Re: Coronavirus
 

Don't forget to add Easter to the equation, basically when people had other things on their mind for 4 days. Bound to have an effect.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Places to be, people to see... :D

Re: Coronavirus
 

Gone for a day out
But nowhere to pee

Re: Coronavirus
 

Yesterday over 400,000 second doses were given. Don't know the first dose figure but it looks like an Easter weekend blip.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Excellent news - thanks for the update.

Stats from Sky News

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-new...d-jab-12268954

Looks like 107k first doses, 408k second doses - 515k in total.

Re: Coronavirus
 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-says-brussels

Sounds like now our vaccination campaign and supplies from Moderna has sufficiently progressed the AstraZeneca (née Oxford) vaccine can go wherever it wants.

Now that we have a choice we are the ones questioning it’s safety and perhaps undermining the global vaccination effort. The world doesn’t have a compliant press to wave an equivalent to the Union Flag to deflect, deny and rally the crowds. Maybe toxic British nationalism has had a benefit after all as the benefits do outweigh the risks if you’ve no alternative .

As I noted as far back as January - we simply didn’t have a vaccination programme without it. Something of obvious importance to the Tory backbenchers - of even more value than making an informed choice.

If anything harms AstraZeneca (née Oxford)’s future sales it’s that they, and the apparatus of the a British state, were happy to suppress and belittle the legitimate concerns of regulatory bodies around the world. Coupled with selective efficacy values, and making a mess of almost every press release going, being the cheapest on the market in the biggest global health concern since 1918 might not cut the mustard given the significant economic impacts of the pandemic.

For a pharmaceutical company worth 94 billion quid the “plucky upstarts” line will not fly. They’re an experienced pharmaceutical company.

Re: Coronavirus
 

It’s a very sad, grey world you live in.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Couldn't have put it better myself.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Scotland ?:)

Re: Coronavirus
 

Grimsby/Cleethorpes?

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

Now that my good man is just not true, it's been sunny here for days.:D

Re: Coronavirus
 

Not sure who’s the biggest anti-Scottish pancake-maker - you or papa.

Could be a tie, I suppose? ;)

Re: Coronavirus
 

Papa was joking. :D

Chris's comments were uncharacteristically imprecise so he left the door open to such a comment.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Grey-t Britain.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

Just a heads up that a person claiming to be a Government statistician has posted that they have been asked not to submit any stats on the day of the funeral of Prince Philip.

If correct, this may be why nobody can find any for that day.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I’m sure they will be getting counted just there won’t be a news release that day.

Re: Coronavirus
 

OMG that's awful news. I don't know how I'm going to survive without my daily fix of statistical analysis and conjecture from the chaps at the top of their game.

Hopefully social media will come to the rescue with lots of extrapolated guesswork and opinionated 'result driven' forecasts with which to fill the void.

:rolleyes: :D

Re: Coronavirus
 

https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/br...ext-two-weeks/ https://www.cityam.com/under-30s-fac...from-tomorrow/

Re: Coronavirus
 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ty-autumn.html

Domestic vaccine passports an absolute slam-dunk. 'Short term' is the subjective part of the headline as real world performance of vaccines, vaccines against variants, etc. is still up in the air.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/09/h...-us/index.html

Meanwhile in the United States they are wondering how to give the Oxford vaccine the Roy Walker treatment - it's good, but it's not right.

Strong indications that emergency use authorisation would be rejected given their abundance of supply of higher efficacy/higher safety vaccines. The problem for the US is how to dump their supplies onto the rest of the world without it looking like they are dumping them.

There's a good reason I don't do full colour British expectionalism. ;)

Re: Coronavirus
 

Oh look, facts .... ;)

Re: Coronavirus
 

Print them in dark blue and place a coat of arms on the front and a free drink voucher inside and I'm sure you'll up that acceptance rate to 90%. ;)

China sound like they would be up for any spare AZ vaccines:

Re: Coronavirus
 

China mulls mixing vaccines to improve efficacy of jabs


As long as they aren't mixing up another virus.

Re: Coronavirus
 

German court bans the compulsory wearing of masks and rapid flow tests for school childern.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1..._E/mobilebasic

Re: Coronavirus
 

A family custody court rules on matters unrelated to family custody. I can see that standing up to scrutiny. :D

I see the full judgement is littered with UN Human Rights nonsense. Well, yes. A pandemic response does infringe human rights that's unavoidable. An effective one reduces the time required to do so my managing the pandemic not letting it get out of control - essentially such a narrow focus makes it worse for everyone.

Re: Coronavirus
 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56713017

Re: Coronavirus
 

Johnson & Johnson shot use suspended due to blood clot fears.

https://twitter.com/US_FDA/status/1381925612743499778

https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-n...73a77164c80b28

Re: Coronavirus
 

Less than 1 in a million.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Oh look!

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/5...4e6b2bb9bc5667 (may be paywalled, wasn't for me).

Re: Coronavirus
 

I'm thinking of opening a consultancy in numerical literacy training. Crazy decision making.

---------- Post added at 13:17 ---------- Previous post was at 13:16 ----------

Good news! :tu:

Re: Coronavirus
 

Confusion still reigns though.

and Matt Hancock

Re: Coronavirus
 

I'm delighted to see that the 'experts' in their field are still changing their minds when presented with new and compelling data, statistics and analysis.

Following the science does lead us a merry dance doesn't it ;)

Re: Coronavirus
 

Neither BoJo or Hancock are, by any stretch of the imagination, "experts in their fields" - they are, at best, bumbling buffoons...

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

This risk was identified months ago, and is low in all vaccines and a % will also be natural occurrences

Re: Coronavirus
 

What - they are bumbling or buffoons, but not both?

Re: Coronavirus
 

Sturgeon announces that Scotland's 'stay local' travel restrictions will end on Friday, along with a number of other things we were expecting to have to wait another 10 days for.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-56733608

It's almost as if there's an election coming.

Re: Coronavirus
 

If their fields are bumbling; as I suspect they are; then they're definitely experts in their field. ;)

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

I just find it intriguing that everyone else is playing it safe and we're always just finding it safe enough to not slow us down.

That said British exceptionalism has served us well so far so what could go wrong.

Re: Coronavirus
 

The two aren't contradictory. The original prediction was for ~500k deaths if we did nothing. We've actually had ~125k. If vaccines have prevented ~10k so far, everything else (but presumably mostly lockdown) has prevented close to 400k.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

Universally accepted around the world. ;)

Re: Coronavirus
 

About as accepted as a Scottish fiver in cleethorpes;)

Re: Coronavirus
 

Can't hold them with their webbed fingers...

Re: Coronavirus
 

For those going on about low numbers and risk, this is what just ONE person can "achieve".
Link
There's always the vaccines?

Re: Coronavirus
 

Steady nomadking you might dig up evidence the 12 week gap was a political stunt and that’s not on.

Following the science at all times.

Re: Coronavirus
 

13th February.
Link
All goes to show the damage just one case can do. Now consider a situation with 100 initial cases around the country, and the numbers quickly build up. A low number of current cases is meaningless.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Only if you accept the predictions based on dubious modelling were correct.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Yeah, because Nicola Sturgeon is exactly the sort of person to go along with one of Boris' political stunts.

Your persistent tinfoil-hatting on this subject is really very silly.

Re: Coronavirus
 

The Scottish Government follows the same JCVI. However they're UK Government appointed, and I assume paid, advisers.

The one thing we do absolutely know is that there would be nobody proactively collecting evidence that they would put in the public domain around it - hence us being the last to notice blood clot risks around the Oxford vaccine and an unnamed senior person within Government leaning on Channel 4 to suppress the story as it'd put releasing restrictions back two weeks.

There would also be a steady stream of establishment mouthpieces willing to deflect and deny for as long as possible to support the Government position.

I did notice Sky's most recent puff piece around the Oxford vaccine.

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-...llout-12272448

Nothing says you're being defended by the British establishment as much as being defended by a Dame.

Re: Coronavirus
 

You realise that positing lack of evidence as proof of your position is standard conspiracy theory procedure, yes?

Re: Coronavirus
 

I have no explaination for why it took us six weeks to join the medical regulators around the world in identifying the blood clot issue - despite issuing the most Oxford vaccines by far over the same time period.

I wouldn't pretend to have one. I'm sure many others would.

Maybe pure serendipity. Or Occam's razor.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I used to work in Academia, and still have lots of contacts in Admin and Research (especially medical) - there is no way this kind of thing could have been covered up.

Academics talk to each other (a lot) - it's how they work.

Re: Coronavirus
 

You have a much higher chance of being shot but they've done very little to suspend gun ownership, talk about priorities

Re: Coronavirus
 

They also contradict each other a lot.

If there's anywhere cronyism is going to further a career with a nudge and a wink from politicians it's almost certainly in the UK.

You don't necessarily have to outright lie, however selective presentation of data to create enough uncertainty to muddy the waters for long enough for Government policy to prevail.

Someone paid that herd immunity stooge Gupta. So I refuse to accept that on blanket terms that academics are whiter than white.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Yes, they did so well at Empire building. Respected the world over.

The Caribbean colony that brought down Scotland https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27405350

Re: Coronavirus
 

Well if someone was going to misinterpret the spirit of the post it was always likely to be you, a complete staple of the thread.

Re: Coronavirus
 

No one said that - however, the amount of people involved (funders, Principle Investigators, researchers, Research Students (grad & post-grad), peer reviewers, Research Ethics boards, support staff, civil servants, etc.), I find it hard to believe that nothing would have leaked if there were any shenanigans.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Not all of those people would necessarily have access to, or input at the stage of monitoring the MHRA yellow card system. Someone somewhere has to decide what constitutes statistically significant and then do a benefit/risk analysis. Get a couple of behavioural scientists hanging about to carp on about undermining the “get vaccinated” message and voila you just raised the bar, despite knowing there’s a risk.

For a full clinical trial yes you couldn’t outright fabricate findings. Where anomalies arise they’ll get clearly identified (e.g. the first AstraZeneca press release rushed out the day after Pfizer’s). However once you are into modelling and “best guess” scenarios - including prescribing medications in conditions outside those seen in clinical trials - you are suddenly relying on smaller subsets of results and analysis and selective studies.

These don’t necessarily need to stand up to scrutiny long term - just long enough to get a few favourable press releases before someone, somewhere points out that your subset of the population might be disproportionately young, disproportionately less likely to be disabled, more likely to have been previously infected, etc.

Re: Coronavirus
 

And then, later on (medium to long term), when the "real facts" come out?

Re: Coronavirus
 

Hide behind best judgement, difficult decisions to be made quickly, etc. Limitations of the scope of the study. Wave a Union Flag and slag off Brussels. Go to the House of Lords, pass go and collect £163 a day.

Plenty of opportunities as long as you stay on the right side of the fence where you look borderline incompetent at worst. Just look at Jenny Harries.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Stefan Simanowitz says it's not BoJo.
https://twitter.com/StefSimanowitz/s...93242010173440

Re: Coronavirus
 

The "duck test" holds...

---------- Post added at 23:50 ---------- Previous post was at 23:42 ----------

Not real world - looked what happened when the Torygraph promoted the UCL model on reaching Herd Immunity recently - all the rest of Academia pointed out the flaws.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Never knowingly disappoint.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Hardly related, but as a firearms certificate holder, I can tell you thats completely incorrect. :dozey:
Shootings with legally held guns in the UK are almost non existant, so you dont have a much higher chance at all.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Has the UK suspended that vaccine as well or something...

Re: Coronavirus
 

However the "rest of Academia" needs data to be able to do this.

Herd immunity Monday was demonstrably ridiculous because of the amount of data in the public domain - number of vaccines, theoretical maximum vaccine efficacy, knowledge that this drops with variants and the fact the textbook HIT needs an equal distribution of "immune" people throughout a population.

However to flip that on it's head what's the real world consequences of the UCL academics who came up with such a flawed paper? None. I appreciate nobody died however it could have, despite being discredited, some impact on population behaviours going forward. The rebuttals didn't get the same prominence from the same publications.

There's enough of the population who think it's all a hoax, think it's an authoritarian Government trying to cling onto unprecedented powers that it gives those who have been in denial all along further literature to reference that we don't need restrictions.

However there will be no consequence for these academics for publishing nonsense off their own back. Now do it on the Government dime and at least you get money for it.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

I feel like this thread has ceased to be a discussion about the world's present predicament and has become nothing more than point scoring.

Re: Coronavirus
 

It's taken you this long? ;) :D

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

^^^^
.THIS.

Re: Coronavirus
 

No! I'm just trying to get up the energy to put my moderator hat on.

Re: Coronavirus
 

An interesting article Re-Lockdowns.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...t-the-evidence

Re: Coronavirus
 

He’s anti-lockdown* and called for "herd immunity" last year, didn’t he?

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/...herd-immunity/

* The Great Barrington declaration signatory

Re: Coronavirus
 

Found this preprint paper today on who funded the chimpanzee adenovirus vaccine technology and COVID vaccine development at Oxford University - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...103v1.full.pdf

Lots of money invested there but also shows the lack of transparency in academic funding.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Does this make the article less interesting? I made no statement of agreement nor denial of the content.

You have a habit of apparently knowing what I am thinking. Good luck with that!

Re: Coronavirus
 

Yes it makes it less interesting because the author has been consistently wrong throughout the pandemic.

Some creative data analysis, shifting some assumptions and removing other key parts of decision making (NHS capacity) make for a thought experiment in fiction but no genuinely interesting analysis.

As I’ve said before throw some coin in the direction of academics and they’ll produce anything you like. Answers on demand. Like legal advice they’ll stretch the bounds of reality as long as it stretches their trouser pocket.

Suspect he woke up in the morning wondering how to get paid by the Spectator.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Are you saying the Imperial modelling (et al) has been consistantly correct?

Re: Coronavirus
 

No, or else I’d have used those words instead of the ones I opted to.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I didn’t comment on what you were, or weren’t, thinking - I commented on the author’s/Spectator’s inclination to be anti-lockdown/pro-herd immunity (cf. Tony Young et al).

You have a habit of apparently projecting your behaviours/inclinations on to others - good luck with that!

Re: Coronavirus
 

Here’s an ”interesting read” re pandemics.

https://www.pandata.org/wp-content/u...VID-Policy.pdf

Re: Coronavirus
 

https://www.ft.com/content/5251e1b9-...a-29dc34d37652 or Google the headline.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

Hes not the only one :erm:

Re: Coronavirus
 

It’s the second most difficult thing in the universe, after block transfer computation.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Something to do with SD quality on a HD TV isn't it?

. . . or is that Tripixelated Inversion :shrug: ;) :D

Re: Coronavirus
 

That report is all kind of 'woo'!

I started reading it got to the section 'Stringency of measures has no effect on total deaths assigned to COVID-19'. It looks very formal and scientifically written but doesn't bear any scrutiny. The two references (Chaudhry et al. and De Larochelambert et al.) are worth a read as this report very much cherry picks their conclusions.

Both reports state that socieconomic factors are more important drivers of outcomes than lockdowns but the first report also states that lockdowns spread out the pandemic over a longer period - flattening the curve in Boris speak. The hypothetical question will always be what would the mortality rate from COVID infections be with a short sharp peak that overwhelms hospitals. The second report states that a very rapid lockdown of international travel such as seen in Taiwan, New Zealand and Iceland was very effective.

I kind of gave up after that as this author is pulling out statements with little regard for the overall conclusions of the studies he is citing.

Re: Coronavirus
 

He's known for it...

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...Don't_Work https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/b...-pseudoscience

Re: Coronavirus
 

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

Apparently that was only in Lower Saxony, due to an over-zealous interpretation by the Lander government.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...a-privacy-laws

Re: Coronavirus
 

I think 'over-zealous interpretation' could easily apply to much of the entire Covid 19 debate . . not only on here ;)

Re: Coronavirus
 

I thought a bit of poetic licence was more than acceptable if it helps get a dig in to anything European related.

Re: Coronavirus
 

“Up shit creek nix paddle” would have been poetic licence!

Re: Coronavirus
 

They have enough paddles, it's just that they're holding the wrong end when using them :D

Re: Coronavirus
 

Probably just as well the EU didn't get its act together. otherwise they would still be holding on to European-wide(including UK) production for themselves.