An update to this, from 30 January all of the Outer Hebrides will be in Level 4
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/2.../contents/made

You were asking about this the other day. I did reply but I admit I don't think I gave a good explanation. However, I saw this thread today and it does a far better job than I did

https://twitter.com/LevinsLaw/status/1355258548008214532?s=20

The main points are:
- an officer has the same right as anyone else to ask a question, but you are not obliged to stop or answer the question
- refusal to answer in and of itself cannot be grounds for reasonable suspicion that you are guilty of an offence
- but if a police officer has reasonable suspicion that you're in breach and you don't offer any information to dispel that suspicion, you may be arrested or issued with an FPN

... sometimes known as "... failing the attitude test"

Explains why the Paris police always seem so cheery whenever I’ve seen them. They have the Napoleonic Code. Personally, I prefer to avoid dealing with The Law, but not to i) stop when asked to stop, ii) answer simple questions and iii) treat them like human beings seems pretty absurd.

I didn’t realise I lived in the parallel universe where none of the above counted for reasonable suspicion.

Thanks KARFA. Point 2 and 3 feel a little bit convoluted and contradictory to each other but there’s a reason why I’m not a lawyer and I don’t understand Common Law.

Here’s one for the stats nuts. First signs the vaccine programme is having a positive effect.

Excellent news today on number of vaccines given 598k, almost 9m in total 1st dose.

I read Captain Tom Moore is in hospital with Covid. I'm hoping he gets well soon but this begs a question: wasn't he vaccinated?

Sky news says he wasn't as he was being treated for pneumonia for the last few weeks. Yes hope he gets well soon too.

But including only 10 000 second jab. 588k were first jabs, not full vaccines.
In comparison, yesterday France gave 10k second jabs out of 80k jabs total: 1/8 compared to 1/60 for UK. I am afraid the UK plan will leave most people not fully vaccinated.

Only a concern if the UK didn't give people a second vaccine I think. There is certainly no plan to do that.

The maths is interesting and I hadn't thought about it until recently. Bear in mind that even with one dose, significant protection is given - about 52% for Pfizer, about 60-65% for AZ.

- If you have 2m doses, giving 2 doses to 1 m people gives 95% efficacy, so you protect protect around 500k-600k of them after the first dose rising to 950k after the second.
- Give 2m people 1 dose each, and even at 50-60% efficacy you have protected 1m-1.2m of them after the 1st dose, and you can catch up with the second to achieve full protection at 12 weeks.

If the resources required for giving all doses (so 1st or 2nd) are equal it makes sense to pursue the second plan if your goal is to protect as many as possible earlier in the program, effectively you get more "return" on your first dose than the second dose.

Your maths are interesting. The only thing I am afraid of is bad management of stocks, leaving in a situation where the second jab can not be given.

The UK currently has the best management of stocks and rollout in Europe.

But even if it gave protection for 12 weeks and not a day more then the most vulnerable 9 million now (and those most likely to die) and probably 15 million in a few weeks have been given a much reduced risk for the next 12 weeks or so. Those maths start to look much more appealing.

If they then start to give second jabs at the week 12 point, it is like starting from scratch again but with a vastly improved injection system and regime now in place. At 600,000 a day or more by then they should get the 15 million done in just a few weeks assuming the vaccine keeps flowing.

There is no right answer as this is an unknown and constantly evolving problem - but I think it looks a reasonable solution supported by many medical experts.

That's a pretty low bar. 😁