Carbuncle

I don't think you understood what I wrote.

It is a sliding scale: Being Boris without due care and attention Gross Borisconduct in a public office Being Boris while under the influence Grievous Borisly harm

True enough. I'd be prepared to convict Boris just for being Boris.

What do you mean? Isn't the fact that Boris has denied it enough for a conviction?

The Evening Standard is reporting fines of £1100 for attendees of parties on the same day as the alleged Downing Street party ( https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/covid19-rules-downing-street-party-westminster-magistrates-court-police-b970925.html ). Yet the Met refuses to investigate the Downing Street event.

Please stop posting misinformation. You have offered a source for your data but the source does not actually provide the data you assert it does. You have not indicated what you did to the source's information to derive your data. The data in your table is incorrect according to the coronavirus dashboard (https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths ) which for example, provides a count of deaths with covid of 146 135 (today's number not Dec 1st) rather than 98 599.

I'm not sure this is right. For example, conspiracy theorists are quite capable of finding each others' nonsense online and quite capable of dismissing more sensible sources of information which are much more prominent.

A comparison of rates of covid hospitalisation and death at a fixed point in time for England, Scotland and Wales is a very weak means of establishing or refuting the effectiveness of mask wearing and vaccine passes. 1. As has been pointed out correlation does not imply causation. For example, it may be that higher case rates are actually the cause of more restrictive measures rather than the reverse. 2. If one is confident of causation and therefore uses this data then one should note that the wrong thing is being compared across these locations. If you change your non-pharmaceuticals interventions (NPIs) they do not instantly change the levels of infection but rather the way that this level of infection will evolve going forward. Perhaps an example would help. Suppose a location magically chose sufficient NPIs to keep levels of infection constant. The comparison proposed ends up scoring that location at it's level of infection prior to the imposition of the NPIs and the performance of NPIs themselves are not measured. [Technically, if you really want to do this (I think) the comparison should be on the basis of the derivative of the log of the rate of hospitalisation (or death) with respect to time, ie the gradient of the relevant curve.] 3. Once one begins to use this correct measure one can bring in data from all over the World because this gradient is not dependant on minor variations on for example what constitutes a 'death with covid'. It is then far more principled to use the whole data set than a cherry picked subset. 4. There remains a huge problem, however. Mask wearing and the presence of vaccine passes are not the only things that impact the data. One has to account for varying levels of prior immunity, how much time is being spent indoors, how good compliance is, when school holidays fall, population density, ... and so on and so forth. These other relevant variables vary across the UK or indeed the World.

We already have 4th vaccines for the immuno-suppressed in the UK. And although I am pleased to hear you are doing your bit to protect yourself and others I would note that over 21 million Britons have already had a third jab. Do try and keep up and maybe save the bold for things that deserve it.

The spread of misinformation has been causing a lot of problems recently. Politics in the US would seem to have been polarising in an alarming manner driven by the misperception that the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen amongst other things. In regards to covid a small but significant fraction of people would appear to believe that the disease is an order of magnitude less deadly than it actually is ('it's just the sniffles'). An overlapping segment believe that the fantastic covid vaccines that we now have are either very much less effective or very much less safe than they actually are. The consequences of belief in this covid misinformation in terms of death and disease are terrible. Central to the problem of misinformation seems to be our relationship with politicians, news media and the internet. Politicians and journalists are widely regarded as untrustworthy because they have frequently proved to be untrustworthy. Thus one of the main routes for the correction of misinformation is tainted. Meanwhile misinformation spreads rapidly through the internet from dubious sources via people who seem not to have considered very carefully the material they are linking to. Is there any way to improve the situation? Do we need (more) censorship? If we do who should we trust to perform this function? Do we need new legal penalties for those who spread misinformation? Is there some way to make our news media more trustworthy and presumably thereby more trusted? What about our politicians? Could better education help? Why are some people so poor at assessing information and evidence? Why do they so willingly retransmit misinformation? Alternatively, will 'the system' right itself, evolving to something more functional, as individuals adjust to the changing information landscape?

Biden seems to have explicitly ruled out military action against Russia should they invade Ukraine. He is instead threatening economic sanctions should the Russians invade. Eg. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59582013 . Well, that's that then.

I think there has been a misunderstanding. I think an analysis of the kind proposed will always be weak ... even with the inclusion of the full data set. However if one is going to attempt an analysis of this kind one should not take an arbitrary subset of the data such as the values for just England, Scotland and Wales on one specific day. This is a strawman. I did not describe these particular posts as misinformation indeed I conceded that they were evidence albeit of an incredibly weak kind.

Yeah, this is evidence against masks and vaccine passports but its incredibly weak, just incredibly weak. This kind of thing is just not the way to get information on the question of the effectiveness of masks and vaccine passports. And of course you have ignored all the other data points in the obvious data set, ie values for other countries which do and do not have some combination of masks and vaccine passports. How many times have you posted this nonsensical analysis? 3 times? Let's leave it at that, it's just weak.

Bother, after a bare few hours of advocating a bit of suppression I am back to being in the mainstream. Where's the fun in that?

More hypocrisy.

I disagree with every line of this. Ooh look, a covid press briefing is coming. I wonder whether Plan B is about to be announced?

'Getting rid of' is such a harsh term. I prefer the term recycling. I am sure we could sell them to Disney who could build a theme park around them or maybe we could install them permanently in the Big Brother house and sell the product on pay-per-view. There really are so many possibilities.

It's cheaper than you might think, Morrisons is providing it as a free service when you spend £8, apparently.

Looks like Allegra Stratton is headed for the Lords ... she's just resigned her position as a Government spokesperson.

The infodemic is real ... just look at what has happened in the US where Trump spread his poison. How would you cope with misinformation? (I take it for granted that you'll recall I feel you are a covid misinformationalist.) And what about people who flounce around hospitals unmasked?

I see no reason to ban outdoor swimming at this point. You could swim at Hathersage.

That's pretty outrageous, comparing a desire to clampdown on antisocial behaviour to Nazi Germany.

Yes I found that amusingly lacking in self-awareness too.

And the MASSIVE effect on your life is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. I'll reiterate: nothing too drastic, do the relatively easier things first. People should be asked to work from home where possible. Shutdown indoor sports venues and gyms. Tighten up on masking in indoor spaces. Re-emphasise social distancing. You object to my potentially ambivalent misnominalization and then insult me ("call people names", "confident and well developed intellect"). Surely you recognise you're being hypocritical.

How big is the effect? Show me the evidence. Bear in mind we'll be saving lives and NHS resource for other uses.