woodenhead

The experts will usually deploy a theory of the chance of their projections, an error rate etc. They will understand the nature of variability, that nothing is set in stone and that a project is only that, a projection of possible outcomes. It's those self styled 'experts' that believe only what they believe and don't listen to other people and who are absolutely sure that what they say will come to pass. Politicians on the other hand will use the projections to tell the story they want us to hear in order to affect our feelings and response to what they say. So if they want us to isolate they will work on the upper limits of the projections, if they want us out eating, drinking and using hospitality they will use the lower projections. Then there is cutting the data a different way, using subsets and suchlike to orchestrate the data to produce the response they need from us. All of this is out of the hands of the medical experts, they present the data, the politicians choose how to use it, which is why sometimes the medical experts will leak what they actually said when they feel the politicians have skewed the data too much.

The other vaccines will increase the coverage but if we have three vaccine options that might equate to 30% of the population. However, what does this mean for other vaccine and medicines production - if your efforts are focussed on production of a vaccine to try and vaccinate every vulnerable human on the Earth then what is being quietly dropped to create that capacity?

We should ignore qualified medical professionals at our peril. There has been a tendency recently to treat such people direspectfully, the word 'expert' being used to demean whilst politicians and certain businessmen then claim to know more than them. It is a policitian's job to listen to the people who know what they are talking about and then make a judgement call based on that advice, sometimes the politician will get it right, sometimes not but that is when they are meant to resign but don't any longer.

Maybe the slippage is because they have changed production slots to make more available hence pre-ordering being available again on the Hornby site.

No I think we all understand the absurb nature of the time we live in, the only reason we're all distancing, isolating and not going off our heads is on the understanding with the Government that this is all temporary, for 12-18 months say. Any attempt beyond 12-18 months to keep this level of isolation going with no obvious way out will be met with complete rejection by the general public.

Bought my Christmas Beef Sirloin today - nice quiet day expected, no visitors now so we will get up, go for a walk, then I will throw the joint into the oven. Boxing day will be minted lamb Turkey will appear on Sunday in the form of leftovers from my Mother in Law who has insisted on cooking a mahoosive one for her and my father in law, as a thank you for all the shopping I've done, we will get the leftover carcus for obligatory turkey curry. Shopping for the week to the Bank Holiday Monday will be undertaken on this coming Monday, then apart from some final bits and bobs later in the week thats us ready for Christmas 2020.

Statistically I am the most intelligent person in my railway room, until the wife appears then not so.

Or to put it another way, you cannot end your membership of David Lloyd but still expect to be able to use the gym, the classes, the steam room, sauna and pool at no cost.

Fingers crossed then for this newer more infectious version in the South East. Is there a danger the more you resist something the more it fights, so if we cannot kill it we have to learn to live with it, accept it and eventually it will become the Flu and one day another common cold?

I can go with that, sometimes I write what I think without considering how others may read it back.

And had we done that early on before Mrs May went off on her re-election to get a mandate voyage, there was a sufficient majority in the house to do the necessary deals with the EU and get them signed off without having to worry what the DUP might think about the deal or allow the DUP to do all sorts to undermine anything that may have benefited anyone else but DUP supporters. Having the balance of power in the hands of a small vested interest did nothing for the progression of BREXIT. Looking back now, I can see the folly of having a Remainer (like myself) in charge of the Government when you needed to leave the EU, she was all about consensus and making the deal, a deal that was not there to be had because the two sides (EU & Brexiteers) were so far apart and remain so far apart. The border between NI and Ireland was used by both sides in the debates as a weapon, it hasn't helped anyone as all it has done is stir up trouble, both sides knew this and continued to wield it. It even drew Biden in at the end, but perhaps that put a focus on things and helped us agree an outcome.

Scenario 1 will only be known in 12 months once sufficient people have been vaccinated and it is understood that not only can they not get COVID but also that they are not a vector to infecting other people. Given they are not even sure that the current vaccines will do more than lessen symptoms and potentially still allow infection of others I think getting to Scenario 1 is a long way off. And to use HIV as a reference, it did have an impact on sexual relations, we recognised that condoms did more than just stop babies being produced - but of course the Catholic church did not like that and actually worked against heath organisations in Africa. However, to bring it back to Covid, we still don't have a definite fully effective vaccine to HIV so assuming we can beat a virus like COVID in 12 months is probably a big stretch.

Rabies hasn't been eradicated, it has been controlled and it doesn't transmit through the air but through saliva just before the host dies. It can be prevented through vaccination and the main route to human infection is through dogs, so vaccinating dogs was the chosen route to control the infection and stop it killing humans, but you cannot vaccinate every animal so it is still prevalent throughout the world we're just less likely to get bitten by other rabid animals than dogs. Australia & New Zealand have the Pacific ocean to help keep themselves isolated, as do many other islands in that region, in fact any island that isn't a staging for people fleeing their home country. I would be doubtful that China has shed itself of Covid, if it can hide the abuse of it's own citizens by the Government then it can hide illness just as effectively.

I'm not implying intelligence and ultimately we're all stardust at the most basic level, but I do believe if something has at least a cell, can divide/mulitply and grow even if that means taking over a different healthy cell then it is in some way living, like a tree or a plant but not like a rock. The base programming of any cell is to divide and replicate and survive in a Darwinian manner - I wonder how many failed attempts Covid had at replicating or mutating before it found it's first form that could be fatal to man.

Even if we did, what happens when the next corona virus leaps from animal to human.

May not be pleasant but sometimes it has to be said, we are after all just animals, we're at the top of the chain but we treat the whole environment around us like a parasite. Without large conflicts as Dagworth points out, starvation and viruses are the only things that can wipe out large numbers of us. Mother nature always finds a way to control numbers and you ignore that at your peril.

A virus is a living organism, it follows the same rules as any other living organism it strives to survive and replicate it's species. Like water in the example above which will follow the route of least resistance as it flows so will a virus, it isn't clever or intelligent, it just finds a way to transmit itself and then does so as effectively as it can. Quite how some plants developed a solution that required birds and bees to transfer seeds through faeces and polinate using a sweet nectar that some insects love I really don't know, it's amazing but it certainly wasn't by some invisible creator cos if there was one he's an evil one - why create parasites if you're all loving, all caring.

Well you've put the cat among the pigeons now Phil. If the answer to resolving our current crisis is this then actually it's time to give up trying to contain it and let it spread until it eventually stops spreading. Like any penned animal humans react negatively to imprisonment, the outcome of what you are saying would be anarchy because it will lose the consensus of support from the majority that one thing that keeps society functioning.

I do my own hair, no2 or no1 cut depending how hot it is, much to the annoyance of Mrs W I only shave when I cut my hair so perhaps I should be cutting my hair more often.

Possibly or it would have been a very specific negotiation to resolve a material issue that everyone would agree was serious and didn't impact anyone's red lines. All eyes would have been focussed on one aspect, fishing rights and the London financial zone, employee rights wouldn't have been in that discussion. Like I said, I wanted to remain, but it shouldn't have taken 4 years to resolve the Good Friday agreement issues - and if that was the crux of our problems in negotiations with the EU we would have a deal right now and we don't because they are too far apart on other issues yet have managed to amicably resolve Northern Ireland. It was being used as a pawn somewhere I suspect as neither side really wanted to be blamed for ending the agreement - once it was necessary to find agreement, lo they found it.

I was thinking more the Christmas bubbles - it was basically accepting the inevitable that people would meet up and they wanted to give us something nice - but since then with divergence by the other nations and messaging saying you can do it but we'd really wish you wouldn't, it was clear someone's 'good idea' had fallen flat and everyone was back peddling. The lockdown in November was to stem rising cases, all I could see coming from the Christmas bubble was a new stringent lockdown starting just before New Year's Eve then the other nations began announcing them and here we are. Everyone, I hope, expected this winter would be difficult, they've been talking about it since the first lockdown so as measures increase why on earth would you then go and abandon everything for 5 days unless there was a plan to doubledown the following week. Furlough now covers till April, I don't think we will see the end of Tier 3/4 in the North, London and the South East before March at the earliest. With those expectations I cannot be disappointed with what happens over the winter now, any easing for other than polictical stunts will be a bonus for me.

And that is exactly why 'nose dive' is a perfectly good description for a journalist to use because I have no idea what what you are on about

I did wonder about NHS - surely I thought there were more important matters to attend to than changing the registration on a plane so we know it is helping the NHS. Does that mean 9H PPE can only carry PPE, it's not allowed to bring in medicines or ventilators or anything else not made of plastic. To think in all this mess there are people who use this as an excuse to display their marketing skills.

Give it a new name and they don't have to call it another failure to anticipate that a political decision was a failure. So now Lockdown is Tier 4 - well they cannot have a Tier 5 at least, there isn't anything else to shut in the South East. I could see this coming, the messaging was all there they just needed to find the right moment and excuse to apply it. Doesn't change much really though, we knew we shouldn't be meeting up and all the non essential shops will be doing their sales via the internet which is no bad thing, there is no way such an event could be run successfully in a shop with the volumes of people you'd expect down Oxford Street.