Graham wrote:
Almost all the risk lies with the few weakest members of the herd because they will be at the back once the chase gets going, therefore most individual wildebeest have significantly <1% chance of being lunch.
It’s like what we said on group bike rides in rural Texas, where there are often some pretty vicious farm dogs: you only have to be the second slowest to be a survivor.
I feel the UK were wrong when we flouted international law in the run up to our exit from the EU
Did we? Or is any expectation that officials will be able to operate border controls on either side of the north channel as required by the Protocol “for the birds”?
Surely both parties knew that the home life of any “little people” paid to operate the new border would be sufficiently unpleasant to persuade them to desist. It may seem utterly reprehensible, but that’s the way democracy works in Ulster. It is, after all, the only part of our hoplophobic United Kingdom in which citizens are authorised to carry firearms for self-protection.
Anyway, VDL’s “mistake” has blown the Protocol to smithereens and for that she has my full support and thanks. For four weeks we have seen a 150% increase in cost of shipping our goods to the province. It took an unelected minor European aristocrat to draw attention to that unsustainable state of affairs…
Peter wrote:
6% chance of being hospitalised. I’d say that’s pretty crap. That is also way more than 1% chance of death.
Applying some simple maths. the UK now has circa 107,000 deaths, and the latest best estimates are that 12.4 million people have been infected, so a mortality of circa 0.9 of one percent.
Looking at similiar data from other countries the range is broadly the same with a deviation of around 0.3%. We seem to be towards the top end, which is surprising, but so much depends on how accurately the cause of death is recorded, and how accurate the estimates are of total infections. Of course, as we know, the risk increases depending on age and overall health.
Latest figures are about 400,000 people have been to hospital with Covid, so about 3.2% of those with Covid. I am surprised this suggests about a quarter of those who go to hospital will die.
We are a little over 9 million vaccinations now, so catching up the virus quite fast. By mid February we should have overtaken the virus, so effectively caught it up in 6 weeks, after it has run for nearly a year. The virus will start to come under pressure, and I guess this is why the Governement is increasingly worried about mutations. I suspect we are now in the 3 to 6 month window where vaccine resistant mutuations are the most significant risk.
All this should mean the number of peope who go to hospital will soon start falling dramatically given the over 65’s will be out of the demographics, and the mortality should follow the same path. Presumably this should be around mid March given the time lag. It looks like just over 50% of the people who go to hospital are 65 or older, so it may well be around 1.5% of those who catch Covid will end up in hospital after mid March, but it is easy to see that without continued social distancing and other measures a similar to current rate will continue for much longer even if the 65+ are vaccinated, and adjustments are made for the spread slowing etc, but the numbers will start coming down realtively quickly.
If the R is currently around one or a little less, it seems to me if one in six has been vaccinated (say 17%) and one in five have been infected at some point (say 20%), and given that somewhere less than half of those will not have been vaccinated, maybe we are around a quarter of the population will be immune, and this should already impact on the R rate to a meaningful extent. Within the next three months it seems to me we might be passing the 60% (by vaccination of infection) threshold at which point there will be significant immunity in the population and everyone over 60 will have been vaccinated. Assuming the vaccine is effective the world is looking a very different place, but with the huge assumption that there isnt a variant that is vaccine resistant, in which case the most severe blockades on international travel will become a feature of the next phase, as the race will be on to modify the vaccine, and restart the whole operation in preparation for northern hemisphere 2021 winter season. In this event we will need to run at around twice the vaccination rate we are currently seeing, to make a meaningful impact, in other words about 18 million doses a month, which it seems to me if the supply exists, is more than possible, but of course all absolutely dependent on staying ahead of the mutations. As with flu, a single highly resistant mutation could see the need to reset the clock fully, and a whole new regime of lockdowns to cover perhaps 3 to 6 month period. If the worst scenario occurs my guess is rather like with flu, it could be a few years before the virus has tried every possible mutation, and vaccines can cover them all, but this does seem unlikely that vaccines will become totally ineffective to a particular mutation.
(I have probably got some of the numbers and assumptions wrong, just a qucik bit of musings!)
Jacko wrote:
I feel the UK were wrong when we flouted international law in the run up to our exit from the EUDid we? Or is any expectation that officials will be able to operate border controls on either side of the north channel as required by the Protocol “for the birds”?
I meant to the extent that we conceeded in the House that technically we would, if we had continued with the plan in place. As it turned out we didnt, and havent.
Malibuflyer wrote:
For venture capital and entrepreneurialism it is difficult to define hard metrics and get a market overview –
My earlier comments on Britain being the European leader in life science research and VC stirred up some pushback. It was not my intention to be divisive. And I fully admit that measuring the quality and quantity of research is difficult, but the numbers on VC are quantifiable.
For example from Pitchbook.com here are the numbers for where VC funding went in 2020 as a % of Europe + Israel total of $46 billion: Britain 30%, Germany 15%, France 13%, Israel 11%, Sweden 7%, Switzerland 5% etc.
I say this, not to beat Britain’s drum (I am not British, and while I live in the UK now, I have lived longer in each of the US, Australia and Switzerland) but because I think it is important for Europeans to understand where entrepreneurialism thrives and where it does not. The number for Israel ($4.9 billion) is truly staggering when looked at compared to the size of the economy – they invest in VC at a rate of 1.4% of GDP annually, greater than anywhere else in the world (UK and US about 0.5% each). The EU as a whole faces long term relative economic decline vs China and the US unless it can improve its rate of economic growth, investment, productivity, flexibility etc etc.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
It looks like just over 50% of the people who go to hospital are 65 or older
I would revisit that assumption – it failed my sniff-test so checked out latest ONS data (w/e 24 Jan) which says 91% of hospitalisations are people 65+ and 54% are people 85+.
My own hypothesis is that the vaccination programme will cause deaths to fall to a very low level once you have:
(a) a critical mass of the most vulnerable having had at least one jab – perhaps about NOW
(b) two weeks for their immune systems to kick in
(c) Another two weeks for those who just missed the boat to pass through the hospital and into the mortuary
So in the UK I think about the end of February. I’d say by that point we could expect to see daily Covid deaths in low double figures, perhaps even lower.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
Jacko wrote:
I feel the UK were wrong when we flouted international law in the run up to our exit from the EU
Did we? Or is any expectation that officials will be able to operate border controls on either side of the north channel as required by the Protocol “for the birds”?I meant to the extent that we conceeded in the House that technically we would, if we had continued with the plan in place. As it turned out we didnt, and havent.
I always think that any reference to international law in a press article should be accompanied by a compulsory reading of this Wikipedia entry.
The press does a wonderful job, simply by failing to give any context to the term, of making sure that most people think international law actually consists of volumes of statute that legally binds nations under some global legal jurisdiction.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
I am surprised this suggests about a quarter of those who go to hospital will die.
I think a significant number of Covid deaths occur outside hospital, e.g. in care homes.
My earlier comments on Britain being the European leader in life science research and VC stirred up some pushback. It was not my intention to be divisive. And I fully admit that measuring the quality and quantity of research is difficult, but the numbers on VC are quantifiable.
My recollection is that in my field within neuroscience (colour vision), the overwhelming majority of papers and conference abstracts were from North America, the UK, Germany and Israel. I have the impression that other countries tend to invest more in clinical or industrial research where they are likely to see a return on their investment, but relatively few will invest heavily in the basic sciences where the payback is more abstract.
I admit this viewpoint is skewed by the narrowness of my field – every country has different areas of strength.
alioth wrote:
It’s like what we said on group bike rides in rural Texas, where there are often some pretty vicious farm dogs: you only have to be the second slowest to be a survivor.
Reminds me of an old fishing joke.
Two buddies were on a fishing trip. In the evening at the fire outside the tent, one of them put on his running shoes.
Why on earth are you putting on your running shoes asked the other.
In case a bear comes, he answered.
You won’t outrun a bear with those shoes.
No, but I will outrun you.
