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Michael
The Tories never made the vaccine possible nor invented it nor manufactured it. Scientists, doctors, nurses and many others did. The Tories have taken credit for something others have done and used it for political capital. They then squandered this because in their arrogance, they used it to try and prove that they were right throughout about herd immunity. There is no question that everything that this government has done has been self centred and serves the monied ranks of the capitalist sleaze bags. Sorry for the rant.Tories? Proper Conservatives shouldn’t use this bunch to wipe their arses on. Churchill was a Conservative. He didn’t wait for the Nazis to invade and then tell everyone to stay home and avoid them.
I don’t support the Conservative Party but I recognise that conservatism used to be based on certain values. The only value this lot consider is how much money they can pour into each others’ pockets.
The UK party system has lost its reason for existence.
After WWII, the Conservative Party was representative of business, commerce and employers, and Labour was the party of industrial workers and other employees. Both supported industry in their different ways, but they had a genuine difference of position representing interests which cannot be entirely reconciled.
But Thatcher and Reagan’s Monetarism sold out to global finance, and Thatcher largely deindustrialised the UK, wiping out most of the Conservative position in a desperate move to disempower the trades unions. The UK party system has made no sense ever since.
We don’t really have government any more, just slightly different styles of administration for more powerful financial forces. But life chugs on of its own accord, so the lack of leadership becomes obvious only when disaster strikes.
We in the U.K. have just walked through a door marked “Freedom Day” since then our covid positive cases have been dropping.
In many other countries people are “quite” upset at the slow vaccine roll out and corruption and brutal repression on civil liberties, like France, Spain, Australia and Tunisia.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-57958555
Anger over the government’s handling of a massive recent spike in Covid cases has added to general unrest over the nation’s economic and social turmoil.President Kais Saied, who was elected in 2019, announced he was taking over.
His supporters erupted in celebration, but opponents in parliament immediately accused him of staging a coup. Clashes among rival groups continued on Monday.
Many, many, many citizens of different regimes are profoundly unhappy about covid but most of the unhappieness is in the brutal repressions put on them.
Tunisia
“The recent coronavirus surge has fuelled long-standing public frustration. The health minister was sacked last week after a bungled vaccination drive.”
now where have we also heard of a Health Minister getting removed = U.K.
But we have not removed our vaccine tzar Nadhim Zahawi as he has done a brilliant jobPublic health measures shouldn’t be brutal or repressive. They’re nothing new; that’s why there are specific public health exemptions in human rights laws.
I understand objections to lockdowns, but one lockdown should get covid under control, and it should take two months maximum. There was genuine community spirit in the first UK lockdown. But it has to be worth it or people quite reasonably start thinking it’s pointless, so they turn against it.
There was never any leadership. The government itself did a U-turn by having a lockdown at all. We were never told what the point was or what we were trying to achieve, just vague nonsense about “flattening the curve to save the NHS”. That’s because it was a last moment panic reaction rather than any sort of coherent plan.
Clark, I mostly agree with you.
However, Nadhim is doing a good job, the U.K. has done a good job with inventing the Oxford Vaccine, of which I have had two jabs and am happy for my third to also be Oxford, we had done an amazing job of the vaccine rollout, even if that was despite Matt Handcock and Boris Johnson, everything in the U.K. is not bad and everything in the rest of the World is not wonderful.
There have been ghastly scenes in India with the most brutal beatings handed out to poor people by their police.
Unmentionable conditions being forced on poor people by all sorts of regimes, think how lucky we are to live in the U.K.Apparently the U.K. covid positive figures have now come down for six consecutive days. The U.K.now have lower figures than were posted by both France and Spain a few days ago. But we must also remember that no other country in Europe tests anywhere near as much as us.
In the French ghettos the people hate the French government and they try to keep away from all officialdom, this probably means they are not getting tested or jabbed.This is not a beauty contest or the Olympics. This is a public health matter that should have been handled throughout by the experts who understand what is needed, and the government acts merely as an enforcer or facilitator. Zahawi could hardly bungle up the vaccine rollout which was coordinated by a scientific advisory committee and carried out by the NHS. Why is Zahawi doing a good job? Because unlike Hancock he did not bungle up care home PPE and so on. He had a simple caretaker task which he carried out as his job description requires. We now give kudos to politicians because they have done their job without bungling?
Yes, this country has done well because of our scientist who invented the vaccine, for all the staff who did the trials and all the individuals who selflessly volunteered. These are the people who are to be praised, not a politician who is the spokesman and political front. His achievement is zero.But even with this astounding fact, that we have been one of the first and quickest to vaccinate, there are problems. The third world supplies of vaccine have not been forth coming and most of the world remains unvaccinated. The vaccine triumph remains a fragile one with a danger of vaccine-resistant variants developing plus the difficulty of justifying the vaccination of children and also the resistance to the vaccine from some quarters. The vaccine triumph could still turn sour, god forbid. And also despite all this we have lifted the restrictions rapidly and are now undergoing an experiment in passaging a virus through a partially vaccinated population to see whether we can produce a vaccine resistant strain.
But the basic fault in all this is the fact is that democracies should be ruled by a consensus and not by one person. Why has the cult of the leader become so prevalent in so called western democracies? I can see that Russia is associated with its leader Putin and Syria with Assad and KSA with MBS, but why is this mature democracy ruled so autocratically by a former journalist and why was the US ruled by a property magnate? There is a basic fault in our politics.
Clark is right, a single strategy of getting out of the pandemic using only vaccines is a flawed one and will flounder on the above problems.“Sorry to see the high infection numbers in the Isle of Man. It looks to me as though the authorities didn’t act quite quickly enough.”
“This reflects the Island’s ongoing transition from an elimination strategy to one of mitigation and is in line with the UK, where isolation ends after 10 days with no PCR test.”
— Quoted from gov release.2474 active cases, 5 in hospital and one in ICU. More cases than at any time up to now.
Some people here seem to hate the conservative government so vehemently [line break removed] but also Brexit, but the people of this country voted for Brexit and a tory government, some people on here seem to hate the United Kingdom.
Ask how Spain is doing, ask how France is doing, ask how Russia, Indonesia, India, U.S.A., Brazil, Argentina.
Then think how lucky you are to live in the U.K.
Yes, we do know that Boris Johnson is a chancer and his ex-mate Matt, also a chancer, yes we know that they did not invent the Oxford Vaccine, we also know that they have got most things wrong but the vaccine roll out has gone better than anyone could have expected. Can’t you show just a little pride and goodwill for our country?
Yes, we all know, that all along the solution was going to be herd immunity.
Now more than 90% of U.K. adults have covid antibodies.
So adult herd immunity is close.
The current problem is people under 18 who are not getting vaccinated, on this I am with Scotland’s First Minister, she thinks this will not end until young people become vaccinated.
I think, on this, she is correct.As usual, Michael, you’re being incredibly simplistic.
The government did not roll out the vaccine. The NHS did that. Left to the government, scores of billions would have been spent with nothing to show for it – just like the track & trace system – for many a long month.
So why do you want to give the government credit for a vaccine they did not produce, and a rollout which they had nothing to do with? “Because they are Tories”, right?
Surely you know that the majority of people did not vote for Johnson and his government. A “landslide victory” does not even need the support of 30% of eligible voters, due to our very primitive and undemocratic voting system.
Herd immunity, particularly for the delta virus, requires a percentage of vaccination (or natural immunity recently acquired) in the high 90’s, and we are nowhere near that. If you think that it’s gone and the all-clear can be sounded now, a view apparently shared by Johnson and his mates, you are making an enormous, reckless gamble with millions of lives in the rest of the world.
Kindly don’t tell me how grateful I should be to live in Britain either. I have lived in plenty of other countries. Anyone who thinks the UK is simply the greatest shows only a lack of perspective. An awful lot of Americans do the same.
Johnson merely a ‘chancer’? What do you think Churchill would have done with a minister that let 130,000 Britons die needlessly through negligence and corruption?
Yes, I’m glad to live somewhere that the police aren’t brutal that often and yes, my best wishes to the people, but I can’t be proud of this country with its militarism, its transgression of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, its repeated invasions in the Middle East, its collusion in the torture and rendition programmes, its central role in collusion with Saudi jihadism, its corrupt finance and the City of London’s gateway to the UKOT etc. tax havens, its 15% of world investment in fossil fuel extraction; the list goes on and on.
“Adult herd immunity” is not herd immunity because the herd necessarily includes children.
Herd immunity is when such a high proportion of the population are immune that it prevents the spread of infection, so that even the non-immune are protected. That can’t happen at present; when the virus can spread through some group such as children who are mixed in with everyone else, it can reach anyone and everyone.
“Adult herd immunity” is therefore a contradiction in terms.
Clark, I thought I had covered that, more than 90% of U.K. adults now have covid antibodies.
I, along with Nicola are saying this will not be over until the children are vaccinated.
I am not asking to be proud of everything in the U.K. but you could show some pride that the Oxford vaccine was designed here.
You could show some gratitude for the vaccine roll out.
And yes you could show some interest in the brutal crushing of poor people in other lands because they can’t self-isolate.
None of this means I expect to kiss the arse of Boris Johnson or Matt Handcock or any of the government; our country is not just our government.If the French do not falsify their figures, today they tip over the 6,000,000 covid case number, they will be the first Western European nation to cross this marker but something strange has been going on over the last few days they claim to have dropped from 25,000 cases a day to 5,000 cases a day, a very wonderful drop, if actually true.
Poland is posting some very low figures, indeed. I suppose the very warm and sunny weather and children on school holidays must be bringing numbers down, after all, that is why the U.K. decided to have “Freedom Day” a week ago, to align with sunshine.Michael, I find it difficult to muster any pride in being human in this era of global conflict, oppression, and ecological devastation, let alone being British or English – neither of which I’m sure I am anyway as I have little idea who my biological parents were. I don’t hate the UK – I don’t really feel connected enough to any nation states to have emotions about them except that they’re looking increasingly outdated; if human civilisation survives its multiple impending crises, whether we grew up on Earth, Mars or in some space habitat will probably become more significant than our nationalities. I just wish that us humans would put all this silly competition behind us and get on with the jobs in hand, because they are challenges the like of which have never been seen before and our window of opportunity is closing fast. If humans can make Mars a living world my pride in humanity will overflow – Gaia will have reproduced, and we will have built her seed pods. But I’m unlikely to live long enough to see such a wonder, if it ever happens at all.
Beware the daily infection figures because they’re affected by delays in data collation caused by weekends, so always check the seven day averages. And the Zoe symptoms app is warning that UK numbers might be about to start rising again.
Vaccination rates are fairly similar in Germany, France, Spain and UK with the UK being a little ahead according to the figures I am seeing. I guess the wave is breaking a little later in Spain, France and Germany than in the UK. I doubt that France’s figures have dropped that suddenly so there must be another explaination.
Mix and Match
“Researchers in Britain have also been testing whether combining AstraZeneca’s vaccine with other products, including the vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, is safe and effective.
Early results have shown that combining AstraZeneca’s jab with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine produces a strong immune response.
The World Health Organization has said it’s likely that mixing and matching different COVID-19 vaccines probably works, but more data is needed to be certain.”
The Chinese sino vaccine seems less than useful, only any good if you get three doses. Mix and Match does seem worth trying.
There have been some trials in U.K. with mixing Sputnik with the Oxford.
Now Russia is trying mixing the Oxford with Sputnik.The U.K. has now dropped a little, every day for a week.
Very hopeful, lets see if France can drop again from yesterdays figure of 5,307France tops the European stats.
Jump 21,000 on yesterday
Looks like they have been fiddling again.
Spanish figures also sky high, up and down like a fiddlers elbow.While president Macron is poncing about in the Pacific having flowers put in his wig, the recent figures for France do not look good. First Western European country to breach the 6,000,000 mark. The first time they have recorded over 25,000 covid cases a day since April 2021.
More than double the number of cases per million of their comparable neighbour-Germany.
Spain, also seems to be recently going the wrong way, very similar numbers catching as France but again more than double the number per million of Germany.
Now Spain and France are great holiday destinations, so partially it could be explained by letting lots of visitors in?
Partially it could be explained by slow and low vaccine take up?
Partially it could be that the French and Spanish don’t trust their governments and do not want to follow advice or rules.
The Germans love rules, so maybe that is why Germany is having such wonderfully low numbers?
As the U.K. covid figures have dropped for seven days on the trot, now, perhaps we can start to see the benefits of the U.K. covid vaccine fast roll out?As I have tried to point out Michael, if you look at the figures for vaccinations you will see that mostly they are very similar although the UK is definitely ahead. Sure, the UK is ahead by a mostly and may have benefitted from the earlier rollout. Also, in the UK the most recent rise in cases started mid June whilst in the Spain, France and Germany it started 2 weeks later towards the end of June. We will have to see where they are in 2 weeks time.
Fully Vaccinated Partially vaccinated Total UK 54.93% 13.7% 68.63% Spain 55.49% 10.45% 65.94% France 45.26% 13.80% 59.06% Germany 49.34% 11.21% 60.55% Ireland 52.46% 11.3% 63.76% Isle of Man 67.26% 8.75% 76.01%
I see that Ireland are claiming 70% all adults fully vaccinated so I am guessing the above figures are percentages of the whole population including under 18.
(data from https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations)
According to a poll from Eurofund survey/poll the countries with the least vaccine hesitancy are first UK followed by Ireland. Here is a wer article from yesterday’s Irish Times.
@Mods
The captcha thing is getting more difficult with having to do up to ten of them before posting. Either that or I am getting more stupid. Have the measures been hardened recently?
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[ Mod: Yes, we were getting hundreds of spam posts every day, and there’s still quite a few getting through. It’s a continual chore to check and clear the spam every few minutes, but it would be much worse without the captcha. ]-
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Infection numbers in the countries Michael names do seem to be levelling off – (Caveat: it’s a bit early to say) – but maybe vaccination is not the cause, or not the only cause. Take a look at the global Daily New Cases graph (as always, tick the box and look at the “7-day moving average”):
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Numbers are still rising, but the rise started slowing down around eight to ten days ago. So how is vaccine rollout globally? My guess is, not enough to be the cause of that slow-down.
If we don’t know what’s slowing it down, we don’t know what might speed it up again.
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