Jimmy_D

I'm finally getting around to re-reading A Song of Ice and Fire (the Game of Thrones books). Got a feeling we might finally actually get Winds of Winter next year.

https://www.redcafe.net/matches/southampton-vs-manchester-united.359/ Has to be the least confident I've ever seen a Man Utd pre-match thread against us. There's good reason for that of course, difficult game to call, but we'll have a very good chance of the win as long as we don't have an off-day.

Could have gone either way, in the end went neither way. Easy to look at either the chances we missed or the chances Wolves missed and say either team should have won, point probably a fair result.

FFS. That was unlucky.

Walcott's first Premier League goal for us!

Feel like we'd probably be a goal or two up if Ings was playing. We're playing well enough to get three points here so hopefully it'll fall our way the second half.

Started well but there just seems to be a slight disconnect when we're in possession so far.

Whew. Justice there, Romeu got the ball.

Really promising, the numbers so far on the Oxford vaccine. 90% efficacy with a half dose followed by a full dose, instead of the two full does they were expecting to need, and NO serious cases in the whole trial is way better than they'd have hoped for. Similar caveats to the other vaccines in that these are still early results, and additionally to the caveats from the other trials, also the caveat that the 90% efficacy came from a relatively small subset of the full trial. Will be a real bonus if those numbers do play out on the wider scale though, only needing a half dose initially lets us treat 33% more people than we were expecting to if two doses were needed. Absolutely fantastic news for the UK if this one comes through, it's the one we've got most doses ordered already, as well as going further than expected, and on top of that, it's good news for everyone else too. Out of the vaccines that results have been shown to be effective so far, it's the cheapest, easiest to produce, fastest to produce, and easiest to store and transport.

I guess this is probably influenced more by his legendary status than his football ability, but I’d go for Benali

It’s not everything that’s going on there, but if they carry on at this rate, Sheffield United will be the picture they always use next to ‘Second Season Syndrome’. Looking like Derby’s points record is under threat.

It was a penalty under this season’s rules, and it should have been retaken with the keeper coming off his line like that, but it doesn’t feel like justice has been done there.

How has he changed his mind on that!?

The actual rule is below the level of the armpit, if the arm is down by the player’s side. They’d never base it on the shirt because that can shift and move, as well as be different lengths. Not to mention some players play in long sleeves. https://www.premierleague.com/news/1820123

Ah, sorry to hear that, hope you and your family get well soon Badger

That's actually specifically banned. https://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/lawsandrules/laws/football-11-11/law-4---the-players-equipment A megaphone, however, I'm really not sure whether any rule deals with that.

It's definitely a vaccine, and intended to be one, but it's still a little too early to tell for certain if it's completely having the intended effect. It really does look promising so far, but unfortunately, there's nothing we can do except wait for more data to come through, and hope that news about it provides all the context of exactly what's been found so far and where it is.

Basically it comes down to us still not knowing enough about COVID-19. Or rather, what we do know meaning we can't make assumptions about what the vaccine is doing. We know there's evidence that COVID-19 can infect asymptomatically, and be transmitted by those it's infected asymptomatically. We also know it's possible for COVID-19 to reinfect people who have been infected before. However, we don't know what causes the difference in severity of symptoms. At this point, we're not certain, because it's not possible to be certain, whether the vaccine is actually preventing infection completely, or is simply causing a difference in severity of symptoms.

At this point it's not known whether it's preventing infection entirely, or making asymptomatic cases that would otherwise have been symptomatic. The entire point of the vaccine is to produce antibodies that would act against the virus, so everyone appears as if they've been infected, and it's not possible to tell the difference at the moment, hence this being an interim result. Don't get me wrong, it's very VERY promising, but it's not absolutely certain that this is 'it' just yet.

Ah, that's a big caveat... Unknown yet whether it prevents transmission, which is what would be required to get the benefit of herd immunity from the vaccine. Just have to wait and see on that one.

Hah, probably a bit late to jump on the Pfizer bandwagon now. The good thing about a vaccination programme, though, is that everyone benefits from increasing herd immunity as it rolls out. It's one of the 6 vaccines the UK had backed in advance, which is also a positive for us.

90% really is promising if that holds up. It'd bring the r rate well below one once enough people are vaccinated. That would put us back on a path that'd allow us to start getting back to normal.

Don’t worry, they’ll have to put us front and centre with the trophy next season

I’d imagine that probably helped. Unfortunately we don’t have that to help us at the moment, which is partly the reason they’ve chosen to impose the lockdown again.

The rate of increase has been slowing. That means it’s still increasing, which eventually will overwhelm the NHS. The local measures have been helping, but unfortunately not enough. Full lockdown last time worked to reverse the rate of infection (bringing r below 1) and unfortunately that’s needed again.