Yesterday the Secretary of State for Health took to the pages of the Daily Telegraph to explain why he wants a more cautious policy. The crucial passages said
“We face a tsunami of infections in the coming days and weeks. Omicron spreads at a pace we have never seen before and has been doubling about every two or three days. Yesterday saw more than 90,000 new cases reported across the UK…..The ultimate risk is that hospitalizations overwhelm the NHS”
Of course an easily transmitted disease will show very fast growth on first arrival on a small base. You would also expect the percentage rate of increase to slow as the number of people infected by it rises. It cannot go on doubling or growing at all were every one to get it, and well before it reaches that level you would expect a slower growth rate before subsiding again. It doesn’t take many days to cover the whole population if it did go on doubling in less than two days.
But note the confusion in this statement between total covid cases including all variants, and numbers of Omicron cases. In recent days there has not been anything like a doubling of covid cases as a whole. Some of the fast growth in Omicron has been offset by declines in other versions of the disease. The last four days produced 87,565 (16 Dec), 92,503 (17 Dec) and 89, 074 (18 Dec) and 82,886 (19 Dec).
We now know that the modellers have not been modelling better outcomes, distorting the task for decision takers of weighing risks and probabilities of bad outturns. When the scientists rightly warn that they cannot yet know how fast this will spread or how serious an illness it may give people until they have more data it is very important to provide good as well as bad scenarios to inform a sensible discussion about how much risk to run.
Hospitalizations were running at a recent peak of 9.345 on the seven day average on 6 November. This had fallen to 7549 by 16 December. This compares with an all time covid peak of 38.389 in Jan 2021.
Many people are fed up with alarmist scientific forecasts which turn out to greatly exaggerate the numbers who will suffer a serious illness. The data used needs to be accurate, relevant and presented fairly.
I have delayed the economic piece until tomorrow as this CV 19 issue  is even more topical.
December 20, 2021
Good morning.
So what was the point of the vaccination then ? If the vaccination program had a purpose it was to protect us from any other variants. If it cannot, then the Health Secretary is wrong to impose mandatory vaccines on health workers and the rest of us. Being vaccinated does not stop you from getting the disease and passing it on. It is this glaring admission in their thinking that further leads to suspicion as to there true intentions. Something I and others have commented on.
The Little Boy is crying wolf too often methinks đ
December 20, 2021
You are applying the usual infantile absolutism.
No vaccine is 100% effective, but this one has already saved scores of thousands of lives in this country alone, thanks to being 80-96% effective at preventing hospitalisation, and it has already protected us from several variants. With the booster it also provides vital, substantial protection for most people against omicron.
There is every point, therefore.
December 20, 2021
The booster is not necessary to protect the vast majority of the UK from OMICRON as South Africa showsâŠ
Zorro
December 20, 2021
According to thesouthafrican.com on 27 November 2021 âVaccine booster shots from Decemberâ, âboosterâ distribution had hardly started at the end of November and was only proposed to immunocompromised adults.
Which practically makes your comment âas South Africa showsâ written only three weeks later rather weak ⊠to say the least.
December 21, 2021
How odd – my comment is perfectly logical when you consider what you said. The booster was NOT necessary to control the OMICRON. Cases are dropping very quickly now. Remember 14 extra days after the vaccine sweetie! Your powers are failing youâŠ..
Zorro
December 20, 2021
The real issue is that although the vaccines are not 100% we have been led to believe that they are sufficient to allow us to go about our everyday lives without restriction. This being the case it would appear that further restrictions on the fully vaccinated are primarily to protect the unvaccinated and the clinically vulnerable. The former need to be encouraged and the latter must be protected but not in a way which excessively compromises the freedom of the wider population, damages the economy and impairs healthcare.
December 20, 2021
BJT. Well said.
December 20, 2021
You need to research the difference between Absolute Risk Reduction and Relative Risk Reduction.
The jabs are not as effective as people have been led to believe.
And you have no EVIDENCE that the jabs have saved scores of thousands of lives; you are making an assumption based upon your own beliefs.
There is, however, EVIDENCE via the Yellow Card system that 1800+ people have died post-jab and there have been over 1.3million adverse effects.
Reply Many adverse effects are sore arms
December 20, 2021
Donna, +1, but facts are not enough to change the course of certain vengeful mindset once it has scented a victim
December 21, 2021
Reply: “Many adverse effects are sore arms”….however, the Yellow Card system is registering a small proportion of actuals!
December 20, 2021
We still have millions of unvaccinated.
December 20, 2021
Their choice. I do not need to restrict my life to protect the unvaccinated.
Zorro
December 20, 2021
+1
And the recommendations on masks is STILL lacking. No specified standards whatsoever.
Vulnerable people should have been issued with fitted FFP3s by now.
December 20, 2021
Z, On that, I fully agree with you.
December 20, 2021
I agree, but that is a moral point, not the rationale for anti-contagion measures.
They are for a practical purpose – to prevent hospitals from being swamped, and general health care from collapsing.
It’s not certain at all how likely that would be, but until more is known about omicron – and let’s hope that it’s very soon – the authorities cannot take that serious risk.
December 20, 2021
correct, and you usually point out how many idiots there are out there.
December 21, 2021
Circa 23.5 million of the UK population (Gov.UK – UKHSA data -Report Week 50 ) are unvaccinated, and now there is further vaccine Booster hesitancy. Many are not convinced by the media, Government, or its scientists, why?
December 20, 2021
Indeed and on the basis if consistently wrong modelling from experts meanwhile the sensible, honest & reliable experts say the extended lockdown was a huge mistake. Meanwhile Khan declares a state of emergency. This while at the weekend he ran a very reduced tube service with tubes pack like sardine tins!
Why one earth did they elect this appalling man. Oh yes I remember, because the Tories put up a pleasant but rather dim nonentity.
December 20, 2021
The only ever slightly sensible justification for a (short) lockdown was to flatten the sombrero as Boris put it to ensure people did not die for lack of NHS care. Many Covid victims as we know certainly died & received no ICU care.
December 20, 2021
Johnson needs to don a sombrero and guitar and earn some honest money.
Zorro
December 20, 2021
There is a credibility gap. This was evidenced by protests in Parliament Square and other episodes.
Pushing a narrative, suppressing other views, âdeplatformingâ people can be counter productive.
December 20, 2021
Indeed either a lockdown is pointless because the vaccines work or the vaccines are pointless because lockdowns are necessary. He can’t have his cake and eat it.
December 20, 2021
Many future PhD theses will be based on the obvious contradictions and propaganda contained in this Government’s communications throughout this minor pandemic.
December 20, 2021
@Mark B -‘The Little Boy is crying wolf too often methinks’ that ship sailed long ago. We cant cope with the job lets take everyone else down comes to mind
December 20, 2021
And the language is alarmist
Rather then saying 80,000 tested positive to covid within or without symptoms
They say 80,000 infective cases
And the news media never tell us the number of recoveries
December 20, 2021
Every year there are 200 million VIRAL INFECTIONS from the common cold viruses. Help, lock us down, I have a runny nose. Utter snowflakes!
Zorro
December 20, 2021
And prior to covid we used to suffer 50,000 flu deaths without murmur. Sad though that is.
December 20, 2021
Every single year
December 20, 2021
almost the same number….
December 20, 2021
MarkB, this is exactly the question that everyone I know is asking. Surely if we have a vaccine program, 3 jabs in six months is a lot for us to take on scientific/medical faith, we were told that catching it would then result in a lower infection for our bodies and save us from ventilation – is this the case or not? Following that advice aren’t we (those without serious underlying conditions and severe obesity) best now catching a less vigorous version of covid so that our bodies can create the natural antibodies required to help fight any worse varients that come along.
December 20, 2021
The point of the vaccination is to reduce the risk of you getting seriously ill from Covid. It is not to prevent you getting, or spreading, the virus. Your choice, I guess. Iâm nearly 70 – Iâd like a few more years so I donât want to get seriously ill from Covid. Therefore, I am thrice jabbed. 2 Astra Zeneca and 1 Pfizer.
December 20, 2021
Agreed, it’s your choice, Mike. And it should be everybody’s choice, whether they work in care or for the NHS or wherever. And it should be nobody else’s business what they have chosen.
December 21, 2021
BillB, I wonder if the nursing staff that refuse to have the jab could be redeployed to just treat the people that refused to have the jab that we are told end up in hospital.
December 20, 2021
Why then are young children being asked to accept being vaccinated?
December 21, 2021
Asked? No actually actively coerced. And for children it does more harm than good on average!
December 20, 2021
I saw this Minister pumping out his tat to some MSM lackey on Sunday. I genuinely felt stained by him. An absolute disgrace to our nation and our ancestors and all they fought for
Scapegoating. Inflammatory language. Lies. Exaggeration. Fear. Scaremongering. Hypocrisy. Premeditation. It’s all there. Never before has our nation’s people been exposed to such barbarity, insolence and contempt for all that we are and all that we stand for.
This PM and the vile political and bureaucratic class has so much to answer for
December 20, 2021
Just thought that I’d mention that New Zealand’s government is having no such problems with public opinion, because they do not need to consider any general lockdowns as it stands.
That’s competence and diligence for you.
December 20, 2021
In NZ, not all the sheep have four legs.
December 20, 2021
GroanâŠ.
Zorro
December 20, 2021
So it’s easier to manage a crisis in an island in the middle of an ocean, and that is not an international trading or travel hub, and whose population is about half that of Greater London – who would have thought it?
December 20, 2021
âScapegoating, inflammatory language, lies, exaggeration, fear, scaremongering, hypocrisy, premeditationâ: Do you realise that such qualificatives could as well apply to your type of daily comments?
As you do not appear to be half an ignorant, would you remember times in European history when this type of discourse was used?
December 20, 2021
Tu quoque is not an accepted argument in law, Hefner. IMO every one of Dom’s terms applies, in spades, to the ‘political and bureaucratic class’ running this country and to the media acolytes doing their dirty work.
December 21, 2021
RG, Strange comment. As far as I can see, Sir Johnâs blog is not a Court of Justice, so no need to showcase/show off your legalese credentials.
The apocalyptic words by some here could have been relevant in 1917 Russia, 1933 Germany, 1973 Chile⊠Are they so in 2021 Britain? Really?
Any sense of proportion?
What about taking a nice cold shower?
December 20, 2021
Hefner.
Dom infallibly presents a well-reasoned argument. Your criticism is unjustified.
December 20, 2021
I find his comments helpful, Hefner.
It’s useful, to see just how unhinged so many on the Right are.
December 20, 2021
@DOM +1
Sort of, as already stated by them ‘its not us its you!’ we don’t know what we are doing, we have lost integrity and the plot so lets sink the Country.
December 20, 2021
Dom, it does make you wonder, Hancock didn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth or he wouldn’t have put his family at risk patting other people on the back in the chamber and his alliance, the most infected workplace I’ve heard of because either their recommendations for masks and distance don’t work or aren’t followed, and Boris’ work meetings no masks, less than 2m distance with a baby in attendance. It all points to all this scientific advice being overstated.
December 20, 2021
Excellent comment, DOM. Have you noticed as well how SJ has his eyes on stalks in every communication in order to better instil ‘the fear’. A totally premeditated and manufactured affectation.
December 20, 2021
I think that happens when he has an internal conflict with his conscience.
December 20, 2021
He is very odd
Zorro
December 20, 2021
@ Dom
“This PM and the vile political and bureaucratic class has so much to answer for.”
Yep …. until the police properly investigate the “parties” at No 10 and elsewhere in Westminster, it will make it very difficult for them to investigate anywhere else.
December 20, 2021
DOM, +1, another excellent comment and clearly you’re bang over the target.
December 20, 2021
This variant is no worse than the common cold.why all this fuss?
December 20, 2021
Imagine John Sessions as Sir Herbert Gussett speaking DOMâs words.
December 20, 2021
They’re all commies. Destroying the nation state is their objective.
It’s the WEF and Bilderburgers who ate controlling the narrative.
Build back better means anhialating all the past in favour of a socialist future.
Sir Kneel must be kicking himself for not thinking of it.
December 20, 2021
Another cold winters day and wind supplying 3% of electricity demand. Coal and open cycle gas turbines supplying more than wind.
December 20, 2021
Happy Days
December 20, 2021
@Bob Dixon – Socialist control of the people by fear.
December 20, 2021
The fuss is to deflect from the sleaze and the parties.
December 20, 2021
Stop being silly.
For many people that is fortunately true, but for a minority they require hospital treatment, and with millions of cases that minority can still easily overwhelm hospitals and displace the rest of their work.
Come on, the arithmetic is pretty simple.
December 20, 2021
Let’s see
December 21, 2021
I agree that we might get away with not responding to possible risk, but could you as a Minister sit there and take it?
December 20, 2021
Agreed, very substantially fed up with alarmist scientific forecasts that materially miss the mark – and with the Ministers who believe them.
December 20, 2021
Which forecasts have missed the mark? At the begging of all this, before the very first lockdown, we were warned of 250,000 deaths if we took no action. We were also told that Covid would likely come in waves – as previous pandemics have. We were told winters would be bad and that new variants would be a risk.
Which bit is wrong?
December 20, 2021
Which bit is wrong, Andy? The shroud-waving claim of 250,000 deaths (0.037% of the UK population) if we didn’t lock down. That’s a counterfactual, but we know that Sweden, with a mainly urban population like us, didn’t lock down. Covid deaths there have been 15,200 (0.014% of the Swedish population).
If you use Worldometer data to do the same calculation with countries like Spain (0.019%) and Belgium (0.024%), with their early and very strict lockdowns, and compare them with the UK (0.022%), this country seems to have fared similarly to them. Though of course distinctly worse than Sweden, which didn’t lock down.
December 20, 2021
I think you know that you are being very selective with the forecasts you have put forward. Have you really so soon forgotten Professor Pants Down’s Imperial College forecast of 500,000 excess deaths which were reckoned would overwhelm the NHS? (Later they blamed this on a computer error…)
December 20, 2021
@ Andy – amongst the forecasts that missed the mark are those dealt with in the paper by Ioannidis, Cripps and Tanner titled “Forecasting for Covid-19 has failed” (part of the Elsevier Public Health Emergency Collection and found on the ncbi.nlm.nih.gov site), the abstract to which includes: –
“Epidemic forecasting has a dubious track-record, and its failures became more prominent with COVID-19. Poor data input, wrong modeling assumptions, high sensitivity of estimates, lack of incorporation of epidemiological features, poor past evidence on effects of available interventions, lack of transparency, errors, lack of determinacy, consideration of only one or a few dimensions of the problem at hand, lack of expertise in crucial disciplines, groupthink and bandwagon effects, and selective reporting are some of the causes of these failures.”.
Too infamously we have Professor Lockdown himself, Ferguson and the Imperial College team. Their work was discussed by Phillip Magness of the American Institute for Economic Research (on its website) where we can gather that Imperial College wildly overstated the projected deaths in each country under both its âunmitigatedâ scenario and its NPI {nonpharmaceutical interventions }-reliant âsocial distancingâ scenario â including by orders of magnitude in several cases.
Clearly, there is lots more to be found from simple searches.
December 21, 2021
Quite, we had 200,000+ excess deaths even though action – belatedly – was taken.
December 21, 2021
‘we’ being?
You often demand clarifiaction of ‘we’ – now your turn.
December 20, 2021
@formula57 – Science real science requires the findings to be peer reviewed before being published. The Government and SAGE will not permit that. So I guess ‘Rule by Fear’ is the purpose
December 20, 2021
Why not a worst case model for lockdown deaths or worst case model for vaccine injury ? Why not a worst case model for economic meltdown caused by lockdown and restrictions ?
There is literally no cost benefit analysis to any of this.
First we had an impossible vaccination target issued by the PM and then Prof Whitty declared an unofficial lockdown. This is lockdown by default.
December 20, 2021
Juno, +1, good questions
December 20, 2021
Me too on Covid and Climate Alarmism. BUT Ministers are in charge and get the usually duff advice they want to get or they change advisors. As on Major’s moronic ERM EURO agenda.
December 20, 2021
They are a very poor set of Ministers. You know why JR wonât get a job with them.
Zorro
December 20, 2021
Sir John, thank you for raising this serious matter again.
In my opinion, Mr Javid and his other alarmist friends are laying the ground to prolong this (dodgy!) data driven (Omicron?) crisis towards Feb/March next year and close enough to the end date of the two-year time limited act Coronavirus Act 2020. If Mr Javid achieves this I do believe the government shall attempt to extend the act for a further six months extending this horror show to the 25th September 2022. The government cannot be trusted!
December 20, 2021
There is certainly a determination to keep “the crisis” going as long as possible. We know that the EU has had a long-term plan to introduce EU-wide vaccine passports and the implementation date is 2022 https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/default/files/vaccination/docs/2019-2022_roadmap_en.pdf
and it appears that the UK is to be part of the scheme. So that may be part of it.
I also think there has been a determined campaign by the Civil Service to (a) wreck Johnson’s Premiership and (b) prevent the UK from progressing with Brexit. Unfortunately, he’s too lazy, cowardly, disorganised and all-round useless to prevent them.
December 20, 2021
Your brexit is done.
Enjoy it.
December 20, 2021
No, my Brexit isn’t done.
Arguably the Brexit that 17.4 million voted for has been done, but I suspect that a large proportion, like me, do not believe they got the proper Brexit they wanted.
December 20, 2021
WTO is the only brexit
December 21, 2021
Donna, +1, again excellent comment and the Brexit voted for has certainly not been delivered and just as certainly it has been deliberately obstructed and twisted to render it ineffective. You and DOM know who is responsible , as do many others now.
December 21, 2021
Well accept that you are a small minority of the UK people then, certainly less than 50% of the referendum vote.
December 20, 2021
Donna,
The implementaion of an EU-wide Vaccine Passport scheme by 2022 is a grotesque plan. We should know within 12 months if any country can pull it off.
Your last paragraph is spot on!
December 20, 2021
It’s over. The government doesn’t know it yet.
December 20, 2021
Agree
December 20, 2021
yep – – what was total denial to keep their jobs, is turning to distance yourself to get a job with his replacement.
December 20, 2021
Radar +1 exactly
December 20, 2021
The way the “advice” is designedly skewed has stuck us in a Covid rut. You make crucial points, that if taken into account could swing the government response to a more rational, appropriate and less damaging one.
I hope you and enough of your fellow MPs can put pressure on the Health Secretary and the PM to move away from their blinkered, blundering, spin-inspired, unscientific, scare-mongering and deeply harmful approach to the Covid issue.
Reply That us what we are trying to do. I have been querying the data and forecasts throughout.
December 20, 2021
Youâre on a hiding to nothing. The whole scaremongering panic is to deflect from the fact Johnson canât hack it as PM.
December 20, 2021
‘We now know that the modellers have not been modelling better outcomes, distorting the task for decision takers of weighing risks and probabilities of bad outturns.’
SAGE is modelling what they are told to model by this PM and his advisers. This PM wants fear and catastrophe and so SAGE models fear and catastrophe.
It is a tad disingenuous for John to try and shift blame for this scaremongering. SAGE and this vile government are both to blame as are the public sector vested interest who are revelling in this entire episode
Not one single public dependent WILL SUFFER. The damage again will be absorbed by THE PRIVATE SECTOR. We have become an easy target
December 20, 2021
I agree Dom, and they want us to pay for their public sector full sick pay generosity too.
December 20, 2021
âData used needs to be accurate, relevant and presented fairlyâ.
Indeed.
False and deliberately misleading statements made with the intent to gain or cause loss constitute a serious breach of criminal law.
Even more serious when committed deliberately and repeatedly by politicians is to undermine trust in the entire system of representative democracy.
Without trust in politicians social stability is at risk.
Without public acceptance of the moral authority of public figures, law and order will collapse.
We face the Dark Ages.
December 20, 2021
Your comment could equally be applied to Climate Change scam.
December 20, 2021
JP Morgan has spotted a clear anomaly in Sages figures that only operate at the doom end of the range concentrating on âmost deathsâ possible not including âthe leastâ.
Apparently they havenât factored in South Africans experience that this variant is weaker than Delta
Sage claims that is what policy makers want, so it is policy driving the interpretation not the other way round which is what it should be.
Mr Javed, we donât believe you. You are âlyingâ to us
December 20, 2021
+1
I honestly never believed that those in govt. (ie elected to high office) could be so utterly without scruples.
December 20, 2021
No, he isnât. You are just an idiot.
Precisely nobody would care if you caught Omicron this week and ended up in hospital in January and in a box by February.
But, Sodâs Law, you will probably be okay and it will be a sensible person in the box instead.
December 20, 2021
Andy
It really is time that we were told details of fatalities *with* or *of* Covid. *With* or *of* omicron.
I have taken my jabs and up to the second one wore my mask.
Why do the details of the single omicron death seem to be a state secret ?
Are we not allowed to be told these things when we are expected to be taking up to four vaccinations a year and have our livelihoods and freedoms destroyed ?
This lack of detail as well as the breaches of the rules by health and govt officials is creating huge mistrust.
December 20, 2021
What an unpleasant comment.
December 20, 2021
Sir J, enough is enough. Why do you allow this? Your blog, otherwise so sensible, is being ruined by this simple abuse.
December 20, 2021
May you live forever Andy
Zorro
December 20, 2021
Nig l +1 Rule by fear and fear alone. The PM has lost the capability (did ever have it) to Govern as promised or interest of the UK peoples – so yes lying becomes the de facto response
December 20, 2021
Probably lying but he is not v. bright to judge from other daft thinks he has said. Truss is a LibDim remainer pretending not to be, almost as dire as Theresa May or John Major. How can she do FROST’S OLD JOB? No Thanks.
December 20, 2021
Intelligence led – NOT!
Zorro
December 20, 2021
Lord Frost knew what to do.
Lord Frost for PM ?
December 20, 2021
I would be happy with that.
December 20, 2021
Really?
During Brexit negotiations, Brussels rejected a British proposal that would have allowed the government to return asylum seekers to the EU, a right the UK had as an EU member state. In August 2020 the Home Office said the UK âwill be able to negotiate its own bilateral returns arrangementsâ from the end of that year.
Now the European Union say, understandably, that they have a limited appetite for such negotiations, however.
That was some coup by the then negotiator, eh?
December 20, 2021
Since circa 99% of people are dutifully still masking up even, as I have seen this year some walkers on the Thames Path in sunshine and open air, masks obviously make little if any difference to the spread of the disease.
December 20, 2021
Nothing like that proportion are so doing.
Have you looked in a pub recently?
December 20, 2021
‘In a pub’ … where masks are not required, at least in England. Or are they required in Wales where perhaps you are?
December 21, 2021
No, I was in one, without a mask, so I’m not going to lecture anyone about not wearing one where one is permitted not to do so.
If we continue to wear them on trains, in shops etc. then we may still prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed however.
This is not about extinguishment of the virus, simply about moderation of its spread.
December 20, 2021
The rules say a mask in a pub is not required.
Wear one if you want to NHL.
December 20, 2021
Is Omicron killing people? No. Is it making the vaccinated seriously ill? No. Is it likely to cause ‘long covid’? No. So we should crack on with ‘boosting’ – and ignore the passage of a ‘tsunami’ it is now too late to stop.
The major economic damage will be to the Hospitality sector. EOTHO should be put in place for January and February.
December 20, 2021
If your claims can be proven then I would agree in principle with your proposal.
Statisticians and researchers are working hard as I write to establish the facts, but as yet they are not known.
Let’s play as safe as we reasonably can until they are.
December 20, 2021
Somehow I donât think that you would.
Zorro
December 20, 2021
And it makes the country ungovernable in any Conservative way.
December 20, 2021
I subscribe to a daily email from ‘Atlas’, which covers a range of sciences. Interestingly, today’s email had an article that suggested that there was NO evidence, yet, that Omicron was less dangerous than Delta, which supports your position. But it did mention a mass infection event – an office party in Oslo – where just about all of the twenty/thirty-somethings caught the bug but no-one got seriously ill.
December 20, 2021
There are lots of facts available, particularly from South Africa, which allow us to make much better estimates than those that have come from SAGE. They are being added to daily. They indicate that hospitalisation rates will remain low, and hospital stays will be much shorter than for previous variants: the disease is far less serious medically. Despite the initial rapid spread of cases, the data also show that the epidemic is not spreading to the whole population, and indeed has already substantially subsided in Gauteng, and has stopped rapid growth in several other provinces. There appears to be a level of immunity preventing wider spread. Now there are still some uncertainties, but almost all the newer data have reduced the estimates of how widespread and serious the omicron epidemic will be. Already we have enough to know that we do not need to panic about potentially overwhelming the NHS, except with those not being treated for other conditions.
December 20, 2021
The are hints that some Cabinet members are resisting suggestions or calls for further covid restrictions. If true that is good news. It may even prompt a new betting market: will Johnson’s departure be prompted by a Cabinet revolt or a challenge resulting from enough letters being sent to the 1922 Committee? One can but hope.
December 20, 2021
The most responsible thing the Governmrnt can do is to tell people to catch omicron. The science supports this.
– Omicron produces 70x as many viral particles in the top of the lungs making it highly trans usable. Masks might reduce the spread slightly but with these numbers will make no difference. There is a R rate of 5.
– Omicron produces 10x less viral particles in the lower lungs making it as mild as a common cold.
– The next variant of covid could be far more dangerous. It is better to catch a mild version today than risk a dangerous version in the next wave.
– Politicians lack good advice, and have poor decision making skills.
December 20, 2021
Those claims are possibly true, and it would be great if they were.
However, sane people would wait for proper, peer-reviewed confirmation before taking needless risks.
December 20, 2021
“Wait” you demand NHL
Whilst people loose their jobs and companies go bust.
OK for you sat at home on a sofa on a nice pension
December 21, 2021
and his 2 rented properties..
December 20, 2021
Can’t be too safe, eh, NLH.
God how I hate your claustrophobic, cotton wool world.
December 21, 2021
Suit yourself, but I didn’t find three painless injections and wearing a bit of cloth on my face now and then too much of an ask.
December 21, 2021
You want another lockdown NHL
Rather more that mask and jabs.
Business will go bust and many will loose their jobs and tax revenues will fall.
December 21, 2021
I want nothing of the sort.
I’d like people to do the trivial things that they are asked absolutely in order to avoid a lockdown. That is, get the shots and wear a face covering in public spaces where practical. Most of all to stay away from others if you have symptoms.
You know nothing of what I want or think, nor of much else it seems.
December 21, 2021
I read what you say NHL
Lockdown whilst you sit with your secure pension on your comfy sofa is what you calmly desire.
Whilst out in the real world people are losing their jobs and small companies are going bust.
December 20, 2021
so we should only breathe with our lower lungs.
December 20, 2021
Sir John,
You are of course correct on the case number trends and that Government is reacting to the most pessimistic forecasts – again. Whilst the forecasters say it is too soon to be sure infections are mild based on African experience, for some reason it isn’t too soon to say it is more contagious based on African experience. The delay between valid evidence of the 2 elements is a few days.
More to the point the majority in the UK are double or three times vaccinated. A year ago vaccination was the solution and it should continue to be. We do now have to treat C19 as endemic, live normally (although carefully around high risk individuals) and accept some will die. This happens with flu. The costs or the C19 controls are higher than the benefits.
Has anyone spotted mass deaths from C19 will contribute positively to the carbon zero targets? Once you are dead you cease to contribute to global warming? And before people start hand-wringing and wailing, look up the definition of irony.
December 20, 2021
FYI. Not in the news. Two rockets fired at US embassy in Iran were shot down by US cram system. You can see a couple of videos on twitter.
December 20, 2021
Fraser Nelson’s dialogue with Prof Medley (head of SAGE modelling) ends with the Prof saying “âWe generally model what we are asked to model,â …. âThere is a dialogue in which policy teams discuss with the modellers what they need to inform them with their policy.â
It is a shame that Fraser didn’t get to ask the next obvious question: “WHO told you to only model the worst-case scenario?” That is what we need answering and Sir John would be doing us a favour if HE asked it, since there’s not a hope of anyone at the BBC/Sky/C4/ITV asking it.
It does, of course, explain why the models which have been used to scare the bejesus out of the British people over the past 20 months have been so consistently wrong.
I consider this to be a resigning matter and possibly a prosecutable issue. The last 20 months has resulted in millions of wrecked lives (children have died; suicides; deaths from cancer and strokes; a mental health crisis etc) and as far as I’m concerned the person/persons who told SAGE to only model the worst-case scenarios should be charged with Malfeasance in Public Office.
Reply Unlikely to be Ministers wanting grim outlooks. Officials commission much of such work.
December 20, 2021
All the more reason, and urgency, to identify who it is/are then.
December 20, 2021
I have been following the figures and come to the same conclusion and particularly annoyed with media behaviour. They live on sensationalism and just love the present situation.
What will they do and say when the increase slows? Don’t worry folks, they’ll find another angle to distort.
December 20, 2021
If this Omicron gets any worse I’m going to have to cancel my indoors Christmas plans and have a ‘cheese & wine’ meeting in the back-garden instead.
December 20, 2021
I think I’ll organise an indoors pub-style quiz, with a large group all sitting around the dining room table with cheese and wine. We’ll have a lot to discuss about our activities on NY Day.
I could call it a Planning Meeting.
December 20, 2021
Hear Hear – Very well said.
The way figures are extrapolated is a national shame, and it is clear that the Health minister is doing nothing but attempting to raise the scare level of people already frightened to leave their homes. The man is unfit for high office!
Yes, there is confusion added to the mix of supplied numbers by quoting only those that make it look bad, but I’ve yet to hear of anyone dying of omicron.
With plan-b measures, and possibly dates, already decided upon, it seems they only need to raise the level of justification for it to come to pass.
December 20, 2021
Surely by now we have copious data from test and trace to determine where people are catching this virus (my suspicion is that it is in the house, the school and in the workplace, but mostly in the house).
By telling the population where they are most likely to catch it they can moderate their behaviour.
I now know of double the number of people who have had this infection and since October everyone has caught it from their kids, in the house. Schools are now shut for Christmas so any transmission that is going to happen, is already in train, we can afford to0″ wait and see” how virulent the variant is for another week to monitor hospital admissions.
December 20, 2021
How many of hospital admissions are unvaccinated? Important to know but we are never told.
December 20, 2021
+ 1
Nor are we told *of* or *with* covid/omicron.
December 20, 2021
All that information is in the weekly Covid-19 vaccine surveillance report.
What that data shows is that rates of hospitalisation are higher in the unvaccinated across all age groups.
December 20, 2021
No it doesnât
Zorro
December 22, 2021
Oh yes, it does, Tables 9 and 10, pages 36-38.
December 20, 2021
But a person with two vaccinations is ‘unvaccinated’.
December 20, 2021
Yes we are told, Andrew. The figures are now in the UKHSA’s vaccine surveillance reports each week. It varies by age, but if you take the age range 60+, where Covid can be serious, you’ll see the unvaccinated Covid admissions figure for most recent four weeks is under 30% of the unvaccinated vs double-jabbed total. In other words, the vaccines don’t make that much difference to hospitalisation.
December 20, 2021
You’re not thinking through your claim.
If 100% of the population were fully vaccinated, then 100% of hospital admissions would also be vaccinated.
However, the absolute numbers would be only a small fraction of those if the population were unvaccinated.
So it makes an absolutely crucial difference.
December 21, 2021
If you look at the Vaccine Surveillance figures you’ll understand. About 90% in the 60+ demographic are reportedly double-jabbed (UKHSA). Around 70-80% of admissions in that group in recent weeks have been double-jabbed rather than unvaccinated. As I said, the double-jabbed are less at risk, but not by all that much.
December 21, 2021
You’re simply repeating your implicit error.
December 21, 2021
We were told it was a vaccine.
ie it stopped you getting the disease.
Now we are told it doesn’t.
December 20, 2021
I suggest you read the tables that show the rates per 100,000 unvaccinated and per 100,000 fully vaccinated. You will see there is a significant difference.
December 20, 2021
Our government unfortunately know they can ride out storms about rule breaking and generally being quite poor at governing. What they can’t ride out is pictures of patients not being admitted to the sainted NHS, that is why they are so scared about cases turning into admissions. It has never been about deaths, it has been about the survival of government. Given that policy makers behind the scenes have always said there would be multiple waves, why hasn’t the increased money thrown at this managerial and admin heavy fiefdom been spent on extra bed capacity rather than diversity monitoring?
December 20, 2021
Here in the real world away from Westminster Iâm still to meet anyone, either at work or elsewhere, who thinks further restrictions should be imposed. I currently work in a Labour controlled local authority and, after Mr Johnsonâs recent announcement on curbs, opened an all-staff communication from the CEO expecting we would be made to observe maximum Covid restrictions as advocated by the Labour front bench. Far from it, it was a model of balance and good sense, trusting teams to take their own precautions in the light of government advice only and thatâs what weâre doing. All this Covid data manipulation is a lot like the climate change scaremongering and most people in the real world are sceptical about that as well!
December 20, 2021
I’d just like to raise one point as we will shortly follow much of the rest of the world into more oppression and a new apartheid system.
Compared to some countries, up to now, we have gotten off relatively lightly – that will change of course, but the reason why this is the case needs to be examined, for it may mean our salvation.
Has there been some push-back against the global elite demanding we all do as we are told and accept the new order, whatever that may mean?
Was it the unwritten UK constitution that has delayed things, or is there real hope, from another quarter, that we may one day be free of all of this agenda?
Boris is under fire from many areas to easily dismiss the idea that this is a coordinated attack on him personally, and I would like to know more.
With so many protestors against CV measures being totally ignored, just who do we appeal to to save our national soul?
December 20, 2021
This is indeed the stage where the Emperor is shown to have no clothes. You know it, we know it, and they know it.
The fact that they sit around in groups and have parties proves that the know the risk profile they brandish around is pants.
We’ll get on with life despite them.
December 20, 2021
Yes, Sir Joe, one wonders whether it has been convenient, perversely, for the government to maintain the âhypocriteâ narrative because it has overshadowed the glaringly obvious point that if Covid was so dangerous, none of these people would have spent a moment longer in close proximities than absolutely necessary, rules or no rules.
December 20, 2021
Neither you nor the narrow spectrum of far-right opinion in the CRG are scientifically or medically qualified. Apparently you cannot see the obvious danger in “only” 80,000+ infected persons – at a time when we have apparently run out of Hancock’s LFT kits.
The last time you and your colleagues recommended ignoring scientific/medical opinion on the basis that you did not agree with the modelling, tens of thousands of dead resulted.
Javid is right to point out that we do not yet know enough about this new variant. People have died in hospital of it already. Right across Europe restrictions are being implemented. We should do the same, instead of again staying behind the curve as you demand.
Reply The UK death rate per million is below Bidenâs USA, Belgium, Italy, much of the Balkans who all had big lockdowns.
December 20, 2021
Stop your ceaseless bedwetting, people die of all sorts of things!
Zorro
December 20, 2021
How many people have died of Omicron? And how many with? Be sure to quote your source(s).
December 20, 2021
Thats the best question this past week…hope you get an answer
December 20, 2021
All the hype is to save the NHS again.
December 20, 2021
The Gov. desperately wants to shut our Christmas down again (Not their own Christmas of course) hence all the fearmongering. But Blundering Boris has become so unpopular he’s scared stiff of doing so.
Be ready for Lockdown 3 by the 27th December and ignore it.
December 20, 2021
It is the precautionary principle at work. Boris Johnson has decided that, although there is no good evidence for this alarmism, and though there are undoubted huge economic costs to it, if he locks down and we don’t get an NHS crisis (other than the annual normal one) then it will largely be forgotten by the summer. But if we don’t lock down and we do get such a crisis he is finished, whether lockdown would have made any difference or not. a cost benefit analysis argues strongly for no lockdown as it is now clear looking around the world, and even within the UK, that lockdowns and hard restrictions make no difference after a short period. So its a political calculation not a health based or economic one. A depressing indictment of the decision making process in government. But of course its the same nonsense in many other countries.
December 20, 2021
My modelling tells me that cases of cut fingers from carving knives will rise like a mighty, surging volcano on December 25th.
200000000 million on that one day.
The blood will flow like a frothing mighty river.
I beg everyone to tear their turkeys apart with their teeth!
Behind their masks of course.
All credibility gone!
December 20, 2021
At least youâve give us a rational for your modelling
December 20, 2021
+1
HeheâŠeverlogical?
December 20, 2021
Of dear Ever – – the damn shops will run out of plasters and bandage tomorrow….What have you done!
December 20, 2021
+1
LolâŠ.umâŠI took the precaution of buying a few sharesâŠ..
December 20, 2021
Sir Graham Medley of SAGE to Fraser Nelson: “we generally model what we have been asked to model.”
Three explanations: (a) a minister asked (b) a civil servant asked (c) “generally” does not apply here, and SAGE used its own initiative to model worst case scenarios.
We need to know with some considerable alacrity which it is.
December 20, 2021
Call me naive, but I would expect under these circumstances that the scientists would/should have been asked to model a) worst outcome, b) outcome if moderate controls were initiated, c) outcome if complete lockdown could be implemented. Then I would expect some financial experts to be asked what would be the likely cost to the economy for each option.
December 20, 2021
I am just doing my own thing now, I have the vaccine, home testing kits are available, as are face coverings, hand gel, and a host of other products, shopping is available on line if needed, and I can choose when and where I go to meet up with friends and relatives.
“Near normal”, was that not the whole point of vaccination, if not what was the point ?
December 20, 2021
But the 7 day average death rate has fallen since 1st November with a average daily death rate of 111…..there isnt any emergency
December 20, 2021
Most of those probably with Covid not from Covid.
Please can you ask the health minister why they keep pretending that 2 jabs gives you only 20% protection but with the booster it gives you 70%. Protection from what deaths, hospitalisation, catching it, which varieties? All varieties and mixes of jabs the same? All ages the same 70%? The same for males and females? Patent propaganda from Javid the BBC just as bad.
Please ask Javid why our NHS still has so few ECMO machines per head – compared to similarly developed countries? Japan seem to have 2200 and the UK 21, Northern Ireland none. How many more lives would have been saved had the NHS matched Japan? Many other areas of very poor care too.
December 20, 2021
Something to do with government – Pfizer contracts I suspectâŠ
Zorro
December 20, 2021
I wonder how many people go to A&E after 8 pm because of drinking and partying? Probably why they want to cut Christmas and New Year revelry at 8 pm?
December 21, 2021
Perhaps NHS should give notice that A&Es will be closed after 8pm, opening at 8am on Dec22 to Dec26, then again on Dec30 to Jan3?
Instant solution to lots of problems.
December 21, 2021
oh my, don’t give them ideas. The vets could make a fortune patching up people.
December 20, 2021
Update – 44 covid deaths recorded today….thats a argument against lockdown
December 20, 2021
The alternative, and that matters as SAGE do not peer review their pseudo science ( So can never be seen as valid), is that ‘Omicron’ is different in outcome to previous Covid-19 versions. Its a mild form similar to the ‘cold’ and nut as aggressive as the yearly flu. On that basis alone the SAGE presumptions that it will aggressively effect the population as past versions makes all their pronouncements and therefore Mr Javid’s sensationalism in itself worrying. A Government out of Control!
‘Omicron’ in the UK is still very new, the outcomes have yet to be arrived at here. But, based on the South African experience SAGE and the ‘English’ Health Secretary are not behaving in the best interest of the UK they are looking for direct Socialist Control of the population by decree. They are going out of their way and beyond any brief to destroy people, their livelihoods and therefore the UK economy.
We have to live with Covid now that its been released on the World. As a virus will keep mutating. It has to mutate to survive. A virus that always kills its host, kills its self. The UK Government is not using science it is creating hype to justify control and in reality they are trying to stem their inadequacies for the job by aggressive deflection and manipulation.
To quote our host elsewhere ‘We Don’t Believe You’. The UK Government is deliberately destroying the peoples trust, it as near as damn it destroyed the Conservative Party. You start to get the feeling they are working as agents of foreign powers – maybe that’s why we never got ‘Brexit’
December 20, 2021
Beats me how anyone could ever have believed a word of the stupid projections.
Since when could anyone accurately predict the future? Basically that has been the govtâs claim.
Who thinks witchcraft is a thing?
MasksâŠthe visible symbols of terror. Ditto social distancing.
The govtâs ideas have been dredged out of history (Defoe) and served up cold to a population that believes in magik and spells. OooooâŠ.Hands, Face, Space. FFS.
For goodness sakeâŠthe govt. isnât even capable of predicting the economy to any good effect.
December 20, 2021
Exactly and just the same with the Net Zero agenda and the âletâs scare them to death with weather pornâ agenda. The BBC is endless incessant propaganda on this.
December 20, 2021
+1
Face coverings… not masks btw.
So long as people can only see your terrified little eyes.
December 20, 2021
Totally agree â history would tell us that the 1918 Spanish flu was eliminated in 18 months, not due to medical or political intervention but by natural herd immunity
December 20, 2021
It seems the argument now is that even though Iâm triple jabbed I wonât be allowed to see my family not because the number of hospitalisations will overwhelm the NHS but because too many NHS staff, many with no symptoms at all, will be self-isolating for 10 days.
Hereâs a suggestion: reduce self-isolation to a week or with a negative LFD test, whichever is lower, and donât fire 75,000 care staff for not having a vaccine which doesnât protect against infection anyway.
When Javid took that job he sounded quite sensible – didnât take long for SAGE to terrify him.
December 20, 2021
+1 though I have never found Javid to sound very sensible.
December 20, 2021
Can the govt not see the damage that their lying and distortions of the facts are causing ? They are damaging both the economy and the mental and physical health of the population, in many cases beyond repair.
Their refusal to listen to the alternative views and to consider a different approach, such as that taken by Sweden suggests to me that this damage is being deliberately inflicted. They consider the use of Ivermectin to be unproven and potentially dangerous, yet ignore the evidence from Japan and some of the Indian States like Uttar Pradesh.
But why ? Some of the conspiracy theories are beginning to appear creditable !
December 20, 2021
Money, money, moneyâŠ. Guess from what?
Zorro
December 20, 2021
The nuances of opinion as to the degrees of lockdown to be applied are subjects to be confined to the privacy of the cabinet table. Once agreed and confirmed they should be announced in Parliament and carried out. Three or more versions of what we should do, all argued out in public, are not the way to go.
Much the same goes for the EU soap opera that is long past its sell by date. I would be inclined to tell the EU what a sovereign United Kingdom will do to confirm its status minus any threats or interference by an EU intent on punishment. Let any punishment be the EU shooting itself in the foot.
December 20, 2021
So an alleged virus with all the characteristics of the common cold is spreading rapidly like the common cold at a time of year when the common cold spreads very rapidly. Oh no, a tsunami of people getting what they get every single year. How will we survive?
December 20, 2021
Spot On Alan
December 20, 2021
+1
December 20, 2021
a. a. a. atishoo !!
December 21, 2021
but we haven’t all fallen down !
December 20, 2021
I wonder if Mr Javid has read the Fraser Nelson article in the Daily Telegraph today? He quotes Professor Medley, the chairman of the sage modelling Committee, as telling him: ‘We generally model what we are asked to model’, so, gash in equals gash out, as ever.
It is time someone asked Mr Javid why the NHS seems to have done so little to prepare for the effects of a new variant; after all, we have consistently been warned to beware of one, so it cannot exactly have been taken by surprise by the appearance of omicron.
December 20, 2021
Patients admitted data has not been updated on govt website since 13 December.. why not?
I share your scepticism, if omicron is more a cold like version and doesn’t translate into admissions then why all the furore and across Europe.
December 20, 2021
Vaccine passport – implementation date 2022
Zorro
December 20, 2021
If you look at the data for just England you will see that the data for admissions (including nosocomial infections) has been trending downwards from the 14th at 815, then 805, 777, 743 and 735. Patients in hospital has risen from 6,434 on the 14th to 6,688 this morning. The numbers in ICU have dropped from 795 to 768 over the same period.
December 20, 2021
The recent by-election result doesnât seem to have registered?
also the resignation of Lord Frost
Talk about rearranging the deckchairs
What will it take for the government to listen to the voters
December 20, 2021
Boris has been told by Carrie to ignore everyone and ploughing ahead regardless
December 20, 2021
I noted she was at the garden work meeting. Working hard, no doubt.
December 21, 2021
In what capacity was she there ?
December 21, 2021
“The voters” are lots of different sorts of people who want different things.
If a party wants to stay in power, then it can either keep its existing ones content, or attract others to replace any discontent.
I’d prefer it if the Tories would do what is needed to replace the bitter and vicious that they have gathered of late by a more amiable kind, though I doubt it.
It would be best if the former just went back to not voting, as they did for a good many years.
December 21, 2021
Hilarious and derogotary labelling of anyone who democratically decides to not vote for NHL’s preferred party as “bitter and vicious”
December 20, 2021
Fraser Nelson’s tweet on this was most revealing. I assumed SAGE gave you the worst possible forecasts because of their huge rewards for 3 minutes work. Surely, now the real reasoning has become clear you should immediately set about righting the ship and steering a new course.
December 20, 2021
‘Arguments for greater lockdown’? Mr Javed hasn’t got any arguments. As his own government’s official data show at https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk, numbers of Covid hospitalisations and ICU bed occupancy in mid -December were well below where they were at the beginning of November. There is no sign the Omicron variant will be particularly serious, rather the reverse. Since when has saying “something bad might happen in future” been an argument?
December 20, 2021
45 deaths yesterday….44 deaths today
December 20, 2021
Thats over a 2% daily swing. Projection says in about 6 weeks it will be zero….
Trust me I’ve got a current version of Excel.
December 20, 2021
The Secretary of State for Health: âŠ..âThe ultimate risk is that hospitalizations overwhelm the NHSâ
For many years the Marxist Britphobes at the MSM, led by the BBC, and within the NHS itself, have weaponised the NHS against all Conservative governments with dire warnings of being overwhelmed during the winter months.
The PM is so petrified of this possible scenario that he prefers instead to shut down the country and cause massive economic damage, which of course the Marxist Britphobes are even happier to see.
The weaponsisation of the NHS means that it would not matter how much money is poured into the NHS by a Conservative government the result would always be a winter crisis.
So if this lockdown goes ahead we can expect them to be a regular occurrence at every Christmas henceforth.
December 20, 2021
What is a ‘case’? Is it merely a positive result from an inaccurate test being used for purposes it wasn’t designed for at a magnification level twice that recommended? Isn’t it true that a number of ‘cases’ are healthy people whose immune systems are about to see and repel the virus? Presumably a growing number of ‘cases’ must now be recovered and possessing immunity against covid, why is that statistic not being reported?
December 20, 2021
This is happening because no-one trusts Boris. The forecasters are making political decisions in the way they present the data because they don’t believe Boris will do anything unless forced to. They are like generals fighting the last war.
The forecasters are very foolish to do this and it will end with everyone involved discredited.
December 20, 2021
Mr Javid’s arguments for lock down are specious. Omicrom is mild and with relatively few hospitalisations, so what on earth could be the reason behind wanting further restrictions and instilling more fear among long suffering people?
Perhaps it is more about keeping the fear laden drama alive to save the faces of fearful politicians, showing the world they are taking strong action, as they wait for the court cases. Deaths and bad side effects will have to be investigated with good reasons for denying very sick people cheap effective anti viral medication to treat Corona virus. Are the politicians manipulating the scientific ‘experts’ or is it the other way round? We may only find out when we know who had most to gain. It may be both!
December 20, 2021
Regarding Lord Frostâs departure, I am inclined to think along the lines of the FT political editor George Parker :-
âHmm. A lot of chaff being thrown out but ultimately Frost was told by Johnson to cave on the NI protocol – and get off the ECJ hill that he was so keen to occupy. The main briefings on the capitulation were done by officials, not Frost.â
Also Charles Grant of The Centre for European Reform
âIt is pretty clear that the extraordinary political weakening of Johnson over the past month has lessened the appetite of his govt for a trade war with BXL – which would probably have been the result of invoking Article 16. All this may have been uncomfortable for Frost. /4â
11:56 PM · Dec 18, 2021
December 20, 2021
I fear that those reports maybe correct
December 20, 2021
Off topic, here is a brief retrospective of the mess our politicians have made of Brexit:
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-brexit-negotiators-of-christmas-past-david-frost/
“In memoriam: Britainâs many Brexit negotiators”
I say “our politicians” because this has been a genuinely cross-party debacle, even though all the way through the core problem has always been the puzzling extent to which over the past six decades politicians in one party have managed to convince themselves and others that we cannot possibly prosper as a nation without some kind of special trade deal with our European neighbours, and indeed in the end it turns out that we must have a special, “fantastic”, trade deal even if it means sacrificing part of the country.
December 20, 2021
No one had to do anything to “make” a mess of brexit.
That is its inherent character.
You simply voted for an appalling mess, as you were warned.
December 20, 2021
Strange that there are many other countries outside the EU which are not in an appalling mess.
December 21, 2021
How do you think, say, Rhode Island would get on if it seceded from the US? Or Tasmania from Australia?
December 21, 2021
Are you trying to waste my time? Before making such a silly comparison why not look up the size of those economies compared to that of the UK, still the fifth largest in the world?
December 21, 2021
What poor examples NHL
Is that the best you could come up with.
Could say the same about Scotland or Wales
December 20, 2021
I just wonder what the outcome wouldâve been if weâd gone the full-on WTO route
December 20, 2021
we’d all be cheering ‘wooo hooo’. Fireworks for days – I finally gave in and lit mine anyway.
Lots of drunks falling about laughing, lots of unplanned pregnancies, quite a number of calls to Samaritans wailing about being a Remainer….loud sobbing coming from the H of C – and Amersham/Chesham, and Cardiff.
December 21, 2021
Much better, because by defaulting to the existing WTO treaties, by which the EU was already bound, we would not have become a supplicant begging the EU for a new trade treaty.
December 20, 2021
still moaning on about the B word, yet telling us not to discuss!
December 20, 2021
We got our sovereignty back – which means that politicians who try to impose too much coercive control over the electorate can get removed. Unlike in the EU…
December 20, 2021
Thank you very much, Sir John.
By the way, if a national health service cannot cope with an outbreak of illness, can anyone tell me what use it is?
December 20, 2021
If your body cannot cope with an outbreak of illness, can anyone tell me what use are you?
December 20, 2021
What a miserable attitude to take about your fellow man.
December 20, 2021
+1
December 21, 2021
@Acorn, Richard Feynman died from cancer – his body failed him. I can guarantee he was far more use to humanity than you and your fellow progressive travelers are at your best.
December 20, 2021
According to the Kings Fund planned spending for the Department of Health and Social Care in England was ÂŁ212.1 billion in 2020/21, up from ÂŁ150.4 billion in 2019/20.
1.2m people work for the NHS.
Perhaps a question to ask the CE of the NHS is :
“How much money and how many beds and employees are required to cope with the usual winter crisis?”
December 20, 2021
I thought the NHS was to service the health, wellbeing & dental requirements of the daily influx of illegal immigrants
December 20, 2021
Advisers have admitted they are only modelling the negative scenarios. We are told this is because that is all they are asked to model, but the question is who precisely is asking for these models only? Is is civil servants? This is most likely, as it is the civil service that prepare all the information for the minister. This would accord with the civil service tradition of timidity, negativity and alarmism. But it would also show, yet again, that ministers – in this case the useless Javid – are too supine and passive and have no control over their officials.
Advisers have rejected criticism of the policy of only producing negative scenarios, claiming that positive scenarios which do not lead to a need for action are pointless. But that yet again shows the contemptible mentality of these people, who think the only alternative to ‘no action’ is ‘more action’. How about LESS action instead? Positive scenarios could be used to justify a REDUCTION in restrictions, in testing, in procedures, etc. So positive scenarios ARE important for policy-making. They would also provide reassurance for the general public, encouraging them to live normally, thus boosting the economy.
It’s time that Tory MPs stopped being so respectful of advisers and ministers and declared bluntly and openly their ‘no confidence’ in both of these groups of useless morons.
December 20, 2021
There was a good analytical piece on GBNews between 9 and 10 this morning asking why do so-called scientists come up with the worst possible outcomes. They had said because they were asked to. But why did they not come up with other numbers on other possible scenarios. It could be said we are deliberately being fed, with government support, exaggerated figures by people who have been proved constantly wrong in the past.
Why?
And when people fully and widespread understand this the reputations of science and scientists will be wrongly subverted and future advancement of our country held back.
Boris must act and lead to prevent this.
December 20, 2021
He has his defacto lockdown.
Impossible vaccine targets combined with Prof Whitty’s shrill message – job done. No compulsion to pay furlough or assist businesses.
December 20, 2021
Some of the reporting in the main newspapers is puzzling at the moment, everyone I know personally and at work over 18 has either had their third booster or booked an appointment to get it in the next two weeks. Yet if you read the news it seems as though the booster vaccination program is failing. Are any of you that want the jab having problems in your region?
December 20, 2021
almost 30m boosters done now.
December 21, 2021
MT – It’s phenomenal what they’re achieving in such a short space of time, the lady that jabbed my daughter was an ex-air hostess very efficient, the chap that did me worked so fast he hardly said two words to me, just checked my written report that I was asked to fill in the queue, get ready, sleeve up, jabbed standing up, NEXT.
All you read is bad news, and it isn’t all bad news – you’re not told the regions in England that are doing the best with covid and why they are doing better? NE and SW.
December 21, 2021
Apparently there needs to be a 6 month gap between the second jab and the booster so there will naturally be a significant difference between the older and younger cohorts untill the later get to 6+ months on their second jabs.
Some NHS England stats are available here – https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-vaccinations/
December 21, 2021
Dixie, they don’t have to wait 6 months now (3 months) my children have been 3rd boostered or are booked in shortly and all their friends, my nephew, niece etc.
December 22, 2021
a-tracy – thanks for the update, my youngest had theirs at +6m a month ago so sounds like a recent change.
December 20, 2021
We now know from the chairman of the Sage Covid modelling committee that they are only modelling the worst case scenario and not taking into account its probability, or modelling a range of scenarios, giving the reason that only worst case scenarios are those which require decisions to be made.
But then these worst case scenarios are taken as the most likely scenario and become the basis for the governmentâs decisions.
Quite ridiculous bearing in mind the damage caused to peopleâs non-Covid and mental health and the countryâs economy.
Precisely the same can be said of the climate change modelling.
December 20, 2021
The government and their idiotic advisers keep wittering on about the increase in the number of omicron cases, and how this could lead to hospitals being overwhelmed. But this will not happen, since omicron is less severe than the common cold. I know this is true from direct, first-hand reports from people who have had it.
As for the very small number of individuals who have abnormally severe reactions to it, I have said before that the correct procedure is to start the mass administration of proven therapeutics (of which there are now at least four, approved by the NHS) to EVERY patient, immediately upon presentation at either hospital or GP surgery. They can then be discharged and sent home right away, and the hospitals will never fill up.
I get so annoyed by the fact that this idiotic government is solely focussed on mass vaccination, rather than mass treatment. Simpletons will say ‘prevention is better than cure’, but in this case ‘prevention” requires the vaccination of tens of millions (many of whom are opposed to this), whereas ‘cure’ would only require the treatment of tens of thousands. You do the maths …
December 20, 2021
I see that Boris the Traitor has replaced Lord Frost with Liz Truss. So we now have a Remainer in charge of Brexit – you couldn’t make it up! Talk about a slap in the face to all Brexit-supporting MPs. Boris has shown his contempt for his backbenchers and his determination to surrender to the EU. And still the sheep refuse to send their letters in to Graham Brady! The country is f****d.
December 20, 2021
X-Tory,
Liz Truss was an active Remain campaigner and visited Northern Ireland as part of that campaign. She was also a former Liberal Democrat (President of Oxford University Liberal Democrats)
What could possibly go wrong?
December 20, 2021
Forget the brexit minister being a brexiter, we need a PM thatâs a brexiter (not the âI wrote 2 lettersâ Boris)
December 20, 2021
– lost in the post.
December 20, 2021
Do we have a collaborationist ruling regime in place?
A failing government which seems always able to rely on “opposition” votes to subvert the freedoms and wishes of the people.
Curious and Curiouser.
December 20, 2021
You were more than happy when the likes of Kate Hoey voted for your complete horlicks of a brexit, which was won by about one vote as I recall.
December 20, 2021
Brexit was won by over a one million vote in favour
The biggest total vote ever in our history
December 21, 2021
@ NLH/MiC – Your statement is a lie according to your own definition of lying.
I suppose we should expect nothing better from a euphilic remainer
December 20, 2021
Dom has got it absolutely right, the modellers are modelling to the outcome that has been requested by the policy teams.
Fraser Nelson’s article in the Spectator after his Twitter exchange with Madeley, a recent member of SAGE, confirms exactly what Dom stated.
Prior to the arrival of Omicron, hospital totals were published each day and the trend showed that, as you said, they were slowly declining. If this variant is less virulent which is quite possible based on the reports from South Africa, then I doubt that the number in hospital is increasing at the same rate as infections.
Once more we are being fed alarmist propaganda by the policy teams and the scientists which will damage the economy and peoples will to follow government guide lines. They are treating us as stupid and it will end up to their cost
December 20, 2021
There has been a surge in “cases” driven by a surge in testing. If testing were stopped tomorrow, (we won’t get our 37 billion back), then the progress of the disease could be judged on how many actually present in hospital. Covid cases are a small percentage of total hospitalisations, yet the impression given is that they are all of them. At the moment there is no need for panic. We have Boris talking of Tidal Waves and in Wales we have Mark Drakeford saying “Prepare For The Storm of Omicron”. Foolish language like this helps no-one.
December 20, 2021
Correct – 44 deaths today
December 20, 2021
Off topic.
The resignation of Lord Frost, widely regarded as the custodian of Brexit is extremely serious. The announcement that the Foreign Secretary is to add his role to hers is even more serious and a mistake that the whole country will regret and not recover from for years.
Boris Johnson should understand that ”getting Brexit done” is not just a matter of returning from Brussels with a signed bit of paper, like PM Chamberlain did in 1939, but following through like Churchill and securing our sovereignty and regaining our leading position in the world.
Anything less than a clean break and total escape from the ECJ will be regarded as a complete failure and will ruin this country for many generations to come. We will end up in the worst of all worlds and be stripped and punished by the EU commission for decades
December 20, 2021
Agree
December 20, 2021
Sir john, Do you know that the government website updating travellers the changes in restrictive travel arrangements has (disgracefully) not been updated since 8th December, and government briefings on the French ban on travel to France have failed to draw attention to the additional measures in place since 18th December banning all except emergency travel *to* Britain *from* France?
Where are businesspeople like myself to receive information and take appropriate evasive action, if the government does not give it? Are we supposed to do any business at all?
December 20, 2021
Not true, updated 17 December 2021, valid on 20 December. See gov.uk âForeign travel advice: Franceâ
December 20, 2021
O/T but E10 petrol.
The latest is that this fuel holds water and rots tanks, fuel lines, injectors etc shortening the lifespan of our vehicles significantly.
I already knew it was a fuel tax by steal but didn’t realise it was going to wreck my car prematurely too.
Was this the plan all along ?
OK. So I have to switch to electric years earlier.. but how is this green ? Or is the aim to price us off the roads ?
December 20, 2021
NLA
Yes diluted the fuel but no the taxes, less MPG as well, so still the same emissions per mile, as I use more fuel for same distance.
Clueless, absolutely clueless, other than of course getting more tax income.
December 20, 2021
AJ – If you’re buying more fuel to cover the same mileage you’re paying more tax. At a rate of 200% of the refinery price.
December 20, 2021
Its also being discussed further afield that the introduction of E10 isn’t even ‘green’ …its green virtue signalling
December 20, 2021
have you been reading scare social bullshit again?
When filling up with it wear a mask because you can catch Omicron from it.
December 20, 2021
thats a good line- almost fell off my chair
December 21, 2021
E10 is why I’m sticking with diesel powered cars.
December 21, 2021
You can still get E5 in the higher priced premium petrol. Just filled my car with it this morning. The extra is worth paying for the extra mileage and assurance that my car is not going to be damaged by E10. In fact I noticed on the E10 pump there is a warning to check if your car is compatible with it. Another fine mess by Boris and his cohort of incompetents.
December 20, 2021
Nice to see the Davos WEF postponed. Even better would have been an announcement from No 10 that the British government would no longer attend the thing.
December 20, 2021
Davos WEF isnât democratic and our politicians should be banned from attending this world elite organisation
December 20, 2021
The Chairman of the Bow Group on GB News this afternoon gave an excellent analysis of how the current government is politically distanced from the Conservative movement in the country. Essentially it is not conservative, liberal at best, but possibly in essence Blairite. There needs to be a great reset before we can begin to reap the benefits of Brexit. You have to accept that political and civil service blood, of necessity will be spilt. It is only a matter of how much.
December 20, 2021
Scotland has tax-raising powers, if they want to pay furlough they can add extra tax on business rates for their Scottish businesses and extra tax on their workers to raise the funds to pay full furlough.
Boris should offer Wales the same, a Welsh only extra income tax and an extra business rates tax to pay for furlough as they’re egging for full closedown.
Put their own money where their mouths are.
We have all entered into a vaccine program to stop lockdowns, if people want to preclude themselves from the world then they can, if they believe the science their masks and vaccines will protect workers, that’s what we’re having to bank on having worked throughout. Hoping that the screens, good cleaning practices, gel and masks will help as they have for the past near two years.
We have also believed the doctors that have told us that developments have been made in treatments once you’ve got the virus is this true or not?
December 20, 2021
The lack of reasoned judgement by the government bedwetters in judging risk and assessing variable forecasts is a complete embarrassment which you clearly call out in this article. If they are incapable of doing their civic duty in an effective way, they should leave the scene and allow the adults to take over.
Zorro
December 20, 2021
God knows how Javid made any money in the financial world if he used the same mentality as he uses now!
Zorro
December 20, 2021
Sir John,
You rightly say, ‘ – it is very important to provide good as well as bad scenarios to inform a sensible discussion about how much risk to run’. If only.
So much harm has been done since March 2020, because the emergency powers of the Coronavirus Act did not permit ‘sensible discussion’ in Parliament. All decision-making was bestowed upon the Prime Minister, the Health Secretary, and their chosen ‘experts’.
These people now seem drunk on power, so much so that Sajid Javid felt able to say what I never thought I’d hear voiced by a British politician, that the unvaccinated (a minority) ‘were really having a damaging impact’ on society. Whether this is true or not is immaterial. The Health Secretary’s statement was irresponsible and divisive.
For this cavalier behaviour alone, the Coronavirus Act 2020 must not be extended beyond its two-year cut-off date next March.
December 20, 2021
Here is a novel idea for the UK’s Lord Hailsham type elective dictatorship; “Pre election alliances”.
Political parties that have some policies that could be welded together in a manifesto, without too much entropy loss. (Resident Polymath Lifelogic, will explain to you what Entropy is and what a process depicted on a Temperature -Entropy diagram tells you.)
In simple terms for this sites audience, the Liberal Democrat (LD) and Labour (L) parties, could form a pre-election alliance, common in more advanced countries; such that a LD candidate would stand in an LD strong constituency, and L candidate would stand in L strong constituencies. After they jointly win the election and form a governing coalition based solely on their published pre-election alliance manifesto; they could proceed to wipe-out the right-wing Thatcherism virus in Westminster, for ever.
December 20, 2021
Thus conspiring to stop voters from voting for the party they like and their very different policies.
December 21, 2021
I checked out the data at the Covidjoe website run by Prof Tim Spector where they track reported symptoms and estimate prevalence data from them. One of the interesting factors that appears to repeat a phenomenon of the South African data is that recent new cases appear to be overwhelmingly among the younger age cohorts (particularly 18-35s and 35-55s), with no sign of an uptick from low rates among the elderly. Here is their chart:
https://www.datocms-assets.com/46938/1639783027-image-16.png
This age pattern also suggests that hospitalisation will be much less of a problem than alarmist SAGE models suggest. Whereas the early variants seemed to leave children little affected, perhaps the omicron variant is sparing the elderly.
Of course, those age groups are also less vaccinated, but also are the ones that have less to fear from covid illness. Booster uptake in December has concentrated mainly on those aged 40-60, with slightly less rapid uptake by those aged 18-39, partly because of more recent access. Chart of vaccination status by age cohort
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/QNb2d/1/
The combination does suggest that boosters work fairly well to limit case symptoms at least.
December 21, 2021
Itâs not just about the covid patients. Covid is already taking out staff. Nor is it just about healthcare. There are many vital services we rely on. I quite like clean water and rubbish collection.
December 21, 2021
I wonder how the covid absence rate compares with supermarket staff, restaurant staff, people who come into a lot of contact with people, drivers, takeaway workers, small shops? All the other services we rely on but the people don’t get full sick pay when they say they live with someone who may have covid.
December 21, 2021
If the government is willing to pay full pay for people in the public sector self-isolating, it should pay full pay for people in the private sector isolating.
December 21, 2021
If you ever used a supermarket, you would know that the staff are behind perspex screens most of the time. My supermarket home delivery driver places the boxes on the ground and stands back as I empty them. NHS staff are in proximity to very sick people. Perhaps you have been lucky and never needed an operation? No 2Â m separations in an operating theatre or intensive care. Typical Tory – full of your usual “expert” stuff on the economy – a pay cut for the workers by cutting sick pay.
December 21, 2021
Martin (in Cardiff or Nottingham? Or a new Martin?), the supermarket staff filling shelves all day long arenât behind screens, nor are the supermarket staff in smaller Xpress shops, the staff that pack the boxes in many supermarkets walk around the store filling those boxes up with other customers for you, Iâve seen six staff in the aisles tonight filling up shelves. Some staff work together packing those boxes up for you and loading them on the vehicle so that you can stay home safe.
I wasnât only talking about NHS workers who have top class PPE, bus drivers sit behind plastic screens too and train drivers yet Mr Khan tells us theyâre off work in their droves too.
December 21, 2021
It wouldn’t occur to you that because people have taken heed of the message to mix less that the numbers are not trending upwards as expected. I guess some might call it a “private enterprise solution” before waiting on the state to get moving?