🗣 @Ianblackford_MP: “Mr Speaker, this afternoon, millions around the world will breathe a massive sigh of relief when President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are sworn into office.” #PMQs

First Minister @NicolaSturgeon: "Firstly, can I thank you, Presiding Officer, for this recall of Parliament today and join you in wishing everyone all the very best for a new year that we hope, despite its very difficult start, will bring better times."

NS: "The Cabinet met this morning to assess the up to date Covid situation - which I must say at the outset is extremely serious - and to discuss what further action is necessary to minimise further spread of the virus. I will set out our decisions shortly."

NS: "However, I can confirm now, in summary, that we decided to introduce from midnight tonight, for the duration of January, a legal requirement to stay at home except for essential purposes. This is similar to the lockdown of March last year."

NS: "However, before I set out these decisions in more detail, I want to take the opportunity to explain in some detail why they are so necessary.

In the last few weeks, there have been two significant game changers in our fight against this virus."

NS: "One, the approval of vaccines, is hugely positive and offers us the way out of this pandemic.

But the other - the new faster spreading variant of the virus - is a massive blow."

First Minister @NicolaSturgeon: "Good afternoon, thank you for joining us. I'll give you some warning in advance - my update is going to be slightly longer than normal today because I've got a few updates I'm going to cover."

NS: "I'm also going to touch a little bit on Christmas, which I know is of huge interest to everyone. But firstly, as usual, I will cover today's statistics."

NS: "There were 689 positive cases reported yesterday, which is 5.9% of the total number of tests and means that the total tally of confirmed cases now is 108,438."

NS: "140 of today's new cases were in Lothian, 109 in Greater Glasgow & Clyde, 92 in Lanarkshire and 91 in Ayrshire & Arran, and the remaining cases are spread across 8 other health board areas."

NS: "1,031 people are currently in hospital which is an increase of 35 from yesterday. 49 people are in intensive care, which is 4 more than yesterday."

First Minister @NicolaSturgeon: "I will give a short update on today's figures. 1,656 positive cases were reported yesterday, which is 7.5% of all tests carried out. The total number of cases therefore is now 166,583."

NS: "As of yesterday, 309,909 people had received their first dose of vaccine. There are currently 2,003 people in hospital, which is 14 more than yesterday, and 156 people in intensive care, which is 6 more than yesterday."

NS: "I very much regret to report that, in the past 24 hours, a further 92 deaths were registered of patients who first tested positive over the previous 28 days and the total number of people who have died under that daily measurement is 5,468."

NS: "National Records of Scotland has also just published its weekly update. That, of course, includes cases where Covid is a suspected or contributory cause of death, even if it hasn't been confirmed through a test."

NS: "Today's update shows that, by last Sunday, the total number of registered deaths linked to Covid under the wider definition was 7,448. 368 of those deaths were registered in the most recent week, which is 23 fewer than in the week before that."

First Minister @NicolaSturgeon: "I'm going to speak in a few moments about the announcements we made over the weekend, the announcements I set out here on Saturday evening..."

NS: "and I will also reflect on the decisions that have been made and intimated by some other countries, in respect of closing borders with the UK.

But first of all, let me begin with today’s statistics.

The total number of positive cases reported yesterday was 1,504."

NS: "That represents 6% of the total number of tests carried out, and the overall number of confirmed cases is now 113,050.

As you'll have noticed, today’s figure represents a significantly higher number of cases than we have seen in recent times."

NS: "We think that this may be, in part, down to a processing backlog last week within the UK Lighthouse system.

Please be aware that today’s figure may be affected by that backlog of cases now coming through the system and being reported on."

NS: "However we will be doing further analysis of these case numbers to confirm that."

📺 Watch @Ianblackford_MP and your SNP MPs at #PMQs as they hold Boris Johnson and the Tories to account on their reckless Brexit obsession.

⏰ Tune in now: https://t.co/RlaW0Pb2tx

.@Ianblackford_MP: “Mr Speaker, In the last few hours, the President of the European Commission said that the ‘next few days are going to be decisive’ in the Brexit negotiations.”

.@Ianblackford_MP: “With just two weeks to go, it is a disgrace that businesses and people have been left with this crippling uncertainty and the real threat of food and medicine shortages ahead of the new year.”

.@Ianblackford_MP: “One year ago, at the general election, Scotland rejected this Prime Minister, rejected this Tory Government and rejected their extreme Brexit.
 
People in Scotland now need to know the price they will be forced to pay.”

.@Ianblackford_MP: “Ahead of any vote in Parliament, will the Prime Minister commit to releasing a detailed economic impact assessment of the cost to the UK of his extreme Tory Brexit plans?”

I've been seeing a lot of discussion around the dosage gaps recommended by government for the Astra/Oxford & Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines. My thoughts on the potential benefits & risks of such an approach, and the need for much greater transparency around these decisions. Thread.

The UK govt announced recently that both the Oxford & BioNTech vaccines would be now administered with a gap of between 4-12 weeks (so prioritise administration of first dose, given limited resources).

What is the basis of this?

The basis that's been discussed seems to be that
1) the first dose is likely to confer some degree of protection against disease, so better to roll this out as fast as possible, and
2) that for Oxford/Astra efficacy may be higher when the gap between doses is greater.

I discuss some of the technical details around the Oxford trial below for those interested in these. If you'd just like a summary of this, please skip to the summary tweet titled 'SUMMARY'.

What does published evidence show? The Astra/Oxford data are a bit messy because of protocol changes during the trial. This is because the trial was originally planned as a single dose trial, but a booster dose was added when developers realised that this would likely help.

NEVER FORGET how stupid [THEY] have been from the beginning!!!

BOTH @GenFlynn and #AdmMikeRogers went to Trump Tower on Nov 17, 2016.

IMPORTANT DATE to remember!!!! (THREAD)

AND Adm. Rogers arrived at Trump tower on NOVEMBER 17, 2016.... Rogers discovered @BarackObama ‘702’ Illegal Spying Operation and Briefed Trump @ Trump Tower...

THE NEXT DAY (Nov. 18, 2016) @realDonaldTrump MOVED transition meetings to private golf club in New Jersey... It was even reported in the

The following week (4 days later) POTUS tweeted, "Great meetings will take place today at Trump Tower concerning the formation of the people who will run our government for the next 8 years."

The only problem for [THEM] spying??? Trump Team ALREADY MOVED OUT OF TRUMP TOWER!!!!

This was a SETUP by #POTUS and Team because they KNEW about surveillance (From Adm Rogers/Flynn)....

(Trump later in 2017 tweeted that he "just found out" about Obama surveillance...KEK!)

1. I am in the process of recovering four years of destroyed Twitter posts from my recent hack. Most related to an organization of rogue CIA agents doing election hacking, drug running, and dark weapons trading in a group led by AG Bill Barr. Other have call this the Enterprise.

2. The Enterprise is run Bill Barr himself and organized 800 ex-CIA agents and 300 ex-Soviet KGB Generals into a junta of 1,100 Frank Guistra partners in a sort of law firm of international crime. Iran Contra drug running was the first major operation in 1980. by the Enterprise.

3. Chip Tatum, a CIA pilot, flew Bill Barr, then a CIA attorney for George Bush, to Central America for Iran Contra banking and money laundering operations talks about this extensively in him book about his close friend, Robert Mueller, entitled, "The Mule".

4. A fundamental premise of my work over the last four years is to focus on this core Iran Contra, "Enterprise" group, to follow election hacking, dark weapons trade, drug running, and money laundering. Here are some video notes capture on the web from shows I did in 2016.

5. You can see in these 2016 show notes how my focus was on a USAID funded Serbian election flipping, subversive group called OTPOR. This group received subversion funds for election flipping through KKR, a joint venture of David Petraeus and Henry Kissinger.