The 19th of July is on.

[Suff]

This little bit of news missing from the mainstream is not going to go down well with the 'spurts.

[TheOstrich]

This little bit of news missing from the mainstream is not going to go down well with the 'spurts.

If you believe the Birmingham Evening Mail, you'll believe anything. Trust me on this, I'm a born-and-bred Brummie. Past masters of sensationalism with a Daily Mail penchant for hurdling back and forth over the fence.

From the comments section:

Two articles on here. One states that the Astra Zeneca gives a life time protection, the second article reads that we are more likely to get covid if we had the Astra Zeneca vaccine rather than the Pfizer vaccine ?????

Changing the topic slightly, I wonder if we might see a resumption of the "Dedicated Hours" ploy in supermarkets? Free from masks during the day, but masks only 19:00 to closure or some other time period. I'd welcome it, TBH.
Additionally, everyone I have casually spoken to in the street in last week has said they will continue to wear masks, and the Government are idiots for lifting the restrictions.

[Workingman]

The story is on a few sites but none have any links so I went to 'Nature' and couldn't get the story there either. Maybe it is in the members only area but it will not let me login.

I spoke to my son who is a research Dr in the field and he says he would not be surprised if it was the case due to the way the AZ works compared to the mRNA versions of PfB and Moderna. However, he cations that it might be too early to tell and that a bit more time and real world data will help sort things out

[cromwell]

real world data will help sort things out

WM you touch upon something that has been on my mind.
After all this is done(April next year according to the conspiracy theorists) there will probably be some sort of inquiry. Not an actual honest public inquiry, the manyfold failings of the British state during the pandemic need to be hidden by the politicians; but some sort of inquiry.

And what I'm wondering is this.
How are they ever going to get any meaningful data to process?

The definition of a Covid death means that Covid deaths will be over stated. A positive test in the last 28 days of life does not mean someone died of Covid; but it will be recorded as a "Covid related" death.

The lateral flow test used to test for Covid has been slated in the USA by their Food and Drug Agency for inaccuracy. In this country we are still ploughing ahead with it.

The NHS app id pinging people for being "in contact with an infected person" when the pinged person hasn't left the house for months.

I worked in IT for a long time and spent some years wrestling with data quality issues.
Looking at the standard of data available for the pandemic I can't see how they can draw any conclusions from it, apart from the broadest of generalisations.

It's an an old saying, but GIGO is still true. Garbage In, Garbage Out.

[Workingman]

Cromwell, I quite agree.

There will be so many lines of data to follow and correlate, as well as the workings of government, other institutions and personnel, that it will be a "forever" inquiry. Our grand children might get to see it if the government of the day actually publishes it.

[Suff]

Apparently 100,000 per day is not scary enough. Now we might have 200,000 per day.

Yet, there is an article in the science section, today, saying that deaths are 16 times lower than the second wave.

Put another way, 1.3m per day required, at current death rates, to reach the second wave.

They need better scare tactics.

[cromwell]

And they will certainly try to find them. Not that imo they need more scary stories. A large proportion of the population is already scared witless by the relentless gloom mongering.
It's awful really. Johnson makes cheerful noises about not long to go now, one last push, etc etc and then a few days before restrictions are due to be eased, he does a 180 turn. He gets people's hopes up and then dashes them at the last moment. It has happened time and time again. What it must be doing to the mental health of vulnerable people I just shudder to think.

And he's at it again.
Remember the "irreversible" road map? The cautious but irreversible one?
Well now Boris is rewriting history again. He is now saying that they always "hoped" that it would be irreversible!
No, that's not what you said. Cautious but irreversible is what you said.

If he can't stick to his promises - and it's obvious that he can't - Boris shouldn't be making them in the first place.
Because people who have had the carrot of hope dangled in front of them, only to have it whipped away at the last moment, even the British might eventually get sick and tired of it.

[Workingman]

And let's not forget the pingdemic now causing problems.

The son of the family next door was sent home from school due to a positive test in his bubble. He keeps testing negative yet his mum, a primary school teacher who had to have a PCR test, came out positive, so did his dad, a chef. The whole family is isolating.

However, due to the layout of the four flats in the block with the kitchen-diner and living rooms sharing a dividing wall on the horizontal level, and ceilings / floors vertically there is the potential for the two positives to ping 11 mixed teens and adults in the other flats even though they do not mix in the social sense.

It's a system that cannot tell the difference between "in the vicinity of" and "close (physical) contact with".

Bunter and Sunny were close contacts of the Javidiot who confirmed that he has Covid, but they were not going to self-isolate because they "suddenly" found themselves on a 'daily test pilot scheme' allowing them to work as normal. That decision lasted 2 hours and 38 minutes till it was dropped when the media (Fleet St and social) picked up on the 'one rule for us and another for the rest of you' positions of the two.

[Suff]

Today new cases are just under 40k and deaths are 19.

Of course it is Monday and Sunday figures tend to flow over. But that didn't really happen these last two weeks when the numbers were going up.

If we don't hit 60k by the end of the week, Boris may find the shrivelled raisins and pump some water into them...

[TheOstrich]

Boris has this evening re-floated the idea of mandatory Covid passports, from September, for entry to "enclosed spaces with lots of people" - so that's not just nightclubs but potentially café and restaurants too.
Probably a carrot/stick to get the under 30's vaccinated - vaccinations today were at a record low - but even so, enjoy your Freedom while you can.