last half hour so I missed most of it) seemed to be that winter is coming and in winter we spend more time inside breathing each other's warmed air in confined spaces so of course infection will increase.
We shall see. There has to be a point at which the virus starts to run out of potential victims (unless reinfection becomes a lot more common than it is at present). How far away is that?
At the moment we are recording over 300k infected persons a week. We are doing an absurd amount of testing but anecdotally there are suggestions that the young in particular are less keen to be tested and have isolation inflicted upon them. Surely 500K a week is more likely. We have already recorded more than 8.5m cases and it is highly likely that there are significantly more that had an asymptomatic or minor infection and were never identified. I would be surprised if less than 15m have not had it already, possibly more.
At the current rate the virus burns its way through the remainder in something approaching 90 weeks, a very long time. I suspect it will take even longer unless the rate increases as there will be a longish tail of lower infections towards the end. We undoubtedly have a long way to go but if you accept the "we are all going to get it" premise then it is a very long road indeed. The consequences for NHS care for everything else are not good.
I've been thinking about lots of man- words today. Not words related to man (from Proto-German mann and Sanskrit manu - not etymologically related at all to 'human', which comes from Latin homo) - so no mansplaining here! (interested to see mansplain doesn't get underlined as misspelt by my computer..)
One of my favourite man- words, due to its peculiar spelling, is manoeuvre (which my computer does underline!). I'd always guessed that the -oeu- was somehow related to a French egg, but it appears not. The word came to English from the same word, with the same meaning, in Middle French. This was derived from an Old French word manovre, meaning 'hand-work' or 'manual labour'. And this was derived from Latin manus meaning hand, and operari meaning to work.
Interestingly, we also have another word derived from the same root. manovre from Middle French crossed the Channel to Middle English as maynouren, which had the same meaning of manual labour, especially on the soil. From this we got the word 'manure'
I now use the phrase "going on manoeuvres" to mean a longer visit to the lavatory.
In further man-hand words, we have mandate (from Latin mandare from manus and dare, to put, so literally "to put in one's hands") and from the same root we get command, demand and remand.
With this man hand meaning, I always find myself annoyed by (usually angry male American) characters in movies and on tv using "mano a mano" to mean "man to man", when it obviously means "hand to hand". As if the Spanish for man would be mano.. I'm waiting to hear a woman use "womano a womano" in the same way.
To finish in a typically smutty place, I was pleased to see that "masturbate" could be considered among these man- words. It's not certain, but has long been suggested that it's a compound of manus and turbare which means to unsettle, and from which we get the word turbulence. I think "hand turbulence" is a wonderfully euphemistic way to describe the practice!
I'm also amused to see that a 19C slang synonym was "boxing the Jesuit"
I've always liked the phrase "hand shandy" which I think, like many wonderful turns of phrase, I learned from Viz. Whether they are the author or merely a conduit I don't know.
Javid's line, since first becoming Health Secretary, has seemed to be that it is only to be expected that numbers of Covid infections (and thus hospitalizations and deaths) will increase. If that were true, policy interventions would seem to have little point.
I think his position from the presser yesterday (of which I only heard about the last half hour so I missed most of it) seemed to be that winter is coming and in winter we spend more time inside breathing each other's warmed air in confined spaces so of course infection will increase.
We shall see. There has to be a point at which the virus starts to run out of potential victims (unless reinfection becomes a lot more common than it is at present). How far away is that?
At the moment we are recording over 300k infected persons a week. We are doing an absurd amount of testing but anecdotally there are suggestions that the young in particular are less keen to be tested and have isolation inflicted upon them. Surely 500K a week is more likely. We have already recorded more than 8.5m cases and it is highly likely that there are significantly more that had an asymptomatic or minor infection and were never identified. I would be surprised if less than 15m have not had it already, possibly more.
At the current rate the virus burns its way through the remainder in something approaching 90 weeks, a very long time. I suspect it will take even longer unless the rate increases as there will be a longish tail of lower infections towards the end. We undoubtedly have a long way to go but if you accept the "we are all going to get it" premise then it is a very long road indeed. The consequences for NHS care for everything else are not good.
That's assuming everyone gets it which is an extreme worst case scenario. Even when its highly contagious in limited areas it doesn't seem that everyone is getting infected.
If you were to go with say 80% of the unvaccinated getting it and 10% of the vaccinated then you'd be looking at about 18.6 million cases. If you go with an 80/20 split then it goes up to 23.6 million.
Obviously there'll be some overlap in the data, eg of people who already caught the virus before they were vaccinated.
Javid's line, since first becoming Health Secretary, has seemed to be that it is only to be expected that numbers of Covid infections (and thus hospitalizations and deaths) will increase. If that were true, policy interventions would seem to have little point.
I think his position from the presser yesterday (of which I only heard about the last half hour so I missed most of it) seemed to be that winter is coming and in winter we spend more time inside breathing each other's warmed air in confined spaces so of course infection will increase.
We shall see. There has to be a point at which the virus starts to run out of potential victims (unless reinfection becomes a lot more common than it is at present). How far away is that?
At the moment we are recording over 300k infected persons a week. We are doing an absurd amount of testing but anecdotally there are suggestions that the young in particular are less keen to be tested and have isolation inflicted upon them. Surely 500K a week is more likely. We have already recorded more than 8.5m cases and it is highly likely that there are significantly more that had an asymptomatic or minor infection and were never identified. I would be surprised if less than 15m have not had it already, possibly more.
At the current rate the virus burns its way through the remainder in something approaching 90 weeks, a very long time. I suspect it will take even longer unless the rate increases as there will be a longish tail of lower infections towards the end. We undoubtedly have a long way to go but if you accept the "we are all going to get it" premise then it is a very long road indeed. The consequences for NHS care for everything else are not good.
That's assuming everyone gets it which is an extreme worst case scenario. Even when its highly contagious in limited areas it doesn't seem that everyone is getting infected.
If you were to go with say 80% of the unvaccinated getting it and 10% of the vaccinated then you'd be looking at about 18.6 million cases. If you go with an 80/20 split then it goes up to 23.6 million.
Obviously there'll be some overlap in the data, eg of people who already caught the virus before they were vaccinated.
Because you do not catch it on one occasion does not mean that you will not catch it on another. So my daughter tested positive. None of the rest of the family were infected despite living in the same house which she understandably continued to live in without a mask (she's asthmatic). This does not mean that the rest of us will not catch it on some future occasion because we are immune. It simply means we did not catch it then.
Javid's line, since first becoming Health Secretary, has seemed to be that it is only to be expected that numbers of Covid infections (and thus hospitalizations and deaths) will increase. If that were true, policy interventions would seem to have little point.
I think his position from the presser yesterday (of which I only heard about the last half hour so I missed most of it) seemed to be that winter is coming and in winter we spend more time inside breathing each other's warmed air in confined spaces so of course infection will increase.
We shall see. There has to be a point at which the virus starts to run out of potential victims (unless reinfection becomes a lot more common than it is at present). How far away is that?
At the moment we are recording over 300k infected persons a week. We are doing an absurd amount of testing but anecdotally there are suggestions that the young in particular are less keen to be tested and have isolation inflicted upon them. Surely 500K a week is more likely. We have already recorded more than 8.5m cases and it is highly likely that there are significantly more that had an asymptomatic or minor infection and were never identified. I would be surprised if less than 15m have not had it already, possibly more.
At the current rate the virus burns its way through the remainder in something approaching 90 weeks, a very long time. I suspect it will take even longer unless the rate increases as there will be a longish tail of lower infections towards the end. We undoubtedly have a long way to go but if you accept the "we are all going to get it" premise then it is a very long road indeed. The consequences for NHS care for everything else are not good.
That's assuming everyone gets it which is an extreme worst case scenario. Even when its highly contagious in limited areas it doesn't seem that everyone is getting infected.
If you were to go with say 80% of the unvaccinated getting it and 10% of the vaccinated then you'd be looking at about 18.6 million cases. If you go with an 80/20 split then it goes up to 23.6 million.
Obviously there'll be some overlap in the data, eg of people who already caught the virus before they were vaccinated.
Because you do not catch it on one occasion does not mean that you will not catch it on another. So my daughter tested positive. None of the rest of the family were infected despite living in the same house which she understandably continued to live in without a mask (she's asthmatic). This does not mean that the rest of us will not catch it on some future occasion because we are immune. It simply means we did not catch it then.
Of course but nor does it guarantee, especially if you're vaccinated, that you will catch it in the future either.
I've been thinking about lots of man- words today. Not words related to man (from Proto-German mann and Sanskrit manu - not etymologically related at all to 'human', which comes from Latin homo) - so no mansplaining here! (interested to see mansplain doesn't get underlined as misspelt by my computer..)
One of my favourite man- words, due to its peculiar spelling, is manoeuvre (which my computer does underline!). I'd always guessed that the -oeu- was somehow related to a French egg, but it appears not. The word came to English from the same word, with the same meaning, in Middle French. This was derived from an Old French word manovre, meaning 'hand-work' or 'manual labour'. And this was derived from Latin manus meaning hand, and operari meaning to work.
Interestingly, we also have another word derived from the same root. manovre from Middle French crossed the Channel to Middle English as maynouren, which had the same meaning of manual labour, especially on the soil. From this we got the word 'manure'
I now use the phrase "going on manoeuvres" to mean a longer visit to the lavatory.
In further man-hand words, we have mandate (from Latin mandare from manus and dare, to put, so literally "to put in one's hands") and from the same root we get command, demand and remand.
With this man hand meaning, I always find myself annoyed by (usually angry male American) characters in movies and on tv using "mano a mano" to mean "man to man", when it obviously means "hand to hand". As if the Spanish for man would be mano.. I'm waiting to hear a woman use "womano a womano" in the same way.
To finish in a typically smutty place, I was pleased to see that "masturbate" could be considered among these man- words. It's not certain, but has long been suggested that it's a compound of manus and turbare which means to unsettle, and from which we get the word turbulence. I think "hand turbulence" is a wonderfully euphemistic way to describe the practice!
I'm also amused to see that a 19C slang synonym was "boxing the Jesuit"
I've always liked the phrase "hand shandy" which I think, like many wonderful turns of phrase, I learned from Viz. Whether they are the author or merely a conduit I don't know.
The "sheer scale of the latest numbers" is down almost entirely to the mixed messaging, heel dragging and completely shit schools/kids rollout.
I don't agree - I think the public must bear some personal responsibility here as well - the rapid abandonment of masks for example, really predated any government actions. The reluctance to tolerate any restrictions on personal freedoms, frequently shown on here, to me seems childish at times. In Spain, where I live masks, for example, remain pretty universal indoors and I sense the attitude of mind is that this is a small sacrifice for staying a little safer. Rather like the attitude to ID cards and Covid certificates - 'not ideal but the benefits outweigh the risks'. The UK attitude seems quite different and that is fair enough, but it is not consequence free.
Just blaming the government/authority all the time just come across as an abdication of personal responsibility.
Because relative to vaccines cloth masks are absolute garbage. Scotland's kept them and what kind of material difference has it made other than making the country a more miserable place than England?
Plenty of people wear masks that are effective. Try comparing Spain & the UK current data. Besides it's not just about mask wearing, it's about attitude. From outside things in the UK are looking quite grim now - a view confirmed by many UK contacts.
From inside thing in the UK are pretty great right now. We've dropped the masks and all the other gibberish and are getting back to normal.
The attitude should be that Covid is an issue for the past. Vaccines saw to that. Get your jab, if required get a booster, and live your life normally.
I have no interest in any precautions other than vaccines. Washing your hands etc is just basic decency and not especially Covid related.
It’s not past Philip, it’s very much still here. We need to flatten the curve in the least intrusive and economically damaging way. That may involve the more widespread use of masks again and more encouragement to WFH. We need tools we can draw on which don’t bring everything to a halt.
Yes , tell that to the families of the 1000 a week that are dying, what an absolute bampot he is.
People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end. Upto ten thousand a week die on average anyway.
What matters isn't that death comes to us all eventually, but what we do with our lives. Ceasing to live our lives because of a paralysing fear of death isn't healthy and is a great waste of life.
Incarcerating people in their homes so they don't see any loved ones and wither away and die of natural causes isn't "better".
How crassly moronic.
"Up to ten thousand a week die on average anyway."
Well, that's fine then. How many extra people are you willing to die just so you can feel the fresh air on your bumfluff-ridden face? Why not twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? All for your 'freedom' ...
But surely there has to be a balance. People die in traffic accidents, or of smoking related conditions or drinking related conditions or of any other number of preventable conditions. We do not ban those activities. We certainly mitigate but not to the degree being proposed by some with COVID. We simply cannot keep locking down or applying large scale restrictions. The vaccines have to be the route out of this. This is not about Philips freedom it is about a fully functioning society and we need a fully functioning economy to pay for this.
Of course there has to be a balance.
I am not in favour of a return to harder restrictions at the moment. It seems a fine-edged thing, though, and the last 18 months have shown us that if you're not careful, when restrictions are required, they're required suddenly.
Hopefully enough kids are getting Covid that we'll be at herd immunity soon, and then figures will plummet. However, herd immunity's been called out many times before during this crisis, and we're not there yet. This s***** little B****er of a virus is a survivor, and may yet surprise us. Again.
And that's where PT is being complacent. He is unwilling to see people do even the smallest measures to protect themselves and others, because for some reason it is offensive to him. He callously disregards unnecessary deaths - possibly because it's not his own death. His argument could be used if we have 100 extra deaths a day, or a thousand. Or ten thousand.
The question you have to ask JJ is how does it get any better than this? If you are double - or triple jabbed - then you are never going to be safer than you are now. Are you proposing that the restrictions, mild as they may seem to you, should become a permanent way of life in Britain? Are we going to see the threat of lockdowns every single winter because the NHS is so unfit for purpose even before Covid?
Basically this is the new normal everyone was talking about. It is possible there is some miracle cure around the corner but to be honest I think we already have that as effectively as we are ever going to get it. So if you think PT is being unreasonable in his rather forthright comments then you have to say what you are proposing as the permanent alternatives.
I think this is the key question that I have asked myself and ask others when this debate arises. I always arrive at the same answer: the only rational position is that we have maximum protection, so we have to live our lives. As you say, a miracle cure might at some point be found, but we cannot wait for it.
It's not really about a miracle cure. Soon we'll have the boosters done, and kids done, and our level of immunity (from vax + infection) will be maxed out and in all probabaility sufficient to have the disease down at background levels. Very much there but manageable. This is then clear 'live with it' territory - both because we can and (your point) because we have to. That's not far away.
But in the meantime, with winter and with the coexistence along with Covid of flu and the pandemic backlog, should we (i) be prepared to bring in some restrictions to prevent the NHS collapsing, or (ii) should we rule this out on a libertarian point of principle? This is how I'd frame the discussion and while not being a hawk on the matter I'd come down squarely for (i).
You still havent answered what restrictions, apart from saying masks and wfh.
Wfh has never been legally enforced, how would you do this? If a business say it is essential to come into the office should they be closed down?
Masks, to the untrained eye usage is similar in mandated settings like TFL and voluntary ones like supermarkets.
So if all you are saying is you would like government to encourage masks and wfh, fine. If not what would you change legally and what impact do you think it would have?
What I'm saying is really just one specific thing. That it makes no sense to rule out bringing in any Covid measures this winter on a point of principle that says anything over and above getting vaccinated is an unacceptable violation of personal liberty. That is just nuts to me. When it comes to what the measures are, they need to be effective and proportionate to the problem. That's rather a SOTBO, I know, but I don't feel very well qualified to expand on it. I haven't much of a clue what works and what doesn't. My level of interest in Covid details has rather dropped off in recent times tbh. But this "plan B" is apparently what's on the table. I'm not sure how much law is envisaged there cf guidance.
Prof Francois Balloux @BallouxFrancois · 49m Interesting data suggesting the Pfizer/BioNTech works best as a three-dose vaccine. Initial 3-dose antibody titres being so much higher than 2-dose ones makes a stronger case than I had anticipated for administrating boosters outside just the most at-risk demographies.
Javid's line, since first becoming Health Secretary, has seemed to be that it is only to be expected that numbers of Covid infections (and thus hospitalizations and deaths) will increase. If that were true, policy interventions would seem to have little point.
I think his position from the presser yesterday (of which I only heard about the last half hour so I missed most of it) seemed to be that winter is coming and in winter we spend more time inside breathing each other's warmed air in confined spaces so of course infection will increase.
We shall see. There has to be a point at which the virus starts to run out of potential victims (unless reinfection becomes a lot more common than it is at present). How far away is that?
At the moment we are recording over 300k infected persons a week. We are doing an absurd amount of testing but anecdotally there are suggestions that the young in particular are less keen to be tested and have isolation inflicted upon them. Surely 500K a week is more likely. We have already recorded more than 8.5m cases and it is highly likely that there are significantly more that had an asymptomatic or minor infection and were never identified. I would be surprised if less than 15m have not had it already, possibly more.
At the current rate the virus burns its way through the remainder in something approaching 90 weeks, a very long time. I suspect it will take even longer unless the rate increases as there will be a longish tail of lower infections towards the end. We undoubtedly have a long way to go but if you accept the "we are all going to get it" premise then it is a very long road indeed. The consequences for NHS care for everything else are not good.
That's assuming everyone gets it which is an extreme worst case scenario. Even when its highly contagious in limited areas it doesn't seem that everyone is getting infected.
If you were to go with say 80% of the unvaccinated getting it and 10% of the vaccinated then you'd be looking at about 18.6 million cases. If you go with an 80/20 split then it goes up to 23.6 million.
Obviously there'll be some overlap in the data, eg of people who already caught the virus before they were vaccinated.
Because you do not catch it on one occasion does not mean that you will not catch it on another. So my daughter tested positive. None of the rest of the family were infected despite living in the same house which she understandably continued to live in without a mask (she's asthmatic). This does not mean that the rest of us will not catch it on some future occasion because we are immune. It simply means we did not catch it then.
Of course but nor does it guarantee, especially if you're vaccinated, that you will catch it in the future either.
Of course we are all vaccinated. We are not stupid. But if it becomes endemic, which it clearly already has, how do we avoid infection forever?
The "sheer scale of the latest numbers" is down almost entirely to the mixed messaging, heel dragging and completely shit schools/kids rollout.
I don't agree - I think the public must bear some personal responsibility here as well - the rapid abandonment of masks for example, really predated any government actions. The reluctance to tolerate any restrictions on personal freedoms, frequently shown on here, to me seems childish at times. In Spain, where I live masks, for example, remain pretty universal indoors and I sense the attitude of mind is that this is a small sacrifice for staying a little safer. Rather like the attitude to ID cards and Covid certificates - 'not ideal but the benefits outweigh the risks'. The UK attitude seems quite different and that is fair enough, but it is not consequence free.
Just blaming the government/authority all the time just come across as an abdication of personal responsibility.
Because relative to vaccines cloth masks are absolute garbage. Scotland's kept them and what kind of material difference has it made other than making the country a more miserable place than England?
Plenty of people wear masks that are effective. Try comparing Spain & the UK current data. Besides it's not just about mask wearing, it's about attitude. From outside things in the UK are looking quite grim now - a view confirmed by many UK contacts.
From inside thing in the UK are pretty great right now. We've dropped the masks and all the other gibberish and are getting back to normal.
The attitude should be that Covid is an issue for the past. Vaccines saw to that. Get your jab, if required get a booster, and live your life normally.
I have no interest in any precautions other than vaccines. Washing your hands etc is just basic decency and not especially Covid related.
LOL. No. We are nowhere near back to normal. Not by a long f***ing shot.
100+ people are dying from/with Covid each day. Thousands are being infected. Hospitals are under pressure, and existing patients are facing far longer waits than usual.
And who says that isn't normal? "The new normal"?
The reason people are facing longer waits is because things were postponed and distancing was implemented etc reducing capacity. Time to end all that nonsense.
Yeah. 100+ avoidable deaths a day perfectly fine as long as you are fine.
I'm not in favour of increased restrictions at the moment. I can easily see that they may be needed in a month or two, though, and I see talk like yours above as being rather cavalier.
I think some reality is needed about who is dying. We had reports yesterday that the majority are elderly with at least 5 (five) other health conditions.
Yep.
However: 1) 'The majority'. Many are not. 2) Many of these people are living fulfilling lives, enjoying themselves. Their families enjoy their times with them. The idea they are somehow all 'ready' for death is far from correct. They do not need to die.
The one person I know who has died of Covid was in his eighties. He had a couple of underlying issues, but they were managed and he was very active with friends and family. He was out and about every day, driving to various clubs and events. The people dying are not all in care homes.
And we will all (hopefully) be old one day.
Why would you want to be old? That's nothing to aspire to. Better to be another powdered skull on the road to PT's freedom.
I think the more important point missed by @Farooq is that his "let a few oldies die" actually incorporates many people of all ages, children with conditions and so on.
Javid's line, since first becoming Health Secretary, has seemed to be that it is only to be expected that numbers of Covid infections (and thus hospitalizations and deaths) will increase. If that were true, policy interventions would seem to have little point.
I think his position from the presser yesterday (of which I only heard about the last half hour so I missed most of it) seemed to be that winter is coming and in winter we spend more time inside breathing each other's warmed air in confined spaces so of course infection will increase.
We shall see. There has to be a point at which the virus starts to run out of potential victims (unless reinfection becomes a lot more common than it is at present). How far away is that?
At the moment we are recording over 300k infected persons a week. We are doing an absurd amount of testing but anecdotally there are suggestions that the young in particular are less keen to be tested and have isolation inflicted upon them. Surely 500K a week is more likely. We have already recorded more than 8.5m cases and it is highly likely that there are significantly more that had an asymptomatic or minor infection and were never identified. I would be surprised if less than 15m have not had it already, possibly more.
At the current rate the virus burns its way through the remainder in something approaching 90 weeks, a very long time. I suspect it will take even longer unless the rate increases as there will be a longish tail of lower infections towards the end. We undoubtedly have a long way to go but if you accept the "we are all going to get it" premise then it is a very long road indeed. The consequences for NHS care for everything else are not good.
That's assuming everyone gets it which is an extreme worst case scenario. Even when its highly contagious in limited areas it doesn't seem that everyone is getting infected.
If you were to go with say 80% of the unvaccinated getting it and 10% of the vaccinated then you'd be looking at about 18.6 million cases. If you go with an 80/20 split then it goes up to 23.6 million.
Obviously there'll be some overlap in the data, eg of people who already caught the virus before they were vaccinated.
Because you do not catch it on one occasion does not mean that you will not catch it on another. So my daughter tested positive. None of the rest of the family were infected despite living in the same house which she understandably continued to live in without a mask (she's asthmatic). This does not mean that the rest of us will not catch it on some future occasion because we are immune. It simply means we did not catch it then.
Bloody hell you'd have had her live in your house with a mask on?
- What I would compel them to do is to attend a vaccination appointment, which is different from compelling vaccination itself. - They would be sat down for a discussion to encourage vaccination. -Give them some ways out: if they have had a confirmed COVID case and refuse, take them off the stats. They shouldn't worry us. - If possible, offer antibody tests (compulsory return appointment if needed) to expand the pool of who we can stop worrying about. - Make clear to them this may not open up all things, for e.g., test free foreign holidays which have an international element
It is important to note the anti-vac activist base may not be typical of the unvaccinated. They are more likely to be people who have a troubled relationship with the state on multiple mundane levels, DWP, police, social services, etc. and are just mistrustful of 'it all'. Being sat down and talked to by the authorities may not be their idea of fun, but you can often get them to listen.
Once you go down n this route you can do the following:
- Do start banning the unvaccinated and not previously infected from certain places, even down to pubs, but I wouldn't go beyond public entertainment venues into workplaces like Italy. Start making those rules that mean you legally have to be vaccinated or exempt to go into entertainment venues. - BUT, don't compel businesses to check Vaxport, don't force people to produce proof on demand. - The classic British driving license fudge of proof 'within 7 days at the police station' is fine here. - Track and trace or the vigilance of the public may also bring breaches to light.
On the whole I'm very relaxed about making rules which have somewhat limited enforceability, but which will make the unvaccinated think twice about going out.
We appreciate the support of MPs and peers from all parties. Today, we are delighted and honoured to receive congratulations on our “incredible hard work” from the Prime Minister, @BorisJohnson as well as his best wishes for our conference. #LGBAlliance2021
Fake news. It may be worth looking at Dom's second tweet on that feed:
Ps. No Jess Phillips is NOT the answer.
I did.
ETA, and the second Dom tweet wasn't there when I posted the first one. But I did post it as soon as it came up.
All fine. Now we just have to hunt down the Midlands woman who Dom has in mind (if she exists, which I rather doubt).
I wonder how many are paying to get on to Dom's blog and find out if he does have anyone specific in mind.. I'm a little surprised that he's put it behind a paywall.
Just seen someone post that he mentions Nandy.
He says he's from Durham so the Midlands is a bit bigger!
On the comments that a minor improvement in transmission reduction won't make much difference.
If we're on an R of 1.1 and a minor change could get us down to 0.9 (eg masks, encouraged wfh), then what's the difference when we start with 50,000 cases after 5 cycles?
It's over 80,000 to under 30,000.
Under 30,000 is a level that's very likely sustainable for hospitalisations in the NHS Over 80,000 is twice the level cases were two weeks ago, giving hospitalisations a week ago which was when the alarm bells started to ring.
It obviously makes a big bloody difference, and those arguing the opposite really damage their case overall.
I do like the dividend to the vaccinated idea as well. Serious carrot time.
A change of 0.2 in the R rate is relatively large. How much benefit do masks really bring?
It might be a decrease of 0.01 in the R rate, or less.
The balance of the studies I found some time ago suggested around a 20%-25% reduction in transmission overall. Not a silver bullet by any means, but when you're this close to R=1, damn well worth a shot.
Presumably though that 20-25% (which I am sceptical of in real world conditions - but then I would be, wouldn't I) was on unvaxxed people? I would expect once people are vaxxed, the benefits to others (and indeed themselves) of wearing a mask decreases to pretty much nothing.
My objection to mask wearing is both one of principle and practicality. The principle is that it's absolutely not something, in my view, that the state should have the power to require people to do,* even if it is desirable.
The practicality is that the benefit gained by it is marginal at best, and may in overall cost-benefit terms be negative. It is certainly not cost-free. And while I don't like that we are now a health service with a country attached to it, the health service does need money, which we can only get by having an economy.
*For me, the biggest lesson of the last 18 months has been how fragile the freedom we used to take for granted really is.
Javid's line, since first becoming Health Secretary, has seemed to be that it is only to be expected that numbers of Covid infections (and thus hospitalizations and deaths) will increase. If that were true, policy interventions would seem to have little point.
I think his position from the presser yesterday (of which I only heard about the last half hour so I missed most of it) seemed to be that winter is coming and in winter we spend more time inside breathing each other's warmed air in confined spaces so of course infection will increase.
We shall see. There has to be a point at which the virus starts to run out of potential victims (unless reinfection becomes a lot more common than it is at present). How far away is that?
At the moment we are recording over 300k infected persons a week. We are doing an absurd amount of testing but anecdotally there are suggestions that the young in particular are less keen to be tested and have isolation inflicted upon them. Surely 500K a week is more likely. We have already recorded more than 8.5m cases and it is highly likely that there are significantly more that had an asymptomatic or minor infection and were never identified. I would be surprised if less than 15m have not had it already, possibly more.
At the current rate the virus burns its way through the remainder in something approaching 90 weeks, a very long time. I suspect it will take even longer unless the rate increases as there will be a longish tail of lower infections towards the end. We undoubtedly have a long way to go but if you accept the "we are all going to get it" premise then it is a very long road indeed. The consequences for NHS care for everything else are not good.
That's assuming everyone gets it which is an extreme worst case scenario. Even when its highly contagious in limited areas it doesn't seem that everyone is getting infected.
If you were to go with say 80% of the unvaccinated getting it and 10% of the vaccinated then you'd be looking at about 18.6 million cases. If you go with an 80/20 split then it goes up to 23.6 million.
Obviously there'll be some overlap in the data, eg of people who already caught the virus before they were vaccinated.
Because you do not catch it on one occasion does not mean that you will not catch it on another. So my daughter tested positive. None of the rest of the family were infected despite living in the same house which she understandably continued to live in without a mask (she's asthmatic). This does not mean that the rest of us will not catch it on some future occasion because we are immune. It simply means we did not catch it then.
Bloody hell you'd have had her live in your house with a mask on?
No for the reasons indicated but if she had not had asthma then when, for example, she wanted to come and watch the TV with us, a mask when we knew she was positive and potentially infectious would not have been unreasonable would it? Obviously she would not have worn it when alone.
I must say the guidance or lack of it as to how to share a house with someone infected with Covid was quite vexing and rather odd.
The "sheer scale of the latest numbers" is down almost entirely to the mixed messaging, heel dragging and completely shit schools/kids rollout.
I don't agree - I think the public must bear some personal responsibility here as well - the rapid abandonment of masks for example, really predated any government actions. The reluctance to tolerate any restrictions on personal freedoms, frequently shown on here, to me seems childish at times. In Spain, where I live masks, for example, remain pretty universal indoors and I sense the attitude of mind is that this is a small sacrifice for staying a little safer. Rather like the attitude to ID cards and Covid certificates - 'not ideal but the benefits outweigh the risks'. The UK attitude seems quite different and that is fair enough, but it is not consequence free.
Just blaming the government/authority all the time just come across as an abdication of personal responsibility.
Because relative to vaccines cloth masks are absolute garbage. Scotland's kept them and what kind of material difference has it made other than making the country a more miserable place than England?
Plenty of people wear masks that are effective. Try comparing Spain & the UK current data. Besides it's not just about mask wearing, it's about attitude. From outside things in the UK are looking quite grim now - a view confirmed by many UK contacts.
From inside thing in the UK are pretty great right now. We've dropped the masks and all the other gibberish and are getting back to normal.
The attitude should be that Covid is an issue for the past. Vaccines saw to that. Get your jab, if required get a booster, and live your life normally.
I have no interest in any precautions other than vaccines. Washing your hands etc is just basic decency and not especially Covid related.
It’s not past Philip, it’s very much still here. We need to flatten the curve in the least intrusive and economically damaging way. That may involve the more widespread use of masks again and more encouragement to WFH. We need tools we can draw on which don’t bring everything to a halt.
Yes , tell that to the families of the 1000 a week that are dying, what an absolute bampot he is.
People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end. Upto ten thousand a week die on average anyway.
What matters isn't that death comes to us all eventually, but what we do with our lives. Ceasing to live our lives because of a paralysing fear of death isn't healthy and is a great waste of life.
Incarcerating people in their homes so they don't see any loved ones and wither away and die of natural causes isn't "better".
How crassly moronic.
"Up to ten thousand a week die on average anyway."
Well, that's fine then. How many extra people are you willing to die just so you can feel the fresh air on your bumfluff-ridden face? Why not twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? All for your 'freedom' ...
I think that question is a bit unfair, a touch of emotional shaming going on, but will give my answer as its an anonymous forum. I probably wouldn't share this view in public but think if there were an extra five thousand a week dying we should have more legal restrictions. At an extra two thousand a week no legal restrictions. So somewhere between those numbers for me.
How about you?
Certainly not 'as many as it takes', which PT said.
The problem with deaths is that it is a lagging factor. Before vaccines, cases went up, then hospitalisations, and then deaths. Now that the link between cases and hospitalisations has been weakened, the first sign we have of trouble is rising hospitalisations.
And I'll therefore swerve your question by saying it's the wrong one, if we're talking about restrictions. The first sign we'll get of big problems is from hospitalisations, and that's what we'd need to react to. So perhaps the 1,200-1,500 daily admissions that we had back in early November would be when we'd have to slam the handbrake on - particularly if they are increasing rapidly.
You asked the question of someone else so a bit of a cop out to now say it is the wrong question. I don't think using wrong questions for emotional shaming will help us get to the right answer.
I'm not 'emotional shaming'. PT's view is that, now we have vaccines, any number of people ("as many as it takes") should die in order to protect his freedom. He said: "People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end."
Which whilst true, could be used to excuse anything causing a life to end. Which is why I asked how many is acceptable. He gave his answer.
What is the alternative?
I believe I gave my view below. We're currently at a manageable, if tragic, level of deaths and hospitalisations. If hospitalisations go up to a certain level - perhaps 1,200 to 1,500 a day, then we need to seriously consider more restrictions.
I'm not saying we need them at the moment. But my view is that we need to be open to the need for more restrictions, and not just callously let any number of people die (and, incidentally, cause the hospital system to fail, potentially affecting all of us).
Until we are in a more stable situation, we've got to be prepared to react.
Again and do what? Whose businesses are you prepared to destroy and lives ruin pursuing an impossible goal?
What's the impossible goal? All we're talking about is managing an epidemic within NHS capacity.
That implies we can keep it at a level low enough to make a difference. We can't. Not without compulsory vaccination. And maybe not even then.
Trouble is this is a great get out for the Government. The NHS is unfit for purpose (keeping people alive) but they can blame its failings on covid.
NHS reform + funding is an important area, I agree. I'm not an "envy of the world" person. But we won't have that sorted by Christmas. To me, this is simply about bringing some limited measures in to get through this winter without something grisly happening. If necessary. Maybe it won't be. But it's crazy imo to just rule it out on some sort of libertarian point of principle.
For once I am not arguing this from a libertarian point of view but purely from one of practicality and (I hope) logic. Putting in place any form of restriction which impacts businesses - particularly the entertainment and hospitality industry - is unsustainable and illogical unless you are saying things are going to get any better than this in the long term. I don't see how they do and the logical conclusion of putting any restrictions in place this winter is that they will have to be reintroduced every winter in the future. That is unsustainable.
Ah well our disagreement is nicely simple and specific then. I think there's a great chance that by Feb 22 we'll have enough immunity (by V and by I) for this disease to be long term manageable. So it's about getting there without something too horrid for words happening in our health care system.
Fake news. It may be worth looking at Dom's second tweet on that feed:
Ps. No Jess Phillips is NOT the answer.
I did.
ETA, and the second Dom tweet wasn't there when I posted the first one. But I did post it as soon as it came up.
All fine. Now we just have to hunt down the Midlands woman who Dom has in mind (if she exists, which I rather doubt).
I wonder how many are paying to get on to Dom's blog and find out if he does have anyone specific in mind.. I'm a little surprised that he's put it behind a paywall.
Just seen someone post that he mentions Nandy.
He says he's from Durham so the Midlands is a bit bigger!
We regularly describe Lancashire and Yorkshire as Down South, so it is very possible, yes.
The "sheer scale of the latest numbers" is down almost entirely to the mixed messaging, heel dragging and completely shit schools/kids rollout.
I don't agree - I think the public must bear some personal responsibility here as well - the rapid abandonment of masks for example, really predated any government actions. The reluctance to tolerate any restrictions on personal freedoms, frequently shown on here, to me seems childish at times. In Spain, where I live masks, for example, remain pretty universal indoors and I sense the attitude of mind is that this is a small sacrifice for staying a little safer. Rather like the attitude to ID cards and Covid certificates - 'not ideal but the benefits outweigh the risks'. The UK attitude seems quite different and that is fair enough, but it is not consequence free.
Just blaming the government/authority all the time just come across as an abdication of personal responsibility.
Because relative to vaccines cloth masks are absolute garbage. Scotland's kept them and what kind of material difference has it made other than making the country a more miserable place than England?
Plenty of people wear masks that are effective. Try comparing Spain & the UK current data. Besides it's not just about mask wearing, it's about attitude. From outside things in the UK are looking quite grim now - a view confirmed by many UK contacts.
From inside thing in the UK are pretty great right now. We've dropped the masks and all the other gibberish and are getting back to normal.
The attitude should be that Covid is an issue for the past. Vaccines saw to that. Get your jab, if required get a booster, and live your life normally.
I have no interest in any precautions other than vaccines. Washing your hands etc is just basic decency and not especially Covid related.
It’s not past Philip, it’s very much still here. We need to flatten the curve in the least intrusive and economically damaging way. That may involve the more widespread use of masks again and more encouragement to WFH. We need tools we can draw on which don’t bring everything to a halt.
Yes , tell that to the families of the 1000 a week that are dying, what an absolute bampot he is.
People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end. Upto ten thousand a week die on average anyway.
What matters isn't that death comes to us all eventually, but what we do with our lives. Ceasing to live our lives because of a paralysing fear of death isn't healthy and is a great waste of life.
Incarcerating people in their homes so they don't see any loved ones and wither away and die of natural causes isn't "better".
How crassly moronic.
"Up to ten thousand a week die on average anyway."
Well, that's fine then. How many extra people are you willing to die just so you can feel the fresh air on your bumfluff-ridden face? Why not twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? All for your 'freedom' ...
But surely there has to be a balance. People die in traffic accidents, or of smoking related conditions or drinking related conditions or of any other number of preventable conditions. We do not ban those activities. We certainly mitigate but not to the degree being proposed by some with COVID. We simply cannot keep locking down or applying large scale restrictions. The vaccines have to be the route out of this. This is not about Philips freedom it is about a fully functioning society and we need a fully functioning economy to pay for this.
Of course there has to be a balance.
I am not in favour of a return to harder restrictions at the moment. It seems a fine-edged thing, though, and the last 18 months have shown us that if you're not careful, when restrictions are required, they're required suddenly.
Hopefully enough kids are getting Covid that we'll be at herd immunity soon, and then figures will plummet. However, herd immunity's been called out many times before during this crisis, and we're not there yet. This s***** little B****er of a virus is a survivor, and may yet surprise us. Again.
And that's where PT is being complacent. He is unwilling to see people do even the smallest measures to protect themselves and others, because for some reason it is offensive to him. He callously disregards unnecessary deaths - possibly because it's not his own death. His argument could be used if we have 100 extra deaths a day, or a thousand. Or ten thousand.
The question you have to ask JJ is how does it get any better than this? If you are double - or triple jabbed - then you are never going to be safer than you are now. Are you proposing that the restrictions, mild as they may seem to you, should become a permanent way of life in Britain? Are we going to see the threat of lockdowns every single winter because the NHS is so unfit for purpose even before Covid?
Basically this is the new normal everyone was talking about. It is possible there is some miracle cure around the corner but to be honest I think we already have that as effectively as we are ever going to get it. So if you think PT is being unreasonable in his rather forthright comments then you have to say what you are proposing as the permanent alternatives.
I think this is the key question that I have asked myself and ask others when this debate arises. I always arrive at the same answer: the only rational position is that we have maximum protection, so we have to live our lives. As you say, a miracle cure might at some point be found, but we cannot wait for it.
It's not really about a miracle cure. Soon we'll have the boosters done, and kids done, and our level of immunity (from vax + infection) will be maxed out and in all probabaility sufficient to have the disease down at background levels. Very much there but manageable. This is then clear 'live with it' territory - both because we can and (your point) because we have to. That's not far away.
But in the meantime, with winter and with the coexistence along with Covid of flu and the pandemic backlog, should we (i) be prepared to bring in some restrictions to prevent the NHS collapsing, or (ii) should we rule this out on a libertarian point of principle? This is how I'd frame the discussion and while not being a hawk on the matter I'd come down squarely for (i).
You still havent answered what restrictions, apart from saying masks and wfh.
Wfh has never been legally enforced, how would you do this? If a business say it is essential to come into the office should they be closed down?
Masks, to the untrained eye usage is similar in mandated settings like TFL and voluntary ones like supermarkets.
So if all you are saying is you would like government to encourage masks and wfh, fine. If not what would you change legally and what impact do you think it would have?
What I'm saying is really just one specific thing. That it makes no sense to rule out bringing in any Covid measures this winter on a point of principle that says anything over and above getting vaccinated is an unacceptable violation of personal liberty. That is just nuts to me. When it comes to what the measures are, they need to be effective and proportionate to the problem. That's rather a SOTBO, I know, but I don't feel very well qualified to expand on it. I haven't much of a clue what works and what doesn't. My level of interest in Covid details has rather dropped off in recent times tbh. But this "plan B" is apparently what's on the table. I'm not sure how much law is envisaged there cf guidance.
The official govt Plan B is requiring vaccine passports for nightclubs and big events, legally requiring masks in settings tbc, and encouraging wfh and masks wearing through talking about them. That's it.
If you think vaccine passports won't happen, all it really is will be changing supermarkets from voluntary mask wearing to mandatory. Might move the needle of mask usage up 5-10% perhaps. Yesterdays presser is essentially a third of plan B done, and another third you think is implausible.
-----
Plan B 75. If the data suggests the NHS is likely to come under unsustainable pressure, the Government has prepared a Plan B for England. The Government hopes not to have to implement Plan B, but given the uncertainty, it is setting out details now so that the public and businesses know what to expect if further measures become necessary. 38 S1360 SAGE 95 minutes, S1376 SPI-M-O Consensus statement, 8th Sept 2021 22 COVID-19 RESPONSE: AUTUMN AND WINTER PLAN 76. Given the high levels of protection in the adult population against COVID-19 by vaccination, relatively small changes in policy and behaviour could have a big impact on reducing (or increasing) transmission, bending the epidemic curve and relieving pressure on the NHS. Thanks to the success of the vaccination programme, it should be possible to handle a further resurgence with less damaging measures than the lockdowns and economic and social restrictions deployed in the past. The Government would provide prior notice as far as possible to the public and Parliament ahead of implementing any necessary changes in a Plan B scenario. 77. The Government’s Plan B prioritises measures which can help control transmission of the virus while seeking to minimise economic and social impacts. This includes: a. Communicating clearly and urgently to the public that the level of risk has increased, and with it the need to behave more cautiously. b. Introducing mandatory vaccine-only COVID-status certification in certain settings. c. Legally mandating face coverings in certain settings. 78. The Government would also consider asking people once again to work from home if they can, for a limited period. The Government recognises this causes more disruption and has greater immediate costs to the economy and some businesses than the other Plan B interventions, so a final decision would be made based on the data at the time.
Prof Francois Balloux @BallouxFrancois · 49m Interesting data suggesting the Pfizer/BioNTech works best as a three-dose vaccine. Initial 3-dose antibody titres being so much higher than 2-dose ones makes a stronger case than I had anticipated for administrating boosters outside just the most at-risk demographies.
It is worth remembering that the dosage, number of shots etc was guesstimated and then trialed for the various vaccines. So they are safe and effective at the trial usage - but it is quite possible that this can be improved on.
By the way, just had my first experience with home PCR tests, and my conclusion is that Test and Trace can't find their arse with both hands.
Four kits ordered in the end to get one that was complete. First two were missing the security seal and address label (so we could take the test but not send it anywhere) and one of the second pair was missing the barcode thing for the test tube (we ended up re-purposing the kit from one of the first pair and transferring the bar code from the (useless) box for that one to the one we needed.
And the number of questions you have to answer to get one and then to register it... don't they know that every extra question/hoop you put into any procedure results in a certain number of people dropping out?
My experience of PCR recently was the drive thru, Sheffield Halfway at least had that absolubtely down pat. It's the same as the at home kits (You do the swabbing parked up in your car) but with less faff I think.
The "sheer scale of the latest numbers" is down almost entirely to the mixed messaging, heel dragging and completely shit schools/kids rollout.
I don't agree - I think the public must bear some personal responsibility here as well - the rapid abandonment of masks for example, really predated any government actions. The reluctance to tolerate any restrictions on personal freedoms, frequently shown on here, to me seems childish at times. In Spain, where I live masks, for example, remain pretty universal indoors and I sense the attitude of mind is that this is a small sacrifice for staying a little safer. Rather like the attitude to ID cards and Covid certificates - 'not ideal but the benefits outweigh the risks'. The UK attitude seems quite different and that is fair enough, but it is not consequence free.
Just blaming the government/authority all the time just come across as an abdication of personal responsibility.
Because relative to vaccines cloth masks are absolute garbage. Scotland's kept them and what kind of material difference has it made other than making the country a more miserable place than England?
Plenty of people wear masks that are effective. Try comparing Spain & the UK current data. Besides it's not just about mask wearing, it's about attitude. From outside things in the UK are looking quite grim now - a view confirmed by many UK contacts.
From inside thing in the UK are pretty great right now. We've dropped the masks and all the other gibberish and are getting back to normal.
The attitude should be that Covid is an issue for the past. Vaccines saw to that. Get your jab, if required get a booster, and live your life normally.
I have no interest in any precautions other than vaccines. Washing your hands etc is just basic decency and not especially Covid related.
It’s not past Philip, it’s very much still here. We need to flatten the curve in the least intrusive and economically damaging way. That may involve the more widespread use of masks again and more encouragement to WFH. We need tools we can draw on which don’t bring everything to a halt.
Yes , tell that to the families of the 1000 a week that are dying, what an absolute bampot he is.
People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end. Upto ten thousand a week die on average anyway.
What matters isn't that death comes to us all eventually, but what we do with our lives. Ceasing to live our lives because of a paralysing fear of death isn't healthy and is a great waste of life.
Incarcerating people in their homes so they don't see any loved ones and wither away and die of natural causes isn't "better".
How crassly moronic.
"Up to ten thousand a week die on average anyway."
Well, that's fine then. How many extra people are you willing to die just so you can feel the fresh air on your bumfluff-ridden face? Why not twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? All for your 'freedom' ...
I think that question is a bit unfair, a touch of emotional shaming going on, but will give my answer as its an anonymous forum. I probably wouldn't share this view in public but think if there were an extra five thousand a week dying we should have more legal restrictions. At an extra two thousand a week no legal restrictions. So somewhere between those numbers for me.
How about you?
Certainly not 'as many as it takes', which PT said.
The problem with deaths is that it is a lagging factor. Before vaccines, cases went up, then hospitalisations, and then deaths. Now that the link between cases and hospitalisations has been weakened, the first sign we have of trouble is rising hospitalisations.
And I'll therefore swerve your question by saying it's the wrong one, if we're talking about restrictions. The first sign we'll get of big problems is from hospitalisations, and that's what we'd need to react to. So perhaps the 1,200-1,500 daily admissions that we had back in early November would be when we'd have to slam the handbrake on - particularly if they are increasing rapidly.
You asked the question of someone else so a bit of a cop out to now say it is the wrong question. I don't think using wrong questions for emotional shaming will help us get to the right answer.
I'm not 'emotional shaming'. PT's view is that, now we have vaccines, any number of people ("as many as it takes") should die in order to protect his freedom. He said: "People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end."
Which whilst true, could be used to excuse anything causing a life to end. Which is why I asked how many is acceptable. He gave his answer.
What is the alternative?
I believe I gave my view below. We're currently at a manageable, if tragic, level of deaths and hospitalisations. If hospitalisations go up to a certain level - perhaps 1,200 to 1,500 a day, then we need to seriously consider more restrictions.
I'm not saying we need them at the moment. But my view is that we need to be open to the need for more restrictions, and not just callously let any number of people die (and, incidentally, cause the hospital system to fail, potentially affecting all of us).
Until we are in a more stable situation, we've got to be prepared to react.
Again and do what? Whose businesses are you prepared to destroy and lives ruin pursuing an impossible goal?
What's the impossible goal? All we're talking about is managing an epidemic within NHS capacity.
That implies we can keep it at a level low enough to make a difference. We can't. Not without compulsory vaccination. And maybe not even then.
Trouble is this is a great get out for the Government. The NHS is unfit for purpose (keeping people alive) but they can blame its failings on covid.
NHS reform + funding is an important area, I agree. I'm not an "envy of the world" person. But we won't have that sorted by Christmas. To me, this is simply about bringing some limited measures in to get through this winter without something grisly happening. If necessary. Maybe it won't be. But it's crazy imo to just rule it out on some sort of libertarian point of principle.
For once I am not arguing this from a libertarian point of view but purely from one of practicality and (I hope) logic. Putting in place any form of restriction which impacts businesses - particularly the entertainment and hospitality industry - is unsustainable and illogical unless you are saying things are going to get any better than this in the long term. I don't see how they do and the logical conclusion of putting any restrictions in place this winter is that they will have to be reintroduced every winter in the future. That is unsustainable.
Ah well our disagreement is nicely simple and specific then. I think there's a great chance that by Feb 22 we'll have enough immunity (by V and by I) for this disease to be long term manageable. So it's about getting there without something too horrid for words happening in our health care system.
How?
What draconian steps are you prepared to take by mandate of law to get us there?
No wonder some of us on PB are so keen on the elite getting a classical education. How deal with the proles. Or rather capite censi. That Oz journo would get corrected on PB, that's for sure. Don't think she has the Gracchi in mind, somehow.
Guernsey COVID update - case rate now above UK (largely due to unvaccinated children and onwards transmission) - recommendation is bi-weekly LFT and mask wearing in busy, poorly ventilated enclosed spaces - but another lockdown is unlikely unless a new virus variant emerges which escapes vaccination - both politicians and CMO aligned.
Javid's line, since first becoming Health Secretary, has seemed to be that it is only to be expected that numbers of Covid infections (and thus hospitalizations and deaths) will increase. If that were true, policy interventions would seem to have little point.
I think his position from the presser yesterday (of which I only heard about the last half hour so I missed most of it) seemed to be that winter is coming and in winter we spend more time inside breathing each other's warmed air in confined spaces so of course infection will increase.
We shall see. There has to be a point at which the virus starts to run out of potential victims (unless reinfection becomes a lot more common than it is at present). How far away is that?
At the moment we are recording over 300k infected persons a week. We are doing an absurd amount of testing but anecdotally there are suggestions that the young in particular are less keen to be tested and have isolation inflicted upon them. Surely 500K a week is more likely. We have already recorded more than 8.5m cases and it is highly likely that there are significantly more that had an asymptomatic or minor infection and were never identified. I would be surprised if less than 15m have not had it already, possibly more.
At the current rate the virus burns its way through the remainder in something approaching 90 weeks, a very long time. I suspect it will take even longer unless the rate increases as there will be a longish tail of lower infections towards the end. We undoubtedly have a long way to go but if you accept the "we are all going to get it" premise then it is a very long road indeed. The consequences for NHS care for everything else are not good.
Its very interesting and amongst other things lists the 'attack rate' the % of people who have already had it, overall its 47% for 5-14 it estimates it as 76% (95% Confidence interval 75%-77%)
Which is the % of the total population testing positive in a week, it estimates 890,000 people in England had it in the week ending 9 October, but crucially it also records 8.1% of 10-14 year olds as having it at that time.
My conclusion is we are very very close to running out of people especially kids, who have not had it and when we do cases will fall.
We have a virus with a very high R number (possible 9 or 10), which means it keeps on increasing till 85% or90% have it, but the flip side is it drops dramatically after that.
Andy Ngô Rainbow flag @MrAndyNgo I’m at the @ALLIANCELGB conference in Westminster, London. It is the first large scale conference for lesbian, gay & bisexual people who are critical of extreme trans ideology. There is high security given extremism of some radical trans activists. 10:32 am · 21 Oct 2021·Twitter for iPhone
The "sheer scale of the latest numbers" is down almost entirely to the mixed messaging, heel dragging and completely shit schools/kids rollout.
I don't agree - I think the public must bear some personal responsibility here as well - the rapid abandonment of masks for example, really predated any government actions. The reluctance to tolerate any restrictions on personal freedoms, frequently shown on here, to me seems childish at times. In Spain, where I live masks, for example, remain pretty universal indoors and I sense the attitude of mind is that this is a small sacrifice for staying a little safer. Rather like the attitude to ID cards and Covid certificates - 'not ideal but the benefits outweigh the risks'. The UK attitude seems quite different and that is fair enough, but it is not consequence free.
Just blaming the government/authority all the time just come across as an abdication of personal responsibility.
Because relative to vaccines cloth masks are absolute garbage. Scotland's kept them and what kind of material difference has it made other than making the country a more miserable place than England?
Plenty of people wear masks that are effective. Try comparing Spain & the UK current data. Besides it's not just about mask wearing, it's about attitude. From outside things in the UK are looking quite grim now - a view confirmed by many UK contacts.
From inside thing in the UK are pretty great right now. We've dropped the masks and all the other gibberish and are getting back to normal.
The attitude should be that Covid is an issue for the past. Vaccines saw to that. Get your jab, if required get a booster, and live your life normally.
I have no interest in any precautions other than vaccines. Washing your hands etc is just basic decency and not especially Covid related.
It’s not past Philip, it’s very much still here. We need to flatten the curve in the least intrusive and economically damaging way. That may involve the more widespread use of masks again and more encouragement to WFH. We need tools we can draw on which don’t bring everything to a halt.
Yes , tell that to the families of the 1000 a week that are dying, what an absolute bampot he is.
People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end. Upto ten thousand a week die on average anyway.
What matters isn't that death comes to us all eventually, but what we do with our lives. Ceasing to live our lives because of a paralysing fear of death isn't healthy and is a great waste of life.
Incarcerating people in their homes so they don't see any loved ones and wither away and die of natural causes isn't "better".
How crassly moronic.
"Up to ten thousand a week die on average anyway."
Well, that's fine then. How many extra people are you willing to die just so you can feel the fresh air on your bumfluff-ridden face? Why not twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? All for your 'freedom' ...
But surely there has to be a balance. People die in traffic accidents, or of smoking related conditions or drinking related conditions or of any other number of preventable conditions. We do not ban those activities. We certainly mitigate but not to the degree being proposed by some with COVID. We simply cannot keep locking down or applying large scale restrictions. The vaccines have to be the route out of this. This is not about Philips freedom it is about a fully functioning society and we need a fully functioning economy to pay for this.
Of course there has to be a balance.
I am not in favour of a return to harder restrictions at the moment. It seems a fine-edged thing, though, and the last 18 months have shown us that if you're not careful, when restrictions are required, they're required suddenly.
Hopefully enough kids are getting Covid that we'll be at herd immunity soon, and then figures will plummet. However, herd immunity's been called out many times before during this crisis, and we're not there yet. This s***** little B****er of a virus is a survivor, and may yet surprise us. Again.
And that's where PT is being complacent. He is unwilling to see people do even the smallest measures to protect themselves and others, because for some reason it is offensive to him. He callously disregards unnecessary deaths - possibly because it's not his own death. His argument could be used if we have 100 extra deaths a day, or a thousand. Or ten thousand.
The question you have to ask JJ is how does it get any better than this? If you are double - or triple jabbed - then you are never going to be safer than you are now. Are you proposing that the restrictions, mild as they may seem to you, should become a permanent way of life in Britain? Are we going to see the threat of lockdowns every single winter because the NHS is so unfit for purpose even before Covid?
Basically this is the new normal everyone was talking about. It is possible there is some miracle cure around the corner but to be honest I think we already have that as effectively as we are ever going to get it. So if you think PT is being unreasonable in his rather forthright comments then you have to say what you are proposing as the permanent alternatives.
I think this is the key question that I have asked myself and ask others when this debate arises. I always arrive at the same answer: the only rational position is that we have maximum protection, so we have to live our lives. As you say, a miracle cure might at some point be found, but we cannot wait for it.
It's not really about a miracle cure. Soon we'll have the boosters done, and kids done, and our level of immunity (from vax + infection) will be maxed out and in all probabaility sufficient to have the disease down at background levels. Very much there but manageable. This is then clear 'live with it' territory - both because we can and (your point) because we have to. That's not far away.
But in the meantime, with winter and with the coexistence along with Covid of flu and the pandemic backlog, should we (i) be prepared to bring in some restrictions to prevent the NHS collapsing, or (ii) should we rule this out on a libertarian point of principle? This is how I'd frame the discussion and while not being a hawk on the matter I'd come down squarely for (i).
You still havent answered what restrictions, apart from saying masks and wfh.
Wfh has never been legally enforced, how would you do this? If a business say it is essential to come into the office should they be closed down?
Masks, to the untrained eye usage is similar in mandated settings like TFL and voluntary ones like supermarkets.
So if all you are saying is you would like government to encourage masks and wfh, fine. If not what would you change legally and what impact do you think it would have?
What I'm saying is really just one specific thing. That it makes no sense to rule out bringing in any Covid measures this winter on a point of principle that says anything over and above getting vaccinated is an unacceptable violation of personal liberty. That is just nuts to me. When it comes to what the measures are, they need to be effective and proportionate to the problem. That's rather a SOTBO, I know, but I don't feel very well qualified to expand on it. I haven't much of a clue what works and what doesn't. My level of interest in Covid details has rather dropped off in recent times tbh. But this "plan B" is apparently what's on the table. I'm not sure how much law is envisaged there cf guidance.
The official govt Plan B is requiring vaccine passports for nightclubs and big events, legally requiring masks in settings tbc, and encouraging wfh and masks wearing through talking about them. That's it.
If you think vaccine passports won't happen, all it really is will be changing supermarkets from voluntary mask wearing to mandatory. Might move the needle of mask usage up 5-10% perhaps. Yesterdays presser is essentially a third of plan B done, and another third you think is implausible.
-----
Plan B 75. If the data suggests the NHS is likely to come under unsustainable pressure, the Government has prepared a Plan B for England. The Government hopes not to have to implement Plan B, but given the uncertainty, it is setting out details now so that the public and businesses know what to expect if further measures become necessary. 38 S1360 SAGE 95 minutes, S1376 SPI-M-O Consensus statement, 8th Sept 2021 22 COVID-19 RESPONSE: AUTUMN AND WINTER PLAN 76. Given the high levels of protection in the adult population against COVID-19 by vaccination, relatively small changes in policy and behaviour could have a big impact on reducing (or increasing) transmission, bending the epidemic curve and relieving pressure on the NHS. Thanks to the success of the vaccination programme, it should be possible to handle a further resurgence with less damaging measures than the lockdowns and economic and social restrictions deployed in the past. The Government would provide prior notice as far as possible to the public and Parliament ahead of implementing any necessary changes in a Plan B scenario. 77. The Government’s Plan B prioritises measures which can help control transmission of the virus while seeking to minimise economic and social impacts. This includes: a. Communicating clearly and urgently to the public that the level of risk has increased, and with it the need to behave more cautiously. b. Introducing mandatory vaccine-only COVID-status certification in certain settings. c. Legally mandating face coverings in certain settings. 78. The Government would also consider asking people once again to work from home if they can, for a limited period. The Government recognises this causes more disruption and has greater immediate costs to the economy and some businesses than the other Plan B interventions, so a final decision would be made based on the data at the time.
I’m on @LumoTravel’s inaugural train today - and I’ll be racing @SimonCalder from London to Edinburgh. A 4.5 hour train ride versus a 1 hour flight? Simon is confident. But I don’t think it’ll be the walkover those numbers suggest…
Javid's line, since first becoming Health Secretary, has seemed to be that it is only to be expected that numbers of Covid infections (and thus hospitalizations and deaths) will increase. If that were true, policy interventions would seem to have little point.
I think his position from the presser yesterday (of which I only heard about the last half hour so I missed most of it) seemed to be that winter is coming and in winter we spend more time inside breathing each other's warmed air in confined spaces so of course infection will increase.
We shall see. There has to be a point at which the virus starts to run out of potential victims (unless reinfection becomes a lot more common than it is at present). How far away is that?
At the moment we are recording over 300k infected persons a week. We are doing an absurd amount of testing but anecdotally there are suggestions that the young in particular are less keen to be tested and have isolation inflicted upon them. Surely 500K a week is more likely. We have already recorded more than 8.5m cases and it is highly likely that there are significantly more that had an asymptomatic or minor infection and were never identified. I would be surprised if less than 15m have not had it already, possibly more.
At the current rate the virus burns its way through the remainder in something approaching 90 weeks, a very long time. I suspect it will take even longer unless the rate increases as there will be a longish tail of lower infections towards the end. We undoubtedly have a long way to go but if you accept the "we are all going to get it" premise then it is a very long road indeed. The consequences for NHS care for everything else are not good.
That's assuming everyone gets it which is an extreme worst case scenario. Even when its highly contagious in limited areas it doesn't seem that everyone is getting infected.
If you were to go with say 80% of the unvaccinated getting it and 10% of the vaccinated then you'd be looking at about 18.6 million cases. If you go with an 80/20 split then it goes up to 23.6 million.
Obviously there'll be some overlap in the data, eg of people who already caught the virus before they were vaccinated.
Because you do not catch it on one occasion does not mean that you will not catch it on another. So my daughter tested positive. None of the rest of the family were infected despite living in the same house which she understandably continued to live in without a mask (she's asthmatic). This does not mean that the rest of us will not catch it on some future occasion because we are immune. It simply means we did not catch it then.
Bloody hell you'd have had her live in your house with a mask on?
No for the reasons indicated but if she had not had asthma then when, for example, she wanted to come and watch the TV with us, a mask when we knew she was positive and potentially infectious would not have been unreasonable would it? Obviously she would not have worn it when alone.
I must say the guidance or lack of it as to how to share a house with someone infected with Covid was quite vexing and rather odd.
Well I can't say for sure but YES. To ask a family member to put a mask on to come and watch the TV. That is ridiculous.
Have you ever behaved in such a way when they presumably suffered any number of contagious diseases previously??
I’m on @LumoTravel’s inaugural train today - and I’ll be racing @SimonCalder from London to Edinburgh. A 4.5 hour train ride versus a 1 hour flight? Simon is confident. But I don’t think it’ll be the walkover those numbers suggest…
The media are on the warpath this morning interviewing everyone they can find who condemns HMG for not commencing plan B from the BMA to iSage and this reminds me so much of the media's behaviour over the fuel shortages
It is almost as if they were not at the press conference yesterday, and that they have blanked the charts presented there from their minds as they simply did not justify this hysteria from them
I would be the first to demand more action if those charts indicated it was necessary but ultimately the unvaccinated are the most at risk and short of compulsory vaccinations I am afraid we have to accept that many of this cohort will get covid and some, maybe many, will pass away but that is not a justifiable reason to curtail the daily lives of the rest of us
I would just say that both my wife and I are clinically vulnerable to covid and notwithstanding that by tomorrow we will both have received our boosters we have for a long time taken personal responsibility and do not expose ourselves to unnecessary risk
We don't need to "curtail daily lives". Wear a mask in crowded spaces. Social distancing. Sanitise. Keep the pubs and cinemas open, but ask people to Think.
Social distancing.
Keep the pubs and cinemas open.
You're a moron.
Bollocks. There will be some environments where social distancing isn't possible. But when it is we should practice it. Every avoided possible transmission point is worthwhile. We can't get all but we can get some. Some is better than none.
The whole point of social distancing is to reduce capacity at indoor socialising venues. If we aren't going to do that then we're not social distancing. 2m distancing reduces capacity by 60%, 1m distancing by 30%. Most places are unprofitable in both scenarios hence the mega government subsidies to keep the lights on.
You're just repeating soundbites because they make you feel superior and virtuous. Social distancing is a crippling economic and social device that has destroyed the economy for a year and a half. Bringing it back is a terrible idea.
Again, bollocks.
That enough of a "superior and virtuous" soundbite for you?
You know what cripples and destroys the economy? A pandemic. Not the responses to tackle and shorten the pandemic.
We really need to drop this "you're a moron" shit. I'm trying. Why don't you do the same?
You accuse others of not thinking yet propose completely stupid ideas like social distancing without thinking through the consequences. It is nothing more than showing us how virtuous you are and the love of being able to accuse others of not being virtuous. The consequences of social distancing are dire for businesses. You say that the pandemic is bad for business but the reality is that it's people like you who want to keep hold of the NPIs that are bad for business. Creating uncertainty where we don't need to. The vast, vast majority of people dying of this are the very old or vaccine refusers, the Italian study from yesterday made it very clear that we are now already at the endemic stage of this process.
Putting social distancing in place because fools refused to get vaccinated is punishing businesses for other people's idiotic decisions. I think maybe we should just get on with life and let nature take its course with those who refuse to be vaccinated. If that means 30-40k people dying per year that wouldn't otherwise have done so then that's the way it will have to be. They made their choice.
I have no interest in being "virtuous" however you define it (sounds a bit like being called "woke").
This one is brutally simple. The NHS is still on its knees after Covid, and its senior managers can see the tsunami coming in. So we either start acting now or we face the consequences of a health system unable to cope through the winter.
Perhaps these NHS managers are also being "virtuous". I hope they are - someone has to give a fuck.
Ultimately the NHS will be faced with a choice of trying and failing to treat everyone or deciding that the unvaccinated by choice made a poor life choice and will have to live with that. Yesterday's press conference has already laid the groundwork for the decision to come that will deprioritise treatment for unvaccinated by choice COVID patients.
That's the tough decision that needs to be made, and I admit that it's a very tough decision to make. You seem to think that reintroduction of social distancing is a cost and consequence free move. It isn't. It will destroy thousands of businesses, put millions out of work again and cost the taxpayer tens of billions in subsidies once more.
The answer is vaccination, the government has delivered vaccinations and now it's up to those people who refused to get them to live with the consequences of that poor choice. The rest of society can't pay the price. You want to shift the burden of their stupid decision onto the rest of us, why not have them live and die by their own life choices?
I'd say there's not a snowball's chance in hell of the NHS introducing a 2 tier Covid service, vaccinated vs not.
Andy Ngô Rainbow flag @MrAndyNgo I’m at the @ALLIANCELGB conference in Westminster, London. It is the first large scale conference for lesbian, gay & bisexual people who are critical of extreme trans ideology. There is high security given extremism of some radical trans activists. 10:32 am · 21 Oct 2021·Twitter for iPhone
GB ALL A INCEL is what jumped out at me. For some unfathomable reason.
The media are on the warpath this morning interviewing everyone they can find who condemns HMG for not commencing plan B from the BMA to iSage and this reminds me so much of the media's behaviour over the fuel shortages
It is almost as if they were not at the press conference yesterday, and that they have blanked the charts presented there from their minds as they simply did not justify this hysteria from them
I would be the first to demand more action if those charts indicated it was necessary but ultimately the unvaccinated are the most at risk and short of compulsory vaccinations I am afraid we have to accept that many of this cohort will get covid and some, maybe many, will pass away but that is not a justifiable reason to curtail the daily lives of the rest of us
I would just say that both my wife and I are clinically vulnerable to covid and notwithstanding that by tomorrow we will both have received our boosters we have for a long time taken personal responsibility and do not expose ourselves to unnecessary risk
We don't need to "curtail daily lives". Wear a mask in crowded spaces. Social distancing. Sanitise. Keep the pubs and cinemas open, but ask people to Think.
Social distancing.
Keep the pubs and cinemas open.
You're a moron.
Bollocks. There will be some environments where social distancing isn't possible. But when it is we should practice it. Every avoided possible transmission point is worthwhile. We can't get all but we can get some. Some is better than none.
The whole point of social distancing is to reduce capacity at indoor socialising venues. If we aren't going to do that then we're not social distancing. 2m distancing reduces capacity by 60%, 1m distancing by 30%. Most places are unprofitable in both scenarios hence the mega government subsidies to keep the lights on.
You're just repeating soundbites because they make you feel superior and virtuous. Social distancing is a crippling economic and social device that has destroyed the economy for a year and a half. Bringing it back is a terrible idea.
Again, bollocks.
That enough of a "superior and virtuous" soundbite for you?
You know what cripples and destroys the economy? A pandemic. Not the responses to tackle and shorten the pandemic.
We really need to drop this "you're a moron" shit. I'm trying. Why don't you do the same?
You accuse others of not thinking yet propose completely stupid ideas like social distancing without thinking through the consequences. It is nothing more than showing us how virtuous you are and the love of being able to accuse others of not being virtuous. The consequences of social distancing are dire for businesses. You say that the pandemic is bad for business but the reality is that it's people like you who want to keep hold of the NPIs that are bad for business. Creating uncertainty where we don't need to. The vast, vast majority of people dying of this are the very old or vaccine refusers, the Italian study from yesterday made it very clear that we are now already at the endemic stage of this process.
Putting social distancing in place because fools refused to get vaccinated is punishing businesses for other people's idiotic decisions. I think maybe we should just get on with life and let nature take its course with those who refuse to be vaccinated. If that means 30-40k people dying per year that wouldn't otherwise have done so then that's the way it will have to be. They made their choice.
I have no interest in being "virtuous" however you define it (sounds a bit like being called "woke").
This one is brutally simple. The NHS is still on its knees after Covid, and its senior managers can see the tsunami coming in. So we either start acting now or we face the consequences of a health system unable to cope through the winter.
Perhaps these NHS managers are also being "virtuous". I hope they are - someone has to give a fuck.
Ultimately the NHS will be faced with a choice of trying and failing to treat everyone or deciding that the unvaccinated by choice made a poor life choice and will have to live with that. Yesterday's press conference has already laid the groundwork for the decision to come that will deprioritise treatment for unvaccinated by choice COVID patients.
That's the tough decision that needs to be made, and I admit that it's a very tough decision to make. You seem to think that reintroduction of social distancing is a cost and consequence free move. It isn't. It will destroy thousands of businesses, put millions out of work again and cost the taxpayer tens of billions in subsidies once more.
The answer is vaccination, the government has delivered vaccinations and now it's up to those people who refused to get them to live with the consequences of that poor choice. The rest of society can't pay the price. You want to shift the burden of their stupid decision onto the rest of us, why not have them live and die by their own life choices?
I'd say there's not a snowball's chance in hell of the NHS introducing a 2 tier Covid service, vaccinated vs not.
Compulsory vaccination would be fairer. Especially as it applies to all.
I’m on @LumoTravel’s inaugural train today - and I’ll be racing @SimonCalder from London to Edinburgh. A 4.5 hour train ride versus a 1 hour flight? Simon is confident. But I don’t think it’ll be the walkover those numbers suggest…
Looks nice but surprised not to see the yellow safety panel on the front of the train. I do love that route, spent my whole life going up and down it.
The yellow front is no longer required if the vehicle has sufficiently powerful front lights, which most modern stock has.
Thanks. This is why I love PB.
Of course if you fly to EDI you miss the fantastic part (actually it's all fantastic) through Berwick on the train. Makes the whole thing worthwhile.
I have often done both and you do save around an hour or more by flying but the train is so much more civilised.
A highly parochial point, but I much prefer the west coast route to Edinburgh. Berwick is good - and the arrival in both Durham and Newcastle are also highlights - but the west coast line from Preston northwards is spectacular.
If you're starting from London, of course, going by the west coast is a bit of an indirect route.
The media are on the warpath this morning interviewing everyone they can find who condemns HMG for not commencing plan B from the BMA to iSage and this reminds me so much of the media's behaviour over the fuel shortages
It is almost as if they were not at the press conference yesterday, and that they have blanked the charts presented there from their minds as they simply did not justify this hysteria from them
I would be the first to demand more action if those charts indicated it was necessary but ultimately the unvaccinated are the most at risk and short of compulsory vaccinations I am afraid we have to accept that many of this cohort will get covid and some, maybe many, will pass away but that is not a justifiable reason to curtail the daily lives of the rest of us
I would just say that both my wife and I are clinically vulnerable to covid and notwithstanding that by tomorrow we will both have received our boosters we have for a long time taken personal responsibility and do not expose ourselves to unnecessary risk
We don't need to "curtail daily lives". Wear a mask in crowded spaces. Social distancing. Sanitise. Keep the pubs and cinemas open, but ask people to Think.
Social distancing.
Keep the pubs and cinemas open.
You're a moron.
Bollocks. There will be some environments where social distancing isn't possible. But when it is we should practice it. Every avoided possible transmission point is worthwhile. We can't get all but we can get some. Some is better than none.
The whole point of social distancing is to reduce capacity at indoor socialising venues. If we aren't going to do that then we're not social distancing. 2m distancing reduces capacity by 60%, 1m distancing by 30%. Most places are unprofitable in both scenarios hence the mega government subsidies to keep the lights on.
You're just repeating soundbites because they make you feel superior and virtuous. Social distancing is a crippling economic and social device that has destroyed the economy for a year and a half. Bringing it back is a terrible idea.
Again, bollocks.
That enough of a "superior and virtuous" soundbite for you?
You know what cripples and destroys the economy? A pandemic. Not the responses to tackle and shorten the pandemic.
We really need to drop this "you're a moron" shit. I'm trying. Why don't you do the same?
You accuse others of not thinking yet propose completely stupid ideas like social distancing without thinking through the consequences. It is nothing more than showing us how virtuous you are and the love of being able to accuse others of not being virtuous. The consequences of social distancing are dire for businesses. You say that the pandemic is bad for business but the reality is that it's people like you who want to keep hold of the NPIs that are bad for business. Creating uncertainty where we don't need to. The vast, vast majority of people dying of this are the very old or vaccine refusers, the Italian study from yesterday made it very clear that we are now already at the endemic stage of this process.
Putting social distancing in place because fools refused to get vaccinated is punishing businesses for other people's idiotic decisions. I think maybe we should just get on with life and let nature take its course with those who refuse to be vaccinated. If that means 30-40k people dying per year that wouldn't otherwise have done so then that's the way it will have to be. They made their choice.
I have no interest in being "virtuous" however you define it (sounds a bit like being called "woke").
This one is brutally simple. The NHS is still on its knees after Covid, and its senior managers can see the tsunami coming in. So we either start acting now or we face the consequences of a health system unable to cope through the winter.
Perhaps these NHS managers are also being "virtuous". I hope they are - someone has to give a fuck.
Ultimately the NHS will be faced with a choice of trying and failing to treat everyone or deciding that the unvaccinated by choice made a poor life choice and will have to live with that. Yesterday's press conference has already laid the groundwork for the decision to come that will deprioritise treatment for unvaccinated by choice COVID patients.
That's the tough decision that needs to be made, and I admit that it's a very tough decision to make. You seem to think that reintroduction of social distancing is a cost and consequence free move. It isn't. It will destroy thousands of businesses, put millions out of work again and cost the taxpayer tens of billions in subsidies once more.
The answer is vaccination, the government has delivered vaccinations and now it's up to those people who refused to get them to live with the consequences of that poor choice. The rest of society can't pay the price. You want to shift the burden of their stupid decision onto the rest of us, why not have them live and die by their own life choices?
I'd say there's not a snowball's chance in hell of the NHS introducing a 2 tier Covid service, vaccinated vs not.
Compulsory vaccination would be fairer. Especially as it applies to all.
I do like Max's idea of £250 for everyone who has been vaxxed for Xmas. Easy one for Labour to call for, as wont impact their future manifesto budget plans at all.
Fake news. It may be worth looking at Dom's second tweet on that feed:
Ps. No Jess Phillips is NOT the answer.
I did.
ETA, and the second Dom tweet wasn't there when I posted the first one. But I did post it as soon as it came up.
All fine. Now we just have to hunt down the Midlands woman who Dom has in mind (if she exists, which I rather doubt).
I wonder how many are paying to get on to Dom's blog and find out if he does have anyone specific in mind.. I'm a little surprised that he's put it behind a paywall.
Just seen someone post that he mentions Nandy.
He says he's from Durham so the Midlands is a bit bigger!
Dom probably doesn't know the North (other than Barnard Castle, of course). So he's probably got Wigan mixed up with West Bromwich or something. But if he's saying Nandy, I agree with him (next Leader).
I’m on @LumoTravel’s inaugural train today - and I’ll be racing @SimonCalder from London to Edinburgh. A 4.5 hour train ride versus a 1 hour flight? Simon is confident. But I don’t think it’ll be the walkover those numbers suggest…
Fake news. It may be worth looking at Dom's second tweet on that feed:
Ps. No Jess Phillips is NOT the answer.
I did.
ETA, and the second Dom tweet wasn't there when I posted the first one. But I did post it as soon as it came up.
All fine. Now we just have to hunt down the Midlands woman who Dom has in mind (if she exists, which I rather doubt).
I wonder how many are paying to get on to Dom's blog and find out if he does have anyone specific in mind.. I'm a little surprised that he's put it behind a paywall.
Just seen someone post that he mentions Nandy.
He says he's from Durham so the Midlands is a bit bigger!
We regularly describe Lancashire and Yorkshire as Down South, so it is very possible, yes.
"We"? I thought you were from Lancashire/North Merseyside?
The mark of a true northerner is that he thinks the north ends 10 miles south of where he was born.
The "sheer scale of the latest numbers" is down almost entirely to the mixed messaging, heel dragging and completely shit schools/kids rollout.
I don't agree - I think the public must bear some personal responsibility here as well - the rapid abandonment of masks for example, really predated any government actions. The reluctance to tolerate any restrictions on personal freedoms, frequently shown on here, to me seems childish at times. In Spain, where I live masks, for example, remain pretty universal indoors and I sense the attitude of mind is that this is a small sacrifice for staying a little safer. Rather like the attitude to ID cards and Covid certificates - 'not ideal but the benefits outweigh the risks'. The UK attitude seems quite different and that is fair enough, but it is not consequence free.
Just blaming the government/authority all the time just come across as an abdication of personal responsibility.
Because relative to vaccines cloth masks are absolute garbage. Scotland's kept them and what kind of material difference has it made other than making the country a more miserable place than England?
Plenty of people wear masks that are effective. Try comparing Spain & the UK current data. Besides it's not just about mask wearing, it's about attitude. From outside things in the UK are looking quite grim now - a view confirmed by many UK contacts.
From inside thing in the UK are pretty great right now. We've dropped the masks and all the other gibberish and are getting back to normal.
The attitude should be that Covid is an issue for the past. Vaccines saw to that. Get your jab, if required get a booster, and live your life normally.
I have no interest in any precautions other than vaccines. Washing your hands etc is just basic decency and not especially Covid related.
It’s not past Philip, it’s very much still here. We need to flatten the curve in the least intrusive and economically damaging way. That may involve the more widespread use of masks again and more encouragement to WFH. We need tools we can draw on which don’t bring everything to a halt.
Yes , tell that to the families of the 1000 a week that are dying, what an absolute bampot he is.
People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end. Upto ten thousand a week die on average anyway.
What matters isn't that death comes to us all eventually, but what we do with our lives. Ceasing to live our lives because of a paralysing fear of death isn't healthy and is a great waste of life.
Incarcerating people in their homes so they don't see any loved ones and wither away and die of natural causes isn't "better".
How crassly moronic.
"Up to ten thousand a week die on average anyway."
Well, that's fine then. How many extra people are you willing to die just so you can feel the fresh air on your bumfluff-ridden face? Why not twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? All for your 'freedom' ...
I think that question is a bit unfair, a touch of emotional shaming going on, but will give my answer as its an anonymous forum. I probably wouldn't share this view in public but think if there were an extra five thousand a week dying we should have more legal restrictions. At an extra two thousand a week no legal restrictions. So somewhere between those numbers for me.
How about you?
Certainly not 'as many as it takes', which PT said.
The problem with deaths is that it is a lagging factor. Before vaccines, cases went up, then hospitalisations, and then deaths. Now that the link between cases and hospitalisations has been weakened, the first sign we have of trouble is rising hospitalisations.
And I'll therefore swerve your question by saying it's the wrong one, if we're talking about restrictions. The first sign we'll get of big problems is from hospitalisations, and that's what we'd need to react to. So perhaps the 1,200-1,500 daily admissions that we had back in early November would be when we'd have to slam the handbrake on - particularly if they are increasing rapidly.
You asked the question of someone else so a bit of a cop out to now say it is the wrong question. I don't think using wrong questions for emotional shaming will help us get to the right answer.
I'm not 'emotional shaming'. PT's view is that, now we have vaccines, any number of people ("as many as it takes") should die in order to protect his freedom. He said: "People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end."
Which whilst true, could be used to excuse anything causing a life to end. Which is why I asked how many is acceptable. He gave his answer.
Why do you keep saying my freedom? I believe everyone should have freedom!
Do you want it to be illegal for a grandparent to hug their grandchild without both grandparent and grandchild wearing a mask when it happens? Do you want it to be illegal to sit in the same room as your parents without you and your parents wearing a mask?
People get sick and die, its sad but its true. Restrictions got us to the point of us having vaccines and rolling them out. Post-vaccines, what's the endgame if not now?
Your view is that everyone should have freedom.
Yes, except for the tens or hundreds of thousands who will die. Unless you call death the ultimate freedom?
You could make the same argument every winter re flu. Yet no-one does.
But this winter isn't 'normal crisis winter' for the NHS, it's (potentially) 'crisis crisis winter'. Reason being instead of flu we have flu + covid + backlog.
"This time its different" said every time ever. 😕
The NHS just needs to do its best. If we need to deprioritise treatment for the unvaccinated, then that should come before restrictions for anyone else.
There won't be a 2 tier NHS service discriminating vs non-vaxed people. That is just not happening. It's even less likely than vaccine passports. And this time it IS different. Rather than a raging early or mid-stage pandemic we have the challenge of managing the final phase towards a long-term manageable 'live with it' situation. That's why the debate is some limited measures vs no measures, not the prospect of a return to Lockdown. We're getting there. That's crystal clear to me. I think people (inc you) are losing perspective in their (understandable) impatience for it all to be over.
This film about Bury is worth watching. Quite thought-provoking, inspiring in some places, depressing in others. Andy Burnham has a walk on part and comes across reasonably well.
The "sheer scale of the latest numbers" is down almost entirely to the mixed messaging, heel dragging and completely shit schools/kids rollout.
I don't agree - I think the public must bear some personal responsibility here as well - the rapid abandonment of masks for example, really predated any government actions. The reluctance to tolerate any restrictions on personal freedoms, frequently shown on here, to me seems childish at times. In Spain, where I live masks, for example, remain pretty universal indoors and I sense the attitude of mind is that this is a small sacrifice for staying a little safer. Rather like the attitude to ID cards and Covid certificates - 'not ideal but the benefits outweigh the risks'. The UK attitude seems quite different and that is fair enough, but it is not consequence free.
Just blaming the government/authority all the time just come across as an abdication of personal responsibility.
Because relative to vaccines cloth masks are absolute garbage. Scotland's kept them and what kind of material difference has it made other than making the country a more miserable place than England?
Plenty of people wear masks that are effective. Try comparing Spain & the UK current data. Besides it's not just about mask wearing, it's about attitude. From outside things in the UK are looking quite grim now - a view confirmed by many UK contacts.
From inside thing in the UK are pretty great right now. We've dropped the masks and all the other gibberish and are getting back to normal.
The attitude should be that Covid is an issue for the past. Vaccines saw to that. Get your jab, if required get a booster, and live your life normally.
I have no interest in any precautions other than vaccines. Washing your hands etc is just basic decency and not especially Covid related.
It’s not past Philip, it’s very much still here. We need to flatten the curve in the least intrusive and economically damaging way. That may involve the more widespread use of masks again and more encouragement to WFH. We need tools we can draw on which don’t bring everything to a halt.
Yes , tell that to the families of the 1000 a week that are dying, what an absolute bampot he is.
People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end. Upto ten thousand a week die on average anyway.
What matters isn't that death comes to us all eventually, but what we do with our lives. Ceasing to live our lives because of a paralysing fear of death isn't healthy and is a great waste of life.
Incarcerating people in their homes so they don't see any loved ones and wither away and die of natural causes isn't "better".
How crassly moronic.
"Up to ten thousand a week die on average anyway."
Well, that's fine then. How many extra people are you willing to die just so you can feel the fresh air on your bumfluff-ridden face? Why not twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? All for your 'freedom' ...
But surely there has to be a balance. People die in traffic accidents, or of smoking related conditions or drinking related conditions or of any other number of preventable conditions. We do not ban those activities. We certainly mitigate but not to the degree being proposed by some with COVID. We simply cannot keep locking down or applying large scale restrictions. The vaccines have to be the route out of this. This is not about Philips freedom it is about a fully functioning society and we need a fully functioning economy to pay for this.
Of course there has to be a balance.
I am not in favour of a return to harder restrictions at the moment. It seems a fine-edged thing, though, and the last 18 months have shown us that if you're not careful, when restrictions are required, they're required suddenly.
Hopefully enough kids are getting Covid that we'll be at herd immunity soon, and then figures will plummet. However, herd immunity's been called out many times before during this crisis, and we're not there yet. This s***** little B****er of a virus is a survivor, and may yet surprise us. Again.
And that's where PT is being complacent. He is unwilling to see people do even the smallest measures to protect themselves and others, because for some reason it is offensive to him. He callously disregards unnecessary deaths - possibly because it's not his own death. His argument could be used if we have 100 extra deaths a day, or a thousand. Or ten thousand.
The question you have to ask JJ is how does it get any better than this? If you are double - or triple jabbed - then you are never going to be safer than you are now. Are you proposing that the restrictions, mild as they may seem to you, should become a permanent way of life in Britain? Are we going to see the threat of lockdowns every single winter because the NHS is so unfit for purpose even before Covid?
Basically this is the new normal everyone was talking about. It is possible there is some miracle cure around the corner but to be honest I think we already have that as effectively as we are ever going to get it. So if you think PT is being unreasonable in his rather forthright comments then you have to say what you are proposing as the permanent alternatives.
How does it get any better than this? We don't know for sure. Improved Gen 2 vaccines, natural evolution leading to a weakening of the virus; herd immunity; better therapeutics. Perhaps all of the above; perhaps none. What we need is time. If they don't appear, reevaluate. But we're still in the early days.
One thing we do know: it could get a heck of a lot worse than this.
We've twice dithered about putting on restrictions (IMO understandably in March 20; less so in December), leading to us having to go for very heavy restrictions where smaller interventions earlier might have helped. We might be at that stage now.
My parents are still alive, as are my in-laws. Fortunately, all four are very active (my parents have had their boosters in the last week - yay!). If at all possible, I'd like my son to have another few years with them. If that means having to wear masks and sitting in a ventilated room: fair enough.
PT's comments are wrong-headed and nasty.
So your answer is to keep restrictions in the hope that at some point in the future we might, possibly,. develop something more effective against the virus and in the meantime you are willing to blight the lives of millions of people and destroy tens of thousands of businesses.
Will you do the same for the next bout of winter flu? That might only kill ten or twenty thousand. Is that enough to bring in more restrictions again?
I agreed entirely with the restrictions when we were waiting for vaccine. But we have that now. And I repeat; This is as good as it gets. Logically whatever restrictions you impose at the moment are what you should impose for ever more with all the concomitant consequences.
We're just talking about "plan B" for a while, aren't we? I don't have a strong opinion either way but this would hardly "blight the lives of millions of people and destroy tens of thousands of businesses".
Social distancing and restrictions in entertainment venues would certainly drive many to the wall. They are already on their knees after the previous rounds of lockdowns and restrictions and many of those who just managed to survive will not be able to cope with yet another round. In 2020 almost 10,000 licenced premises shut down permanently in the UK due to the restrictions. Many more only just survived. So yes I think my claim stands up well.
Ok. But I don't think that's on the table. The measures being (or rather atm not being) considered are more WFH, more masks, vaxports. That's my understanding of plan B. And one of those - vaxports - is a not happening event for this country so it's just WFH and masks. I'm not getting all the angst about it. All sounds like hyperventilating to me.
WFH is decided by businesses. Many are doing so, others are not. It has never been mandated during the pandemic, are we going to start now?
Masks, many wear them, others do not. That is true where it is mandated, such as TFL, or supermarkets, where it is voluntary.
The government is not going to make a huge difference on either wfh or masks.
Well if you're calling that right "Plan B" would be useless. So what's your theory on why they'd do it?
This film about Bury is worth watching. Quite thought-provoking, inspiring in some places, depressing in others. Andy Burnham has a walk on part and comes across reasonably well.
I’m on @LumoTravel’s inaugural train today - and I’ll be racing @SimonCalder from London to Edinburgh. A 4.5 hour train ride versus a 1 hour flight? Simon is confident. But I don’t think it’ll be the walkover those numbers suggest…
The media are on the warpath this morning interviewing everyone they can find who condemns HMG for not commencing plan B from the BMA to iSage and this reminds me so much of the media's behaviour over the fuel shortages
It is almost as if they were not at the press conference yesterday, and that they have blanked the charts presented there from their minds as they simply did not justify this hysteria from them
I would be the first to demand more action if those charts indicated it was necessary but ultimately the unvaccinated are the most at risk and short of compulsory vaccinations I am afraid we have to accept that many of this cohort will get covid and some, maybe many, will pass away but that is not a justifiable reason to curtail the daily lives of the rest of us
I would just say that both my wife and I are clinically vulnerable to covid and notwithstanding that by tomorrow we will both have received our boosters we have for a long time taken personal responsibility and do not expose ourselves to unnecessary risk
We don't need to "curtail daily lives". Wear a mask in crowded spaces. Social distancing. Sanitise. Keep the pubs and cinemas open, but ask people to Think.
Social distancing.
Keep the pubs and cinemas open.
You're a moron.
Bollocks. There will be some environments where social distancing isn't possible. But when it is we should practice it. Every avoided possible transmission point is worthwhile. We can't get all but we can get some. Some is better than none.
The whole point of social distancing is to reduce capacity at indoor socialising venues. If we aren't going to do that then we're not social distancing. 2m distancing reduces capacity by 60%, 1m distancing by 30%. Most places are unprofitable in both scenarios hence the mega government subsidies to keep the lights on.
You're just repeating soundbites because they make you feel superior and virtuous. Social distancing is a crippling economic and social device that has destroyed the economy for a year and a half. Bringing it back is a terrible idea.
Again, bollocks.
That enough of a "superior and virtuous" soundbite for you?
You know what cripples and destroys the economy? A pandemic. Not the responses to tackle and shorten the pandemic.
We really need to drop this "you're a moron" shit. I'm trying. Why don't you do the same?
You accuse others of not thinking yet propose completely stupid ideas like social distancing without thinking through the consequences. It is nothing more than showing us how virtuous you are and the love of being able to accuse others of not being virtuous. The consequences of social distancing are dire for businesses. You say that the pandemic is bad for business but the reality is that it's people like you who want to keep hold of the NPIs that are bad for business. Creating uncertainty where we don't need to. The vast, vast majority of people dying of this are the very old or vaccine refusers, the Italian study from yesterday made it very clear that we are now already at the endemic stage of this process.
Putting social distancing in place because fools refused to get vaccinated is punishing businesses for other people's idiotic decisions. I think maybe we should just get on with life and let nature take its course with those who refuse to be vaccinated. If that means 30-40k people dying per year that wouldn't otherwise have done so then that's the way it will have to be. They made their choice.
I have no interest in being "virtuous" however you define it (sounds a bit like being called "woke").
This one is brutally simple. The NHS is still on its knees after Covid, and its senior managers can see the tsunami coming in. So we either start acting now or we face the consequences of a health system unable to cope through the winter.
Perhaps these NHS managers are also being "virtuous". I hope they are - someone has to give a fuck.
Ultimately the NHS will be faced with a choice of trying and failing to treat everyone or deciding that the unvaccinated by choice made a poor life choice and will have to live with that. Yesterday's press conference has already laid the groundwork for the decision to come that will deprioritise treatment for unvaccinated by choice COVID patients.
That's the tough decision that needs to be made, and I admit that it's a very tough decision to make. You seem to think that reintroduction of social distancing is a cost and consequence free move. It isn't. It will destroy thousands of businesses, put millions out of work again and cost the taxpayer tens of billions in subsidies once more.
The answer is vaccination, the government has delivered vaccinations and now it's up to those people who refused to get them to live with the consequences of that poor choice. The rest of society can't pay the price. You want to shift the burden of their stupid decision onto the rest of us, why not have them live and die by their own life choices?
I'd say there's not a snowball's chance in hell of the NHS introducing a 2 tier Covid service, vaccinated vs not.
Compulsory vaccination would be fairer. Especially as it applies to all.
I do like Max's idea of £250 for everyone who has been vaxxed for Xmas. Easy one for Labour to call for, as wont impact their future manifesto budget plans at all.
I quite like the idea of a bribe too.
Even more, I've enjoyed Max and Philip transitioning from "let the unvaxxed die, serves them right", to "let's pay them not to die" in a short space of time.
Fake news. It may be worth looking at Dom's second tweet on that feed:
Ps. No Jess Phillips is NOT the answer.
I did.
ETA, and the second Dom tweet wasn't there when I posted the first one. But I did post it as soon as it came up.
All fine. Now we just have to hunt down the Midlands woman who Dom has in mind (if she exists, which I rather doubt).
I wonder how many are paying to get on to Dom's blog and find out if he does have anyone specific in mind.. I'm a little surprised that he's put it behind a paywall.
Just seen someone post that he mentions Nandy.
He says he's from Durham so the Midlands is a bit bigger!
Dom probably doesn't know the North (other than Barnard Castle, of course). So he's probably got Wigan mixed up with West Bromwich or something. But if he's saying Nandy, I agree with him (next Leader).
He's from the north. He didn't just go to Barnard Castle for a day trip.
My favourite story of southerners not knowing the north is a that of a friend of mine, who lives in Liverpool and went to Durham University. A couple of years after leaving university, she and her friends held a reunion, in Durham. One friend, from London, insisted on, rather than getting the train to Durham, getting the train to Liverpool to be picked up by my friend, as she lived in the north so would be close by. She was then incredulous that it took a further three hours driving to get to Durham. This was someone who had spent three years at university in Durham. She just assumed everywhere in the north was close to everywhere else.
The "sheer scale of the latest numbers" is down almost entirely to the mixed messaging, heel dragging and completely shit schools/kids rollout.
I don't agree - I think the public must bear some personal responsibility here as well - the rapid abandonment of masks for example, really predated any government actions. The reluctance to tolerate any restrictions on personal freedoms, frequently shown on here, to me seems childish at times. In Spain, where I live masks, for example, remain pretty universal indoors and I sense the attitude of mind is that this is a small sacrifice for staying a little safer. Rather like the attitude to ID cards and Covid certificates - 'not ideal but the benefits outweigh the risks'. The UK attitude seems quite different and that is fair enough, but it is not consequence free.
Just blaming the government/authority all the time just come across as an abdication of personal responsibility.
Because relative to vaccines cloth masks are absolute garbage. Scotland's kept them and what kind of material difference has it made other than making the country a more miserable place than England?
Plenty of people wear masks that are effective. Try comparing Spain & the UK current data. Besides it's not just about mask wearing, it's about attitude. From outside things in the UK are looking quite grim now - a view confirmed by many UK contacts.
From inside thing in the UK are pretty great right now. We've dropped the masks and all the other gibberish and are getting back to normal.
The attitude should be that Covid is an issue for the past. Vaccines saw to that. Get your jab, if required get a booster, and live your life normally.
I have no interest in any precautions other than vaccines. Washing your hands etc is just basic decency and not especially Covid related.
It’s not past Philip, it’s very much still here. We need to flatten the curve in the least intrusive and economically damaging way. That may involve the more widespread use of masks again and more encouragement to WFH. We need tools we can draw on which don’t bring everything to a halt.
Yes , tell that to the families of the 1000 a week that are dying, what an absolute bampot he is.
People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end. Upto ten thousand a week die on average anyway.
What matters isn't that death comes to us all eventually, but what we do with our lives. Ceasing to live our lives because of a paralysing fear of death isn't healthy and is a great waste of life.
Incarcerating people in their homes so they don't see any loved ones and wither away and die of natural causes isn't "better".
How crassly moronic.
"Up to ten thousand a week die on average anyway."
Well, that's fine then. How many extra people are you willing to die just so you can feel the fresh air on your bumfluff-ridden face? Why not twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? All for your 'freedom' ...
But surely there has to be a balance. People die in traffic accidents, or of smoking related conditions or drinking related conditions or of any other number of preventable conditions. We do not ban those activities. We certainly mitigate but not to the degree being proposed by some with COVID. We simply cannot keep locking down or applying large scale restrictions. The vaccines have to be the route out of this. This is not about Philips freedom it is about a fully functioning society and we need a fully functioning economy to pay for this.
Of course there has to be a balance.
I am not in favour of a return to harder restrictions at the moment. It seems a fine-edged thing, though, and the last 18 months have shown us that if you're not careful, when restrictions are required, they're required suddenly.
Hopefully enough kids are getting Covid that we'll be at herd immunity soon, and then figures will plummet. However, herd immunity's been called out many times before during this crisis, and we're not there yet. This s***** little B****er of a virus is a survivor, and may yet surprise us. Again.
And that's where PT is being complacent. He is unwilling to see people do even the smallest measures to protect themselves and others, because for some reason it is offensive to him. He callously disregards unnecessary deaths - possibly because it's not his own death. His argument could be used if we have 100 extra deaths a day, or a thousand. Or ten thousand.
The question you have to ask JJ is how does it get any better than this? If you are double - or triple jabbed - then you are never going to be safer than you are now. Are you proposing that the restrictions, mild as they may seem to you, should become a permanent way of life in Britain? Are we going to see the threat of lockdowns every single winter because the NHS is so unfit for purpose even before Covid?
Basically this is the new normal everyone was talking about. It is possible there is some miracle cure around the corner but to be honest I think we already have that as effectively as we are ever going to get it. So if you think PT is being unreasonable in his rather forthright comments then you have to say what you are proposing as the permanent alternatives.
How does it get any better than this? We don't know for sure. Improved Gen 2 vaccines, natural evolution leading to a weakening of the virus; herd immunity; better therapeutics. Perhaps all of the above; perhaps none. What we need is time. If they don't appear, reevaluate. But we're still in the early days.
One thing we do know: it could get a heck of a lot worse than this.
We've twice dithered about putting on restrictions (IMO understandably in March 20; less so in December), leading to us having to go for very heavy restrictions where smaller interventions earlier might have helped. We might be at that stage now.
My parents are still alive, as are my in-laws. Fortunately, all four are very active (my parents have had their boosters in the last week - yay!). If at all possible, I'd like my son to have another few years with them. If that means having to wear masks and sitting in a ventilated room: fair enough.
PT's comments are wrong-headed and nasty.
So your answer is to keep restrictions in the hope that at some point in the future we might, possibly,. develop something more effective against the virus and in the meantime you are willing to blight the lives of millions of people and destroy tens of thousands of businesses.
Will you do the same for the next bout of winter flu? That might only kill ten or twenty thousand. Is that enough to bring in more restrictions again?
I agreed entirely with the restrictions when we were waiting for vaccine. But we have that now. And I repeat; This is as good as it gets. Logically whatever restrictions you impose at the moment are what you should impose for ever more with all the concomitant consequences.
We're just talking about "plan B" for a while, aren't we? I don't have a strong opinion either way but this would hardly "blight the lives of millions of people and destroy tens of thousands of businesses".
Social distancing and restrictions in entertainment venues would certainly drive many to the wall. They are already on their knees after the previous rounds of lockdowns and restrictions and many of those who just managed to survive will not be able to cope with yet another round. In 2020 almost 10,000 licenced premises shut down permanently in the UK due to the restrictions. Many more only just survived. So yes I think my claim stands up well.
Ok. But I don't think that's on the table. The measures being (or rather atm not being) considered are more WFH, more masks, vaxports. That's my understanding of plan B. And one of those - vaxports - is a not happening event for this country so it's just WFH and masks. I'm not getting all the angst about it. All sounds like hyperventilating to me.
WFH is decided by businesses. Many are doing so, others are not. It has never been mandated during the pandemic, are we going to start now?
Masks, many wear them, others do not. That is true where it is mandated, such as TFL, or supermarkets, where it is voluntary.
The government is not going to make a huge difference on either wfh or masks.
Well if you're calling that right "Plan B" would be useless. So what's your theory on why they'd do it?
Why does this government do useless things? The easy answer is of course because they are useless, but the slightly better quick answer is to manage the press and media. Something must be done, and seen to be done even if it makes no difference or indeed makes things worse. The PM also seems to have a "thing" with vaccine passports so shoving them into Plan B was perhaps a concession to him from the rest of the cabinet who did not like them.
The media are on the warpath this morning interviewing everyone they can find who condemns HMG for not commencing plan B from the BMA to iSage and this reminds me so much of the media's behaviour over the fuel shortages
It is almost as if they were not at the press conference yesterday, and that they have blanked the charts presented there from their minds as they simply did not justify this hysteria from them
I would be the first to demand more action if those charts indicated it was necessary but ultimately the unvaccinated are the most at risk and short of compulsory vaccinations I am afraid we have to accept that many of this cohort will get covid and some, maybe many, will pass away but that is not a justifiable reason to curtail the daily lives of the rest of us
I would just say that both my wife and I are clinically vulnerable to covid and notwithstanding that by tomorrow we will both have received our boosters we have for a long time taken personal responsibility and do not expose ourselves to unnecessary risk
We don't need to "curtail daily lives". Wear a mask in crowded spaces. Social distancing. Sanitise. Keep the pubs and cinemas open, but ask people to Think.
Social distancing.
Keep the pubs and cinemas open.
You're a moron.
Bollocks. There will be some environments where social distancing isn't possible. But when it is we should practice it. Every avoided possible transmission point is worthwhile. We can't get all but we can get some. Some is better than none.
The whole point of social distancing is to reduce capacity at indoor socialising venues. If we aren't going to do that then we're not social distancing. 2m distancing reduces capacity by 60%, 1m distancing by 30%. Most places are unprofitable in both scenarios hence the mega government subsidies to keep the lights on.
You're just repeating soundbites because they make you feel superior and virtuous. Social distancing is a crippling economic and social device that has destroyed the economy for a year and a half. Bringing it back is a terrible idea.
Again, bollocks.
That enough of a "superior and virtuous" soundbite for you?
You know what cripples and destroys the economy? A pandemic. Not the responses to tackle and shorten the pandemic.
We really need to drop this "you're a moron" shit. I'm trying. Why don't you do the same?
You accuse others of not thinking yet propose completely stupid ideas like social distancing without thinking through the consequences. It is nothing more than showing us how virtuous you are and the love of being able to accuse others of not being virtuous. The consequences of social distancing are dire for businesses. You say that the pandemic is bad for business but the reality is that it's people like you who want to keep hold of the NPIs that are bad for business. Creating uncertainty where we don't need to. The vast, vast majority of people dying of this are the very old or vaccine refusers, the Italian study from yesterday made it very clear that we are now already at the endemic stage of this process.
Putting social distancing in place because fools refused to get vaccinated is punishing businesses for other people's idiotic decisions. I think maybe we should just get on with life and let nature take its course with those who refuse to be vaccinated. If that means 30-40k people dying per year that wouldn't otherwise have done so then that's the way it will have to be. They made their choice.
I have no interest in being "virtuous" however you define it (sounds a bit like being called "woke").
This one is brutally simple. The NHS is still on its knees after Covid, and its senior managers can see the tsunami coming in. So we either start acting now or we face the consequences of a health system unable to cope through the winter.
Perhaps these NHS managers are also being "virtuous". I hope they are - someone has to give a fuck.
Ultimately the NHS will be faced with a choice of trying and failing to treat everyone or deciding that the unvaccinated by choice made a poor life choice and will have to live with that. Yesterday's press conference has already laid the groundwork for the decision to come that will deprioritise treatment for unvaccinated by choice COVID patients.
That's the tough decision that needs to be made, and I admit that it's a very tough decision to make. You seem to think that reintroduction of social distancing is a cost and consequence free move. It isn't. It will destroy thousands of businesses, put millions out of work again and cost the taxpayer tens of billions in subsidies once more.
The answer is vaccination, the government has delivered vaccinations and now it's up to those people who refused to get them to live with the consequences of that poor choice. The rest of society can't pay the price. You want to shift the burden of their stupid decision onto the rest of us, why not have them live and die by their own life choices?
I'd say there's not a snowball's chance in hell of the NHS introducing a 2 tier Covid service, vaccinated vs not.
Compulsory vaccination would be fairer. Especially as it applies to all.
I do like Max's idea of £250 for everyone who has been vaxxed for Xmas. Easy one for Labour to call for, as wont impact their future manifesto budget plans at all.
I quite like the idea of a bribe too.
Even more, I've enjoyed Max and Philip transitioning from "let the unvaxxed die, serves them right", to "let's pay them not to die" in a short space of time.
Also makes up some of the lost UC credit/higher fuel costs etc. Before people say we can't afford it, if we could afford to inflate the rich and olds assets with a trillion of QE, £250 once at Xmas is going to be a drop in the ocean in the big scheme of things.
The media are on the warpath this morning interviewing everyone they can find who condemns HMG for not commencing plan B from the BMA to iSage and this reminds me so much of the media's behaviour over the fuel shortages
It is almost as if they were not at the press conference yesterday, and that they have blanked the charts presented there from their minds as they simply did not justify this hysteria from them
I would be the first to demand more action if those charts indicated it was necessary but ultimately the unvaccinated are the most at risk and short of compulsory vaccinations I am afraid we have to accept that many of this cohort will get covid and some, maybe many, will pass away but that is not a justifiable reason to curtail the daily lives of the rest of us
I would just say that both my wife and I are clinically vulnerable to covid and notwithstanding that by tomorrow we will both have received our boosters we have for a long time taken personal responsibility and do not expose ourselves to unnecessary risk
We don't need to "curtail daily lives". Wear a mask in crowded spaces. Social distancing. Sanitise. Keep the pubs and cinemas open, but ask people to Think.
Social distancing.
Keep the pubs and cinemas open.
You're a moron.
Bollocks. There will be some environments where social distancing isn't possible. But when it is we should practice it. Every avoided possible transmission point is worthwhile. We can't get all but we can get some. Some is better than none.
The whole point of social distancing is to reduce capacity at indoor socialising venues. If we aren't going to do that then we're not social distancing. 2m distancing reduces capacity by 60%, 1m distancing by 30%. Most places are unprofitable in both scenarios hence the mega government subsidies to keep the lights on.
You're just repeating soundbites because they make you feel superior and virtuous. Social distancing is a crippling economic and social device that has destroyed the economy for a year and a half. Bringing it back is a terrible idea.
Again, bollocks.
That enough of a "superior and virtuous" soundbite for you?
You know what cripples and destroys the economy? A pandemic. Not the responses to tackle and shorten the pandemic.
We really need to drop this "you're a moron" shit. I'm trying. Why don't you do the same?
You accuse others of not thinking yet propose completely stupid ideas like social distancing without thinking through the consequences. It is nothing more than showing us how virtuous you are and the love of being able to accuse others of not being virtuous. The consequences of social distancing are dire for businesses. You say that the pandemic is bad for business but the reality is that it's people like you who want to keep hold of the NPIs that are bad for business. Creating uncertainty where we don't need to. The vast, vast majority of people dying of this are the very old or vaccine refusers, the Italian study from yesterday made it very clear that we are now already at the endemic stage of this process.
Putting social distancing in place because fools refused to get vaccinated is punishing businesses for other people's idiotic decisions. I think maybe we should just get on with life and let nature take its course with those who refuse to be vaccinated. If that means 30-40k people dying per year that wouldn't otherwise have done so then that's the way it will have to be. They made their choice.
I have no interest in being "virtuous" however you define it (sounds a bit like being called "woke").
This one is brutally simple. The NHS is still on its knees after Covid, and its senior managers can see the tsunami coming in. So we either start acting now or we face the consequences of a health system unable to cope through the winter.
Perhaps these NHS managers are also being "virtuous". I hope they are - someone has to give a fuck.
Ultimately the NHS will be faced with a choice of trying and failing to treat everyone or deciding that the unvaccinated by choice made a poor life choice and will have to live with that. Yesterday's press conference has already laid the groundwork for the decision to come that will deprioritise treatment for unvaccinated by choice COVID patients.
That's the tough decision that needs to be made, and I admit that it's a very tough decision to make. You seem to think that reintroduction of social distancing is a cost and consequence free move. It isn't. It will destroy thousands of businesses, put millions out of work again and cost the taxpayer tens of billions in subsidies once more.
The answer is vaccination, the government has delivered vaccinations and now it's up to those people who refused to get them to live with the consequences of that poor choice. The rest of society can't pay the price. You want to shift the burden of their stupid decision onto the rest of us, why not have them live and die by their own life choices?
I'd say there's not a snowball's chance in hell of the NHS introducing a 2 tier Covid service, vaccinated vs not.
Compulsory vaccination would be fairer. Especially as it applies to all.
I do like Max's idea of £250 for everyone who has been vaxxed for Xmas. Easy one for Labour to call for, as wont impact their future manifesto budget plans at all.
The cost £17 Billion (ish) is staggering IMO
Things we could/should do:
1) Offer the unvaccinated a chose of vaccines, ideally including the Johnson and Johnson signal jab vaccine, (I think a lot of people are frustrated with the loss of control this pandemic has entailed and if you give people chose that will alleviates some of that loss of control) but this will not get everybody.
2) Sort out the boosters, let anybody who has had their first jab 5 months ago book one, to have maybe at the 5 months and 2 weeks point.
3) Accelerate the rate of jabbing in schools, for 12-15 year olds.
4) Let parents of younger kids decide if they what their kids jabbed, this is especially the case for 11 year olds, some of who are at the same school as 12-15 year olds, and could be jabbed at the same time as there older classmates.
Fake news. It may be worth looking at Dom's second tweet on that feed:
Ps. No Jess Phillips is NOT the answer.
I did.
ETA, and the second Dom tweet wasn't there when I posted the first one. But I did post it as soon as it came up.
All fine. Now we just have to hunt down the Midlands woman who Dom has in mind (if she exists, which I rather doubt).
I wonder how many are paying to get on to Dom's blog and find out if he does have anyone specific in mind.. I'm a little surprised that he's put it behind a paywall.
Just seen someone post that he mentions Nandy.
He says he's from Durham so the Midlands is a bit bigger!
Dom probably doesn't know the North (other than Barnard Castle, of course). So he's probably got Wigan mixed up with West Bromwich or something. But if he's saying Nandy, I agree with him (next Leader).
He's from the north. He didn't just go to Barnard Castle for a day trip.
My favourite story of southerners not knowing the north is a that of a friend of mine, who lives in Liverpool and went to Durham University. A couple of years after leaving university, she and her friends held a reunion, in Durham. One friend, from London, insisted on, rather than getting the train to Durham, getting the train to Liverpool to be picked up by my friend, as she lived in the north so would be close by. She was then incredulous that it took a further three hours driving to get to Durham. This was someone who had spent three years at university in Durham. She just assumed everywhere in the north was close to everywhere else.
I knew that Durham was full of people too thick to get into Oxbridge, but I didn't realise they were *that* thick...
The "sheer scale of the latest numbers" is down almost entirely to the mixed messaging, heel dragging and completely shit schools/kids rollout.
I don't agree - I think the public must bear some personal responsibility here as well - the rapid abandonment of masks for example, really predated any government actions. The reluctance to tolerate any restrictions on personal freedoms, frequently shown on here, to me seems childish at times. In Spain, where I live masks, for example, remain pretty universal indoors and I sense the attitude of mind is that this is a small sacrifice for staying a little safer. Rather like the attitude to ID cards and Covid certificates - 'not ideal but the benefits outweigh the risks'. The UK attitude seems quite different and that is fair enough, but it is not consequence free.
Just blaming the government/authority all the time just come across as an abdication of personal responsibility.
Because relative to vaccines cloth masks are absolute garbage. Scotland's kept them and what kind of material difference has it made other than making the country a more miserable place than England?
Plenty of people wear masks that are effective. Try comparing Spain & the UK current data. Besides it's not just about mask wearing, it's about attitude. From outside things in the UK are looking quite grim now - a view confirmed by many UK contacts.
From inside thing in the UK are pretty great right now. We've dropped the masks and all the other gibberish and are getting back to normal.
The attitude should be that Covid is an issue for the past. Vaccines saw to that. Get your jab, if required get a booster, and live your life normally.
I have no interest in any precautions other than vaccines. Washing your hands etc is just basic decency and not especially Covid related.
It’s not past Philip, it’s very much still here. We need to flatten the curve in the least intrusive and economically damaging way. That may involve the more widespread use of masks again and more encouragement to WFH. We need tools we can draw on which don’t bring everything to a halt.
Yes , tell that to the families of the 1000 a week that are dying, what an absolute bampot he is.
People die, its the natural order of things. Life comes to an end. Upto ten thousand a week die on average anyway.
What matters isn't that death comes to us all eventually, but what we do with our lives. Ceasing to live our lives because of a paralysing fear of death isn't healthy and is a great waste of life.
Incarcerating people in their homes so they don't see any loved ones and wither away and die of natural causes isn't "better".
How crassly moronic.
"Up to ten thousand a week die on average anyway."
Well, that's fine then. How many extra people are you willing to die just so you can feel the fresh air on your bumfluff-ridden face? Why not twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? All for your 'freedom' ...
But surely there has to be a balance. People die in traffic accidents, or of smoking related conditions or drinking related conditions or of any other number of preventable conditions. We do not ban those activities. We certainly mitigate but not to the degree being proposed by some with COVID. We simply cannot keep locking down or applying large scale restrictions. The vaccines have to be the route out of this. This is not about Philips freedom it is about a fully functioning society and we need a fully functioning economy to pay for this.
Of course there has to be a balance.
I am not in favour of a return to harder restrictions at the moment. It seems a fine-edged thing, though, and the last 18 months have shown us that if you're not careful, when restrictions are required, they're required suddenly.
Hopefully enough kids are getting Covid that we'll be at herd immunity soon, and then figures will plummet. However, herd immunity's been called out many times before during this crisis, and we're not there yet. This s***** little B****er of a virus is a survivor, and may yet surprise us. Again.
And that's where PT is being complacent. He is unwilling to see people do even the smallest measures to protect themselves and others, because for some reason it is offensive to him. He callously disregards unnecessary deaths - possibly because it's not his own death. His argument could be used if we have 100 extra deaths a day, or a thousand. Or ten thousand.
The question you have to ask JJ is how does it get any better than this? If you are double - or triple jabbed - then you are never going to be safer than you are now. Are you proposing that the restrictions, mild as they may seem to you, should become a permanent way of life in Britain? Are we going to see the threat of lockdowns every single winter because the NHS is so unfit for purpose even before Covid?
Basically this is the new normal everyone was talking about. It is possible there is some miracle cure around the corner but to be honest I think we already have that as effectively as we are ever going to get it. So if you think PT is being unreasonable in his rather forthright comments then you have to say what you are proposing as the permanent alternatives.
How does it get any better than this? We don't know for sure. Improved Gen 2 vaccines, natural evolution leading to a weakening of the virus; herd immunity; better therapeutics. Perhaps all of the above; perhaps none. What we need is time. If they don't appear, reevaluate. But we're still in the early days.
One thing we do know: it could get a heck of a lot worse than this.
We've twice dithered about putting on restrictions (IMO understandably in March 20; less so in December), leading to us having to go for very heavy restrictions where smaller interventions earlier might have helped. We might be at that stage now.
My parents are still alive, as are my in-laws. Fortunately, all four are very active (my parents have had their boosters in the last week - yay!). If at all possible, I'd like my son to have another few years with them. If that means having to wear masks and sitting in a ventilated room: fair enough.
PT's comments are wrong-headed and nasty.
So your answer is to keep restrictions in the hope that at some point in the future we might, possibly,. develop something more effective against the virus and in the meantime you are willing to blight the lives of millions of people and destroy tens of thousands of businesses.
Will you do the same for the next bout of winter flu? That might only kill ten or twenty thousand. Is that enough to bring in more restrictions again?
I agreed entirely with the restrictions when we were waiting for vaccine. But we have that now. And I repeat; This is as good as it gets. Logically whatever restrictions you impose at the moment are what you should impose for ever more with all the concomitant consequences.
We're just talking about "plan B" for a while, aren't we? I don't have a strong opinion either way but this would hardly "blight the lives of millions of people and destroy tens of thousands of businesses".
Social distancing and restrictions in entertainment venues would certainly drive many to the wall. They are already on their knees after the previous rounds of lockdowns and restrictions and many of those who just managed to survive will not be able to cope with yet another round. In 2020 almost 10,000 licenced premises shut down permanently in the UK due to the restrictions. Many more only just survived. So yes I think my claim stands up well.
Ok. But I don't think that's on the table. The measures being (or rather atm not being) considered are more WFH, more masks, vaxports. That's my understanding of plan B. And one of those - vaxports - is a not happening event for this country so it's just WFH and masks. I'm not getting all the angst about it. All sounds like hyperventilating to me.
WFH is decided by businesses. Many are doing so, others are not. It has never been mandated during the pandemic, are we going to start now?
Masks, many wear them, others do not. That is true where it is mandated, such as TFL, or supermarkets, where it is voluntary.
The government is not going to make a huge difference on either wfh or masks.
Comments
As you say, low cost compared to alternatives. Even ecnouraging WFH would probably require support packages for city centre businesses screwed again, particularly in the run-up to Christmas.
I guess the other alternative is where does a similar amount of money get you in terms of emergency Covid healthcare facilities. Probably not all that far, I guess...
The other thing that needs pushing is advice to pregnant mothers. Spell out the risks of Covid to the unborn children (there are some studies now on premature birth etc) and there will be an increasing number of pregnancies with Covid vaccine that have completed now, so there should be some reassurance in stats from those. Also spell out the risks to the mothers - less powerful than the risks to the babies for most mothers, in my experience, but family members can play a part. It's distasteful, but focus on the families and children grieving for mothers who did not get a vaccine.
Earlier in the thread it was mentioned how borrowing since April to September is already £43bn less than forecast. That's the boon we get from an open society that some people wish to throw away.
If we were to reinvest that cash as a one-off dividend to the vaccinated then that would avoid hospitalisations far more than any mask mandates, or social distancing etc realistically could. And come at a tiny fraction of the cost of another lockdown.
I'd say £500 for every fully vaccinated person including children.
Replying to
@Dominic2306
Ps. No Jess Phillips is NOT the answer. She's focused on London media. Labour must shift focus *away from London* if it wants to disconnect Tories from power
https://twitter.com/Dominic2306/status/1451150511886028802
If mask wearing made a significant and meaningful difference that should be discernible by now. Is it? And if its not, why should it suddenly be going forwards in England?
If we're on an R of 1.1 and a minor change could get us down to 0.9 (eg masks, encouraged wfh), then what's the difference when we start with 50,000 cases after 5 cycles?
It's over 80,000 to under 30,000.
Under 30,000 is a level that's very likely sustainable for hospitalisations in the NHS
Over 80,000 is twice the level cases were two weeks ago, giving hospitalisations a week ago which was when the alarm bells started to ring.
It obviously makes a big bloody difference, and those arguing the opposite really damage their case overall.
I do like the dividend to the vaccinated idea as well. Serious carrot time.
Edited to avoid lawyers jumping on me!
They have a track record of saying "we follow the science" when they need political cover for unpopular decisions, and then saying "we make the decisions" when the science says turn left and they are under pressure to turn right.
If you introduce mask mandates they won't do anything to change the course of the pandemic (because they don't) and having accepted the need for "more action" the calls for even more restrictions would become deafening.
Ps. No Jess Phillips is NOT the answer.
Edit - sorry, you added an addendum after I'd posted.
ETA, and the second Dom tweet wasn't there when I posted the first one. But I did post it as soon as it came up.
Four kits ordered in the end to get one that was complete. First two were missing the security seal and address label (so we could take the test but not send it anywhere) and one of the second pair was missing the barcode thing for the test tube (we ended up re-purposing the kit from one of the first pair and transferring the bar code from the (useless) box for that one to the one we needed.
And the number of questions you have to answer to get one and then to register it... don't they know that every extra question/hoop you put into any procedure results in a certain number of people dropping out?
They had a slow start to vaccinations but are now rocketing up, only 12 US States and 10 EU nations have more people vaccinated, But in NZ the number vaccinated keep going up, about 1.3% a day are receiving a first or second jab, and they should pass the UK in the next 48 hours, I don't know where they will max out at but probably amongst the highest in the would.
But then what, cases are still rising now with a lockdown and so many vaccinated: Wait till they have even more vaccinated and hope cases come down? What if they don't, the lockdown could go on for a long time, or open up and accept a more rapid rise in cases?
When Zero COVID has worked so well for them, and still seems tantalisingly close its going to be hard give it up,
Nothing's going to happen until Biden is safely back the other side of the pond after strike riven rubbish strewn Glasgow.
(The latter is often missed out).
We had twice this number of beds in the Eighties. And yes, I know it takes time, but we're eighteen months into this pandemic - how much time do the Government need to sort out a more permanent solution?
What I’m saying is, if you say the pressure on the NHS is unacceptable, you’re obliged to do whatever it takes. As you say, full lockdown is horrific. We need our politicians (all sides) to agree just how far we should go to protect the NHS.
Wales Daily Coronavirus (COVID-19) Report · Thursday 21st October.
4,240 new cases (people positive) reported, giving a total of 412,534.
13 new deaths reported, giving a total of 6,063.
Last week 2,635 cases...
So, if masks help, why don't we see it clearly in the data? Probably because masks are not worn where it really matters, in homes and other private settings. In other places, people don't wear them well. My hairdresser still masks up and asks customers to, too. But she doesn't wear a mask when there are no customers, so her masking up is not all that useful to me - I'm breathing the air she's been breathing out in an enclosed space all day. It also probably means they'd have limited effect if mandated again in England. Plus, increased viral shedding with Delta probably means that whatever % reduction in dose you get from a masked infected person is less useful - say it used to mean, with earlier variants, the mean time to infection would be contact of ten minutes and now it's 30 seconds or so. In a lot of settings, that might mean you'll be exposed to an infectious dose either way (there is still the point that reducing the dose might lead to bette outcomes and less hospital risk).
It is important to untangle two things, I think. Do masks help? Probably. Is there evidence that the policies of Wales and Scotland on masks are very effective in the current situation? Not really.
It would be very hard to enforce, but there's an argument that mandating high efficacy masks for the unvaccinated in public/at work etc could be quite effective (to protect the most vulnerable and most likely to be spreading infection - the unvaccinated in both cases). Might also drive vaccination take-up.
It might be a decrease of 0.01 in the R rate, or less.
And the Passenger Location Form what a load of nonsense. It is so much nonsense compared to the Portuguese requirement which achieve the same results quickly, easily and much less complicated.
Then there are the day 2 test that never turn up, because the ones offering cheap tests are cowboys yet they are on the Govt web site and there is no follow up whatsoever (again personal experience as well as being well documented, not least by Which).
Nobody checks the documents at the ports properly and they are just airline/ferry staff. You could come through with any stuff you produce and track and trace contact you on a mobile so you could be anywhere even when you did have to self isolate.
It is just all done on trust.
Prof Francois Balloux
@BallouxFrancois
·
49m
Interesting data suggesting the Pfizer/BioNTech works best as a three-dose vaccine. Initial 3-dose antibody titres being so much higher than 2-dose ones makes a stronger case than I had anticipated for administrating boosters outside just the most at-risk demographies.
Not a silver bullet by any means, but when you're this close to R=1, damn well worth a shot.
Any conversations about mask wearing, as opposed to getting the unvaccinated vaccinated, is a pure waste of time.
We shall see. There has to be a point at which the virus starts to run out of potential victims (unless reinfection becomes a lot more common than it is at present). How far away is that?
At the moment we are recording over 300k infected persons a week. We are doing an absurd amount of testing but anecdotally there are suggestions that the young in particular are less keen to be tested and have isolation inflicted upon them. Surely 500K a week is more likely. We have already recorded more than 8.5m cases and it is highly likely that there are significantly more that had an asymptomatic or minor infection and were never identified. I would be surprised if less than 15m have not had it already, possibly more.
At the current rate the virus burns its way through the remainder in something approaching 90 weeks, a very long time. I suspect it will take even longer unless the rate increases as there will be a longish tail of lower infections towards the end. We undoubtedly have a long way to go but if you accept the "we are all going to get it" premise then it is a very long road indeed. The consequences for NHS care for everything else are not good.
If you were to go with say 80% of the unvaccinated getting it and 10% of the vaccinated then you'd be looking at about 18.6 million cases. If you go with an 80/20 split then it goes up to 23.6 million.
Obviously there'll be some overlap in the data, eg of people who already caught the virus before they were vaccinated.
Hypothetical second rounds have Macron beating Zemmour comfortably. Bertrand running him close if he can get through.
http://www.commission-des-sondages.fr/notices/files/notices/2021/octobre/9225-p-hi-challenges-v18.pdf
https://www.ifop.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Presentation-LAZARE-DEF-19.10.2021-18h15.pdf
the wiki page gives a quicker and easier to read summary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2022_French_presidential_election
*&^% blockquotes.
https://www.lexico.com/definition/hand_shandy
The "so let them die" position is callous.
A.
https://twitter.com/joshuabadge/status/1450584993500057603?s=20
- What I would compel them to do is to attend a vaccination appointment, which is different from compelling vaccination itself.
- They would be sat down for a discussion to encourage vaccination.
-Give them some ways out: if they have had a confirmed COVID case and refuse, take them off the stats. They shouldn't worry us.
- If possible, offer antibody tests (compulsory return appointment if needed) to expand the pool of who we can stop worrying about.
- Make clear to them this may not open up all things, for e.g., test free foreign holidays which have an international element
It is important to note the anti-vac activist base may not be typical of the unvaccinated. They are more likely to be people who have a troubled relationship with the state on multiple mundane levels, DWP, police, social services, etc. and are just mistrustful of 'it all'. Being sat down and talked to by the authorities may not be their idea of fun, but you can often get them to listen.
Once you go down n this route you can do the following:
- Do start banning the unvaccinated and not previously infected from certain places, even down to pubs, but I wouldn't go beyond public entertainment venues into workplaces like Italy. Start making those rules that mean you legally have to be vaccinated or exempt to go into entertainment venues.
- BUT, don't compel businesses to check Vaxport, don't force people to produce proof on demand.
- The classic British driving license fudge of proof 'within 7 days at the police station' is fine here.
- Track and trace or the vigilance of the public may also bring breaches to light.
On the whole I'm very relaxed about making rules which have somewhat limited enforceability, but which will make the unvaccinated think twice about going out.
We appreciate the support of MPs and peers from all parties. Today, we are delighted and honoured to receive congratulations on our “incredible hard work” from the Prime Minister, @BorisJohnson as well as his best wishes for our conference. #LGBAlliance2021
https://twitter.com/ALLIANCELGB/status/1451160797497921544?s=20
He says he's from Durham so the Midlands is a bit bigger!
My objection to mask wearing is both one of principle and practicality. The principle is that it's absolutely not something, in my view, that the state should have the power to require people to do,* even if it is desirable.
The practicality is that the benefit gained by it is marginal at best, and may in overall cost-benefit terms be negative. It is certainly not cost-free. And while I don't like that we are now a health service with a country attached to it, the health service does need money, which we can only get by having an economy.
*For me, the biggest lesson of the last 18 months has been how fragile the freedom we used to take for granted really is.
I must say the guidance or lack of it as to how to share a house with someone infected with Covid was quite vexing and rather odd.
If you think vaccine passports won't happen, all it really is will be changing supermarkets from voluntary mask wearing to mandatory. Might move the needle of mask usage up 5-10% perhaps. Yesterdays presser is essentially a third of plan B done, and another third you think is implausible.
-----
Plan B
75. If the data suggests the NHS is likely to come under unsustainable pressure, the
Government has prepared a Plan B for England. The Government hopes not to have
to implement Plan B, but given the uncertainty, it is setting out details now so that the
public and businesses know what to expect if further measures become necessary.
38 S1360 SAGE 95 minutes, S1376 SPI-M-O Consensus statement, 8th Sept 2021
22 COVID-19 RESPONSE: AUTUMN AND WINTER PLAN
76. Given the high levels of protection in the adult population against COVID-19 by
vaccination, relatively small changes in policy and behaviour could have a big impact
on reducing (or increasing) transmission, bending the epidemic curve and relieving
pressure on the NHS. Thanks to the success of the vaccination programme, it should
be possible to handle a further resurgence with less damaging measures than the
lockdowns and economic and social restrictions deployed in the past. The Government
would provide prior notice as far as possible to the public and Parliament ahead of
implementing any necessary changes in a Plan B scenario.
77. The Government’s Plan B prioritises measures which can help control transmission of
the virus while seeking to minimise economic and social impacts. This includes:
a. Communicating clearly and urgently to the public that the level of risk has
increased, and with it the need to behave more cautiously.
b. Introducing mandatory vaccine-only COVID-status certification in certain settings.
c. Legally mandating face coverings in certain settings.
78. The Government would also consider asking people once again to work from home if
they can, for a limited period. The Government recognises this causes more disruption
and has greater immediate costs to the economy and some businesses than the other
Plan B interventions, so a final decision would be made based on the data at the time.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1020982/COVID-19-response-autumn-and-winter-plan-2021.pdf
It's the same as the at home kits (You do the swabbing parked up in your car) but with less faff I think.
What draconian steps are you prepared to take by mandate of law to get us there?
https://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/now-casting/nowcasting-and-forecasting-20th-october-2021/
Its very interesting and amongst other things lists the 'attack rate' the % of people who have already had it, overall its 47% for 5-14 it estimates it as 76% (95% Confidence interval 75%-77%)
Then there is also the ONS Weekly servay:
https://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/now-casting/nowcasting-and-forecasting-20th-october-2021/
Which is the % of the total population testing positive in a week, it estimates 890,000 people in England had it in the week ending 9 October, but crucially it also records 8.1% of 10-14 year olds as having it at that time.
My conclusion is we are very very close to running out of people especially kids, who have not had it and when we do cases will fall.
We have a virus with a very high R number (possible 9 or 10), which means it keeps on increasing till 85% or90% have it, but the flip side is it drops dramatically after that.
Andy Ngô Rainbow flag
@MrAndyNgo
I’m at the @ALLIANCELGB
conference in Westminster, London. It is the first large scale conference for lesbian, gay & bisexual people who are critical of extreme trans ideology. There is high security given extremism of some radical trans activists.
10:32 am · 21 Oct 2021·Twitter for iPhone
I have often done both and you do save around an hour or more by flying but the train is so much more civilised.
Have you ever behaved in such a way when they presumably suffered any number of contagious diseases previously??
If you're starting from London, of course, going by the west coast is a bit of an indirect route.
https://twitter.com/georgeeaton/status/1451166562656870410?s=20
The mark of a true northerner is that he thinks the north ends 10 miles south of where he was born.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/21/documentary-poverty-film-makers-made-in-bury-britain
Even more, I've enjoyed Max and Philip transitioning from "let the unvaxxed die, serves them right", to "let's pay them not to die" in a short space of time.
My favourite story of southerners not knowing the north is a that of a friend of mine, who lives in Liverpool and went to Durham University. A couple of years after leaving university, she and her friends held a reunion, in Durham. One friend, from London, insisted on, rather than getting the train to Durham, getting the train to Liverpool to be picked up by my friend, as she lived in the north so would be close by. She was then incredulous that it took a further three hours driving to get to Durham.
This was someone who had spent three years at university in Durham. She just assumed everywhere in the north was close to everywhere else.
Twat.
https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1451142195986280450?s=20
Things we could/should do:
1) Offer the unvaccinated a chose of vaccines, ideally including the Johnson and Johnson signal jab vaccine, (I think a lot of people are frustrated with the loss of control this pandemic has entailed and if you give people chose that will alleviates some of that loss of control) but this will not get everybody.
2) Sort out the boosters, let anybody who has had their first jab 5 months ago book one, to have maybe at the 5 months and 2 weeks point.
3) Accelerate the rate of jabbing in schools, for 12-15 year olds.
4) Let parents of younger kids decide if they what their kids jabbed, this is especially the case for 11 year olds, some of who are at the same school as 12-15 year olds, and could be jabbed at the same time as there older classmates.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/new-push-to-get-civil-servants-back-in-offices-fsg6ml60x