I wish they'd explain why this new strain is more transmissible. If we don't know, say so, but if do explain why and how it should change our behaviour.
All as expected. As usual it was all leaked to the press beforehand.
Fuck.
I wish they'd explain why this new strain is more transmissible. If we don't know, say so, but if do explain why and how it should change our behaviour.
All as expected. As usual it was all leaked to the press beforehand.
Fuck.
Originally Posted by RandBlade
My daughter's (6 and 4) have had enough of not going to school. My six year old says she "hates Boris Johnson" because in her mind all the restrictions are due to him and him alone.
Your 6-year-old is basically the entire Republican Party.
Hope is the denial of reality
What I've heard is that its to do with a mutation on the spike of the virus that makes it easier for the virus to latch onto the receptors in our cells.
Though I may have misunderstood that. Something alone those lines.
What really pisses me off is that the government and Johnson have allowed my wife and I to agonise about what to do over the last few days. We literally didn't know what to do and didn't sleep last night, and whilst I'm glad that decision is now made for us, it's unforgivable that Johnson was doing his media rounds yesterday and today telling us schools are safe and that we should send them despite growing evidence to the contrary.
He needs to be far more careful with his words. They don't really matter when you're a silly journalist, but they fucking matter when you're leading the country.
And giving schools 13 fucking hours to implement remote learning again.
Fucking idiots.
This is by far Johnson and this government's worse moment.
There was no reason to expect it would've.F*ck.
Schools closed, likely for months from the way he spoke. F*ck f*ck f*ck this is not good.
This new variant is a real bugger that even Tier 4 isn't working on it.
Decisive leadership. Sorry mate, you saw it coming, as did most people who have assessed the Johnson govt's actions with a clear eye.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Schools can't operate on the assumption that Johnson says x therefore we'll do y.
And following yesterday I did genuinely think schools would remain open. More fool me.
To be fair all schools should be operating and planning for remote learning already due to any socially distanced children (shielding, positive etc) - plus they were put on alert this could happen already.
Our school emailled us on the weekend to say they were opening as normal on Monday but that they were prepared for remote learning if it was to be announced.
That's good. Ours isn't prepared at all. I don't know why they're not but they'll be closing tomorrow and Wednesday completely to put things in place.
(That's primary school. The secondary school was planning for remote learning anyway this week).
This thread is America:
Twitter Link
"People die. Your father is not special."
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Labour were saying the exact same bloody thing. Starmer was saying the schools should be open. Even their Shadow Education Secretary this morning on their media rounds was saying schools should be open.
Twitter Link
Then today the experts have put the country into Alert Level 5. That is new, unprecedented and wasn't the case yesterday. So it really isn't the time for petty partisan potshots.
Instead its just a horrible, horrible situation and I'm not looking forward to explaining this to our girls in the morning.
That really surprises me. The logical thing to do was prepare.
We're in Tier 4 if it makes a difference. I can more understand those not in Tier 4 being caught by surprise.
It drove the old variant down. Tier 3 was enough to lower case numbers with the original virus and Tier 4 is November's lockdown and cases and R fell down significantly in November.
That even a November style lockdown isn't sufficient to keep the new variant under control is really bad.
The only way schools could've had even a faint chance of remaining open is if govt. had acted more powerfully and more decisively, several months ago. The price of not doing so is what you're seeing now. As has been said before, this is a pattern with this govt. Granted, other countries and other govts have made somewhat similar errors, but almost none have waffled as much.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
If it makes you feel better Labour were wrong too.
I'm more concerned with the government than an opposition with very little chance of winning anything in the next decade or so. It's true I'd rather have Starmer as a leader than Johnson, but I'd rather a conservative government.
I don't think it's fair to say is new or unprecedented. Sage have been advising school closures and tougher restrictions for weeks, and my understanding is that the alert level went up hours after the briefing was announced. I personally believe Johnson just succumbed to the growing pressure on social media and the recent polls showing support for lockdown.
We are doomed to repeat this cycle of lockdowns with premature lifting of restrictions, which eventually necessitates another lockdown, which will again be lifted prematurely etc, until kingdom come, and it's all because these useless cunts are too lazy to look up exponential functions on Wikipedia.
Keir Starmer, by the way, is also a dipshit.
Here's Jeremy Hunt calling for restrictions that should have been put in place weeks ago if not before, and going further than anything Starmer has suggested.
Twitter Link
What's even the point in Keir Starmer if more effective and robust opposition comes from inside the damn Tory party?
Last edited by Steely Glint; 01-05-2021 at 11:46 AM.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
With the way you've been implementing measures—eg. this unvalidated Swiss cheese tier system, foolishly relaxing restrictions at the wrong time, etc—since Autumn, you haven't had even a remote chance of quashing regional outbreaks, which has guaranteed a situation that would spiral out of control. Moderate interventions sustained over time might press case numbers down far enough to give you sufficient margins, but, if the number of cases remains fairly high, the potential for an out of control surge will remain high. That is what has happened in the UK, with these delays, half-measures and untimely course-changes. It's not as if you weren't being warned for several months that you would be overwhelmed again. It doesn't even take a drastically more transmissible variant—a slightly more transmissible variant would've been overwhelming as well, given equally slim margins and equally untimely decisions to relax restrictions. The lessons for the future are still the same as they were in Spring, and in Autumn: don't end restrictions prematurely and all at once and while you still have a high level of community transmission. Hopefully your early vaccine rollout will help. Hopefully your decision to focus on breadth of protection will yield positive results. Hopefully your decision to delay the second dose of vaccine won't saddle you with a protracted wave and more headaches down the line. But there's no reason to hope your waffling with tiers will be effective if you keep carrying on the way you have for the past year.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
If you recall the bombshell Times report, the govt's advisors have grown increasingly alarmed over the past several months, to the point of trying to force the govt's hand by getting information out to the public. To no avail.
Made me physically uncomfortable to have to agree with Jeremy Hunt. One of the more frustrating aspects of this pandemic.Here's Michael Hunt calling for restrictions that should have been put in place weeks ago if not before, and going further than anything Starmer has suggested.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Not sure I see what's so shocking about Bild trying to stoke nationalist outrage over some bullshit scandal—it's practically a line item on their budget.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
It is a major scandal, or should be. Absolute incompetence that trumps anything being discussed in this thread outside of the USA.
Which part of the article do you believe the scandal is? Please describe it in your own words.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
The delay and dithering and letting a continent squander opportunities to get a vaccine for political reasons.
From Google Translate: According to BILD information, the four ministers already had massive doubts in June 2020 that the EU would be able to procure enough vaccine in time, but were urged by their respective heads of government - in Germany by Chancellor Angela Merkel - to initiate the procedure Ursula von der Leyen to transfer.
Rank incompetence.
On another subject this was a very good article: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...-anti-science- by the Editor of Vaccines in Practice and a former chair of the British Medical Association's public health medicine committee.
Nothing in the article substantiates the claim that problems that have arisen can be attributed to the letter or the decision. It's not unreasonable a priori, but the article doesn't do anything to support the claim, or show that the alternative approach would've been better. Nor are most EU nations constrained by vaccine supply atm. You can read the article in English here: https://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/...6986.bild.html
Respectfully, he's mischaracterizing the debate, as well as misrepresenting some aspects of science & practice.On another subject this was a very good article: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...-anti-science- by the Editor of Vaccines in Practice and a former chair of the British Medical Association's public health medicine committee.
For example, re. off-label use, it is rare to use a substance off-label—on a large scale, at that—unless there is substantial experience with using it in that manner, often from studies conducted after approval; in this case, we're talking about new vaccines—indeed, new types of vaccines—against a novel illness, so nobody can be said to have any substantial experience with the equivalent of off-label use.
He's also misrepresenting the issue somewhat. We have a great deal of knowledge about eg. influenza, influenza vaccines and even influenza pandemics, but, even with influenza, the optimum strategy in a situation similar to the present one can't be determined from basic principles alone without epidemiological simulations of different strategies under different assumptions & scenarios.
The claims re. primary response of the Pfizer vaccine completely misrepresent the data by glossing over the very high uncertainty of those estimates.
The response to the hypothetical risk of unfavorable selection ignores the fact that we have next to no relevant experience with any even remotely similar situations (a pandemic) as far as that hypothetical risk is concerned.
The argument re. the benefits of delayed vaccination—resulting in a better quality immune response—does not take into account risk of exposure & illness during the interval between doses.
Almost all the research demonstrating possible benefits of heterologous boosting approaches has been conducted on animal models, focusing on lab parameters, and frequently for experimental vaccine candidates that are not in clinical use; there is little applicable data on clinical outcomes in humans.
Finally, he begs the question, by suggesting that the alternatives are to save lives by taking an approach not currently supported by evidence—or lose more people by only taking the approach supported by available evidence; in reality, there are other alternatives—such as losing more people by taking an approach not supported by evidence, or saving them by taking the approach supported by evidence. The question is whether the UK outbreak is such that a breadth-first strategy is preferable to adequately vaccinating the highest risk groups as quickly as possible. You can answer that question in a variety of ways, but not simply from basic principles—you can and must show the work.
Last edited by Aimless; 01-05-2021 at 09:47 AM.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Deaths per million (last 7 days)
Lithuania 134.2
Slovenia 99.62
Croatia 81.87
Slovakia 80.31
Czechia 75.73
Hungary 74
Bulgaria 61.21
United Kingdom¹ 58.5
Panama 58.4
Bosnia and Herzegovina 57.26
Eswatini 55.74
Latvia 53.33
Poland 51.93
USA¹ 50.74
Georgia 49.73
Italy 49.12
Moldova 48.16
Switzerland 44.9
Austria 44.27
Germany 43.86
Sweden 43.56
Portugal 42.94
South Africa 42.79
Belgium 40.67
The US jumped 7 spots since you last posted this bullshit in this thread.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Republicans are so desperate to keep colleges open that they're making professors "critical infrastructure" in most of the states here. Which puts me in category 1B for the vaccine, I believe (after nursing homes and health care personnel). When you add the ridiculously high rate of refusal from the nurses down here, I might get this sooner rather than later.
Hope is the denial of reality
Well, you are critical, soRepublicans are so desperate to keep colleges open that they're making professors "critical infrastructure" in most of the states here. Which puts me in category 1B for the vaccine, I believe (after nursing homes and health care personnel). When you add the ridiculously high rate of refusal from the nurses down here, I might get this sooner rather than later.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Dude, the trash paper BILD is regularly spelled as "BLÖD" (i.e. "stupid") for a reason: They're full of wannabe demagogues and liars. Relying on anything they say is foolishness. It's tabloid trash.
There's even a song by Die Ärzte (a famous German punk band) which summarizes them as "Fear, hate, tits and the weather report" because that's all they are.
According to people who worked there, they're using terms like "shoot this guy" or "let's destroy that bitch" regularly in internal meetings. Their executive editor sees himself as someone who makes politics instead of reporting about it. That should tell you all you need to know.
Last edited by Khendraja'aro; 01-05-2021 at 11:42 AM.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
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