Lighthouse

A combination of high vaccination rate, a more cavalier president, (probably) much lower prominence of the Indian variant and, going by that BBC chart, a much lower BAME population.

Sounds good to me, although we’ll probably still end up about 16th 👍 I’d prefer the tough run to be right at the start. There’re always a couple who have indifferent starts to the campaign, I’d rather catch them before they get their rhythm. Remember the start we had when we first came up? We were a combined 20 minutes or so away from beating both United and City. A Koeman or Poch team would have seen those two off relatively comfortably and probably got a routine 2-0 win over Wigan in between.

It sounds counter intuitive but when you think about it, it actually makes sense. The ratio will continue to look worse and worse, the more people that get vaccinated. We will reach a point we’re something like 85% of the people dying have been fully vaccinated. The antivaxxers will look upon this with triumph as look, "see we told you they don’t work, you’re all brainless sheep!" They will completely fail to understand that 15% of fatalities coming from 3% of the population is actually terrible for them.* *figures pulled straight out the hole in my arse but you get the principle.

You're looking at it the wrong way. Taking those figures at face value and supposing for simplicity's sake that AZ is 92% effective against death (ignoring hospital admissions) - 12 people is 8% of the people who would have died with no vaccine. In other words 12/8x100 = 150, plus the other 30 unvaccinated people. In other words, roughly speaking, the jab is the reason we had 42 deaths instead of 180.

Ah but is he a great lad in the dressing room? I'll pass thanks.

Just so long as our run in is tolerable. I wouldn’t want to be in a relegation scrap and needing points from our last four games again City, Everton, Leeds and Chelsea.

This isn't aimed at you but there's plenty of evidence out there for anyone willing to read it and when people already have their minds made up, you can lead a horse to water... I don't want to trigger another religious argument on this thread, but it's a bit like trying to disprove somebody's god. If there's no evidence for something then it's very hard to debunk.

The vaccine myths are completely, utterly, totally, unequivocally debunked. Some people however are just beyond help. Anyone wittering on about Bill Gates, 5G and ‘the great global reset’ whereby the masses stop er… going to nightclubs for a bit?? … is clearly devoid of all logic, reason and commonsense.

It’s a fair question but I would argue that in turning down the vaccine you’ve already refused treatment, so what right do you have then demanding much more prolonged and resource consuming treatment. There’s a difference between people with unhealthy lifestyles and what I would consider to be passive self-harming. If people refuse the vaccine I would ‘defer’ their treatment until we’ve caught up with all the cancer patients who don’t have any choice. It you have to wait six months for a ventilator, well that’s a shame, isn’t it.

It would be nice if we were allowed to refuse treatment for anyone who chooses not to get vaccinated but apparently that’s not ethical.

Never understood players ‘taking one for the team’ when they’re in their own half, with two defenders covering and 70 yards to run to the goal. Doesn’t seem worth getting booked on the off chance some random Slovakian midfielder might pull off an Owen vs. Argentina.

Wouldn’t mind if our scouts had been keeping an eye on Yaremchuk as a possible Ings replacement. Goal and assist tonight, decent scoring rate in Belgium. Probably out of our price range, having said that.

Yeah but they usually get cocky and start pushing their luck. That’s when you nail them with the Mr Sheen.

Just for reference, today we reported 7490 cases and increasing. The last time we had roughly that many and increasing was September 24th. Back then this coincided with 422 admissions and 40 deaths. Today it coincided with 187 admissions and 8 deaths. It’s a crude analysis but the ratio across all three is undoubtedly much higher, so that’s promising.

As things are, there doesn’t seem to be anything to be alarmed about. Cases have been increasing for around a month but so far patients in hospital have only gone up by around 200 from their minimum of 869 back in May. Nobody is arguing that we can’t stay as we are, it’s all about what the models predict will happen to the R number if we end all restrictions and infections start to climb at a much faster rate than they are currently.

“Sterling involved in deadly London Shooting” - The Sun

Yes. 9 months of lock down to save one life is exactly what I'm hoping for.

"Fears," held by somebody in the government, in a scare mongering, click bait article are not evidence. Somebody at The Express 'fears' we're going to have the coldest winter for 50 years. The immigrants in the Daily Mail still give you cancer. Big whoop. When scientists start producing accurate modeling based on real evidence to show that the vaccines don't work, then I'll start to worry. We came up with a plan 4 months ago, 2 months before the D/Indian variant was even in the UK. We've been given all the freedoms back we were promised, right up until this point. Now we're being asked to wait another 4 weeks to be completely free from restrictions because of a variant we couldn't have predicted which is 40% more transmissible. If we still had the Kent variant, we'd be home and dry by now but we don't.

That and I’d expect Denmark to have withdrawn.

Yes, the current roadmap was published on 22nd of February, four months ago, before the D variant was even heard of. These models are like weather forecasts, the further into the future you go, the more effect the variables have and the less accurate they become. Personally, I’m surprised the modelling has been as accurate as it has to allow us to stick to the roadmap this well so far. Picking the June 21st date back then was a bit like saying today that it’s going to be 14 degrees and raining on 12th October. What we’re concerned about now is the graph at the bottom of this article. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/57403888

Putting aside the needless insults, go and read my post again. I didn’t answer, I explained why the question isn’t valid. Neither seasonal flu nor whelks example of drunks cracking their heads open are in any way comparable to Covid 19 in either severity or longevity. I’m not being sanctimonious, you made up that 9 months bit, pure and simple. Covid isn’t seasonal, there’s no evidence at all that we’re suddenly going to be faced with more lockdowns in winter. The worst outbreaks in the world weren't observed in the Arctic tundras around Jaipur and Manaus.

Yes, that’s the growth at the current rate with our current restrictions. If we start opening up events and venues, which are overwhelmingly popular with young, unvaccinated people, the number of cases and admissions will grow exponentially. Just to be clear - I really, really don’t want this extension. I’ve got tickets to the F1 which, rather typically, is due to start ten hours before a theoretical four week extension would end, at midnight on 19th July. I’m desperate to go but not at the expense of someone’s triple heart bypass.

I need perspective? You’ve just pulled a big dramatic number like 9 months out of thin air, rather than answer a simple question about what you desperately needed to do in the next five weeks and yes; a lot will change in that period. Namely another 17 million vaccinations being administered, which will cover roughly 75% of the total adult population. Flu seasons are short term and the come and go on their own in accordance with the cold weather. Covid doesn’t do that, it’s perennial. We aren’t talking about putting operations back by three weeks because February was a bit rough for flu, there’s a backlog which has been building on and off for 16 months now. That’s also worse than a few p*ssheads falling off lamp posts.

It’s not about deaths it’s about people in hospital. The more people go in with Covid, the fewer resources are available to treat other patients, that’s undeniable. So answer me this; what is it that you wanted to do in the next five weeks which is more important than a person having surgery or other treatment.

It basically is. There are tens of thousands of outpatients who’ve had treatments delayed repeatedly by the NHS being packed to capacity with Covid patients. We can’t afford to do that again, or get any where close to the 40,000 we had in January. It’s nothing to do with moral high ground, it’s about not sarcastically pretending to be surprised by something we were told right from day one. We’ve always known that these vaccines needed two jabs and that everyone who was able would need to get one for the country to be safe.