Carbuncle

The UK can't suppress mask wearing just because one person has a strong aversion to them. I'm sorry but you are just not that important.

Interesting. Previously you have claimed to have done them for twenty years. It's more credible when your story stays the same over time.

Bats are the origin of SARS, MERS and SARS-CoV-2 and are the subject of intensive virology research based on the huge variety of viruses they harbour and the potential threat they pose to humans. For example: Bat origin of human coronaviruses ( https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-015-0422-1 ). As you say there is often an intermediate host between bat and human. I seem to remember that virologists found many antibodies for various bat coronaviruses found in bat infested areas of Southern China meaning presumably that human were being infected directly by bats. Sorry I cannot remember where I read this.

Bats are the main source of coronaviruses. They live in caves. Every night they fly out of their caves and deposit their guano while in flight. The guano which goes everywhere contains viable coronavirus. Lots of opportunity for coronaviruses to jump species barriers.

Ridiculous documentary. Only about a minute's worth of information padded with innuendo.

Setting aside the current case ... Child protection work is clearly very difficult. Failures can occur in both directions. Ripping families apart is obviously extremely traumatic for children and the care system has frequently been a source of danger to its 'users'. Leaving children with abusive or potentially abusive parents also carries huge risks. The close decisions are obviously hard decisions and the consequences of errors are massive. Rather than focusing on one particular case we (or rather the appropriate experts) need to make sure the system as a whole is functional and keeps errors at reasonable levels. I don't know how to assess the system as a whole though my prejudice is that social work is underfunded and that Delbow's seemingly more informed assessment is right. I do know I don't trust either knee-jerk reactions or warm words from politicians and their ilk.

You keep making the same point: covid is not a particular problem for the vaccinated and the healthy under-40s therefore once all the over-40s and vulnerable have had the opportunity to have the vaccine we could have ignored covid and gone back to normal and suffered only modest health consequences from covid. I understand what you are saying. The problem is it's not true and it does not get any more true for your repetition of it. If we had removed all restrictions in April, cases would have grown rapidly and we would either have toughed it out with hospitals overwhelmed (to the point of not even being able to give oxygen to all those who could benefit from it) or reimposed a hard lockdown. Replace April with mid-June and I do not know what happens but for April, I think it's clear using simple arguments with data that is publicly available. You just have to contemplate the possibility that you have missed something and actually look at the data for yourself. But I'm guessing you are just going to post that graph from AgeUK for the fifth time and repeat yourself.

A lot has changed in the years since Spanish flu. When Spanish flu struck the pattern of mortality was very different. World War I was causing catastrophic loss of life though its end, at least on the Western Front, was clearly in view. Smallpox and polio were rife. Child mortality was horrific to the extent that life expectancy at birth in Britain was under 55 years and nowhere in the World was it over 65 years. Most of the World's population lived in abject poverty and suffered from what we would consider to be chronic malnutrition as exhibited by the increase in adult height. Relative to the other problems societies faced, Spanish flu in its day might well have been a smaller issue than covid is now. It also has to be borne in mind that the covid pandemic is not over yet so we do not have the full bill yet. Finally, in making any comparison, we should bear in mind that when we count the health cost of covid it is the cost of a heavily mitigated epidemic. We have had the choice to mitigate covid's impact a lot more effectively than was available to those who faced Spanish flu. A couple of last points in reference to the 'once in a hundred years' theme: 1. We have had other serious, non-pandemic, contagious diseases (eg smallpox, polio, malaria, measles) to contend with ... their impact has been falling. 2. HIV/ AIDS, another pandemic in the last fifty years, has killed more people than covid albeit over a protracted period.

Perhaps you have a misunderstanding as to what a strawman is. If in response to your post, I write 'But Tinky Winky is purple' then I am arguing against a strawman because your post does not make a claim that Tinky Winky is some colour other than purple. I would be stating a fact because Tinky Winky is purple but it would not be a response to your argument. Now let's have an example. Suppose I say (as I did) 'strawman' but your argument is against my having said 'that's not true' then that would be a strawman argument because you have addressed a different point from the one I made. Can you see where this is going? When you say "It's not a strawman, it's a fact," well that's actually a strawman argument. Congratulations, you win the internet.

Strawman. I made no comment on vaccine passports. Amazingly, you have managed to fit in another strawman. I'm sorry you did not understand the point I was trying to make. Perhaps I could have been clearer. I am concerned about the possibility of cases of omicron in the UK doubling week after week after week pushing us into crisis. It could be, as you suggest, that cases in the UK are each individually on average less bad than those in South Africa.

Some documents relating to the meeting of SAGE at the end of November were released a couple of days ago. NERVTAG (New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threat Advisory Group), one of the advisory groups that feeds into SAGE released some initial observations on the omicron variant ( https://app.box.com/s/3lkcbxepqixkg4mv640dpvvg978ixjtf/file/890120528845 ). A couple of interesting points: 1. Some existing PCR tests can distinguish omicron from delta. This is important because it makes spotting omicron easier. I say 'some' because (I believe) more than one PCR test is in use and what NERVTAG points out is that in South Africa their PCR tests were distinguishing omicron from delta. 2. NERVTAG gave an estimate of omicron's reproduction number, R of 1.9 in South Africa. I take this to mean that numbers of omicron infections were doubling roughly once a week in South Africa. South Africa has lower rates of vaccination than us so we may be better off ... possibly. The NERVTAG meeting is actually from the 25th November so they may have better information by now.

BS. Repetition of the BS will not make it right. Reduction in transmission due to acquired immunity within the population is also important. People who are under 40 and healthy but vaccinated contribute mightily to this. This obviously also matters.

Lucky he wasn't a head butler then.

What about the cleaning product sketch, did he do that one?

I agree with the proposition that the virus is till capable of spreading in the UK's highly vaccinated populaton. It's not quite what the bit in bold says but perhaps it is something we can both agree on. The point is that in the absence of any acquired immunity, delta daily case numbers would balloon by 500% (or 700% or 900%) each week given the recent relaxed attitude to non-pharmaceutical interventions. Having the numbers grow or fall by 10 or 20% per week is tremendous testimony to the vaccines' effectiveness in controlling transmission.

Do you remember how tops used to post links to "evidence" that he thought supported his view and how when you clicked through they turned out not to. Strange thing: I do too. Important question: is this vaccine related?

What we really need is some kind of register in which people could record random events and coincidences that they have noticed. Then we could know how often people think of their grannies just before their phone rings and it's their granny. We could see how often Morrisons is out of sandwich spread and black olive tapenade at the same time, too. Also has anybody else noticed how often Dec 2nd comes immediately after Dec 1st and how often your car starts making a funny noise before a service in which you receive a big bill. Also is the fridge light really off when you close the door. So many questions.

They have given 90 million vaccines in England, has it worked? What would the death figures be like without those 90 million vaccinations, we dont know. There are two parts to this: (1) How has the vaccine changed the number of people who would have been infected to this point in time? (2) How has the vaccine changed outcomes for those who are infected? In both cases the effect of the vaccine has been positive and provided one is prepared be rough about ones calculations it is possible to see this from data we all have access to. In regard to (1), the vaccine got us out of the lockdown of the early months of the year even though we have had to cope with the more transmissible delta variant. In regard to (2) the case fatality rate has gone from 2%, ie there was one death for every 50 cases, in the second wave to about 0.3 %, ie about one death per 350 cases, in the third wave.

No, this is not true. Fit test, fit check, no facial hair ... it's all good stuff but FFP2 and FFP3 masks don't magically become useless if you don't do them.

It's worse than that. Before the pandemic arrived in the UK, one of the committees (NERVTAG?) advising the government said frontline NHS staff should wear surgical masks to protect themselves. Nobody had ever previously considered surgical masks as a form of PPE. So for over a year (?I think?), some NHS staff were being offered surgical masks when they should have been given 'high grade PPE'.

Jenny Harries also told us, in a press briefing early in the epidemic, there was no general problem with PPE. A week later, when further widespread problems had emerged, she said she had been being hopeful. She is a liar ... so they promoted her.

I would assume he was being hyperbolic. It's quite common for people to say things like 'we will do everything possible to ...' or 'we will spare no expense to ...' . You are making a mistake to interpret such statements literally especially in the political sphere.

I do believe the vaccine are very effective at stopping transmission. Thank you for not throwing up a strawman and correctly assessing my view. Every week the Health Security Agency (UK HSA) publishes a vaccine surveillance report in which, amongst other things, they update estimates of the effect of the vaccines on infection and transmission( https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccine-weekly-surveillance-reports ). And each week they conclude they are highly effective at reducing transmission. It is also possible to look directly at the data and see something of the effectiveness of the vaccines at stopping transmission. For example, the alpha variant which was such a threat in the second wave has (virtually?) disappeared!. Further, delta (which is known to be more contagious than alpha which is more contagious than the classic variant which was originally such a threat) is being held roughly steady in terms of numbers. Absent the vaccine's impact on transmission it would have overwhelmed us. It's a quote from (the egregious) Dominic Cummings. The second wave was largely optional.

This is false.

I do not have an estimate for the percentage of people dying within 28 days of a positive covid test who actually died of covid [and I never said I did]. I do not even think 'died of covid' can sensibly be defined. 'Died of covid' is an approximate kind of thing. For what it is worth, over the first few months of the pandemic the excess mortality rose to around 60 000 in the period the 'died with covid' statistic made its way to 40 000. [This comes from data on Our World in Data.] Now ... in reference to your Telegraph article, have you worked out whether you have misinterpreted it or whether the Telegraph article itself was wrong? You have read the article, haven't you? I'm going to guess you have read and misinterpreted it but then I have not seen it because it is behind a paywall.