4% of all people! And we can track COVID related hospitalisations to it as well. With today's data. The CHR must be absolutely tiny.
Roughly 2m to 10k or 200:1. The death rate used to be higher than that. Go vaccines!
7k in hospital *for* COVID so I'd guess at 1/300.
Again, these are the kinds of stats that the NHS will have been seeing which is why they seem unworried by Omicron.
At 1/300 the total number of potential hospitalisations from Omicron could be around 220k in all the UK and chances are the current hospitalisations are front loaded to the unvaccinated so the number is probably significantly lower.
But, but what does Nicola do now?
What a ridiculous question David. You think Nicola is bothered by "the science"?
We all know the answer: Something marginally different to England.
The contrast to tonight's New Year display in London to a deserted and dour Edinburgh and Cardiff will not be a good look for Sturgeon or Drakeford
What effect do you think it'll have on Welsh and Scotch polling, oh wise one? Will you keep you 100% record on predictions for the political futures of Sturgeon and Drakeford?
I have no idea but the Welsh news is interviewing border businesses who are seeing their income disappear to England and are not happy
You can extol the virtues of Sturgeon as much as you like but despite the SNP monopoly, Independence is as far away as ever and she knows it
I haven't extolled any virtues of Sturgeon, otoh you whine about her 24/7. I am old enough to remember you extolling the virtues of BJ mind.
I was fine with Boris upto Paterson but not anymore, and as for Sturgeon she is only interested in herself and how she can leave a legacy without holding indyref2
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
Am I the only PB regular that hasn't (knowingly) had the Rona yet? It is getting a bit last Boris supporter.....
nope, nothing here.
I've been teaching front-of-house to around 100 freshers all last term, plus a couple of smaller classes. Given I was essential staff in the first lockdown, so in more often that not, and worked through both lockdowns 2 and 3, in a war movie, I'd be *that* guy on his last mission.
Looks like the beginning of an outbreak of Covid-19 at Liverpool.
Three first teamers have it, and others in the staff.
I thought they had an outbreak 2 weeks ago, hence why Van Dijk was off?
I also thought St. Jurgen was the patron Saint of footballer vaccination? I suppose he could lay hands on and all would be well? Or alternatively whinge at length.
Newcastle Soton postponed. Get in. Let the fewm commence.
Isn't there a bit of vested interest for Saudi FC to try and get as much postponed till after the Jan transfer window as possible when they may well have bolstered their squad more relative to their relegation rivals ?
If a novel coronavirus had arrived with the characteristics of Omicron (as infectious and similar illness) would we even be aware of it other than the usual winter pressure on the NHS headlines on page 6?
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
On ridiculous stories the Guardian photographing Raab at the Chelsea match unmasked takes the biscuit
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
Yes, ridiculous, but hardly a Boris-only thing. Remember when people were measuring Corbyn's cenotaph bow with a protractor?
Newcastle Soton postponed. Get in. Let the fewm commence.
Isn't there a bit of vested interest for Saudi FC to try and get as much postponed till after the Jan transfer window as possible when they may well have bolstered their squad more relative to their relegation rivals ?
Damn right.
But regardless, we've already played more games than most. Burnley had 4 games in hand over us until yesterday, so it's not like other teams have not had their fair share of postponements either.
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
Or its a shame it wasn't this infectious originally because if it was this infectious when we had no idea what it was it would have burnt out in the space of a month or two and then we'd have gotten back to normal instead of spending two years obsessing over Covid.
But then it would have been going over an unvaccinated population, so swings and roundabouts.
Had it been this infectious to begin with, it would have been carnage. Mind you, the world might have shutdown air travel that much faster had 1% of China died in a couple of weeks.
It would have been carnage but we'd have ripped off the bandage much quicker.
I'm far from convinced that having two years of lockdowns was in hindsight worth preventing 1% of global population from dying. Considering that life expectancy from here isn't 100 years for the people who were dying.
I am far from convinced a disease as infectious as Omicron and as deadly as the original variant would have been 1% fatality. Bear in mind health systems would simply have imploded under the pressure so even quite minor infections, coughs etc might easily have been fatal. And it would certainly have gone charging through sub-Saharan Africa and not in a good way.
Yes it would have burnt through very quickly and lots of people would have died, but then it would have been over almost as soon as it began. Close to a million die of natural causes anyway in a two year period and aren't getting that time they've lost back. There wouldn't be expanded waiting lists for years to come for cancer, hips, dental and all the other postponements. There wouldn't have been years of disrupted education. There wouldn't have been trillions spent.
There'd need to be surge money spent on funeral homes for a few weeks, but the rest of society I suspect would have been better off if it had just ripped out of control immediately. Cynical but true.
I think it would have been longer than a few weeks. Long Covid aside, at that rate it would have caused major long term damage to the healthcare system that would have been with us for months if not years as we struggled to replace dead doctors and nurses. Which would, in itself, see higher mortality rates.
In any case, if this was as infectious as Omicron and as virulent as the original disease you might easily be looking, even without such issues, at 5% mortality concentrated overwhelmingly among older people. Do you honestly think there would be no repercussions in society and the economy if more people than live in Greater Manchester all died in a short space of time?
We'd be looking at far more than a few busy funeral parlours...
It would have been sad and traumatic, but then the last two years have been sad and traumatic anyway.
However being sad doesn't necessarily make it worse. There have been repercussions that we'll be paying probably for years to come if not the rest of our lives due to the disruptions to education, the amount borrowed, the longer waiting lists etc
Being utterly cynical if it had ripped through then that would have been awful for the elderly, but for the young they wouldn't have had their education so seriously damaged. They wouldn't have had trillions of debt imposed upon them to shoulder for the rest of their lives. Besides toying with emotions, would it really be worse for them? I'm not convinced.
With one in five teachers in the UK aged over 50, it could easily have left them in a worse mess...
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
On ridiculous stories the Guardian photographing Raab at the Chelsea match unmasked takes the biscuit
Raab is useless but that simply is absurd
He deserves to be recalled. Not for the masklessness, but being a Chelsea fan.
On topic, I'm a split personality on Johnson's prospects for 2022. Political Me believes it's all over for him, he's been sussed and he's on his way out. Betting Me disagrees and thinks he's far more likely than not to recover sufficiently to stay in place. I'm long of him at 1.9 to still be PM for the Tory Party Conf and I'm not laying it back yet even though it's shortened to 1.5. I think that's still too big. Should be 1.33 max and probably 1.25.
Paterson was bonfire night, today is NYE. So inside of two months we have had Paterson, peppa pig, wallpaper redux, kabul redux and partygate. Those last three still have life in them, but also why would one think BJ has Drawn a Line and the Fightback Starts Now, rather than the omnishambles will continue with new material in the new year?
My guess is someone is subbing his living expenses big time with undeclared loans.
Boris does like a freebie. Remember when it turned out JCB were sending him meals? Would it be within the rules to seek a 7-figure advance on his memoirs?
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
No matter. Table service in pubs and banning parkrun will deal with it.
And early closing time.....
I thought the Quebec one being 10pm was particularly funny on the "we are doing something that won't make a blind bit of difference" scale.
Quebec is an actual curfew. For most people it means you have to be home by 10pm. I have no idea whether this is a good idea or not, but do you have any evidence that it doesn't make any difference? I would have thought it would have a pretty big effect on the amount of socialising done in certain demographics.
People just shift their behaviour forward. We saw it in London when the UK closing time, you just end up with a choke point as everybody rushes to leave. And we know Omicron is so infectious, one individual can pass it on to many people in a really short space of time.
If you goal is absolute minimising of COVID transition, you have to close all public indoor spaces, not say well its 9pm, everybody needs to be home in an hour.
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
Or its a shame it wasn't this infectious originally because if it was this infectious when we had no idea what it was it would have burnt out in the space of a month or two and then we'd have gotten back to normal instead of spending two years obsessing over Covid.
But then it would have been going over an unvaccinated population, so swings and roundabouts.
Had it been this infectious to begin with, it would have been carnage. Mind you, the world might have shutdown air travel that much faster had 1% of China died in a couple of weeks.
It would have been carnage but we'd have ripped off the bandage much quicker.
I'm far from convinced that having two years of lockdowns was in hindsight worth preventing 1% of global population from dying. Considering that life expectancy from here isn't 100 years for the people who were dying.
I am far from convinced a disease as infectious as Omicron and as deadly as the original variant would have been 1% fatality. Bear in mind health systems would simply have imploded under the pressure so even quite minor infections, coughs etc might easily have been fatal. And it would certainly have gone charging through sub-Saharan Africa and not in a good way.
Yes it would have burnt through very quickly and lots of people would have died, but then it would have been over almost as soon as it began. Close to a million die of natural causes anyway in a two year period and aren't getting that time they've lost back. There wouldn't be expanded waiting lists for years to come for cancer, hips, dental and all the other postponements. There wouldn't have been years of disrupted education. There wouldn't have been trillions spent.
There'd need to be surge money spent on funeral homes for a few weeks, but the rest of society I suspect would have been better off if it had just ripped out of control immediately. Cynical but true.
I think it would have been longer than a few weeks. Long Covid aside, at that rate it would have caused major long term damage to the healthcare system that would have been with us for months if not years as we struggled to replace dead doctors and nurses. Which would, in itself, see higher mortality rates.
In any case, if this was as infectious as Omicron and as virulent as the original disease you might easily be looking, even without such issues, at 5% mortality concentrated overwhelmingly among older people. Do you honestly think there would be no repercussions in society and the economy if more people than live in Greater Manchester all died in a short space of time?
We'd be looking at far more than a few busy funeral parlours...
It would have been sad and traumatic, but then the last two years have been sad and traumatic anyway.
However being sad doesn't necessarily make it worse. There have been repercussions that we'll be paying probably for years to come if not the rest of our lives due to the disruptions to education, the amount borrowed, the longer waiting lists etc
Being utterly cynical if it had ripped through then that would have been awful for the elderly, but for the young they wouldn't have had their education so seriously damaged. They wouldn't have had trillions of debt imposed upon them to shoulder for the rest of their lives. Besides toying with emotions, would it really be worse for them? I'm not convinced.
With one in five teachers in the UK aged over 50, it could easily have left them in a worse mess...
If we'd spent a fraction of the trillions on a post-pandemic recovery, instead of dragging the pandemic out for years, then that could have been resolved.
Plus if we're setting aside all emotions and being purely utilitarian the liabilities for NHS requirements in the future and pension liabilities would have been reduced.
Newcastle Soton postponed. Get in. Let the fewm commence.
Isn't there a bit of vested interest for Saudi FC to try and get as much postponed till after the Jan transfer window as possible when they may well have bolstered their squad more relative to their relegation rivals ?
I stil wonder if anyone has actually explained the concept of the football pyramid, to the new Saudi shareholders.
I recall one American football investor from a few years ago, who had difficulty understanding he hadn’t bought into an “EPL Franchise”.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
Yes, ridiculous, but hardly a Boris-only thing. Remember when people were measuring Corbyn's cenotaph bow with a protractor?
No.
But I do remember him losing the 2019 election really heavily.
4% of all people! And we can track COVID related hospitalisations to it as well. With today's data. The CHR must be absolutely tiny.
Roughly 2m to 10k or 200:1. The death rate used to be higher than that. Go vaccines!
7k in hospital *for* COVID so I'd guess at 1/300.
Again, these are the kinds of stats that the NHS will have been seeing which is why they seem unworried by Omicron.
At 1/300 the total number of potential hospitalisations from Omicron could be around 220k in all the UK and chances are the current hospitalisations are front loaded to the unvaccinated so the number is probably significantly lower.
But, but what does Nicola do now?
What a ridiculous question David. You think Nicola is bothered by "the science"?
We all know the answer: Something marginally different to England.
The contrast to tonight's New Year display in London to a deserted and dour Edinburgh and Cardiff will not be a good look for Sturgeon or Drakeford
What effect do you think it'll have on Welsh and Scotch polling, oh wise one? Will you keep you 100% record on predictions for the political futures of Sturgeon and Drakeford?
I have no idea but the Welsh news is interviewing border businesses who are seeing their income disappear to England and are not happy
You can extol the virtues of Sturgeon as much as you like but despite the SNP monopoly, Independence is as far away as ever and she knows it
The Scottish and Welsh Governments have both majored in caution throughout this interminable slog - and the First Ministers have vastly superior approval ratings to you know who. Even if it transpires to be demonstrable that the most recent round of restrictions have been useless they are most unlikely to suffer for it now, beyond the small cohort of frustrated business people to whom you refer.
The devolved elections took place relatively recently, but even so if I predicted a 90% probability of another SNP administration in Scotland after the next one, and a 99.99975% likelihood of Welsh Labour getting back in, then this would strike few dispassionate observers as outrageous. They're going nowhere.
If a novel coronavirus had arrived with the characteristics of Omicron (as infectious and similar illness) would we even be aware of it other than the usual winter pressure on the NHS headlines on page 6?
If it arrived in summer, I doubt we'd notice it much. Perhaps.
If it arrived in winter: it might depend if it somehow 'replaces' influenza. If it does not, the pressure on the NHS would be much higher, with both influenza *and* omicron causing hospitalisations. I daresay the boffins would soon realise they were looking at something novel.
It'll be interesting to look back midway through 2022 to see how bad the influenza season's been this year - some were predicting a very bad flu season. But will omicron caused behavioural changes that has prevented much flu (as happened last year), or may it even outcompete and replace flu?
BBC news highlighting how the Scots and Welsh are crossing into England including a couple from Brigend who have travelled to London and looking forward to the firework display which has been banned in Cardiff
This looks like it could be the story of tonight and tomorrow
BBC news highlighting how the Scots and Welsh are crossing into England including a couple from Brigend who have travelled to London and looking forward to the firework display which has been banned in Cardiff
This looks like it could be the story of tonight and tomorrow
The Drake needs to stop these Welsh plague carriers from entering England. It's a disgrace.
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
Or its a shame it wasn't this infectious originally because if it was this infectious when we had no idea what it was it would have burnt out in the space of a month or two and then we'd have gotten back to normal instead of spending two years obsessing over Covid.
But then it would have been going over an unvaccinated population, so swings and roundabouts.
Had it been this infectious to begin with, it would have been carnage. Mind you, the world might have shutdown air travel that much faster had 1% of China died in a couple of weeks.
It would have been carnage but we'd have ripped off the bandage much quicker.
I'm far from convinced that having two years of lockdowns was in hindsight worth preventing 1% of global population from dying. Considering that life expectancy from here isn't 100 years for the people who were dying.
I am far from convinced a disease as infectious as Omicron and as deadly as the original variant would have been 1% fatality. Bear in mind health systems would simply have imploded under the pressure so even quite minor infections, coughs etc might easily have been fatal. And it would certainly have gone charging through sub-Saharan Africa and not in a good way.
Yes it would have burnt through very quickly and lots of people would have died, but then it would have been over almost as soon as it began. Close to a million die of natural causes anyway in a two year period and aren't getting that time they've lost back. There wouldn't be expanded waiting lists for years to come for cancer, hips, dental and all the other postponements. There wouldn't have been years of disrupted education. There wouldn't have been trillions spent.
There'd need to be surge money spent on funeral homes for a few weeks, but the rest of society I suspect would have been better off if it had just ripped out of control immediately. Cynical but true.
I think it would have been longer than a few weeks. Long Covid aside, at that rate it would have caused major long term damage to the healthcare system that would have been with us for months if not years as we struggled to replace dead doctors and nurses. Which would, in itself, see higher mortality rates.
In any case, if this was as infectious as Omicron and as virulent as the original disease you might easily be looking, even without such issues, at 5% mortality concentrated overwhelmingly among older people. Do you honestly think there would be no repercussions in society and the economy if more people than live in Greater Manchester all died in a short space of time?
We'd be looking at far more than a few busy funeral parlours...
It would have been sad and traumatic, but then the last two years have been sad and traumatic anyway.
However being sad doesn't necessarily make it worse. There have been repercussions that we'll be paying probably for years to come if not the rest of our lives due to the disruptions to education, the amount borrowed, the longer waiting lists etc
Being utterly cynical if it had ripped through then that would have been awful for the elderly, but for the young they wouldn't have had their education so seriously damaged. They wouldn't have had trillions of debt imposed upon them to shoulder for the rest of their lives. Besides toying with emotions, would it really be worse for them? I'm not convinced.
The fact you are getting into VHEMT these days is making me think twice about it.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
Yes, ridiculous, but hardly a Boris-only thing. Remember when people were measuring Corbyn's cenotaph bow with a protractor?
No.
But I do remember him losing the 2019 election really heavily.
ARF!!!
Yes, that was good. Pity it meant Boris had to win though. Still, we might be shot of both of them soonish, with a fair wind. That would be superb.
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
Or its a shame it wasn't this infectious originally because if it was this infectious when we had no idea what it was it would have burnt out in the space of a month or two and then we'd have gotten back to normal instead of spending two years obsessing over Covid.
But then it would have been going over an unvaccinated population, so swings and roundabouts.
Had it been this infectious to begin with, it would have been carnage. Mind you, the world might have shutdown air travel that much faster had 1% of China died in a couple of weeks.
It would have been carnage but we'd have ripped off the bandage much quicker.
I'm far from convinced that having two years of lockdowns was in hindsight worth preventing 1% of global population from dying. Considering that life expectancy from here isn't 100 years for the people who were dying.
I am far from convinced a disease as infectious as Omicron and as deadly as the original variant would have been 1% fatality. Bear in mind health systems would simply have imploded under the pressure so even quite minor infections, coughs etc might easily have been fatal. And it would certainly have gone charging through sub-Saharan Africa and not in a good way.
Yes it would have burnt through very quickly and lots of people would have died, but then it would have been over almost as soon as it began. Close to a million die of natural causes anyway in a two year period and aren't getting that time they've lost back. There wouldn't be expanded waiting lists for years to come for cancer, hips, dental and all the other postponements. There wouldn't have been years of disrupted education. There wouldn't have been trillions spent.
There'd need to be surge money spent on funeral homes for a few weeks, but the rest of society I suspect would have been better off if it had just ripped out of control immediately. Cynical but true.
I think it would have been longer than a few weeks. Long Covid aside, at that rate it would have caused major long term damage to the healthcare system that would have been with us for months if not years as we struggled to replace dead doctors and nurses. Which would, in itself, see higher mortality rates.
In any case, if this was as infectious as Omicron and as virulent as the original disease you might easily be looking, even without such issues, at 5% mortality concentrated overwhelmingly among older people. Do you honestly think there would be no repercussions in society and the economy if more people than live in Greater Manchester all died in a short space of time?
We'd be looking at far more than a few busy funeral parlours...
It would have been sad and traumatic, but then the last two years have been sad and traumatic anyway.
However being sad doesn't necessarily make it worse. There have been repercussions that we'll be paying probably for years to come if not the rest of our lives due to the disruptions to education, the amount borrowed, the longer waiting lists etc
Being utterly cynical if it had ripped through then that would have been awful for the elderly, but for the young they wouldn't have had their education so seriously damaged. They wouldn't have had trillions of debt imposed upon them to shoulder for the rest of their lives. Besides toying with emotions, would it really be worse for them? I'm not convinced.
With one in five teachers in the UK aged over 50, it could easily have left them in a worse mess...
If we'd spent a fraction of the trillions on a post-pandemic recovery, instead of dragging the pandemic out for years, then that could have been resolved.
Plus if we're setting aside all emotions and being purely utilitarian the liabilities for NHS requirements in the future and pension liabilities would have been reduced.
No-one could ever accuse you of being emotional about the effects of Covid on other people ...
The fourth Ashes Test has been thrown into chaos after Australia's Travis Head tested positive for Covid on New Year’s Eve. The Australian batter is the first player from either side to test positive.
Does this mean England can now be legitimately 10:1 for this test?
So here's my current theory on the mismatch between infections and in hospital for COVID. Three doses of vaccines gives close to zero protection from asymptomatic infection, I have seen that close up with my parents, both triple dosed for a few weeks before they got infected, neither have had any symptoms at all but both PCR positive. So what we may actually have is close to 100% of people in the country likely to get some kind of Omicron infection which is why the infection stats look absolutely terrible with ~200k per day being detected by testing and 2.2m people in England having it last week.
However, it seems as though very few of the infected actually get severe symptoms, whether that's because Omicron is inherently more mild or because of high rates of immunity against severe disease or both is still a bit of an unknown, but it seems very difficult to deny it now.
Looking at the specific data release from the ONS, Delta still accounted for around a third of the total cases over the previous monitoring period which means of the 7k in hospital a very significant proportion will have been because of Delta, for the 1.4m Omicron cases during the monitoring period we may actually only have seen a 2-4k hospitalisations *for* COVID. Once again, this proved why the NHS trusts are so bullish over not needing more restrictions and the government also more bullish than most of us expected.
Here's the bottom line - Omicron may only have a CHR of 1/400 to 1/700 in the UK with our level of population immunity. Delta we know had a CHR of around 1/100 over the summer/autumn but with a worse population immunity profile.
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
No matter. Table service in pubs and banning parkrun will deal with it.
And early closing time.....
I thought the Quebec one being 10pm was particularly funny on the "we are doing something that won't make a blind bit of difference" scale.
Quebec is an actual curfew. For most people it means you have to be home by 10pm. I have no idea whether this is a good idea or not, but do you have any evidence that it doesn't make any difference? I would have thought it would have a pretty big effect on the amount of socialising done in certain demographics.
People just shift their behaviour forward. We saw it in London when the UK closing time, you just end up with a choke point as everybody rushes to leave. And we know Omicron is so infectious, one individual can pass it on to many people in a really short space of time.
If you goal is absolute minimising of COVID transition, you have to close all public indoor spaces, not say well its 9pm, everybody needs to be home in an hour.
Hence we need to forget about minimising transmission post vaccination. Vaccination has largely minimised deaths
I think discussions of the SNP in such a situation are completely secondary to the crucial point that there would be a huge crisis solely in England right from the start if the Tories still had a majority of English seats; they would be screaming at the illegitimacy of Labour deciding on English domestic issues. That's (so to speak) independent of what happens in Scotland (and Wales and NI for that matter).
Of course, that would be the Tories' fault for not setting up an English parliament in the years since Mr Blair's administration.
Their abolition of EVEL remains a huge anomaly unless it is a trap to try and get the SNP to fall into.
A huge crisis? i doubt if anyone except partisans would care. The Tories had a majority of English votes in 2005 (though Labour led in seats through a lot of boundary luck), and I'm not sure even they noticed. Most people look at the overall result without breaking it down in the detail that we do here.
Interesting. But that's the legal new year? Gifts still handed out at what we call New Year?
It would be in Scotland, not in England. The old year until then began with Easter, also Lady Day (now the Feast of the Annunication) on the 25th March.
You got me curious so I did some googling.
This introduction to an academic book clearly talks about the Queen giving and receiving New Year gifts in the Xmas season.
" As in her father’s time, a gift chamber was set up at New Year’s in whatever palace Elizabeth celebrated the Christmas season. This chamber was equipped with display tables for the gifts, as described in these entries from the Treasurer of the Chamber’s accounts: 1574 Dec: The Office of Works set up ‘tables for the banquet and for her Majesty’s New Year gifts’."
Newcastle Soton postponed. Get in. Let the fewm commence.
Isn't there a bit of vested interest for Saudi FC to try and get as much postponed till after the Jan transfer window as possible when they may well have bolstered their squad more relative to their relegation rivals ?
Damn right.
But regardless, we've already played more games than most. Burnley had 4 games in hand over us until yesterday, so it's not like other teams have not had their fair share of postponements either.
Not one of those Burnley postponements were due to Burnley having had COVID. But, it sounds like they have it now, so they could fall further behind.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
Yes, ridiculous, but hardly a Boris-only thing. Remember when people were measuring Corbyn's cenotaph bow with a protractor?
Sure, but that wasn't discussed by anyone important. Three of these were proposed as serious ideas by the LOTO, a QC and a Political Editor.
Robbert Dijkgraaf, theoretical physicist at the University of Amsterdam and director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton will become the new minister of science and education in the Netherlands
More background to the mess the BBC have got into...
The BBC’s claim that Jewish people targeted by an antisemitic attack on Oxford Street were themselves guilty of an “anti-Muslim slur” has been proved beyond any doubt to be inaccurate, after the findings of two independent reports published today.
That is a real mess. The BBC should correct and apologise - or state exactly what they think was said, and why they think it.
There's been some suggestion that the journalist who wrote the original article was in some way leant on. Either way, it's inescapable that they reported the anti-Semitism as "alleged" and allowed no such qualifier for the (now proven to be non-existent) anti-Muslim "slur". That's the real evidence for bias.
Yes, the qualifier is the clincher. Till then I'd be half inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt for not understanding Hebrew.
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
Or its a shame it wasn't this infectious originally because if it was this infectious when we had no idea what it was it would have burnt out in the space of a month or two and then we'd have gotten back to normal instead of spending two years obsessing over Covid.
But then it would have been going over an unvaccinated population, so swings and roundabouts.
Had it been this infectious to begin with, it would have been carnage. Mind you, the world might have shutdown air travel that much faster had 1% of China died in a couple of weeks.
It would have been carnage but we'd have ripped off the bandage much quicker.
I'm far from convinced that having two years of lockdowns was in hindsight worth preventing 1% of global population from dying. Considering that life expectancy from here isn't 100 years for the people who were dying.
I am far from convinced a disease as infectious as Omicron and as deadly as the original variant would have been 1% fatality. Bear in mind health systems would simply have imploded under the pressure so even quite minor infections, coughs etc might easily have been fatal. And it would certainly have gone charging through sub-Saharan Africa and not in a good way.
Yes it would have burnt through very quickly and lots of people would have died, but then it would have been over almost as soon as it began. Close to a million die of natural causes anyway in a two year period and aren't getting that time they've lost back. There wouldn't be expanded waiting lists for years to come for cancer, hips, dental and all the other postponements. There wouldn't have been years of disrupted education. There wouldn't have been trillions spent.
There'd need to be surge money spent on funeral homes for a few weeks, but the rest of society I suspect would have been better off if it had just ripped out of control immediately. Cynical but true.
Almost all countries with the necessary resource & infrastructure did lockdowns of some sort. The main exceptions were those run by fascist 'strongmen' types unencumbered with giving a shit about their citizens. It's very unlikely their approach was the better one. So unlikely, in fact, that I'm not sure it was worth floating. So I'm going to pretend you didn't. Think that's best.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
Did your sister write a 'we should understand more' piece about the wrong uns weeks before they were found guilty of grooming and sex trafficking?
Newcastle Soton postponed. Get in. Let the fewm commence.
Isn't there a bit of vested interest for Saudi FC to try and get as much postponed till after the Jan transfer window as possible when they may well have bolstered their squad more relative to their relegation rivals ?
Damn right.
But regardless, we've already played more games than most. Burnley had 4 games in hand over us until yesterday, so it's not like other teams have not had their fair share of postponements either.
Not one of those Burnley postponements were due to Burnley having had COVID. But, it sounds like they have it now, so they could fall further behind.
4% of all people! And we can track COVID related hospitalisations to it as well. With today's data. The CHR must be absolutely tiny.
Roughly 2m to 10k or 200:1. The death rate used to be higher than that. Go vaccines!
7k in hospital *for* COVID so I'd guess at 1/300.
Again, these are the kinds of stats that the NHS will have been seeing which is why they seem unworried by Omicron.
At 1/300 the total number of potential hospitalisations from Omicron could be around 220k in all the UK and chances are the current hospitalisations are front loaded to the unvaccinated so the number is probably significantly lower.
But, but what does Nicola do now?
What a ridiculous question David. You think Nicola is bothered by "the science"?
We all know the answer: Something marginally different to England.
The contrast to tonight's New Year display in London to a deserted and dour Edinburgh and Cardiff will not be a good look for Sturgeon or Drakeford
What effect do you think it'll have on Welsh and Scotch polling, oh wise one? Will you keep you 100% record on predictions for the political futures of Sturgeon and Drakeford?
I have no idea but the Welsh news is interviewing border businesses who are seeing their income disappear to England and are not happy
You can extol the virtues of Sturgeon as much as you like but despite the SNP monopoly, Independence is as far away as ever and she knows it
The Scottish and Welsh Governments have both majored in caution throughout this interminable slog - and the First Ministers have vastly superior approval ratings to you know who. Even if it transpires to be demonstrable that the most recent round of restrictions have been useless they are most unlikely to suffer for it now, beyond the small cohort of frustrated business people to whom you refer.
The devolved elections took place relatively recently, but even so if I predicted a 90% probability of another SNP administration in Scotland after the next one, and a 99.99975% likelihood of Welsh Labour getting back in, then this would strike few dispassionate observers as outrageous. They're going nowhere.
In Scotland yes but labour in Wales did not win a majority and need the greens to govern
The conservatives need a new leader to start the recovery in their ratings in Wales, following Boris's disastrous couple of months
A slur about Muslims can also be heard from inside the bus.
Short of a full apology, the BBC needs taking to task over this. Thoroughly disgraceful.
See what I mean about the blurred video,....what is the rational behind that? We can see a screen grab, we can hear the audio, but we can't see the unblurred faces from the full video? Given every other media outlet ran the video unblurred, it can't be a legal issue.
A slur about Muslims can also be heard from inside the bus.
Short of a full apology, the BBC needs taking to task over this. Thoroughly disgraceful.
This is a classic BBCism, they simply can't fathom that some poor oppressed minority (Muslims in this case) can be arseholes without provocation, so they fabricated one.
I think discussions of the SNP in such a situation are completely secondary to the crucial point that there would be a huge crisis solely in England right from the start if the Tories still had a majority of English seats; they would be screaming at the illegitimacy of Labour deciding on English domestic issues. That's (so to speak) independent of what happens in Scotland (and Wales and NI for that matter).
Of course, that would be the Tories' fault for not setting up an English parliament in the years since Mr Blair's administration.
Their abolition of EVEL remains a huge anomaly unless it is a trap to try and get the SNP to fall into.
A huge crisis? i doubt if anyone except partisans would care. The Tories had a majority of English votes in 2005 (though Labour led in seats through a lot of boundary luck), and I'm not sure even they noticed. Most people look at the overall result without breaking it down in the detail that we do here.
Labour had a big majority of seats in England in 2005 though and there was a high LD vote. If the Tories won a majority of seats in England but a UK Labour government passed laws on English domestic policy it would be a big deal and push the Tories towards backing an English parliament.
Before devolution we just had one UK parliament so if the Tories won England but not the UK as in 1964 and February 1974 it was less of an issue. Now if Scotland and Wales get their own parliaments for their domestic laws if we have a UK Tory government but English Tories get no say if we have a UK Labour government that would be an issue
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
Or its a shame it wasn't this infectious originally because if it was this infectious when we had no idea what it was it would have burnt out in the space of a month or two and then we'd have gotten back to normal instead of spending two years obsessing over Covid.
But then it would have been going over an unvaccinated population, so swings and roundabouts.
Had it been this infectious to begin with, it would have been carnage. Mind you, the world might have shutdown air travel that much faster had 1% of China died in a couple of weeks.
It would have been carnage but we'd have ripped off the bandage much quicker.
I'm far from convinced that having two years of lockdowns was in hindsight worth preventing 1% of global population from dying. Considering that life expectancy from here isn't 100 years for the people who were dying.
I am far from convinced a disease as infectious as Omicron and as deadly as the original variant would have been 1% fatality. Bear in mind health systems would simply have imploded under the pressure so even quite minor infections, coughs etc might easily have been fatal. And it would certainly have gone charging through sub-Saharan Africa and not in a good way.
Yes it would have burnt through very quickly and lots of people would have died, but then it would have been over almost as soon as it began. Close to a million die of natural causes anyway in a two year period and aren't getting that time they've lost back. There wouldn't be expanded waiting lists for years to come for cancer, hips, dental and all the other postponements. There wouldn't have been years of disrupted education. There wouldn't have been trillions spent.
There'd need to be surge money spent on funeral homes for a few weeks, but the rest of society I suspect would have been better off if it had just ripped out of control immediately. Cynical but true.
Almost all countries with the necessary resource & infrastructure did lockdowns of some sort. The main exceptions were those run by fascist 'strongmen' types unencumbered with giving a shit about their citizens. It's very unlikely their approach was the better one. So unlikely, in fact, that I'm not sure it was worth floating. So I'm going to pretend you didn't. Think that's best.
In hindsight I think the Swedes were right. I am willing to say I called it wrong last year when I opposed the Swedish method and wish @contrarian were still around so I could apologise to him over that. Perhaps @MISTY might be able to pass on the message.
Yes lockdowns do seem to have become the populist option in the Democratic world but that doesn't make them right. The fascist 'strongmen' types have possibly been able to do the right thing by their countries unencumbered by the need to appeal to their voters.
However I 100% entirely prefer democracy even if democracy sometimes means we end up having to do the wrong and populist thing instead of the right unpopular thing. Its funny to see those who regularly abhor populism rush to defend it here though.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
Absolutely.
I've got:
*one of the journalists to be arrested for phone hacking *at least one of the coq d'argent jumpers *one of the bankers in the German cum-ex scandal
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
Yes, ridiculous, but hardly a Boris-only thing. Remember when people were measuring Corbyn's cenotaph bow with a protractor?
Sure, but that wasn't discussed by anyone important. Three of these were proposed as serious ideas by the LOTO, a QC and a Political Editor.
Being LOTO, QC, or Political Editor doesn't immunise you from being a bit of an idiot. Corbyn, Peston, Hague, Kuenssberg, Cox, Howard, Miliband, Kinnock. We could be here all day.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
Yes, ridiculous, but hardly a Boris-only thing. Remember when people were measuring Corbyn's cenotaph bow with a protractor?
Sure, but that wasn't discussed by anyone important. Three of these were proposed as serious ideas by the LOTO, a QC and a Political Editor.
Being LOTO, QC, or Political Editor doesn't immunise you from being a bit of an idiot. Corbyn, Peston, Hague, Kuenssberg, Cox, Howard, Miliband, Kinnock. We could be here all day.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
Yes, ridiculous, but hardly a Boris-only thing. Remember when people were measuring Corbyn's cenotaph bow with a protractor?
Sure, but that wasn't discussed by anyone important. Three of these were proposed as serious ideas by the LOTO, a QC and a Political Editor.
Being LOTO, QC, or Political Editor doesn't immunise you from being a bit of an idiot. Corbyn, Peston, Hague, Kuenssberg, Cox, Howard, Miliband, Kinnock. We could be here all day.
Someone got their protractor out and in today's ACTION PACKED! episode of Farooq Investigates! we find out who.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
Yes, ridiculous, but hardly a Boris-only thing. Remember when people were measuring Corbyn's cenotaph bow with a protractor?
Sure, but that wasn't discussed by anyone important. Three of these were proposed as serious ideas by the LOTO, a QC and a Political Editor.
Being LOTO, QC, or Political Editor doesn't immunise you from being a bit of an idiot. Corbyn, Peston, Hague, Kuenssberg, Cox, Howard, Miliband, Kinnock. We could be here all day.
Someone got their protractor out and in today's ACTION PACKED! episode of Farooq Investigates! we find out who.
I might pitch this. Who do you think, ITV for the popular touch? Perhaps GB news for a bit of lefty-baiting?
Am I the only PB regular that hasn't (knowingly) had the Rona yet? It is getting a bit last Boris supporter.....
I am not sure that any of us really know. My son's partner produced a vaguely positive LFT last Wednesday, which led to them eventually getting positive PCR results (this Tuesday). She produced negative results on Thursday and Friday but Saturday's test also came up positive. My son's tests have been negative on a daily basis.
Emboldened by this negativity, my son dropped our presents off on Saturday, and despite a masked, and most fleeting encounter with my line manager wife alongside an open external door, he managed to infect her. So I am now living with Covid, but my daily LFTs continue to show negative.
Big O really is highly infectious. I don't see how we all avoid getting infected over the next few months.
Probably best to get it over and done with if you are reasonably fit.
Not how I'm viewing it. I intend to dodge the thing as long as possible. Viruses evolve to become nicer - Darwin tells us this with his Theory that's more like a fact - so my plan is to catch it in about 2027, by which time the main symptom will be a hankering for chocolate.
While you're waiting why not get yourself by a dog carrying the at least 3 millennia old rabies virus, to silence the doubters and the h8ers about that theory? (Which is nothing to do with Darwin).
I really should have put money on "when the mild varient turns up covidminiziers/psychotics will use it as evidence that it has all been a big fuss about nothing and we should have never have tslen any minimisation measures" because that was a sure thing.
We're back to March 2020 "no worse than a bad flu season"
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
It's a little unkind, but I love 'Keirdness'. But at least you wrote 'Keir' rather than 'Kier', so you won't trigger someone ...
Also of note; none of those stories personally attacking Johnson moved the polls at all. It's only when his party mucked up (due to his lack of leadership skills) that they shifted.
I really should have put money on "when the mild varient turns up covidminiziers/psychotics will use it as evidence that it has all been a big fuss about nothing and we should have never have tslen any minimisation measures" because that was a sure thing.
We're back to March 2020 "no worse than a bad flu season"
And what are the odds exactly the same people will be using the words "Captain Hindsight" in 2022?
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
Yes, ridiculous, but hardly a Boris-only thing. Remember when people were measuring Corbyn's cenotaph bow with a protractor?
Sure, but that wasn't discussed by anyone important. Three of these were proposed as serious ideas by the LOTO, a QC and a Political Editor.
Being LOTO, QC, or Political Editor doesn't immunise you from being a bit of an idiot. Corbyn, Peston, Hague, Kuenssberg, Cox, Howard, Miliband, Kinnock. We could be here all day.
Well, with the QC being Joanna Cherry MP and her being the one who thought they'd have taped bin bags over cctv cameras, maybe you should worry more about that being SNP SOP.
I really should have put money on "when the mild varient turns up covidminiziers/psychotics will use it as evidence that it has all been a big fuss about nothing and we should have never have tslen any minimisation measures" because that was a sure thing.
We're back to March 2020 "no worse than a bad flu season"
For a betting site it's disgraceful the amount of aftertimers who come out of the woodwork on here. Actually, scrub that, betting sites are the natural habitat of these lads.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
It's a little unkind, but I love 'Keirdness'. But at least you wrote 'Keir' rather than 'Kier', so you won't trigger someone ...
Also of note; none of those stories personally attacking Johnson moved the polls at all. It's only when his party mucked up (due to his lack of leadership skills) that they shifted.
Haha, I just remembered the wild rage that some people were in about Kear Starmer being referred by The Speiker to as "Keir Starmer" instead of "Sir Keir Starmer". Wow, that seems like a lifetime ago, was it really only a couple of months back?
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
Or its a shame it wasn't this infectious originally because if it was this infectious when we had no idea what it was it would have burnt out in the space of a month or two and then we'd have gotten back to normal instead of spending two years obsessing over Covid.
But then it would have been going over an unvaccinated population, so swings and roundabouts.
Had it been this infectious to begin with, it would have been carnage. Mind you, the world might have shutdown air travel that much faster had 1% of China died in a couple of weeks.
It would have been carnage but we'd have ripped off the bandage much quicker.
I'm far from convinced that having two years of lockdowns was in hindsight worth preventing 1% of global population from dying. Considering that life expectancy from here isn't 100 years for the people who were dying.
I am far from convinced a disease as infectious as Omicron and as deadly as the original variant would have been 1% fatality. Bear in mind health systems would simply have imploded under the pressure so even quite minor infections, coughs etc might easily have been fatal. And it would certainly have gone charging through sub-Saharan Africa and not in a good way.
Yes it would have burnt through very quickly and lots of people would have died, but then it would have been over almost as soon as it began. Close to a million die of natural causes anyway in a two year period and aren't getting that time they've lost back. There wouldn't be expanded waiting lists for years to come for cancer, hips, dental and all the other postponements. There wouldn't have been years of disrupted education. There wouldn't have been trillions spent.
There'd need to be surge money spent on funeral homes for a few weeks, but the rest of society I suspect would have been better off if it had just ripped out of control immediately. Cynical but true.
The fatality rate was only 1% when hospital care was available. If the hospitals were overwhelmed then the fatality rate would have been closer to 5% - except that, of course, people would have stayed home out of fear, so we would have had a lot of the damage of lockdown, with a higher rate of fatality, and a feeling from the public that their government had abandoned them.
There's many things I would have done differently - I wouldn't have used the law to enforce a lockdown, but made it strong government public health advice, for example - but there was no easy way to avoid the difficulties of the last two years.
This is right. There's a valid debate about the balance struck between law and guidance, but the notion governments had the serious option of doing nothing is ludicrous.
For me, the Big Picture is a heartening one. Faced with this novel threat, governments acted to protect people and funded Science to make vaccines & treatments. The world did good. Offered this, back in March 2020, I'd have bitten your hand off.
But let's not now snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by letting the pandemic fester on in the less developed parts of the world. Let's get those jabs rolled out!
I really should have put money on "when the mild varient turns up covidminiziers/psychotics will use it as evidence that it has all been a big fuss about nothing and we should have never have tslen any minimisation measures" because that was a sure thing.
We're back to March 2020 "no worse than a bad flu season"
Who's saying that? I don't see a single person saying that.
Its much worse than a bad flu season, but the damage from restrictions has been worse than the damage from Covid.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
Did your sister write a 'we should understand more' piece about the wrong uns weeks before they were found guilty of grooming and sex trafficking?
People are not their sisters' keepers, to be scrupulously fair to the FLSOJ.
I think she is paid to make him look like a reasonably ok journalist. I can never safely be more than 6 feet from a serviceable sickbag until the memory of the word glamazon and the sentence it features in have faded.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
Yes, ridiculous, but hardly a Boris-only thing. Remember when people were measuring Corbyn's cenotaph bow with a protractor?
Sure, but that wasn't discussed by anyone important. Three of these were proposed as serious ideas by the LOTO, a QC and a Political Editor.
Being LOTO, QC, or Political Editor doesn't immunise you from being a bit of an idiot. Corbyn, Peston, Hague, Kuenssberg, Cox, Howard, Miliband, Kinnock. We could be here all day.
Well, with the QC being Joanna Cherry MP and her being the one who thought they'd have taped bin bags over cctv cameras, maybe you should worry more about that being SNP SOP.
Cherry still in the SNP? I thought she was Provisional Alba near as damn it.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
Yes, ridiculous, but hardly a Boris-only thing. Remember when people were measuring Corbyn's cenotaph bow with a protractor?
Sure, but that wasn't discussed by anyone important. Three of these were proposed as serious ideas by the LOTO, a QC and a Political Editor.
Being LOTO, QC, or Political Editor doesn't immunise you from being a bit of an idiot. Corbyn, Peston, Hague, Kuenssberg, Cox, Howard, Miliband, Kinnock. We could be here all day.
Well, with the QC being Joanna Cherry MP and her being the one who thought they'd have taped bin bags over cctv cameras, maybe you should worry more about that being SNP SOP.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
Yes, ridiculous, but hardly a Boris-only thing. Remember when people were measuring Corbyn's cenotaph bow with a protractor?
Sure, but that wasn't discussed by anyone important. Three of these were proposed as serious ideas by the LOTO, a QC and a Political Editor.
Being LOTO, QC, or Political Editor doesn't immunise you from being a bit of an idiot. Corbyn, Peston, Hague, Kuenssberg, Cox, Howard, Miliband, Kinnock. We could be here all day.
Well, with the QC being Joanna Cherry MP and her being the one who thought they'd have taped bin bags over cctv cameras, maybe you should worry more about that being SNP SOP.
Yeah, and JCQCMP has form, something about a nurse on Question Time a few years ago? Keep lining them up, there are fruitloops e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e
Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer see Scottish approval ratings 'hit record lows'
VOTERS’ estimations of the UK and Scottish leaders of both the Tory and Labour parties have sunk to record lows, Professor Sir John Curtice [the president of the British Polling Council] has said.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar’s rating has plummeted to a rating of -1, while his UK leader, Keir Starmer, has also seen a drop in his approval rating, which now sits on -35.
The news is equally poor for the Tory leaders, with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson having an approval rating of -62. A massive 78% of people said Johnson was doing his job poorly.
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross has also seen a drop in his rating, which now sits on -38. Just 17% of Scots said he was doing well in his role.
Alex Cole-Hamilton, the leader of the Scottish LibDems, has an approval rating of -16. However, the majority of respondents (55%) said they did not know how he was performing.
[Curtice] adds: “There is no sign of any electoral challenge to the grip of the nationalist movement on the Holyrood chamber. Meanwhile, the Conservatives are mired in sleaze, and the UK and Scottish leaders of the Conservative and the Labour Party have all sunk to record lows in voters’ estimation.”
And Scotland is now almost irrelevant in relation to UK General Elections.
In that case we may as well just call them England & Wales General Elections, or my preference, Wangland GEs.
At some point Scottish voters will decide they want influence over Westminster politics
Yeah, a rather abrupt influence.
It’s on the assumption that there is a Labour minority government that will trade with them for support. How many have there been in the last century? 1? (Vague memory of something in the 70s)
In return they have no meaningful input on foreign affairs, defence, tax policy etc.
It may be they are content with effective control of the main public facing aspects of domestic policy however
It'll be interesting to see whether the Scottish MPs can have any meaningful influence even if they do hold the balance of power in theory. In practice the SNPs positioning is such that English Labour will probably feel that they can write it off. They can't do anything to damage a minority Labour administration that doesn't help the hated Tories.
I suspect you are right but not sure that Labour have the cojones for that sort of play
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
Did your sister write a 'we should understand more' piece about the wrong uns weeks before they were found guilty of grooming and sex trafficking?
People are not their sisters' keepers, to be scrupulously fair to the FLSOJ.
I think she is paid to make him look like a reasonably ok journalist. I can never safely be more than 6 feet from a serviceable sickbag until the memory of the word glamazon and the sentence it features in have faded.
Yes, glamazon was a keeper in the most unpleasant sense, like the taste of the alcohol that you first spewed your ring over.
Interesting. But that's the legal new year? Gifts still handed out at what we call New Year?
It would be in Scotland, not in England. The old year until then began with Easter, also Lady Day (now the Feast of the Annunication) on the 25th March.
You got me curious so I did some googling.
This introduction to an academic book clearly talks about the Queen giving and receiving New Year gifts in the Xmas season.
" As in her father’s time, a gift chamber was set up at New Year’s in whatever palace Elizabeth celebrated the Christmas season. This chamber was equipped with display tables for the gifts, as described in these entries from the Treasurer of the Chamber’s accounts: 1574 Dec: The Office of Works set up ‘tables for the banquet and for her Majesty’s New Year gifts’."
Interesting. She must have kept the Roman New Year (which is why during the early modern period Europe picked 1st January as the start date for the New Year).
Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer see Scottish approval ratings 'hit record lows'
VOTERS’ estimations of the UK and Scottish leaders of both the Tory and Labour parties have sunk to record lows, Professor Sir John Curtice [the president of the British Polling Council] has said.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar’s rating has plummeted to a rating of -1, while his UK leader, Keir Starmer, has also seen a drop in his approval rating, which now sits on -35.
The news is equally poor for the Tory leaders, with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson having an approval rating of -62. A massive 78% of people said Johnson was doing his job poorly.
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross has also seen a drop in his rating, which now sits on -38. Just 17% of Scots said he was doing well in his role.
Alex Cole-Hamilton, the leader of the Scottish LibDems, has an approval rating of -16. However, the majority of respondents (55%) said they did not know how he was performing.
[Curtice] adds: “There is no sign of any electoral challenge to the grip of the nationalist movement on the Holyrood chamber. Meanwhile, the Conservatives are mired in sleaze, and the UK and Scottish leaders of the Conservative and the Labour Party have all sunk to record lows in voters’ estimation.”
And Scotland is now almost irrelevant in relation to UK General Elections.
In that case we may as well just call them England & Wales General Elections, or my preference, Wangland GEs.
At some point Scottish voters will decide they want influence over Westminster politics
Yeah, a rather abrupt influence.
It’s on the assumption that there is a Labour minority government that will trade with them for support. How many have there been in the last century? 1? (Vague memory of something in the 70s)
In return they have no meaningful input on foreign affairs, defence, tax policy etc.
It may be they are content with effective control of the main public facing aspects of domestic policy however
You are, I suspect, thinking of the Lib-Lab pact(s) There was a tentative one between March & Oct 74 and a more formal on in 1977-8.
Wikipedia says that there were similar arrangements in 1924 and 1929.
Blair was going to offer one to Ashdown in 1997, but the massive majority and John Prescott's powerful opposition stopped it, as it did electoral reform.
It was the late 70s I was thinking of - thought there was something informal with the snp as well
In a long-standing tradition harking back to the last century my accountant and I exchange new year greetings on 5th April.
Boring but true: 5th April is the new 25 March because when they fixed the calendar Jul to Greg they couldn't face the thought of having to calculate taxes at 354/365 of a whole year, without calculators. So tax year 1752-3 was 25 march to 4 April, which was 365 days
A slur about Muslims can also be heard from inside the bus.
Short of a full apology, the BBC needs taking to task over this. Thoroughly disgraceful.
This is a classic BBCism, they simply can't fathom that some poor oppressed minority (Muslims in this case) can be arseholes without provocation, so they fabricated one.
It's how bias creeps in. The journalists involved have spent so many hours listening to unconscious bias training and the like, and so they take extra care not to display bias towards a marginalised group that they know is underrepresented among their friends and family, and all the rest of it. Only they never stop to think that they might be overcorrecting, and thus inadvertently end up being biased in a different direction, against a different group. And can't even see the problem because of the focus on eliminating the original "bias".
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
Did your sister write a 'we should understand more' piece about the wrong uns weeks before they were found guilty of grooming and sex trafficking?
People are not their sisters' keepers, to be scrupulously fair to the FLSOJ.
I think she is paid to make him look like a reasonably ok journalist. I can never safely be more than 6 feet from a serviceable sickbag until the memory of the word glamazon and the sentence it features in have faded.
Yes, glamazon was a keeper in the most unpleasant sense, like the taste of the alcohol that you first spewed your ring over.
Still, interesting to note the number of people here who wouldn't even raise a single eyebrow over 1) the Johnson/Maxwell connection and 2) it was highlighted in the Spectator of all places.
4% of all people! And we can track COVID related hospitalisations to it as well. With today's data. The CHR must be absolutely tiny.
Roughly 2m to 10k or 200:1. The death rate used to be higher than that. Go vaccines!
7k in hospital *for* COVID so I'd guess at 1/300.
Again, these are the kinds of stats that the NHS will have been seeing which is why they seem unworried by Omicron.
At 1/300 the total number of potential hospitalisations from Omicron could be around 220k in all the UK and chances are the current hospitalisations are front loaded to the unvaccinated so the number is probably significantly lower.
But, but what does Nicola do now?
What a ridiculous question David. You think Nicola is bothered by "the science"?
We all know the answer: Something marginally different to England.
The contrast to tonight's New Year display in London to a deserted and dour Edinburgh and Cardiff will not be a good look for Sturgeon or Drakeford
What effect do you think it'll have on Welsh and Scotch polling, oh wise one? Will you keep you 100% record on predictions for the political futures of Sturgeon and Drakeford?
I have no idea but the Welsh news is interviewing border businesses who are seeing their income disappear to England and are not happy
You can extol the virtues of Sturgeon as much as you like but despite the SNP monopoly, Independence is as far away as ever and she knows it
"monopoly". It was a minority government, and would be on its own - and if one counts the Scottish Greens agreement, it's not a monopoly ...
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
Did your sister write a 'we should understand more' piece about the wrong uns weeks before they were found guilty of grooming and sex trafficking?
People are not their sisters' keepers, to be scrupulously fair to the FLSOJ.
I think she is paid to make him look like a reasonably ok journalist. I can never safely be more than 6 feet from a serviceable sickbag until the memory of the word glamazon and the sentence it features in have faded.
Yes, glamazon was a keeper in the most unpleasant sense, like the taste of the alcohol that you first spewed your ring over.
Still, interesting to note the number of people here who wouldn't even raise a single eyebrow over 1) the Johnson/Maxwell connection and 2) it was highlighted in the Spectator of all places.
No, you are still making an arse of yourself. Well done with the second thoughts about the Cowley bit, hur hur, but I'd go back in and delete it altogether.
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
I really should have put money on "when the mild varient turns up covidminiziers/psychotics will use it as evidence that it has all been a big fuss about nothing and we should have never have tslen any minimisation measures" because that was a sure thing.
We're back to March 2020 "no worse than a bad flu season"
Who's saying that? I don't see a single person saying that.
Its much worse than a bad flu season, but the damage from restrictions has been worse than the damage from Covid.
Your hypothetical 1% death rate and no long lasting disruption bar funeral homes is pure wish fulfillment fantasy.
A slur about Muslims can also be heard from inside the bus.
Short of a full apology, the BBC needs taking to task over this. Thoroughly disgraceful.
This is a classic BBCism, they simply can't fathom that some poor oppressed minority (Muslims in this case) can be arseholes without provocation, so they fabricated one.
It's how bias creeps in. The journalists involved have spent so many hours listening to unconscious bias training and the like, and so they take extra care not to display bias towards a marginalised group that they know is underrepresented among their friends and family, and all the rest of it. Only they never stop to think that they might be overcorrecting, and thus inadvertently end up being biased in a different direction, against a different group. And can't even see the problem because of the focus on eliminating the original "bias".
More likely the bias played a part in mishearing what was said on the bus, given it was said in a foreign language when the listener expected English. Wasn't there a famous murder case that was derailed because a well-meaning copper badly mistranscribed surveillance tapes?
A slur about Muslims can also be heard from inside the bus.
Short of a full apology, the BBC needs taking to task over this. Thoroughly disgraceful.
This is a classic BBCism, they simply can't fathom that some poor oppressed minority (Muslims in this case) can be arseholes without provocation, so they fabricated one.
It's how bias creeps in. The journalists involved have spent so many hours listening to unconscious bias training and the like, and so they take extra care not to display bias towards a marginalised group that they know is underrepresented among their friends and family, and all the rest of it. Only they never stop to think that they might be overcorrecting, and thus inadvertently end up being biased in a different direction, against a different group. And can't even see the problem because of the focus on eliminating the original "bias".
If the "unconscious bias training" they use in the BBC resembles the ones I've been given... well, it's not about removing unconscious biases. It is about trying to inculcate a different set of prejudices into people.
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
Did your sister write a 'we should understand more' piece about the wrong uns weeks before they were found guilty of grooming and sex trafficking?
People are not their sisters' keepers, to be scrupulously fair to the FLSOJ.
I think she is paid to make him look like a reasonably ok journalist. I can never safely be more than 6 feet from a serviceable sickbag until the memory of the word glamazon and the sentence it features in have faded.
I don't think anyone was particularly thinking of Mr Johnson and his possible links with Ms Maxwell till Ms Johnson came out with that story!
Also how some of us rushed to attack it instantly. Indeed one of us claimed it showed no evidence that Ms M and Mr J knew each other at uni, despite that glamazon bit making it quite clear (and hinting he went to the party, though that might be a misreading).
A slur about Muslims can also be heard from inside the bus.
Short of a full apology, the BBC needs taking to task over this. Thoroughly disgraceful.
This is a classic BBCism, they simply can't fathom that some poor oppressed minority (Muslims in this case) can be arseholes without provocation, so they fabricated one.
It's how bias creeps in. The journalists involved have spent so many hours listening to unconscious bias training and the like, and so they take extra care not to display bias towards a marginalised group that they know is underrepresented among their friends and family, and all the rest of it. Only they never stop to think that they might be overcorrecting, and thus inadvertently end up being biased in a different direction, against a different group. And can't even see the problem because of the focus on eliminating the original "bias".
So here's my current theory on the mismatch between infections and in hospital for COVID. Three doses of vaccines gives close to zero protection from asymptomatic infection, I have seen that close up with my parents, both triple dosed for a few weeks before they got infected, neither have had any symptoms at all but both PCR positive. So what we may actually have is close to 100% of people in the country likely to get some kind of Omicron infection which is why the infection stats look absolutely terrible with ~200k per day being detected by testing and 2.2m people in England having it last week.
However, it seems as though very few of the infected actually get severe symptoms, whether that's because Omicron is inherently more mild or because of high rates of immunity against severe disease or both is still a bit of an unknown, but it seems very difficult to deny it now.
Looking at the specific data release from the ONS, Delta still accounted for around a third of the total cases over the previous monitoring period which means of the 7k in hospital a very significant proportion will have been because of Delta, for the 1.4m Omicron cases during the monitoring period we may actually only have seen a 2-4k hospitalisations *for* COVID. Once again, this proved why the NHS trusts are so bullish over not needing more restrictions and the government also more bullish than most of us expected.
Here's the bottom line - Omicron may only have a CHR of 1/400 to 1/700 in the UK with our level of population immunity. Delta we know had a CHR of around 1/100 over the summer/autumn but with a worse population immunity profile.
That's my theory too. Everyone will get it, relatively few will notice.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
Did your sister write a 'we should understand more' piece about the wrong uns weeks before they were found guilty of grooming and sex trafficking?
People are not their sisters' keepers, to be scrupulously fair to the FLSOJ.
I think she is paid to make him look like a reasonably ok journalist. I can never safely be more than 6 feet from a serviceable sickbag until the memory of the word glamazon and the sentence it features in have faded.
Yes, glamazon was a keeper in the most unpleasant sense, like the taste of the alcohol that you first spewed your ring over.
Still, interesting to note the number of people here who wouldn't even raise a single eyebrow over 1) the Johnson/Maxwell connection and 2) it was highlighted in the Spectator of all places.
No, you are still making an arse of yourself. Well done with the second thoughts about the Cowley bit, hur hur, but I'd go back in and delete it altogether.
Edit Well done!
Oxford graduates always so touchy. Must be something about defining yourself through the education establishments you attended.
I really should have put money on "when the mild varient turns up covidminiziers/psychotics will use it as evidence that it has all been a big fuss about nothing and we should have never have tslen any minimisation measures" because that was a sure thing.
We're back to March 2020 "no worse than a bad flu season"
Who's saying that? I don't see a single person saying that.
Its much worse than a bad flu season, but the damage from restrictions has been worse than the damage from Covid.
Yes, I assumed he was talking about you as well.
You may be right that the damage from restrictions being worse than the damage from lockdown, but it does feel quite a bit like you've decided this largely based on Omicron being mild. I know they're technically completely separate issues, but the timing of your sudden volte face seems a bit suspicious.
There are now swathes of the country where no PCR tests are available. Helpful...
Are there, I have it up now....Scotland and NI nothing. Wales nearly out. NE is patchy. The rest of England there is widespread availability, although filling up.
Its definitely getting earlier in the day when it finally fills up. Usually Scotland and Wales don't "sell out" this early. I presume much less staff with it being New Years Eve and Omicron absence.
Does anyone know how accurate the blood O2 measures are on a phone? And what numbers to look out for?
I've got a Galaxy S9+ and after testing positive yesterday I used the sensor for the first time in years to get a reading of 95. I then immediately tried it again a few times and got an 85, 86 and 88 which rather raises question marks against its reliability. Just tried again and got a 90.
This article says that it is accurate within FDA tolerances to be approved for clinical use, which makes me worry about lax standards at the FDA, but it does have a nice scatter plot comparing readings taken with the S9+ and with a blood gas analyser. Looks like there is the potential for large errors in either direction.
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
No longer part of the UK as far as the critics are concerned?
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
In my case I live in Wales and have a Scottish wife and family
I have been a couple of times on holiday to Ireland but have not been NI so have not the same interest
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
FWIW, I think ni have got it wrong, too.
What I’m interested to see is, will any of them impose further restrictions when their current restrictions don’t make much difference?
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
Did your sister write a 'we should understand more' piece about the wrong uns weeks before they were found guilty of grooming and sex trafficking?
People are not their sisters' keepers, to be scrupulously fair to the FLSOJ.
I think she is paid to make him look like a reasonably ok journalist. I can never safely be more than 6 feet from a serviceable sickbag until the memory of the word glamazon and the sentence it features in have faded.
Yes, glamazon was a keeper in the most unpleasant sense, like the taste of the alcohol that you first spewed your ring over.
Still, interesting to note the number of people here who wouldn't even raise a single eyebrow over 1) the Johnson/Maxwell connection and 2) it was highlighted in the Spectator of all places.
No, you are still making an arse of yourself. Well done with the second thoughts about the Cowley bit, hur hur, but I'd go back in and delete it altogether.
Edit Well done!
Oxford graduates always so touchy. Must be something about defining yourself through the education establishments you attended.
Like I was the one who started it
And no need to be chippy, I didn't go to Oxford to spite you.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
Did your sister write a 'we should understand more' piece about the wrong uns weeks before they were found guilty of grooming and sex trafficking?
People are not their sisters' keepers, to be scrupulously fair to the FLSOJ.
I think she is paid to make him look like a reasonably ok journalist. I can never safely be more than 6 feet from a serviceable sickbag until the memory of the word glamazon and the sentence it features in have faded.
I don't think anyone was particularly thinking of Mr Johnson and his possible links with Ms Maxwell till Ms Johnson came out with that story!
Also how some of us rushed to attack it instantly. Indeed one of us claimed it showed no evidence that Ms M and Mr J knew each other at uni, despite that glamazon bit making it quite clear (and hinting he went to the party, though that might be a misreading).
I do wonder what side Ms J is on ...
I have an inkling that few members of Boris's family actually like Boris anymore.
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
Or its a shame it wasn't this infectious originally because if it was this infectious when we had no idea what it was it would have burnt out in the space of a month or two and then we'd have gotten back to normal instead of spending two years obsessing over Covid.
But then it would have been going over an unvaccinated population, so swings and roundabouts.
Had it been this infectious to begin with, it would have been carnage. Mind you, the world might have shutdown air travel that much faster had 1% of China died in a couple of weeks.
It would have been carnage but we'd have ripped off the bandage much quicker.
I'm far from convinced that having two years of lockdowns was in hindsight worth preventing 1% of global population from dying. Considering that life expectancy from here isn't 100 years for the people who were dying.
I disagree, I think it was absolutely worthwhile saving c.350,000 UK lives.
But the inquiry should consider what level of death is not worth worrying about.
Any level so long as it does not include me?
A valid point. The longer this drags on for and the more jabs are administered, so the percentage of the population that feels safe and bridles against rules to protect other people (especially our friends the refusers) will continue to track upwards. Another important consideration for our leaders when weighing up whether or not to embark on the umpteenth lockdown cycle.
Let me one more time reassure you. Lockdowns are not going to be a routine part of the toolbox. Unless the virus changes in a way that is wholly unexpected we'll be living with it as we do the flu.
We're not even getting a lockdown for Omi where there was something of a case for it. It'll only be done in future - as it has been up to now - if the case for it is clear and compelling. It really is irrational to think otherwise.
Comments
I suspect we now have a decent chance of staying up
I've been teaching front-of-house to around 100 freshers all last term, plus a couple of smaller classes. Given I was essential staff in the first lockdown, so in more often that not, and worked through both lockdowns 2 and 3, in a war movie, I'd be *that* guy on his last mission.
I suppose he could lay hands on and all would be well?
Or alternatively whinge at length.
Raab is useless but that simply is absurd
But regardless, we've already played more games than most. Burnley had 4 games in hand over us until yesterday, so it's not like other teams have not had their fair share of postponements either.
Not for the masklessness, but being a Chelsea fan.
If you goal is absolute minimising of COVID transition, you have to close all public indoor spaces, not say well its 9pm, everybody needs to be home in an hour.
Plus if we're setting aside all emotions and being purely utilitarian the liabilities for NHS requirements in the future and pension liabilities would have been reduced.
I recall one American football investor from a few years ago, who had difficulty understanding he hadn’t bought into an “EPL Franchise”.
But I do remember him losing the 2019 election really heavily.
ARF!!!
The devolved elections took place relatively recently, but even so if I predicted a 90% probability of another SNP administration in Scotland after the next one, and a 99.99975% likelihood of Welsh Labour getting back in, then this would strike few dispassionate observers as outrageous. They're going nowhere.
If it arrived in winter: it might depend if it somehow 'replaces' influenza. If it does not, the pressure on the NHS would be much higher, with both influenza *and* omicron causing hospitalisations. I daresay the boffins would soon realise they were looking at something novel.
It'll be interesting to look back midway through 2022 to see how bad the influenza season's been this year - some were predicting a very bad flu season. But will omicron caused behavioural changes that has prevented much flu (as happened last year), or may it even outcompete and replace flu?
(IANAE)...
This looks like it could be the story of tonight and tomorrow
However, it seems as though very few of the infected actually get severe symptoms, whether that's because Omicron is inherently more mild or because of high rates of immunity against severe disease or both is still a bit of an unknown, but it seems very difficult to deny it now.
Looking at the specific data release from the ONS, Delta still accounted for around a third of the total cases over the previous monitoring period which means of the 7k in hospital a very significant proportion will have been because of Delta, for the 1.4m Omicron cases during the monitoring period we may actually only have seen a 2-4k hospitalisations *for* COVID. Once again, this proved why the NHS trusts are so bullish over not needing more restrictions and the government also more bullish than most of us expected.
Here's the bottom line - Omicron may only have a CHR of 1/400 to 1/700 in the UK with our level of population immunity. Delta we know had a CHR of around 1/100 over the summer/autumn but with a worse population immunity profile.
This introduction to an academic book clearly talks about the Queen giving and receiving New Year gifts in the Xmas season.
" As in her
father’s time, a gift chamber was set up at New Year’s in whatever palace Elizabeth
celebrated the Christmas season. This chamber was equipped with display tables
for the gifts, as described in these entries from the Treasurer of the Chamber’s
accounts:
1574 Dec: The Office of Works set up ‘tables for the banquet and for her
Majesty’s New Year gifts’."
https://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/13/9780197265260_prelim.pdf
https://twitter.com/wellingmax/status/1476890754337419266?s=20
Sounds like a dangerous idea putting a real scientist as minister for science.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-59495842
A slur about Muslims can also be heard from inside the bus.
Short of a full apology, the BBC needs taking to task over this. Thoroughly disgraceful.
The conservatives need a new leader to start the recovery in their ratings in Wales, following Boris's disastrous couple of months
Before devolution we just had one UK parliament so if the Tories won England but not the UK as in 1964 and February 1974 it was less of an issue. Now if Scotland and Wales get their own parliaments for their domestic laws if we have a UK Tory government but English Tories get no say if we have a UK Labour government that would be an issue
Yes lockdowns do seem to have become the populist option in the Democratic world but that doesn't make them right. The fascist 'strongmen' types have possibly been able to do the right thing by their countries unencumbered by the need to appeal to their voters.
However I 100% entirely prefer democracy even if democracy sometimes means we end up having to do the wrong and populist thing instead of the right unpopular thing. Its funny to see those who regularly abhor populism rush to defend it here though.
I've got:
*one of the journalists to be arrested for phone hacking
*at least one of the coq d'argent jumpers
*one of the bankers in the German cum-ex scandal
https://twitter.com/FolgerLibrary/status/815668197668122624/photo/1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTftlM0MJUk
We're back to March 2020 "no worse than a bad flu season"
Also of note; none of those stories personally attacking Johnson moved the polls at all. It's only when his party mucked up (due to his lack of leadership skills) that they shifted.
Actually, scrub that, betting sites are the natural habitat of these lads.
For me, the Big Picture is a heartening one. Faced with this novel threat, governments acted to protect people and funded Science to make vaccines & treatments. The world did good. Offered this, back in March 2020, I'd have bitten your hand off.
But let's not now snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by letting the pandemic fester on in the less developed parts of the world. Let's get those jabs rolled out!
Its much worse than a bad flu season, but the damage from restrictions has been worse than the damage from Covid.
I think she is paid to make him look like a reasonably ok journalist. I can never safely be more than 6 feet from a serviceable sickbag until the memory of the word glamazon and the sentence it features in have faded.
Did Cherry do it as well?
Keep lining them up, there are fruitloops e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e
LF both negative, no PCRs available but both feel shocking. So it's off.
Bugger.
14th Jan was basically 2 weeks post christmas mixing of relatively immune naive schoolkids mixing.
Edit Well done!
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
Also how some of us rushed to attack it instantly. Indeed one of us claimed it showed no evidence that Ms M and Mr J knew each other at uni, despite that glamazon bit making it quite clear (and hinting he went to the party, though that might be a misreading).
I do wonder what side Ms J is on ...
You may be right that the damage from restrictions being worse than the damage from lockdown, but it does feel quite a bit like you've decided this largely based on Omicron being mild. I know they're technically completely separate issues, but the timing of your sudden volte face seems a bit suspicious.
Its definitely getting earlier in the day when it finally fills up. Usually Scotland and Wales don't "sell out" this early. I presume much less staff with it being New Years Eve and Omicron absence.
Very close to falsely claiming FDA approval
I have been a couple of times on holiday to Ireland but have not been NI so have not the same interest
What I’m interested to see is, will any of them impose further restrictions when their current restrictions don’t make much difference?
And no need to be chippy, I didn't go to Oxford to spite you.
We're not even getting a lockdown for Omi where there was something of a case for it. It'll only be done in future - as it has been up to now - if the case for it is clear and compelling. It really is irrational to think otherwise.