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"I give it 2 months, max. I've bought just enough toilet paper and frozen food to see us through".

So, as per above posts, I’m meant to be flying to LA for work on Saturday, and need to return a negative test on Friday. Here’s a photo of this morning’s test: Not easy to photograph, but you can just about make out a faint line on the result. Official guidance says that any visible line...

First positive was this morning; started feeling unwell yesterday. Flying with BA.

So two years into this shitshow I have finally returned a positive test. Triple-jabbed, so I’m not unduly unwell - just feeling a bit lethargic with a splitting headache. I’m due to fly to LA on Saturday, my first flight since August 2019. What are the chances of returning a negative test in...

I think this has been largely mooted for weeks now, in particular from those heading up the vaccine research and rollout itself. Covid is about to become endemic in the UK, and our collective immune status is probably about as high as it’s realistically going to get. Vaccines aren’t free...

Unvaccinated people are 28 times more likely to die from Covid than vaccinated, according to this Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/16/what-do-we-know-about-people-who-died-covid-uk

Their response throughout the whole pandemic has been to go a bit earlier and a bit harder than Boris (and generally correctly so). It’s almost a reflex now. I’m not sure how much independent data they had access to, but I think they saw England seemingly panicking and panicked even more. I...

Let’s not forget what was dominating the headlines in the days running up the the kerfuffle about Omicron. I felt at the time, and still feel now, that the scale of the problem was catastrophised to divert attention. Which in fairness, it did, because no ones talking about parties or cheese and...

I get all of the other countries mentioned here - all are massive with the exception of the UK which was hard hit in the first two waves and has a high quality of data recording, but what the hell happened in Peru!? It’s half the size of the UK, and I’ve hardly seen them mentioned over the...

With 2020 being so spectacularly and unexpectedly shit, I think there was some understandable naivety and desperation that 2021 would be better. And in many ways it has been better - being back at the football for one has been incredibly cathartic for me. But still, on balance, for the majority...

A big number, yes - certainly compared to previous waves, however not unexpected or necessarily deeply concerning. This snippet from the lead article on the BBC right now helps provide some useful context. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59822687

I think the latest stat I heard on this was doubling every two to three days, rather than every day, but your point still stands. If we were at 90,000 official cases four or five days ago, then in theory we should be well over the 300k threshold by now. Now, it may be that a milder version of...

Hospitalisations also falling in South Africa. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/covid-19-hospitalisations-fall-sharply-south-africa/

That’s certainly the pattern now being exhibited in SA. As you say, early days but that’s certainly how it’s at least beginning to look. How much of that is due to the characteristics of Omicron and how much is down to changes in human behaviour I don’t know, but I’ve not heard stories of strict...

It’s not particularly visible here, in data reported by the South African government. https://www.samrc.ac.za/reports/report-weekly-deaths-south-africa This is the outlook for Guateng province, the epicentre of Omicron. Still fairly small in comparison to previous waves. Excess deaths is...

I'm not saying I'm any brighter, but if I've interpreted this chart correctly it is that Omicron appears to be outcompeting Delta and therefore, slowly phasing it out. I may be wrong on that front (that's merely what it 'looks like' to me), but if so that would be good news in so much that you...

I have, and it’s big for sure. The questions we don’t yet know the answers to however are; how fast can it keep transmitting at that rate, what percentage of people require hospital care and what percentage of those who do, go onto die? The first question is probably the one we know the least...

Perhaps, and I of course understand a degree of caution while we obtain all of the facts, but I’m not sure I can abide by the narrative that we have to lock down NOW, lock down HARD and if we don’t we’re all going to hell in a HAND-BASKET, which is apparently what all of our scientists or saying...

Perplexing isn’t it. After all this time we still seem to be managing the pandemic by case numbers alone, rather than delving beyond those figures for the deeper context.

As someone who spends a lot of time ‘modelling’ outcomes, albeit commercial / financial ones, I can safely say that they consist of mostly bollocks. The fact you have scientists doing it makes no difference. There is always a pre-determined ‘ideal scenario’ and if the first or second attempt...