🛎 Attention scientific conference organisers:

It is not acceptable in this day and age not to organise your face to face events as hybrid.

I’ll tell you why 🧵

Lots of women feel unsafe running in the dark – so we give up something we love < not only did some of the tweet responses not get it, it’s already the same in the comments section 🤦🏻‍♀️ theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

🧵So this is where Heneghan and Jefferson have ended. Hosting a conference with conspiracy theorist vibes
'Governments collude with big tech/fact checkers to control public information'

“Can you please tell them to hurry up or I shall be dead.”

Ken Shadbolt, 94, begged 999 handlers for an ambulance three times before he died from a fall at home.

You promise you care deeply about the NHS & patient safety, Jeremy Hunt.

Please do not cut our budgets even more.

Some updated variant analyses by Moritz Gerstung. Below and here github.com/tomwenseleers/… also some more updated plots based on my analysis here github.com/tomwenseleers/….

The Continuous Mortality Investigation (CMI) has published its weekly Mortality Monitor covering deaths to 7 October.

There were 10% more deaths this week than if death rates were the same as 2019. That’s another significant excess. 1/3

This is well worth reading from Jonathan Portes making some crucial points:
(1) Osborne could have borrowed much more in the early 2010s when interest rates were 0%, *without* upsetting the markets.
(2) But if you try to borrow eye-watering amounts of £... 1/ magazine.newstatesman.com/2022/10/18/the…

There were 400 deaths in England and Wales this week where COVID was mentioned on the death certificate. That’s the highest number for 6 weeks.

64% of deaths with COVID mentioned on the death certificate had it listed as underlying cause.

ONS deaths data has been released for week ending 7 Oct.

1,652 more deaths were recorded in-week compared to the 2015-19 average. That’s 17% more, which is another significant excess.

Year-to-date there have been 436,182 deaths recorded which is 7% more than the 2015-19 avg.

2-year fixed mortgage

May - 2.35%
Aug - 4%
Sept - 5.59%
Oct - 5.75%
Today.. 6.53%

A visual look at ambulance metrics for East of England.
Blue = average excess time ambulances take to hand over each patient to hospital (vs target of 15 mins).
Red = Category 2 excess response times (vs target of 18 mins).
Category 2s include suspected strokes, chest pain etc.

🎉Happy Birthday BBC on your 100th birthday! When you were founded we had a King, no one knew if they could afford to put their heating on and we'd just lived through a global pandemic. Times really do change!

It’s looks like Gez Medinger and I are now the #LongCovid Odd Couple. Bagsy I get to be Walter Matthau.

The UK’s National Grid has warned British households to prepare for blackouts between 4pm and 7pm on ‘really, really cold’ weekdays in January and February

on.ft.com/3yLdx5C

This Is Fine dot gif but without the flames and warmth.

The moron premium

Liz Truss's net favourability rating has fallen to -70

Favourable: 10% (-5 from 11-12 Oct)
Unfavourable: 80% (+9)

yougov.co.uk/topics/politic…

I love this video from RIKEN in Japan.

It models the flow of exhaled air in various different settings under different conditions.

As well as the flow patterns being very beautiful, it also highlights the importance of good quality masks (FFP2/FFP3)