wilsnunn

Indeed, we are all a bit dumbfounded by what is going on here! I am almost certain that it is flu as opposed to a cold as it came on all of a sudden with pretty nasty muscle ache (particularly in my back), a fever, exhaustion/weakness, a sore throat and a headache with very little in the way of runny nose, sneezing etc.

Maybe we all need a bit of a flu to kick COVID out of our systems!

alex67500

Shame about Christmas day, but I hope it was a false positive and you don't develop symptoms.

There are scores of people who didn't have a Christmas day with family, ours got reduced from 12 to 4 (and 4 separate groups in total) due to pings and cases.

corporate-wage-slave

Yes, that's ticks most of the Influenza Like Illness (ILI) boxes. Lemsip to the fore! There is very little flu around at the moment, and not much real cold viruses either, so you are unlucky, and you don't want to give flu to an older relative. If we had been a bit Covid like with flu then a lot of lives could have been saved.

flyslow

No parole for me, Day6 LFT still positive. I have few cartridges left, I'll just keep trying.

IAN-UK

Brendan O'Neill, the author of that frothy-mouthed nonsense is an odd bod. A reformed Trotskyite, he segues easily and opportunistically into contrarian commentary. He's with excellent company at the Spectator where the ghastly Rod Liddle is one of the editors, and where Mary Wakefield (wife of Dom Cummings) commissions work.


The Independent called O'Neill out for similar opportunistic anti-science posturing, way back last year:

With his contrarianism and pseudo-radicalism, as if a global pandemic was nothing but another opportunity to exploit, Brendan O’Neill, editor of Spiked!, condemned the closing of pubs and called for “Dissent in a time of Covid”, criticising the “chilling” and “dangerous” “witch-hunting of those who criticise the response to coronavirus”. This led to a backlash from mainstream commentators and even his fellow travellers.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices...-a9486326.html


Scientists offer advise based on evidence. Without the evidence, the sensible approach considers unfavourable outcomes and how to mitigate their impact. Or as @Internaut suggests, the counsel offered is to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. The government then does its work, and decides what worst case it can afford to prepare for.

13901

I speak only for myself, obviously, but I think that this time it was OK for HMG to show an excess of caution. Sure, I wouldn't be feeling so charitable if I were one of the unlucky sods caught in the Nigeria debacle, but better this way than a repeat of the Delta shenanigans.

There is a point, though, in the excessive alarmism from the press. That "million cases a day" headline being a chief example.

Silver Fox

Another couple of interesting articles:

Covid lockdowns plunged nearly a million people into poverty, warns think tank

‘Dodgy data’ used in push for tighter Covid restrictions. Health chief accused of disseminating misleading statistics on hospitalisations that overstated the risk from omicron

IAN-UK

But both from the Telegraph, sister publication to the Spectator. And a newspaper already shamed by the independent regulator of the press, who ordered the Telegraph to publish corrections for spreading Covid misinformation. This information appeared in an article criticising an earlier lockdown, and referred to as seriously misleading by the regulator.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/20...y-covid-column



Longer memories might recall the Telegraph rubbishing the notion of a second spike. A spike that duly materialised and wiped out thousands of lives.

Internaut

The Telegraph is another subscription that I had and dropped a long time ago. I wanted a right of centre alternative to my Guardian diet but got the Mail with big words instead. I fired them in favour of the Times (via Apple News+) and FT, both of which have been a little more sober over the pandemic period.

Misco60

In Northern Ireland, from today (27 Dec), the exemption from wearing a face covering where it causes severe stress will be removed and the onus will be on the individual to prove an exemption on medical grounds.

This is a sensible and long-overdue measure that ought to be adopted by the other UK nations. Abuse of the "exemption" get-out is widespread and scandalous.

Silver Fox

Try and sound surprised:

Covid PCR test providers use ‘alphabet hacking’ to rip off travellers Firms offering PCR kits on government website use punctuation tricks to top the list but then charge much more than the advertised price

Private PCR test firms are deploying “alphabet hacking” to get to the top of the government website before charging travellers up to four times the advertised prices, an investigation has found.

Some companies are promoting themselves to the top of the Government’s official list of test providers by using punctuation in their names to “hack” the system, according to Robert Boyle, a former senior BA executive who now heads Gridpoint Consulting.

By using exclamation marks, they can game the filter and rise to the top of the site to be ostensibly the first choice for customers. One in eight (13 per cent) of the firms now on the government site have names which begin with punctuation or a digit.

However, their advertised prices of as little as £15 for a PCR test often turn out to be three or four times higher when prospective travellers click through to the company websites, an anomaly that has been previously criticised by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

The tactics are not illegal but come despite a promise by ministers and the CMA to crackdown on rip-offs from which there is no escape. All arrivals in the UK are now required to pay for PCR tests which average £80 per person, adding more than £300 to the cost of a holiday for a family of four.

Gridpoint branded the tactic “alphabet hacking” after its analysis found the top five listed suppliers were !!! 0-100 Travel 19, !! + + 0 0 44 Tests, ! Covid Testing Direct.com, ! Nomad and !247 Travel Tests.

DaveS

I saw this story earlier. It is shocking that it is still going on and that HMG are allowing it. A new company has appeared at the top the list in the last day or so - 247HomeTesting which claims tests for £15. The real cost on their web site is £64.99.

13901

I wonder how many pockets, besides Owen Paterson’s, have been lined by this total scam.

nk15

This sounds like almost certainly corruption, rather than incompetence, given how easy this would be to fix.

DaveS

Well here is some data. However I would caution against its usefulness because of reporting delays. Only England cases and deaths data is included and I do not know how complete that is. Hopefully something more valid will be available tomorrow, but most likely it will be incomplete for another week. Daily data:

Cases 98,515 (91,743 last Monday)
Deaths 143 (44)
People vaccinated up to and including 26 December 2021:
First dose: 51,663,078
Second dose: 47,270,663
Booster: 32,480,361

The rolling seven day daily average for cases is now up 30.5% on the previous week and the same measure for deaths is down 5.6%. The rolling 7 day daily average for deaths is 106.0 today.