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It seems increasingly that Boris is indeed a gift from above, and that he will eventually deliver the break up of the union. 🙂
I suspect you are right.
Or if he does, he simply doesn’t care, because power/possession/vanity is more important.
Increasingly I'm starting to think he actually doesn't understand "truth" or "lie".
It's a weird one ... his school reports seem to show he was the same back then even by Eton standards but he doesn't even seem to take the opportunity to tell the truth even when it's the easy option ??? (and again I don't mean that in a politician way)...
I don't know if this happened to him or was he born like this?
I wouldn't be all that surprised TBH if it turned out parts of the government were behind the leaflet... some bizarre plan to obscure the truth through accusing themselves of lying ???
It's all VERY 1984 double think...
Nober
It seems increasingly that Boris is indeed a gift from above, and that he will eventually deliver the break up of the union.
You couldn't make this up could you?
Honestly even with the combined intellegence of hancock and bozster you couldn't possibly think this would go down well in any of the devolved nations. Even die hard unionist will be vomiting...
All I can think is its a double bluff... Bozzer is going to hand over power of the union to Nicola.
edit:
Actually I think that might be more popular than first glance.
My kid asked me and my mate who was the "best English politican" the other day and I said "English of British"... he was "Oh British then" and me and my mate both said Nicola Sturgeon at the same time.
That right there is the problem.
The modern world is more complex than yes/no.
I've been pulled apart on this forum more than once for suggesting such heresy! 🤣
Rather alarmed that Tory MPs are undermining the latest tier plans by demanding evidence after the event, with the press giving it their backing. Can see that playing into the hands of the Covid deniers/ignorers.
Obviously could have been avoided if the criteria were set out clearly before or alongside the announcement.
Much as I'd like to see the Tories stab Boris in the back. 😎
Actually I think that might be more popular than first glance.
Down here in little England... I take that offer up in a heartbeat.
Kelvin
Down here in little England… I take that offer up in a heartbeat.
Yep ... just time to cancel HS2 and put it between Manchester and Edinburgh ??
but seriously I wonder how popular it would be after the handling of this epidemic.
MoreCash
Rather alarmed that Tory MPs are undermining the latest tier plans by demanding evidence after the event, with the press giving it their backing. Can see that playing into the hands of the Covid deniers/ignorers.
I'm not totally convinced they are not the same thing. As in if it turned out later that spreading disinformation in 2 ways was actually official policy ..
I mean Bozzer knows that Govey leaked the biggy... and has ordered a police investigation he will doubtless then obstruct. Makes you wonder ...
HS2 will continue as it's a vanity project.
Sadly they have postponed Crossrail2 due to Covid-19, the £ Billions that were to be invested in that have morphed into £43.82 and a bag of gobstoppers for levelling up the North.
What the actual ****. Can someone please reboot this version of reality.
FFS. How we laughed when Trump demanded his signature be put on the stimulus checks.
Can Scotland adopt selected parts of the North of England on the way out please?
Can Scotland adopt selected parts of the North of England on the way out please
We'll take Cumbria, ye can keep the rest of it.
Rather alarmed that Tory MPs are undermining the latest tier plans by demanding evidence after the event, with the press giving it their backing
I don't think we can blame the MP's here, if the government provided evidence when they released the details then there'd be more buy-in to the restrictions.
You can argue about their timing, but asking for evidence is no bad thing.
I don’t think we can blame the MP’s here, if the government provided evidence when they released the details then there’d be more buy-in to the restrictions.
As per my next paragraph then....
That anti lock down poster appears to have been removed? I did report it but didn't actually expect anything to happen.
Obviously it will still keep on popping up but still...
Chloroquine & hydroxy if taken by CV19 patients may cause psychotic episodes...
https://www.politico.eu/article/drugs-hyped-as-coronavirus-treatment-linked-to-psychiatric-disorders-says-ema/
Could it make you falsely believe you are president of America?
Harry Potter takes on the Tier system:
Nadhim Zahawi, a minister for business and industry, has been placed in charge of overseeing the deployment of the Covid-19 vaccine, Downing Street has announced.
Is it the vodka talking or was Grayling too busy?
We're doomed now. He'll siphon off the budget for his property portfolio.
Good job we are paying millions for a vaccine Tzar......
Thought this blog posted to Wired on the vaccine trial reporting was very good and worth a read. http://hildabastian.net/index.php/100
Basically, the two mRNA trials were well set out Phase 3 designs with one simple endpoint. Reporting of them in press releases (which is a mandated activity for any trial results material to the share price) was clear and straightforward, as is the interpretation. By contrast, the world-beating Oxford/AZ trial was more convoluted, an amalgam of multiple trials and objectives, and reporting was (ahem) less than transparent. Only after Warp Speed's Moncef Slauoi revealed the randomisation has the true nature of the results come out.
Basically it appears that one contract manufacturer did not transfer the release assay for concentration of virus in the vials. This lower strength vaccine was used unwittingly and the reported reduction in adverse events led to further investigation.
In Biotech Land, the process is the product. If you can't make it reliably then you are absolutely looking for the paddleshop. On a scale of 1 (minor trial issue) to 10 (failed trial) this would rate about an 8-9 maybe a 10. OK the remainder of the data is probably OK (60% efficacy is enough for an emergency license) but the 90% efficacy can be wholly disregarded. The fact that the data is confounded (no >55 received the low dose) and there are no US patients due to an FDA clinical hold during the trial means that the vaccine won't be approved in the US without a further trial. AZ's CEO admitted as much and they will run a further trial.
MHRA may approve the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine this week for emergency use, ahead of the EMA.
If you want some good news, we are presently at the peak of the second wave of deaths and things will continue to go down as we leave lockdown into lockdown lite.
TiRed - if (as they claim) the AZ/Ox vaccine is 60% efficacy, and stops severe illness, possibly transmissibility too, would it be a good, cheap option for the mass population under 50, leaving the Pfizer/Moderna options for the most susceptible?
Yes, I think the OX/AZ vaccine can be approved and used, particularly as all vaccines (and antibodies) prevent serious disease. That is a huge benefit. For the West, cheap is not important - the cost compared to the economic cost of NPIs as a whole is trivial.
Moderna and Pfizer/Biontech have shown how to conduct trials properly rather than the make-do Oxford route - which looks and feels academic at best. Well-defined trials with limited but approvable objectives are what builds public confidence. Plenty of other vaccines coming along next year following the Pharma approval route.
Thanks. My main worry is getting my mum vaccinated (72) so we can see her, and help her move house to my village.
Personal immunity is a lesser worry, but definitely see “no jab, no entry” to some countries being an issue , both to my job and personal travel.
Have we done the effects of Covid-19 on Yankee Candle buyers?
😂😂😂
Week 47 mortality data shows 26% rise above normal means for the year. Or to put it another way, every death in the last eight weeks of 2020 is excess mortality above ten-year mean, and every death in the last five weeks is above the ten-year maximum. That will be about 60k over the past maximum. Things should stabilise by Christmas
My predictions for the coming weeks:
We will see the effects of lockdown for a further week on admissions and two weeks on deaths. Admissions and deaths will then stabilise due to Tier 2/3 going into Christmas. I’m fairly optimistic that over the five days (equivalent to half a Tier 1 doubling time with closed schools) of Christmas mixing we will see a roughly 40% (=sqrt(2)) increase in prevalence which will show in the first ONS survey of the year. This increase in prevalence will feed into (and predict) admissions in 2021-W1-2 and deaths in 2021-W2-3. Peaks will be broadly in line with levels seen now as the Tiers are reintroduced. All-cause mortality will be similar to past 10-year maximum mortality levels which normally peak in Week 2.
60% seems a bit rubbish to a man that doesn't know anything about vaccines (Although similar to flu shot)
Does that mean it has a 60% chance of stopping me contracting the virus? If that's the case then surely when things get back to 'normal' my exposure will be numerous times higher than it is now, and as such my risk of gettimg it will actually be greater.
The key point for the vaccine is the absence of ANY severe disease for those vaccinated. This will keep people out of healthcare, and that is the reason for restricting transmission with Tiers and Lockdowns. It's a good result. Think of the vaccine as giving you that lifetime of colds you would have had. A reduction in transmission is also possible but has not been tested in the studies.
If people around you have the vaccine then over time the likelihood of you coming into contact with it dramatically decreases from, oh I dunno probably <5% now, to <<0.1% in the summer
The key point for the vaccine is the absence of ANY severe disease for those vaccinated
So do we know how effective it is at reducing severe disease? Is that 60% (ie it effectively cuts the risk of becoming severely ill in half)
Apologies if this has recently been covered, but what are the current estimates for % population to have been infected? We were @ ~6% in June; where are we thought to be now?
I don't think there is any evidence that any(?) of the vaccines are either better or worse at stopping severe cases, than they are at stopping mild cases. Reasonable assumption may be that they are similarly effective.
60% wouldn't be fantastic on an individual basis but would certainly aid control and reduce the load on healthcare. 90% would be really good though and depending on uptake and persistence could fix this problem quite conclusively.
So do we know how effective it is at reducing severe disease
100% - nobody in the vaccinated arm had a serious COVID19 infection. In any of the three trials.
but what are the current estimates for % population to have been infected?
Based on most up-to-date ONS survey - note lower rates of infection mean that people lose their seropositivity, so these numbers may not reflect total numbers. Less than 1/8 is a robust answer.
Analysis of antibodies evidence from individuals who have had the infection in the past show: in England, an estimated 6.9% (95% confidence interval: 6.3% to 7.4%) of people would have tested positive for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 on a blood test in October, suggesting they had the infection in the past; there is substantial variation in antibody positivity between regions, from 10.8% (95% confidence interval: 9.3% to 12.5%) in London compared with 3.1% (95% confidence interval: 2.1% to 4.4%) in the South West.
Anyone seen the latest anti-vax bollocks doing the rounds on Facebook?
Apparently "forced vaccination is against the Nurumbrg [sic] Rules."
That " " taken directly off a comment on my FB from someone who clearly can't spell Nuremberg nor has any idea about the Trials. But hey it sounds good and also it sort of mentions The War so one for all the proud Brexiteers to get behind - there seems to be quite an overlap on the Venn Diagram of Brexiteer and Anti-Vaxxer.
There will not be compulsory vaccination. There may be a nudge along the lines that other countries won't admit you if you have not been vaccinated. Come Brexit we won't be going anywhere anyway 🙁
TiReD, that's a silly claim. Only a handful were infected, the proportion of serious cases is expected to be small. We certainly don't know any of the vaccines to be 100% effective against serious cases any more than if you toss a coin a couple of times and it comes up heads, you could claim to have invented a foolproof way of always getting heads.
@thecaptain - although you're "correct" in absolute terms, do you realistically expect the trial to test the total population?
Assuming an AZ breakdown of infections (they haven't given the breakdown) of Active/Placebo:
3/30 low dose trial (90% effective)
28/70 normal dose trial (60% effective)
31/100 (reported 69% effective)
That makes no serious infections in 28 treated on normal dose gives a 95% credibility interval of (0,0.098145). So I'm 95% certain that the vaccine is at least 90% effective in preventing serious COVID19 infections that lead to hospitalisation. Including the low dose (0/31) doesn't change this much.
I never mentioned prevention of infection - only serious disease. One could take the prior of, say 2-3% as the normal complication rate and update with a posterior. But this is now across three vaccines with no hospitalisations.
So I’m 95% certain that the vaccine is at least 90% effective in preventing serious COVID19 infections that lead to hospitalisation. Including the low dose (0/31) doesn’t change this much.
Technically I am 19/20 certain that the frequency of serious infections is less than 10%. But my best estimate is zero if I am a frequentist and less than 3% if I am a Bayesian. If I strongly believed before the trial that serious infections occur in 5%, then I am now very confident that the vaccine does something. If I have no prior belief before the trial, then my best estimate now is 0%, but larger values are possible. How's that? 🙂
Reporting of the OX/AZ trial has been an exercise in how NOT to report a clinical trial. And I've co-written those press releases for some of our trials in the past.
There will not be compulsory vaccination. There may be a nudge along the lines that other countries won’t admit you if you have not been vaccinated. Come Brexit we won’t be going anywhere anyway
It was hinted on BBC Breakfast that you might be allowed into pubs unless you have been vaccinated. I think that'll get plenty of volunteers ready for the jab.
TiReD, we already know that the probability of serious infection is around 10% (ballpark) as a proportion of cases. If your calculation doesn't take that into account it *cannot* be correct as a matter of principle. Saying that the frequency of serious infections (as a proportion of all infections) is no more than 10% in the treatment arm doesn't really say very much at all since it would only be 10% in the case of no treatment, and certainly your calculation does not support the claim that the vaccine is 100% effective in preventing these serious infections.
It was hinted on BBC Breakfast that you might be allowed into pubs unless you have been vaccinated. I think that’ll get plenty of volunteers ready for the jab.
Seems to be a good level of support for it in the licence trade, if Radio Scotia today is anything to go by.