UK Politics - You can't correct a mistake, if you don't admit it was a mistake

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, mormont said:

They're still a bit rubbish though. But that's OK because defence contractors never have to say 'sorry'.

Because those they most screwed over are dead and can't complain?

[Heartofice]

13 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

It kind of is translating to hospitalisations, the most recent PHE date apparently suggests the Delta/B.617.2 variant is about 2.5 times more likely to result in hospitalisations than the B.1.17 variant. 

 

Suggests but really isn’t clear and might well be the exact opposite.

Is Indian variant resulting in more hospitalisations

Quote

Is the Indian variant really more like to land you in hospital? That is the claim being widely reported this morning, based on Public Health England’s technical briefing 14. The briefing claims that the Indian (or Delta variant) is associated with a ‘significantly increased risk of hospitalisation within 14 days of specimen date.’ If you are infected with the Indian variant you are 2.61 times as like to require hospitalisation within 14 days, relative to the risk if you are infected with the Kent variant. And you are 1.67 times at greater risk of having to seek A&E treatment or be hospitalised.

The complicating factor is that the raw data actually points a little in the opposite direction. The full study analysed over 200,000 cases of Covid sequenced between 1 October 2020 and 31 May 2021, 94.7 per cent of which were the Kent variant and 4.2 per cent the Indian variant. In both cases, Kent and Indian, 3.9 per cent of people ended up making a visit to an Accident and Emergency department. Of the Kent variant, 1.5 per cent of cases resulted in a hospital stay, compared with 0.9 per cent of cases of the Indian variant. As for the mortality rate, 1.2 per cent of cases of the Kent variant resulted in death, compared to 0.2 per cent of cases of the Indian variant. It is only when PHE tried to adjust the results for age, sex, ethnicity, area of residence and vaccine status that they detected a higher risk from the Indian variant.

Adjusting for these factors might sound reasonable enough, but an important question remains: are people equally likely to be diagnosed with the Indian variant as they are with the Kent variant, or are there more milder cases missing in one instance than the other? One complicating factor is that the level of sequencing to pick up new variants has changed markedly over time. Up until February, fewer than 10 per cent of cases were being sequenced to find out what variant they were. By May that had climbed to over 60 per cent, before falling back slightly to around 50 per cent. 

The PHE report states emphatically: ‘confirmatory analyses are required to confirm the magnitude in change of risk’ – although this seems to have gone missing from much of the reporting this morning, which takes it as fact that the Indian variant is more likely to land you in hospital.

 

[ljkeane]

5 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Suggests but really isn’t clear and might well be the exact opposite.

Is Indian variant resulting in more hospitalisations

 

I'll take the conclusions PHE are drawing from their data over a journalist from the Spectator doing some back of the envelope calculations thanks. Of course that doesn't mean the specific numbers are exactly right or don't require more review but there's clearly significant reason for concern here. Along with some other recent reports on the potential for reduced vaccine effectiveness against this variant.

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, ljkeane said:

I'll take the conclusions PHE are drawing from their data over a journalist from the Spectator doing some back of the envelope calculations thanks. Of course that doesn't mean the specific numbers are exactly right or don't require more review but there's clearly significant reason for concern here. Along with some other recent reports on the potential for reduced vaccine effectiveness against this variant.

Also worth noting that hospitalisations aren’t really jumping up , and that discharges are quite high, suggesting that the severity of those admitted is unlikely to overwhelm the NHS. 

[Heartofice]

58 minutes ago, Leap said:

The landscape is obviously much different now thanks to the vaccine

Yes.

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Leap said:

The landscape is obviously much different now thanks to the vaccine, but the cases are clearly going to continue to skyrocket. We'll know in about two weeks how that looks in terms of hospitalisations, and fingers crossed hitting another million cases won't spawn some even worse variant that further reduces vaccine efficacy.

The main area of concern, beyond the variants, is that the number of people even partially vaccinated below 40 remains very low, and it's that age group where the virus spread quite freely in the previous waves and then jumped to more vulnerable categories. The benefit this time around is that the vulnerable categories are more or less fully vaccinated and the vaccines seem to be holding against the Kent variant and still mostly effective against the Indian variant. If people who are fully vaccinated start being hospitalised or dying from the Indian variant, that will be the real moment of concern. So we're stress-testing the vaccine right now, which may be ill-advised or might end up being totally fine. It's a bit of a shot in the dark. There does seem to be much more of an attitude of "fuck it, let's see what happens" this time around, even from people who were very careful in the prior waves. I think there are a lot of people who are at the end of their tether and the idea of a further lockdown is completely unacceptable, though the appetite for the current measures to continue to even to be rowed back a bit, and no further opening up does seem to be fairly strong.

The key weakness throughout the pandemic has been the reluctance to fully lock off the country and stop people travelling abroad and in and out of the country at will, bringing variants with them. It's why Britain has done so terribly compared to other island nations.

[Raja]

You know what would be useful with new variants - some form of test & trace, but we haven't had that throughout the last 18 months, which is another big weakness and we've sleepwalked into this situation. There was another window of having an effective track & trace when cases were much lower earlier this year but we didn't take advantage of that.

Could have slowed the spread, but we've chosen not to. We've basically allowed the Delta variant to become dominant, which we know is more transmissible with *possibly* some vaccine escape.

I would be very surprised if we drop all social distancing rules come the 21st, but wouldn't put anything past this government.

[polishgenius]

I'm absolutely furious coz it looked like I would be able to go to my sister's small wedding in July but now because of the way it's been handled Germany has had to go 'fuck no if you fly to the UK now you're doing full two week quarantines regardless of testing' which is sensible but means I can't go coz I can't miss that much work.

Haven't seen my family in 18 months and it's gonna extend to probably at least Christmas thanks to the cunts in charge. I know it's small things compared to what others have suffered to Covid but it's just so stupid.

[Heartofice]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/01/vaccines-keeping-covid-patients-intensive-care-say-nhs-chiefs

”

Crucially, the number of admissions peaked way below previous waves, even though the percentage of the community infections was similar. 

In May, the seven-day rolling infection rate rose to 453 per 100,000 in Bolton – higher than the January peak. 

Bu the Lancashire town saw a peak of 143 patients in hospital with Covid in January compared to fewer than 50 this time, suggesting vaccines have broken the linkbetween infections and admissions. 

Trust chief executives have also reported that those being admitted are not as sick, with few requiring intensive care.

Chris Hopson, the head of NHS Providers, said: "It's clear that, in some of these hotspot areas, the community infection rates have peaked and are coming down, so we're starting to get a picture of what the hospitalisation rate looks like when the variant hits a particular community – and this is much lower than in previous waves.

"There is no doubt that the vaccines have not only broken the link between community infections and hospitalisations but also in terms of the level of harm that comes with catching an infection.

"What is quite surprising is that hospitals are finding patients tend to be younger and they are able to treat them in general and acute wards, so the demand for critical care beds is significantly lower than it was in previous waves."

[A wilding]

Changing the subject, I wanted to flag up another horror being perpetuated by our government, one they seem well on the way to achieving by stealth.

Remember their plan to sneak in a "care.data" (  ) system a few years back? This was a scheme to upload the complete medical history of everyone in the UK onto a single centralised database and then sell access to whoever they then saw fit. They put up a fig leaf of "anonymisation" (easily broken and explicitly reversible "if there is a valid reason") plus vague promises that they would be careful about who they gave access, but the implications were still horrifying, and a big groundswell of opposition forced them to cancel it.

Well it is now back, and they are doing everything that they can to make it a fait accompli before everyone notices, while we are all distracted by the pandemic. The announcement was made on an NHS blog, and apparently on flyers in some GP's surgeries (as if anyone is visiting them right now). They are rushing it through, with the upload scheduled to take place on 1st July. You can opt out, but the deadline for doing so is June 23rd. And don't be fooled by the comforting lie they tell that you can always opt out later - that would just stop subsequent updates to your medical history from being uploaded.

If you want more details you can start from this BBC article (though it is way too kind on the government) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57341897

The opt out form can be found here: https://digital.nhs.uk/

And, anticipating a counter argument: there are already mechanisms for looking at our medical data for research purposes, but there are restrictions on who can see the data and what it can be used for that our government obviously considers irksome.

 

[SeanF]

16 hours ago, Hereward said:

Agreed on the first para. On the second, that’s because in most cases, it’s not the contractors’ fault. In this case, they are shit because, having been designed and built to the MoD specifications, there was a post last minute additional requirement to triple the armour, which makes them too heavy, and too noisy, to use safely. 
 

It’s like the notorious contractor failures of the SA80 rifle and the Type 45 engines, both of which were produced to the stated requirement that they were for use in the European theatre, and then didn’t work in deserts and tropical waters, respectively. 

 

Depends who you’re fighting. Against the Russians or Chinese, no, not much. Against a technologically less advanced country, such as, for example, Wales, they’d be perfect.

There are times I wish that we could have someone like Joseph Stalin in charge of defence procurement.  The amount of money that gets wasted on absolute junk is nauseating.

[SeanF]

12 hours ago, Werthead said:

The main area of concern, beyond the variants, is that the number of people even partially vaccinated below 40 remains very low, and it's that age group where the virus spread quite freely in the previous waves and then jumped to more vulnerable categories. The benefit this time around is that the vulnerable categories are more or less fully vaccinated and the vaccines seem to be holding against the Kent variant and still mostly effective against the Indian variant. If people who are fully vaccinated start being hospitalised or dying from the Indian variant, that will be the real moment of concern. So we're stress-testing the vaccine right now, which may be ill-advised or might end up being totally fine. It's a bit of a shot in the dark. There does seem to be much more of an attitude of "fuck it, let's see what happens" this time around, even from people who were very careful in the prior waves. I think there are a lot of people who are at the end of their tether and the idea of a further lockdown is completely unacceptable, though the appetite for the current measures to continue to even to be rowed back a bit, and no further opening up does seem to be fairly strong.

The key weakness throughout the pandemic has been the reluctance to fully lock off the country and stop people travelling abroad and in and out of the country at will, bringing variants with them. It's why Britain has done so terribly compared to other island nations.

Holiday bookings to Portugal seem to be holding up, despite the new restrictions, so I expect that that is correct.

I can't see any reason now not to let anyone aged over 18 get vaccinated.

[ljkeane]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

I can't see any reason now not to let anyone aged over 18 get vaccinated.

Supply/capacity restrictions I'd guess. Astrazeneca's pretty much no use for first doses anymore other than the few people over forty left who still want to get vaccinated and Moderna supplies seem very limited so it's largely down to how much Pfizer vaccine we've got. The focus seems to be primarily on second doses for the priority groups at the moment with appointments being moved up.

There are some reports today that it's going to move to over 25s next week though.

[Werthead]

6 hours ago, SeanF said:

I can't see any reason now not to let anyone aged over 18 get vaccinated.

Over 12. The government has started approving vaccinations from that age, and it looks like there's a lot of spread in secondary schools and even the upper end of primary school. Fortunately not resulting in any deaths (so far).

It also looks like the Pfizer vaccine, at least, is less effective against the Indian variant than others.

[ljkeane]

57 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Over 12. The government has started approving vaccinations from that age

No it hasn’t. The MHRA has cleared the Pfizer vaccine for use in 12-15 year olds but the JCVI hasn’t made a decision on whether to start vaccinating that age group yet.

I imagine they’ll probably finish the rollout to adults then carry on to under 18s after that.

[Werthead]

6 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

No it hasn’t. The MHRA has cleared the Pfizer vaccine for use in 12-15 year olds but the JCVI hasn’t made a decision on whether to start vaccinating that age group yet.

I imagine they’ll probably finish the rollout to adults then carry on to under 18s after that.

Good clarification. With the USA and France both going down that road, I suspect we will as well, given that spread in schools is still a problem.

[Spockydog]

The fucking neck on it. 

 

[Werthead]

More UK-EU trouble ahead, as the UK wants to unilaterally extend the grace period for certain goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK but the EU wants the situation sorted out permanently, and is threatening to impose sanctions. There seem to be a general feeling that might be grandstanding ahead of a last-minute deal (as has happened a few times) but the rhetoric is heating up again.

[Spockydog]

Pretty sure we're going to hear some of the "very good people on both sides" bullshit from Johnson over the course of the next few weeks. We've already had his spokesman saying these people have every right to peacefully protest.

Booing this gesture is racist act. It needs to be treated as such, and I would go so far as to ban these fucking degenerates. 

 

[Heartofice]

33 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Pretty sure we're going to hear some of the "very good people on both sides" bullshit from Johnson over the course of the next few weeks. We've already had his spokesman saying these people have every right to peacefully protest.

Booing this gesture is racist act. It needs to be treated as such, and I would go so far as to ban these fucking degenerates. 

 

What I don’t understand about the whole taking the knee thing is, it’s a symbol that is clearly really bad at communicating what people think they are communicating. If you were an advertising exec and your ad campaign was creating an intensely adverse reaction for half your consumers then you wouldn’t just double down and dismiss everyone as ignorant racists. You might rethink why your campaign isn’t working.

Taking the knee means different things to different people , and while there are some like the Gary Lineakers of the world who think that everyone booing it is doing it because they want more racism, that isn’t actually what is going on, just go and ask fans why they are booing, or go ask people like Zaha why they won’t do it any more.