From my Twitter account this morning:
What is this government doing?
Just for the record, this is one plot of what is happening with Covid in school-aged children:
I've been updating this graph showing 10-14 year olds in Bristol for a while now, and it's been growing steeply -- exponentially -- so this shouldn't be surprising, but the rate per 100K has gone from 390 to 527 in one day. Gulp. pic.twitter.com/TjzgYFntaS
— Colin Davis (@ProfColinDavis) July 3, 2021
This is reality: this disease is out of control. And that is government policy.
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There is a debate in our household about our children (18 and 16) getting a jab. I think that they should.
I still find it hard to believe that we think it is OK to let a highly adaptive and dangerous organism continue to live amongst us.
It’s the age of arrogance.
It’s also a very risky strategy born of those reckless opportunists who rule over us.
Surveys suggest ore tha n 90% of parents would agree to teenage children being vaccinated
Absolutely they should be. They only way to get to community immunity is to reduce the number of susceptible people, and that includes people aged under 18 as well as those over 18. Children are people too.
The government’s chosen alternative is to let them catch the live disease – indeed, they seem to be encouraging it – with all the potential downsides that entails. To be clear, no vaccination is entirely effective or entirely risk free, but the risks of catching the disease are much worse.
Have just been told by FB that I could not share this post because its content had been reported as abusive. What can be going on here?
I have no idea….
It may have nothing to do with the post itself. It may be because someone is trying to shut up whoever posted it.
Complaints of “bullying” or “hate speecch” are normally accompanied by a ban in posting for up to a month and what FB considers to fall under these categories can be truly bizarre.
This happens regularly to people who post criticisms of the Chinese government normally just before some newsworthy event. For instance a lot of people were hit by posting bans the day before the arrests of journalists at Apple Daily started.
FB?
This is apparently happening a lot today….
The main problem is that we have a bunch of immature adults making government policy that focuses on ensuring that they are liked by the public and continue to ride high in the polls, rather than enforcing polices that protect the public.
I am very worried.
Fortunately, I have a stash of ffp3 masks, due to doing renovations on a very damp motorhome, and will be taking one with me from now on.
My Covid infection now seems to have passed – I feel much better and my lateral flow test is finally back to negative after a week of clear positive readings (although the past few days have seen a fading T-line: as a scientist it’s been quite fascinating, really)
However, my sense of taste and smell is almost non-existent! I have no idea if it’ll come back. The one saving grace is that I can taste coffee (although only the very strong notes)
I know it’s not death, I know it’s a mild inconvenience, but seriously, why even risk hundreds of thousands or even millions of people ending up like this? It’s insane.
For completeness: I’ve had one shot of Pfizer, about a month prior to infection, and I believe I had Covid in the first wave. By all common logic, I should have been pretty much protected.
Evidently not…
I am glad you are better
My son has had it twice now…
He’s now home because after round two he is utterly exhausted
Oh dear, really sorry to hear that :(. I hope he makes a full recovery and that the fatigue isn’t too long lasting.
There is a slight glimmer of anecdotal hope from my recent infection, in that my parents-in-law have not reported symptoms or positive tests, despite us being at theirs for Sunday dinner the evening before my very strong positive lateral flow test (they have both had both jabs, well over a month ago)
Additionally, my fiance, with whom I have been in close contact throughout my entire infection (our flat is neither big enough, or laid out in such a way, that effective home-quarantine is possible), thankfully displayed only very mild symptoms and has not provided a positive lateral flow or PCR test. She, like me, has had one jab about a month ago…
But, really, I would say that this were further evidence for completing vaccination before removing any further restrictions. Lifting restrictions now is an awful idea and is wasting so much hard work, plus the risk of straining an already over-stretched NHS, plus long covid, plus deaths, etc etc.
Indeed with the case rates (and now hospitalisations) rising rapidly, I cannot fathom how the no-mask fetishists are still so vocal. Or allowed airtime…
Good luck still
And I agree with your conclusion
Useful stats on BBC Coronavirus site today. Particularly, I noted the lack of vaccinated inhabitants in South American countries except Chile, low numbers in most African countries and some countries in the Far and Middle East. Another significant fact is that the Palestine Territories have only vaccinated 16.5 per 100 people whilst Israel has vaccinated 124.6 per 100 people. In view of the fact that Israel was Palestine in the past and the Palestinian Territories are restricted by Israeli rules it seems to me that Israel has a moral responsibility to vaccinate ALL people in that whole area of Israel and Palestinian Territories.
People in poor countries are not vaccinated either because they are controlled by richer countries or because they lack the relevant infrastructure and resources or are governed by a corrupt elites. In some cases, a mix of a number of those reasons. If we donate vaccine to them, how can we ensure it will reach the most vulnerable poor?
Javid’s actions fit with the very worst that you might have expected of him given his background and previous utterances. Never has a ‘Health’ Secretary been more inappropriately titled.
With this level of infections, expect to see borders closed to UK visitors for some time to come. Even the most desperate resort will be reluctant to accept British visitors. Im assuming all overseas travel is probably off for the next 3 months at least, which with close family in the USA and France is disappointing.
Javid is not a ‘Health’ secretary.
He’s a ‘Stealth Secretary’ – he’s been given the job for a particularly underhand purpose.
If you were to pick a minister to privatise the NHS, equipped with the most extreme ideology and lacking any qualms about the consequences, Javid fits the bill perfectly.
Thank you for such a clear and succinct explanation of yet another vile policy that this appalling Tory government is imposing on us.
I wonder what the real (not official) NHS operation waiting list might be come the spring. I fear it could be epic and beyond convential measures to fix.
The expalantion for the rewriting of pandemic rules and regulations seems to have followed the change in Health Secretaries; we have thus simply moved from the frying pan, into the fire. So you thought anybody other than Hancock was bound to be an improvement? Think again.
It would appear that the new Health Secretary is an admirer of Ayn Rand’s novel ‘The Fountainhead’ (1943). The leading protagonist of Rand’s somewhat heated, romantic notions of the world in the novel, Howard Roark (a free market architect), represents the visionary ideas that will supposedly come to our rescue. In Howard Roark, Sajid Javid has however rather prosaically found the perfect metaphor to demonstrate the flaw, the running fissure slicing through Rand’s ideas, that so often has rendered free market neoliberalism so prone to catastrophic failure in the real world, when faced with real world, adult crises, over and over again: for the answer to Howard Roark may be summarised at much less investment than Rand’s brittle novel’s length; indeed answered in fewer words than a Conservative Government PPE contract’s legal boilerplate; or in even less time than aGovernment, insider chumocracy’s fast-track application operation.
The answer to Howard Roark’s idea of free-market, laissez-faire architectural innovation thesis may be given in but a single word: Grenfell.
It is no mere irony that free-marketeers always wish to “burn” red-tape; because the words ‘burn red-tape’ should lead us immediately to remember Grenfell, and sternly remind us that the Common Good is much more often there simply to save our lives; or our homes and savings.
While my personal interpretation of the Covid situation sometimes differs from yours, I am in agreement this time. Given the underlying increases in Delta infections in unvaccinated age groups, there seems no objective reason for July 19th as a date to release restrictions.
And the failure to understand the benefits of masks after a whole year is ludicrous.
There is a discussion to be had on the relative benefits of extending vaccination to school-age children in the UK versus supporting protection of more vulnerable populations in developing countries – but that needs intelligent analysis which is not in evidence.
Cases continue to shoot up – tens of thousands of cases each day for the last few weeks and now over 25,000 a day – and hospitalisation are following, over 350 on 29 June (the latest date available, about a week ago).
Hospitalisation seem to be doubling every two weeks so could already be approaching 500 and perhaps 1000 per day in two weeks time. Exponential increase often appears manageable until it explodes out of control.
It is not just young people who recover quickly – the numbers of people in hospital and on ventilators are also up markedly. Mercifully deaths remain low but the pressure on the NHS (GC) is increasing day by day.
Agreed
That said, and I am always open to new evidence, I wonder how much there is to support this suggestion. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-02/delta-coronavirus-variant-symptoms-vaccines-spread/100255804
We know the delta variant is much more transmissible than the alpha variant, which is more transmissible than the original coronavirus. Reproduction number is up to around 6 (comparable to rubella or polio) from around 3 (comparable to the common cold, and much worse than flu).
But is it as dangerous? Many diseases have evolved to become less fatal to their hosts.
The case fatality rate of the original virus may be around 1 or 2% (comparable to smallpox or measles) but what if the case fatality rate of the delta variant is only around 0.3%? That is comparable to seasonal flu. If ten million people catch it perhaps 30,000 might die. Brutal and fatalistic as it seems, I start to see the analogy with a bad flu season (albeit much worse due to the much higher transmissibility).
Even if the delta variant is much less fatal, that still doesn’t deal with the risk of ever increasing hospitalisations putting pressure on the NHS, or the risk of further variants emerging, or the prevalence of long COVID.
Or the risk of mutation into something worse
But, even if we assume a flu-like case fatality rate of 0.3%, the fact that the transmissability is many times greater means that it won’t just be like “a bad flu season”
It’ll be similar to a devastating flu season.
I feel like I’m banging my head on a brick wall with this, but a small %age of a very large number is still a large number.
The transmissability of the delta variant is massive! Assuming many/most people do away with any mediating measures, it won’t “just” be 10m cases. It’ll be most of everyone.
Get yourself some ffp3 masks, everyone!
I use ffp2 now
Indeed, Johan. Transmissibility of the delta variant is massive, albeit not a massive nor as fatal as measles (perhaps R0 of 12 or 18 or more, and case fatality in an unvaccinated population of perhaps 1-3%).
Part of my reason for stating it like that that was to make it clear that it could indeed be much worse than a bad flu season due to the much higher transmissibility. It all depends on whether infections are 1 million, 10 million or 50 million.
At 0.3% fatality, 50 million cases could turn into a further 150,000 COVID deaths in the UK, and potentially many more if the NHS is overwhelmed by tens of thousands of hospitalisations.
Somehow the government thinks risking that – plus together with millions of cases of long COVID – is an acceptable outcome and represents some sort of return to “normality”.
It is very worrying. The focus of the lamestream media is on the numbers of deaths and hospitalisations along with the vaccinations with the former two being low at present. However, they are rising – not by a huge amount but nevertheless rising.
But, there are many gaps in what is being reported in the LSM – there is almost no mention of if, and how much, Covid affects those who catch it but are not hospitalised and the impact of Long Covid. I’m guessing studies are being done on this. Similarly, how are the under-18s affected by it and how easily do they transmit it. When will the booster jabs start being administered and will that be to everyone who has had two jabs. No doubt there are many other questions as well.
It feels very much like a con job by this so-called govt to persuade the country to accept that everything is fine and there is nothing to worry about. Normality will be here soon and we can all celebrate our freedom (sarcasm mode activated).
Regards,
Craig
There is this bizarre idea that it is a matter of personal conscience as to whether individuals participate in helping manage a pandemic.
Er, no.
States, cities and communities have always managed pandemics communally.
Whether it be collecting and disposing of the dead, closing borders and city walls, or instituting the principles of public health management: test , locate and isolate, organising care for the suffering and those unable to look after themselves. and organising vaccine production and distribution etc
But this government and its ideological supporters are so determined to deny that salvation lies in communal activity and socialistic virtues that it is prepared to risk further spread , further harm and deepened economic impact.
Starmer needs to be speaking clearly.
Agreed
I really don’t think that he cares enough to speak out.
It really is a case study of the extreme end of libertarianism. ‘I should have absolute freedom to do whatever i want regardless of the consequences for others’. Even when those consequences are serious illness or death. Javid’s appointment is a very dark and downward step.