Leicester game called off due to Covid cases

Probably not a bad thing given the injuries but the kids did okay tonight without the crocks.

Happy Xmas All 💙

Mike #1

Yes. They will be available for the bench. Gray is the only one that offers more to the team on the pitch. By the restart, which could be January, there will be a few competent players transfered in as well.

I was looking at the spread of Omicron, the Delta virus according to UK.gov, from less than a few hundred cases took 4 months to reach its infections peak of 68k per day.

The Omicron variant has reached 78k per day transmission rate in just over 2 weeks.

The Boxing Day games might not happen at this rate? I expect this season will be severely disrupted.

What happens to those none season ticket holders who purchased a ticket from the club? Will the ticket still be valid for the rearranged game?

If we keep stopping everytime there's a spike, we will never finish the season.

Paul,

It does seem chaotic and they're winging it trying to play as many games as they can when they can. Could get controversial if teams at the top or bottom stockpile games in hand then reinforce in January.

Just get on with it, every Premier League club has, or ought to have, the squad depth to put a team out. If it's a team full of youngsters, has-beens or whatever, tough luck, every club has selection crises now and again.

They all managed to play without a "circuit breaker" after the restart last season, when there were no vaccines for the most part and virus surges came and went. What's different now?

I've just had Omicron, it's a mild fever, that's all. Flu is far, far worse! The panic over this is ridiculous.

No panic, Mark. Hit just before Xmas to get everyone to have the booster. They could have handled it differently, people will still have the booster, but surely they could have gone ahead with boosters and let people enjoy Xmas without spreading wide panic.

What makes me despair is, just after the mad panic they spread, they open 11 Red listed countries to fly into Britain.

Mark Boullé @ 7,

"I've just had Omicron, it's a mild fever, that's all. Flu is far, far worse! The panic over this is ridiculous."

Many of the finest minds science has are fighting this pandemic and they've all come to a consensus: isolate and avoid catching!

To many, it will be just a mild cold, but if it's more to just 1% of this nation, or any other nation, the health services will grind to a halt. There aren't only healthy people with healthy immune responses in the world.

Brian @ 6

"What makes me despair is just after the mad panic they spread, they open 11 Red listed Countries, to fly into Britain."

That's probably because we're more of a danger to them than they are to us and commerce rolls on! If we can attract a few of their tourists for Christmas, marvelous!

Mark,

I work with a 22-year-old fully vaccinated girl who's just gone into hospital with Covid. They don't know yet if it's Omicron but, based on the spread, they think it may be.

I hope and pray she has a full recovery, while the scientists (wisely in my view) err on the side of caution, as it's too soon to tell how bad Omicron is.

Mark - are you just trying to be provocative?

Viruses affect everyone differently, Covid especially. Your experiences tell us little more than zero about how bad Omicron is. Scientists do not yet know how severe it is overall.

I'm double-vaccinated and just had Covid, strain unknown, and it was truly brutal. A full recovery could take me many weeks. I feel lucky to have escaped hospital.

I feel mixed about how the season should proceed – it's a tricky one – but your comments undermine other people's suffering.

One thing I do believe firmly is that Arteta is right – the lack of transparency about which games get cancelled and why is outrageous.

There's differing schools of thought here…

Omicron has already proved to be an incredibly mild version of Covid that results in less hospitalisations and even fewer deaths, and that's in countries where large percentages are not vaccinated. It is, however, more transmissible and therefore dangerous to the more vulnerable.

The same could be said, however, about the flu or cold virus: should we shut down the Premier League every winter when flu is about?

I know it's not the same thing and many have lost people to Covid, and they have my deepest sympathies. But many people, maybe even many more people, have lost people as a side-effect of Covid through not seeing doctors etc early enough to catch life-threatening diseases.

On one hand, we should do everything we can to protect those most vulnerable. On the other, we have to live with this at some point and shutting the country for a mild version of this disease could result in more harm than good.

I think it's unfair to negatively comment on Mark as it is to negatively comment on others. We all have our opinions on this and, largely, they will all be based on personal experiences.

Personally, I'm lucky enough to have not lost anyone to Covid, but have lost people who didn't see healthcare professionals soon enough due to the panic over Covid.

Good post that, Kevin.

"Omicron has already proved to be an incredibly mild version of Covid that results in less hospitalisations and even fewer deaths."

"Flu is far, far worse! The panic over this is ridiculous."

Untrue. Blatantly untrue.

Yes, preliminary indications are that Omicron is milder than the Delta variant. South Africa has found, in its first limited study, that Omicron caused 29% fewer hospitalizations than Delta. However, this is not yet "proved".

What is proven is that both the original Coronavirus and the Delta variant are not "incredibly mild"... each has a death rate six- to ten-times higher than the flu (depending on the study) and both can have long-term effects that the flu does not.

Ask Lascelles and St Maximin. Ask the 20-year-old Wimbledon midfielder who cannot yet walk up a flight of stairs, more than a year after contracting Covid. Or Asia Durr of the WNBA, or Jayson Tatum and Mo Bamba of the NBA, all of whom are yet to fully recover more than a year after infection. That never happens with the flu.

Omicron seems likely to be relatively less severe than earlier forms of Covid, but that still would make it exponentially more dangerous than the flu -- for hospitalizations, long-term complications, and death.

Stick to the facts and leave the politics out of it.

Good work, Mike. I was going to just look away, glad you didn't.

One thing to add: we still don't know that milder cases have less risk of long-term effects. We know that there are many who did contract long-term symptoms while experiencing what they described as mild infection.

We're off topic here but I can find much to empathise with in both Kevin's (#13) and Mike's (#15) posts.

One might think they are in conflict but one of the more unusual aspects of this pandemic is that there is probably some truth in both of them and neither is just outright wrong. Or at least, not at this point...

There's another overwhelmingly important point about this variant, more than Delta before it, there's a good chance this variant will give birth to the next variant. With it infecting so many more people than Delta, I'd say it's a certainty there'll be another serious mutation.

If there had been a global effort and we'd have fought Delta properly, funded vaccinations for poor nations and face masks everywhere, this Omicron nasty might not have appeared and we could have been on the tail-end of the epidemic.

Of course, I'm dreaming that we can all work together to solve problems like this, but I don't think it's an impossibility that we might be in the same position next Christmas because we can't get it together for a unified effort.

Mike – stick to the facts…..

I question the measures put in place due to the Omicron variant – you quote death tolls from other variants.

Please, stick to the facts regarding this variant. The facts are sketchy at best, but currently indicate milder symptoms, less hospitalisations and far fewer deaths than previous variants.

Kevin,

"The facts are sketchy at best, but currently indicate milder symptoms, less hospitalisations and far fewer deaths than previous variants."

You need to read his post again, you're repeating what he's already said, but Mike Gaynes says:

"Omicron seems likely to be relatively less severe than earlier forms of Covid, but that still would make it exponentially more dangerous than the flu -- for hospitalizations, long-term complications, and death."

This is the current opinion of the medical professions. The medics are in a fearful state right now.

The skeptics will be happy to hear my healthy 22-year-old fully vaccinated coworker is out hospital now, albeit with a prescription of Remdesevir and a breathing device.

Nobody wants the country shut down or football cancelled. But relative to my coworker's health and age, I'd happily forego a few football matches and parties versus one of my parents dying.

Hopefully, once we have sufficient data, we will see Omicron isn't so bad. But, as Tom wisely points out, the more infections, the more chances of worse mutations.

The one thing that this extended pandemic is showing is that it affects people in different ways and to different degrees.

I had Covid in June last year and it was fairly mild and certainly no worse than a bad case of flu. But there is evidence of even fully vaccinated people being hospitalised with this thing. We even have superfit professional sportsmen being badly affected.

I happen to believe that so many of these expert scientists haven't got a dooby about what's going on and the world leadership is non-existent so, as usual, the masses are made to pay.

Like everything else in life, we need a champion to show us the way and we certainly haven't been shown the way so far.

Tom 18.

"If there had been a global effort and we'd have fought Delta properly, funded vaccinations for poor nations..."

Absolutely this. It has been a global pandemic and yet it has been dealt with by individual nations and not a global approach to stop the spread.

Jay & James,

Good posts, lads.

James #23,

Correct, and I wish I could say I'm surprised. But I'm 65 and I've never seen a coordinated global effort to deal with anything. Not HIV/AIDS, or hunger, or the refugee crisis. And the global effort to deal with climate change is pretty pathetic. The human race just doesn't work that way... not outside the movies, anyway.

Jay #22,

A champion did emerge who showed us the way, and the majority of Americans at least have followed his guidance. But those devoted to a certain political cult have called him a liar, a criminal, a Nazi, "the most dangerous bureaucrat in the history of the country", and a traitor to the United States who should be tried and summarily executed.

This world is too deeply divided ever to follow any champion.

I will be having a listen to this man later tonight.

Dr John Campbell

He is a a medical professional. I have listened through a few of his videos and been impressed with the information and opinion he offers.

Kevin (#13), well said. People with underlying cancer and other illnesses are dying at an alarming rate.

Mike Gaynes (#15).

Did all of those you mentioned have double jabs? (I am not having a dig here, just curious to know.)

Having two doses (we are told by experts) stops having to go to hospital and the booster stops the Omicron doing the same.

As Kevin alludes to, at some point, we have to carry on with life. We can't keep having to have boosters every time we get a new variant.

Tom (#18),

The virus will always mutate, whatever you do to try to stop it; it's what it was born to do.

Eric,

The thing is, the more people it infects, the more chances it has to mutate. If it just infected 20k people, it probably wouldn't be a problem.

The sad thing about Omicron and where it originated from, is that there were millions of doses of vaccine unused in South Africa – no-one was coming forward for them.

Kevin - you say stick to the facts, yet defend Mark's post. Mark stated that Omicron is milder than flu. This is not a fact. You then misjudge Mike's post.

I don't like knocking anyone on here – we're all Evertonians and there's a pandemic on, which is a bad double whammy. But sweeping statements and misinformation are part of the reason why this mess is so bad. They need to be called out.

Everybody has become obsessed with Omicron and seems to have decided all other coronavirus strains have gone away. Well, at the start of this week, the UK had never had a day of over 60,000 reported cases; we are now a day or so away from hitting 100,000 in a day and Omicron is only just approaching the 10,000 mark.

None of this is going away and rabid anti-vax conspiracy theorists just make that worse. And now we have members of the Government and senior members of that party telling the nation's Chief Medical Officer to 'stop playing at science' (the same MP who told Marcus Rashford to say out of politics and stick to his day job) saying the situation is going to get worse.

Aston Villa game called off 2 hours before kick-off. Fans from all over would have been travelling to Villa Park.

The Premier League are an absolute joke. They should have cancelled all games this weekend. Farcical.

Andrew,

There are far more than 10,000 Omicron cases out there. That is only the number that has been identified by genome sequencing and there is a 4-5 day delay in that process. Not all labs can identify it anyway.

My view is that football should be suspended until the New Year. It might be an outdoor spectator event but having 40,000 to 70,000 tightly packed together in a stadium shouting themselves silly, cannot help surely? Especially in the run-up to Christmas when everyone is going to visit friends and family.

Stuart @32.

That Omicron is a far milder variation of Covid than previous mutations appears to be undisputable fact. The high number of cases versus low hospitalisations and deaths appears to confirm this too. That is how viruses behave.

Mark @ 7, I agree.

I guess herd immunity went the same way as 2 weeks to flatten the curve, children not being vulnerable (and parents told to not mask them), children not scheduled to be vaccinated, then children below 12 not to be vaccinated. Having a new, continuous cough and temperature if you had Covid, not having it if you didn't. No plans for vaccine passports, "Freedom" for jabbed people... and the rest of it.

It doesn't matter if/whether the finest minds in science are involved; they are not running the show.

Mike @ 25;

"The human race just doesn't work that way... not outside the movies, anyway"

It's not the human race, Mike, it's people numbering in the several thousands that set the stage. Being going on for a long time and it's not even hard to find with a little research.

Martin, you could end up being right but you can't compare Omicron cases and deaths yet because there's generally a 3-week gap between a person contracting the disease and dying.

As I said, you could be right but don't be so smug about things.

My personal opinion is that the Premier League will have to call a temporary halt to the season sooner or later.

Back in the olden days, when pitches were quagmires over the winter and frozen pitches regularly caused postponements, some teams ended up with fixture pile-ups at the end of the season, but there was more room for it then.

These days there are so many tournaments, not to mention pointless internationals and African Nations Cups etc, that the Premier League will quickly become a mess of games in hand and recriminations about unfairness.

Perhaps all the Christmas and New Year fixtures can be called off, and a series of midweek dates set aside for all teams to play the games in hand, rather than just a few teams like Spurs and Burnley having half a dozen to fulfill while Liverpool and others have none.

Alternatively, halt the season and call it all off and then we won't have to worry about relegation, and can get a full set of decent and fit players for next time.

Mark (#7),

"I've just had Omicron, it's a mild fever, that's all."

Do you always generalise from a sample of one?

Martin,

I'm aware how viruses behave. I'm a biologist.

"An undisputed fact"? Clearly you don't know what that phrase means.

Firstly, it is not milder for everyone.

Secondly, meaningful data based on representative samples are not available yet. So the world's finest scientists aren't sure yet. Hopefully, it will be less severe on average. Which preliminary data suggest is the case. Get your undisputed facts right.

My original objection was that the sweeping statement was insensitive. Omicron is going to kill people. But it's also worth pointing out that Omicron appears to be more infectious. So, even if it hospitalises a smaller proportion of people than Delta... a small proportion of a huge number is still a very big number. This is why the alleged 'overreaction' is actually justified concern.

I am not saying football should stop. I don't know what the answer is. But I do know what a fact is.

Kunal, totally agree. Surely Aston villa, like Watford in midweek, must have known they had positive cases 2 hours before kick off. All games this weekend should have been called off. What's to say more games won't follow?

Watford fans would have been more than three-quarters of the way to Burnley, whilst over 2k Burnley fans were well on their way to Villa. No consideration for the fans get again. Any apologies from Villa today and Watford in midweek are futile.

Okay, the away fans will no doubt receive free travel to the rearranged game, if we're allowed that is, but what about the home fans who have had to travel, they will receive no reimbursement whatsoever?

Would it be too much suggest the clubs who had to cancel, Watford and Villa, forfeit the game or have points docked? They say it is totally out of their control what's happened, but let's face it, it is totally within their control.

As I said at the start, surely they must have known about any players testing positive, unless these tests are conducted only 2 hours before kick-off?

Stuart Sharp @ 41

"So even if it hospitalises a smaller proportion of people than Delta... a small proportion of a huge number is still a very big number."

Yes absolutely, that should be simple enough for those who think there's no threat from this "mild" variant to understand.

Ray @38,

I never try to be smug but always try to be realistic. The worst strain of Covid is unfortunately Covid Hysteria.

I strongly recommend State of Fear by Laura Dodsworth which explains the propaganda and psychological manipulation by government behavioural scientists that would put Goebbels to shame.

Look only at statistics such as hospitalisations and deaths and not cases and projections which are almost meaningless at times.

Look after yourselves.

Martin,

Looking at the deaths figures NOW and comparing them with the higher cases figures NOW, as you seem to be doing, does not prove that the Omicron variant is relatively harmless.

Compare cases now with deaths in 3 weeks time and then see if your opinion can be justified. Meanwhile, don't claim "facts" to be indisputable.

Martin,

Stuart has summed up the situation:

"So even if it hospitalises a smaller proportion of people than Delta... a small proportion of a huge number is still a very big number."

Martin,

The worst strain of Covid is actually Covid denial – the fingers in ears, head in the sand brigade claiming “it's only a cold” or that there is some sort of global conspiracy that all world leaders and the vast, vast majority of medical professionals are somehow secretly bought into.

That Bill Gates is microchipping people through the vaccines or that Covid tests contain a membrane that rots the lining of your brain. They've invariably “done their own research” and can share with you an obscure Facebook or YouTube video ‘proving' their outlandish claims whilst (with no hint of irony) accusing anyone who actually believes the mainstream science of being “a sheep”.

These are the very people refusing to modify their behaviour in the slightest to take account of anyone who is more vulnerable than themselves. They are selfish, ignorant and their actions and refusal to think of anyone other than themselves prolong the very mitigation measures they so vehemently object to.

Well said, Chris.

Chris...

If you haven't seen it, do check out a little video of a Glaswegian lady railing against the tin foil hat brigade.

Her gist is that, with all the things going on in the world, why would you think yourself so important that "they" want to track or control you? Bloody brilliant.

Ray @45,

There have been 7 deaths with Omicron (not from omicron). Covid deaths are still very low; Covid bed occupation is extremely low.

Tom @46,

No, the figure is tiny. 7 deaths with Omicron.
Chris @47,

The scientists who isolated the Omicron variant said that symptoms are similar to a mild cold and that the world is overreacting and that is good enough for me. There isn't evidence that says otherwise.

My daughter tested positive for it and had symptoms of a mild cold. Your comment on the fiction of Covid deniers is too thick to warrant a response, sorry.

Btw, there is no real evidence that any of the restrictions imposed make any significant difference. The outcomes from states that implemented harsh restrictions were no better than those who didn't. Western Europe implemented the harshest and have had the worst outcomes in stopping the spread of the virus.

I check everything I say as realistic; if and when the facts change, then my interpretation of them will too, of course.

This virus is not going away ever. I think the best option to all governments is to go into full lockdown at least 2 weeks before Xmas every year until we can come up with a solution.

The problem the scientists have is they can't stop it spreading, no matter how many jabs we have, and there lies the problem. It will infect the nurses and doctors who will have to isolate and that in turn stops cancer patients and other sick people getting medical help.

Just have a full 2-week lockdown. Just bring the school 2-week break at Xmas forward a week and do it then.

Bobby #28, I assume not. All were infected over a year ago, before the vaccines were available.

Will #37, I wish I thought so. I'm afraid I have a darker view of humanity overall.

Stuart #41, thank you for your informed contribution to this discussion.

Chris #47, and they always seem to make Nazi references, like the "Goebbels" comparison in the post you addressed. Superb summation, sir.

In 1978, a mate and I set out for the World Cup in Argentina, overland through the Americas. There was a bus line called Tica that connected all the capitals in Central America.

As we crossed from Nicaragua into Costa Rica, we were all hoiked off the bus – locals and gringos alike – and given a jab. Never did find out what it was for but didn't seem to do me any harm...

Mind you, I can't follow the matchday commentary for the bloody voices coming out of the toaster and tumble dryer.

Trying to stay out... but Martin – c'mon man! Every time restrictions are lifted, transmission rates go up. Also, comparative studies among places that did or didn't have them make clear that you are on a wind-up there.

Martin,

"The outcomes from states that implemented harsh restrictions were no better than those who didn't."

Do you have a reference for that?

Should we operate solely on the basis of the severity of restrictions? What about speed of implementation of those restrictions as well? So, lack of speed of implementation of restrictions could lead to worse outcomes, which could then lead (belatedly) to harsh restrictions. A totally different causal relationship.

Chris, there is more to this current malaise than a simple dichotomy of mainstream belief at one end versus social media lunacy at the other. To imply everything other than what's on the TV absolutely has to be an obscure outlandish claim is really very lazy.

Quotes around done their own research being used almost as an insult is very churlish. Why not do some yourself?

Alan, I could share that Gates has and is still funding research and development of a system of sub-dermal tattooing of people's medical and vaccination history into their skin.

You could then retort the tin foil hat line for your comfort. Or you could find out if it's true. And by the way – do implantable RFID chips for people already exist, and are there already people with them inserted?

I hate to state the bleedin' obvious, but cases went down in July when restrictions were lifted!

Looking at the stats, it's difficult to see much difference between the outcomes of major European countries like Italy, France, Spain and the UK – the death rate per million is plus/minus 10% amongst them all. Probably because, in the end, the differences in approach were either so small or made very little difference.

Strangely, Sweden, which consistently made restrictions at the discretion of the individual rather than imposing lockdowns, has a lower death rate than that of, say, France which has consistently imposed stringent measures. And before anyone says "yeah but lower population density", Sweden has the same level of urbanization as the UK.

Lockdowns flatten the curve, but don't change the long-term outcome. That was never the aim of them. The aim was to spread the burden on each country's health service over a longer period so they weren't swamped.

So we can lockdown again now, but it would simply spread the deaths over a longer period. Of course, that might be worth doing, but the key surely is still vaccinations. It doesn't stop people getting ill, but it clearly reduces the dangers of hospitalisation and death.

We're in a great place now thanks to a superb vaccination programme – we are by far the best in Europe when it comes to the booster jab – and that's something to celebrate. Whether it stops thousands more dying is another matter. It's a virus, it spreads.

To finish on an optimistic note, I live in London so I follow the local stats closely. Obviously the case rate in London is rocketing and, on first glance, so are the number of hospitalisations. But the actual numbers in hospital are rising much more slowly, so clearly people are spending less time in hospital than previously, presumably because they are becoming less ill than in previous waves. If that continues, the NHS will cope and, fairly soon, the number of cases will peak. Again, probably thanks to so many over-60s being triple jabbed.

And, while the number of under-60s in London catching the virus is rocketing, the number of over-60s getting it is only going up very slowly. A good sign.

Hopefully it will all look much better by the end of January and we can return to the misery of being Evertonians rather than the misery of Covid.

The only thing I will say on the matter – and yes, I have had the double jab – is there are always two sides to every story. Divide and conquer seems appropriate at these times.

People have been advised one jab, then oh, you need two jabs to give you 90-odd percent survival, the same survival rate as anyone healthy catching it. Then comes a further booster jab, that's three jabs in just one year. In 6 months, you will then have to have a further 2nd booster jab.

Yet in all this, we may have to have a circuit breaker, the very same time they lift 11 countries on the Red list, to fly into Britain. Some might say they are a greater risk chancing coming over while it is rife over here. According to scientists, that is not the point. Why remove 11 Red listed countries when we are struggling with the new variant.

So from the other side, when David Ikke came up with his son of god and predictions, he was all over tv, the newspapers, and no doubt would have been all over the internet had he said it later than 1991, "They are laughing at you" Wogan replied, he was ridiculed from pillar to post, all over the papers the next day.

So my question is, why are those with differing views not being ridiculed all over TV, the websites, newspapers? Instead, they have their story blocked, have their videos removed, within minutes it has been fact-checked the lot and blocked.

If the other views are so crazy, then why not get a debate of people who can say you're wrong, we can dismiss this and that. This would then take a lot of the Conspiracies out of the context. We have a lot of clever scientists, so why not get a debate on National TV, to rid the Conspiracies if nothing else? Why are they instead choosing to bury every single different viewpoint by blocking it?

So there you have it. One side who accept the scientists, people who have had the jabs and being told everything and keeping safe; the other side are not seeing any counter-acting debates by other scientists and doctors – everything is being vetted and kept out of the main news.

Why if so daft, is it being kept out and blocked, instead of being ridiculed and proven wrong on National TV?

No matter if you are for or against, only one side is seeing their view put across with all kinds of facts, numbers, etc.

Martin, you say you check everything but I very much doubt that. When you talk about the effectiveness of restrictions in various countries, have you considered population density and cultural norms? Or are you just extrapolating from wholly inadequate data?

It doesn't help when you make meaningless statements like “That is how viruses behave.” Viruses don't ‘behave', they are unthinking pathogens and come in various grades, which are generalisations themselves.

Natural selection means that there is normally a counter-balance between virulence and prevalence; a virus that kills too many hosts too quickly will self-limit how far it spreads but that doesn't mean there can't be dangerous ‘outliers' on the distribution curve.

The problem with Covid-19 is its novelty limits the natural immunity in a 7(-ish) billion strong host species that has never before been so ‘intimately' connected.

It is literally just now establishing itself and finding its own niche. Evolution is simply the best ‘fit' mutants coming to prominence and it is a numbers game; the more infected (and that includes those with mild or no symptoms) the more viral progeny and the more chances for those millions-to-one confluences of certain genes to crop up and lead to a proper grade 4 pathogen in our midst.

Unfortunately, Martin, I can't take your opinions / recommendations as gospel as you just don't appear to be immune from confirmation bias.

Si,

I hope my post is a little more both sides and no bias. I am neither one side or the other, but there are always two sides to a story and at the moment, only one point of view is being allowed to be aired.

Might be worth checking up flu deaths over a 10-year period in the UK with a low of 12,000 while others go up to around 17,000, yet last year there was only just over a 1,000 flu deaths, that's a huge drop from previous years.

Michael (57), the important data missing from your post is anything to do with personal behaviour and general population health, age, education or wealth.

In Sweden, for instance, although restrictions were not imposed, most people were seen to have adopted safer practices anyway (face coverings, social distancing, sanitising hands regularly, etc) and they did see large falls in optional travel which actually meant their plans for quickly acquiring ‘herd' immunity were effectively stymied.

By July, many had received vaccinations and most of us didn't just revert to pre-pandemic behaviours just because official restrictions were lifted.

Martin Mason @ 50

"Tom @46, no, the figure is tiny. 7 deaths with Omicron."

It hasn't properly started yet, when infections of this are in the many millions (and they will be) then we'll know.

Once again:

"So even if it hospitalises a smaller proportion of people than Delta... a small proportion of a huge number is still a very big number."

Brian "Might be worth checking up flue deaths over a 10-year period in the UK."

We lost our chimney sweep only last week!

Sorry, Brian, couldn't resist it. And I do see your point about both / all sides of the argument and different degrees of exposure being given to them.

Good one Brent, now I have an image of Dick Van Dyke, tap dancing on my roof.

It's true though Brent, last year every death went down as Covid on the death certificate, when people had the first jab, hardly a death was put down to Covid, I am not foolish enough to dismiss Covid, but at the same time, top doctors, scientists who offer a different view, are being blocked from people hearing their viewpoint, why.

Let us get both sides of the debate on National TV, and let those who are getting all the exposure, shoot down the Conspiracies with facts against, instead of removing every content the other side debates.

Si (62)

Yes, I did say Sweden made the restrictions at the discretion of the individual. And people mostly did the right thing. In fact, at the start of the first pandemic wave, there was a similar response in London. Tube and bus travel numbers collapsed in the week before the lockdown was imposed, and nobody I knew was going to a pub after the second week of March.

And I totally agree that population health was an important marker. The UK is a nation of fat bastards, as well as having a rickety underfunded health system with some of the poorest outcomes in Western Europe, so we were in a terrible position to face a virus which impacted the obese and the unhealthy old so severely.

Brian – Covid killed the flu, don't ya know.

The censorship has been enormous, incredibly far-reaching and basically abhorrent. Some leading world authorities on the relevant issues have been ruthlessly ostracized.

Of course, most will assume that those "fact-checked" are the usual 20-year-old loser eating pizza in the basement types. That's the meme.

I wonder, of what do people think comprised, these myriad fact-checking systems? Able to view, dissect, analyse and check the veracity of 90-minute videos of complex technical matter... all in a handful of minutes, often.

It ain't fact checking – it's rapid censorship from a list of don't-go-theres. Dissenting voices have no place and no audience.

Lizards aside (I know), most of what Icke said back then is now old-hat truth.

Michael,

It could also be because Swedish people have a greater sense of community and doing things for other people than we do in the UK (Jag är gift med en Svensk). They may have large urban populations (Stockholm, Malmö, Göteborg) but the rest of them are well spread out!

And you are little disingenuous with regard to our "underfunded" NHS. Government spending is just over $4,000 per person. Germany & Netherlands spend over $5k and so we are 10th in the European League table, ahead of Italy, Spain and Portugal and the rest of the Eastern Europe EU block. Our problem is we do not spend enough as individuals. I am not talking US stupidity health care but the €25 per visit it costs to go to a GP in France type of spending.

David Icke: crap goalkeeper and anti-semitic fraud. Dropped by one publisher (Gateway) because he submitted a book chapter endorsing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. A Tsarist police forgery. Fact-check that…

Reading some of these I'm thinking my Renaissance Report is looking rather sensible.

Larry - we probably all realize Icke is "Different". However, much of what he said on record turned out to be provably true, character aside.

Then again, maybe only good goalkeepers can know what's going on.

Brian (@65), that type of open debate will never happen. About any major issue. Those days are gone.

It's fascinating how general perception is managed and shifted. It's an oily and immoral system but it works. There are things I said at the outset of this that had me sneered at.

Jabs, passports, more jabs, time frames, duration, contradictory rules, camps and more. Many of those people now? Accepted it. It's been on the telly.

"Lock up the unvaxxed! Force vaccinate!"

Will 71,

Surely the Queen is not a shape shifting lizard?

Well blow me down, I thought I was going to get hammered from pillow to post, some very good responses after my posts.

Can have a nice tipple of Jack Daniels now, without the worry of the content of my jd being fact checked.

Martin #50
That is absolutely not what the scientists said. Again, the data aren't there yet. Besides, South Africa's demographics (e.g. average age) are totally different to ours. Early indications should not be 'good enough' for anyone.

Science rarely proves anything. It provides evidence for or against. Increasing evidence suggests that Omicron, on average, is milder. I hope this turns out to be the case. But once again, that doesn't mean this isn't a potential disaster for a huge number of people.

Regarding the football, what we really need now is transparency. But I won't hold my breath.

Brian are you talking about editors making content decisions on some grounds of merit or are you suggesting full on censorship? It looks to me that credentialed opinions make it to the big channels/platforms and stay there if their credibiy remains after commentary. Others who've yet to establish credibility are left to YouTube and other outlets until their predictions gain some attention from editors or researchers in the field. Thats kind of how you want it to work on public health issues.

Mark, I doubt it. I think you didn't fully read my posts. In fact I'm sure you didn't.

I sent our kid for a boost and he came back with a Mars bar. I pointed out to him that Omicron is an anagram of moronic.

I suppose it is a good thing that the finest supporters' forum around gives a platform for some folk to repeat and repeat and prove that they are free thinkers able and willing to carry out research that is beyond most people.

I guess, if Lyndon and Michael didn't allow this"debate", they'd be inflicting it in real life.

What will the postponement mean for Everton? Is it a good thing? (I know, dull football stuff on a football site.) I believe it is a blow to us. I think we reached a turning point at Chelsea, and now... who knows?

Dale - attention from whose editors and researchers? And whose idea of credentialed?

Many post on YouTube precisely because they are excluded elsewhere. They then get excluded from there, and hop-a-platform continues, with occasional and sometimes frequent re-posts in an attempt to foil the bots and censors.

YouTube incidentally is not some second rate platform in and of itself. It's a hosting source of information. Information can be good or bad, true or false, wherever it resides.

How it should work is that information should be available uncensored. Public health issues or not. Not labelled as disinformation simply for even asking a question, let alone deeper exploration.

Truth and reality should have nothing to fear.

Andy - those pesky free thinkers. Aren't they annoying?

No wonder those who are above that kind of nonsense don't like them.

Brent #40 - what else am I supposed to do? I've had real flu and Omicron, the former was far, far worse.

Chris #47 - the constant implication that those of us who reject lockdowns and associated NPIs are selfish or inconsiderate is not fair. I did my bit in the first lockdown, I shopped for people in my area who couldn't leave home etc, but then the vaccines came. Our part of the bargain was to observe the measures until the vaccines were rolled out. They were, to an extraordinary number of people in double quick time.

And the government's part of the bargain was to restore normal life and leave us alone after that. I am therefore done with covid rules I'm afraid. I am no longer prepared to have life, travels etc put on hold "just in case" and to protect a crumbling health service that is unfit for purpose. We never used to stop life during the annual flu outbreak "to protect the vulnerable". Instead, we assumed they'd get their flu jabs and take their own further precautions if they felt it necessary. End of story.

Please give me one reason why this is any different?! There will be variants each year until the end of time - this is, after all, almost certainly a virus engineered to be particularly good at binding to human cells and infecting us! Are you suggesting we panic, destroy the economy, livelihoods, create an acute backlog of other untreated health conditions and restrict the liberties of millions each winter from now till Kingdom come?

The waves of the virus have come and gone around the world and these ludicrous, Chinese-invented controls nobody had heard of before 2020, have made no difference. Yet this dangerous, arrogant assumption that governments can control a respiratory virus is now normalised, so much so that the Netherlands has become the first Western country to lockdown and cancel Christmas this year, with their Prime minister saying the restrictions are "unavoidable".

Well, pardon my French, but that is bullshit. Of course they're "avoidable", just don't impose them, then watch the wave of Omicron fall away as fast as it is currently peaking, just as all the other waves have done.

Finally, for any of you on twitter, I suggest you read the astonishing exchange today between Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator, and Graham Medley, from LSHTM (authors of the latest doom-laden Omicron modelling) and of SAGE.

Medley basically admits that he and his fellow fatalistic modellers like Neil Ferguson only ever model worst case scenarios, at the request of policy makers, because a best case scenario model wouldn't require a decision to be made and would therefore be pointless. In other words, every time, they produce a dire model, the media leaps on it, the drumbeat for restrictions gets louder and, hey ho, we're all off to house arrest for another few months. The statistics conform to the policy rather than the policy to the statistics...

Had to get that off my chest!

Mark,@82. Absolutely stop on mate. Well said.

Mark #82
"Brent #40 - what else am I supposed to do?"

Mark, to draw a conclusion about Omicron from a single case you know of is like drawing a conclusion about a player's abilities from only seeing him once - you can't generalise from a single case. What else you could do is wait until there are more cases and generalise from that.

"I've had real flu and Omicron, the former was far, far worse."

That's great. But the same was true for previous versions of Covid - that for some people the symptoms were mild. What about people for whom the symptoms aren't mild? Don't you care about them, Jack.

Run out of pfiser inject with Tizer

Andy - very daring to break into such debate with football talk - hopefully the reverence most hold you in as a long-standing TW contributor will allow such temerity

The Chelsea game certainly has the potential to be a watershed moment - clearly there is a massive power struggle going on with GP and FF but football games still must be won to ensure we get safety (and in my prayers, the FA cup), and the response on Thursday after going a goal down showed there is spirit within the camp. I would have liked the Leicester game to go ahead as a barometer to see if that hunch proved to be the case

Mark #82 - and you did your bit during previous versions of Covid. Genuinely, that's great; I mean that. But Omicron is not previous versions. If it proves to be at least as bad in terms of hospitalisations and deaths, then doesn't that suggest you might want to be as socially conscious this time?

Martin (50) and Will (56), sorry, I've been away from the debate “doing my own research” - I've just watched one of the top poster boys for covid deniers, Piers Corbyn, incite crowds to go and “hammer those scum… burn down their offices” (referring to MP's who voted in favour of public health measures) and also tell people that they will get aids from the vaccine.

I was obviously a sheep for believing the vast, vast (and I mean vast) majority of peer-reviewed and evidence-based science before now but his argument has won my over. Well, it would have done if wasn't the biggest load of bat-shit crazy bollocks for a thick as shit lunatic.

Talking of thick, Martin, your comment on your daughter having the virus and only getting mild symptoms is a bit like saying “I smoked 30 B&H a day and I've never for cancer so it's proof that smoking doesn't cause cancer.”

You're in a growing group, Mark - those that did their bit and have realized where it's now led.

The Netherlands situation is bad, as is the decision of several countries to move to blanket vaccination mandates. It's outright tyranny.

You actually touch upon an intention of this whole thing; permanent ongoing monitoring and control of "Health". A shift from people being considered normally healthy until found unwell, to being assumed unhealthy unless proved well. This proof would be in the form of a personal digital identity engineered into eventually all aspects of general life. Then watch it go.

Chinese social credit system, anyone?

I said "Would be". In fact it's will be, if accepted.

The government does not take away our freedoms. We hand them over like sheep.

The British Lion, Champion of the individual? No, the British lamb, baa, baa.

Chris #88,

Piers Corbyn is an idiot, but it ought to be clear to you from my previous post that I'm not a mad anti-vaxxer like him.

You haven't attempted to refute any of my logical, sensible arguments, you've just cited the lunatic fringe in a feeble attempt to discredit what I (and, from what I can see, plenty other perfectly reasonable, rational people on here) are saying.

This fool did his own research too:

William Hartmann, 63, Michigan Official Who Disputed Election, Dies

Chris @88,

So you think you have done research when all you can come up with is a personal attack on Piers Corbyn in relation to a very democratic protest (which I attended) and a stupid comment on my autistic daughter's Covid infection?

Brent, did you see the comments by the South African Minister of Health and the figures re infections, hospital admissions etc? Then contrast that with the massive and high-speed growth of the situation here. From several cases, to one death, to this, in no time flat.

They are now trying to imply that this virus could possibly blaze yet another new trail – that of becoming a more contagious and more deadly variant.

Chris, I haven't heard Piers Corbyn's words. Nor would I want to, and I don't trust his motivations, but that's another story. He's the last thing anybody needs appending, for any side.

Whilst Corbyn may be a more overt arsehole, we've all observed countless revelations of what I'll call political shortfall. The recent Christmas party debacle, on the back of the others throughout this. It's kind of hard to trust, wouldn't you say.

Mark@82, take a bow son, wish I could have come up with even half of that, you may get shot down by a few, but that is one of the best and most sensible posts I have read for a long time.

I can picture you now with a smoking jacket on, a cognac in one hand, stood by an open fire, a long filtered cigarette in the other hand, and a well earned nod of approval from yourself, I doff my cap to you.

Andy 79.

Never fear, bud. This is Everton, miss one false dawn and there'll be another one along in a month or so

Brent #87 – well, in the highly unlikely event that happens (viruses typically mutate to become more infectious but less lethal so I doubt that it will), I will look out for those who need help, but I won't be obeying any more Covid rules myself.

Above all, I will never carry the proof of my vaccinations in the UK (I don't have the app and the hard copy letter I do have, I am prepared to use solely for foreign travel).

I would walk away from an Everton game or any other event I have tickets for if asked to disclose what is confidential medical information, whether vaccine status or that I've taken a test and received a negative result.

I am capable of making my own judgements as to whether I'm healthy, infectious, should or shouldn't go out and mix with people – the state does not decide that for me.

Will, let's see what happens. Early days.

Mark "I am capable of making my own judgements as to whether I'm healthy, infectious, should or shouldn't go out and mix with people – the state does not decide that for me."

Mark, I agree. We get to decide where we don't want to go. And equally there are times when we don't get to decide where we do go, when we can't just go anywhere we want.

Correct Mark.

Will #56: "Alan, I could share that Gates has and is still funding research and development of a system of sub-dermal tattooing of people's medical and vaccination history into their skin."

Will #80: "Truth and reality should have nothing to fear."

You should have nothing to fear, then, from the truth that Gates does not fund, and has never funded, any such research into any such system.

He has been accused of planning and engineering, the virus crisis in order to implant people with mind-control microchips, sterilize them with vaccines, and yes, track them subversively with tattoos.

None of it is true.

Is Bill Gates a modern witch? COVID conspiracy theories involving billionaire similar to witch hunt

Fact check: 'Plandemic' sequel makes false claims about Bill Gates

Mark @97:

There seems to me some merit in what you say. Before the vaccines, the chance of dying from Covidwas roughly 1-in-500 generically for the population, a level of risk generally considered intolerable in our society.

With vaccines performing at the oft-quoted 90% protection rate, that reduces the risk by a factor of 10, to about 1-in-5000, a level of risk comparable to that from some other common hazards in life (including flu), considered tolerable if not wholly acceptable, ie, worth reducing further by measures that are not 'grossly disproportionate' in relation to societal cost and disruption.

That said, the current concerns about Omicron are to do with the uncertainty of how well the existing vaccines will protect against it. If there were confidence that they gave circa 90% protection, I don't think the government would be considering further restrictions.

Once there is clarity about this, as data quickly accumulates, there could be less precaution, and such a situation might prevail going forward as more insight is gained into other new variants as they occur.

As such, the current situation of considering further restrictions might be, and hopefully will be, short-lived. .

Alan@96, is right, and consistently for decades.

One day soon, the stars will line up, the tides, will be right and the new era for EFC, will start, after against all odds, deservedly winning a point at Chelsea.

Let's hope so.

You need to review your fact checkers, Mike.

Link

Well, I've had my ration of Scotch and Welsh whisk (e) y.
I love ToffeeWeb and all you guys.
May I go to bed, sharing one of my favourite slices of American wit...vis a vis the debate, above.
Think it was George Burns..
" such a shame that the people most qualified to run the country are too busy cutting hair and driving cabs "
Until tomorrow mes amis.

Whilst we all hate for the games to be cancelled at any time I think secretly we Evertonians would all love to have the next month or so without them to give us a chance to get many of our players fully fit.

Everton, unlike a few of the top clubs do not have an endless stream of top class players waiting to step in.

Yes, we have replacements but many are just not good enough or experienced enough to carry us through right now.

The late heroics against Arsenal and that great point at the Bridge need to happen more often and with the awful Palace result in between one can feel rather unsure about games over the next few weeks.

The spirit shown by the likes of Simms, Dobbin, Branthwaite and Gordon could put us in good stead for next season but I doubt Rafa will be willing to use them as regular starters just yet although he may for the Hull game.

The UK "government" have scandalously claimed all the credit for the scientist-produced vaccine success, in which they played no part.

Omicron is now being well overplayed by the lazy, abject liar masquerading as our PM as a direct consequence of him being exposed as a self-indulgent, hypocritical dick-head, again, and his panic-station pronouncements are therefore piffle.

As others above have said, Covid is here to stay. We'll physiologically adapt to it as it continues to adapt to us. It's seriously unwelcome but it's only a matter of time before another pandemic breaks out, Covid mutation or otherwise. That's always been the nature of life.

In the meantime we as a species just need to get on with it.

In the very late 1960's we in the UK were visited by what was known as "Asian Flu". It killed nearly 100,000, yet no lock-down occurred, nobody got furloughed, schools/shops/pubs/factories remained open etc etc. And there never was a vaccine. It and we mutated and it went away. Very sad for those who died and their loved ones but 'tis the nature of life.

So, beware what anybody in or used by this "government" says my friends. They are only fluent in talking "bollocks".

And a note to Dazza (who takes me to task for occasionally allegedly saying nothing Everton-wise, just like he sometimes does though), I think Branthwaite will be a legendary player for us, but only if we can keep the better-run clubs (of which there are sadly many) at bay though.

Alan (#94), seriously, genuinely, I like Penderyn too and as I'm jam-packed with Scottish genes that's not always welcome to my family. That said, do you too taste a slightly "minty" tinge in it?

Or should I stop sipping it with Everton Mints? (that's a joke, hopefully!).

Will 80, with respect I'm simply suggesting that the editors of content providers are doing what they think is best by market standards typically. Some early stage research or controversial approach may tend to get filtered out if the researchers are out of their field (lane) or if they lack University Lab backgrounds of some sort.

These other methods aren't 'censored' – they are filtered out because the same level of lab testing isn't there. It ends up on YouTube until it can get some lab level testing to establish credibility. From there, it gets a seat at the table on the larger media outlets.

We were told one jab, then two, then we will have to learn to live with it, the perfect time to push for a booster is just before Xmas, cause the most panic.

Now we have a booster, a booster that was rolled out and given to many before this new Omicrom hit us.

Now anyone can say it is here we have to adhere, so I will finish by saying please take note of my final comment, that when everyone or most have had a booster, watch out around July, just as people are planning holidays, that another variant will come, and a further booster jab will be required and panic will be yet again be thrown out by the powers.

Dismiss anything else I have said, but watch out for my warning in around 6 months; we need to learn to live with this.

I disagree with the fatalism of the "live with it" point of view regarding Covid. That doesn't seem a viable option in an age of global travel. It's all well to talk about what happened in the 60s or 1920 even, but the world was different then. Things have changed and if we don't change then like the dinosaurs we may well all end up wiped out.

Like it or not, and plenty of people won't, John Donne was right when he wrote "No man is an island" and Covid can't be dealt with on a national level. This crisis, and the future crises it presages, need to be dealt with internationally. So far, that is a lesson that hasn't been learned. Fingers crossed it will be before it's too late.

In the meantime, I was pleased to see the fight in the players against Chelsea. Not a fan of Rafa Benitez myself, but we've got to hope he does well, and we're in a bit of trouble at the minute. As others have said, the chance to get a few players back wouldn't hurt. It's been a bit grim lately with the football, Covid and the weather. Let's hope things pick up in the New Year.

Not noticed that, Don... my only complaint about Penderyn is how greedy the angels are for their share.

Wonderful film that, if you've not seen it

Brian, the flu season (which we are long-time conditioned as a society to just endure even though it is a notifiable disease and annual vaccines are produced) was effectively eliminated by the relatively simple hygiene tricks many of us have calmly accepted (social distancing, regular hand sanitisation and covering face and mouth when in enforced enclosed proximity) and that tells us a great deal about Covid. Covid spread was nowhere near as interrupted as flu spread was because so many more people were able to be infected by Covid (near enough 100% of us).

And that is the main point; Covid is the biggest current concern because the number of people who could be infected is a massive factor that makes any decision to rely on what viruses ‘typically' do absolutely laughable. Personally I'm happy for people of the requisite expertise to monitor what it actually does do and react accordingly.

I don't think it will be around forever but it will take a certain amount of time to become just a typical threat to us. Throwing caution to the wind in the interim will not help us get there any quicker and could actually draw out the process.

Looking at worst-case scenarios is typical in risk assessment and is not about inducing unnecessary panic. It helps you to plan appropriately and, when you put in remediating factors, you reduce the threat. If we had a better pandemic plan in place, we wouldn't have needed the government to throw money at money-gouging opportunists.

It's like the bad planning that now leaves our energy supply largely at the mercy of an autocrat who would dearly like to see Western democracies on their knees.

Why shouldn't everyone get their say on this? Because there is a point in a health crisis when misinformation actually becomes an intolerable threat. Just by giving them a platform you effectively legitimise the cranks. I'm happy for things that simply aren't true to be shunted into the hinterland of mass media to protect society as a whole.

Don @106:

The government failed significantly at the start of 2020, as Covid was gathering momentum, and their actions have often been typical of that breed of politician marked by deception and general waffle.

On the other hand, the vaccine developments reflect the success of science and international collaboration amongst talented people, and of course the politicians finally got some things right in terms of the speed of the vaccination programme in the UK.

The best thing to do, imo, is to basically ignore statements from politicians, especially their rhetoric, and dig deeper for information beneath the surface of potted and too-often sensationalist news coverage.

The media can, like politicians, be very irritating. They certainly can be in their coverage of Everton!

Si,

Very well put, the trouble is that so many believe it cannot be the truth, or all of it. Experts can only hypothesize on the end (if there is one) but it's fair to say that two outcomes are most likely: living with it and all it entails until it mutates to something less destructive; or a long-term battle against it, fighting off new mutated strains that come out of large scale unvaccinated areas of the world. That would mean that we would see more strains and need continual shots to combat it.

Either way, it's going to be around for quite a while, methinks, a long tail while vaccination is so slow across different areas of the globe.

This article was written in July and appeared in the Irish Times, pretty much hit nail on head and was done before Omicron strain came out of Africa. Vaccination is only part of the answer, nature and how countries vaccinate is still a significant part of the way forward.

How and when will the Covid-19 pandemic end?

Michael, 57, a reasonable comment but one thing you wrote is completely wrong - Sweden is twice the size of the UK with a population the size of London so we are about 14 times more densely populated than them!

With many games falling foul to teams having a number of Covid cases, I wouldn't be surprised to see games, especially in January, being played behind closed doors. I know the games that have been called off have been because of player infection but with the virus doubling everyday I think it's inevitable that large sporting events will again be behind closed doors. What happens if many Boxing Day fixtures are cancelled? I don't know as some clubs have already got to fit in 2 or 3 games that have already been lost.

Should games have to be played behind closed doors, it will really impact some of the lower league sides who have drawn Premier League opposition in the FA Cup. Some of the lower league clubs can survive for years on the money they make from these sort of ties, so it will hit some of them very hard if more restrictions are brought in.

Stan # 113 - words of wisdom in my opinion:-

“The best thing to do, imo, is to basically ignore statements from politicians, especially their rhetoric, and dig deeper for information beneath the surface of potted and too-often sensationalist news coverage.”

The only thing I would add is after you have done your digging you have to decide what is your truth and what you are going to do about it - if anything.

However, that can only happen if there is freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to act according to your conscience etc, etc,

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Today I heard about a women who had her employment terminated by her employer after 15 years with the company because she does not want to be vaccinated.

My conscience is telling me that this is unjust.

Brian Harrison,

I'm afraid you are right. I see all your concerns becoming a reality.

I took my jabs to keep my job. I've had Covid and presumably have some measure of natural immunity. Certain 'experts', by which I mean leading authorities in their field, said that natural immunity would be enough but they are no longer available to listen to.

With apologies to Mike G and others, I'm not overly keen on having the state decide whether or not my children are injected with an experimental mRNA vaccine (do your research on that). I'll be sure not to resist arrest when they cart my off to a re-education camp.

There's a different debate in your last paragraph Brian Harrison.

A restructuring of the English football pyramid and streamlining of the amount of professional clubs, that would not eliminate, but allow many clubs who are stalwarts of the English game to survive, but within their means in regional leagues.

Go professional and full time when you hit that level.

@Peter. I took my jabs (booster on Friday) because it was advised that I should do, just as I have done with every vaccination I've had in my life. Not because I was told to or felt threatened.

Apart from when I went away with the Army. That was pretty much enforced and I didn't know half of what they were sticking into me, let alone which brand or flavour!!

Danny,

I have said on here on many occasions, I think to have 4 professional teirs in this country is too many to try and sustain. I would have the Premier League and the Championship as the only fully professional leagues, and make Leagues One and Two semi-pro and regional.

I realize that the problem comes when a side gets promoted to the Championship, how do they go from semi-pro to being fully professional, and incurring the extra cost without increasing their income that much?

Agree Brian and I'm not saying it's easy, so it would require a proper study, but it happens in other countries.

Look at Hoffenheim and RB Leipzig. Not long ago, semi-professional teams playing in the 3rd and 4th (non-professional) tiers of German football.

Yes, they benefited from investment and used it wisely, but it demonstrates it's achievable to move up and down the tiers. I suppose it is no different from what we have now, just more professional leagues. Look at Harrogate for example. They had to make the progression over the years.

German football only introduced a 3rd national level professional league (Bundesliga 3) in 2008. And their leagues are only 18 deep in terms of participants, although there are 20 in the 3rd league so that's 56 clubs before it goes regional and semi-pro.

I know I harp on about German football, but to your point, it's achievable and some very prominent clubs have endured dropping down to the regional leagues to come back again. TSV 1860 Munich and St Pauli (Hamburg's neighbours) are examples.

Brian, I agree and I sense that potentially if there's further long term fixture breaks across professional football, some teams could/ will fold, such is they survive had to mouth, week by week.

I few years ago Bury, went and folded from the top tiers and others could follow.

Unless there's some financial aid support packages to be provide by the FA, or the UK government, but this doesn't look likely, with this new variant spreading like wild fire across the world.

I hope there no clubs go under, but who knows what will manifest over the next few weeks.

All stay well and The Best of The Seasons Greetings to Evertonians on TW and across the World.
☘️🥃🍻⚽️

On the rolling debate about Covid-19, lines have long been drawn by individuals as to which camp they belong to.

IMO it is wrong to profile anti-vaxxers and the like as disingenuous middle-aged and older right-wing extremists, who also deny green issues as well as being homophobic and all other foibles associated to this demographic. Non-liberal, if you like. The demographic, in truth, is much broader and diverse than that.

There are clearly intelligent and well-read people in their camp, drawn from the entire width of political and religious belief, expressing genuine concerns on core and secondary issues related to the pandemic, vaccination and social controls implemented by governments.

What is also clear is that there are powerful, influential and well-funded individuals and corporations that DO exploit and feed the fears of this demographic with lies.

There are zealots on both sides. The very definition of a zealot means that they are fanatical and uncompromising in their beliefs. It is a Crusade in which they are the only possessors of the truth and so their campaign is quasi-religious, trying to exorcise and convert heathen non-believers to the true path of salvation.

It doesn't by default make them ignoble. Corrupters of the truth or the innocent. They are genuine and sincere in their beliefs. And that is what makes it hard to debate and engage in.

Too often, any debate on key issues such as this pandemic is absolutist and reductive. Each side trying to impose their beliefs on the other in an attempt to control how the other thinks or feels.

Here in Brazil, my wife and I have personally and collectively with the entire Brazilian nation been deeply impacted on by this pandemic. For those who read the many civil debates shared about Covid-19 here on TW (all praise to Michael and Lyndon for allowing that), my position is well-known.

I am always-always-always open to having my position challenged and being pointed in the direction of credible sources that oppose my own beliefs.

I have also long recognized that so entrenched are individual views and positions that reasonable and rational debate will not 'convert' others to think otherwise. I have yet to be presented with any powerful, convincing, legitimate counter-opinions about Covid-19. Those on the flip side of the coin will claim the same for their own position.

There is an excellent book on the question of disagreement, when polar opposite views clash. 'Conflicted' by Ian Leslie.

He interviewed a broad range of people whose livelihoods are dependent on negotiation and resolving conflicts. He explores what happens to us when we argue. Why disagreement makes us stressed and angry. How social media is a breeding ground for expanding and exacerbating differences and conflicts.

He uses a nice analogy. Parents can tell a child there's no monster under the bed, but they can't stop the child feeling that there is. All they can do is turn on the light, let the child look under the bed themselves and hope they eventually come to the right conclusion.

Telling the child 'don't talk nonsense', or shining a torch into their eyes and interrogating or intimidating them into 'disproving' the existence of monsters will be met with resistance.

The ongoing debate of the pandemic - and many other social issues besides - is similar.

Taken altogether, it is making the world and societies we live in an extremely fraught and conflicted place right now.

Excellent, Jay and very true. I instinctively come from the anti-restriction side of the debate and tend to get very angry about it all.

We have to start debating properly and with respect. That requires access to as much information as possible and to a full range of expert analysis.

If I may say so, I think that is a very important post from you.

Very good points Jay, please remember too though that there are a web of lies woven across the mainstream media by the Covid zealots. Note also that the aim of the zealots is to silence all debate on the issue, to deny free speech and to force their own views on normal people who have the temerity to question the propaganda.

As having the jabs doesn't stop you catching, suffering or transmitting the virus, unvaccinated people pose no threat to those vaccinated. I can't see what is wrong with people just looking after themselves as they see fit. You want the protection of a vaccine? Absolutely fine, just do it. You want to isolate yourself for protection? Absolutely fine, but just don't insist I do it.

There is no civic responsibility that says we must get vaccinated to protect others or that the non-vulnerable should suffer restrictions to protect a small number of vulnerable people (old with several comorbidities).

I'm fully vaccinated but I will never deny any individual his inalienable right to not have the vaccination or to ignore restrictions like wearing a mask or seeing his family as and when he sees fit. I'm sorry if these views don't align with some.

My position is always to first challenge restrictions imposed by governments and experts with an agenda rather than assume that authority is always right.

All I know is, if Iwobi gets it, it will be the only thing he tackles this season.

Off for my booster at half-three. I've taken far more dubious stuff in the past.

Jay@126: Good post. Issues discussed on social media tend to become polarised into black and white camps, ‘believers' versus ‘deniers'. Brexit, Covid vaccines, global warming, etc. Reality is more complex and nuanced, going way beyond the simplistic images created by politicians and much of the media.

Yes, the issues are discussed like religious debates, ultimately futile. There seem to be two types of person involved in such debates, those who genuinely seek truth, and those who treat debates as a kind of debating society game. It's worth debating with the former, but not with the latter.

To reiterate what others have said Jay (BRZ), a cracking and very balanced post.

We can't and shouldn't judge everyone on their views on this subject.

I haven't agreed with everything that has been decided, but I have generally complied with what has been asked of me.

I'm now triple vaxxed and, despite having legitimate medical reasons to declare myself exempt from mask-wearing, I have not done so. I've played the game even though that's now given me an unsightly rash on both of my cheeks. First world problems!!!

I always consider society, certainly UK society, one that has always been governed by consent. Note I say governed, not ruled. The Government governs; it doesn't rule.

If you educate and convince people what is the right thing to do, they will be more willing to follow. Beat them with a stick and try to tell them what to do like naughty school kids and they will resist. Look at the Liberals in the last UK election. Basically their message was that we were all stupid and they're going to ignore our voice and concerns because they apparently knew better. Massively backfired on them.

A bit extreme, but Kitchener's Army in World War 1 was initially made up of volunteers who stepped up based on a sense of duty because they believed in the cause. Imperial Russia's army of conscripts was forced to fight for something they didn't understand; they were told. We know where that ended.

I don't know if people will agree or disagree with me with what I'm going to say, but here goes anyway…

Since July, I've been abroad four times on holiday. We've had to have a Covid test prior to flying home, and then a PCR test 2 days after arriving home. All tests were negative. To date, I've been to 19 football matches, often going into a rammed pub prior to, and sometimes after the match. I've been out with the missus to various local pubs and restaurants. I've been out once a week with mates to our local pub. I've neither felt ill, or had any symptoms of covid, that I'm aware of anyway. I've had both jabs and also the booster. I'm pretty certain that I would, or could have contracted Covid somewhere down the line after all that, but I haven't.

I find it pretty annoying that we could possibly be heading into another lockdown, albeit probably only for a couple of weeks, yet this government had the audacity to “throw a party” last Christmas. This virus will be around for generations to come, so what are we going to do, cancel Christmas every year, cancel sporting events, or have them behind closed doors? Cancel this, that and the other every time a new variant comes around? Quite simply, the answer is “Get the two jabs, get the booster, and let's live our lives as normal”.

There's been all different kinds of viruses down the generations, yet, as far as I'm aware, there has been no lockdowns. Every year, particularly this time of year, the flu kills thousands all over the world, yet I don't recall any lockdown because of it.

There has been a flu jab for years which nobody complains about, so from now on, there will be a covid double jab, then a booster and maybe followed by an annual booster. So FFS, just get jabbed and get on with living, and living as we please!!

@Matin Mason (several) for once, I fully agree with you.

Also Check out "Century of the Self" Link made by BBC in 2003

Tom #30, it WILL infect everyone, whether or not you know it.

It's what viruses do.

Dale Self #54 "Every time restrictions are lifted, transmission rates go up."

Michael Lynch #57 "I hate to state the bleedin' obvious, but cases went down in July when restrictions were lifted!"

With you Rob Halligan.

Live with it like everything else we've lived with over the generations. I've had more concerning things to worry about in the past 12 months and in previous life.

Like you, I've been abroad recently, back and forward the the US. I actually got tested 11 times in the space of 3 and a half weeks as a result. And I had my booster on Friday. I've been socialising and at football matches, but guess what; I'm fine.

We are in danger of letting the scientists, the politicians and the BBC take over with their scaremongering in my opinion. They'll have us locked down for ever now they have their grip of power.

There will sadly always be sickness, illness, viruses and disease. That's life as they say. As my hard faced Grandfather from Garston used to say, which used to scare me as a child; you start dying from the day you are born. Very doom mongering but I suppose something gets us in the end.

His was a heart attack on my Aunties couch on a Sunday afternoon after winning yet another game of Billiards in a Speke social club. He went happy after his 72 years.

Brian #59, good post.

and Brian #63, just a couple of years ago there was 50,000 EWD from flu in a 4 month period. Has there been that many deaths in any 4 month period from Covid?

(just asking, haven't checked myself)

Will #72, check out Century of the Self

Rob, Danny, spot on lads. The thing that really pisses me off are the inconsistencies. To go to the match I get a train from Hunts Cross to Sandhills, have to wear a mask, get on the soccer bus, have to wear a mask, go for a pint in the rammed to the rafters Royal Oak, don't have to wear a mask, get a programme in the club shop, have to wear a mask, then go and spend 2 hours in a packed Lower Bullens and don't have to wear a mask. I mean wtf!!!!

Danny, my Uncle Pete, who worked on Garston Docks for the best part of 50 years and lived just off Banks Road all his life used to say pretty much the same thing. I was in awe of the philosophical approach to life of this hard working man.

Mark Boulle #82 "I am no longer prepared to have life, travels etc put on hold "just in case" and to protect a crumbling health service that is unfit for purpose."

This Mike Gaines #15 IS the politics of it, it's not to do with personal health, it's all about not showing that the NHS is incapable of coping with something that has killed only 0.21% of the UK population.

Rob, Danny, Stephen spot on
Time to get on with it

Mark #82.

"We never used to stop life during the annual flu outbreak "to protect the vulnerable". Instead, we assumed they'd get their flu jabs and take their own further precautions if they felt it necessary. End of story.

Please give me one reason why this is any different?! There will be variants each year until the end of time - this is, after all, almost certainly a virus engineered to be particularly good at binding to human cells and infecting us! Are you suggesting we panic, destroy the economy, livelihoods, create an acute backlog of other untreated health conditions and restrict the liberties of millions each winter from now till Kingdom come?

Fcuking great post!

Eric Myles your understanding of events over time is overwhelmed by quotes that excite you. Go look at a time series representation of tranmission Then place some vertical lines where policy changes occur. Now go try to find some words that undo what that picture shows. Most decent newspapers have the in graphs linked on the front page.

Rob #115 Re Sweden, you're referring to population density, not urbanization. Sweden has a huge amount of land but most of it is empty. Which is why it is better to look at urbanization - the proportion of people living in towns and cities - when comparing populations, rather than simply how many people there are per square mile, which is skewed by huge tracts of empty lands, as in places like Sweden.

Sweden has an urbanization level of 88%, the UK is 84%. So Sweden has a higher percentage of people living in towns and cities than we do. As a comparison, Ireland is around 63%.

Football sites eh, amazing what you can talk about

One thing to add to my earlier post about hospitalizations - the number of covid sufferers in hospital in England has actually dropped over the last four days; there are currently less people in hospital than there were last week. So more people are being released from hospital than being admitted. I expect this might change over the next few weeks but it does go some way to explaining why the government want to hold fire a while before hitting us with another lockdown.

Eric @ 139;

thanks. I have watched that before. It is worth a watch, and it's unlikely any mainstream broadcaster would be associated with such today.

The timing and context of this might be interesting to some:

Link

It's interesting when you look into the UK population distribution and density too Michael.

84% of the UK's population is rammed into England with only 8% in Scotland, 5 % in Wales and 3% in Northern Ireland.

And of that 84%, I'd be interested to see how much of it is crammed south of the M62 and east of the M5.

I think most of them live in my road Danny

Will #148, yes definitely wouldn't get an airing on the BBC these days, especially what is said at the end of the second episode and how relevant it is to today.

Dale #146, I think it's self evident that when restrictions are lifted transmission rates go up, I've always said that.

So that means to stop transmission everyone has to stay in their own home.........forever?

I've read all of the stuff on this thread, as I do on most threads, and have had, really, a moment of epiphany. I consider myself to be open minded, a left of centre liberal but...when it comes to Covid, Everton, actually most things, I find myself getting, disconcertingly, annoyed when people post views that I disagree with.

8, I watched that video and thought about a line in a Talking Heads video

"You are talking a lot but not saying anything"

Eric (142) I agree with your position but Covid hasn't killed 0.21% of the population. The deaths are “with” (within 28 days of a positive test) rather than “of” Covid. Add to that the significant relaxation of rules concerning doctors knowledge and treatment of the deceased before the sign off of death certificates means that it's highly unlikely we will ever get to the true figure. Also the population isn't static, during 2020 and 2021 the UK population grew by around 0.5% each year.

There are many people who now question how proportionate the response has been. The shutting down of these questions by simply castigating the doubters is further evidence of the weakness of the arguments put forward by their proponents.

Eric and Will.

On Adam Curtis' work.

'it's unlikely any mainstream broadcaster would be associated with such today'

and

'yes definitely wouldn't get an airing on the BBC these days'.

You both need to check out these links:

Adam Curtis Filmography

Almost his entire body of work has been produced and aired by the BBC. The very documentary you claim the BBC would not be associated with and definitely would not air it today, is currently available to one and all on the BBC iPlayer platform, as most of his works regularly are. I frequently share them with friends.

Century of the Self - BBC iPlayer

It only took a precursory glance to confirm what I already knew. The big clue is included in the YouTube link you yourselves provided to the documentary where the description credits BBC and its copyright.

Peter, it's yet another aspect of all this, that early on would elicit the accusation of "Conspiracy theorist" – that of the deaths being rather creatively attributed and recorded. Now of course it's simply another to add to the common knowledge list.

I don't care how anyone tries to spin or intellectualize this; there is no genuine reason to augment figures in this patently engineered manner. No reason that is unless you include the many known discussions around maximizing public fear.

The "with" rather than "of" label is still being openly used, including by Johnson if one listens.

These things alone should give pause for thought.

Jay,

Yes, I'm aware of what you say there. And that's visible on at least one of the YouTube listings. My meaning is you haven't or wouldn't hear any of this, or its like, referred to in broadcast during this pandemic.

There are though many things the BBC have been associated with that have been wiped in the past. And huge removal of material across many platforms of contrary material.

At various stages, certain things were being chased off so continuously that it caused more attention and they just... gave up (not necessarily the Beeb itself or alone here, often by the platform hosts).

Quite honestly that's as far as I'd debate regarding censorship. It's massive and widely known.

Thank you, Will, for sharing a real-time example which demonstrates what I reflected on in my earlier post in this thread.

You and Eric shared a single link to a documentary and both of you made very explicit comments that such content would today never be aired by a mainstream broadcaster.

I demonstrably, indisputably, showed you that the documentary you promote is in fact currently available to one and all on the BBC's own iPlayer platform, totally contrary to your claims.

Your comeback is that you are aware of this. This begs the question why then did you claim otherwise, that such material was NOT available?

You justify this switch by generalising and talking vaguely about broad censorship in a knowing way, but excuse yourself from 'debating this massive and widely known issue' in greater detail.

Sadly to me, this is the nature of (in particular) social media debate these days. Whenever a fact contrary to an individual's claims is indisputably demonstrated, they shift the discussion to a different claim or belief, rather than concede the point they have been shown to be wrong on.

As a result, there can never ever be a consensus, a meeting of the minds capable of acknowledging the validity of different aspects across both sides of the divide.

As I said, it saddens (and frustrates) me. The absolutism and reductivity in public, private, national and global debate these days. The intolerance of views other than your own.

Will #103, I knew, of course, that was the basis for your extrapolated conspiracy theory.

But "Specialized invisible dye, delivered along with a vaccine" is not remotely the same thing as "a system of sub-dermal tattooing of people's medical and vaccination history into their skin."

Unless, of course, one is an eager aficionado and distributor of wildly exaggerated conspiracies in which a grain of truth is deliberately spun into a massive lie.

Which you apparently are.

And which this clearly is.

Mike, yeah of course you knew.

There are other documents and articles where the thing is given other titles, including tattoos. Also, other potential uses and details. It's pointless playing semantics and it's obvious what the concept and intention are. No "grain of truth" – reality.

Pretty silly to try to insult me with extrapolated conspiracy theory. The reality is, what is shown, or I will say proven, is that you asserted that there was no basis and that you-know-who-wasn't involved. He was and is.

I am uncomfortable with the whole idea of governments and large globalist players/interests thinking it's a good way forward to start getting into the bodies humans and labelling them, and those are just some of the plans. And that what this is. There are abhorrent precedents from a long time ago.

You may have different views or you may not wish to acknowledge what is right there in that linked article, or portray it as something else. I don't care either way. I can go on forever putting up info here – but to what end? People will either choose to consider it or they will choose to try to attack it; or me.

It all comes down to your beliefs in the end, and your beliefs in the intentions of others. Plus a willingness to consider the basis of those beliefs.

Jay,

I explained in the last post, I thought. Perhaps the initial post should have said "Broadcast today on a mainstream channel", as opposed to "Associated with today" since it is on iPlayer etc.

The rest of what you typed implies there was some further nuanced debate, which there wasn't. There has been and is ongoing, wide-scale censorship across multiple platforms and BBC coverage has been and is heavily weighted.

Nothing like this content would be shown on BBC television today.

Mike, as a friend, I would ask you to back out of this debate.

Totally unrelated and nothing to do with this debate. The late Bernard Levin recalled a case where a concentration camp guard was shown irrefutable proof that the holocaust did indeed happen. He said "I spit on your proof!"

This is no reflection on the admirable debators on this site. Just a comment on how all of us have views that we will defend, probably way too seriously.
Will, I respect your views, will read your links and make my mind up.. One thing I do not doubt is your sincerity.
COYB

"This is no reflection on the admirable debators on this site. Just a comment on how all of us have views that we will defend, probably way too seriously."

Andy, you're right. There are times when only extreme seriousness will do. Sometimes not.

Another one bites the dust.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/12/19/doug-ericksen-state-senator-dies-coronavirus/

Will, I'm going to make this my last post on the thread.

Having had a claim you made categorically and indisputably debunked you re-engineer what you were challenged on, giving your original words a different spin to uphold a still unproven claim you have made in your posts. Namely, that 'censorship has been enormous, incredibly far-reaching and basically abhorrent.'

How you 'know' that and how you quantify that and how you identify what qualifies as (verified) evidence of such widespread censorship, you don't explain. It is part of your belief system, describing it as 'a rapid censorship of dissenting voices, denying them a place and an audience.'

I am all for freedom of information and the idealism of allowing each individual access to diverse material to study and decide for themselves on all issues. Sadly, that is an extremely naive view. The vast majority of people no longer read long texts intensively or attentively. They scan read and get 'informed' by a headline or a sound bite in 280 characters or less. That doesn't constitute critical reading or the basis to take absolute positions on very important issues, IMO. But that is where we are today, largely thanks to the onset of social media.

You project the notion that all that is being censored is true, benevolent, benign and beneficial and should be allowed for all to see in the public domain. It isn't.

Contrary to what you claim, dissenting voices most definitely have a platform and are being heard and believed by an enormous worldwide audience.

Misinformation is being manufactured and published on an industrial scale by well-funded vested interests every second of every day.

A report by a UK/US non-profit NGO, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) earlier this year found that the vast majority of Covid-19 anti-vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories originate from just 12 people.

Dirty Dozen of Covid Misinformation

The volume is such that social media platforms cannot keep pace with it and 95% of Covid misinformation is NOT being removed.

Unfortunately, Brazil is at the mercy of one such denialist influencer. The democratically elected President of the country, Jair Messiahs Bolsonaro.

His 'messaging' has had a direct impact on many aspects of the pandemic here in Brazil. His words and actions on the question have directly contributed to the avoidable deaths of many of the 618,000 who are victims of the pandemic.

It is my firmly held belief that influencers and idealogues such as Bolsonaro and their anti-science claims are grossly irresponsible and exceedingly dangerous.

Yes, we need an honest debate on how best to 'normalise' life again. A good starting point would be the equitable distribution of covid-19 vaccinations globally to all as a means to reduce and better control the risk of continued disruptive variants.

But this continued denialism as to the very existence of the virus, or the conspiracies alleging the true purpose of the vaccine is to enable a cabal to establish a New World Order is behind all this...

I simply have no words.

Jay,

How many "jabs" have you had now, Jay ?? 3, 4, upto 7 in Isreal, currenlty in lockdown? Ireland 95%, Portugal 97% all facing lockdown. Definitiion of insanity... ever heard of Einstein ?

"A good starting point would be the equitable distribution of Covid-19 vaccinations globally to all as a means to reduce and better control the risk of continued disruptive variants."

Doesn't sound like a very successful endeavour to me... but hey, that's "misinformation".

You attack Balsenaro, as do all the Elites, but listen to Gates (set to make trilllions of dollars), Tedrous, Fauchi, the CCP owned WHO. Are you a fan of Shwaub too? Do you remember voting for any of these Globalist eliites? I don't.

"I simply have no words" – if only this was the case. It is nearly as ironic as the previous quote you pedalled. Maybe when we have jabbed everything with a heartbeat, we can review and take stock, eh?

How about children, Jay, you want them to get "equitable" treatment when it comes to taking an untested vaccine which plainly doesn't work? On a virus which has zero effect on them?

Noticed any footballers having breathing issues lately, Jay?

Jay

Equitable distribution sounds good but logistically is problematic. In West Africa, eg Ghana, Senegal they have a good infrastructure in place from Ebola so they can and have moved quickly against Covid. In the Congo for example they've spent nothing on infrastructure since colonial days. They don't have paved roads in most of the country, much less the ability to store and distribute vaccines.

Therefore if the vaccine is produced in the UK, Germany and India where it can be dispersed quickly and efficiently, it's better to use it there than ship it somewhere where it will go to waste.

Case in point: Nigeria and South Africa just destroyed millions of doses that expired because either people didn't want them or they couldn't get them out fast enough. I personally would send the vaccines where they can get to the highest number of people the quickest.

Just like to make a couple of points.

Firstly, the immunity you get from a vaccine is not ‘unnatural'. It is simply a controlled version of the immune response you'd get from being infected by the pathogen itself. The important thing is the ‘controlled' part because the vaccines are designed to grant you that immunity with less risk to you (and others) because you don't get the full-blown disease and don't produce pathogens that can then infect others.

Just because the antigenic material or precursor is synthesised doesn't make it more risky because the way it induces your body to react to give you suitable antibodies, T cells, et al is very well understood.

A large part of our lives can be classed as ‘experimental'. The first time you take / ingest anything you don't really know how your body will react. It amazes me how people who presumably have previously taken a great deal on trust (medicines, getting on a plane, the various legal intoxicants or stimulants) are suddenly advocating ignoring the consensus advice and making decisions for ourselves.

It all comes down to risk, or maybe more importantly ‘perceived' risk. Everyone may have the right to decide what risks they are personally prepared to take, but that ‘right' goes out the window when you are effectively deciding the risk level for others. That is why we have consensus rules and regulations everyone is expected to adhere to.

How many of those being sticklers for personal freedom would support me if I decided to drive through town at 60 miles an hour just because I reckoned I could do it safely?

I'm sorry to be pedantic, Si, but being vaccinated is an example of artificial active immunity as opposed to natural active immunity when the body makes antibodies following infection by a pathogen.

Passive natural immunity would be gaining the antibodies to a pathogen without direct exposure to it, for example, from maternal breast milk. Passive artificial immunity would be receiving the antibodies directly via injection or infusion.

I agree with your comments about the relative low risk of vaccines compared to other activities and medicines and that anti-vaccine advocates are akin to people who believe the earth is flat but, because of that, it's important to be accurate.

Not having all the facts does not mean the facts we do have are lies. The perceived risk of taking a vaccine has to be weighed not only against personal risk but also community or countrywide risk of not taking it.

Individuals make personal choices everyday, governments balance individual needs against national interests. Sometimes it's advice that's given in the interests of all individuals based on the interpretation of evidence and facts; other times, they determine that the need to act is enshrined in law to force adherence.

Some people do not believe, quite sensibly, all they are told by governments who have a vested interest in control and power. When issues such as Covid result in a minimum of 5M deaths, official count, or as The Economist latest covid analysis suggests, a true figure of over 20M so far, based on excess deaths numbers, individual freedom of choice starts to look absurd against this pandemic. Ad hoc approaches by differing countries have not only caused deaths but exacerbated the spread and its impact.

I am not advocating the removal of personal choice, but neither can a significant minority determine the risk levels for entire populations, that's the removal of democracy. We have freedom of choice within a democracy, not outside of it. Brexit being the perfect analogy, we leave the club but we still expect all its benefits without the downsides.

Do I trust all governments to tell the truth all the time? No. But I do see consequences of a pandemic that has taken so many worldwide, that many still believe it's no worse than flu or that it doesn't exist at all.

I believe in personal freedom, I wish I had perfect understanding of everything but I have to trust others because I cannot exist without any trust in others. Everyday, every minute of our lives we trust others to do the right thing, follow rules on the road.

It may not be a perfect world with perfect decisions based on perfect facts, but the body count grows daily, loved ones are taken. Doing nothing is not an option. Sorry.

Si @169: Good post.

From what I can gather, I believe there are different shades of being ‘wary' or ‘sceptical' about the current vaccines, on a spectrum from ‘concerned rationally' to ‘anti-vax flat Earth society'.

On the ‘concerned rationally' side, some folks are conscious of the fact that the regulatory processes for approving the vaccines were apparently unusually fast-tracked, against a background of regulatory processes and time-scales associated with them being there for a reason.

I think that that is an understandable concern, noting at the same time the urgent circumstances that dictated this fast-tracking, and real-world experience of the vaccines to date. I've witnessed some folks expressing such concerns, and then others accusing them of being ‘anti-vax'. Not untypical of the way that discussions can rapidly become polarised.

Just a question which I don't know the answer to.

During the pandemic, the players have been tested pretty much every day, and the number of cases amongst them was very small. So why, with this new strain, have more players become infected, probably 3 or 4 times more than any other time since the pandemic struck?

Jer @ 167, I've had 3 jabs and feel just marvellous!

Perhaps you should just give the virus a stern talking to. It obviously has failed to acknowledge the special intellectual capabilities of the vaccine-sceptic communities around the world. Well, at least those that are still alive anyway.

Brian # 173 - the medical authorities say it is three times more infectious than previous strains. (R value).

The vaccination (or even 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 doses) clearly doesn't stop the individual getting it or spreading it – so the social contract argument is over at that point – it's a personal health choice, simple.

The argument for "straining" the health system applies to people who don't exercise and stuff their face with Domino's Pizza, vodka, heroin, cigarettes etc (ie, bad personal health choices which strain the health system).

The unvaccinated where I am calculate to approx 3% – it is ludicrous and corrupt to suggest this can have any bearing on the outcome of a global pandemic

Any forcing of an untested vaccine on its populace or individuals in such cases is nothing short of fascism and an affront to basic human rights – anyone remember them? Any freedoms taken from me are by proxy taken from all of society.

Pfizer have locked down the results of their vaccine test results for 75 years and claimed and received global indemnity so it appears the public have more faith in these drugs than the makers themselves???

For me, the vaccinations don't work and never could, as viruses mutate. I believe and hope Omicron is the end of this issue, is mild and overtly contagious and should indicate the lifecycle of such a virus.

I don't know what kind of society you want to hand over to the next generations but the next year or so is crucial in what if any individual freedoms they will enjoy. Government and bureaucrats are largely the reserve of the incompetent and corrupt.

Anybody who still thinks after all of this that the actors you call politicians have any power is deluded. None of the power brokers pushing this agenda are elected and seldom have anything to do with medicine. Most countries are in debt to the global power structures and thus are constrained by said entities.

Jay,

Do I need to point out the credulity and absurdity involved in backing up an "official government" narrative by linking to an "official government" funded and run quango???

Football is an irrelevance and a distraction at this point for me.

Steve @174,

You can take the vaccine if you choose. I will prefer to eat well, get fresh air, sunshine and vitamins and run 20 km a week.

Note, I also have a dodgy ticker and an autoimmune disorder but believe firmly a virus with median death age of 85 – natural causes being 82 – is not a threat to me. Communist-style fascism and a police surveillance state on the other hand ....

Jer, 167.

I've heard of Einstein, and I know that he never made the "definition of insanity" statement. Probably highlights that people shouldn't believe everything they read on the internet.

Jer, untested? Why are these lies still being spread after a year?

The company that I work for was heavily involved in clinical trials and testing of the Astrazeneca/Oxford vaccine. Volunteers were used in the trials as per any other new drug but, because of the amount of funding thrown at it and the prioritising over others, it meant this one went through in super-quick time.

If you don't want a jab, don't have it... but don't tell lies, use infantile terms you don't understand like fascism and human rights. You just end up sounding like a total pillock.

Talking of infectious disease, does Klopp have one.

It always flares up when RS don't get everything their own way and they drop points etc. Never fails that he lambastes the officials and opposing players.

Time for the a lethal vaccination by the league to eradicate Klopps outbursts.

To think there are followers of the 'School of Science' who regard followers of science as fascist, communist, totalitarian sheep. Interesting.

He had that in his last season at Dortmund Tom.

On one hand you can sit and admire his passion.

On the other, standby for the meltdown if it doesn't go his and their way. He's a bit of a Vesuvius type volcano. Fine for years when life is good. But when he blows, he will blow. I'm always suspicious of people who smile too much and have nervous laughs. I was the same with Tony Blair.

Jer,

I give you that the vaccines do not stop transmission. I do think they reduce the level but that is just a think, not a certainty.

What I do know is the statistics. Sadly, the message forum does not allow pictures as that tells it so well.

Since July we have consistently had 30,000+ infections per day and yet we have never had more than 200 daily deaths.

Go back to August and September last year – when cases and deaths were roughly in line with April and May this year and the October and January and February spike in infections were followed by a corresponding rise in deaths about 2-3 weeks later. Based on the numbers a year ago we should be seeing well over 1000 people dying every day from Covid at the moment but the average over the last 14 days is 115 and falling. That, I take to be the benefit of the vaccine.

Klopp's outburst is bad for the game. Do your protests in private, don't do them on the pitch where they'll be copied on every grassroots pitch in the country.

Grassroots football has it hard enough without pre Maradona's adding fuel to the fire. The professional game has a duty to act professional. Klopp and his lap dog Carragher need to remember it.

My understanding of vaccines is that won't stop you from getting Covid, but will reduce the symptoms, resulting in a quicker recovery and less likelihood of hospitalisation. If you are unsure of possible side effects, you should consult your Doctor for guidance, which will trigger extra monitoring if an issue is possible. Vaccination may take more than one dose to be effective and may need to be altered to deal with variants resulting in necessary boosters.

Where policy is not clearly defined, politics and ignorance reign.

Jerome, I'm now tired of the phrase "we don't want to politicise this", followed by blatant politicisation by politicians trying to play Mother Nature.

I've stopped watching the mainstream British news as well. They're just interested in speculation, keeping their own agenda going and still sulking over Brexit. The sooner they get us back into another lockdown, the sooner they can move on. But they won't.

For medical matters, I'll listen to Doctors. But when I choose to like I have done all my life or when I've needed to or chosen to do so.

Looks like the Premier League has decided to carry on with fixtures over the festive period and beyond, despite the risk of further postponements.

No vote was taken during today's meeting of Premier League clubs but a number of options were discussed.

Thanks Michael.

I'm pleased as I've just paid £100 for tickets for Brighton home tickets as well as the return train tickets.

By the way, considering the media fervour last week, no "passport" checks at Stamford Bridge on Thursday.

Political "be seen to be saying and doing something" statements versus actual reality on the ground. And yes, that included the London Underground mask wearing that Sadiq apparently never relinquished. As long as they can be seen to say something on BBC Breakfast, they've done their job.

Back to your point though, I'm pleased that common sense is being applied. Postpone on a case by case basis, not knee jerk and carte blanche postpone everything because the mainstream media demands it and the politicians buckle to the pressure.

But let's wait and see once Christmas Day is over. I suspect a January lockdown of some sorts is coming, they just don't want to be the Christmas Grinch.

The governments everywhere need to get their priorities right.

Most professionals will still get paid if they are not playing so why not, in the light of this explosion of the virus, cancel all sporting fixtures pro-tem for at least a month.

Carrying on regardless is just a recipe for further disaster especially when so many won't get vaccinated.

Tried blowing into a brown paper bag, Tom? Or switching off the “just focus on the total cases” news.

In fairness Tom, the vast majority of the UK population has willingly been vaccinated.

And the reality on the ground? I don't see disaster. I mostly see normal life apart from people wearing mask coverings.

That's obviously from a UK and my view perspective from what I've seen and witnessed rather than what I watch on the agenda driven biased news that would have you think something totally different.

Triple taxed and tested 11 times in the past 4 weeks by the way.

Jer #176:

"Pfizer have locked down the results of their vaccine test results for 75 years..."

No, they have not. The FDA requested that timeline for fully releasing all study data, not Pfizer, and nothing has been locked down.

"...and claimed and received global indemnity..."

There is no such thing as global indemnity. All national governments offer indemnity to protect the vaccine manufacturers they are buying from. That's so the companies aren't at risk for claims (real or frivolous) over possible adverse reactions to vaccines that were tested for only a few months before being deployed to fight the pandemic. Otherwise no company would take the legal/financial risk of releasing vaccines until they had undergone years of foolproof testing, and their unavailability could cost untold lives.

**triple vaxed I meant

Although sometimes I do feel triple taxed!!

Jer 176

"Untested vaccine" with just under 8.5 BILLION doses administered globally, I'm curious as to what you would define as "tested"?

Jerome 184 that is the situation I believe. The "vaccination" prevents the most serious symptoms from occurring. We all will probably have some accumulation of colonies (ahem) of the virus in our nostrils. Whether that viral load is enough to make us sick or worse depends on our own immunity and any enhanced immunity from shots. So we all get it to some extent but it is important to realize the infection overwhelming your system is what gives rise to the most transmissible state for the virus.

I will ignore any personal attacks on this i dont have time to engage in such clown-actory so sling the mud is water off a ducks back,deal with the issue at hand pls

The definition of an effective Vaccine seems to have been diluted from "stops you getting or spreading a disease" to "have your 3-7shots in the space a year PLUS a negative test" to be allowed to partake in "civil"society, - this is an abject failure by any measure I am sorry -will Gates et all return the thrillions paid??

Again the median age of death on this virus is extremely high above that of natural causes, upto 100,000 + EXTRA drug deaths last year in US on top of the usual real drug actual epidemic in the states, an appalling toll on small business and peoples mental health (sky high suicide rates especially amongst the young) missed cancer screenings etc

Not to mention the destruction of the West economies and human rights abuse, yes you wont see it on Sir Jimmis BBC but I can assure you they are happening (look at Germany /Austra) New Zealand ffs ? Internment camps in Aus ?

So I am following the "facts" the vax has not worked why is it bein rammed down our throat has to be questioned, sorry Fascism is the correct word to use in the above cases,

Can somebody give me a logical or even medical reason why 5 to 11 years olds need to take this "new" and umproven vax, I am waiting ?

Take a number Jer, other discussions are more enjoyable and informative at the moment.

James Gardener @195 - one could define a 'tested' vaccine as one which administers a weakened or killed microbe to the host's immune system. Something that has been done for over 100 years.

One could define an 'untested' vaccine as one that uses mRNA to alter the cytoplasm of the host's cells. There has been no mRNA tried on humans prior to COVID-19 (please correct me if I am wrong) and so the long-term advantages and disadvantages are unknown (except to the pharmaceutical companies and their profits, of course).

Whether we like it or not, there are reports of damaging side-effects and ineffectiveness, both of which will become more apparent in many years time. But yes, mRNA delivery of vaccine has been hitherto untested, though if you think the last year has been a success that is your prerogative.

Jer @ 197. Thank you for ignoring personal attacks. I have read your post quite a few times and can only ask...what in the name of fuck are you talking about?
May I also add that your casual dropping of the accusation of Facism is blasphemous.
I guess you have no time for clown- actory( love that phrase, by the way) because you are completing your doctorate at the university of facebook.
There is a decent argument to be made against the turning back of civil liberties. There are many points worth debating and questions worth asking. Jer, you can contribute to the debate by simply.. never posting again. If you think that you made any contribution worth considering, please, honestly, think again.

Andy, you are always my go-to for belly laughs.

I would have guessed YouTube University, but then again they require elementary levels of spelling, punctuation and English comprehension, which probably sets too high a bar for this particular matriculator.

Peter #199, mRNA (messenger RNA) does not "alter the cytoplasm of the host's cells." It delivers messages to cells to cause them to react in a certain way, but without altering them. Here is a concise summary of how that works:

https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/therapy/mrnavaccines/

That's the same principle as the immunotherapy that has saved many thousands of lives over the past couple of years (including mine) from previously un-survivable cancers. Within a few more years, many more lives will be saved as mRNA technology is used to actually deliver cancer vaccines. In your words, "one could define" that as a miracle.

mRNA is what enabled the two most effective vaccines to be rolled out so fast. That contributes to the fact that overall the vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of lives:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03686-x

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2021/dec/us-covid-19-vaccination-program-one-year-how-many-deaths-and

I will exercise my "prerogative", as you call it, to consider that a success.

Skeptics like to point to adverse events from the vaccines, but they have proven extremely rare (5 severe allergic reactions per million vaccinations, for example), and almost always occur at the time of inoculation when help is readily available, so deaths are virtually unknown:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2784015

Many non-mRNA vaccines (e.g. DTAP) have higher incidences of severe adverse events than the mRNA COVID vaccines.

Good stuff Mike, thanks for that.

Ed (170), I deliberately avoided saying vaccination is ‘natural', I just said it was not ‘unnatural'. It's just when people trumpet their ‘naturally acquired' immunity the implicit suggestion is that vaccination is freakish mad science run riot. I was just pointing out it is just using a different means to get desired end results, which applies to many areas of medicine.

Thanks Mike, couldn't have put it better myself!!

Further to that, the half life of the mRNA is incredibly short meaning anything from the vaccine will decay within days. This negates the whole argument that it has "damaging side-effects and ineffectiveness, both of which will become more apparent in many years time"

Jed and Peter, these are new vaccines (because the virus is new) but that doesn't mean the science behind them isn't thoroughly understood.
As I attempted to explain in an earlier post, it is obtuse to not recognise that vaccines simply co-opt a natural process to deliver a desired result.
To understand mRNA vaccines properly you probably have to know a bit about genetics, virology and cell biology. Suffice to say, mRNA is in every genomically active cell of your body because your cells use it to make proteins and the vaccine mRNA is just another part of the virus that has been co-opted to induce the desired immune response.
When infected with a virus one of the things that happens is that the viral genome uses your cells to make multiple progeny viruses which then go on to infect other cells or leave that host and perhaps infect a new host. mRNA copied from the viral genome (RNA in some, DNA in others) is part of that production of progeny viruses.
Antigenic material triggers your immune system. The antigenic material in old type vaccines is either whole virus (dead or attenuated) or pieces of smashed virus (envelope or genomic material.
mRNA is easy to mass produce in specific sequences (taken from the viral genome) which will get your cells to manufacture harmless portions of the virus which can still get a specific immune response.
mRNA activity is well researched. These vaccines are novel but well understood.

Always good to hear from a professional, Si.

Keep calm and carry on.

Following on from Stan's post @ 113 and my response at 117 I carried on digging. I came across this very informative article in The New Zealand Daily Telegraph; for me it was about a 20 minute read.

Link

I am double vaccinated with Astra Zeneca - my doctor told me yesterday that I am "eligible" for a booster in February but it will be Pfizer.

I believe to make an informed decision you have to hear from both sides of the debate.

Jay, let me know when the BBC is airing the linked series on mainstream programming and I'll withdraw my comment that it wouldn't be shown today.

That it is available, is not the same as, it is being broadcast.

Jay #166, so you hold the Brazilian President personally responsible for 0.3% of the country's deaths from Covid?

Tell me how many people are killed in vehicle accidents each year and is he also personally responsible for those deaths?

Jer #176, good post, especially

"The unvaccinated where I am calculate to approx 3% – it is ludicrous and corrupt to suggest this can have any bearing on the outcome of a global pandemic"

They blame the unvaccinated for causing mutations, but they can't mutate unless they have the virus, and vaccinated people can have the virus, so they can mutate it also!

The science may be sound and understood, but go to a hospital with a chronic stomach issue and watch them take a year+ to understand exactly what's going on. Even then possibly with no firm conclusion. The human body is well mapped, but it is not completely understood.

The only real way that big pharma can know for sure what happens to the human body when they manipulate it is effectively via studies and testing. Nobody can deny the vaccine testing was hugely rushed, and there's already a few whistleblower accounts about testing processes.

Couple this with an absolute litany of settled lawsuits/liability claims in big pharma (using “well understood” drugs) and data freely available on yellow card sites, and it's easy to have sympathy with people who don't want to get it.

Quoting "The Science"â„¢ as “unequivocally factual” is a bizarre tool of modern left. Science is open to challenge. Always.

There was also a very good article on The Spectator (Fraser someone) this week where a reporter questioned one of the main Sage modellers, to find out that the data is being modelled to give an answer they want to set policy, no matter how unlikely the scenario is. They ignore more likely scenarios (such as Omicron might actually help overall if it's mild but creates antibodies) if it “leads to no actionable policy”.

Again, this isn't science, it's just fact. Distrust is a natural response.

Just to finish up, I am triple vaxxed, and have allowed my teenagers to have it… so I am not an anti-vaxxer in any way, shape or form. I simply respect other peoples views too, and don't blindly accept "The Science"™ as unequivocal facts. I keep my mind open.

Ultimately this is about personal choice. If people want to lock themselves down until it's over – the government should support you in doing so. If people don't want to take the vax then good luck to them. My rights to be ‘possibly safer in a crowd' do not trump the rights of the anti-vaxxer to not have to put a drug they don't want in themselves.

Credit Mike @#192.

That's so the companies aren't at risk for claims (real or frivolous) over possible adverse reactions to vaccines that were tested for only a few months before being deployed to fight the pandemic. Otherwise no company would take the legal/financial risk of releasing vaccines until they had undergone years of foolproof testing, and their unavailability could cost untold lives.

Peter #199,

Yes you are wrong that there has been no testing of mRNA vaccines before Covid; there has, but they have not (yet) passed regulatory approval stage and are still classed as "experimental" although that word now seems to be out of favour.

Covid has been a special case as they wanted a quick fix to assure people that they won't die, even if they were not likely to anyway.

Laurie @209...

I'm from New Zealand and that link might sound like a mainstream outlet but it isn't. There isn't a Daily Telegraph here. The guy who wrote this is considered fringe at best.

The New Zealand public overwhelmingly have decided to get vaccinated... heading towards 90% now with children 5-11 due to start in January. Booster shots will begin then too. There are pockets of resistance but these are slowly but surely shrinking as more people have quality discussions with health professionals.

Time for professional athletes to get vaccinated or be sacked. They are in a privileged position in society that demands a crowd to survive... that crowd can't turn up unvaccinated.

They have a choice and can choose not to play... it will happen now or at the next contract renewal. Good luck getting that signed.

Mike #207, I always thought Si was an accountant?

Laurie #209, your post at #117 really struck a nerve. If the firing of the woman who refused vaccination is unjust, what does your conscience tell you about the woman's co-workers whose health may be endangered by her unvaccinated status? Isn't it possible that their rights to have their health protected should take precedence? If the woman remains on the job and a co-worker with cancer or diabetes or vulnerable parents in her home must leave her job to avoid working with an unvaccinated employee and protect her health, is that also unjust in your opinion? And to take it one step farther... should I, as an employer with profound health risks, be forced by government mandate to retain (and forced to keep paying) an employee who endangers my own life by refusing vaccination? The woman's job is not the only issue here -- there are a whole lot of other people's rights at stake besides hers. Are they not worthy of consideration as well?

With regards to the fascinating article you linked, I would point out a few things. First, the author's background is in food safety and statistical analysis, not immunology.

Second, he recommends the government protect people against the virus thusly: "Remove GST from fresh fruit and vegetables... regulate known disease vectors like excess sugar, hard fats, and pollutants... investigate and promote verified approaches to health like organic food, meditation, and yoga." Seems like some serious Big Brother government overreach to me.

Third, and more seriously, this is an opinion piece, but it states the following claims as fact -- all without attribution or supporting evidence:

"...mRNA covid vaccine adverse events have been grossly unreported."

"...vaccination will expose children to a greater risk than covid."

[Ardern] must have started to either believe that the Pfizer vaccine was both safe and effective or decided to ignore these criteria..."

"...vaccine effectiveness drops to zero after 7 months, completely negating any possibility of herd immunity."

Again, all these claims are presented without one iota of supporting evidence of any kind -- no quotes, no links, no references or citations of studies, and therefore no evidence that they are true.

And finally, the author extensively cites a report from someone he describes as an "investigative journalist" who is not, in fact, employed by any scientific or journalistic organization. She's a former science reporter who makes Youtube videos. In her own LinkedIn profile, she describes her profession as “an emcee for awards nights, black tie balls, charity functions and hired as a conference speaker or to facilitate panel discussions at live events."

Certainly, as you say, making an informed decision is helped by hearing both sides of the debate... but only when the debate itself is informed. When one side offers little or no factual support for its point of view, that should weigh heavily in the decision.

Mike #218,

I think that if the woman decides she doesn't want to be vaccinated then she shouldn't be forced to lose her job because of that decision.

If her employers don't want an unvaccinated employee around, they should just furlough her unless there's something in her conditions of contract to enable them to legally fire her.

Eric #215, the issue in the US wasn't so much about people dying of Covid as it was about hospital systems across the country being overwhelmed with critically ill Covid patients, and the deaths from other causes that resulted. Cancer treatment, kidney dialysis, COPD therapy and and other life-and-death treatments were critically -- and sometimes fatally -- unavailable because the facilities were crushed with Covid. That's what the vaccines saved us from.

But you can't convince people who saw Covid up close that people weren't likely to die from it. My wife saw dead bodies in the streets in Wuhan, people who died so quickly from the newly virulent virus that they couldn't reach medical care in time. Patients died in hospital corridors waiting to see doctors. In the early days in New York, the mortality rate was above 2% -- that's 25 times the death rate from the flu. My niece, a doctor in Tel Aviv, saw similar carnage. Make no mistake, this bastard was deadly.

As to your comment about the fired woman, what's the difference between a furlough and a firing? Would she be paid for a furlough?

Laurie #209 and Steve #216,

From that article "It was clear that 99+% of people would recover from Covid."

Eric @220...

Only Frontline workers are mandated in key sectors. Health being one of them. They were given ample opportunity to discuss their situation and if possible find an alternative.

A very small minority have decided not to get vaccinated...difficult for them but such is life. Plenty of folk have gone through redundancy for less. They had over 3 months to get vaccinated and knew the consequences. I have no sympathy at all really.

Mike, firstly no-one ever took a vaccine to protect someone else. This is a terribly weak argument that is being used coercively to increase vaccine uptake.

Secondly, the vaccinated can still catch, become ill, die and also (drum roll) pass on the virus. Thus the need for vaccine or health passes is totally unjust and yet another means of coercion, blackmail, whatever you want to call it.

If you want to stop its spread,d you really have to test, and make sure they are accurate… but even that is pointless because a fast mutating RNA coronavirus will be able to evade most or all measures. What usually happens is, after crossing the animal-human barrier, the virus wants to survive and thus will likely become more infectious and less deadly.

The four current human coronaviruses are an example of this as they successfully integrated themselves into human hosts (and form part of the common cold family). SARS and MERS less so because they were too deadly and could not spread quickly.

No-one, anywhere should be forced to put anything in their body, particularly an experimental vaccine (and particularly children with zero benefit) for a virus with an average age of death of 82 and a 0.097% (Public Health England) death rate.

Once you take away people's liberties, they are very hard to win back as history shows us.

An excellent discussion can be found here:

57 Top Scientists and Doctors: Stop All Covid Vaccinations

I was in Texas last month at my company's HQ. The rule was; vaccinated = carry on as normal. Non-vaccinated = wear a mask.

No firing or questioning of personal decisions, just different guidelines and direction depending on your status.

It would seem the BBC will get their wish and have us behind locked doors once the glorified Sunday Dinner that is Christmas Day is out of the way.

Apologies for being overly cynical. I actually like Christmas, but if restrictions are going to be imposed, just do it now, rather than pull a political publicity stunt to demonstrate that Christmas wasn't cancelled.

Wales has announced sporting events (amongst others) cannot have people in attendance. Now throughout this, despite the political games of the nationalist and devolved powers, we've all followed the same UK path. Dress it up, call it a fire-breaker rather than a circuit-breaker, announce it a week earlier or later, this many people meeting versus that many, but we've all done practically the same thing UK wide. So if Wales has announced that, it will have been discussed and decided at national level.

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm anticipating Sky Sports fan noise & empty seats from Boxing Day, rather than Brighton home, Hull in the cup and Norwich away.

Looks like we'll have Big Dunc hugging ball boys again over Christmas

And just to lay off the BBC, who I can't stomach these days despite being forced to pay for them, there's another angle to the calls for games to be suspended.

It is no surprise to me that some of the coaches of the higher placed teams are trying to effectively implement a winter break, which is what some of them are used to in their native countries.

I see the Welsh government has made a decision that all professional sport whether it be inside or outside will be behind closed doors. I think the same will happen here and may be in place for a couple of weeks.

I see it was reported yesterday that Everton have recorded a few positive cases of Covid, and, with it spreading so rapidly amongst players, maybe there might be another batch of matches that are called off irrespective of whether fans are allowed in or not.

Cases ,Cases ,Cases Cases and more "cases" EH ? Surely the shutdown of society warrants at least some hosptializations ? appears not

@Mike 221

"My wife saw dead bodies in the streets in Wuhan, people who died so quickly from the newly virulent virus that they couldn't reach medical care in time" that looked to me like CCP propaganda, why did we not see this anywhere else, poorer parts of Africa for example, the median death age is 85 thats with them bloating the figures, sounds illogical to me to be honest

The vax doesnt stop you getting it or spreading it - How many times do I have to repeaat this to break the "spell" that people are under ????????????????

Its been an unmigitaged disaster as have lockdowns and that and only that is why the Elites are targeting the un vaxxed, they are removing any semblence of a "control group" that could be compared to the vaxed regards possible future side effects etc,we all agree that there is siide effect to any medical intervention,,question is what is acceptable ????? 5times ,10? 20 times ? the purveyors of this rollout would prefer not to have this discussion (hence the FDA locking away the pfzier stats for 75 years) they are removing your freedoms with every turn of the screw and there are many on here cheering this on(nae demanding it happens quicker) , shocking but not a bit surprising

Why a healthy athelete, person or indeed healthy child or teen would need a Vax for a disease that only adversely affects people with co morbities or serious underlying health issues is illogical, immoral and has no basis in medicine, can somebody give me ONE good reason ( asside control & profit) why 5 -11 would take this experimental flu jab,, I am STILL waiting ?

Steve #223,

I agree that frontline workers should be vaccinated, if they are dealing with susceptible patients especially… but, if they choose not to, they should not lose their jobs, however long they've had to make a decision.

Mike #221, but how many of those "critically ill" Covid patients we actually critically ill?

And has the scaremongering of this pandemic caused more deaths from other causes than might otherwise have happened.?

Mike G, Si and Eric - thanks for the rebuttals and further information, appreciate them.

I understood that mRNA vaccines were supposedly far cheaper to manufacture and potentially less dangerous to store than viral vector vaccines but what does the 'established science' say about their relative effectiveness (apologies for the lay terminology, Si)?

The impression we are getting is that they are not exactly doing a great job given than I'm being invited to go for my 3rd jab in 6 months. Is this due to the novelty of the virus or the novelty of the vaccine delivery, or is it just nothing to see? Cheers chaps.

Jer #229 "Why a healthy athelete, person or indeed healthy child or teen would need a Vax for a disease that only adversely affects people with co morbities or serious underlying health issues is illogical, immoral and has no basis in medicine"

"a disease that only adversely affects people with co morbities or serious underlying health issues"? Not true. I, and others, know of previously healthy and fit people who have died with and from Covid.

Peter @232. Have a look at the link I sent in my post.

Brent @233. With a willing media, you can create any narrative you like. See this from 2017:

Teen athlete dies from flu. It can happen to anyone

As an example, there was recently an exchange between Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator magazine, and the chairman of the Sage committee, Professor Graham Medley which predicted Omicron would kill 6,000 people a day in Britain. Medley openly admitted that they model what the government wants them to model so that they get the outcome they want. This is a scandal and a fraud.

“If democracy is destroyed in Britain it will be not the communists, Trotskyists or subversives but this House which threw it away. The rights that are entrusted to us are not for us to give away. Even if I agree with everything that is proposed, I cannot hand away powers lent to me for five years by the people of Chesterfield. I just could not do it. It would be theft of public rights.” – Tony Benn

Mike # 218 - let me make one thing clear to you - I know very well that Covid 19 has killed a lot of people. I posted a warning along those lines on here about April or May of last year after I read the reports of the terrible death toll in Italy. I am not a “Covid Doubter”.

I am also obviously not what is commonly known as an anti vaxxer. I also believe vaccination has saved countless lives this year. What I don't know (and nobody else does) is what will be the extent of any adverse effects in the short and long term. Pfizer has actually issued a document that there have been instances of adverse effects.

Regarding the woman who was fired - I am assuming that knowing she faced the sack if she didn't get vaccinated, she must hold very strong views about her right to refuse having something injected into her body that she didn't want. That is her inalienable right. I remain convinced that it was unjust to sack her because she chose to exercise her right. I will lay odds it wasn't in her contract of employment.

If these people are as you seem to be asserting, a risk to everyone they come into contact with, then if you take your argument to its logical conclusion the government should step in and lock them all up. What a dreadful thought.

Here is the rub for me - how did Omicron get into countries like Australia - I am 100% sure it wasn't the unvaccinated who brought it here.

Regarding the article - people will consider the content and form their own opinion. I have read it twice now and will probably read it again. I have a decision to make.

Nick #234 "Brent @233. With a willing media, you can create any narrative you like. See this from 2017:..."

What?! You think says that those people I referred to, and knew, who died from Covid didn't die from Covid. Just a narrative? How crass and insensitive.

Argue against things you might know something about but not against the cases I refer to that you know nothing about. No willing media, no narrative created in those cases.

Brent @236.

You've totally missed the point, I'm afraid. Many healthy people, young and old, tragically die of many things every year, it is just that we are not subject to their reporting in the same we are with Covid.

The media is being paid by the government to cover Covid-19 – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The reporting is one-sided, biased, and designed to sow fear and compliance. We don't ever see that in a flu season, for example, but people die.

Laurie (235), yes people losing their jobs for refusing to be vaccinated disturbed me as well, are there any cases in the pipeline where some of those fired have taken it to a tribunal? Surely they have a case.

I ask as somebody who has had the two vaccinations and the booster and think, stress think, it is wise to do so but everyone has the right to make their own mind up on this very important issue.

Nick, you totally missed my point, I'm afraid.

Whilst everyone argues, they are taking away loads of our liberties, and slowly changing loads of other laws, with a soon to be cashless society, making me feel that the human race, might as well be bloody Robots!

Tony - if you look at the terrifying WEF propaganda around The Great Reset, Build Back Better, ID2020 etc etc…”you will own nothing and be happy”. So you're probably right.

Tony you make a good point. To add to it...remember the 1980's, as a result of football hooliganism Maggies Merry Men wanted to introduce ID Cards ?
Remember the outcry...it was un British blah blah.
Well we all have walked willingly into a life where it is damn near impossible to live "off grid". It is increasingly difficult to live without a Smart Phone from banking, shopping, booking travel etc.
I don't know if it's a conspiracy, I'm not that bright but mobile telephony started as a boon. It then became a necessity. Mark my words by the end of the decade it will be illegal to be found without a Smart Phone.
Will make ID Cards seem like membership of the Little Woody club

So scary that Alan, especially when the people who have already got a smart phone, are very disappointed in the people who don't want to conform.

@Alan 242
" Mark my words by the end of the decade it will be illegal to be found without a Smart Phone" - No need for such drachonian measures as you will be "chipped" ;)

I mean are the Govts not as we speak legislating the forcing of an injectable into our bodies against our own will ?

Like all thugs and bullies they will only push until they are confronted and will then back down,, but has been 2 years now and from what i can see most people are not even agreeved enough to get off the couch :(

Whats it they say -Beware the Tyrants who do it "for your own good"

Not considered it like that Tony...but yeah, not exactly the same but a sort of Catch 22 scenario

Nick #234 "As an example, there was recently an exchange between Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator magazine, and the chairman of the Sage committee, Professor Graham Medley which predicted Omicron would kill 6,000 people a day in Britain" [my emphases].

Nick, I've looked at the source you cite - Nelson's Spectator article. Nelson references the Sage paper (actually by SPI-M-O, a sub-group of Sage); and the paper from LSHTM where Medley is prof. So I've just been to those two original sources that Nelson cites. I might misread these so what follows is tentative; correct me if you read them differently.

First, I can see no reference whatsoever to 6,000 deaths a day in the LSHTM / Medley paper.

Second, the Sage (SPI-M-O) paper has a summary table of three scenarios for Omicron. There is NO prediction, only scenarios based on modelling. And within those scenarios there is NO simple reference to 6,000 deaths a day. The worst-case scenario involves a peak of deaths ranging from 600 to 6,000 per day. The middle-case scenario - a peak of deaths from 500 to 3,000 per day. The least-worse case scenario - a peak of 200 to 2,000 deaths a day.

As I say, correct me on my reading of the original sources if I misread them - I'm no scientist!

I think it's shocking too how the govt force people onto social media platforms, Facebook etc, and force them to reveal allsorts of mundane and tedious facts about themselves, almost living their life online, sharing everything (99% of which is mind numbingly boring).
That should be stopped for sure. ;-)

Brian you would deny people their 15 minutes of fame? even if it is only to explain how often they went to the toilet and what their experience was.. lol

Nick #224: "firstly no-one ever took a vaccine to protect someone else."

You are wrong. Every child who begins public school must be vaccinated for DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis), polio, measles, mumps, rubella and chicken pox, plus others varying by state. This is for the protection of all the children in the school system, not just each individual child. You took at least some of those vaccines yourself, by government directive, to protect others before you were allowed to attend school.

Laurie #235, you chose not to answer any of the questions I posed to you in my post #218 regarding the human rights of that woman's employer and co-workers to be safe, and whether those rights were also worthy of consideration. That disappoints me, because I would have liked to hear your thoughts on that.

Instead, you have reiterated that the woman has an inalienable right to reject the vaccine. I agree.

However, she does not have an inalienable right to keep her job after doing so. Nobody has a human right to a specific employment position. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not bestow the right to violate a company policy, risk others' health in doing so, and still work for the company.

If I am that woman's employer, I have the inalienable right to protect myself -- and the moral obligation to protect my other employees and my customers -- from the increased health risk of forced contact with a willfully unvaccinated person eight hours a day. Specifically, I will not allow her to come back into my company and potentially endanger my life... I will not allow her presence to force the departure of other employees with health vulnerabilities... and I most definitely will not pay her to do it. That is my inalienable right.

And all this talk about rights completely leaves aside the outrage and sadness of knowing that a woman I employed for 15 years is so willing to endanger my personal health and that of her longtime colleagues.

The woman is not banished from all employment. She can now exercise her inalienable human right to go find another job.

Jay#248.
My favourite is the pouting empty head selfie in Costa with the message "having a coffee with my bestie."
It makes me want to go back to killing!!!!!!!

Mike...I don't know if you have the same halfwits in the states but, thanks to the nettyweb, there was a reaction here to the MMR because " it caused autism ".
I kid you not

I think it's played exactly how they wanted it to play Brian, right into their hands, mate, and I also believe it's helping to take away so much character, from the now very easily offended human race, which is what some very clever visionaries, sort of predicted, with the start of the internet?

My mate was at a funeral the other day, and he said he walked away from everyone outside the crematorium, because that horrible song of there's (you know the one) was playing over the tannoy, and it always makes him emotional. The funeral director saw what was happening, and asked him if he was alright?

It's just this song, “you'll never walk alone, always does this to me” he said. The funeral director who is one of us, then said to my mate, I have to listen to it everyday, and always think at least another one of the bastards has gone, it helps get me through the day!

My mate found it hilarious, (he knew the blue, though) and said so did everyone else he told the story to that day, but imagine putting this on the internet with your name attached, it'd be the fucking end of yer, such is the curse of modern life.

Mike#249.
Mike, you make some good points on the employment issue.
Many times during my 38 years or so with a major multinational, but mostly American, energy company the company would choose to change aspects of my contract.
Some of the changes I hated and meant I spent more time in danger and more time away from my family.
I believed the changes were purely to benefit the company. They gave me a choice however. Accept the new contract, or not.
On trips to some far flung places I was required to have multiple jabs for various diseases or not be allowed to go to those countries.
When I got to some of these countries I had to do/not do many things I'd always taken for granted and done in my own country without thinking about it.
And in my own country I've found I'm not allowed, after attending a TW together, and enjoying half a dozen or more Desperadoes (most of 'em bought by Dave Abrahams) drive my fucking car home!

Tony#252.

I nearly pissed myself reading that mate.

"from the increased health risk of forced contact with a willfully unvaccinated person eight hours a day. Specifically, I will not allow her to come back into my company and potentially endanger my life."

Mike this statement is backed up with no science ?? it is hyperbolic nonsense at what point has there been any proof a non vaxed person is more likely to catch or indeed spread this ? if they could shoe horn in any stat to back this up they would have believe me, they cant because the Vax doesnt work simple -" but obviously the irrational fear porn that comes with it works a treat

Have you seen some of the laws they are looking to implement in NY ? also like you I am still and have been for a long time waiting for somebody to answer and provide me a moral,logical, or scientific reason why any healthy young people should take this ? It is about power control and profit, ,

it is my opinion that The medical /Big Pharma industry is sick to the core and has surpassed the financial industries for levels of corruption- we have lots of "experts" who don't understand basic logic, I have been saying from the start "its Darwinian" Prof Ferguson/Whitty et al look and sound like a goof balls because they ARE, ,i don't care how long they went to college

I am seeing lockdowns being re-introduced with ZERO evidence or justification now, this was always the plan and they have now pushed us so far down the road of Fascism that they simply cannot turn back -Shameful

"from the increased health risk of forced contact with a willfully unvaccinated person eight hours a day. Specifically, I will not allow her to come back into my company and potentially endanger my life."

Mike this statement is backed up with no science ?? it is hyperbolic nonsense at what point has there been any proof a non vaxed person is more likely to catch or indeed spread this ? if they could shoe horn in any stat to back this up they would have believe me, they cant because the Vax doesnt work simple -" but obviously the irrational fear porn that comes with it works a treat

Have you seen some of the laws they are looking to implement in NY ? also like you I am still and have been for a long time waiting for somebody to answer and provide me a moral,logical, or scientific reason why any healthy young people should take this ? It is about power control and profit, ,

it is my opinion that The medical /Big Pharma industry is sick to the core and has surpassed the financial industries for levels of corruption- we have lots of "experts" who don't understand basic logic, I have been saying from the start "its Darwinian" Prof Ferguson/Whitty et al look and sound like a goof balls because they ARE, ,i don't care how long they went to college

I am seeing lockdowns being re-introduced with ZERO evidence or justification now, this was always the plan and they have now pushed us so far down the road of Fascism that they simply cannot turn back -Shameful

Alan #251, the US is the world's leading supplier of halfwits. The anti-vax/autism cause has been a hot topic here for a good 15 years, pushed by celebrities like Robert Kennedy Jr., Robert DeNiro, Jim Carrey, Jessica Biel, Jenny McCarthy, Alicia Silverstone, Charlie Sheen and Rob Schneider. Our halfwits are a full-scale industry.

It was, however, a Brit -- gastroenterologist Dr. Andrew Wakefield -- who launched this insanity with a falsified study published in The Lancet in 1998. So this particular halfwit-ism is an Anglo-American cooperative venture.

What Brian said Tony (252). I know it was talk of funerals, but that did make me smile. I walk out of the room when that song is played regardless of circumstance.

My blue cousin got scorned by me and her equally blue husband for posting an NHS version of it. Her husband threatened to march her to her Dad's (my Uncle) grave and explain herself.

"If I am that woman's employer, I have the inalienable right to protect myself -- and the moral obligation to protect my other employees and my customers -- from the increased health risk of forced contact with a willfully unvaccinated person eight hours a day.
"

Mike, how and why are people at increased risk by that woman's presence any more than they would be by someone vaccinated?

(Nice use of "Willfully" as an enforcer btw).

Mike #256 "It was, however, a Brit -- gastroenterologist Dr. Andrew Wakefield -- who launched this insanity with a falsified study published in The Lancet in 1998. So this particular halfwit-ism is an Anglo-American cooperative venture."

Mike, I'm glad you acknowledge that Fakefield - oops, Wakefield - is half ours here in the UK! You can't own all the comedians, mate. He's been chucked out of the the British Medical Association, I believe - another fascist organisation, I guess. He's now plying his trade in Australia - serves them right, no bloody sense of humour down under (to all Aussies - I love the place and the dry sense of humour; lived in Vic for 4 years; annual returns there for a couple of decades to see family).

Brent #246 - you are entirely correct, that is the reference. I summised their “output” that they were using as worst case scenario - the 6000 deaths/d which is utterly ludicrous. Here is the link discussing how they model according to directive rather than based on observed assumptions.
https://twitter.com/GrahamMedley/status/1472323614762582024?s=20

Mike Gaynes #249 - sorry Mike but vaccination is not compulsory in the UK (it is prophylactic intervention) if both parents of said child agree. There have been many precedents set in law. Thanks.

Eric Myles @ 210 and 211.

You and Will - as I accurately quoted both of you on the Adam Curtis documentary you linked - were very explicit in your claims that a mainstream broadcaster would neither be associated nor broadcast it these days.

As I irrefutably demonstrated, almost the entire body of Adam Curtis' excellent documentaries have been funded, produced and aired by the BBC. The very documentary you say has been censored by them is currently available to view on the BBC iPlayer platform.

Both of you subsequently re-engineered what you orignally said, rather than admit 'fair cop. I was wrong.'

The further implication of your (evidently false) original claim is that NO mainstream broadcaster, anywhere in the world, is giving air time to material contrary to what you consider manipulated mainstream thought, supportive of the views you hold.

Now if I applied your own logic I could argue that the BBC is maliciously and irresponsibly suppressing the excellent 2018 BBC 4 documentary 'Contagion' showing how dangerously virulent a virus can be, by not having it available on its platform. (It IS available here on YouTube):

Contagion

The documentary is spookily accurate of what has occurred with Covid-19. Dr. Hannah Fry demonstrates just how viral a new virus can be and how quickly it can transmit without proper checks and controls.

As I say, I could argue that this is an example of BBC bias and censorship as you and Will attempted, but I wouldn't be so daft.

As for your apparent exonerating of Brazil's Bolsonaro, I guess you've missed the six months Parliamentary Inquiry into the handling of the Covid-19 crisis here in Brazil which:

* heard 50+ witnesses
* uncovered evidence of multi-million dollar fraud of vaccine contracts within the Ministry of Health
* exposed the President's promotion of ineffective 'preventative' medicines against CV-19
* exposed the irresponsible delay in purchasing vaccines earlier than Brazil did
* uncovered an unofficial 'Cabinet of Hate' operating within the seat of power in the capital Brasilia, disseminating misinformation related to CV-19
* concluded with a 1300 page report listing charges against the President, 3 of his sons, 77 other people including existing and ex-ministers of Bolsonaro's government, two corporations, including one of the country's largest private health providers

There are no fewer than 80 charges against Bolosnaro and others, ranging from the criminal, to Presidential impeachment, to International charges of Crime against Humanity.

In his 3 years in office, a record 143 impeachment charges have been laid against Bolsonaro. He has openly attacked the Parliamentary and Supreme Court political structure in ways that are illegal and anti-constitutional, resenting that they act as checks and balances to his Presidential executive powers and political idealogy which leans heavily towards a restoration of a Military Government.

And that's before we touch on his policies on education, the environment, culture, economics, religion.

Now a cornerstone of the anti-vax/CV-19 hoax/New World Order/Whatever movement (it's a broad church) is that governments are incompetent and/or culpable in their handling of the pandemic.

So I'm really trying to get my head around how anyone on even the most casual study of Jair Bolsonaro can so casually exonerate him, promote him as a paragon of virtue almost, whilst simultaneously demonising someone like the NZ prime minister Jacinda Ardern.

It strikes me that maybe - just maybe - such folks moral compass is a wee bit off.

Will #258, I used "willfully" willfully... to distinguish between people who choose not to be vaccinated and people who, for medical reasons, cannot be vaccinated. I believe all possible accommodations should be made for the latter. The former can exercise their freedom to find another job.

As to "how and why" unvaccinated people are an increased risk to those around them, I could spend half a day composing a reply with a dozen citations of supporting evidence, and you'd dismiss it out of hand because, as you have made clear, you just don't believe it. So no thanks.

Nick #260, you made the general statement that nobody ever took a vaccination to protect others, and I was equally general in my reply disproving that. Your inaccurate statement was nonspecific about country, and so was my answer. However, if I was inaccurate about your having received childhood vaccinations, my apologies.

What I have to say IS amazing in all of this, is the organisation, dedication to the task, and the almost miraculous cooperation between a multitude of governments and professional bodies in their unwavering crusade to fool us all.

If, when they decide to finish their duplicity, they put the same effort into global warming, then we're in with a chance of seeing BMD up and running.

Thanks, Nick.

Re what the scientists are asked to model, the tweet you link to says:
"I think the more concerning part is the admission that policy makers discuss with modellers what they need to push the policy forward".

Nick, I'm not quite sure what the point is but if I understand you correctly, then you're saying that the likes of Sage is being used by the government (by limiting the terms of reference) in order to justify a harsher set of covid policies than is necessary.

But note the other, independent group in the UK, called Independent Sage, which is "unaffiliated" to government. They have consistently argued for even more robust policies than the government has implemented, and to be implemented sooner. If the government had wanted to "engineer" scientific backing for its policy measures, surely it would defer to Independent Sage - a ready-made line of defence for even more draconian and immediate measures.

But I might misunderstand your point.

It's not about me dismissing it out of hand, Mike.

It's that I don't see such claims on the CDC website (as a relevance to you in the US) or other similar in the western world, or indeed the governments or vaccine manufacturers.

Since these are the ones driving this whole thing I'd expect some severe trumpeting of such if they had evidence that would stand up.

CDC itself like others, focuses on not getting sick i.e. reduction of symptoms. It does say in one place, that there is increasing evidence (with nothing quantified, referenced or supported) that it may reduce transmission of covid without symptoms - which is a little odd.

It is wrong and unfair to bedevil those who choose to exercise that freedom as some kind of more dangerous spreaders, when there is nothing proven to support that; people's livelihoods and lives flattened on the basis of fear-driven hearsay.

@Will
He ( Mike ) is dodging your point by infering you would dodge his non existant evidence, see my point above the definition of a succesful vacination has gone from "stops you getting and spreading the diesase" to become" 7 jabs in a year and a negative test taken that day before you can eat" an unmitigated disaster in anybodys books

Regards the people who have genuine health "exemptions" you would be doing well to get any doctor to put his head above the parapit on this one (regards the cultist adherance to the WHO narrative) but it goes like this " if you can prove you are allergic to an ingredient" is one, ,,the other "if the first jab fecks up your heart you don't have to take the second" some choice what ?

It is of the utmost importance that people who mostly took part in this endevour out of their genuine good faith need to demand back the return of ALL of our freedoms when Omicron which is the end of this virus for me passes

Big Pharma need to payback all the profits made from this virus vax it has been an abject failure and proof positive if ever it was need that modern "profilt based" medicine if it has no fix for a malady, will just invent a racket and all will jump on the gravy train

I am signing off on this I hope for all that people are brave enough to demand all their freedoms back for the generatioins to come and that we will all value and cherish the freedoms we in the West for so long took for granted, the other options don't bare thinking about

Timet to face up to the CCP and hold them accountable on the world stage but more important to expose the barbarians in the West who are holding open the gates for them

Will #265, guess you didn't see this on the CDC website:

“Even if you've gotten a vaccine there is still a chance” albeit a “much lower” one, “that you can get symptomatic infection” after contracting the virus from an unvaccinated person, Offit explained. “There is still a chance that you can get serious infection and there is still a chance you can be hospitalized or die from that infection.”

...or this article:

https://www.factcheck.org/2021/09/covid-19-the-unvaccinated-pose-a-risk-to-the-vaccinated/

“The greater the number of unvaccinated people in a community, the more opportunity germs have to spread. This means outbreaks are more difficult to stem and everyone is at greater risk of exposure — including vaccinated people” it said.

Dr. Mounzer Agha, a hematologist and director of the Mario Lemieux Center for Blood Cancers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center who has studied blood cancers and the vaccines, told the Washington Post in May that in order for cancer patients who don't develop immunity from the vaccines to be protected, they need people around them to be vaccinated. “Everyone knows someone who has cancer. And if you care about that person, you should get the vaccine and tell your friends to get it” Agha told the Post.

That doesn't just apply to blood cancer patients, by the way. It also applies to people with solid tumor cancers, Type 1 diabetes, MS, lupus, kidney disease, liver disease, COPD, HIV and sickle cell.

I'm in two of those categories, so if I own a company and one of my employees refused to protect my health (and others) by vaxxing, what would be "wrong and unfair" would be if I were forced by law to keep her in my employ. I have the right to protect my life. She has no right to keep collecting paychecks from me. So yes, I would most definitely tell her to take her principles and her rights and hit the road, and I wouldn't spend one single minute pondering the potential flattening of her livelihood. She has the right to make her choices. I have the right to make mine. Simples.

I really thought this would die down by now.

Okay, I'll go read some of this crap. Give me a couple of minutes.

Mike @267
These are not facts but opinions ?

Gibratla 100% Israel the same ,Ireland 95% .Portugal 97% all under threat of further lockdowns

Look like the fully vaxed are doing a fine job of spreadihg this without the unvaxxed

Again some "experts" general opinion on these matters is good enough to dismiss the blatantly obvious ??

Question.
Given how long it took a 23 year old professional athlete to recover from his "it is nothing more than the flu/cold" back in the summer, are we allowed to speculate whether he had had his vaccine shots and whether Ben Godfrey has had them now?
For those above - he missed the first month of the season and only played a full 90 minutes at the end of September.
Just hope he does not get a cold next season.

Wow, first I don't think my side is looking for conformity or obeisance from anyone else, we're just trying to live maaaaaaaan.

And let me get right with some of those who I will differ with here. I love you guys when we talk football and don't forget that. Hell, I've even learned to love you when I disagree on serious matters like this because we're all Blues. However, there comes a time when your experience as a human being requires an expression that may or may not be well received by some segments of society and well society didn't consult me enough when they set that thing up.

Will and Jer, the notion that unvaccinated do not present a greater risk than those who are vaccinated is beyond windup performance art, it is pure unmitigated neanderfuckness. You know damn well that has been established, enough with the games on that one. And the idea that somehow our attempts to contain the virus are flawed because of an intransigent group that then demands full access to everyone and everything else is pure sabotage right from the start. We've done the natural experiment and it is obvious some will pay for their ignorance which is a tragedy but those of you who are playing games at this point are despicable for misleading others who don't know better.

This debate will rumble on into non-conclusion and disagreement.

Okay, playing Devil's advocate and I'm triple vaccinated and have been tested 11 times in the last month by the way. I'm medically diagnosed with asthma but play the mask wearing game to make others feel comfortable and because it's what is expected.

To those on the US side suggesting people not taking a vaccine are threatening life. What's the view on firearm ownership and that potential risk to life? It's all about context and perspective. To many this side of the Atlantic, people walking around with firearms is far more risky in my opinion.

I'm compliant and my arm is still aching from my 3rd jab (first world problems; nothing a glass of Vino can't sort out). My wife had treatment for cancer earlier this year, my youngest dog has to have an MRI scan on a potential neck vertebrae default and my son is off to a place I would rather he wasn't going to in the New Year. In addition to Everton, I've got more to concern myself with to be honest. The BBC is lucky if it gets 2 minutes of my time before I take the dogs out in the morning.

They'll get their way. Announcement tomorrow I reckon; some sort of lockdown after Christmas. The media and establishment is tightening it's grip on power. And they're enjoying it.

@Dale
Thats it ? thats all you have ? ha HA ffs

maybe you should do as you said earlier and read some of the other TW articles,, you missed the boat and your veiled attacks are a poorly written attempt to be involved in an arguement for which you obvisouly have nothing to add

I timed my exit just right, ,
Good nite all

Well, Jer, I was going to save this but since you asked:

Koo Koo For Cocoa Puffs! [insert theme here]

Mike, I've been right through the website - all of them.

The CDC does not "Sell" the vaccine as being a system to stop infection or transmission. Anything I ever cite (wider, not just here necessarily) is subject to the usual requirements of "Evidence, peer-reviewed?" and similar. None of the main players have ever offered any conclusive figures to support.

In the UK, throughout the latest push for boosters, all you will hear Johnson say is such as be safe, get protected. There are hints, allusions, "Figures not in, when we get all the data, data is starting to show" and such. He did say, the booster offers "Great protection". Again, from what?

It is impossible that any research of an older booster of an older vaccine against a new variant is done in matter of several days (omicron), and hence no evidence is available. When it suits they will imply an existing jab/booster helps, when it later suits they will then imply an apparent newer one is required for a new variant(s). Watch and see.

Fact-checkers? Sorry, that whole fact-checking thing is almost fully co-opted for use against anyone questioning the narrative.

I've not seen one of them conclude that what was contended was right or had merit - and there's been some laughable (and worse) offerings. Some very eminent credible people have offered up info to them and they won't touch it.

Let's see the science of this protection against transmission and infection, with the resultant figures endorsed and quoted by the main players.

Danny #272, 11 tests in a month? Wow. Your upper nasal passages must be as sore as your arm.

Generally speaking, the folks here in the USA who don't consider vax avoidance life-threatening also don't consider guns life-threatening. In fact, they believe that both actually preserve lives. (I'm serious.) But it's not about perspective and context, because those two elements are as extinct in America as the passenger pigeon. We have gone bull goose loony over here.

As to masks, I happen to think that wearing one just to make other people comfortable is OK. I wear pants (when I remember to) for the same reason... it's expected and people seem uncomfortable when I don't.

My best wishes to your wife and the dog, in that order. May they both enjoy the best of health in the New Year. (Which I hope will not begin with another lockdown there, but I fear you're right.)

Dale,

"Will and Jer, the notion that unvaccinated do not present a greater risk than those who are vaccinated is beyond windup performance art, it is pure unmitigated neanderfuckness. You know damn well that has been established"

at the risk of turning this into an unending quote/llnk fest, I will say - show me where. Conclusively.

A little snippet;

Did anyone notice? Until recently, the government here were quoting a vaccine uptake in the 80s percents, 83 then 86% at points.

In one of yesterday's offerings, Johnson said "Over half have now been vaccinated". And people will still hang on their every word.

You're on your own Will, fuck it.

Thank you for your wishes Mike, genuinely appreciated.

2 trips to the US in November and an outbreak when on my first trip. I liked the drive through Walgreens testing system even if one of the ladies on one occasion was quite sadistic and made me do the nose swab again. I think she was just enjoying the power and control.

On a serious note, I genuinely have some very interesting and well informed debates on the firearm debate when out there. I work for a Texas company and have been to 30 of the 50 states over the years, so I am far from judgemental. Easy for us Brits / Europeans to be so on that subject.

All the best to you Mike and all that contribute to this site.

Agree, disagree, handbags or nostalgia, we all have one thing in common that unifies us. Our club.

It's 1976-ish (I think), 5 or 6 year old Danny has just watched Everton lose 6 - 0 in a pre-season game in Germany to Braunsweig and been subject to ridicule by the German fans. "Everton, Everton Ha, Ha, Ha" they chanted. My first match.

On the way home, I asked my Dad why do we support Everton? He quickly snapped back at me in an angry tone; "because you do". I never questioned it again. I never have.

Danny, I've never had a Covid test, but it looked uncomfortable when I drove my wife to the drive-thru for hers. (I may get my first one this week -- I have odd symptoms, none of which seem to match Covid.)

The guns question wears me out. I'm a lifelong gun owner (for home protection) who believes in strict regulation. Which puts me square in the US middle. And makes me either a criminal or a Commie to the warring extremes. I envy you those intelligent discussions. I haven't had one in years myself.

As to sporting loyalties, I can't blame anyone but myself and my Chicago birthplace for my own incurable, soul-destroying allegiance to the Cubs -- since you've traveled here, you know exactly what I mean. My own dad was only slightly interested in sports, so it's a self-inflicted wound (gun pun deliberate) which was greatly healed by the 2016 World Series.

Gotta go find my damn pants now. Have a great evening over there.

Dale :)

Will #278 "Until recently, the government here were quoting a vaccine uptake in the 80s percents, 83 then 86% at points.
In one of yesterday's offerings, Johnson said 'Over half have now been vaccinated'. And people will still hang on their every word."

Will, I don't know but I very much suspect he was talking about the booster jab, received by UK adults - now over 29 million. It's important to be careful about what he's referring to.

Will 277

https://theconversation.com/amp/no-vaccinated-people-are-not-just-as-infectious-as-unvaccinated-people-if-they-get-covid-171302

Less viral load. Less time carrying the virus. Far less likely to end up in hospital infecting critical workers.

All proven and very obvious stuff to those who don't have their head in the sand.

Phil, I think they believe the unvaccinated are of no more risk to even contract the virus if I'm reading some of those comments correctly. It was hurting my eyes, I had to squint at the ugliness but I think that's where they're at on this.

And Will :(

Brent@264: There is a basic point regarding a need to independently assess, systematically, the outputs of committees like SAGE. ‘Independent SAGE' is a body of opinion, but outwith the systematic assessment process I'm referring to.

When any major hazard, whether nuclear, oil & gas, SARS-COV-2, etc is realised as a major accident event, there is always a queue of consultants and academics eager to provide their paid technical advice, advice which can and does impact the public. In these situations, it is vital, and has become good practice, for the outputs of committees like SAGE to be assessed independently by professionals representing the interests of the public, in order to provide checks and balances on technical advice and help ensure that decisions are timely and based on a rational consensus.

In April last year, at the start of COVID, I submitted a paper to an inquiry being carried out by the Science and Technology Select Committee, recommending independent assessment of advice from SAGE to COBR. My paper is No. C190012 on the UK Parliament website under that Select Committee.

Recently, the Committee published their report which took on board the recommendations for independent assessment. A central point of the concerns I raised is the fact that the Government's approach at the start of the pandemic was not consistent with systems in place for avoiding and preventing events escalating, rather than trying to control and mitigate once they have escalated, and that an appropriate independent assessment function is important to this end.

Of course, events have now escalated and many people have died, and no system
of independent assessment will bring them back. But there are lessons for Government to take on board going forward, and particularly in the event of future epidemics.

Thanks, Stan. Found it. Your reasons 1 and 2 in that ring true.

Politics versus rationality?

Brent, possibly, but I think it was a failure of communication between government departments. For example, I couldn't find anyone in COBR, or on SAGE, who had the experience of assessing major hazards, and particularly assessing mathematical model outputs, that I refer to.

The UK HSE is a global leader in this, but the government and their advisors appeared not to know this. HSE Inspectors, for example, or former Inspectors, with the relevant experience, could have been involved in early decision-making, but were not.

I wouldn't believe a word this government said. They haven't a clue what's going on, and they just make figures up to suit themselves. People just need to get on with life. If you're vulnerable then by all means take precautions. Otherwise, get on with it.

Jer, you actually used the phrase "poorly written", you really did. You accused someone of this? How wonderful. Keep up the good work!

You tell em Paul # 289!!

Phil # 284 & Dale 285 - to clarify my position on this - I haven't got my head in the sand. I am doing what Stan suggested; doing my own digging, gathering information, and forming an opinion using whatever mental and other faculties I have at my disposal.

Andy @ 290. That made me smile, too.

I meant to compliment you on your post @ 200. Very funny.

I saw Jer's first two posts on the thread - Sunday night I think it was - uncut. The editors have done a sterling job knocking them into shape.

Although the posts addressed me directly, I thought it wasn't fair to answer them.

Not trying to be malicious in any way, but I had two thoughts.

1) they were written by somebody under the heavy influence of alcohol or drugs.
2) the author's first language was not English

In their raw form they were magnificently, spectacularly, spellbinding. By far and away the two most incomprehensible posts I have ever read on TW. And there is some fierce competition for that title.

I 'read' them. Three-four times. I even recognized individual words. Some of the words were even spelt correctly. But the syntax. The structure. The spelling. The grammar. The punctuation!:#*@! My God, the punctuation!

But like you and others, for all my attempts, I didn't have a Scooby Doo what the hell he was going on about.

For me, it was a Jimmy Bullard moment. Jimmy Bullard, you ask?

D'ya remember back in the day a night game in which Big Dunc poleaxed a Wigan player in the ribs? Red card. In the resulting melee, Jimmy Bullard was standing close to Dunc. The expression on his face was classic. In awe. Disbelieving. A nervous look and laugh. 'What the feck is going on with this fellah?'

Jimmy Bullard's with Big Dunc

Jer gave me a Jimmy Bullard moment.

Laurie, totally cool and I do not wish to generalize my disdain for Will and Jer's collective prose to everyone else who may agree with them. I am simply disgusted to the point of calling it out every fucking time I see ill-intended information offered as educated opinion. Everyone is free to do what they wish until it affects others then it becomes entirely negotiable. We are working that part out right about now.

Jay, there was a comedy duo here, Morecambe and Wise. You probably know. They did a sketch with Eric Morecambe playing the piano in front of Andre Previn. An utter mess of notes on the piano. Morecambe says “I'm playing all the right notes. Just not necessarily in the right order “.

Seeing as the thread has morphed to some extent into comment on our egregious government still fucking about regardless of their diktats to everyone else I thought it might be appropriate to mention two books published in the past 18 months that spell out their/BoJo's provable gross inadequacy/lying.

The first and most important is "Blinded by Corona: How the Pandemic Ruined Britain's Health and Wealth and What to Do about It" by John Ashton, an international virologist doctor of international renown (and a scouser to boot). He sources all of his massive criticism of the UK government and nobody has attempted to sue him yet the book is not widely publicised by the media.

The other is by Peter Oborne, a Tory journalist who has had a lengthy history personally working with BoJo. His book has the catchy title "The Rise of Political Lying, The Triumph of the Political Class and The Assault on Truth - Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the emergence of a new moral barbarism".

Oborne spells out BoJo's lifelong litany of lying, right up to the present day. He's served copies of it to the Speakers of the Lords and Commons and the "leaders" of every UK political party. None of them have made public mention of it despite the fact that neither BoJo nor those cited people behind him have chosen to sue. Again, the UK media have been silent about it.

Dark times folks, and as bad a pandemic as Covid is the devised pandemic obliterating truth is to me even more worrying.

Eric (217), not sure if that is a humorous post, but no, definitely not an accountant.
Biochem / microbiology / microbial biotech academic history, many years in Pharma business (process development / improvement, investigations, quality control / assurance = compliance) including a flu vaccine manufacturer.
Peter, I'm sure I can give you some basics on various types of vaccines and some virology but I can't give you specifics on the cost or storage details of the mRNA vaccines. I know 25 years ago ‘DNA' vaccines were heralded as set to soon become the biggest players in the vaccines market but that hasn't really come to pass yet. That isn't necessarily down to them not being effective though, it is really tough getting new medicines to market (and has been getting tougher not easier). Companies want clear competitive advantage before they will commit everything to get a new drug to market, and the NHS likes to try the cheapest options first and American markets changed with bundling.
Pharma companies are also very wary of over-promising and that is something Jer and Will appear to be exploiting. Because no vaccine is 100% effective, because there are a spectrim of immune responses, because some antigens just don't give long lasting immunity, the vaccines against Covid are coming with disclaimers attached. Just because the some vaccinated can be reinfected, because some will develop symptoms and can pass the virus on, doesn't mean it is as ineffective as Jer clearly believes.
Logic dictates that if a vaccine triggers an immune response then those with such immunity are better protected than those without. That is how the immune system works. The level of protection is likely to be variable but that is no reason to conclude it is ineffective, nor that the unvaccinated aren't at more risk of contracting and passing on the virus.
To believe that you really do have to be convinced that the whole Covid–19 thing is just pretty much every government in the world wilfully scare-mongering.

Ok Mike - if you insist – here we go.
Q1. what does your conscience tell you about the woman's co-workers whose health may be endangered by her unvaccinated status?

My conscience tells me that the co-workers at the stage we are now (90% double vaccinated in Victoria Australia) are probably at more risk of catching it from each other than from her for the following reasons:-

The 90% can circulate freely in restaurants, cafes, pubs, nightclubs, Kmart etc. All places where they can contract the virus from each other. In Australia at least, the 10% do not have access to these locations.

Q2. Isn't it possible that their rights to have their health protected should take precedence?
The question presupposes that she represents a greater risk to them than the people they are mixing with freely outside of the workplace. I would need a statistician or mathematician to prove this but I don't think she does. If I am correct then my view is there is no basis for sacking her.

Q3. If the woman remains on the job and a co-worker with cancer or diabetes or vulnerable parents in her home must leave her job to avoid working with an unvaccinated employee and protect her health, is that also unjust in your opinion?

I feel my answer to question 2 applies however your question raise another question in my mind – does the co-worker then decide not to circulate with the vaccinated outside the workplace?

Q4. And to take it one step farther... should I, as an employer with profound health risks, be forced by government mandate to retain (and forced to keep paying) an employee who endangers my own life by refusing vaccination?

This is a hypothetical question for the private sector at least. Actually the opposite has occurred here. The government has stipulated that in certain workplaces employers must insist that their employees are double vaccinated if that is what is required to ensure a healthy and safe workplace. They have left it up to the employer to decide how this applies to their particular workplace.

Which I think, yet again, brings us back to square one.

Q5. The woman's job is not the only issue here -- there are a whole lot of other people's rights at stake besides hers. Are they not worthy of consideration as well?

They are most certainly worthy of consideration but once again it comes down to a question of what is the level risk she poses as opposed to that which they pose to each other.

About this statement of yours:-

“The woman is not banished from all employment. She can now exercise her inalienable human right to go find another job.”

True, but if all employers take the same position as the employer who sacked her then this womans employment opportunities have been dramatically reduced. What will be the long term impact on her life?

Surely this women must have been conflicted about this and yet she has made this decision.

So many questions remain unanswered for me. Here are a few hypothetical ones:

Presumably this women has come to the conclusion that being vaccinated represents a significant risk to her health and well being that she does not want to take - what if she is right?

If she had decided to comply and suffered a serious adverse effect what level of compensation and support would she receive and from whom?

How would her co workers feel about that?

How would you feel about that?

Here in Australia the vaccine has been available since the middle of the year. Many people jumped at the opportunity to be vaccinated but perhaps an equal number remained hesitant. I don't know the age demographics – it would be interesting to know.

What I do know is that we only got to 90% vaccination after a series of lock downs, border closures, and the likelihood of employment mandates as well as being told that vaccination was the “way out”.

No Mike, in my view there is something very wrong about all this and it seems that there are growing group of professionals around the world that are raising red flags – like those in Nicks post @ 224.

There has got to be a better way of handling this issue and it is up to us to find it.

Laurie #298, to address your last point first, there are 57 professionals listed in the paper Nick linked. There are hundreds of thousands of professionals all over the world who believe the vaccines are effective and are advocating and administering them. The overwhelming preponderance of scientific and medical opinion supports that view. If you choose not to believe it, that's your call.

Regarding your responses:

Q1: The possibility that this woman's co-workers with cancer, Type 1 diabetes, MS, lupus, lung disease, HIV and sickle cell anemia -- or elderly parents at home -- might theoretically catch the virus someplace else is irrelevant. Such vulnerable people can and do avoid the risk of encountering unvaccinated people at restaurants and pubs and KMart simply by staying out of there (I can pretty much guarantee there aren't any chemo or dialysis patients in your Aussie nightclubs!!). However, the only way they could avoid sitting adjacent to this unvaccinated woman at work eight hours a day with their compromised immune systems would be by quitting their jobs to protect themselves. It amazes me that you think this situation is fair but firing the unvaxxed employee is not.

Q2 and Q3: You have absolutely no idea how freely at-risk employees are mixing with others outside the workplace. You're just theorizing about that. And it has nothing to do with whether this woman should keep her job.

Now, if your opinion is correct that this unvaccinated woman represents no additional risk to co-workers (and you cite no evidence to support that opinion, because there isn't any), then yes, the woman could lose her job unnecessarily. However, if you're wrong and the general medical consensus is right, then a co-worker could lose her life unnecessarily. Both are suppositions, but one is a massively greater consequence than the other.

Q4: I can't comment on Australia. In the US, right-wing Trumpy governors have banned, or tried to ban, employer vaccination mandates. Florida, Texas and Tennessee are three states where it is virtually impossible for employers to require that employees be vaccinated -- no matter the danger to other employees or the employers themselves. As an at-risk patient myself, if I owned a small business in Tennessee, since I could not fire an employee who refused vaccination. I would either have to pay him to stay home or close the company and let everybody go, because I would be legally barred from protecting my own health and my own business. Guess you think that's fair too?

As to your final questions... to paraphrase Rhett Butler, frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn about this woman. Putting myself in her employer's place, if after 15 years of taking my paychecks she defied my workplace standards -- which I have every right to impose -- and refused to protect MY vulnerable health and that of her co-workers by vaxxing, I would have not the slightest hesitation about telling her to stay the hell out of MY business and go work someplace else. She wouldn't even get in the door -- she'd just be met in the parking lot with a severance check and a box holding her desk contents, and told in no uncertain terms to go pound sand. And if other employers had the same attitude as me, maybe she'd get the message. If there's another way to handle the situation, it's up to HER to find it, not us.

Bottom line is, this woman has the free choice to vax or not. She has the free choice to work for my company or not. She has the free choice to work for any employer who will hire her. For that matter, she has the free choice to go home and start her own business. Nobody is infringing on her freedom or her rights.

She has no right -- none at all -- to keep her job when she defies a stated company policy and potentially endangers the health of the other people who work there. And it honestly blows my mind that you think she does.

Don thanks for the book recommendations. For non light hearted Christmas reading I'd add Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. A superbly researched and written account of how the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma, aided by regulatory bodies, were behind the opioid epidemic, doing more damage to society than any illegal drugs cartel.

I wake up every morning to Radio 4 and they always have at least one or two "experts" in the studio to tell us the "facts" about the pandemic. As soon as I hear their names, I know what I'm going to get. If its Susan Michie, it's going to be fierce pro-lockdown anti-government rhetoric. She's a behavioural psychologist and a (very wealthy) communist. If it's Carl Heneghan I'll get fierce anti-lockdown pro-libertarian rhetoric. He's a clinical epidemiologist, the director of the University of Oxford's Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and a GP.

It's a bit like that on here. But I quite like that - it's good to see (usually respectful) argument, especially when it's backed up with links and quotes. And nobody is as annoying as Susan Michie to be fair.

Anyway, my bottom line is that I have a close friend who is a consultant, and in a very senior position at one of the biggest London hospital trusts. She's always very measured in her opinions, the least hysterical person I know. Her best advice to us is, please, get vaccinated. Her hospital ICUs are filling up with unvaccinated covid sufferers, and it's inevitable that this is going to start to impact on the care that all of us receive.

Sadly, what happens in London is probably going to dictate government policy. Because more than a third of Londoners have refused the vaccine, it seems almost inevitable that there will be more restrictions after Christmas. Personally, I think most of those restrictions will be pointless empty gestures, but even those empty gestures probably wouldn't be necessary if London had higher than 61% double vaccinated and 33% boosted. By the way, Liverpool isn't very different to London in it's vaccination percentage, but overall health and life expectancy is worse.

Just saying.

This is where we have gotten to unfortunately, with two very sensible people arguing over a difference of opinion, and this is something that has developed right across the board with regards to Covid, imo.

Don (296), regarding Johnson, a friend of mine was worried about her mother who was showing signs of dementia, she arranged with her mothers doctor to get her seen to, he arranged a memory test for the old lady.

When the mother came back from the test she said “ Well that was a waste of my time, asking me all sorts of useless questions: What day is it today, what is the date of your birthday, who is the Prime Minister etc, etc,

My friend started smiling when she mentioned the Prime Minister, she said “ Mam who did you say was the PM ?” Her mother said she said. “ Everyone knows who the PM is and the doctor said yes but but what's his name so I told him, Dickhead. True story.

What would be absolutely staggering if, having formed an opinion, correctly or incorrectly, that even one person said yes, I've read what you said or the article that you've linked to, I agree and have changed my mind.

From what I see over the last few days the Omicron variant has been confirmed as mild compared with Delta as expected. Cases are not doubling every few days but have risen generally as the number of tests has increased as expected, hospital admissions and deaths are not high and not accelerating significantly for the time of year. On this basis I would say that the Omicron variant is being hyped into something it certainly isn't. Fact?

Wrt the vaccine, I'd say that there are theories (and that is all they are) that it reduces severity, transmission rate and deaths but it is weak and risky based on the fact that it doesn't offer anything like full protection and fully jabbed people are getting it, passing it on, filling hospital beds and even dying from it. Many people are suffering from adverse effects from the jab too. I believe these are facts but they are irrelevant as it is the inalienable right of any person to refuse the jab for whatever reason he chooses and and that overrides any fictitious moral responsibility that some believe we have. I've had the jabs on the basis that it benefits me and that is what people need to do, protect themselves as well as they can and don't expect everybody else in the country to suffer in a fatuous exercise to do it for them.

(opinion alert!!!) If what I say is fact then we need to stop the hysterics and accept that the Covid pandemic is over and we should accept it as the endemic cold like illness that it's become. We also need to think hard about how we can improve the dreadful NHS so that it is better able to meet the needs of the people.

Si Cooper - much obliged for that answer and information, cheers.

Mike G - so hypothetically speaking, if your employee, possibly a tad mental, is convinced the jab will ruin her health or infect her with nanobots or whatever, your answer is for her to go fuck herself and 'pound sand'. You're all heart aren't you. People like you aren't the solution to the world's problems you think you are.

For those who are interested in stats, there currently around five times as many under 60s testing positive as over 60s in London. If you look at the graphs, there has never been a gap like that in any of the previous waves.

Obviously, if the numbers keep rocketing there will still be enormous pressure on the NHS, but it does look like the booster jab is doing its job.

Martin @304:

There is another important aspect that has been particularly underlined by the pandemic, and that is the significance of comorbidity. There will surely now be heightened awareness of a wider need for people to endeavour to keep themselves as fit and healthy as they reasonably can. Both for their own personal wellbeing and for the societal purpose of reducing the impact on the health service.

There are enough hazards in life as it is, and to better manage those we can directly control is clearly sensible. Responsibility to oneself and to the wider community, directed by sensible personal judgement. The traditional Hippocratic principle of a sensible balance in things.

Mike@299, on question one you hilight to Laurie about Laurie saying firing the unvaxxed employee is not fair.

What I would like to know is, why are people so afraid who have been triple vaxxed, if those in the know who at first said the first jab will protect you, then a further jab will protect you a little more, now a booster jab will give you even more protection.

So if these jabs are so good, what are the healthy vaccinated afraid of, you have as much chance of catching COVID, from someone who has been Tripple jabbed, as you do with someone who has not, if you are fit and healthy and believe our Government that this is the answer, then why worry, if you have had this magic Vaccine, why worry.

The simple answer is, the vaccines are not working.

I agree with Laurie, forcing someone to have a jab or be fired is wrong, and before you think me as an anti-vaxer, I can assure you I am not, I have been double jabbed, but I believe there is a right to both sides of the coin, at the moment, only one side is all over the news and the internet, anyone who has a different view is either mad in some peoples eyes, or wrong, and have it fact-checked and dismissed within 2 minutes.

Mike @306, of course the booster is doing its job, the figures will show that, just like flu figures do not show up at the time of Covid cases rising.

They rose in the first year, every death put down to Covid, there were no flu deaths, no natural causes, no long time illness deaths, every one recorded as Covid, then we have the first jab, surprisingly hardly any Covid cases put down on death certificates after the first jab roll out.

Anyone can make figures appear high by including flu symptoms as this new variant, by then as boosters are rolled out, and flu declines, so does the figures for people, making it look like this wonder booster works.

The first two jabs have not worked, the booster was rolled out well before this new strain came out, so if a double jab is not working, how can a booster jab work, that contains the same vaccine?

No one should need three Jabs in a single year.

How unvaccinated people are far more likely to be hospitalised by Covid-19

I think, though I'm sure others will find flaws with this report, that the article above and its accompanying graph demonstrate pretty clearly the benefits of vaccination.

I think if, instead of nightclubs, hospital Covid wards were where you had to show your vaccination status to get in, there would be a lot less problems. If you don't want to get vaccinated, fine – you should have a choice... but don't go clogging up the hospitals if you get Covid bad.

90% of over 12s have had one jab;
82% of over 12s have had two jabs;
48% of over 12s have had three jabs;
95% of over 18s have Covid antibodies.
80% reduction in chance of hospitalisation with Omicron compared to Delta
70% reduction in severe disease in hospital

So only 6% chance of severe disease with Omicron compared to Delta.

Why is anyone surprised that a catastrophe is not happening and that a lockdown is not needed?

Of course the Country is coping.

Martin @311:

You could be right, subject to the significance of Omicron with vaccination. To reiterate an earlier post, generically the risk of death with Covid without vaccination has been about 1-in-500, which is intolerable in our society. With a protection rate of 90% from the vaccines, that risk reduces by a factor 10, to 1-in-5000, which is tolerable if not wholly acceptable.

If the vaccines are equally effective against Omicron, then it would appear that the risk is tolerable, subject to sensible, proportionate, measures to lower the risk further (where possible) without undue disruption to society such as lockdown.

Thus, it would appear that the only remaining uncertainty as to whether the ‘Covid emergency' is ‘over' or ‘on the way to being over' is whether the vaccines perform equally well against new variants such as Omicron. The data that would clarify this sufficiently would hopefully be available very soon.

Martin and Stan.

A mate of mine tested positive last Thursday or Friday. He said he only had “a mild cough” and “runny nose”. He went for a test purely because his mum is in a care home and so he tests every time he goes to see his mum.

He said that overall, he didn't feel too bad and puts it down purely to having the two jabs and the booster. As Martin says, there is no need for any lockdown.

Peter #305,

I don't think the woman is "mental" at all. She's exercising her right to make her decision. As her employer, I'd be exercising my right to make mine. And yes, I am all heart. I am protecting my health-vulnerable employees from somebody who is putting her personal preferences over their safety. I'm no solution to the world's problems. I can certainly be the solution to that one. By signing her pink slip.

Brian #308, if you read through my posts, at no time do I even mention what you call the "healthy vaccinated" -- the danger is to people with compromised immune systems. The jabs don't protect them very well, and they don't fight Covid very well, so their risk of serious illness or death from a Covid infection is exponentially higher than that of a healthy person. People with blood cancer, for example, are among the most vulnerable in Britain:

Rising number of blood cancer patients dying of Covid in England and Wales

You say "forcing someone to have a jab or be fired is wrong." Isn't it more wrong to force a leukemia or myeloma patient, who may be 10-20 times more likely to die from a Covid infection, to choose between endangering their lives by working with an unvaxxed person or quitting their job to protect themselves?

Sorry, I come down on the side of the most vulnerable against the healthy vaccine refuser. She can go find an employer who doesn't care if she's had the jabs or not.

So the vaccines are working seems to be an argument for no further measures to prevent Covid spread. And then a statement that vaccines do not work and are somehow magical.

The logical absurdity here has to be laid out: Because of recklessness and resistance to the early jabs, the virus was allowed to mutate which compromised the initial vaccines' efficacy.

One more time: the behavior of potential takers of the vaccine encouraged a more severe strain than what had been prepared in the pipeline that required significant testing for overall safety. This is only a failure of the good sense of people to stay home and wait it out a bit so that the treatments can work at an aggregate society level. The constant resistance and denial of various approaches is the failure here, don't get confused.

And when you note stats on what's happening, be sure to break out those who are vaccinated fully and otherwise since they will reduce the numbers who can potentially be infected. While the set of people where transmission can take place is reduced the Omicron transmissibility is clearly a new challenge that could take another round of vaccine action. Deal with it.

Mike@314:

Re your final sentence, being on the side of the most vulnerable, yes, the highest priority is to protect the most vulnerable. When the situation is effectively an emergency societal problem with an intolerable risk of death (for example, of the order 1-in-500 referred to in my post @312), rigorous measures such as pressing people (through, for example, threat of dismissal from their job) to be vaccinated may be appropriate. However, if the risk of death were tolerable (for example, of the order 1-in-5000 referred to in my post @312), such rigorous measures would be unlikely to be acceptable to society.

The appropriateness of the measures depends on the significance of the situation in terms of risk. That is how a modern civilised society handles matters to do with the balance between individual freedom (civil liberties) and the welfare of others affected by that individual's choices (civic responsibility). There is always this balance, and whether someone should be fired for choosing not to be vaccinated depends on it.

Rob @313, my autistic daughter Lisa tested Omicron positive and her symptoms were exactly as you describe but possibly more minor.

Dale @313, the jab wasn't available when the first wave happened so there was no recklessness and when the jabs came out there was very little resistance to having them. I'll give you a fact: there is no strong evidence that the vaccines work or that lockdowns work. The virus was not allowed to mutate by anything due to the vaccine. The virus did and is doing now exactly what a non-hysterical person would expect it to.

Mike @314, the world can't protect every vulnerable person and they are vulnerable to many other ailments than Covid. I can't believe that an Evertonian would support theft of freedom on the flimsiest of scientific basis.

I have mandated vaccinations for all employees in my company in Singapore, as verified by submission of a vaccination certificate. If any employee had failed to provide the certificate, they would not have been able to come to the office.

Given that is a requirement of their letter of employment to work their agreed working hours in the office, I would have terminated the employment who was unable to come to the office without a valid medical exemption.

Fortunately, all employees complied but I wouldn't have hesitated to fire anyone who didn't. My responsibility is to business continuity and broader employee welfare, not pandering to the whims of individual employees. End of story.

You sound like a smashing bloke and very pleased with yourself. Can't wait for the next update.

Steve@318 You are a rule follower that's all. I'm glad I never had to work with somebody like you, if I had I'd have fired you.

To be fair to Steve he appears to take “rules” and twist his own take on them. Up the workers. His bravery in “not hesitating” to fire workers. What a wanker.

Stan #316,

I agree with your main point, but I would posit that a job is not a civil liberty, and the firing of an employee is a private response, not a societal one.

We're not talking about this person being arrested, or imprisoned, or confined to her home, or assessed a fine by the legal system, or deprived of any personal freedoms by society because of her refusal to be vaccinated. Her freedoms are intact.

But like anyone who works for someone else, she is subject to the employer's determination about what is best for the company and its workforce. No-one has the inalienable human right to be employed by a specific employer who doesn't want them there.

Up the Workers? No, it's up common sense. I'm with Steve. I know in Toronto there have been demonstrations by health care workers because they didn't want to be forced into taking the jab. We have to live with this now and manage it accordingly.

And Peter Neilson's first contribution to this debate is... personal insults.

Very convincing. Well done.

Thanks Mike Gaynes. I stand by it.

Mike@322 I'm sorry but to me you are a disgrace to humanity. I'm lucky in that I fire people who employ me but your lady can't, she has a family and she has the absolute right to refuse vaccine.

That was fuct Martin not fact.

And as an ex-economist I am running though the possibilities of how the social welfare function of that lot would be modeled.

Peter/Martin

Its legal to drink and smoke, yet if I were to do these things while sitting in my office at work I would get the sack. There are occasions when I feel driven to do both but I don't as I base my decision on the risk/rewards. Every workplace has rules, every worker run union, or indeed every worker run state e.g. East Germany has or had rules. You act as if we all live in anarchy and can do what and when we want as and when we want and anyone who says otherwise is a fascist. You are clearly in a minority as I see welders wearing required goggles, I see builders wearing required safety hats, office workers wearing ties. These are infringements on our rights if you will yet we comply because there are broader benefits to ourselves and our coworkers from compliance, and because we don't want the sack.

Mike@322: No, the firing of an employee is ultimately a societal decision, because its appropriateness is dictated by the factors I mention, esconced in the rule of law, in this case employment law, with the case being determined by the Courts if the fired employee chooses to take that route.

Not at all Kieran it's about a proportionate response rather than one that applies conditions regardless of how ineffectual they are. Completely different to the current situation.

Martin, the risk from Mike employing that unvaccinated lady is that somebody might die.

The risk from firing her is that she finds it more or less difficult to find a new job.

You would put a job before life? And you talk about "a disgrace to humanity"! The irony of using the word "humanity".

It seems to me that some libertarians are fine with their own right to choose but less so with other people's right to choose.

One person's "freedom to" can often be at the expense of another person's "freedom from".

"A Libertarian's freedom to wave their arm around ends at another person's nose" is another way to put that Brent.

Brent@331: The prioritisation depends on the assessed risks, as I've outlined @316.

This far into the pandemic it's highly unlikely to change the minds of those with views on pro/anti restrictions. Peace and love to all including Steve Brown and especially his employees.

Very interesting debate. Whilst I'm wholly opposed to the Government mandating that people should be vaccinated, I do think that employers should be able to impose reasonable conditions relating to continued employment. Those conditions may well vary from one business or industry to another, of course.

John@310. So if you smoke and get cancer, do you not get treated then?

Stan #329, yes, to the extent that societal norms are reflected in employment law, you'd be correct. In this example, if the law prohibits termination based on vaccination status, the fired employee would certainly be free to sue for reinstatement and/or damages. I'm not aware of the existence of any such regulation anywhere in the world at this point.

The question of assessed risk, however, is really difficult where information is limited and evolving. Would the employer have to prove that the unvaxxed employee posed a higher risk? Or would the employee have to prove that she didn't? A judge might find himself confronted with a decision to be made not just on case law but on differing scientific evidence.

Brent #331, I think you said it better than I could, but of course as a "disgrace to humanity" my opinion isn't credible.

Funny how the personal insults start flying when they can't handle rational debate.