Goat

Hi, I can't really follow your link, could you post some numbers please.

Airlines and airports are fully privatized, I can get down to Tenerife for £50 or so. Trains, still a quasi-state monopoly, you paid £300 or so to go maybe 25% of the distance. 'nuff said. UK housing is the exact opposite of a free market. Town and Country Planning Act 1947.

How much would it cost to fly a similar distance?

Turn your headlights on maybe?

Ask any economist, and they'll tell you that defence is something that only the state can provide, it doesn't mean that they're any good at it (ask the Russians), just that no market alternative exists. In terms of street lighting, you know that flashlights are a thing, don't you? I suggest you check the definition of monopoly, and in any event, since when has the NHS only provided emergency care.

Let's say 1/100 vaccinated die from Covid, but for the unvaccinated that figure is 1/10, that's 90% protection against death from Covid. Now let's assume we merge unvaccinated with partially vaccinated, and they have a 1/20 chance of dying from Covid, the vaccines now only offer 80% protection from death from Covid. One problem is the partially vaccinated usually have a reason why they've not had further doses, thus their all cause mortality can be worse, but if we're solely focussed on death by Covid, the numbers still hold.

I've been away from this forum for a long time, did they try floating that Lancet study and how did it work out?

The claim was about original promises, not what the semi-senile POTUS said a year later. Also, let's remember that the vaccines were developed against pre-Alpha variants, work well against Alpha and Delta, but Omicron has changed the game a bit. So, what were the original promises, and who made them, with links to sources please.

It makes the vaccines look less effective, I'm not sure how that helps anyone.

The thing is though, roughly 90% of people who die from flu, or indeed anything, are likely to have some other condition mentioned as well, so the comparison is not valid.

So the source for the screenshot was: Worldometers. I can't quite work out where they've got the figure from, but it looks like it's based on the deaths within 28 days metric, but with high case numbers and Omicron that's going to give a lot of "Covid incidental" deaths. Having a flick through the March figures, about 70% - 75% of deaths within 28 days end up with Covid on the death certificate, and for those that do, only about 60% of it have it listed as the underlying cause, so 1,764 x 75% x 60% = about 800 deaths a week from Covid. Quite how comparable our figures are to other countries I don't know.

What's the source for that screenshot. It could be connected to Easter, and depend on exactly what the above is measuring, we didn't update the figures over the Easter holiday, so that could distort things.

The article's not entirely clear, it talks about 3 cabinet ministers, but then goes on to talk about 2 shadow cabinet ministers, so is that as well as, or are the Guardian including the as cabinet minister?

I think HK was the other way round, there's a discussion of it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct2dlj

I don't think you'll ever see me claim that it represents 40% of the public sector budget, however if you exclude social security then it's getting towards 35% Let's look at the statement I made: Public sector monopoly It is undoubtedly in the public sector, it is undoubtedly a monopoly. Which is why nobody else has copied it. Has anybody copied it? Can you give examples? Horrifically inefficient All public sector monopolies are horribly inefficient.

I think the problem with the US is their legal system, every decision is guided by the risk of getting sued, which means that everything is bureaucratic and vast amounts of time and money is wasted on essentially pointless testing to guard against the risk of a 1 in a million condition. Europe manages to get by without an NHS, I wonder why we're special.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it? Conclusions The NHS showed pockets of good performance, including in health service outcomes, but spending, patient safety, and population health were all below average to average at best.

It wasn't policy, apparently there were a load of scare stories doing the rounds about the vaccine causing heart attacks and strokes in the elderly, so the elderly simply didn't want the vaccine and didn't get it when offered, which wasn't a problem when HK was Covid free, but became a big problem when the virus arrived.

Comparative Performance of Private and Public Healthcare Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. So yes, if you want really basic healthcare in a country where many couldn't afford private treatment, then maybe this is the way to go, but that's not what the NHS is.

Wilson had a couple of goes either side of Heath, Churchill had two goes, Baldwin three times in the twenties, Gladstone 4 separate premierships, loads of others on multiple occasions. The difference is that they remained leader of their party, whereas for Johnson to go would mean his party deposing him (probably).

It's a horrifically inefficient public sector monopoly, which is why nobody else has copied it.

Don't you think it's odd that no other country in the world has followed us down the NHS route? If the NHS really was as wonderful as some seem to think, don't you think one or two might've tried to copy us.

I'm not sure if that's true, we had next to no Covid restrictions in December/January 2021/22 beyond some largely symbolic mask mandates, if we were really worried about the NHS then surely we'd have gone much further. I think it was simply a case of a vast amount of uncertainty about what it was and what it would do.

None of this was known at the time. Their overall vaccine coverage is good, but it's very limited in the elderly and most vulnerable age groups, which is precisely the opposite of what you want, and is why they've seen such a terrible number of deaths over the last month. I also think they might be using a more narrow definition of Covid death than some, but we'll need to wait for the excess mortality figures before we can make a judgement on that.

The problem is the NHS itself.