Morley_crosses_to_Withe

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California’s coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous: ‘The devil is already here’

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A coronavirus variant that probably emerged in May and surged to become the dominant strain in California not only spreads more readily than its predecessors but also evades antibodies generated by COVID-19 vaccines or prior infection and is associated with severe illness and death, researchers said.

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-02-23/california-homegrown-coronavirus-strain-looks-increasingly-transmissible-and-dangerous

Obviously people arriving from San Fran into the UK can pretty much stroll straight out of the airport. They just need to fill out a form and promise they’ll go straight to the place they’re staying to quarantine. 

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

 

 

I’ll be the one in the blue t-shirt 

Te quiero mi amor

8 hours ago, bickster said:

Good luck with getting travel insurance that covers COVID to travel abroad in the near future, You can't even rely on your EU medical rights you had until January

There are providers offering COVID cover with their travel insurance. The Post Office is one of them. 

EHIC are still valid if in date and many are long dated (mine runs well into 2024), but what specifically changed about medical rights in January?

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If you are planning a holiday in a country in the European Union (EU), you might be wondering whether your European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) will still be valid.

As part of the deal announced on 24 December 2020, the UK and the EU agreed that the cards can still be used until their expiry dates.

After that, the government will issue a new Global Heath Insurance Card (GHIC) which will replace the EHIC for the majority of UK citizens.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44850972

8 minutes ago, Genie said:

If it didn’t happen last summer, why would it happen this summer when we’ve vaccinated most of the population?

Because we didn’t remove all controls last summer.

It’s all in the paper. The vaccination isn’t 100% effective and some of the graphs show how deaths could spike depending on uptake and the % of infection blocking. 

31 minutes ago, AndyClarke said:

They are really starting to push the narrative that we can't open things back up hard at the moment. From sensationalised mutation stories to Boris questioning if the data shows the vaccine to be working to bring down the numbers.

An insight about that is in the paper that I posted a page or two back.

The Government don’t want the 1000 deaths per day figure and opening up hard is the rapid way to cause a spike again. If, say, we gradually open up in April and then remove all controls by July/August then deaths could hit ~2500 (this is shown in one of the graphs in the paper).

The incompetent word removeds have **** it. We needed to do everything properly from the start and we’re still not doing things properly now.

Meanwhile people are crying cos they can’t have two weeks in Benidorm, but they shouldn’t worry - Boris likes to be popular, so people will get their wish followed by further infection spikes, variants and then additional cycles of lockdowns and other control measures.

I can’t see an end to this. 

12 hours ago, markavfc40 said:

Yes hopefully that is the case.

Cases have come down from around 60k a month ago to 12k today. If that 80% fall happens again over the next month then we'll be down to around 2.5k new daily cases come early - mid March. 

Hopefully by early April we could be down to less than 1k new daily cases and should then be in a position to open things up. 

There’s an interesting paper on this here:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.27.20248896v2.full.pdf

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We consider the interaction between the UK vaccination programme and future relax- ation (or removal) of NPIs. Our predictions highlight the population-level risks of early relaxation leading to a pronounced wave of infection, hospital admissions and deaths. Only vaccines that offer high infection-blocking efficacy with high uptake in the general population allow relaxation of NPIs without a huge surge in deaths.

TL;DR 

Things will need to be lifted a lot more gradually and much later than otherwise expected. 

57 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

The pandemic has been great for Devi Sridhar personally, perhaps that's why she doesn't want it to end.

I’ll be really glad to see the back of her,  and will praise the day that she never needs to be interviewed again, but I will kind of miss seeing Devi on our screens 

She can f**k right off with this chat about next year, though. 

3 hours ago, ml1dch said:

Probably feels like quite a long journey for Zuckerberg from that site that he set up to rate the attractiveness of girls on campus.

Probably for a different thread but I often wonder who came top. 

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Professor Wei Shen Lim, COVID-19 Chair for JCVI, said:

For both vaccines, high-levels of protection are evident after the first dose of vaccine. JCVI advises priority should be given to the first dose, to maximise the public health benefits in the current situation and save more lives.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-issues-advice-on-the-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine

JCVI list of members:

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Membership

Professor Andrew Pollard, Chair (University of Oxford)

Professor Wei Shen Lim, Chair COVID-19 immunisation (Nottingham University Hospitals)

Professor Anthony Harnden, Deputy Chair (University of Oxford)

Professor Judith Breuer (University College Hospital)

Dr Peter Elton (Greater Manchester, Lancashire, South Cumbria Strategic Clinical Network)

Dr Maggie Wearmouth (East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust)

Professor Matt Keeling (University of Warwick)

Alison Lawrence (lay member)

Professor Robert Read (Southampton General Hospital)

Professor Anthony Scott (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)

Professor Adam Finn (University of Bristol)

Dr Fiona van der Klis (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Netherlands)

Professor Maarten Postma (University of Groningen)

Professor Simon Kroll (Imperial College London)

Dr Martin Williams (University Hospitals Bristol)

Professor Jeremy Brown (University College London Hospitals)

https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/joint-committee-on-vaccination-and-immunisation#research-recommendations

I reckon we’re due to spank someone again so I’m going 5-1 to us.
Watkins to grab a hat-trick, Grealish to score and El Ghazi to net again. 

8 hours ago, sidcow said:

Lots more people who get it don't get particularly ill than those who do get seriously ill/die. 

Most peoples experience will be a mate or two who got it and weren't particularly ill. 

My point was in response to not enough people will have encountered somebody being seriously ill means they don't understand the danger of the disease. 

If a lot of people know someone who wasn't particularly bad it may actually reinforce an opinion that it's no big deal

I still don’t understand your thinking.
Not enough people having family or friends who haven’t been seriously ill (or died) is surely an extremely good thing and the absolute desired outcome from someone being infected.
Why would you want more people to have gravely suffered just so other people have the opinion it’s a big deal? 

13 hours ago, sidcow said:

As ever MJM has hit the nail on the head. 

It has become a very sterile reporting format.  Lots of facts, figures and graphs. 

They definitely need to get more under the skin.  Behind the scenes of what is going on inside hospitals. 

And probably even more damaging than people not knowing someone who has got very ill with it is knowing a coupe of people who HAVE had it but not been very ill - that will be a much bigger demographic people will have had direct communication with. 

Many many people still seem to think of it as not a big problem anymore. 

They need some very savvy social media marketing types on this as well. Unfortunately people with those kind of talents seem to work for the dark side than for the good. 

What!?!?!?

14 hours ago, Paddywhack said:

Every single time I go to collect Paddywhack Jr. from nursery (everyday, at the same time, the time his 'shift' finishes) when they ask how they can help me over the intercom, they seem completely surprised that I'm there to pick him up.

"Oh. Okay, we'll just have to get him ready then".

I have to wait outside for 5-10 minutes whilst a queue builds up behind me of other parents and grandparents dropping off and picking up their kids.

"Always the same, 1:30pm, everyday...so..."

Criminally underrated post! Really liked the use of a reference from The Office  

2 hours ago, avfcDJ said:

Love being a vegan, it just “fits” for me. I don’t really have major reasons, I know I’ve never felt better - other than some possible stress related issues, but for nearly 4.5 years I’ve been on a wonderful spiritual journey with added veganism.

I have no idea whether you’re just parodying being a vegan at this point.

3 hours ago, rjw63 said:

Oct 19, 1991 maybe?

Won 2-0 with goals from Daley and Regis.

Team was

Les Sealey

 Dariusz Kubicki

 Shaun Teale

 Paul McGrath

 Bryan Small

 Mark Blake

 Kevin Richardson

 Dalian Atkinson

 Tony Daley

 Cyrille Regis

 Dwight Yorke

I think Ugo was on the bench

There are five of the best players I’ve ever seen play for us full stop in that squad. 

(God, Atkinson, Daley, Yorke and Ugo) 

19 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

This is like the final victory of the 'crowded-beach-worrier' types. Imagine the thought processes that went into this decision:

 

I hate those **** things! 
They’ve actually have been around for years and became a silly trend way before COVID. 

They started off as ‘Winter igloos’ which at least makes some sense, but venues  have been putting them up in the summer too.  

You pay through the nose to sit in what’s basically a bit of plastic with some chairs in it.

10 hours ago, Xela said:

Broad Street had a nationwide reputation as a good night out back then... you'd get people coming to Brum from all over just to go out on the 'golden mile'. I'm not sure whether i'd say famous or infamous! 

We always started at Some Place Else after work at 3pm on Friday... then we'd bar hop down the Broad Street... places like Key Largo, Branigans, Waxys, Revolution, Walkabout and then you'd turn around and go back up and maybe take in Stoodis or the Works! Cheesy nights but fun. Broad St now is full of kebab shops and fried chicken emporiums. 

On a good night we'd end up at Bonds or Code or Pulse (or whatever it was called afterwards)

I was trying to remember these places but couldn’t picture them in my head. I’d say Broad Street had around fifteen viable places for a drink and the Arcadian had 52 Degrees North (which won national awards) on the upper level and about five/six decent places in the internal concourse. Then you had a few places just nearby outside or on Hurst Street (Green Room and Steering Wheel/Bambu).

As the outsider I am these days, it doesn’t seem that sheer volume has been replaced. Bennett’s Hill and Temple Street just doesn’t have an equivalent amount of venues.

Broad Street was a worthwhile place to out back in those days. It’s not any more and I wonder whether that’s reflective of a general decline in nightlife across the whole of the city centre. That’s not to say there aren’t still places to go, but 15-20 years ago, I’d say the nightlife was nicer, more expansive, had a greater volume of decent venues and was overall just better than it is now. 

On Broad Street, I remember places like the Living room (expensive, flashy), Stoodi Bakers (late night, good music), Some Place Else (pre-drinking venue) for the club - Bakers (which was generally well respected on the clubbing scene); then there was The Sports Bar (for pints and a bit of sport with mates), Rococco and Risa (I remember seeing Hendrie, Bosnich and Ugo in there several times) plus a number of others that were respectable and good for a night out.

Then there was also the Arcadian. It eventually seemed to surpass Broad Street as the place to go out. Some people used to say it was pretentious, but I never saw it like that. I just thought it was a trendy place to go out with nice people.

Then there were pockets of decent bars along places like Suffolk Street and Smallbrook, Summer Row, Regents Wharf, John Bright Street. Plus you had all the clubs Xela mentioned plus others (Steering Wheel, Bobby Brown’s, The Church, Liberty’s, Air)

And the on top of all that...places like St Paul’s Square, The Mailbox, Colmore Row and Brindley Place had good places in those days too, just like they do today. 

Everything just seemed nicer and more high end in those days. I don’t get up there much these days, but when I do, it mostly seems a bit rough and there seems to be a lot less choice available.

Southgate looks like he pulls himself off to trains the duller than sewerage, waistcoat rocket polisher, c**knosed spunk maggot.

And he got lucky at the last World Cup.