Whereas MPs have minute jobs.My favourite tweet this morning
"Jon Jones @JonJonesSnr
https://twitter.com/JonJonesSnr
Laura Kuenssberg revealed to have a second job working for the BBC."
That is, sixty second jobs.
Brexit, for once some facts.
- Thread starter flecc
- Start date
That is, sixty second jobs.
And the biggest failure is that of the vaccines failing to protect us.
Far more deaths in this second year of Covid, despite all the natural protection gained by 2020's infections, despite plenty of PPE this year, despite much better masks and despite the vaccines.
The first three must have helped avoid infections, so the big letdown has been the vaccines which have been a huge waste of a vast sum of money. London has been consistently proving it as I've regularly shown, with far lower vaccination rates and far lower death rates than nationally with their very high vaccination rates.
Delta is irrelevant, that the vaccines have failed is all that matters in humanitarian and financial terms.
.
...now back to the core business of this thread... The following taken from the Irish Times , was a reprint from the UKs Financial Times .... By a Martin Wolf.
Boris Johnson won the general election of 2019 on the promise that he would get Brexit done. But it has not been done. Instead of stabilising, post-divorce relations are worsening. Not surprisingly, they are most fraught where the responsibilities remain shared. Fisheries are one such point of contention. But the most dangerous by far is Northern Ireland.
Back in October 2019, Johnson declared he had reached a “great new deal”. Now he would like to tear it up. That is characteristic, alas. But it is dangerous not just for the UK, but also for the EU and wider West.
In one sense Brexit could never have been “done” by now. The ending of a marriage transforms the prospects of the partners into the future. Other things equal, the more economically dependent partner will also suffer more.
In its Economic and Fiscal Outlook last month, the Office for Budget Responsibility concluded that “since . . . November 2016, our forecasts have assumed that total UK imports and exports will eventually both be 15 per cent lower than had we stayed in the EU. This reduction in trade intensity drives the 4 per cent reduction in long-run potential productivity we assume will eventually result from our departure from the EU.” To put this in context, this is twice the estimated long-run costs of Covid and, in today’s value, is £80 billion a year.
So far, outcomes are close to the earlier forecasts. The UK’s trade with the EU is shrinking relative to what would otherwise have happened. This will not be offset by other trade. That will impose costs in perpetuity.
Yet it could be far worse even than this. Suppose traders and investors, foreign and domestic, concluded they could not rely on the negotiated framework for relations between the UK and its most important economic partners. Suppose, even worse, that the credibility of the UK’s government as a partner is destroyed. Then the losses for the UK might substantially exceed those indicated by the OBR. They would also go far beyond merely economic costs.
Irish warning
How realistic are such fears? In a broadcast over the weekend, Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney suggested that the EU might repudiate its post-Brexit trade agreement if the British government went through with its threat to suspend parts of the deal on Northern Ireland. He warned that the UK was pushing for a deal it knew it could not get. The UK is indeed pushing for radical change. In a combative speech in October, Johnson’s bantam cock, David Frost, argued: “For the EU now to say that the protocol – drawn up in extreme haste in a time of great uncertainty – can never be improved upon, when it is so self-evidently causing such significant problems, would be a historic misjudgment.”
This is the language of repudiation. Particularly striking is the implication that this protocol – consciously and, one must assume, knowingly agreed by Johnson himself two years ago – was somehow “uncertain” and drawn up in “extreme haste”.
In fact, its consequences were quite foreseeable. That is why Theresa May, his predecessor, rejected the idea of splitting Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK in this way. If Johnson did not understand what he was signing, he was incompetent. If he did but had no intention of abiding by the deal he signed, he was dishonest.
This is not to argue that the administration of this protocol could not be improved. The European Commission has made significant proposals on this. But the UK’s insistence on being able to deviate from EU standards in foodstuffs was sure to create problems in its trade with Northern Ireland. It duly did.
Now, in pursuit of a radical change in the agreement it knowingly signed, the UK government is proposing to take “safeguard” measures. Such measures are permitted under article 16 of the protocol. But, the latter explains, such “measures shall be restricted with regard to their scope and duration to what is strictly necessary in order to remedy the situation”.
Cycle of retaliation
The UK’s desire to remove the role of the European Court of Justice in settling the EU law that governs the single market is far from “strictly necessary”. Moreover, the EU would be entitled to take its own rebalancing measures in response to such an action by the UK. Where such a cycle of retaliation between these neighbours would finish, nobody knows.The optimistic view is that this “game of chicken” will end, as it has done before, with a patched-up agreement: the EU will give a bit and the UK will fail to get all it wants.
Yet there are obvious difficulties with this cheerful view. The first is that the endless attempts to renegotiate the most contentious part of the withdrawal have soured relations and will continue to do so: after all, Ireland, Northern Ireland, the EU and the UK are not going away.
The second is that such finagling fatally undermines the trust in its commitments that any government needs. The UK can no longer hope to get away with a reputation for being “perfidious Albion”.
The last is that the game of chicken might end up in a crash of just the sort suggested by Coveney. Maybe that will not happen this time. But it looks increasingly as though the UK government will keep on at this until the EU folds totally or the crash happens. In the long run, the latter seems far more likely.
So, what would happen if core parts of the deals between the UK and the EU were to collapse? The economic effects would certainly be damaging. But far worse would be the breakdown of trust among leading democracies and eternal neighbours at a time of enormous challenges for such countries. These are risks nobody sane would dare to run. This dangerous “game” must stop. We have to move on. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2021
Boris Johnson won the general election of 2019 on the promise that he would get Brexit done. But it has not been done. Instead of stabilising, post-divorce relations are worsening. Not surprisingly, they are most fraught where the responsibilities remain shared. Fisheries are one such point of contention. But the most dangerous by far is Northern Ireland.
Back in October 2019, Johnson declared he had reached a “great new deal”. Now he would like to tear it up. That is characteristic, alas. But it is dangerous not just for the UK, but also for the EU and wider West.
In one sense Brexit could never have been “done” by now. The ending of a marriage transforms the prospects of the partners into the future. Other things equal, the more economically dependent partner will also suffer more.
In its Economic and Fiscal Outlook last month, the Office for Budget Responsibility concluded that “since . . . November 2016, our forecasts have assumed that total UK imports and exports will eventually both be 15 per cent lower than had we stayed in the EU. This reduction in trade intensity drives the 4 per cent reduction in long-run potential productivity we assume will eventually result from our departure from the EU.” To put this in context, this is twice the estimated long-run costs of Covid and, in today’s value, is £80 billion a year.
So far, outcomes are close to the earlier forecasts. The UK’s trade with the EU is shrinking relative to what would otherwise have happened. This will not be offset by other trade. That will impose costs in perpetuity.
Yet it could be far worse even than this. Suppose traders and investors, foreign and domestic, concluded they could not rely on the negotiated framework for relations between the UK and its most important economic partners. Suppose, even worse, that the credibility of the UK’s government as a partner is destroyed. Then the losses for the UK might substantially exceed those indicated by the OBR. They would also go far beyond merely economic costs.
Irish warning
How realistic are such fears? In a broadcast over the weekend, Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney suggested that the EU might repudiate its post-Brexit trade agreement if the British government went through with its threat to suspend parts of the deal on Northern Ireland. He warned that the UK was pushing for a deal it knew it could not get. The UK is indeed pushing for radical change. In a combative speech in October, Johnson’s bantam cock, David Frost, argued: “For the EU now to say that the protocol – drawn up in extreme haste in a time of great uncertainty – can never be improved upon, when it is so self-evidently causing such significant problems, would be a historic misjudgment.”
This is the language of repudiation. Particularly striking is the implication that this protocol – consciously and, one must assume, knowingly agreed by Johnson himself two years ago – was somehow “uncertain” and drawn up in “extreme haste”.
In fact, its consequences were quite foreseeable. That is why Theresa May, his predecessor, rejected the idea of splitting Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK in this way. If Johnson did not understand what he was signing, he was incompetent. If he did but had no intention of abiding by the deal he signed, he was dishonest.
This is not to argue that the administration of this protocol could not be improved. The European Commission has made significant proposals on this. But the UK’s insistence on being able to deviate from EU standards in foodstuffs was sure to create problems in its trade with Northern Ireland. It duly did.
Now, in pursuit of a radical change in the agreement it knowingly signed, the UK government is proposing to take “safeguard” measures. Such measures are permitted under article 16 of the protocol. But, the latter explains, such “measures shall be restricted with regard to their scope and duration to what is strictly necessary in order to remedy the situation”.
Cycle of retaliation
The UK’s desire to remove the role of the European Court of Justice in settling the EU law that governs the single market is far from “strictly necessary”. Moreover, the EU would be entitled to take its own rebalancing measures in response to such an action by the UK. Where such a cycle of retaliation between these neighbours would finish, nobody knows.The optimistic view is that this “game of chicken” will end, as it has done before, with a patched-up agreement: the EU will give a bit and the UK will fail to get all it wants.
Yet there are obvious difficulties with this cheerful view. The first is that the endless attempts to renegotiate the most contentious part of the withdrawal have soured relations and will continue to do so: after all, Ireland, Northern Ireland, the EU and the UK are not going away.
The second is that such finagling fatally undermines the trust in its commitments that any government needs. The UK can no longer hope to get away with a reputation for being “perfidious Albion”.
The last is that the game of chicken might end up in a crash of just the sort suggested by Coveney. Maybe that will not happen this time. But it looks increasingly as though the UK government will keep on at this until the EU folds totally or the crash happens. In the long run, the latter seems far more likely.
So, what would happen if core parts of the deals between the UK and the EU were to collapse? The economic effects would certainly be damaging. But far worse would be the breakdown of trust among leading democracies and eternal neighbours at a time of enormous challenges for such countries. These are risks nobody sane would dare to run. This dangerous “game” must stop. We have to move on. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2021
for comparison:
Covid deaths from 1/7/2020 to 8/11/2020: 9,857
From 1/7/2021 to 8/11/2021: 13,825 up 40%
As you said, despite the fact that we have had vaccines, masks, PPE and treatments, covid deaths have gone up by 40% .
The numbers don't look good.
Let's hope that herd immunity is going to keep the numbers down this winter.
I noticed this in the Week42 Government vaccine surveillance report:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccine-weekly-surveillance-reports
"The Roche S assay that the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) uses for serological surveillance is fully quantitative, meaning that it measures the level of antibodies in a blood sample; an antibody level above 0.8 AU/ml (approximately one IU/ml using the WHO standard) is deemed positive. The PHE and UKHSA surveillance over the past few months has found that over 97% of the population of blood donors test positive for S-antibodies, which may have resulted from either COVID-19 infection or vaccination."
So while that sampling is specific to blood donors ... 97% of the population already has antibodies ???
Wouldn't this have given us the 'herd immunity' in the past?
Thanks for this. I'd also done some similar checking, hence my post, though the overall for the two years comparison isn't too bad. That's still disappointing though since with the vaccines and the other given advantages for 2021 there should have been a very real drop in the deaths in this second year.
Of greater interest to me is that London's death rate throughout the whole pandemic to date is marginally lower than the national rate excluding London's deaths, despite our much lower use of the vaccines. In fact borough by borough the lowest death rates are in those which have the lowest vaccine takeups, making it look like the vaccines are giving people the disease!
Excluding London vaccinations, the rest of the country have over 80% with both vaccine doses and nearly 20% with the booster as well.
In London just 59.5% have both vaccine doses with some boroughs barely over 50%, and there's no data on booster takeup, which I suspect is low.
It all makes one question what value the vaccines have actually had. Outside of the very old and those with pre-existing chronic conditions, I think no value, certainly not enough to justify the immense cost of vaccinating almost all the population.
I think we are slowly winning on herd immunity, we've won in London.
.
I reckon the article confirmed what we already knew, the virus changes so fast that having S-antibodies is not enough to avoid infection.
The Roche N assay is the interesting one. It measures the level of N-antibodies (N=nucleocapsid) post infection, the higher, the better.
It shows that London region has the highest seropositivity, South West lowest.
That explains why the death rate in London is lower than national average.
NHS region Weeks 21 - 32
East of England 13.3% (12.1% - 14.6%)
London 25.0% (23.5% - 26.6%)
Midlands 16.2% (15.0% - 17.6%)
North East and Yorkshire 15.7% (14.3% - 17.1%)
North West 20.7% (19.1% - 22.4%)
South East 12.9% (11.7% - 14.2%)
South West 9.4% (8.3% - 10.6%)
The S assay measures the level of S-antibodies (S=spike). S antibodies can be produced after vaccination or infection.
I think Londons accidentally occurring secret was suffering each hit immediately, as I so often posted last year on this, "taking the hit". With the first hit in 2020, the second wave and Delta's arrival, we led every time and as a result our infection and death rates fell first and very rapidly each time, leaving us, as now, far better placed than most of the country.
This points to the natural immunity from infections being more effective and/or longer lasting than the immunity from the vaccines.
.
Last edited:
I can agree with that.
from the stats on Roche N assay, I reckon that N-antibodies are needed to combat covid at the early stage (week 1). That may explain why new tech vaccines aren't very good.
If they can, and seemingly have, derived a conversion from Arbitrary Units to IU/ml, just why do they report in AU/ml at all?
And just why do they use the abbreviation IU when NHS standards say to use just U (to avoid confusion between the capital I and lower-case ell, numeric one). They also say to use mL , rather than ml, for the same reason.
An interesting little bit about Covid testing, etc.
People testing negative for Covid-19 despite exposure may have ‘immune memory’
Study says some individuals clear virus rapidly due to a strong immune response from existing T-cells, meaning tests record negative result
www.theguardian.com
People testing negative for Covid-19 despite exposure may have ‘immune memory’
Study says some individuals clear virus rapidly due to a strong immune response from existing T-cells, meaning tests record negative result
People testing negative for Covid-19 despite exposure may have ‘immune memory’
Study says some individuals clear virus rapidly due to a strong immune response from existing T-cells, meaning tests record negative result
www.theguardian.com
There is a more modern descriptive
"Johnson’s bantam cock, David Frost"
More accurately described thus
"Johnson’s CATCHFART, David Frost"
Definition:
A lackey, a particularly submissive subordinate willing to follow so closely behind one's superior as to position themselves in range of breaking wind.
Dr John Campbell has just yesterday produced a new, fairly short video which discusses and hopefully helps clarify a number of the issues we've been dealing with.
I'd strongly recommend giving it a watch. Its fairly stand alone, but he also provides a reference list in the comments if anyone wants to dig a bit deeper.
Please bear in mind that Dr Cambell is coming from a VERY pro-vaccine background. He himself was very skeptical about certain things such as Ivermectin.
I listened to all of that with interest. However what is not discussed is
1. Whether the concentration of Ivermectin in order to achieve this gumming up the protease is at levels which are non lethal .
2. He glosses over those additional reactions where Ivermectin has the ability to inhibit other functions ..with other proteins And says he doesn't know what they are .... . . Then claims that because it is a shotgun approach the virus will not learn to escape it.
Presumably the point of the new Pfizer drug is that by being more targeted it will have less side effects, and presumably does its business at levels which are not toxic. I can accept of course that it also produces revenue to the patent holder.
We can get rid of any infection by using sufficient concentrations of heat, alkali or acids or alcohol, but at concentrations which can kill patients.
Definitely interesting.
I note brief showing of a paper referring to ilimaquinone. That would appear to be a prenylquinone - which is a relative of vitamin K2 (of which there are several menaquinone MK7, for example).
Which is all very much involved in blood clotting - and what have we heard so much about regarding both Covid and vaccines - but blood clot issues.
Agreed.
I'd be pretty sure the Ivermectin dosing would be non-lethal but possibly causing significant side effects/adverse reactions.