The big point about the first dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is that it massively reduces the risk of serious disease and hospitalisations. In the trials, no one given the vaccine was hospitalised. Which is why the government has decided to increase to three...
months the gap between the two doses. It means that the 20m people regarded as the priority for vaccination, those aged over 50 or who are clinically vulnerable, can all receive at least one dose by the spring. It in effect doubles the pace of vaccination. All...
that said, it is important to receive two doses, to obtain long term protection against Covid19. Much more clinical detail will be provided shortly by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. But as I said earlier, this is probably the most important decision...
by the government since the start of the pandemic, though tragically it comes too late to prevent hospitals being overwhelmed by the current viral surge. At least, though, there is now well-founded hope for better times.
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1) The data shows that the vaccine reduces serious illness and risk of mortality from around 10 days of having just first dose. 2) The risk of acute illness, hospitalisation and mortality is highest in the tenth of population who are over 80 or clinically most vulnerable...
3) Tier 4 lockdown is designed primarily to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed by those whose Covid19 symptoms require hospital treatment. 4) Tier 4 lockdown is coming to a region near you very soon, if you are not there already. 5) Tier 4 is economically devastating...
6) The costs of a military style operation to vaccinate us would be huge, but they would be a fraction of the economic costs of Tier 4 lockdown. 7) The top priority, by a country mile, of any rational government would therefore be to create the infrastructure for millions of...
So here are the CovidUK headlines. Nervtag thinks new British strain is 70% more infectious than existing strain and may increase the R or transmission rate by more than 0.4. So London and SE go into new Tier 4 (very similar to last lockdown) tonight and...
Everyone in ALL tiers should stay local. And no foreign travel if you are in Tier 4...
Lawful Christmas will be reduced to a single day everywhere in England. This is a disaster for non-essential shops, hairdressers, gyms and so on in the capital and surrounding area. In London and SE no intra household mixing even on Xmas day...
The current government timetable is to announce any tier changes on Wednesday for implementation 00.01 Saturday. But there is evidence that when people fear their tier level will rise, which is a well-grounded expectation in infection-growing London, they bring...
forward socialising, they discount the shift to increased restrictions. There is evidence these behavioural changes increase infections by 10 to 15 per cent. It is a basic flaw in a system of tiers being reviewed every couple of weeks. By the way,...
there is also evidence that when an area comes out of restrictions, it is like unpopping a cork of a fizzy drink: there is such a sense of relief and release, that again people accelerate their virus-spreading socialising. All of which is an argument for having fewer tiers,...
Here is the fundamental stumbling block to a free trade deal. And truthfully I am not sure how it can be sorted. The EU wants the unilateral right to toughen up its labour laws, or environmental standards or other so-called level-playing-field rules. Any such new rules...
would not automatically apply to the UK. But the EU wants an arbitration mechanism to determine whether the change in rules would confer a competitive advantage to the UK. And if the balance of competitive advantage tilted to the UK, the EU would want to allow...
the possibility of tariffs being imposed on relevant UK exports. And the UK would have the symmetrical right if it so chose to toughen labour laws etc. This is not an issue of sovereignty but of complexity and uncertainty for business. And it is difficult to see...
.@michaelgove is conspicuously desperate for the UK to agree a free trade deal with the EU, in the way that @BorisJohnson is not (and the gap between the two has been there for months, according to his ministerial colleagues). But in saying that "like Canada" the UK is happy...
to sign up to "non regression" he was being startlingly disingenuous, because the kind of "non regression" agreed by Canada is a world apart from the level-playing-field non regression on offer from the EU (and from the point of view of EU...
leaders, that difference is reasonable because Canada's economy is not integrated with the EU's in the way that the UK's is). There is a growing view in Brussels that the prime minister's conception of the sovereignty he wants for the UK is not compatible with a zero tariff,...
There is one more thing about @ONS’s Covid19 survey which is driving me up the wall. As I pointed out, it has revised down its daily data for coronavirus incidence per 10k from an original estimate of 9.52 on 17 Oct to 4.89 for that date, and 4.90 on 18 Oct, 4.91 19 Oct...
4.90 20 Oct, 4.89 21 Oct, 4.86 22 Oct and 4.83 23 Oct. That means the revised daily average in the week to 23 Oct is 4.88 per 10k. Which is therefore the latest @ons revised daily number of infections per 10k people. Except it isn’t. Because the @ons continues to insist that...
it stands by its data in “table 2a” - which shows that the average daily incidence rate for the week to 23 October was (believe it or not) 9.52 per 10k. So is the newly revised daily data correct or the unrevised old weekly data? Both cannot be correct. And yet the ONS...