Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
No. You are absolutely right. Bear in mind also that as far as I understand it if someone tests positive for covid then dies of a heart attack or accidental decapitation then they still go down as a covid death. (Died after having tested positive for covid in the last 28 days). As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my cousin died of long term cancer but is down as a covid death.
But then some people probably die more than 28 days after being tested, or weren't tested at all (particularly in the early days). Although you would hope that if someone dies in hospital after several weeks on ventilation they will go down as a Covid victim, however long ago their test was.
Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.
So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
I’m happy with the various measures. I’m less happy with thick journos comparing how countries have ‘done’ by using such figures when each country collects data differently. At the least if they wish to draw a comparison they should explicitly state what is being measured and how for the countries compared.
Excess deaths is surely the only reasonably reliable basis for comparisons.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
The only one of the Beatles with any real talent was Yoko.
BREAKING: A very serious situation at hospitals across Lincolnshire tonight as @ULHT_News declares a 'critical incident' over "extreme and unprecedented" staff shortages. It says it is "unable to maintain safe staffing levels" leading to "compromised care" across its sites: https://twitter.com/ShaunLintern/status/1477711272384909314/photo/1
Distressing to hear, and good luck to the staff and patients, but isn't this basically the situation in every hospital in the country? Sadiq Khan declared a "critical emergency" (or similar) in London over Christmas
We know the NHS is under the cosh, there's not much we can do now. Apart from try not to slip over and break an ankle and get sent to A&E?
Restrictions won't do anything. It is too late, I doubt if they would ever work against Omicron anyway, in a UK democratic context
We are a bit like the British people in the Battle of Britain, staring up at the sky, willing on the RAF, but not able to do much more
There’s not much else we can do now. It will take a few years to build the hospitals and train the doctors and nurses that we should have had even before Covid.
Pray for a mild winter?
Ice and snow leads to accidents and more A&E visits.
Choosing to go to bat for Marjorie Taylor Green out of all 435 members of the house of reps is not gonna be a good look for you Charles.
I’ve no idea who she is, and know nothing about her except that apparently space lasers are responsible for forest fires 😂
The principle remains is that all candidates for elections in a free country have an equal right to be heard. If they break the law prosecute then. But to prevent them using a major channel of political communication is to distort elections
You are doing the thing where you defend a general principle based on the newspaper headline of a specific case and everyone talks about the specific case that justifies the action whilst you are ignorant of the specifics.
Yes. I’m defending the principle of free elections. I don’t know who MTG is and don’t really give a shit.
This is not interfering with 'free elections'. The companies have rules - sensible rules, by the sound of it - and are hopefully applying those rules uniformly. If they applied them very unevenly you may have more of a point; but it's up to you to provide evidence of that in this discussion.
It is. Twitter is a key part of a former POTUS’s election technique. They have made the decision to ban him. How anyone can claim that is not going to impact on the election result I don’t know.
So, if it is going to impact, you are really comfortable with giving a private company that power?
Absolutely - as long as the rules are fairly implemented to all. If Trump did make Twitter a key part of his election technique, he should have looked at their rules and operated within them. If he got banned having broken those rules, then it's his own fault.
Those people who got censored or suspended for discussing lab leak as a hypothesis on Twitter and Facebook, for a year, what rule were they breaking?
Was it the rule that This Upsets China?
Or some other rule? Do tell
Can I have more details please?
Here. Tho quite why I have to spoon feed you this news is beyond me
"Facebook issued two statements in the past week relating to its treatment of “misinformation” — and they couldn’t have been more different.
The first was a single paragraph updating their policy on stories speculating that Covid-19 is a man-made virus — after almost every major media outlet, and yesterday even the British and American security services, finally confirmed that it is a feasible possibility.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts,” a Facebook spokesman said, “we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.”"
Thanks, I'll have a look at it when I've put the little 'un to bed.
But a word to the wise; there is nothing wrong with asking for links, if someone apparently knows more on a subject than you do.
You sound a bit like a drunken man in a gutter: "I claim the world is run by a cartel of hungry mice." "Oh, that's interesting. Can I know more?" "NO! How dare you aske me for more information, you fetid bag of ball-cheese!"
Fair enough. I was feeling a bit feisty, apologies if I overdid it
I just get quite angry when people say Twitter and Facebook are judiciously "censoring misinformation about Covid" when for a year they were actively PURVEYING misinformation on the most fundamental level, by censoring info which embarrasses the Chinese government on the likely origins of Covid19. ie the lab in Wuhan
It is equivalent to a newspaper in the 1930s printing favourable crap about Hitler's racial policies. That kind of stuff can make a man a bit punchy
All this is a bit like monarchists complaining that they don't like Prince Andrew. The point about morachy is that you don't have any say in the head of state. The point about private enterprise is that they can do what they like within the law.
Is that problematic? Should they be constrained by rules of fairness and social conscience? Sure, as the left have said for many years. And hello to our new Corbynistas, Charles and Leon.
Excellent point. We have fervent divine rightists actually attacking the Duke fo York. I mean, he's 9th in line to the throne. If you can remove the 9th at a whim or by decision of Pmt, you can remove the 8th, and so on to HMtQ.
As indeed happened in the 1640s.
(I forget what that mathematical method is called. But it is so useful.)
Historically, most monarchs were killed, imprisoned, tortured etc by devout monarchists.
People who stated that God had chosen *them* to be The One True Monarch.
True indeed.
Though I do think it a bit silly and disingenuous when people pretend monarchists cannot criticise members of a royal family because the point of monarchy is you get what you get. That's never been how monarchy worked in practice, even when people did believe (or claimed to believe) in divine right, anymore than people who nominally believed the pope was God's representative on earth could not oppose them on many temporal and spiritual matters. Our monarchy might well keep religious titles, but no one of any sense believes in divine right - parliament and outside forces essentially deposed one monarch, invited in another, set rules for it which excluded those who would otherwise have been in the succesion - and one can very easily believe in the system, without supporting everyone involved.
So the 'the point in monarchy is you don't have a say' thing is just being absurd and silly - if our monarchy steps out of line of what is expected of it it would be changed or abolished pronto, and that doesn't even touch upon the issue of embarrassing members of a royal line, who have always been able to be dealt with one way or another. In what monarchy on earth was every member of a line sacrosanct?
I certainly believe the Queen is anointed by God as our monarch and to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even if I also agree she is a constitutional not an absolute monarch
The whole idea of who is the anointed falls apart for me when throughout history we’ve had monarchs usurped, replaced, murdered, chosen by committee etc. What is the chain of succession that gets Henry Bolingbrook to the throne, or Henry Tudor, or King Oliver?
Arguably until the Reformation English Kings were acknowledged by God but not anointed by God as the head of the English Church was the Pope, not the Monarch
That aspect of the coronation rite didn't change at the Reformation. Kings of England were always anointed.
The anointment was more a blessing, the head of the Church until the Reformation and God's ultimate representative on English soil was still the Pope not the Monarch
Er no. The Queen was consecrated as Monarch. As were her ancestors going back before the Conquest. The ceremony recalls the anointment of Solomon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with being appointed Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
I originally said I certainly believe the Queen to be anointed by God to be our Monarch and Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Until the Reformation the Monarch was only anointed for that role, they swore to protect the Church but the Head of the Church in England was still the Pope, not the Monarch
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
No. You are absolutely right. Bear in mind also that as far as I understand it if someone tests positive for covid then dies of a heart attack or accidental decapitation then they still go down as a covid death. (Died after having tested positive for covid in the last 28 days). As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my cousin died of long term cancer but is down as a covid death.
But then some people probably die more than 28 days after being tested, or weren't tested at all (particularly in the early days). Although you would hope that if someone dies in hospital after several weeks on ventilation they will go down as a Covid victim, however long ago their test was.
Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.
So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
I’m happy with the various measures. I’m less happy with thick journos comparing how countries have ‘done’ by using such figures when each country collects data differently. At the least if they wish to draw a comparison they should explicitly state what is being measured and how for the countries compared.
Excess deaths is surely the only reasonably reliable basis for comparisons.
Possibly, but even then the background may be distorted by perhaps bad flu years etc.
BREAKING: A very serious situation at hospitals across Lincolnshire tonight as @ULHT_News declares a 'critical incident' over "extreme and unprecedented" staff shortages. It says it is "unable to maintain safe staffing levels" leading to "compromised care" across its sites: https://twitter.com/ShaunLintern/status/1477711272384909314/photo/1
Distressing to hear, and good luck to the staff and patients, but isn't this basically the situation in every hospital in the country? Sadiq Khan declared a "critical emergency" (or similar) in London over Christmas
We know the NHS is under the cosh, there's not much we can do now. Apart from try not to slip over and break an ankle and get sent to A&E?
Restrictions won't do anything. It is too late, I doubt if they would ever work against Omicron anyway, in a UK democratic context
We are a bit like the British people in the Battle of Britain, staring up at the sky, willing on the RAF, but not able to do much more
There’s not much else we can do now. It will take a few years to build the hospitals and train the doctors and nurses that we should have had even before Covid.
It's not just the UK, of course
C. Salina Harris @C_SalinaH · 37m Replying to @XianJaneway Maryland hospitals are on crisis management mode. There are no beds. No beds for COVID, or strokes, or MI’s. No. Beds.
BREAKING: A very serious situation at hospitals across Lincolnshire tonight as @ULHT_News declares a 'critical incident' over "extreme and unprecedented" staff shortages. It says it is "unable to maintain safe staffing levels" leading to "compromised care" across its sites: https://twitter.com/ShaunLintern/status/1477711272384909314/photo/1
Distressing to hear, and good luck to the staff and patients, but isn't this basically the situation in every hospital in the country? Sadiq Khan declared a "critical emergency" (or similar) in London over Christmas
We know the NHS is under the cosh, there's not much we can do now. Apart from try not to slip over and break an ankle and get sent to A&E?
Restrictions won't do anything. It is too late, I doubt if they would ever work against Omicron anyway, in a UK democratic context
We are a bit like the British people in the Battle of Britain, staring up at the sky, willing on the RAF, but not able to do much more
There’s not much else we can do now. It will take a few years to build the hospitals and train the doctors and nurses that we should have had even before Covid.
Pray for a mild winter?
Ice and snow leads to accidents and more A&E visits.
And if councils are short staffed, road and pavement gritting could be one of the services that is sacrificed to e.g. keep bins emptied.
Choosing to go to bat for Marjorie Taylor Green out of all 435 members of the house of reps is not gonna be a good look for you Charles.
I’ve no idea who she is, and know nothing about her except that apparently space lasers are responsible for forest fires 😂
The principle remains is that all candidates for elections in a free country have an equal right to be heard. If they break the law prosecute then. But to prevent them using a major channel of political communication is to distort elections
You are doing the thing where you defend a general principle based on the newspaper headline of a specific case and everyone talks about the specific case that justifies the action whilst you are ignorant of the specifics.
Yes. I’m defending the principle of free elections. I don’t know who MTG is and don’t really give a shit.
This is not interfering with 'free elections'. The companies have rules - sensible rules, by the sound of it - and are hopefully applying those rules uniformly. If they applied them very unevenly you may have more of a point; but it's up to you to provide evidence of that in this discussion.
It is. Twitter is a key part of a former POTUS’s election technique. They have made the decision to ban him. How anyone can claim that is not going to impact on the election result I don’t know.
So, if it is going to impact, you are really comfortable with giving a private company that power?
Absolutely - as long as the rules are fairly implemented to all. If Trump did make Twitter a key part of his election technique, he should have looked at their rules and operated within them. If he got banned having broken those rules, then it's his own fault.
Those people who got censored or suspended for discussing lab leak as a hypothesis on Twitter and Facebook, for a year, what rule were they breaking?
Was it the rule that This Upsets China?
Or some other rule? Do tell
Can I have more details please?
Here. Tho quite why I have to spoon feed you this news is beyond me
"Facebook issued two statements in the past week relating to its treatment of “misinformation” — and they couldn’t have been more different.
The first was a single paragraph updating their policy on stories speculating that Covid-19 is a man-made virus — after almost every major media outlet, and yesterday even the British and American security services, finally confirmed that it is a feasible possibility.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts,” a Facebook spokesman said, “we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.”"
Thanks, I'll have a look at it when I've put the little 'un to bed.
But a word to the wise; there is nothing wrong with asking for links, if someone apparently knows more on a subject than you do.
You sound a bit like a drunken man in a gutter: "I claim the world is run by a cartel of hungry mice." "Oh, that's interesting. Can I know more?" "NO! How dare you aske me for more information, you fetid bag of ball-cheese!"
Fair enough. I was feeling a bit feisty, apologies if I overdid it
I just get quite angry when people say Twitter and Facebook are judiciously "censoring misinformation about Covid" when for a year they were actively PURVEYING misinformation on the most fundamental level, by censoring info which embarrasses the Chinese government on the likely origins of Covid19. ie the lab in Wuhan
It is equivalent to a newspaper in the 1930s printing favourable crap about Hitler's racial policies. That kind of stuff can make a man a bit punchy
All this is a bit like monarchists complaining that they don't like Prince Andrew. The point about morachy is that you don't have any say in the head of state. The point about private enterprise is that they can do what they like within the law.
Is that problematic? Should they be constrained by rules of fairness and social conscience? Sure, as the left have said for many years. And hello to our new Corbynistas, Charles and Leon.
Excellent point. We have fervent divine rightists actually attacking the Duke fo York. I mean, he's 9th in line to the throne. If you can remove the 9th at a whim or by decision of Pmt, you can remove the 8th, and so on to HMtQ.
As indeed happened in the 1640s.
(I forget what that mathematical method is called. But it is so useful.)
Historically, most monarchs were killed, imprisoned, tortured etc by devout monarchists.
People who stated that God had chosen *them* to be The One True Monarch.
True indeed.
Though I do think it a bit silly and disingenuous when people pretend monarchists cannot criticise members of a royal family because the point of monarchy is you get what you get. That's never been how monarchy worked in practice, even when people did believe (or claimed to believe) in divine right, anymore than people who nominally believed the pope was God's representative on earth could not oppose them on many temporal and spiritual matters. Our monarchy might well keep religious titles, but no one of any sense believes in divine right - parliament and outside forces essentially deposed one monarch, invited in another, set rules for it which excluded those who would otherwise have been in the succesion - and one can very easily believe in the system, without supporting everyone involved.
So the 'the point in monarchy is you don't have a say' thing is just being absurd and silly - if our monarchy steps out of line of what is expected of it it would be changed or abolished pronto, and that doesn't even touch upon the issue of embarrassing members of a royal line, who have always been able to be dealt with one way or another. In what monarchy on earth was every member of a line sacrosanct?
I certainly believe the Queen is anointed by God as our monarch and to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even if I also agree she is a constitutional not an absolute monarch
The whole idea of who is the anointed falls apart for me when throughout history we’ve had monarchs usurped, replaced, murdered, chosen by committee etc. What is the chain of succession that gets Henry Bolingbrook to the throne, or Henry Tudor, or King Oliver?
Arguably until the Reformation English Kings were acknowledged by God but not anointed by God as the head of the English Church was the Pope, not the Monarch
That aspect of the coronation rite didn't change at the Reformation. Kings of England were always anointed.
The anointment was more a blessing, the head of the Church until the Reformation and God's ultimate representative on English soil was still the Pope not the Monarch
Er no. The Queen was consecrated as Monarch. As were her ancestors going back before the Conquest. The ceremony recalls the anointment of Solomon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with being appointed Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
You cannot challenge articles of faith with mere logic and facts. Particularly when it’s HYUFD.
Sunetra Gupta @SunetraGupta · 9h 2. Misrepresenting the @gbdeclaration as a “let-it-rip” strategy and yet endorsing focused protection has lately become a common ploy among scientists and journalists but it is disappointing to see it trotted out by old friends and colleagues.
As I posted last earlier. Woolhouse slams Great Barrington and then calls for exactly their policy of protecting the vulnerable. Surely he has been misquoted?
Marjorie Taylor Greene is a poisonous, gun-toting fascist who advocates violence in the pursuit of political ends. She's an anti-semitic QAnon conspiracy theorist, Covid-denier and anti-vaxxer. She still claims Trump won the 2020 election and had it stolen from him. She supported the Capitol insurrection. In this country, her free speech would be legally curtailed under various laws relating to incitement to racial hatred, violence etc. It's remarkable that Twitter gives her a platform at all.
She should be returned to the sewer from whence she sprang. Sod free speech, if this is what it means. She uses it in an effort to stamp on other people's liberties.
Sounds vile.
So fight her. Combat her lies convince her acolytes that she’s a poisonous individual.
Banning her from the mainstream just reinforces the belief that they are the righteous oppressed
problem is fashions change...there was a time when anti semitism was quite acceptable in the uk in certain circles....many of these people also believe joe biden is a CCP asset should we ban such speech...
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
The only one of the Beatles with any real talent was Yoko.
Choosing to go to bat for Marjorie Taylor Green out of all 435 members of the house of reps is not gonna be a good look for you Charles.
I’ve no idea who she is, and know nothing about her except that apparently space lasers are responsible for forest fires 😂
The principle remains is that all candidates for elections in a free country have an equal right to be heard. If they break the law prosecute then. But to prevent them using a major channel of political communication is to distort elections
You are doing the thing where you defend a general principle based on the newspaper headline of a specific case and everyone talks about the specific case that justifies the action whilst you are ignorant of the specifics.
Yes. I’m defending the principle of free elections. I don’t know who MTG is and don’t really give a shit.
This is not interfering with 'free elections'. The companies have rules - sensible rules, by the sound of it - and are hopefully applying those rules uniformly. If they applied them very unevenly you may have more of a point; but it's up to you to provide evidence of that in this discussion.
It is. Twitter is a key part of a former POTUS’s election technique. They have made the decision to ban him. How anyone can claim that is not going to impact on the election result I don’t know.
So, if it is going to impact, you are really comfortable with giving a private company that power?
Absolutely - as long as the rules are fairly implemented to all. If Trump did make Twitter a key part of his election technique, he should have looked at their rules and operated within them. If he got banned having broken those rules, then it's his own fault.
Those people who got censored or suspended for discussing lab leak as a hypothesis on Twitter and Facebook, for a year, what rule were they breaking?
Was it the rule that This Upsets China?
Or some other rule? Do tell
Can I have more details please?
Here. Tho quite why I have to spoon feed you this news is beyond me
"Facebook issued two statements in the past week relating to its treatment of “misinformation” — and they couldn’t have been more different.
The first was a single paragraph updating their policy on stories speculating that Covid-19 is a man-made virus — after almost every major media outlet, and yesterday even the British and American security services, finally confirmed that it is a feasible possibility.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts,” a Facebook spokesman said, “we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.”"
Thanks, I'll have a look at it when I've put the little 'un to bed.
But a word to the wise; there is nothing wrong with asking for links, if someone apparently knows more on a subject than you do.
You sound a bit like a drunken man in a gutter: "I claim the world is run by a cartel of hungry mice." "Oh, that's interesting. Can I know more?" "NO! How dare you aske me for more information, you fetid bag of ball-cheese!"
Fair enough. I was feeling a bit feisty, apologies if I overdid it
I just get quite angry when people say Twitter and Facebook are judiciously "censoring misinformation about Covid" when for a year they were actively PURVEYING misinformation on the most fundamental level, by censoring info which embarrasses the Chinese government on the likely origins of Covid19. ie the lab in Wuhan
It is equivalent to a newspaper in the 1930s printing favourable crap about Hitler's racial policies. That kind of stuff can make a man a bit punchy
All this is a bit like monarchists complaining that they don't like Prince Andrew. The point about morachy is that you don't have any say in the head of state. The point about private enterprise is that they can do what they like within the law.
Is that problematic? Should they be constrained by rules of fairness and social conscience? Sure, as the left have said for many years. And hello to our new Corbynistas, Charles and Leon.
Excellent point. We have fervent divine rightists actually attacking the Duke fo York. I mean, he's 9th in line to the throne. If you can remove the 9th at a whim or by decision of Pmt, you can remove the 8th, and so on to HMtQ.
As indeed happened in the 1640s.
(I forget what that mathematical method is called. But it is so useful.)
Historically, most monarchs were killed, imprisoned, tortured etc by devout monarchists.
People who stated that God had chosen *them* to be The One True Monarch.
True indeed.
Though I do think it a bit silly and disingenuous when people pretend monarchists cannot criticise members of a royal family because the point of monarchy is you get what you get. That's never been how monarchy worked in practice, even when people did believe (or claimed to believe) in divine right, anymore than people who nominally believed the pope was God's representative on earth could not oppose them on many temporal and spiritual matters. Our monarchy might well keep religious titles, but no one of any sense believes in divine right - parliament and outside forces essentially deposed one monarch, invited in another, set rules for it which excluded those who would otherwise have been in the succesion - and one can very easily believe in the system, without supporting everyone involved.
So the 'the point in monarchy is you don't have a say' thing is just being absurd and silly - if our monarchy steps out of line of what is expected of it it would be changed or abolished pronto, and that doesn't even touch upon the issue of embarrassing members of a royal line, who have always been able to be dealt with one way or another. In what monarchy on earth was every member of a line sacrosanct?
I certainly believe the Queen is anointed by God as our monarch and to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even if I also agree she is a constitutional not an absolute monarch
The whole idea of who is the anointed falls apart for me when throughout history we’ve had monarchs usurped, replaced, murdered, chosen by committee etc. What is the chain of succession that gets Henry Bolingbrook to the throne, or Henry Tudor, or King Oliver?
Arguably until the Reformation English Kings were acknowledged by God but not anointed by God as the head of the English Church was the Pope, not the Monarch
That aspect of the coronation rite didn't change at the Reformation. Kings of England were always anointed.
The anointment was more a blessing, the head of the Church until the Reformation and God's ultimate representative on English soil was still the Pope not the Monarch
Er no. The Queen was consecrated as Monarch. As were her ancestors going back before the Conquest. The ceremony recalls the anointment of Solomon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with being appointed Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
You cannot challenge articles of faith with mere logic and facts. Particularly when it’s HYUFD.
By definition the anointment of the Monarch of England also makes them Supreme Governor of the Church of England now. Before the Reformation that was not the case as the Supreme Governor of the Church in England was effectively the Pope (the Head of the Church being Jesus Christ).
This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?
Yes, he will, because many people now accept it is too late to do anything, and many more have become fiercely resistant to lockdowns, esp schools. We are where we are
This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?
Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
No. You are absolutely right. Bear in mind also that as far as I understand it if someone tests positive for covid then dies of a heart attack or accidental decapitation then they still go down as a covid death. (Died after having tested positive for covid in the last 28 days). As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my cousin died of long term cancer but is down as a covid death.
But then some people probably die more than 28 days after being tested, or weren't tested at all (particularly in the early days). Although you would hope that if someone dies in hospital after several weeks on ventilation they will go down as a Covid victim, however long ago their test was.
Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.
So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
The 28 days cutoff was chosen because the under counts approximately counteract the over counts.
The reason for having such a figure is that over wise you would need to wait a long time for all the inquests, autopsies etc.
The 28 day number is a an approximation - a fairly good one. The more you delve into such medical statistics, the more you realise that 100% perfect truth is not obtainable. There are different measures and each has it's accuracy issues.
It's fundamentally really cheap, easy and fast to collect with absolutely minimal admin overhead and as you say the under and over counting cancel each other out in the main. It is an excellent compromise.
I did read The Da Vinci Code some time ago. Couldn't put it down, but felt a little silly as if taken in by a circus barker to buy some patent medicine or adopt Homeopathy. Sometimes I get the same queasy feeling as when singing "Happy Birthday".
One can imagine a game to pass the time when traveling thinking of slogans that have stuck---say "Go to work on an egg"---and so forth.
I've said this story before, but years ago I was staying in a B&B in North Yorkshire. One breakfast, the owner's teenage daughter was reading the Da Vinci Code. I'd never read it, so I asked her what it was like. She said she loved it, but it was the first book she had ever read. She then added she would read more.
I've read it since, and it's poor literature. But if it helped one girl to start loving reading, then good on it.
Perhaps HP and DVC are just gateway drugs to better literature. If so, then that's fine.
I've read Middlemarch, and Madame Bovary, a few other dull 19th century novels, possibly as many as six pages of Ulysses, (and some good ones too, I guess), and there is zero chance of me re-reading any of the dull ones, despite them appearing on lists of Great Literature, while I regularly re-read the Harry Potter series, because it's a great story, and it tells the important stories about life, love, courage, etc, that people want to read. I also love that Harry grows up during the series, to the extent of including large periods in books 4-6 where I don't like him because he's an impossible teenager.
I'm apparently related to George Eliot. I've never read Middlemarch.
Time you did, my boy. Arguably the greatest novel in English, and certainly one of the top handful.
This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?
Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas
Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it
As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
No. You are absolutely right. Bear in mind also that as far as I understand it if someone tests positive for covid then dies of a heart attack or accidental decapitation then they still go down as a covid death. (Died after having tested positive for covid in the last 28 days). As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my cousin died of long term cancer but is down as a covid death.
But then some people probably die more than 28 days after being tested, or weren't tested at all (particularly in the early days). Although you would hope that if someone dies in hospital after several weeks on ventilation they will go down as a Covid victim, however long ago their test was.
Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.
So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
I’m happy with the various measures. I’m less happy with thick journos comparing how countries have ‘done’ by using such figures when each country collects data differently. At the least if they wish to draw a comparison they should explicitly state what is being measured and how for the countries compared.
Excess deaths is surely the only reasonably reliable basis for comparisons.
Possibly, but even then the background may be distorted by perhaps bad flu years etc.
Which is why the comparison figures looked at in 2020 were based on a five year average. Not perfect, but better than most other metrics which could be manipulated.
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
No. You are absolutely right. Bear in mind also that as far as I understand it if someone tests positive for covid then dies of a heart attack or accidental decapitation then they still go down as a covid death. (Died after having tested positive for covid in the last 28 days). As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my cousin died of long term cancer but is down as a covid death.
But then some people probably die more than 28 days after being tested, or weren't tested at all (particularly in the early days). Although you would hope that if someone dies in hospital after several weeks on ventilation they will go down as a Covid victim, however long ago their test was.
Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.
So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
The 28 days cutoff was chosen because the under counts approximately counteract the over counts.
The reason for having such a figure is that over wise you would need to wait a long time for all the inquests, autopsies etc.
The 28 day number is a an approximation - a fairly good one. The more you delve into such medical statistics, the more you realise that 100% perfect truth is not obtainable. There are different measures and each has it's accuracy issues.
Sure, but JL was suggesting that a post 28 days death SHOULD go in the figures because it was definitely Covid whereas a within 28 days case which definitely NOT Covid should NOT come out of the figures. The balance you describe is therefore lost if this is actually happening.
To clarify, I want assurance that a Covid death after 28 days from the original positive test result is not currently a Covid death in the Uk figures. Otherwise I feel a letter to my MP coming on.
Choosing to go to bat for Marjorie Taylor Green out of all 435 members of the house of reps is not gonna be a good look for you Charles.
I’ve no idea who she is, and know nothing about her except that apparently space lasers are responsible for forest fires 😂
The principle remains is that all candidates for elections in a free country have an equal right to be heard. If they break the law prosecute then. But to prevent them using a major channel of political communication is to distort elections
You are doing the thing where you defend a general principle based on the newspaper headline of a specific case and everyone talks about the specific case that justifies the action whilst you are ignorant of the specifics.
Yes. I’m defending the principle of free elections. I don’t know who MTG is and don’t really give a shit.
This is not interfering with 'free elections'. The companies have rules - sensible rules, by the sound of it - and are hopefully applying those rules uniformly. If they applied them very unevenly you may have more of a point; but it's up to you to provide evidence of that in this discussion.
It is. Twitter is a key part of a former POTUS’s election technique. They have made the decision to ban him. How anyone can claim that is not going to impact on the election result I don’t know.
So, if it is going to impact, you are really comfortable with giving a private company that power?
Absolutely - as long as the rules are fairly implemented to all. If Trump did make Twitter a key part of his election technique, he should have looked at their rules and operated within them. If he got banned having broken those rules, then it's his own fault.
Those people who got censored or suspended for discussing lab leak as a hypothesis on Twitter and Facebook, for a year, what rule were they breaking?
Was it the rule that This Upsets China?
Or some other rule? Do tell
Can I have more details please?
Here. Tho quite why I have to spoon feed you this news is beyond me
"Facebook issued two statements in the past week relating to its treatment of “misinformation” — and they couldn’t have been more different.
The first was a single paragraph updating their policy on stories speculating that Covid-19 is a man-made virus — after almost every major media outlet, and yesterday even the British and American security services, finally confirmed that it is a feasible possibility.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts,” a Facebook spokesman said, “we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.”"
Thanks, I'll have a look at it when I've put the little 'un to bed.
But a word to the wise; there is nothing wrong with asking for links, if someone apparently knows more on a subject than you do.
You sound a bit like a drunken man in a gutter: "I claim the world is run by a cartel of hungry mice." "Oh, that's interesting. Can I know more?" "NO! How dare you aske me for more information, you fetid bag of ball-cheese!"
Fair enough. I was feeling a bit feisty, apologies if I overdid it
I just get quite angry when people say Twitter and Facebook are judiciously "censoring misinformation about Covid" when for a year they were actively PURVEYING misinformation on the most fundamental level, by censoring info which embarrasses the Chinese government on the likely origins of Covid19. ie the lab in Wuhan
It is equivalent to a newspaper in the 1930s printing favourable crap about Hitler's racial policies. That kind of stuff can make a man a bit punchy
All this is a bit like monarchists complaining that they don't like Prince Andrew. The point about morachy is that you don't have any say in the head of state. The point about private enterprise is that they can do what they like within the law.
Is that problematic? Should they be constrained by rules of fairness and social conscience? Sure, as the left have said for many years. And hello to our new Corbynistas, Charles and Leon.
Excellent point. We have fervent divine rightists actually attacking the Duke fo York. I mean, he's 9th in line to the throne. If you can remove the 9th at a whim or by decision of Pmt, you can remove the 8th, and so on to HMtQ.
As indeed happened in the 1640s.
(I forget what that mathematical method is called. But it is so useful.)
Historically, most monarchs were killed, imprisoned, tortured etc by devout monarchists.
People who stated that God had chosen *them* to be The One True Monarch.
True indeed.
Though I do think it a bit silly and disingenuous when people pretend monarchists cannot criticise members of a royal family because the point of monarchy is you get what you get. That's never been how monarchy worked in practice, even when people did believe (or claimed to believe) in divine right, anymore than people who nominally believed the pope was God's representative on earth could not oppose them on many temporal and spiritual matters. Our monarchy might well keep religious titles, but no one of any sense believes in divine right - parliament and outside forces essentially deposed one monarch, invited in another, set rules for it which excluded those who would otherwise have been in the succesion - and one can very easily believe in the system, without supporting everyone involved.
So the 'the point in monarchy is you don't have a say' thing is just being absurd and silly - if our monarchy steps out of line of what is expected of it it would be changed or abolished pronto, and that doesn't even touch upon the issue of embarrassing members of a royal line, who have always been able to be dealt with one way or another. In what monarchy on earth was every member of a line sacrosanct?
I certainly believe the Queen is anointed by God as our monarch and to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even if I also agree she is a constitutional not an absolute monarch
The whole idea of who is the anointed falls apart for me when throughout history we’ve had monarchs usurped, replaced, murdered, chosen by committee etc. What is the chain of succession that gets Henry Bolingbrook to the throne, or Henry Tudor, or King Oliver?
Arguably until the Reformation English Kings were acknowledged by God but not anointed by God as the head of the English Church was the Pope, not the Monarch
That aspect of the coronation rite didn't change at the Reformation. Kings of England were always anointed.
The anointment was more a blessing, the head of the Church until the Reformation and God's ultimate representative on English soil was still the Pope not the Monarch
Er no. The Queen was consecrated as Monarch. As were her ancestors going back before the Conquest. The ceremony recalls the anointment of Solomon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with being appointed Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
You cannot challenge articles of faith with mere logic and facts. Particularly when it’s HYUFD.
By definition the anointment of the Monarch of England also makes them Supreme Governor of the Church of England now. Before the Reformation that was not the case as the Supreme Governor of the Church in England was effectively the Pope (the Head of the Church being Jesus Christ).
Good the Church of Scotland has Christ as its Head, anything else is nonsense
Regarding the discussions about about what music and books are good/shit.
Save your energy everyone, it’s all subjective.
But I do have to weigh in on the Beatles. Picking up an old vinyl randomly one day when I was about eight, when I heard ‘Twist and Shout’, that Lennon rasp, the energy, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
I’ve developed a wide and eclectic (or at least I like to tell myself) taste in music, countless bands and genres, but the start of it all is that version of Twist and Shout, recorded, I know now, at the end of a long days recording session when Lennon’s throat was already ripped to shreds. But what energy, what urgency, what a thrill to hear it, to feel that emotion, that connection. It was like a bomb going off for me. Much like Lennon describes hearing Elvis for the first time.
The genius of the Beatles, and Dan Brown as Leon has so rightly pointed out, is making something so hard look easy.
Watch the Get Back doc on Disney+, see how McCartney pulls the song Get Back seemingly from nowhere. It’s mind blowing. I’ve tried to write songs, it is bloody difficult.
Incidentally I always thought Lennon was a genius and McCartney a bit syrupy but in recent years I have come to appreciate the gift McCartney has. I’ve been diving into his much maligned solo stuff and there’s some really good stuff there.
And I can’t believe I’m saying this but listen again to that Frog Chorus song he did. Yeah it’s saccharine cheese squarely aimed at kids - which can’t be easy to do but he did it with aplomb, so kudos. But if you look beyond the ‘bom bom boms’, the melodies and harmonies are sublime. Honest!
In my opinion the song is the perfect art form. It combines words, which convey thoughts and feelings that the rational, verbal part if our brain can process, with music, whose deep appeal to us we don't even begin to understand. In a good song those two strands, words and music, work in harmony to transport us into the mind of the person or people who wrote it. Lennon and McCartney are among the greatest songwriters of all time, and I believe that their songs will be enjoyed for as long as our civilisation endures.
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
No. You are absolutely right. Bear in mind also that as far as I understand it if someone tests positive for covid then dies of a heart attack or accidental decapitation then they still go down as a covid death. (Died after having tested positive for covid in the last 28 days). As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my cousin died of long term cancer but is down as a covid death.
But then some people probably die more than 28 days after being tested, or weren't tested at all (particularly in the early days). Although you would hope that if someone dies in hospital after several weeks on ventilation they will go down as a Covid victim, however long ago their test was.
Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.
So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
The 28 days cutoff was chosen because the under counts approximately counteract the over counts.
The reason for having such a figure is that over wise you would need to wait a long time for all the inquests, autopsies etc.
The 28 day number is a an approximation - a fairly good one. The more you delve into such medical statistics, the more you realise that 100% perfect truth is not obtainable. There are different measures and each has it's accuracy issues.
Sure, but JL was suggesting that a post 28 days death SHOULD go in the figures because it was definitely Covid whereas a within 28 days case which definitely NOT Covid should NOT come out of the figures. The balance you describe is therefore lost if this is actually happening.
To clarify, I want assurance that a Covid death after 28 days from the original positive test result is not currently a Covid death in the Uk figures. Otherwise I feel a letter to my MP coming on.
Covid deaths as primary cause, or underlying cause on death certification are in the ONS figures. This is usually a couple of weeks behind, but only includes covid whether day 1 or 101 post test, and only covid.
Excess deaths are a mathematical construct against baseline.
The 28 day figure is an approximation.
All three figures are pretty congruous though. The excess deaths are a little higher than the other two.
"After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."
Choosing to go to bat for Marjorie Taylor Green out of all 435 members of the house of reps is not gonna be a good look for you Charles.
I’ve no idea who she is, and know nothing about her except that apparently space lasers are responsible for forest fires 😂
The principle remains is that all candidates for elections in a free country have an equal right to be heard. If they break the law prosecute then. But to prevent them using a major channel of political communication is to distort elections
You are doing the thing where you defend a general principle based on the newspaper headline of a specific case and everyone talks about the specific case that justifies the action whilst you are ignorant of the specifics.
Yes. I’m defending the principle of free elections. I don’t know who MTG is and don’t really give a shit.
This is not interfering with 'free elections'. The companies have rules - sensible rules, by the sound of it - and are hopefully applying those rules uniformly. If they applied them very unevenly you may have more of a point; but it's up to you to provide evidence of that in this discussion.
It is. Twitter is a key part of a former POTUS’s election technique. They have made the decision to ban him. How anyone can claim that is not going to impact on the election result I don’t know.
So, if it is going to impact, you are really comfortable with giving a private company that power?
Absolutely - as long as the rules are fairly implemented to all. If Trump did make Twitter a key part of his election technique, he should have looked at their rules and operated within them. If he got banned having broken those rules, then it's his own fault.
Those people who got censored or suspended for discussing lab leak as a hypothesis on Twitter and Facebook, for a year, what rule were they breaking?
Was it the rule that This Upsets China?
Or some other rule? Do tell
Can I have more details please?
Here. Tho quite why I have to spoon feed you this news is beyond me
"Facebook issued two statements in the past week relating to its treatment of “misinformation” — and they couldn’t have been more different.
The first was a single paragraph updating their policy on stories speculating that Covid-19 is a man-made virus — after almost every major media outlet, and yesterday even the British and American security services, finally confirmed that it is a feasible possibility.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts,” a Facebook spokesman said, “we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.”"
Thanks, I'll have a look at it when I've put the little 'un to bed.
But a word to the wise; there is nothing wrong with asking for links, if someone apparently knows more on a subject than you do.
You sound a bit like a drunken man in a gutter: "I claim the world is run by a cartel of hungry mice." "Oh, that's interesting. Can I know more?" "NO! How dare you aske me for more information, you fetid bag of ball-cheese!"
Fair enough. I was feeling a bit feisty, apologies if I overdid it
I just get quite angry when people say Twitter and Facebook are judiciously "censoring misinformation about Covid" when for a year they were actively PURVEYING misinformation on the most fundamental level, by censoring info which embarrasses the Chinese government on the likely origins of Covid19. ie the lab in Wuhan
It is equivalent to a newspaper in the 1930s printing favourable crap about Hitler's racial policies. That kind of stuff can make a man a bit punchy
All this is a bit like monarchists complaining that they don't like Prince Andrew. The point about morachy is that you don't have any say in the head of state. The point about private enterprise is that they can do what they like within the law.
Is that problematic? Should they be constrained by rules of fairness and social conscience? Sure, as the left have said for many years. And hello to our new Corbynistas, Charles and Leon.
Excellent point. We have fervent divine rightists actually attacking the Duke fo York. I mean, he's 9th in line to the throne. If you can remove the 9th at a whim or by decision of Pmt, you can remove the 8th, and so on to HMtQ.
As indeed happened in the 1640s.
(I forget what that mathematical method is called. But it is so useful.)
Historically, most monarchs were killed, imprisoned, tortured etc by devout monarchists.
People who stated that God had chosen *them* to be The One True Monarch.
True indeed.
Though I do think it a bit silly and disingenuous when people pretend monarchists cannot criticise members of a royal family because the point of monarchy is you get what you get. That's never been how monarchy worked in practice, even when people did believe (or claimed to believe) in divine right, anymore than people who nominally believed the pope was God's representative on earth could not oppose them on many temporal and spiritual matters. Our monarchy might well keep religious titles, but no one of any sense believes in divine right - parliament and outside forces essentially deposed one monarch, invited in another, set rules for it which excluded those who would otherwise have been in the succesion - and one can very easily believe in the system, without supporting everyone involved.
So the 'the point in monarchy is you don't have a say' thing is just being absurd and silly - if our monarchy steps out of line of what is expected of it it would be changed or abolished pronto, and that doesn't even touch upon the issue of embarrassing members of a royal line, who have always been able to be dealt with one way or another. In what monarchy on earth was every member of a line sacrosanct?
I certainly believe the Queen is anointed by God as our monarch and to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even if I also agree she is a constitutional not an absolute monarch
The whole idea of who is the anointed falls apart for me when throughout history we’ve had monarchs usurped, replaced, murdered, chosen by committee etc. What is the chain of succession that gets Henry Bolingbrook to the throne, or Henry Tudor, or King Oliver?
Arguably until the Reformation English Kings were acknowledged by God but not anointed by God as the head of the English Church was the Pope, not the Monarch
That aspect of the coronation rite didn't change at the Reformation. Kings of England were always anointed.
The anointment was more a blessing, the head of the Church until the Reformation and God's ultimate representative on English soil was still the Pope not the Monarch
Er no. The Queen was consecrated as Monarch. As were her ancestors going back before the Conquest. The ceremony recalls the anointment of Solomon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with being appointed Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
You cannot challenge articles of faith with mere logic and facts. Particularly when it’s HYUFD.
By definition the anointment of the Monarch of England also makes them Supreme Governor of the Church of England now. Before the Reformation that was not the case as the Supreme Governor of the Church in England was effectively the Pope (the Head of the Church being Jesus Christ).
Good the Church of Scotland has Christ as its Head, anything else is nonsense
No it isn't, you can still be Christ's representative on earth as the Pope is for Roman Catholics and the Monarch is for members of the Church of England. Christ still remains the ultimate head however
This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?
Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas
Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it
As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.
Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.
When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
No. You are absolutely right. Bear in mind also that as far as I understand it if someone tests positive for covid then dies of a heart attack or accidental decapitation then they still go down as a covid death. (Died after having tested positive for covid in the last 28 days). As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my cousin died of long term cancer but is down as a covid death.
But then some people probably die more than 28 days after being tested, or weren't tested at all (particularly in the early days). Although you would hope that if someone dies in hospital after several weeks on ventilation they will go down as a Covid victim, however long ago their test was.
Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.
So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
The 28 days cutoff was chosen because the under counts approximately counteract the over counts.
The reason for having such a figure is that over wise you would need to wait a long time for all the inquests, autopsies etc.
The 28 day number is a an approximation - a fairly good one. The more you delve into such medical statistics, the more you realise that 100% perfect truth is not obtainable. There are different measures and each has it's accuracy issues.
Sure, but JL was suggesting that a post 28 days death SHOULD go in the figures because it was definitely Covid whereas a within 28 days case which definitely NOT Covid should NOT come out of the figures. The balance you describe is therefore lost if this is actually happening.
To clarify, I want assurance that a Covid death after 28 days from the original positive test result is not currently a Covid death in the Uk figures. Otherwise I feel a letter to my MP coming on.
Covid deaths as primary cause, or underlying cause on death certification are in the ONS figures. This is usually a couple of weeks behind, but only includes covid whether day 1 or 101 post test, and only covid.
Excess deaths are a mathematical construct against baseline.
The 28 day figure is an approximation.
All three figures are pretty congruous though. The excess deaths are a little higher than the other two.
I'm confused. So the ONS figures, rather than the 4pm daily figure we wait for, should be the ones to focus on?
Choosing to go to bat for Marjorie Taylor Green out of all 435 members of the house of reps is not gonna be a good look for you Charles.
I’ve no idea who she is, and know nothing about her except that apparently space lasers are responsible for forest fires 😂
The principle remains is that all candidates for elections in a free country have an equal right to be heard. If they break the law prosecute then. But to prevent them using a major channel of political communication is to distort elections
You are doing the thing where you defend a general principle based on the newspaper headline of a specific case and everyone talks about the specific case that justifies the action whilst you are ignorant of the specifics.
Yes. I’m defending the principle of free elections. I don’t know who MTG is and don’t really give a shit.
This is not interfering with 'free elections'. The companies have rules - sensible rules, by the sound of it - and are hopefully applying those rules uniformly. If they applied them very unevenly you may have more of a point; but it's up to you to provide evidence of that in this discussion.
It is. Twitter is a key part of a former POTUS’s election technique. They have made the decision to ban him. How anyone can claim that is not going to impact on the election result I don’t know.
So, if it is going to impact, you are really comfortable with giving a private company that power?
Absolutely - as long as the rules are fairly implemented to all. If Trump did make Twitter a key part of his election technique, he should have looked at their rules and operated within them. If he got banned having broken those rules, then it's his own fault.
Those people who got censored or suspended for discussing lab leak as a hypothesis on Twitter and Facebook, for a year, what rule were they breaking?
Was it the rule that This Upsets China?
Or some other rule? Do tell
Can I have more details please?
Here. Tho quite why I have to spoon feed you this news is beyond me
"Facebook issued two statements in the past week relating to its treatment of “misinformation” — and they couldn’t have been more different.
The first was a single paragraph updating their policy on stories speculating that Covid-19 is a man-made virus — after almost every major media outlet, and yesterday even the British and American security services, finally confirmed that it is a feasible possibility.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts,” a Facebook spokesman said, “we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.”"
Thanks, I'll have a look at it when I've put the little 'un to bed.
But a word to the wise; there is nothing wrong with asking for links, if someone apparently knows more on a subject than you do.
You sound a bit like a drunken man in a gutter: "I claim the world is run by a cartel of hungry mice." "Oh, that's interesting. Can I know more?" "NO! How dare you aske me for more information, you fetid bag of ball-cheese!"
Fair enough. I was feeling a bit feisty, apologies if I overdid it
I just get quite angry when people say Twitter and Facebook are judiciously "censoring misinformation about Covid" when for a year they were actively PURVEYING misinformation on the most fundamental level, by censoring info which embarrasses the Chinese government on the likely origins of Covid19. ie the lab in Wuhan
It is equivalent to a newspaper in the 1930s printing favourable crap about Hitler's racial policies. That kind of stuff can make a man a bit punchy
All this is a bit like monarchists complaining that they don't like Prince Andrew. The point about morachy is that you don't have any say in the head of state. The point about private enterprise is that they can do what they like within the law.
Is that problematic? Should they be constrained by rules of fairness and social conscience? Sure, as the left have said for many years. And hello to our new Corbynistas, Charles and Leon.
Excellent point. We have fervent divine rightists actually attacking the Duke fo York. I mean, he's 9th in line to the throne. If you can remove the 9th at a whim or by decision of Pmt, you can remove the 8th, and so on to HMtQ.
As indeed happened in the 1640s.
(I forget what that mathematical method is called. But it is so useful.)
Historically, most monarchs were killed, imprisoned, tortured etc by devout monarchists.
People who stated that God had chosen *them* to be The One True Monarch.
True indeed.
Though I do think it a bit silly and disingenuous when people pretend monarchists cannot criticise members of a royal family because the point of monarchy is you get what you get. That's never been how monarchy worked in practice, even when people did believe (or claimed to believe) in divine right, anymore than people who nominally believed the pope was God's representative on earth could not oppose them on many temporal and spiritual matters. Our monarchy might well keep religious titles, but no one of any sense believes in divine right - parliament and outside forces essentially deposed one monarch, invited in another, set rules for it which excluded those who would otherwise have been in the succesion - and one can very easily believe in the system, without supporting everyone involved.
So the 'the point in monarchy is you don't have a say' thing is just being absurd and silly - if our monarchy steps out of line of what is expected of it it would be changed or abolished pronto, and that doesn't even touch upon the issue of embarrassing members of a royal line, who have always been able to be dealt with one way or another. In what monarchy on earth was every member of a line sacrosanct?
I certainly believe the Queen is anointed by God as our monarch and to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even if I also agree she is a constitutional not an absolute monarch
The whole idea of who is the anointed falls apart for me when throughout history we’ve had monarchs usurped, replaced, murdered, chosen by committee etc. What is the chain of succession that gets Henry Bolingbrook to the throne, or Henry Tudor, or King Oliver?
Arguably until the Reformation English Kings were acknowledged by God but not anointed by God as the head of the English Church was the Pope, not the Monarch
That aspect of the coronation rite didn't change at the Reformation. Kings of England were always anointed.
The anointment was more a blessing, the head of the Church until the Reformation and God's ultimate representative on English soil was still the Pope not the Monarch
Er no. The Queen was consecrated as Monarch. As were her ancestors going back before the Conquest. The ceremony recalls the anointment of Solomon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with being appointed Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
You cannot challenge articles of faith with mere logic and facts. Particularly when it’s HYUFD.
By definition the anointment of the Monarch of England also makes them Supreme Governor of the Church of England now. Before the Reformation that was not the case as the Supreme Governor of the Church in England was effectively the Pope (the Head of the Church being Jesus Christ).
Good the Church of Scotland has Christ as its Head, anything else is nonsense
No it isn't, you can still be Christ's representative on earth as the Pope is for Roman Catholics and the Monarch is for members of the Church of England. Christ still remains the ultimate head however
Again you mislead
I specifically said the Church of Scotland, not the Catholic Church in Scotland
This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?
Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas
Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it
As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.
Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.
When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
Whether he was right or wrong, or somewhere in the middle, Fraser Nelson should be mentioned in dispatches too. Provided the impetus for cabinet to start asking questions that they should have been asking for months. I wouldn’t want to be working at a hospital right now. I hope they get through ok. And I hope that soon the pressure really does ease. But for the rest of us we should be fine.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
I imagine the Decca Accounts department felt a little differently
I said, merit. I mean, The Da Vinci Code made squillions. Have you read it?
Yes, it is written really badly, but it is superbly plotted. In fact it is a masterpiece of plotting, beautifully knitted together, with puzzles and cliffhangers. It deserved to earn the money it did
Really? I would have said its plotting veered from the asinine to the merely implausible.
The first bit was a man being shot in the stomach and then spending lots of time running around leaving far-fetched clues before lying down to die having written an epitaph that made no sense at all, to be translated by an expert in French art who spoke no French.
And it got worse after that...
I hear this a lot. "The plotting was ludicrous blah blah blah"
Tell you what, if the plotting was ludicrous why don't you sit down for a couple of days and knock out something better. If the Da Vinci Code is so shit it shouldn't take you more than a weekend, right?
Then you can sit back and watch as the millions roll in. Doddle.
I'm amazed that all the people who are so utterly convinced the Da Vinci Code is shit don't do this. It is an obvious route to great fortune. Just do it better than Dan Brown!
Not really right, because if you look at Amazon theres literally 10s of 000s of people self publishing stuff like crazy which is intended to hit exactly that jackpot, and I would bet that in a blind tasting you couldn't pick out the D Brown from the wannabes. It's not writnig the stuff, it's marketing it
With all due respect, you don't know what the fuck you are talking about, and I do
When it comes to mega-bestsellers, there is one and only one guaranteed route to fortune for a really cracking book: Word of Mouth
No amount of sales marketing adverts whatever can match Great Word of Mouth. People saying "Hey have you read this, or this, or this, I could not put it down!"
Word of Mouth is the reason books as diverse as Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Harry Potter, the Kite Runner and the Hobbit became enormous global bestsellers. It wasn't the brilliant marketing exercise behind them. It was because people loved them, usually because they have great plots and vivid characters, and the first readers told their friends, who told their friends.... that is all you need, but it so very rare
As I say, if you think it is that simple, sit down and knock one out. Self publish, then wait for the billions to shower down
Is that how you sell your flint dildos?
Has to be word of mouth - I’ve looked and looked for adverts for flint dildos and there’s nothing...
I won't ask why you were looking...
I found this. It appears they are nothing new. Wondering if Leon has tried camel shit as a material?
Though my guess is that it was the Carthaginians who introduced the concept, by batting the heads of the conquered around and about, just for the fun of it.
It goes much further back than that. In the Epic of Gilgamesh the Gods give Enki a [thing made of wood] with which to hit, for fun, another [thing made of wood], which the current translation calls a croquet mallet and ball.
I meant they introduced the "sport" to your shores. Having cribbed it from the Babylonians, who got it from Who Knows?
"After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."
Encouraging.
This is also encouraging. A Canadian doctor on the front line, whole thread worth a read
"The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"
If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
I imagine the Decca Accounts department felt a little differently
I said, merit. I mean, The Da Vinci Code made squillions. Have you read it?
Yes, it is written really badly, but it is superbly plotted. In fact it is a masterpiece of plotting, beautifully knitted together, with puzzles and cliffhangers. It deserved to earn the money it did
Really? I would have said its plotting veered from the asinine to the merely implausible.
The first bit was a man being shot in the stomach and then spending lots of time running around leaving far-fetched clues before lying down to die having written an epitaph that made no sense at all, to be translated by an expert in French art who spoke no French.
And it got worse after that...
I hear this a lot. "The plotting was ludicrous blah blah blah"
Tell you what, if the plotting was ludicrous why don't you sit down for a couple of days and knock out something better. If the Da Vinci Code is so shit it shouldn't take you more than a weekend, right?
Then you can sit back and watch as the millions roll in. Doddle.
I'm amazed that all the people who are so utterly convinced the Da Vinci Code is shit don't do this. It is an obvious route to great fortune. Just do it better than Dan Brown!
But you're missing the point. The issue isn't whether it's any good. It clearly isn't. I've given you one example there, but there could be many others.
The question is, why it was so popular despite being ridiculous?
And actually, I'd disagree with your first point. It's the writing that made it wahat it was. The key was it went so fast from point to point that it's actually very hard to catch your breath long enough to spot the errors. It's only when you pause for a second and think 'Hang on...' that you realise it's all ludicrous shit.
Yes, that is key. The action has to keep rapidly moving forward so that no one really has time to consider the cardboard characterisation or ludicrous plot holes. The same is true of the early Harry Potter books, and many action movies.
It is a simple formula, but a rare skill to actually do it. Like the difficulty coming up with advertising tag lines. Lots think they can do it, but few actually can.
Yes, quite
Many look at this and think: oh that's easy. When they try, it is bloody hard. Formidably hard. And that goes for many successful authors of literary fiction who try to write tightly plotted (and better rewarded) thrillers. They can't do it.
Martin Amis is a genius writer. Yet he cannot plot at all, and when he tries it is bit embarrassing. That's probably why he is outsold by Dan Brown by orders of magnitude, despite Amis being a in a clearly different and superior league when it comes to beautiful prose, witty insights, and lush description
Anyway this will all quite soon be moot. In a decade or less, computers will be able to write lurid Dan Brown thrillers or pensive Martin Amis novels in about 2 minutes, and we won't be able to tell the difference, except the computer will keep churning them out for free so the human writers will be finished
I am perfectly serious. This is coming, sooner than anyone expects. I am quite glad it is happening later in my dildo-knapping career
Are we talking about different Martin Amises? Dead Babies (Quentin is Johnny? Quentin is Johnny) and Success are brilliantly plotted. It all gets flabby after that but they are Hitchcock level plotting
God no, they're not good plots. lol
You're drunk, aren't you? You always trot out this weird Beatles-phobia, with some vehemence, when you've had a few
I shall join you, with my bottle of Diez Cabellero Rioja, Reserva 2011
Absolutely delicious, and a total bargain at this price. Just £13.95. BUY
This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?
Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas
Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it
As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.
Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.
When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
I really doubt if the meeting before Christmas will be seen as a profound moment (at least not the way you imply).
The country is doing lockdown itself anyway now, and it was probably too late to enforce a lockdown the week before Christmas - many would have ignored it. So on that basis it was a non-decision but...
...If we have a few weeks of hospital horror stories or major disruption now, that is what people will remember and, fairly or not, the government will get the blame.
Conversely, if as I hope, things are not too bad and omicron swiftly dies away, no one will remember a cabinet meeting from before Christmas anyway.
I think it's a lose-draw situation for the government, not a win-win.
This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?
Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas
Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it
As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.
Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.
When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
I really doubt if the meeting before Christmas will be seen as a profound moment (at least not the way you imply).
The country is doing lockdown itself anyway now, and it was probably too late to enforce a lockdown the week before Christmas - many would have ignored it. So on that basis it was a non-decision but...
...If we have a few weeks of hospital horror stories or major disruption now, that is what people will remember and, fairly or not, the government will get the blame.
Conversely, if as I hope, things are not too bad and omicron swiftly dies away, no one will remember a cabinet meeting from before Christmas anyway.
I think it's a lose-draw situation for the government, not a win-win.
Especially as the decision arose not from analysis and good judgement but from fear and political weakness.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
I imagine the Decca Accounts department felt a little differently
I said, merit. I mean, The Da Vinci Code made squillions. Have you read it?
Yes, it is written really badly, but it is superbly plotted. In fact it is a masterpiece of plotting, beautifully knitted together, with puzzles and cliffhangers. It deserved to earn the money it did
Really? I would have said its plotting veered from the asinine to the merely implausible.
The first bit was a man being shot in the stomach and then spending lots of time running around leaving far-fetched clues before lying down to die having written an epitaph that made no sense at all, to be translated by an expert in French art who spoke no French.
And it got worse after that...
I hear this a lot. "The plotting was ludicrous blah blah blah"
Tell you what, if the plotting was ludicrous why don't you sit down for a couple of days and knock out something better. If the Da Vinci Code is so shit it shouldn't take you more than a weekend, right?
Then you can sit back and watch as the millions roll in. Doddle.
I'm amazed that all the people who are so utterly convinced the Da Vinci Code is shit don't do this. It is an obvious route to great fortune. Just do it better than Dan Brown!
But you're missing the point. The issue isn't whether it's any good. It clearly isn't. I've given you one example there, but there could be many others.
The question is, why it was so popular despite being ridiculous?
And actually, I'd disagree with your first point. It's the writing that made it wahat it was. The key was it went so fast from point to point that it's actually very hard to catch your breath long enough to spot the errors. It's only when you pause for a second and think 'Hang on...' that you realise it's all ludicrous shit.
Yes, that is key. The action has to keep rapidly moving forward so that no one really has time to consider the cardboard characterisation or ludicrous plot holes. The same is true of the early Harry Potter books, and many action movies.
It is a simple formula, but a rare skill to actually do it. Like the difficulty coming up with advertising tag lines. Lots think they can do it, but few actually can.
Yes, quite
Many look at this and think: oh that's easy. When they try, it is bloody hard. Formidably hard. And that goes for many successful authors of literary fiction who try to write tightly plotted (and better rewarded) thrillers. They can't do it.
Martin Amis is a genius writer. Yet he cannot plot at all, and when he tries it is bit embarrassing. That's probably why he is outsold by Dan Brown by orders of magnitude, despite Amis being a in a clearly different and superior league when it comes to beautiful prose, witty insights, and lush description
Anyway this will all quite soon be moot. In a decade or less, computers will be able to write lurid Dan Brown thrillers or pensive Martin Amis novels in about 2 minutes, and we won't be able to tell the difference, except the computer will keep churning them out for free so the human writers will be finished
I am perfectly serious. This is coming, sooner than anyone expects. I am quite glad it is happening later in my dildo-knapping career
Are we talking about different Martin Amises? Dead Babies (Quentin is Johnny? Quentin is Johnny) and Success are brilliantly plotted. It all gets flabby after that but they are Hitchcock level plotting
God no, they're not good plots. lol
You're drunk, aren't you? You always trot out this weird Beatles-phobia, with some vehemence, when you've had a few
I shall join you, with my bottle of Diez Cabellero Rioja, Reserva 2011
Absolutely delicious, and a total bargain at this price. Just £13.95. BUY
This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?
Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas
Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it
As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.
Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.
When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
I really doubt if the meeting before Christmas will be seen as a profound moment (at least not the way you imply).
The country is doing lockdown itself anyway now, and it was probably too late to enforce a lockdown the week before Christmas - many would have ignored it. So on that basis it was a non-decision but...
...If we have a few weeks of hospital horror stories or major disruption now, that is what people will remember and, fairly or not, the government will get the blame.
Conversely, if as I hope, things are not too bad and omicron swiftly dies away, no one will remember a cabinet meeting from before Christmas anyway.
I think it's a lose-draw situation for the government, not a win-win.
It will become apparent in the next few weeks whether Scotland and Wales more severe restrictions actually had any material effect or not, and comparison with England may become inevitable either way
This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?
Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas
Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it
As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.
Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.
When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
I really doubt if the meeting before Christmas will be seen as a profound moment (at least not the way you imply).
The country is doing lockdown itself anyway now, and it was probably too late to enforce a lockdown the week before Christmas - many would have ignored it. So on that basis it was a non-decision but...
...If we have a few weeks of hospital horror stories or major disruption now, that is what people will remember and, fairly or not, the government will get the blame.
Conversely, if as I hope, things are not too bad and omicron swiftly dies away, no one will remember a cabinet meeting from before Christmas anyway.
I think it's a lose-draw situation for the government, not a win-win.
You may be right about what the general public remember. I'm talking about the history writers and the politcos. It seems pretty clear that the technocracy from DoH and SAGE and so on went into that cabinet meeting expecting a rubber stamp on lockdown.
They didn't come out of the meeting with it.
Seems pretty important to me for us watchers of politics.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is a poisonous, gun-toting fascist who advocates violence in the pursuit of political ends. She's an anti-semitic QAnon conspiracy theorist, Covid-denier and anti-vaxxer. She still claims Trump won the 2020 election and had it stolen from him. She supported the Capitol insurrection. In this country, her free speech would be legally curtailed under various laws relating to incitement to racial hatred, violence etc. It's remarkable that Twitter gives her a platform at all.
She should be returned to the sewer from whence she sprang. Sod free speech, if this is what it means. She uses it in an effort to stamp on other people's liberties.
Those who would give up liberty for a measure of security deserve neither
This quote is always trotted out. It is arrant nonsense.
Ben Franklin… anonymous bloke on the internet… Ben Franklin… anonymous bloke on the internet….
Yep. Going with Ben Franklin
You're free do what you like. Me. Well I'll continue to trade a little liberty for security every time I get in a car or on a plane. Or in a myriad other ways. Like locking my doors when I leave the house and obeying crossing signs. I won't be wandering down Downing Street or across military bases either.
"After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."
Encouraging.
This is also encouraging. A Canadian doctor on the front line, whole thread worth a read
"The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"
If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)
Get the Jab
My brother was bemoaning the fact that his (triple-jabbed) daughter tested positive this morning. "What was the point of the vaccinations then?"
I need to share that data with him 1st thing tomorrow - hoping it will reassure him.
This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?
Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas
Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it
As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.
Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.
When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
Whether he was right or wrong, or somewhere in the middle, Fraser Nelson should be mentioned in dispatches too. Provided the impetus for cabinet to start asking questions that they should have been asking for months. I wouldn’t want to be working at a hospital right now. I hope they get through ok. And I hope that soon the pressure really does ease. But for the rest of us we should be fine.
The stats on vaxxed versus unvaxxed in ICUs and on ventilators are insane
ICUs would be virtually empty of Covid patients if everyone was vaxxed: that's the logical inference. Thus freeing up so many staff and so much room to do so much more. The unvaxxed are the crucial pressure on the health system. And if the health systems of the West crumble because of their limitless stupidity..
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
I imagine the Decca Accounts department felt a little differently
I said, merit. I mean, The Da Vinci Code made squillions. Have you read it?
Yes, it is written really badly, but it is superbly plotted. In fact it is a masterpiece of plotting, beautifully knitted together, with puzzles and cliffhangers. It deserved to earn the money it did
Really? I would have said its plotting veered from the asinine to the merely implausible.
The first bit was a man being shot in the stomach and then spending lots of time running around leaving far-fetched clues before lying down to die having written an epitaph that made no sense at all, to be translated by an expert in French art who spoke no French.
And it got worse after that...
I hear this a lot. "The plotting was ludicrous blah blah blah"
Tell you what, if the plotting was ludicrous why don't you sit down for a couple of days and knock out something better. If the Da Vinci Code is so shit it shouldn't take you more than a weekend, right?
Then you can sit back and watch as the millions roll in. Doddle.
I'm amazed that all the people who are so utterly convinced the Da Vinci Code is shit don't do this. It is an obvious route to great fortune. Just do it better than Dan Brown!
But you're missing the point. The issue isn't whether it's any good. It clearly isn't. I've given you one example there, but there could be many others.
The question is, why it was so popular despite being ridiculous?
And actually, I'd disagree with your first point. It's the writing that made it wahat it was. The key was it went so fast from point to point that it's actually very hard to catch your breath long enough to spot the errors. It's only when you pause for a second and think 'Hang on...' that you realise it's all ludicrous shit.
Yes, that is key. The action has to keep rapidly moving forward so that no one really has time to consider the cardboard characterisation or ludicrous plot holes. The same is true of the early Harry Potter books, and many action movies.
It is a simple formula, but a rare skill to actually do it. Like the difficulty coming up with advertising tag lines. Lots think they can do it, but few actually can.
Yes, quite
Many look at this and think: oh that's easy. When they try, it is bloody hard. Formidably hard. And that goes for many successful authors of literary fiction who try to write tightly plotted (and better rewarded) thrillers. They can't do it.
Martin Amis is a genius writer. Yet he cannot plot at all, and when he tries it is bit embarrassing. That's probably why he is outsold by Dan Brown by orders of magnitude, despite Amis being a in a clearly different and superior league when it comes to beautiful prose, witty insights, and lush description
Anyway this will all quite soon be moot. In a decade or less, computers will be able to write lurid Dan Brown thrillers or pensive Martin Amis novels in about 2 minutes, and we won't be able to tell the difference, except the computer will keep churning them out for free so the human writers will be finished
I am perfectly serious. This is coming, sooner than anyone expects. I am quite glad it is happening later in my dildo-knapping career
Are we talking about different Martin Amises? Dead Babies (Quentin is Johnny? Quentin is Johnny) and Success are brilliantly plotted. It all gets flabby after that but they are Hitchcock level plotting
God no, they're not good plots. lol
You're drunk, aren't you? You always trot out this weird Beatles-phobia, with some vehemence, when you've had a few
I shall join you, with my bottle of Diez Cabellero Rioja, Reserva 2011
Absolutely delicious, and a total bargain at this price. Just £13.95. BUY
"After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."
Encouraging.
This is also encouraging. A Canadian doctor on the front line, whole thread worth a read
"The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"
If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)
Get the Jab
My brother was bemoaning the fact that his (triple-jabbed) daughter tested positive this morning. "What was the point of the vaccinations then?"
I need to share that data with him 1st thing tomorrow - hoping it will reassure him.
Yes, it's a nice simple vivid and persuasive thread. Those X rays - none of that horrible snowy crap in the lungs
Get vaccinated is the overwhelming message from every doctor on Twitter right now
"After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."
Encouraging.
This is also encouraging. A Canadian doctor on the front line, whole thread worth a read
"The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"
If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)
Get the Jab
My brother was bemoaning the fact that his (triple-jabbed) daughter tested positive this morning. "What was the point of the vaccinations then?"
I need to share that data with him 1st thing tomorrow - hoping it will reassure him.
Is he bemoaning that she is ill or merely that she has tested positive even though not ill?
"After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."
Encouraging.
This is also encouraging. A Canadian doctor on the front line, whole thread worth a read
"The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"
If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)
Get the Jab
My brother was bemoaning the fact that his (triple-jabbed) daughter tested positive this morning. "What was the point of the vaccinations then?"
I need to share that data with him 1st thing tomorrow - hoping it will reassure him.
Is he bemoaning that she is ill or merely that she has tested positive even though not ill?
Or that after three vaccinations younger people are still seeing their lives disrupted?
This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?
Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas
Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it
As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.
Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.
When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
"After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."
Encouraging.
This is also encouraging. A Canadian doctor on the front line, whole thread worth a read
"The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"
If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)
Get the Jab
My brother was bemoaning the fact that his (triple-jabbed) daughter tested positive this morning. "What was the point of the vaccinations then?"
I need to share that data with him 1st thing tomorrow - hoping it will reassure him.
That has been the prevailing reaction I've heard too. The danger is, of course that it will discourage more take up. The average punter is interested in this virus, but spectacularly ill-informed.
BREAKING: A very serious situation at hospitals across Lincolnshire tonight as @ULHT_News declares a 'critical incident' over "extreme and unprecedented" staff shortages. It says it is "unable to maintain safe staffing levels" leading to "compromised care" across its sites: https://twitter.com/ShaunLintern/status/1477711272384909314/photo/1
Distressing to hear, and good luck to the staff and patients, but isn't this basically the situation in every hospital in the country? Sadiq Khan declared a "critical emergency" (or similar) in London over Christmas
We know the NHS is under the cosh, there's not much we can do now. Apart from try not to slip over and break an ankle and get sent to A&E?
Restrictions won't do anything. It is too late, I doubt if they would ever work against Omicron anyway, in a UK democratic context
We are a bit like the British people in the Battle of Britain, staring up at the sky, willing on the RAF, but not able to do much more
There’s not much else we can do now. It will take a few years to build the hospitals and train the doctors and nurses that we should have had even before Covid.
Pray for a mild winter?
Ice and snow leads to accidents and more A&E visits.
Some of which will be classed as covid hospitalisations - as (bizarrely) we have learned tonight.
This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?
Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas
Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it
As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.
Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.
When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
I really doubt if the meeting before Christmas will be seen as a profound moment (at least not the way you imply).
The country is doing lockdown itself anyway now, and it was probably too late to enforce a lockdown the week before Christmas - many would have ignored it. So on that basis it was a non-decision but...
...If we have a few weeks of hospital horror stories or major disruption now, that is what people will remember and, fairly or not, the government will get the blame.
Conversely, if as I hope, things are not too bad and omicron swiftly dies away, no one will remember a cabinet meeting from before Christmas anyway.
I think it's a lose-draw situation for the government, not a win-win.
“The country is doing its own lockdown now”
It really isn’t. Unless the pubs and shops I’ve visited and the parties I’ve hosted and attended are in a different country to you.
"After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."
Encouraging.
This is also encouraging. A Canadian doctor on the front line, whole thread worth a read
"The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"
If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)
Get the Jab
My brother was bemoaning the fact that his (triple-jabbed) daughter tested positive this morning. "What was the point of the vaccinations then?"
I need to share that data with him 1st thing tomorrow - hoping it will reassure him.
I heard similar in the barbers the other day - yet the chap next to me said it was just a “very mild cold”. Are people still not getting the message that vaccines main benefit is to stop people getting ill, not to prevent infection?
The problem, I guess, comes from the damned seven day isolation penalty. If that could be reduced to say three days test and release, people would be more likely to embrace the benefit.
The Times saying the pre-departure test to return to England likely to be dropped. Other than that, looks like we’ll have Plan B until the end of the month at least.
ydoethur - Probably both, but i meant a black guy who was single. (In many small Western towns in the United States, match making is one of the favorite past times, especially among women.)
(My apologies for the slow reply. In this area, we are expected to watch the Seahawks games, as I was doing. They won, easily, by the way.)
Cookie - That Tot Lot is the only one I know of, though there are small towns that have similar parks, though usually without the fence. (Fences are generally less needed in those towns.)
Sixty years ago, when my mother moved to Kirkland, almost all new homes, however inexpensive, had backyards for kids to play in. (That would still be true for much of the United States.)
In New York City (and possibly other places) there are a few private -- and expensive -- similar parks.
On the other hand, Kirkland has three large beach front parks on Lake Washington, which draw many small kids, with their mothers and sometimes grandmothers. (Favorite activity: feeding the ducks.) And for older children, there is a large baseball field, in the middle of the downtown.
"After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."
Encouraging.
This is also encouraging. A Canadian doctor on the front line, whole thread worth a read
"The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"
If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)
Get the Jab
My brother was bemoaning the fact that his (triple-jabbed) daughter tested positive this morning. "What was the point of the vaccinations then?"
I need to share that data with him 1st thing tomorrow - hoping it will reassure him.
I heard similar in the barbers the other day - yet the chap next to me said it was just a “very mild cold”. Are people still not getting the message that vaccines main benefit is to stop people getting ill, not to prevent infection?
The problem, I guess, comes from the damned seven day isolation penalty. If that could be reduced to say three days test and release, people would be more likely to embrace the benefit.
read this. Omicron case rates are lowest in the unvaccinated by far
and i think leon should mind his language given a huge proportion of the unvaxxed are from ethnic minorities. I know hes not racist but its not a good look
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQS91wVdvYc
Ice and snow leads to accidents and more A&E visits.
C. Salina Harris
@C_SalinaH
·
37m
Replying to
@XianJaneway
Maryland hospitals are on crisis management mode. There are no beds. No beds for COVID, or strokes, or MI’s. No. Beds.
Mike Rouse
@MikeRou67608823
·
20h
State Of Emergency Issued To Help Delaware Hospitals Fight COVID Surge https://youtu.be/fL4bbd36Pwc via
@youtubered
Almost every health system in every country with a full-on Omicron surge will be in this situation
Particularly when it’s HYUFD.
@SunetraGupta
·
9h
2. Misrepresenting the
@gbdeclaration
as a “let-it-rip” strategy and yet endorsing focused protection has lately become a common ploy among scientists and journalists but it is disappointing to see it trotted out by old friends and colleagues.
@guardian
===
As I posted last earlier. Woolhouse slams Great Barrington and then calls for exactly their policy of protecting the vulnerable. Surely he has been misquoted?
But like @Leon *, I enjoy some of their stuff - and it’s absurd to deny their musical talent.
(* whose opinion of Beethoven is simply wrong
Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it
As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
To clarify, I want assurance that a Covid death after 28 days from the original positive test result is not currently a Covid death in the Uk figures. Otherwise I feel a letter to my MP coming on.
Excess deaths are a mathematical construct against baseline.
The 28 day figure is an approximation.
All three figures are pretty congruous though. The excess deaths are a little higher than the other two.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1044481/Technical-Briefing-31-Dec-2021-Omicron_severity_update.pdf
"After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."
Encouraging.
Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.
When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
Which are the Worldometer figures based on?
I specifically said the Church of Scotland, not the Catholic Church in Scotland
I wouldn’t want to be working at a hospital right now. I hope they get through ok. And I hope that soon the pressure really does ease. But for the rest of us we should be fine.
"The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"
https://twitter.com/DrJacobsRad/status/1475094770854866946?s=20
If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)
Get the Jab
The country is doing lockdown itself anyway now, and it was probably too late to enforce a lockdown the week before Christmas - many would have ignored it. So on that basis it was a non-decision but...
...If we have a few weeks of hospital horror stories or major disruption now, that is what people will remember and, fairly or not, the government will get the blame.
Conversely, if as I hope, things are not too bad and omicron swiftly dies away, no one will remember a cabinet meeting from before Christmas anyway.
I think it's a lose-draw situation for the government, not a win-win.
They didn't come out of the meeting with it.
Seems pretty important to me for us watchers of politics.
Me. Well I'll continue to trade a little liberty for security every time I get in a car or on a plane. Or in a myriad other ways. Like locking my doors when I leave the house and obeying crossing signs.
I won't be wandering down Downing Street or across military bases either.
My brother was bemoaning the fact that his (triple-jabbed) daughter tested positive this morning. "What was the point of the vaccinations then?"
I need to share that data with him 1st thing tomorrow - hoping it will reassure him.
This US hospital network has 107 people in ICU.
93% are unvaxxed
https://twitter.com/SpectrumHealth/status/1475923265801621518
ICUs would be virtually empty of Covid patients if everyone was vaxxed: that's the logical inference. Thus freeing up so many staff and so much room to do so much more. The unvaxxed are the crucial pressure on the health system. And if the health systems of the West crumble because of their limitless stupidity..
Get vaccinated is the overwhelming message from every doctor on Twitter right now
The danger is, of course that it will discourage more take up.
The average punter is interested in this virus, but spectacularly ill-informed.
https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1477052450314108930?s=20
It really isn’t. Unless the pubs and shops I’ve visited and the parties I’ve hosted and attended are in a different country to you.
The problem, I guess, comes from the damned seven day isolation penalty. If that could be reduced to say three days test and release, people would be more likely to embrace the benefit.
(My apologies for the slow reply. In this area, we are expected to watch the Seahawks games, as I was doing. They won, easily, by the way.)
Sixty years ago, when my mother moved to Kirkland, almost all new homes, however inexpensive, had backyards for kids to play in. (That would still be true for much of the United States.)
In New York City (and possibly other places) there are a few private -- and expensive -- similar parks.
On the other hand, Kirkland has three large beach front parks on Lake Washington, which draw many small kids, with their mothers and sometimes grandmothers. (Favorite activity: feeding the ducks.) And for older children, there is a large baseball field, in the middle of the downtown.
https://twitter.com/holmenkollin/status/1477797112553390082?s=20