I also have a theory that, were Covid to have hit us in the pre mass internet era; it could have been covered up or downplayed as a particularly bad flu season. It was only because of mass communication that the reality of the virus, and inability of governments to deal with it, became clear.
I'm not sure - but it's safe to say that things would have had to be very different because working from home just wouldn't have been possible.
I just had to dial 999 due to the Great Orme goats gathering on the dual carriageway down the Little Orme creating a very present danger for passing cars, and they have very big horns
And they are not wearing masks !!!!!
Ah, the goats have the horns. I had visions of a Dukes of Hazzard convention for one moment.
I just had to dial 999 due to the Great Orme goats gathering on the dual carriageway down the Little Orme creating a very present danger for passing cars, and they have very big horns
And they are not wearing masks !!!!!
Ah, the goats have the horns. I had visions of a Dukes of Hazzard convention for one moment.
I also have a theory that, were Covid to have hit us in the pre mass internet era; it could have been covered up or downplayed as a particularly bad flu season. It was only because of mass communication that the reality of the virus, and inability of governments to deal with it, became clear.
I'm not sure - but it's safe to say that things would have had to be very different because working from home just wouldn't have been possible.
It would have been somewhere between Hong Kong flu and Spanish flu. It would have been bad, but not unprecedentedly so.
Thatcher is the obvious choice, but it is important to remember that she governed in a different era. There was no internet, social media, camera phones etc; just a relatively deferential mainstream media who the government could bargain with to control the flow of information. This meant that Thatchers public persona could be stage managed to a degree that is no longer possible. It is a similar story for Tony Blair. These are all characters in a world that no longer exists.
You exaggerate. Johnson’s persona is every bit as stage managed as ever. Social media is all secondary: what Johnson does and what he permits people to know is still up to him.
Absolutely - it is just that it stage managed for the post truth era. He succeeds where Theresa May failed.
She failed because she is a failure. Post-truth doesn't mean all that much. We all still know what the word means, and have an instinctive respect for it.
On a parallel subject who will be the leader to tell us that, if the science is correct, the climate crisis is already an absolute certainty, whatever steps are taken in some countries to emit less CO2 than before, and that mitigation planning is the only option, and that net Zero emissions, or anything close to it, cannot in practice (political and economic) in any foreseeable time scale and circumstance come about.
I think the great Greta Thunberg may already be trying to work out the implications of this very obvious truth.
My sense is that this is obvious to almost everyone but almost no-one is prepared to say so. Is that how it seems generally?
Yes, a more interesting question would be who would have been best PM to address the Climate Crisis?
For this I would go for Blair. He would be best at coordinating international response, which is the key issue, and also he is the best communicator. Matched with his pragmatism and unideological approach he would be the clear winner.
No, IIRC, when asked about making fuel duty on aircraft fuel equal to that on car petrol duty, he made some platitude about airlines only being responsible for 2% of carbon emissions. Blair was a populist, in his own way.
If interviewing for the role I'd ask each candidate if they had successfully navigated a crisis of this magnitude and complexity when in charge before. Just the one would be able to look me straight in the eye and answer yes. A heavyset Scottish bloke with a dodgy eye. So I'd probably play it safe and go for him, despite the hint of overintensity that makes me wonder if he'll get through it without a crackup.
Latest study on boosters very encouraging, and even at just 250k per day everyone over 50 gets boostered by Christmas, which is barely an acceleration on the current much maligned levels which are clearly now being ramped up. With a 95% efficacy vs 2 doses, it's hard to see how the usual suspects will try to make a case for more NPI, but I'm sure they're manage.
That sounds good, but what exactly do you mean by 'a 95% efficiency Vs 2 doses'?
If interviewing for the role I'd ask each candidate if they had successfully navigated a crisis of this magnitude and complexity when in charge before. Just the one would be able to look me straight in the eye and answer yes. A heavyset Scottish bloke with a dodgy eye. So I'd probably play it safe and go for him, despite the hint of overintensity that makes me wonder if he'll get through it without a crackup.
Not sure that the financial crises compares in magnitude to Covid. In fact, I'm sure it doesn't.
You would want someone with gravitas, so I'd go with Thatcher or Brown. I think Thatcher would be listened to more by the public, so she gets the nod. So my order would be: 1) Thatcher, 2) Brown, 3) Major 4) May.
I also have a theory that, were Covid to have hit us in the pre mass internet era; it could have been covered up or downplayed as a particularly bad flu season. It was only because of mass communication that the reality of the virus, and inability of governments to deal with it, became clear.
I'm not sure - but it's safe to say that things would have had to be very different because working from home just wouldn't have been possible.
It would have been somewhere between Hong Kong flu and Spanish flu. It would have been bad, but not unprecedentedly so.
The NHS would have clogged up with elderly victims.
Since lockdowns would have shut the economy down, they probably wouldn't have happened - at least as universally as they did.
A lot of economic activity would have stopped by itself.
Seven persistent myths about Covid and lockdowns in the UK / England.
I thought I would put one thread together on what I think are 7 myths that continue to be propagated - mainly by those who, although well-intentioned, always assume that more restrictions are the answer.
There's an awful lot of nostalgia for Thatcher on here, but some of us around at the time don't have quite the same rose-tinted view. Yes, she was adored by many - I don't deny that for a minute. But she was also hated by a very large minority, whether it be miners, urban youth, the 3M unemployed, or young lefties as I was at the time. I'd put her down as the most divisive of all post-war PMs.
So although she may have had the skills to manage the Covid crisis, I do wonder whether she would have been able to build the necessary consensus to get us through. It's possible that too many people would simply not have trusted or believed her. On those grounds, I'd probably go for Blair (pre-Iraq). He didn't attract such antipathy among his opponents, was a brilliant communicator, and had a good grip on the machinery of government by around 2001.
Latest study on boosters very encouraging, and even at just 250k per day everyone over 50 gets boostered by Christmas, which is barely an acceleration on the current much maligned levels which are clearly now being ramped up. With a 95% efficacy vs 2 doses, it's hard to see how the usual suspects will try to make a case for more NPI, but I'm sure they're manage.
That sounds good, but what exactly do you mean by 'a 95% efficiency Vs 2 doses'?
In a study with people on average 11 months post their 2nd dose, the 3rd dose have 95% coverage vs a control group who never had a 3rd dose. So you're at overall protection deep in to 99%.
There's an awful lot of nostalgia for Thatcher on here, but some of us around at the time don't have quite the same rose-tinted view. Yes, she was adored by many - I don't deny that for a minute. But she was also hated by a very large minority, whether it be miners, urban youth, the 3M unemployed, or young lefties as I was at the time. I'd put her down as the most divisive of all post-war PMs.
So although she may have had the skills to manage the Covid crisis, I do wonder whether she would have been able to build the necessary consensus to get us through. It's possible that too many people would simply not have trusted or believed her. On those grounds, I'd probably go for Blair (pre-Iraq). He didn't attract such antipathy among his opponents, was a brilliant communicator, and had a good grip on the machinery of government by around 2001.
The Falklands suggests that given a national crisis with a nearly universal consensus on the "the task at hand", Thatcher would get the nation behind her.
There's an awful lot of nostalgia for Thatcher on here, but some of us around at the time don't have quite the same rose-tinted view. Yes, she was adored by many - I don't deny that for a minute. But she was also hated by a very large minority, whether it be miners, urban youth, the 3M unemployed, or young lefties as I was at the time. I'd put her down as the most divisive of all post-war PMs.
So although she may have had the skills to manage the Covid crisis, I do wonder whether she would have been able to build the necessary consensus to get us through. It's possible that too many people would simply not have trusted or believed her. On those grounds, I'd probably go for Blair (pre-Iraq). He didn't attract such antipathy among his opponents, was a brilliant communicator, and had a good grip on the machinery of government by around 2001.
When I first posted this poll yesterday and also supported Thatcher I made the point that it was for COVID - only - and the rest of her ideas were 40 years out of date.
I've seen mainly similarly qualified responses to the question on this thread.
Thatcher is the obvious choice, but it is important to remember that she governed in a different era. There was no internet, social media, camera phones etc; just a relatively deferential mainstream media who the government could bargain with to control the flow of information. This meant that Thatchers public persona could be stage managed to a degree that is no longer possible. It is a similar story for Tony Blair. These are all characters in a world that no longer exists.
You exaggerate. Johnson’s persona is every bit as stage managed as ever. Social media is all secondary: what Johnson does and what he permits people to know is still up to him.
Absolutely - it is just that it stage managed for the post truth era. He succeeds where Theresa May failed.
She failed because she is a failure. Post-truth doesn't mean all that much. We all still know what the word means, and have an instinctive respect for it.
She failed because she tried to project a thatcher like 'strong and stable' image. But this was from another era. Such strong and stable leaders only now exist outside of the western democracies; ie Putin and Xi.
Johnson has developed a political style which enables him to avoid taking anything seriously, including pandemics. This is because our problems are basically too difficult to sort out, but we press on anyway. It is perfect for our time.
There's an awful lot of nostalgia for Thatcher on here, but some of us around at the time don't have quite the same rose-tinted view. Yes, she was adored by many - I don't deny that for a minute. But she was also hated by a very large minority, whether it be miners, urban youth, the 3M unemployed, or young lefties as I was at the time. I'd put her down as the most divisive of all post-war PMs.
So although she may have had the skills to manage the Covid crisis, I do wonder whether she would have been able to build the necessary consensus to get us through. It's possible that too many people would simply not have trusted or believed her. On those grounds, I'd probably go for Blair (pre-Iraq). He didn't attract such antipathy among his opponents, was a brilliant communicator, and had a good grip on the machinery of government by around 2001.
The Falklands suggests that given a national crisis with a nearly universal consensus on the "the task at hand", Thatcher would get the nation behind her.
I also have a theory that, were Covid to have hit us in the pre mass internet era; it could have been covered up or downplayed as a particularly bad flu season. It was only because of mass communication that the reality of the virus, and inability of governments to deal with it, became clear.
I'm not sure - but it's safe to say that things would have had to be very different because working from home just wouldn't have been possible.
It would have been somewhere between Hong Kong flu and Spanish flu. It would have been bad, but not unprecedentedly so.
The NHS would have clogged up with elderly victims.
Since lockdowns would have shut the economy down, they probably wouldn't have happened - at least as universally as they did.
A lot of economic activity would have stopped by itself.
It would have been a mess.
Why didn't the hospitals keel over for Hong Kong flu? Or indeed for Spanish flu? Were there just fewer elderly people around?
There's an awful lot of nostalgia for Thatcher on here, but some of us around at the time don't have quite the same rose-tinted view. Yes, she was adored by many - I don't deny that for a minute. But she was also hated by a very large minority, whether it be miners, urban youth, the 3M unemployed, or young lefties as I was at the time. I'd put her down as the most divisive of all post-war PMs.
So although she may have had the skills to manage the Covid crisis, I do wonder whether she would have been able to build the necessary consensus to get us through. It's possible that too many people would simply not have trusted or believed her. On those grounds, I'd probably go for Blair (pre-Iraq). He didn't attract such antipathy among his opponents, was a brilliant communicator, and had a good grip on the machinery of government by around 2001.
The Falklands suggests that given a national crisis with a nearly universal consensus on the "the task at hand", Thatcher would get the nation behind her.
Well, that's a good example of what I mean. There wasn't actually a 'nearly universal consensus' on the Falklands war, although the media told us that there was, and alternative voices were largely drowned out and had no social media to be heard on.
Latest study on boosters very encouraging, and even at just 250k per day everyone over 50 gets boostered by Christmas, which is barely an acceleration on the current much maligned levels which are clearly now being ramped up. With a 95% efficacy vs 2 doses, it's hard to see how the usual suspects will try to make a case for more NPI, but I'm sure they're manage.
That sounds good, but what exactly do you mean by 'a 95% efficiency Vs 2 doses'?
In a study with people on average 11 months post their 2nd dose, the 3rd dose have 95% coverage vs a control group who never had a 3rd dose. So you're at overall protection deep in to 99%.
I went for Gordon Brown, but thought seriously about May and Major. Brown and May for their attention to detail and concentration on the task in hand. I thought Major the one most in tune and at ease with all parts of Britain and able to balance conflicting interests. I went with Brown because I thought he would open the money bags better.
Thatcher would have been reluctant to spend and would have allowed, even encouraged businesses to go bankrupt while their customers disappeared. I don't think she would have locked down, just let market forces work. This required central state action which would have been anathema to her.
Johnson would have been the bottom of my list because of his failure to understand science and incompetent buffoonery.
Brown might have been good - I think he'd either have been great or dithered too long. Post-GFC actions suggest he'd have done well, I think. He'd have been a good person to have in government.
Major is a tricky one. He might have been quite good, alone, but with his government he would have been a disaster. He didn't have the ability/the Tory party of his time didn't have the ability to be coherent on this, I think. It was dysfunctional.
Thatcher - I tend to agree with most others. Good on the health response. Like you, not sure about the big-state action, which I think has been a good thing overall.
Blair, I really can't decide. He'd have taken the country with him in whatever direction, but I can't work out how good that direction would have been.
May, I don't see it. Also - like Major - for the inability to carry her party/parliament with her.
Though the ability to carry Parliament is largely a reflection of the government majority at the time.
Imagine if Covid had struck before Johnson could fit in the 2019 election.
Actually, don't because it will give you nightmares if you're anything like me.
Latest study on boosters very encouraging, and even at just 250k per day everyone over 50 gets boostered by Christmas, which is barely an acceleration on the current much maligned levels which are clearly now being ramped up. With a 95% efficacy vs 2 doses, it's hard to see how the usual suspects will try to make a case for more NPI, but I'm sure they're manage.
That sounds good, but what exactly do you mean by 'a 95% efficiency Vs 2 doses'?
In a study with people on average 11 months post their 2nd dose, the 3rd dose have 95% coverage vs a control group who never had a 3rd dose. So you're at overall protection deep in to 99%.
I accept under 18 is a minefield but why not just open up 3rd doses to everyone over the age of 18 6 months from their initial dose ?
The takeup in under 50s probably won't be enormous anyway but it could meaningfully affect cases getting parents of schoolkids with mega neutralising efficacy.
If interviewing for the role I'd ask each candidate if they had successfully navigated a crisis of this magnitude and complexity when in charge before. Just the one would be able to look me straight in the eye and answer yes. A heavyset Scottish bloke with a dodgy eye. So I'd probably play it safe and go for him, despite the hint of overintensity that makes me wonder if he'll get through it without a crackup.
Would that be the bloke who without a hint of self-awareness of the absurdity of his hubris, claimed that he has "saved the world"?
NEW: Monthly Reinfections update from @UKHSA surveillance report
• 57,195 re-infections (to 3 Oct) • 300-350/day holding steady • no increase in re-infections in recent weeks • does not explain recent increase in cases
By specimen date, Tuesday will be a week on week drop in cases for England and it's likely the rest of the week will be too. Oddly the R value in England may already be below 1 despite all of the current panic.
I know we should treat worldometers data with a massive pinch of salt - but a few things of note: - After two months of steady decline, worldwide infections and deaths are ticking up again. - I think this is driven by Europe - which is the most significant location in terms of recorded infections and deaths, due to size of population, age structure, and ability to test. There are upticks across Europe. - Some places looking particularly black - Romania, for example, which is recording what would be for a UK population 1000-1500 deaths a day. How is this possible in a country which has had even a perfunctory roll-out of vaccines? - Increases in Poland look striking - same point really: how is this happening when vaccines have been rolled out? - Russia also continuing to tick up, though I trust Russian data almost not at all - could be a genuine increase, could simply be more accurate recording. - The third world still seems relatively little-scathed. Why is this? Demographics, or different habits of the population, or simply less ability to accurately record?
I don't think Africa's lesser prominence from this is simply lack of recording. I've not seen a great amount of anecdote of health system collapse like there was for India, just the odd bit. We know SA and some of the southern tip have had substantial waves and Tanzania had some seriously bad handling and problems that were hidden to say the least.
But the way the weather and lack of mod cons affects human behaviour, plus being further away from intensive seed infection seems to have helped. I'm sure it's been noted before that Africa doesn't seem overly vulnerable to flu either.
To me the dog that really didn't bark was DRC, especially when compared to Amazon Brazil. Has knowledge around infectious diseases, a less advanced lifestyle (e.g. less air con) and further distance from international travel helped them?
And again, comparing France's case rates to Mayotte's, where France should be doing the measuring pretty well, seemed to suggest Mayotte was a place that had far less infection a few months ago.
A lot of African life is outdoors, so naturally better ventilated.
I think there has been massive under recording too. My Nigerian colleagues have nearly all lost family members, albeit mostly cousins.
The case of Tanzania is darkly ironic. Their president announced that covid was over in Tanzania sometime in the middle of last year, insisted their were no covid deaths since then, and stopped testing.
Later that year, he died from a respiratory disease that caused Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome with the presentation of broken-glass lungs. (ie. something exactly the same as covid)
I also have a theory that, were Covid to have hit us in the pre mass internet era; it could have been covered up or downplayed as a particularly bad flu season. It was only because of mass communication that the reality of the virus, and inability of governments to deal with it, became clear.
I'm not sure - but it's safe to say that things would have had to be very different because working from home just wouldn't have been possible.
It would have been somewhere between Hong Kong flu and Spanish flu. It would have been bad, but not unprecedentedly so.
The NHS would have clogged up with elderly victims.
Since lockdowns would have shut the economy down, they probably wouldn't have happened - at least as universally as they did.
A lot of economic activity would have stopped by itself.
It would have been a mess.
Why didn't the hospitals keel over for Hong Kong flu? Or indeed for Spanish flu? Were there just fewer elderly people around?
Much shorter periods before death or recovery, I believe, also. If you were in hospital at all.
I also have a theory that, were Covid to have hit us in the pre mass internet era; it could have been covered up or downplayed as a particularly bad flu season. It was only because of mass communication that the reality of the virus, and inability of governments to deal with it, became clear.
I'm not sure - but it's safe to say that things would have had to be very different because working from home just wouldn't have been possible.
It would have been somewhere between Hong Kong flu and Spanish flu. It would have been bad, but not unprecedentedly so.
The NHS would have clogged up with elderly victims.
Since lockdowns would have shut the economy down, they probably wouldn't have happened - at least as universally as they did.
A lot of economic activity would have stopped by itself.
It would have been a mess.
Why didn't the hospitals keel over for Hong Kong flu? Or indeed for Spanish flu? Were there just fewer elderly people around?
Because we knew how best to treat flu? Moreover, we knew how it was transmitted, and therefore how to avoid it. We also knew that most folk made a complete recovery. We knew none of that with Covid.
Latest study on boosters very encouraging, and even at just 250k per day everyone over 50 gets boostered by Christmas, which is barely an acceleration on the current much maligned levels which are clearly now being ramped up. With a 95% efficacy vs 2 doses, it's hard to see how the usual suspects will try to make a case for more NPI, but I'm sure they're manage.
That sounds good, but what exactly do you mean by 'a 95% efficiency Vs 2 doses'?
In a study with people on average 11 months post their 2nd dose, the 3rd dose have 95% coverage vs a control group who never had a 3rd dose. So you're at overall protection deep in to 99%.
I accept under 18 is a minefield but why not just open up 3rd doses to everyone over the age of 18 6 months from their initial dose ?
The takeup in under 50s probably won't be enormous anyway but it could meaningfully affect cases getting parents of schoolkids with mega neutralising efficacy.
Yup there's a huge difference between 25m people having 95% immunity from infection and 40m people having it. The latter gets us to herd immunity. The limitation is odd given how big our vaccine surplus is, there's still something like 8m Moderna doses kicking about. They could be used for an under 50s booster programme if they're worried about incoming Pfizer supply.
By specimen date, Tuesday will be a week on week drop in cases for England and it's likely the rest of the week will be too. Oddly the R value in England may already be below 1 despite all of the current panic.
Given MRC estimates kids were at c. 75% of kids have already been infected by last Friday, and the ONS has 5-10% getting infected each week right now, it's pretty difficult to construct a plausible scenario where cases don't fall pretty soon even before using the words half-term.
There's an awful lot of nostalgia for Thatcher on here, but some of us around at the time don't have quite the same rose-tinted view. Yes, she was adored by many - I don't deny that for a minute. But she was also hated by a very large minority, whether it be miners, urban youth, the 3M unemployed, or young lefties as I was at the time. I'd put her down as the most divisive of all post-war PMs.
So although she may have had the skills to manage the Covid crisis, I do wonder whether she would have been able to build the necessary consensus to get us through. It's possible that too many people would simply not have trusted or believed her. On those grounds, I'd probably go for Blair (pre-Iraq). He didn't attract such antipathy among his opponents, was a brilliant communicator, and had a good grip on the machinery of government by around 2001.
The Falklands suggests that given a national crisis with a nearly universal consensus on the "the task at hand", Thatcher would get the nation behind her.
Well, that's a good example of what I mean. There wasn't actually a 'nearly universal consensus' on the Falklands war, although the media told us that there was, and alternative voices were largely drowned out and had no social media to be heard on.
Evidence? IIRC Michael Foot supported military action.
If interviewing for the role I'd ask each candidate if they had successfully navigated a crisis of this magnitude and complexity when in charge before. Just the one would be able to look me straight in the eye and answer yes. A heavyset Scottish bloke with a dodgy eye. So I'd probably play it safe and go for him, despite the hint of overintensity that makes me wonder if he'll get through it without a crackup.
Would that be the bloke who without a hint of self-awareness of the absurdity of his hubris, claimed that he has "saved the world"?
In fairness to Brown, he did not say that out of hubris. It was a slip of the tongue, as shown by him immediately correcting himself. He meant to say "We not only saved the world's banks [..]". Which is a very different (and much more defensible) claim.
There's an awful lot of nostalgia for Thatcher on here, but some of us around at the time don't have quite the same rose-tinted view. Yes, she was adored by many - I don't deny that for a minute. But she was also hated by a very large minority, whether it be miners, urban youth, the 3M unemployed, or young lefties as I was at the time. I'd put her down as the most divisive of all post-war PMs.
So although she may have had the skills to manage the Covid crisis, I do wonder whether she would have been able to build the necessary consensus to get us through. It's possible that too many people would simply not have trusted or believed her. On those grounds, I'd probably go for Blair (pre-Iraq). He didn't attract such antipathy among his opponents, was a brilliant communicator, and had a good grip on the machinery of government by around 2001.
The Falklands suggests that given a national crisis with a nearly universal consensus on the "the task at hand", Thatcher would get the nation behind her.
Well, that's a good example of what I mean. There wasn't actually a 'nearly universal consensus' on the Falklands war, although the media told us that there was, and alternative voices were largely drowned out and had no social media to be heard on.
Mm, good point. But there was a fair network of protest in those days. The sort of thing that led to Greenham Common peace camps. Universities were much more hotbeds of protest in the late 60s and 1970s than the wimps of today.
Newspapers would have been utterly critical. If Messrs Maxwell et al had been against a policy ...
This would be a perfect time for someone to show a picture of a Class 52 'Western' loco, but they were such GWR-inspired cr@p they never lasted long enough to receive their TOPS numbers.
Latest study on boosters very encouraging, and even at just 250k per day everyone over 50 gets boostered by Christmas, which is barely an acceleration on the current much maligned levels which are clearly now being ramped up. With a 95% efficacy vs 2 doses, it's hard to see how the usual suspects will try to make a case for more NPI, but I'm sure they're manage.
That sounds good, but what exactly do you mean by 'a 95% efficiency Vs 2 doses'?
In a study with people on average 11 months post their 2nd dose, the 3rd dose have 95% coverage vs a control group who never had a 3rd dose. So you're at overall protection deep in to 99%.
I accept under 18 is a minefield but why not just open up 3rd doses to everyone over the age of 18 6 months from their initial dose ?
The takeup in under 50s probably won't be enormous anyway but it could meaningfully affect cases getting parents of schoolkids with mega neutralising efficacy.
Yup there's a huge difference between 25m people having 95% immunity from infection and 40m people having it. The latter gets us to herd immunity. The limitation is odd given how big our vaccine surplus is, there's still something like 8m Moderna doses kicking about. They could be used for an under 50s booster programme if they're worried about incoming Pfizer supply.
It's not 95% immunity to be clear. It's 95% better immunity than 2 doses. Unclear how long the test covers and whether it will suffer waning, but for whatever time period it does cover they're suggesting it's more or less perfect protection.
If interviewing for the role I'd ask each candidate if they had successfully navigated a crisis of this magnitude and complexity when in charge before. Just the one would be able to look me straight in the eye and answer yes. A heavyset Scottish bloke with a dodgy eye. So I'd probably play it safe and go for him, despite the hint of overintensity that makes me wonder if he'll get through it without a crackup.
Would that be the bloke who without a hint of self-awareness of the absurdity of his hubris, claimed that he has "saved the world"?
I think it was the bloke who 'abolished boom and bust' (and who later went on to say that actually, he'd only claimed to have abolished 'Tory boom and bust').
Seven persistent myths about Covid and lockdowns in the UK / England.
I thought I would put one thread together on what I think are 7 myths that continue to be propagated - mainly by those who, although well-intentioned, always assume that more restrictions are the answer.
Claim in tweet: the UK does a lot more testing, but has only average positive %, so not evidence of more cases.
But if our number of cases was only average, then, if we assume our testing is more targeted than random, having a lot more testing should give us below average positivity %. If we're doing more testing than others and have average positivity % then we probably do indeed have more cases. On a perfectly targeted sample (all infected are tested): Country A has 10% infected, tests 20%. Positivity 50% Country B has 10% infected, tests 40%. Positivity 25% On a random sample: Country A has 10% infected, tests 20%. Positivity 10% Country B has 10% infected, tests 40%. Positivity 10% The reality is somewhere between perfect targetting and random (some people taking routine tests; but some - many? - testing in response to symptoms or known infected contacts). If we were no more infected than other countries and are doing much more testing then we should have lower positivity. We don't, so we probably have more cases.
A better response might be wait a few weeks and see what happens then. Comparing countries at any point in time is only useful for what is happening at that moment.
Latest study on boosters very encouraging, and even at just 250k per day everyone over 50 gets boostered by Christmas, which is barely an acceleration on the current much maligned levels which are clearly now being ramped up. With a 95% efficacy vs 2 doses, it's hard to see how the usual suspects will try to make a case for more NPI, but I'm sure they're manage.
That sounds good, but what exactly do you mean by 'a 95% efficiency Vs 2 doses'?
In a study with people on average 11 months post their 2nd dose, the 3rd dose have 95% coverage vs a control group who never had a 3rd dose. So you're at overall protection deep in to 99%.
more evedance, if it was needed, that we should simply go for boosters for all!!
There's an awful lot of nostalgia for Thatcher on here, but some of us around at the time don't have quite the same rose-tinted view. Yes, she was adored by many - I don't deny that for a minute. But she was also hated by a very large minority, whether it be miners, urban youth, the 3M unemployed, or young lefties as I was at the time. I'd put her down as the most divisive of all post-war PMs.
So although she may have had the skills to manage the Covid crisis, I do wonder whether she would have been able to build the necessary consensus to get us through. It's possible that too many people would simply not have trusted or believed her. On those grounds, I'd probably go for Blair (pre-Iraq). He didn't attract such antipathy among his opponents, was a brilliant communicator, and had a good grip on the machinery of government by around 2001.
The Falklands suggests that given a national crisis with a nearly universal consensus on the "the task at hand", Thatcher would get the nation behind her.
Well, that's a good example of what I mean. There wasn't actually a 'nearly universal consensus' on the Falklands war, although the media told us that there was, and alternative voices were largely drowned out and had no social media to be heard on.
Evidence? IIRC Michael Foot supported military action.
Unsurprisingly, it was basically Tony Benn and what became the 'Corbynite' left who opposed the war. You can probably guess what the Absolute Boy thought about it.
Latest study on boosters very encouraging, and even at just 250k per day everyone over 50 gets boostered by Christmas, which is barely an acceleration on the current much maligned levels which are clearly now being ramped up. With a 95% efficacy vs 2 doses, it's hard to see how the usual suspects will try to make a case for more NPI, but I'm sure they're manage.
That sounds good, but what exactly do you mean by 'a 95% efficiency Vs 2 doses'?
In a study with people on average 11 months post their 2nd dose, the 3rd dose have 95% coverage vs a control group who never had a 3rd dose. So you're at overall protection deep in to 99%.
I accept under 18 is a minefield but why not just open up 3rd doses to everyone over the age of 18 6 months from their initial dose ?
The takeup in under 50s probably won't be enormous anyway but it could meaningfully affect cases getting parents of schoolkids with mega neutralising efficacy.
Yup there's a huge difference between 25m people having 95% immunity from infection and 40m people having it. The latter gets us to herd immunity. The limitation is odd given how big our vaccine surplus is, there's still something like 8m Moderna doses kicking about. They could be used for an under 50s booster programme if they're worried about incoming Pfizer supply.
I don't think it should be part of any internal vaxport (Though it'll help if you're off to say Austria in the new year), but the option should be there
If interviewing for the role I'd ask each candidate if they had successfully navigated a crisis of this magnitude and complexity when in charge before. Just the one would be able to look me straight in the eye and answer yes. A heavyset Scottish bloke with a dodgy eye. So I'd probably play it safe and go for him, despite the hint of overintensity that makes me wonder if he'll get through it without a crackup.
Would that be the bloke who without a hint of self-awareness of the absurdity of his hubris, claimed that he has "saved the world"?
In fairness to Brown, he did not say that out of hubris. It was a slip of the tongue, as shown by him immediately correcting himself. He meant to say "We not only saved the world's banks [..]". Which is a very different (and much more defensible) claim.
This would be a perfect time for someone to show a picture of a Class 52 'Western' loco, but they were such GWR-inspired cr@p they never lasted long enough to receive their TOPS numbers.
PB is being Proustian again. Sudden memories of visiting friends in the area and seeing one parked outside Swindon Works in the late 1970s (?), all done up nicely in green.
I also have a theory that, were Covid to have hit us in the pre mass internet era; it could have been covered up or downplayed as a particularly bad flu season. It was only because of mass communication that the reality of the virus, and inability of governments to deal with it, became clear.
I'm not sure - but it's safe to say that things would have had to be very different because working from home just wouldn't have been possible.
I think it would have just been massive excess deaths. No ICU for those over 70 years old. Bodies piled up in hospitals. Something like what has happened in places like Brazil and India.
Latest study on boosters very encouraging, and even at just 250k per day everyone over 50 gets boostered by Christmas, which is barely an acceleration on the current much maligned levels which are clearly now being ramped up. With a 95% efficacy vs 2 doses, it's hard to see how the usual suspects will try to make a case for more NPI, but I'm sure they're manage.
That sounds good, but what exactly do you mean by 'a 95% efficiency Vs 2 doses'?
In a study with people on average 11 months post their 2nd dose, the 3rd dose have 95% coverage vs a control group who never had a 3rd dose. So you're at overall protection deep in to 99%.
I accept under 18 is a minefield but why not just open up 3rd doses to everyone over the age of 18 6 months from their initial dose ?
The takeup in under 50s probably won't be enormous anyway but it could meaningfully affect cases getting parents of schoolkids with mega neutralising efficacy.
Yup there's a huge difference between 25m people having 95% immunity from infection and 40m people having it. The latter gets us to herd immunity. The limitation is odd given how big our vaccine surplus is, there's still something like 8m Moderna doses kicking about. They could be used for an under 50s booster programme if they're worried about incoming Pfizer supply.
I don't think it should be part of any internal vaxport (Though it'll help if you're off to say Austria in the new year), but the option should be there
Yup, that's what I'm not happy about the state is a monopoly supplier of COVID vaccines and is also restricting supply of them to people that want them and are approved to receive them. That made sense when we had a supply shortage and needed a distribution plan that made best use of limited supply. Now that we don't have a shortage they should be made available to everyone who has been approved, even if it means going private same as the flu jab.
For all the feedback loops that can be at play for CO2 it is the molecule's most basic physical properties that make it a greenhouse gas. At a basic, classical level, molecules that have 3 atoms and that can bend and flex absorb the infra red coming from the ground to do that.
If you replaced the air in your 1cm thick duvet with pure CO2, the tog* rating of that gas layer alone would rise from 3.7 to 5.9. (engineers have some hoary SI measurement for the inverse of togs, the mW/mK, but I don't think the conversion is something a sane person has ever done - even after today ).
I also calculated the tog rating increase for the entire atmospheric thickness, but I've not got a record of that. It was much less stark, because the increase in CO2 content is only 1 part per 6000. But, in any case, simple models with the most basic insulation equations, stripping out almost all complexity, would predict rises in the broad ballpark of what the very complex models predict.
Anyway, where I was with Mr Tyndall very very early on in my PB career is that, a climate sceptic to my mind has to show what there is in the complexity of the earth that would offset that base physical heat retention of CO2, and show across the full range of CO2 concentration we might see. My take is simply that a lot of burden of proof falls on the sceptic side here.
* trivia - the tog rating system was developed in Manchester when assessing clothing and it is indeed named after the slang for clothes.
There's an awful lot of nostalgia for Thatcher on here, but some of us around at the time don't have quite the same rose-tinted view. Yes, she was adored by many - I don't deny that for a minute. But she was also hated by a very large minority, whether it be miners, urban youth, the 3M unemployed, or young lefties as I was at the time. I'd put her down as the most divisive of all post-war PMs.
So although she may have had the skills to manage the Covid crisis, I do wonder whether she would have been able to build the necessary consensus to get us through. It's possible that too many people would simply not have trusted or believed her. On those grounds, I'd probably go for Blair (pre-Iraq). He didn't attract such antipathy among his opponents, was a brilliant communicator, and had a good grip on the machinery of government by around 2001.
The Falklands suggests that given a national crisis with a nearly universal consensus on the "the task at hand", Thatcher would get the nation behind her.
Well, that's a good example of what I mean. There wasn't actually a 'nearly universal consensus' on the Falklands war, although the media told us that there was, and alternative voices were largely drowned out and had no social media to be heard on.
Evidence? IIRC Michael Foot supported military action.
Unsurprisingly, it was basically Tony Benn and what became the 'Corbynite' left who opposed the war. You can probably guess what the Absolute Boy thought about it.
Indeed, though the poster who said there was a "consensus" was correct, as all the major parties supported military action to some degree, again IIRC. The awkward squad did not, but that does not mean there was not a broad political consensus, as a "consensus" does not require unanimity.
There's an awful lot of nostalgia for Thatcher on here, but some of us around at the time don't have quite the same rose-tinted view. Yes, she was adored by many - I don't deny that for a minute. But she was also hated by a very large minority, whether it be miners, urban youth, the 3M unemployed, or young lefties as I was at the time. I'd put her down as the most divisive of all post-war PMs.
So although she may have had the skills to manage the Covid crisis, I do wonder whether she would have been able to build the necessary consensus to get us through. It's possible that too many people would simply not have trusted or believed her. On those grounds, I'd probably go for Blair (pre-Iraq). He didn't attract such antipathy among his opponents, was a brilliant communicator, and had a good grip on the machinery of government by around 2001.
The Falklands suggests that given a national crisis with a nearly universal consensus on the "the task at hand", Thatcher would get the nation behind her.
Well, that's a good example of what I mean. There wasn't actually a 'nearly universal consensus' on the Falklands war, although the media told us that there was, and alternative voices were largely drowned out and had no social media to be heard on.
My guess (and guess is the operative word here - I don't know if any evidence exists) is that there was about an 80% consensus on the Falklands. Which is not 'near universal' but as close to universal as you normally get. I mean, a horrible and hostile regime had invaded and annexed British territory. It would be surprising if there was not a consensus in favour of its recovery, even if it was not a bit of territory people had given much thought to previously. It can't have been much fun to be part of the 20%. But it is never fun to have most people disagree with you. If twitter had been about in those days, no doubt the opposition to the Falklands War could have portrayed itself as much more numerous, and potentially caused some problems. But they would also have hardened the opinions of the 80%.
If interviewing for the role I'd ask each candidate if they had successfully navigated a crisis of this magnitude and complexity when in charge before. Just the one would be able to look me straight in the eye and answer yes. A heavyset Scottish bloke with a dodgy eye. So I'd probably play it safe and go for him, despite the hint of overintensity that makes me wonder if he'll get through it without a crackup.
Would that be the bloke who without a hint of self-awareness of the absurdity of his hubris, claimed that he has "saved the world"?
I think it was the bloke who 'abolished boom and bust' (and who later went on to say that actually, he'd only claimed to have abolished 'Tory boom and bust').
There's an awful lot of nostalgia for Thatcher on here, but some of us around at the time don't have quite the same rose-tinted view. Yes, she was adored by many - I don't deny that for a minute. But she was also hated by a very large minority, whether it be miners, urban youth, the 3M unemployed, or young lefties as I was at the time. I'd put her down as the most divisive of all post-war PMs.
So although she may have had the skills to manage the Covid crisis, I do wonder whether she would have been able to build the necessary consensus to get us through. It's possible that too many people would simply not have trusted or believed her. On those grounds, I'd probably go for Blair (pre-Iraq). He didn't attract such antipathy among his opponents, was a brilliant communicator, and had a good grip on the machinery of government by around 2001.
The Falklands suggests that given a national crisis with a nearly universal consensus on the "the task at hand", Thatcher would get the nation behind her.
Well, that's a good example of what I mean. There wasn't actually a 'nearly universal consensus' on the Falklands war, although the media told us that there was, and alternative voices were largely drowned out and had no social media to be heard on.
Evidence? IIRC Michael Foot supported military action.
As Matthew Parrish observed at the time Foot came "roaring out of the closet draped in the Union Jack".
Compare & contrast his response to that of Corbyn and Salisbury.
For all the feedback loops that can be at play for CO2 it is the molecule's most basic physical properties that make it a greenhouse gas. At a basic, classical level, molecules that have 3 atoms and that can bend and flex absorb the infra red coming from the ground to do that.
If you replaced the air in your 1cm thick duvet with pure CO2, the tog* rating of that gas layer alone would rise from 3.7 to 5.9. (engineers have some hoary SI measurement for the inverse of togs, the mW/mK, but I don't think the conversion is something a sane person has ever done - even after today ).
I also calculated the tog rating increase for the entire atmospheric thickness, but I've not got a record of that. It was much less stark, because the increase in CO2 content is only 1 part per 6000. But, in any case, simple models with the most basic insulation equations, stripping out almost all complexity, would predict rises in the broad ballpark of what the very complex models predict.
Anyway, where I was with Mr Tyndall very very early on in my PB career is that, a climate sceptic to my mind has to show what there is in the complexity of the earth that would offset that base physical heat retention of CO2, and show across the full range of CO2 concentration we might see. My take is simply that a lot of burden of proof falls on the sceptic side here.
* trivia - the tog rating system was developed in Manchester when assessing clothing and it is indeed named after the slang for clothes.
How interesting. But what also strikes me, why bother with the mW/mK ratio when you could strip out the millis and have plain W/K?
I also have a theory that, were Covid to have hit us in the pre mass internet era; it could have been covered up or downplayed as a particularly bad flu season. It was only because of mass communication that the reality of the virus, and inability of governments to deal with it, became clear.
I'm not sure - but it's safe to say that things would have had to be very different because working from home just wouldn't have been possible.
It would have been somewhere between Hong Kong flu and Spanish flu. It would have been bad, but not unprecedentedly so.
The NHS would have clogged up with elderly victims.
Since lockdowns would have shut the economy down, they probably wouldn't have happened - at least as universally as they did.
A lot of economic activity would have stopped by itself.
It would have been a mess.
Why didn't the hospitals keel over for Hong Kong flu? Or indeed for Spanish flu? Were there just fewer elderly people around?
Much quicker resolution of the disease - either recovery or death. And health systems were far less sophisticated, so a flu ward was effectively a Nightingale hospital absent any technology.
I know we should treat worldometers data with a massive pinch of salt - but a few things of note: - After two months of steady decline, worldwide infections and deaths are ticking up again. - I think this is driven by Europe - which is the most significant location in terms of recorded infections and deaths, due to size of population, age structure, and ability to test. There are upticks across Europe. - Some places looking particularly black - Romania, for example, which is recording what would be for a UK population 1000-1500 deaths a day. How is this possible in a country which has had even a perfunctory roll-out of vaccines? - Increases in Poland look striking - same point really: how is this happening when vaccines have been rolled out? - Russia also continuing to tick up, though I trust Russian data almost not at all - could be a genuine increase, could simply be more accurate recording. - The third world still seems relatively little-scathed. Why is this? Demographics, or different habits of the population, or simply less ability to accurately record?
For Africa and the ME, I am sure that demographics play a major part in this. Many populations have 50%+ under 18s. As someone in one of the big refugee camps in Kenya asked me, why should we do all these non-medical measures when we don't have old people here and no-one is worried about getting COVID?
Also, probably a far higher percentage of those with 5+ major complicating medical conditions have not survived into older age there vs N America and Europe.
There's an awful lot of nostalgia for Thatcher on here, but some of us around at the time don't have quite the same rose-tinted view. Yes, she was adored by many - I don't deny that for a minute. But she was also hated by a very large minority, whether it be miners, urban youth, the 3M unemployed, or young lefties as I was at the time. I'd put her down as the most divisive of all post-war PMs.
So although she may have had the skills to manage the Covid crisis, I do wonder whether she would have been able to build the necessary consensus to get us through. It's possible that too many people would simply not have trusted or believed her. On those grounds, I'd probably go for Blair (pre-Iraq). He didn't attract such antipathy among his opponents, was a brilliant communicator, and had a good grip on the machinery of government by around 2001.
The Falklands suggests that given a national crisis with a nearly universal consensus on the "the task at hand", Thatcher would get the nation behind her.
Well, that's a good example of what I mean. There wasn't actually a 'nearly universal consensus' on the Falklands war, although the media told us that there was, and alternative voices were largely drowned out and had no social media to be heard on.
Evidence? IIRC Michael Foot supported military action.
Unsurprisingly, it was basically Tony Benn and what became the 'Corbynite' left who opposed the war. You can probably guess what the Absolute Boy thought about it.
The unions, who weren't exactly hard-core Thatcher supporters chucked the rule books in the dock and worked 24/7 to get ships to sea.
There was opposition to the war - there always is, to any war. But even on the Labour hard-left, it was only a subset.
The vast majority of the country was supportive of what Thatcher did.
She read every briefing paper, challenged and quizzed the scientists to understand things better, and crucially, she allowed her cabinet to overrule her as she and they understood how serious this was.
As Sir Norman Fowler put it, she wasn't going to let hundreds of thousands of young men die from this, and she sold the message even if she wanted it to be a moral campaign.
Just compare how badly France and America dealt with AIDS.
Yep with you on this. And that raises another criticism of Johnson and his Government over this.
Remember Fowler and his 'Don't Die of Ignorance' adverts.
They were fecking terrifying.
And they worked. Brilliantly.
All we got from this mob was soft soap 'protect the NHS' and info-mation soundbites. They should have got in the top advertising agency and said "scare the shit out of us". There should have been constant advertising on all media about how we could help fight this thing. I am sure there were adverts btu they really were completely forgettable.
There's an awful lot of nostalgia for Thatcher on here, but some of us around at the time don't have quite the same rose-tinted view. Yes, she was adored by many - I don't deny that for a minute. But she was also hated by a very large minority, whether it be miners, urban youth, the 3M unemployed, or young lefties as I was at the time. I'd put her down as the most divisive of all post-war PMs.
So although she may have had the skills to manage the Covid crisis, I do wonder whether she would have been able to build the necessary consensus to get us through. It's possible that too many people would simply not have trusted or believed her. On those grounds, I'd probably go for Blair (pre-Iraq). He didn't attract such antipathy among his opponents, was a brilliant communicator, and had a good grip on the machinery of government by around 2001.
The Falklands suggests that given a national crisis with a nearly universal consensus on the "the task at hand", Thatcher would get the nation behind her.
Well, that's a good example of what I mean. There wasn't actually a 'nearly universal consensus' on the Falklands war, although the media told us that there was, and alternative voices were largely drowned out and had no social media to be heard on.
By specimen date, Tuesday will be a week on week drop in cases for England and it's likely the rest of the week will be too. Oddly the R value in England may already be below 1 despite all of the current panic.
Yep, there are definitely signs we are near a peak. The Cambridge / MRC study implied R was 1.0 and likely falling.
Still, falling or not - if those booster stats are right then there's a big incentive to get them done as fast as possible and get this thing shut down.
On a parallel subject who will be the leader to tell us that, if the science is correct, the climate crisis is already an absolute certainty, whatever steps are taken in some countries to emit less CO2 than before, and that mitigation planning is the only option, and that net Zero emissions, or anything close to it, cannot in practice (political and economic) in any foreseeable time scale and circumstance come about.
I think the great Greta Thunberg may already be trying to work out the implications of this very obvious truth.
My sense is that this is obvious to almost everyone but almost no-one is prepared to say so. Is that how it seems generally?
It's a mistake to think of a climate crisis in on/off terms, which regrettably is how almost all the discussion is framed.
However bad it is already unavoidably going to be we will still make it worse by burning more fossil fuels. Every bit of fossil fuel we avoid burning reduces the extent to which it gets worse.
I also think that some of the transition away from fossil fuels might happen surprisingly quickly once technological tipping points are reached. Coal pretty much disappeared from the UK electricity grid surprisingly quickly. The transition to electric cars may also happen more quickly than expected.
The difficulties with air travel, shipping, land freight and production of high energy products like concrete and steel will all remain.
Mass tree planting seems the best way to manage the next decades alongside reductions in fossil fuels.
Mass tree planting really is not, for a variety of reasons.
Did you know BTW there's a lot more foliage planet wide than there was 30 years ago, anyway? Ironically because CO2 is so good for plants. Or so Matt Ridley said in the Spectator the other day.
Temperatures have varied by more than 1.5C in the past so it makes sense that the planet has evolved life that is quite good at both adaption and self-correction.
Despite knowing that the planet was warmed than it is now in the past, a lot of people have fallen for the notion that warming will become self-reinforcing as ice melts releasing trapped CO2 etc but the opposite is probably more likely. As CO2 levels rise, the planet becomes more habitable for greenery that processes that CO2.
I don't think you can easily make such assumptions. Life does indeed adapt and self-correct, but that doesn't mean there aren't short term (on geological timescales) catastrophes and extinctions. Human civilisation is the blink of an eye in those terms.
Indeed, that adaptation involves extinctions and complete revamping of ecosystems.
She read every briefing paper, challenged and quizzed the scientists to understand things better, and crucially, she allowed her cabinet to overrule her as she and they understood how serious this was.
As Sir Norman Fowler put it, she wasn't going to let hundreds of thousands of young men die from this, and she sold the message even if she wanted it to be a moral campaign.
Just compare how badly France and America dealt with AIDS.
Yep with you on this. And that raises another criticism of Johnson and his Government over this.
Remember Fowler and his 'Don't Die of Ignorance' adverts.
They were fecking terrifying.
And they worked. Brilliantly.
All we got from this mob was soft soap 'protect the NHS' and info-mation soundbites. They should have got in the top advertising agency and said "scare the shit out of us". There should have been constant advertising on all media about how we could help fight this thing. I am sure there were adverts btu they really were completely forgettable.
Thatcher all the way for me.
Agree with the general thrust, but I'm not sure I think people have been insufficiently scared of covid.
She read every briefing paper, challenged and quizzed the scientists to understand things better, and crucially, she allowed her cabinet to overrule her as she and they understood how serious this was.
As Sir Norman Fowler put it, she wasn't going to let hundreds of thousands of young men die from this, and she sold the message even if she wanted it to be a moral campaign.
Just compare how badly France and America dealt with AIDS.
Yep with you on this. And that raises another criticism of Johnson and his Government over this.
Remember Fowler and his 'Don't Die of Ignorance' adverts.
They were fecking terrifying.
And they worked. Brilliantly.
All we got from this mob was soft soap 'protect the NHS' and info-mation soundbites. They should have got in the top advertising agency and said "scare the shit out of us". There should have been constant advertising on all media about how we could help fight this thing. I am sure there were adverts btu they really were completely forgettable.
Thatcher all the way for me.
Agree with the general thrust, but I'm not sure I think people have been insufficiently scared of covid.
And the channels for effective advertising/communication are way more diffuse than they were back in Thatcher's time. Just what percentage of the population watch BBC1/ITV (or whatever its equivalent is these days) compared to back then?
She read every briefing paper, challenged and quizzed the scientists to understand things better, and crucially, she allowed her cabinet to overrule her as she and they understood how serious this was.
As Sir Norman Fowler put it, she wasn't going to let hundreds of thousands of young men die from this, and she sold the message even if she wanted it to be a moral campaign.
Just compare how badly France and America dealt with AIDS.
Yep with you on this. And that raises another criticism of Johnson and his Government over this.
Remember Fowler and his 'Don't Die of Ignorance' adverts.
They were fecking terrifying.
And they worked. Brilliantly.
All we got from this mob was soft soap 'protect the NHS' and info-mation soundbites. They should have got in the top advertising agency and said "scare the shit out of us". There should have been constant advertising on all media about how we could help fight this thing. I am sure there were adverts btu they really were completely forgettable.
Thatcher all the way for me.
Agree with the general thrust, but I'm not sure I think people have been insufficiently scared of covid.
I think they were scared at the start but then became blase. That is where the Government really should have been keeping the pressure up. People were scared of the unknown but Johnson should have made sure they remained scared of the known.
I also have a theory that, were Covid to have hit us in the pre mass internet era; it could have been covered up or downplayed as a particularly bad flu season. It was only because of mass communication that the reality of the virus, and inability of governments to deal with it, became clear.
I'm not sure - but it's safe to say that things would have had to be very different because working from home just wouldn't have been possible.
It would have been somewhere between Hong Kong flu and Spanish flu. It would have been bad, but not unprecedentedly so.
The NHS would have clogged up with elderly victims.
Since lockdowns would have shut the economy down, they probably wouldn't have happened - at least as universally as they did.
A lot of economic activity would have stopped by itself.
It would have been a mess.
Why didn't the hospitals keel over for Hong Kong flu? Or indeed for Spanish flu? Were there just fewer elderly people around?
Much quicker resolution of the disease - either recovery or death. And health systems were far less sophisticated, so a flu ward was effectively a Nightingale hospital absent any technology.
For all the feedback loops that can be at play for CO2 it is the molecule's most basic physical properties that make it a greenhouse gas. At a basic, classical level, molecules that have 3 atoms and that can bend and flex absorb the infra red coming from the ground to do that.
If you replaced the air in your 1cm thick duvet with pure CO2, the tog* rating of that gas layer alone would rise from 3.7 to 5.9. (engineers have some hoary SI measurement for the inverse of togs, the mW/mK, but I don't think the conversion is something a sane person has ever done - even after today ).
I also calculated the tog rating increase for the entire atmospheric thickness, but I've not got a record of that. It was much less stark, because the increase in CO2 content is only 1 part per 6000. But, in any case, simple models with the most basic insulation equations, stripping out almost all complexity, would predict rises in the broad ballpark of what the very complex models predict.
Anyway, where I was with Mr Tyndall very very early on in my PB career is that, a climate sceptic to my mind has to show what there is in the complexity of the earth that would offset that base physical heat retention of CO2, and show across the full range of CO2 concentration we might see. My take is simply that a lot of burden of proof falls on the sceptic side here.
* trivia - the tog rating system was developed in Manchester when assessing clothing and it is indeed named after the slang for clothes.
How interesting. But what also strikes me, why bother with the mW/mK ratio when you could strip out the millis and have plain W/K?
Yes that looks odd. I transcribed blindly from an old calculation I did, but I'm thinking one of those m's is actually a metre, as in "amount of power you have to put in to the system to sustain a unit temperature difference across a width of material."
I would also go with Mrs Thatcher. Like with Boris, she would have recognised that being a bit nationalistic - i.e. having countries competing to get vaccines - would be best for spurring overall production.
She would have combined this with being a lot more in charge of her brief. She would have grilled the scientists, and her ministers, and wouldn't have been so concerned about short term popularity. I don't think the JCVI would have gone unchallenged.
Of the others, I tend to agree that Brown and May would have been weak. Cameron would probably have been overly reliant on the scientists. And Blair would have called the US President to see what his policy should be.
I genuinely don't know about Major. He is an intelligent and thoughtful guy, but would he have struggled to challenge the scientists? I don't know.
She read every briefing paper, challenged and quizzed the scientists to understand things better, and crucially, she allowed her cabinet to overrule her as she and they understood how serious this was.
As Sir Norman Fowler put it, she wasn't going to let hundreds of thousands of young men die from this, and she sold the message even if she wanted it to be a moral campaign.
Just compare how badly France and America dealt with AIDS.
Yep with you on this. And that raises another criticism of Johnson and his Government over this.
Remember Fowler and his 'Don't Die of Ignorance' adverts.
They were fecking terrifying.
And they worked. Brilliantly.
All we got from this mob was soft soap 'protect the NHS' and info-mation soundbites. They should have got in the top advertising agency and said "scare the shit out of us". There should have been constant advertising on all media about how we could help fight this thing. I am sure there were adverts btu they really were completely forgettable.
Thatcher all the way for me.
Agree with the general thrust, but I'm not sure I think people have been insufficiently scared of covid.
German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has a blunt message for her European counterparts: Forget your lofty ideas about the Continent defending itself and get real.
Kramp-Karrenbauer is doubling down on her dismissal of the idea of European strategic autonomy, which sparked a diplomatic blow-up with French President Emmanuel Macron, and which she sees as farther off than ever.
By specimen date, Tuesday will be a week on week drop in cases for England and it's likely the rest of the week will be too. Oddly the R value in England may already be below 1 despite all of the current panic.
I'm down for Tuesday next week, being peek by repoted date.
after that we will be in the half term lul, as there are less tests done at school, and after that for cases to be falling natraly.
There's an awful lot of nostalgia for Thatcher on here, but some of us around at the time don't have quite the same rose-tinted view. Yes, she was adored by many - I don't deny that for a minute. But she was also hated by a very large minority, whether it be miners, urban youth, the 3M unemployed, or young lefties as I was at the time. I'd put her down as the most divisive of all post-war PMs.
So although she may have had the skills to manage the Covid crisis, I do wonder whether she would have been able to build the necessary consensus to get us through. It's possible that too many people would simply not have trusted or believed her. On those grounds, I'd probably go for Blair (pre-Iraq). He didn't attract such antipathy among his opponents, was a brilliant communicator, and had a good grip on the machinery of government by around 2001.
The Falklands suggests that given a national crisis with a nearly universal consensus on the "the task at hand", Thatcher would get the nation behind her.
Well, that's a good example of what I mean. There wasn't actually a 'nearly universal consensus' on the Falklands war, although the media told us that there was, and alternative voices were largely drowned out and had no social media to be heard on.
Evidence? IIRC Michael Foot supported military action.
Unsurprisingly, it was basically Tony Benn and what became the 'Corbynite' left who opposed the war. You can probably guess what the Absolute Boy thought about it.
Indeed, though the poster who said there was a "consensus" was correct, as all the major parties supported military action to some degree, again IIRC. The awkward squad did not, but that does not mean there was not a broad political consensus, as a "consensus" does not require unanimity.
I didn't say there wasn't a broad consensus. I was taking issue with the words "near universal consensus", which is what the poster you refer to said. Sometimes I wish folk bothered to read what one writes.
Latest study on boosters very encouraging, and even at just 250k per day everyone over 50 gets boostered by Christmas, which is barely an acceleration on the current much maligned levels which are clearly now being ramped up. With a 95% efficacy vs 2 doses, it's hard to see how the usual suspects will try to make a case for more NPI, but I'm sure they're manage.
That sounds good, but what exactly do you mean by 'a 95% efficiency Vs 2 doses'?
In a study with people on average 11 months post their 2nd dose, the 3rd dose have 95% coverage vs a control group who never had a 3rd dose. So you're at overall protection deep in to 99%.
I accept under 18 is a minefield but why not just open up 3rd doses to everyone over the age of 18 6 months from their initial dose ?
The takeup in under 50s probably won't be enormous anyway but it could meaningfully affect cases getting parents of schoolkids with mega neutralising efficacy.
Yup there's a huge difference between 25m people having 95% immunity from infection and 40m people having it. The latter gets us to herd immunity. The limitation is odd given how big our vaccine surplus is, there's still something like 8m Moderna doses kicking about. They could be used for an under 50s booster programme if they're worried about incoming Pfizer supply.
I understand we've got about 23m surplus doses of Pfizer and Moderna together at the moment. So let's use them.
With all the stuff about "Delta precludes herd immunity", if boosters get us to just 95% (and as maarsh says, indications are that 98-99% is closer to the mark) and those with just 2 doses or infection-immunity average 80% immunity, then boosting that 40 million and assuming the rest largely have 2 doses or have infection-immunity puts us at 89% immune overall.
Enough to pass the HIT for an R0 of 9, let alone Delta's 6-7.
I also have a theory that, were Covid to have hit us in the pre mass internet era; it could have been covered up or downplayed as a particularly bad flu season. It was only because of mass communication that the reality of the virus, and inability of governments to deal with it, became clear.
I'm not sure - but it's safe to say that things would have had to be very different because working from home just wouldn't have been possible.
It would have been somewhere between Hong Kong flu and Spanish flu. It would have been bad, but not unprecedentedly so.
The NHS would have clogged up with elderly victims.
Since lockdowns would have shut the economy down, they probably wouldn't have happened - at least as universally as they did.
A lot of economic activity would have stopped by itself.
It would have been a mess.
Why didn't the hospitals keel over for Hong Kong flu? Or indeed for Spanish flu? Were there just fewer elderly people around?
Much quicker resolution of the disease - either recovery or death. And health systems were far less sophisticated, so a flu ward was effectively a Nightingale hospital absent any technology.
There is some speculation that Spanish flu evolved to be a young man killer in US troopships, US troop trains and US military barracks in WWI
I was under the impression that it was so deadly because of the cytokine storm response that immune systems had to it. That the stronger immune system you had actually worked against you when it overeacted to infection, young people tend to have stronger more robust immune systems.
She read every briefing paper, challenged and quizzed the scientists to understand things better, and crucially, she allowed her cabinet to overrule her as she and they understood how serious this was.
As Sir Norman Fowler put it, she wasn't going to let hundreds of thousands of young men die from this, and she sold the message even if she wanted it to be a moral campaign.
Just compare how badly France and America dealt with AIDS.
Yep with you on this. And that raises another criticism of Johnson and his Government over this.
Remember Fowler and his 'Don't Die of Ignorance' adverts.
They were fecking terrifying.
And they worked. Brilliantly.
All we got from this mob was soft soap 'protect the NHS' and info-mation soundbites. They should have got in the top advertising agency and said "scare the shit out of us". There should have been constant advertising on all media about how we could help fight this thing. I am sure there were adverts btu they really were completely forgettable.
Thatcher all the way for me.
Very much so. I was still terrified by those adverts into the 21st century.
What makes Thatcher's handling of AIDS even more admirable is the fact it was seen to be protecting homosexuals, a group that was badly maligned by the media and others.
Lest we forget a senior policeman said of AIDS victims were a ‘human cesspool of their own making’.
A politician obsessed with popularity wouldn't have expended quite so much energy trying to save the lives of gay people.
German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has a blunt message for her European counterparts: Forget your lofty ideas about the Continent defending itself and get real.
Kramp-Karrenbauer is doubling down on her dismissal of the idea of European strategic autonomy, which sparked a diplomatic blow-up with French President Emmanuel Macron, and which she sees as farther off than ever.
Is that the out-going defence minister or the new one? (they had an election recently but IIRC are still working on the new coalition)
I think a big division here is between people who think the response to this pandemic hasn't been authoritarian enough - and people who think its been too authoritarian. I fall very much now under the latter category, so while I have a lot to criticise Boris over (and think he lifted lockdown-3 months too late), I think all other PM's apart from Thatcher would have handled the pandemic worse.
If I was to rate the PM's in order I'd say Thatcher first, then Boris. Then Cameron - he always took the NHS seriously given his own personal concerns and I'd be worried he'd go too far down the "protect the NHS" road, but I think Osborne would have been able to keep him in check. Without Osborne by his side I'd be much more worried about Cameron.
Major just middling.
Then my rogue's gallery would be Brown, then May and absolutely worst of all Blair.
Overall as a PM I'd have Blair ahead of Major, Brown and May. But Blair would have been horrendous in this. Even without a pandemic he was prepared to detain people for 90 days without charge. Even without a pandemic he wanted to introduce ID Cards. Under the cover of the pandemic he'd have introduced ID Cards and other restrictions that he tried to push through but failed and the Civil Service would have made them permanent.
The best person who should be trusted with authoritarian powers is someone who doesn't want to wield them. That's one of the things that makes Boris one of the best possible PMs for this pandemic - and it make Blair the worst possible choice. Even worse than May or Brown.
There's an awful lot of nostalgia for Thatcher on here, but some of us around at the time don't have quite the same rose-tinted view. Yes, she was adored by many - I don't deny that for a minute. But she was also hated by a very large minority, whether it be miners, urban youth, the 3M unemployed, or young lefties as I was at the time. I'd put her down as the most divisive of all post-war PMs.
So although she may have had the skills to manage the Covid crisis, I do wonder whether she would have been able to build the necessary consensus to get us through. It's possible that too many people would simply not have trusted or believed her. On those grounds, I'd probably go for Blair (pre-Iraq). He didn't attract such antipathy among his opponents, was a brilliant communicator, and had a good grip on the machinery of government by around 2001.
The Falklands suggests that given a national crisis with a nearly universal consensus on the "the task at hand", Thatcher would get the nation behind her.
Well, that's a good example of what I mean. There wasn't actually a 'nearly universal consensus' on the Falklands war, although the media told us that there was, and alternative voices were largely drowned out and had no social media to be heard on.
Evidence? IIRC Michael Foot supported military action.
Unsurprisingly, it was basically Tony Benn and what became the 'Corbynite' left who opposed the war. You can probably guess what the Absolute Boy thought about it.
Indeed, though the poster who said there was a "consensus" was correct, as all the major parties supported military action to some degree, again IIRC. The awkward squad did not, but that does not mean there was not a broad political consensus, as a "consensus" does not require unanimity.
I didn't say there wasn't a broad consensus. I was taking issue with the words "near universal consensus", which is what the poster you refer to said. Sometimes I wish folk bothered to read what one writes.
Your wish is my command sir! I have reread to be sure! The word "near" is apposite here. I would say 84% of people in favour of how the government handled something (as mentioned by other posters) is pretty "near" enough to near-universal for my liking.
By specimen date, Tuesday will be a week on week drop in cases for England and it's likely the rest of the week will be too. Oddly the R value in England may already be below 1 despite all of the current panic.
Yep, there are definitely signs we are near a peak. The Cambridge / MRC study implied R was 1.0 and likely falling.
Still, falling or not - if those booster stats are right then there's a big incentive to get them done as fast as possible and get this thing shut down.
Am I going mad or looking at different data? I don't see how Tuesday can be a week on week drop when its already more than the week before? Or are you talking 7 day average?
I also have a theory that, were Covid to have hit us in the pre mass internet era; it could have been covered up or downplayed as a particularly bad flu season. It was only because of mass communication that the reality of the virus, and inability of governments to deal with it, became clear.
I'm not sure - but it's safe to say that things would have had to be very different because working from home just wouldn't have been possible.
It would have been somewhere between Hong Kong flu and Spanish flu. It would have been bad, but not unprecedentedly so.
The NHS would have clogged up with elderly victims.
Since lockdowns would have shut the economy down, they probably wouldn't have happened - at least as universally as they did.
A lot of economic activity would have stopped by itself.
It would have been a mess.
Why didn't the hospitals keel over for Hong Kong flu? Or indeed for Spanish flu? Were there just fewer elderly people around?
Much quicker resolution of the disease - either recovery or death. And health systems were far less sophisticated, so a flu ward was effectively a Nightingale hospital absent any technology.
There is some speculation that Spanish flu evolved to be a young man killer in US troopships, US troop trains and US military barracks in WWI
I was under the impression that it was so deadly because of the cytokine storm response that immune systems had to it. That the stronger immune system you had actually worked against you when it overeacted to infection, young people tend to have stronger more robust immune systems.
But I could be wrong on that, I am no scientist.
You are right, but the theory is that strain of the flu that induced the cytokine storm evolved in the locations where young men going off to war were densely packed and so, bucking the normal trend in viral evolution to higher transmissibility and lower morbidity, it evolved into a killer as, in this case, the higher morbidity in young men also resulted in higher transmissibility in those densely packed conditions.
Latest study on boosters very encouraging, and even at just 250k per day everyone over 50 gets boostered by Christmas, which is barely an acceleration on the current much maligned levels which are clearly now being ramped up. With a 95% efficacy vs 2 doses, it's hard to see how the usual suspects will try to make a case for more NPI, but I'm sure they're manage.
That sounds good, but what exactly do you mean by 'a 95% efficiency Vs 2 doses'?
In a study with people on average 11 months post their 2nd dose, the 3rd dose have 95% coverage vs a control group who never had a 3rd dose. So you're at overall protection deep in to 99%.
I accept under 18 is a minefield but why not just open up 3rd doses to everyone over the age of 18 6 months from their initial dose ?
The takeup in under 50s probably won't be enormous anyway but it could meaningfully affect cases getting parents of schoolkids with mega neutralising efficacy.
Yup there's a huge difference between 25m people having 95% immunity from infection and 40m people having it. The latter gets us to herd immunity. The limitation is odd given how big our vaccine surplus is, there's still something like 8m Moderna doses kicking about. They could be used for an under 50s booster programme if they're worried about incoming Pfizer supply.
I understand we've got about 23m surplus doses of Pfizer and Moderna together at the moment. So let's use them.
With all the stuff about "Delta precludes herd immunity", if boosters get us to just 95% (and as maarsh says, indications are that 98-99% is closer to the mark) and those with just 2 doses or infection-immunity average 80% immunity, then boosting that 40 million and assuming the rest largely have 2 doses or have infection-immunity puts us at 89% immune overall.
Enough to pass the HIT for an R0 of 9, let alone Delta's 6-7.
Totally agree Andy, for whatever reason the government just always seems one step behind the curve. I think there's a real lack of expertise within the political class and a lot of complacency has set in. If we offered third doses to all 45m who have had second doses 4 months after their second I expect we'd get 40m people going for it. That's herd immunity and we're currently throwing away our chance to hit it before Xmas by having an artificial limitation on who is eligible for a third dose. The JCVI has completely hamstrung our rollout since the end of the initial rollout. Kids should get two doses and everyone over 18 should be eligible for three and the Israel data shows that three doses with a big gap between two and three should be considered fully vaccinated, not two.
If Pfizer and other pharma had unlimited time to develop these vaccines we would have got that trial and the whole world would consider three doses a full course, not two.
She read every briefing paper, challenged and quizzed the scientists to understand things better, and crucially, she allowed her cabinet to overrule her as she and they understood how serious this was.
As Sir Norman Fowler put it, she wasn't going to let hundreds of thousands of young men die from this, and she sold the message even if she wanted it to be a moral campaign.
Just compare how badly France and America dealt with AIDS.
Yep with you on this. And that raises another criticism of Johnson and his Government over this.
Remember Fowler and his 'Don't Die of Ignorance' adverts.
They were fecking terrifying.
And they worked. Brilliantly.
All we got from this mob was soft soap 'protect the NHS' and info-mation soundbites. They should have got in the top advertising agency and said "scare the shit out of us". There should have been constant advertising on all media about how we could help fight this thing. I am sure there were adverts btu they really were completely forgettable.
Thatcher all the way for me.
Very much so. I was still terrified by those adverts into the 21st century.
What makes Thatcher's handling of AIDS even more admirable is the fact it was seen to be protecting homosexuals, a group that was badly maligned by the media and others.
Lest we forget a senior policeman said of AIDS victims were a ‘human cesspool of their own making’.
A politician obsessed with popularity wouldn't have expended quite so much energy trying to save the lives of gay people.
The people now saying You realise only one person under 50 has died of COVID were then saying only one heterosexual had ever died of AIDS. Or their parents were.
For all the feedback loops that can be at play for CO2 it is the molecule's most basic physical properties that make it a greenhouse gas. At a basic, classical level, molecules that have 3 atoms and that can bend and flex absorb the infra red coming from the ground to do that.
If you replaced the air in your 1cm thick duvet with pure CO2, the tog* rating of that gas layer alone would rise from 3.7 to 5.9. (engineers have some hoary SI measurement for the inverse of togs, the mW/mK, but I don't think the conversion is something a sane person has ever done - even after today ).
I also calculated the tog rating increase for the entire atmospheric thickness, but I've not got a record of that. It was much less stark, because the increase in CO2 content is only 1 part per 6000. But, in any case, simple models with the most basic insulation equations, stripping out almost all complexity, would predict rises in the broad ballpark of what the very complex models predict.
Anyway, where I was with Mr Tyndall very very early on in my PB career is that, a climate sceptic to my mind has to show what there is in the complexity of the earth that would offset that base physical heat retention of CO2, and show across the full range of CO2 concentration we might see. My take is simply that a lot of burden of proof falls on the sceptic side here.
* trivia - the tog rating system was developed in Manchester when assessing clothing and it is indeed named after the slang for clothes.
To be honest my arguments against catastrophic AGW haven't changed and nor has my underlying scepticism. My problem is that although I have severe criticisms of the claims made and from a scientific point of view think they are very dodgy, I actually like the direction of travel that has resulted. Like many others on the scientific end of oil exploration I am of the opinion that hydrocarbons are way too valuable a resource to be burning. This was my view long before AGW ever reared its head. We need them for far too many other things that make modern life bearable and, if we have viable alternatives, we are bloody stupid to be wasting this finite resource by burning it.
One thing I do disagree with you about is where the burden of proof lies. If you are proposing a novel theory for the cause of any observation - such as changing climate being due to man made gases - then it is incumbent from a scientific point of view to eliminate all other potential natural causes. This is why some climate advocates went so strong on trying to undermine earlier warming periods claiming they were not warmer than now (they were) or that they were only regional (they were not). It was actually this that got my back up more than anything.
In the end I do not consider this a fight worth spending too much time on as I think the end result will probably be a better world than the one we have now. It doesn't change the underlying science which, as I say, is dodgy but getting the right result for the wrong reasons is not the worst outcome in the world.
Of course an addendum to this is that to get that right result we do need to do it in the right way and at the moment I fear that we are not doing that. We are driven too much by the claim we need to do something rather than the need to do the right thing. Hence the issues with energy shortages, chopping down rainforests for biofuels and letting a 17 year old brat drive the narrative. (I threw that last one in to stir up a bit of controversy )
I would also go with Mrs Thatcher. Like with Boris, she would have recognised that being a bit nationalistic - i.e. having countries competing to get vaccines - would be best for spurring overall production.
She would have combined this with being a lot more in charge of her brief. She would have grilled the scientists, and her ministers, and wouldn't have been so concerned about short term popularity. I don't think the JCVI would have gone unchallenged.
Of the others, I tend to agree that Brown and May would have been weak. Cameron would probably have been overly reliant on the scientists. And Blair would have called the US President to see what his policy should be.
I genuinely don't know about Major. He is an intelligent and thoughtful guy, but would he have struggled to challenge the scientists? I don't know.
We really don't have a fair impression of John Major. It would be interesting to know how he would have got on with a bigger majority or less fractious party. I certainly don't recollect the 1990-1992 period - when he did have a fair-sized majority being characterised by terrible leadership. I do remember getting the impression that only he and William Hague were really trying for the Conservatives at the 1997 election.
Ditto Theresa May, I suppose. Who knows - in charge of a majority, she may have come across as entirely competent and in command.
I think a big division here is between people who think the response to this pandemic hasn't been authoritarian enough - and people who think its been too authoritarian. I fall very much now under the latter category, so while I have a lot to criticise Boris over (and think he lifted lockdown-3 months too late), I think all other PM's apart from Thatcher would have handled the pandemic worse.
If I was to rate the PM's in order I'd say Thatcher first, then Boris. Then Cameron - he always took the NHS seriously given his own personal concerns and I'd be worried he'd go too far down the "protect the NHS" road, but I think Osborne would have been able to keep him in check. Without Osborne by his side I'd be much more worried about Cameron.
Major just middling.
Then my rogue's gallery would be Brown, then May and absolutely worst of all Blair.
Overall as a PM I'd have Blair ahead of Major, Brown and May. But Blair would have been horrendous in this. Even without a pandemic he was prepared to detain people for 90 days without charge. Even without a pandemic he wanted to introduce ID Cards. Under the cover of the pandemic he'd have introduced ID Cards and other restrictions that he tried to push through but failed and the Civil Service would have made them permanent.
The best person who should be trusted with authoritarian powers is someone who doesn't want to wield them. That's one of the things that makes Boris one of the best possible PMs for this pandemic - and it make Blair the worst possible choice. Even worse than May or Brown.
Aw, you really can't stop loving "Boris" can you? However shit he is, you have to keep bigging him up. Blind loyalty. That must be such a nice thing to experience I guess.
She read every briefing paper, challenged and quizzed the scientists to understand things better, and crucially, she allowed her cabinet to overrule her as she and they understood how serious this was.
As Sir Norman Fowler put it, she wasn't going to let hundreds of thousands of young men die from this, and she sold the message even if she wanted it to be a moral campaign.
Just compare how badly France and America dealt with AIDS.
Yep with you on this. And that raises another criticism of Johnson and his Government over this.
Remember Fowler and his 'Don't Die of Ignorance' adverts.
They were fecking terrifying.
And they worked. Brilliantly.
All we got from this mob was soft soap 'protect the NHS' and info-mation soundbites. They should have got in the top advertising agency and said "scare the shit out of us". There should have been constant advertising on all media about how we could help fight this thing. I am sure there were adverts btu they really were completely forgettable.
Thatcher all the way for me.
Very much so. I was still terrified by those adverts into the 21st century.
What makes Thatcher's handling of AIDS even more admirable is the fact it was seen to be protecting homosexuals, a group that was badly maligned by the media and others.
Lest we forget a senior policeman said of AIDS victims were a ‘human cesspool of their own making’.
A politician obsessed with popularity wouldn't have expended quite so much energy trying to save the lives of gay people.
Or that that the UK's paper of record ran a campaign at the time promoting the idea that AIDS was entirely a disease of homosexuals and that HIV tests were pointless. The editor of that time will block you on twitter if you remind him about it.
By specimen date, Tuesday will be a week on week drop in cases for England and it's likely the rest of the week will be too. Oddly the R value in England may already be below 1 despite all of the current panic.
Yep, there are definitely signs we are near a peak. The Cambridge / MRC study implied R was 1.0 and likely falling.
Still, falling or not - if those booster stats are right then there's a big incentive to get them done as fast as possible and get this thing shut down.
Am I going mad or looking at different data? I don't see how Tuesday can be a week on week drop when its already more than the week before? Or are you talking 7 day average?
By specimen date, this Tuesday is currently recorded as 40,146. Last Tuesday was 47,446.
Obviously there will be more cases coming in over the next few days as the systems catch up but I'm not sure this will push this Tuesday higher than 47k.
Monday was 5k higher than the previous week, though, so there's something a bit odd going on. It might still be down to the testing centre failure.
I think a big division here is between people who think the response to this pandemic hasn't been authoritarian enough - and people who think its been too authoritarian. I fall very much now under the latter category, so while I have a lot to criticise Boris over (and think he lifted lockdown-3 months too late), I think all other PM's apart from Thatcher would have handled the pandemic worse.
If I was to rate the PM's in order I'd say Thatcher first, then Boris. Then Cameron - he always took the NHS seriously given his own personal concerns and I'd be worried he'd go too far down the "protect the NHS" road, but I think Osborne would have been able to keep him in check. Without Osborne by his side I'd be much more worried about Cameron.
Major just middling.
Then my rogue's gallery would be Brown, then May and absolutely worst of all Blair.
Overall as a PM I'd have Blair ahead of Major, Brown and May. But Blair would have been horrendous in this. Even without a pandemic he was prepared to detain people for 90 days without charge. Even without a pandemic he wanted to introduce ID Cards. Under the cover of the pandemic he'd have introduced ID Cards and other restrictions that he tried to push through but failed and the Civil Service would have made them permanent.
The best person who should be trusted with authoritarian powers is someone who doesn't want to wield them. That's one of the things that makes Boris one of the best possible PMs for this pandemic - and it make Blair the worst possible choice. Even worse than May or Brown.
Aw, you really can't stop loving "Boris" can you? However shit he is, you have to keep bigging him up. Blind loyalty. That must be such a nice thing to experience I guess.
Its my honest opinion 🤷♂️
It depends upon what your priorities are? My priority is ASAP ensuring all restrictions are lifted.
The UK was the first nation in Europe to do so (AFAIK) and the first major nation on the planet to have a vaccine rollout. That makes it the best response to the pandemic on the continent and second to Israel the best response to the pandemic on the planet.
Could other leaders have done better? I think Thatcher would have yes. But I don't think anyone else would have, just as no other contemporary leader has done better other than (much as I loathe him) Netanyahu.
Who of the previous leaders would have lifted restrictions faster than Boris? Any of them? Maybe Thatcher, other than that no I don't think so. Any of my rogue's gallery (Brown, May and Blair) I think we'd still be under restrictions today just as most continental Europeans as well as New Zealanders etc still are. Blair would have abused the opportunity set us up for restrictions for years to come too.
If interviewing for the role I'd ask each candidate if they had successfully navigated a crisis of this magnitude and complexity when in charge before. Just the one would be able to look me straight in the eye and answer yes. A heavyset Scottish bloke with a dodgy eye. So I'd probably play it safe and go for him, despite the hint of overintensity that makes me wonder if he'll get through it without a crackup.
Not sure that the financial crises compares in magnitude to Covid. In fact, I'm sure it doesn't.
You would want someone with gravitas, so I'd go with Thatcher or Brown. I think Thatcher would be listened to more by the public, so she gets the nod. So my order would be: 1) Thatcher, 2) Brown, 3) Major 4) May.
That's not a top 4 I'd take great issue with. Thatcher so long as she'd do the furlough. GFC cf Covid? Maybe not an equivalence but ballpark, I think. Turn a different corner in 08 and it could have been horrendous. As it is, the politics and money consequences are still with us and they're not small.
By specimen date, Tuesday will be a week on week drop in cases for England and it's likely the rest of the week will be too. Oddly the R value in England may already be below 1 despite all of the current panic.
Yep, there are definitely signs we are near a peak. The Cambridge / MRC study implied R was 1.0 and likely falling.
Still, falling or not - if those booster stats are right then there's a big incentive to get them done as fast as possible and get this thing shut down.
Am I going mad or looking at different data? I don't see how Tuesday can be a week on week drop when its already more than the week before? Or are you talking 7 day average?
By specimen date, it's unlikely that another 7k cases will be added to Tuesday, at most it will be ~5k but probably more like ~4k which means Tuesday will be a week on week drop. The rest of the week as well and then next week is half term.
By specimen date, Tuesday will be a week on week drop in cases for England and it's likely the rest of the week will be too. Oddly the R value in England may already be below 1 despite all of the current panic.
Yep, there are definitely signs we are near a peak. The Cambridge / MRC study implied R was 1.0 and likely falling.
Still, falling or not - if those booster stats are right then there's a big incentive to get them done as fast as possible and get this thing shut down.
Am I going mad or looking at different data? I don't see how Tuesday can be a week on week drop when its already more than the week before? Or are you talking 7 day average?
By specimen date, this Tuesday is currently recorded as 40,146. Last Tuesday was 47,446.
Obviously there will be more cases coming in over the next few days as the systems catch up but I'm not sure this will push this Tuesday higher than 47k.
Monday was 5k higher than the previous week, though, so there's something a bit odd going on. It might still be down to the testing centre failure.
I think its too early to say re this tuesday by specimen date. We'll know more tomorrow. There is definitely an effect of the testing lab feck up going through the system. I don't believe that the rates recorded in the SW are as high as that, its retesting of false negatives feeding in. This will end soon, and with half term that will also reduce the cases.
By specimen date, Tuesday will be a week on week drop in cases for England and it's likely the rest of the week will be too. Oddly the R value in England may already be below 1 despite all of the current panic.
Yep, there are definitely signs we are near a peak. The Cambridge / MRC study implied R was 1.0 and likely falling.
Still, falling or not - if those booster stats are right then there's a big incentive to get them done as fast as possible and get this thing shut down.
Am I going mad or looking at different data? I don't see how Tuesday can be a week on week drop when its already more than the week before? Or are you talking 7 day average?
By specimen date, it's unlikely that another 7k cases will be added to Tuesday, at most it will be ~5k but probably more like ~4k which means Tuesday will be a week on week drop. The rest of the week as well and then next week is half term.
Overall I agree, but I can believe we could add more than 7K cases. Looking at England only data you can see the daily change, and monday had over 6K added today and sunday another K. But yes, broadly I agree. We must be due big falls in the kids rates (less testing over half term) and they must be nearly all infected by now...
I think a big division here is between people who think the response to this pandemic hasn't been authoritarian enough - and people who think its been too authoritarian. I fall very much now under the latter category, so while I have a lot to criticise Boris over (and think he lifted lockdown-3 months too late), I think all other PM's apart from Thatcher would have handled the pandemic worse.
If I was to rate the PM's in order I'd say Thatcher first, then Boris. Then Cameron - he always took the NHS seriously given his own personal concerns and I'd be worried he'd go too far down the "protect the NHS" road, but I think Osborne would have been able to keep him in check. Without Osborne by his side I'd be much more worried about Cameron.
Major just middling.
Then my rogue's gallery would be Brown, then May and absolutely worst of all Blair.
Overall as a PM I'd have Blair ahead of Major, Brown and May. But Blair would have been horrendous in this. Even without a pandemic he was prepared to detain people for 90 days without charge. Even without a pandemic he wanted to introduce ID Cards. Under the cover of the pandemic he'd have introduced ID Cards and other restrictions that he tried to push through but failed and the Civil Service would have made them permanent.
The best person who should be trusted with authoritarian powers is someone who doesn't want to wield them. That's one of the things that makes Boris one of the best possible PMs for this pandemic - and it make Blair the worst possible choice. Even worse than May or Brown.
Interesting analysis, but I think it misses where Boris was weak: he was too slow to make decisions, and therefore when he did take them, they had to be more authoritarian.
If the UK had been quicker to close the borders at the beginning of the pandemic, or when it was incredibly obvious that there was a big problem in India with Delta, the number of cases seeded could have been dramatically lower.
Likewise, there was too much prevarication over vaccinating teenagers and over booster shots.
It's not that decisions were wrong - it was that they made too slowly. I think both Blair and Thatcher were more sure of themselves (and Cameron was too), and would have made faster decisions. And those faster decisions would have meant less authoritarian decisions were needed.
For all the feedback loops that can be at play for CO2 it is the molecule's most basic physical properties that make it a greenhouse gas. At a basic, classical level, molecules that have 3 atoms and that can bend and flex absorb the infra red coming from the ground to do that.
If you replaced the air in your 1cm thick duvet with pure CO2, the tog* rating of that gas layer alone would rise from 3.7 to 5.9. (engineers have some hoary SI measurement for the inverse of togs, the mW/mK, but I don't think the conversion is something a sane person has ever done - even after today ).
I also calculated the tog rating increase for the entire atmospheric thickness, but I've not got a record of that. It was much less stark, because the increase in CO2 content is only 1 part per 6000. But, in any case, simple models with the most basic insulation equations, stripping out almost all complexity, would predict rises in the broad ballpark of what the very complex models predict.
Anyway, where I was with Mr Tyndall very very early on in my PB career is that, a climate sceptic to my mind has to show what there is in the complexity of the earth that would offset that base physical heat retention of CO2, and show across the full range of CO2 concentration we might see. My take is simply that a lot of burden of proof falls on the sceptic side here.
* trivia - the tog rating system was developed in Manchester when assessing clothing and it is indeed named after the slang for clothes.
To be honest my arguments against catastrophic AGW haven't changed and nor has my underlying scepticism. My problem is that although I have severe criticisms of the claims made and from a scientific point of view think they are very dodgy, I actually like the direction of travel that has resulted. Like many others on the scientific end of oil exploration I am of the opinion that hydrocarbons are way too valuable a resource to be burning. This was my view long before AGW ever reared its head. We need them for far too many other things that make modern life bearable and, if we have viable alternatives, we are bloody stupid to be wasting this finite resource by burning it.
One thing I do disagree with you about is where the burden of proof lies. If you are proposing a novel theory for the cause of any observation - such as changing climate being due to man made gases - then it is incumbent from a scientific point of view to eliminate all other potential natural causes. This is why some climate advocates went so strong on trying to undermine earlier warming periods claiming they were not warmer than now (they were) or that they were only regional (they were not). It was actually this that got my back up more than anything.
In the end I do not consider this a fight worth spending too much time on as I think the end result will probably be a better world than the one we have now. It doesn't change the underlying science which, as I say, is dodgy but getting the right result for the wrong reasons is not the worst outcome in the world.
Of course an addendum to this is that to get that right result we do need to do it in the right way and at the moment I fear that we are not doing that. We are driven too much by the claim we need to do something rather than the need to do the right thing. Hence the issues with energy shortages, chopping down rainforests for biofuels and letting a 17 year old brat drive the narrative. (I threw that last one in to stir up a bit of controversy )
If the causation argument looks tight enough there isn't much in this burden of proof point. Technically it might be right just as technically the prosecution in a murder case has to exclude natural causes of death. That can be trivially easy in cases of say gunshot wounds.
Scientists on both sides lied their heads off, to great applause. When those clowns at UEA were rumbled there.was a poster here saying effectively Praise them, their very lies are.truer than our truths.
I think a big division here is between people who think the response to this pandemic hasn't been authoritarian enough - and people who think its been too authoritarian. I fall very much now under the latter category, so while I have a lot to criticise Boris over (and think he lifted lockdown-3 months too late), I think all other PM's apart from Thatcher would have handled the pandemic worse.
If I was to rate the PM's in order I'd say Thatcher first, then Boris. Then Cameron - he always took the NHS seriously given his own personal concerns and I'd be worried he'd go too far down the "protect the NHS" road, but I think Osborne would have been able to keep him in check. Without Osborne by his side I'd be much more worried about Cameron.
Major just middling.
Then my rogue's gallery would be Brown, then May and absolutely worst of all Blair.
Overall as a PM I'd have Blair ahead of Major, Brown and May. But Blair would have been horrendous in this. Even without a pandemic he was prepared to detain people for 90 days without charge. Even without a pandemic he wanted to introduce ID Cards. Under the cover of the pandemic he'd have introduced ID Cards and other restrictions that he tried to push through but failed and the Civil Service would have made them permanent.
The best person who should be trusted with authoritarian powers is someone who doesn't want to wield them. That's one of the things that makes Boris one of the best possible PMs for this pandemic - and it make Blair the worst possible choice. Even worse than May or Brown.
Yes. Blair was an absolute political titan in so many ways and compared to so many others. But his reaction to terrorism was too heavily influenced by the Americans. 90 days detention was too much and open to abuse. ID cards in isolation I have less of a problem with, but in the context of why and how they wanted them it was a very short walk from "your papers please".
I was persuaded not to defect to the LibDems in 2003. In hindsight that was a mistake.
By specimen date, Tuesday will be a week on week drop in cases for England and it's likely the rest of the week will be too. Oddly the R value in England may already be below 1 despite all of the current panic.
Yep, there are definitely signs we are near a peak. The Cambridge / MRC study implied R was 1.0 and likely falling.
Still, falling or not - if those booster stats are right then there's a big incentive to get them done as fast as possible and get this thing shut down.
Am I going mad or looking at different data? I don't see how Tuesday can be a week on week drop when its already more than the week before? Or are you talking 7 day average?
By specimen date, it's unlikely that another 7k cases will be added to Tuesday, at most it will be ~5k but probably more like ~4k which means Tuesday will be a week on week drop. The rest of the week as well and then next week is half term.
Overall I agree, but I can believe we could add more than 7K cases. Looking at England only data you can see the daily change, and monday had over 6K added today and sunday another K. But yes, broadly I agree. We must be due big falls in the kids rates (less testing over half term) and they must be nearly all infected by now...
Monday always has a bigger backfill, it usually drops a fair bit for the other days. I guess it's lab catchup on Wednesday to close out Monday specimen dates samples.
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOz8TXVzz_g
'Interesting that the Greens are starting to make significant headway and Labour need a strategy and message to deal with it'
I do not bet but I would think this is of interest to those who do
https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1451198943530913793?t=fTR7y6ujlHggG7xREjqaQQ&s=19
You would want someone with gravitas, so I'd go with Thatcher or Brown. I think Thatcher would be listened to more by the public, so she gets the nod. So my order would be: 1) Thatcher, 2) Brown, 3) Major 4) May.
Since lockdowns would have shut the economy down, they probably wouldn't have happened - at least as universally as they did.
A lot of economic activity would have stopped by itself.
It would have been a mess.
Seven persistent myths about Covid and lockdowns in the UK / England.
I thought I would put one thread together on what I think are 7 myths that continue to be propagated - mainly by those who, although well-intentioned, always assume that more restrictions are the answer.
https://twitter.com/drraghibali/status/1451166919915094022?s=20
So although she may have had the skills to manage the Covid crisis, I do wonder whether she would have been able to build the necessary consensus to get us through. It's possible that too many people would simply not have trusted or believed her. On those grounds, I'd probably go for Blair (pre-Iraq). He didn't attract such antipathy among his opponents, was a brilliant communicator, and had a good grip on the machinery of government by around 2001.
I've seen mainly similarly qualified responses to the question on this thread.
Johnson has developed a political style which enables him to avoid taking anything seriously, including pandemics. This is because our problems are basically too difficult to sort out, but we press on anyway. It is perfect for our time.
Imagine if Covid had struck before Johnson could fit in the 2019 election.
Actually, don't because it will give you nightmares if you're anything like me.
The takeup in under 50s probably won't be enormous anyway but it could meaningfully affect cases getting parents of schoolkids with mega neutralising efficacy.
• 57,195 re-infections (to 3 Oct)
• 300-350/day holding steady
• no increase in re-infections in recent weeks
• does not explain recent increase in cases
https://twitter.com/kallmemeg/status/1451199718214696985?s=20
Their president announced that covid was over in Tanzania sometime in the middle of last year, insisted their were no covid deaths since then, and stopped testing.
Later that year, he died from a respiratory disease that caused Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome with the presentation of broken-glass lungs.
(ie. something exactly the same as covid)
We knew none of that with Covid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYrNCMwxcpk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_not_only_saved_the_world
Newspapers would have been utterly critical. If Messrs Maxwell et al had been against a policy ...
This would be a perfect time for someone to show a picture of a Class 52 'Western' loco, but they were such GWR-inspired cr@p they never lasted long enough to receive their TOPS numbers.
But it'd probably have been D1019 Western Challenger
https://www.flickr.com/photos/curly42/5373512910
Claim in tweet: the UK does a lot more testing, but has only average positive %, so not evidence of more cases.
But if our number of cases was only average, then, if we assume our testing is more targeted than random, having a lot more testing should give us below average positivity %. If we're doing more testing than others and have average positivity % then we probably do indeed have more cases.
On a perfectly targeted sample (all infected are tested):
Country A has 10% infected, tests 20%. Positivity 50%
Country B has 10% infected, tests 40%. Positivity 25%
On a random sample:
Country A has 10% infected, tests 20%. Positivity 10%
Country B has 10% infected, tests 40%. Positivity 10%
The reality is somewhere between perfect targetting and random (some people taking routine tests; but some - many? - testing in response to symptoms or known infected contacts). If we were no more infected than other countries and are doing much more testing then we should have lower positivity. We don't, so we probably have more cases.
A better response might be wait a few weeks and see what happens then. Comparing countries at any point in time is only useful for what is happening at that moment.
more evedance, if it was needed, that we should simply go for boosters for all!!
If you replaced the air in your 1cm thick duvet with pure CO2, the tog* rating of that gas layer alone would rise from 3.7 to 5.9. (engineers have some hoary SI measurement for the inverse of togs, the mW/mK, but I don't think the conversion is something a sane person has ever done - even after today
I also calculated the tog rating increase for the entire atmospheric thickness, but I've not got a record of that. It was much less stark, because the increase in CO2 content is only 1 part per 6000. But, in any case, simple models with the most basic insulation equations, stripping out almost all complexity, would predict rises in the broad ballpark of what the very complex models predict.
Anyway, where I was with Mr Tyndall very very early on in my PB career is that, a climate sceptic to my mind has to show what there is in the complexity of the earth that would offset that base physical heat retention of CO2, and show across the full range of CO2 concentration we might see. My take is simply that a lot of burden of proof falls on the sceptic side here.
* trivia - the tog rating system was developed in Manchester when assessing clothing and it is indeed named after the slang for clothes.
It can't have been much fun to be part of the 20%. But it is never fun to have most people disagree with you.
If twitter had been about in those days, no doubt the opposition to the Falklands War could have portrayed itself as much more numerous, and potentially caused some problems. But they would also have hardened the opinions of the 80%.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBXj5l6ShpA
Compare & contrast his response to that of Corbyn and Salisbury.
And health systems were far less sophisticated, so a flu ward was effectively a Nightingale hospital absent any technology.
nb 'Spanish' flu - actually Kansas flu, in all likelihood - killed much younger people, possibly as the older generation had some immunity from earlier influenza outbreaks.
The economic effects were considerable:
https://www.nber.org/digest/may20/social-and-economic-impacts-1918-influenza-epidemic
Also, probably a far higher percentage of those with 5+ major complicating medical conditions have not survived into older age there vs N America and Europe.
There was opposition to the war - there always is, to any war. But even on the Labour hard-left, it was only a subset.
The vast majority of the country was supportive of what Thatcher did.
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/falklands-war-panel-survey
Q Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way the Government are now handling the situation in the Falkland Islands?
21-23 June 1982
Satisfied 84%
Dissatisfied 13%
Don't know 3%
Remember Fowler and his 'Don't Die of Ignorance' adverts.
They were fecking terrifying.
And they worked. Brilliantly.
All we got from this mob was soft soap 'protect the NHS' and info-mation soundbites. They should have got in the top advertising agency and said "scare the shit out of us". There should have been constant advertising on all media about how we could help fight this thing. I am sure there were adverts btu they really were completely forgettable.
Thatcher all the way for me.
Satisfaction with government handling stated at 60% and climbed steadily to eventually 84%
Still, falling or not - if those booster stats are right then there's a big incentive to get them done as fast as possible and get this thing shut down.
I would also go with Mrs Thatcher. Like with Boris, she would have recognised that being a bit nationalistic - i.e. having countries competing to get vaccines - would be best for spurring overall production.
She would have combined this with being a lot more in charge of her brief. She would have grilled the scientists, and her ministers, and wouldn't have been so concerned about short term popularity. I don't think the JCVI would have gone unchallenged.
Of the others, I tend to agree that Brown and May would have been weak. Cameron would probably have been overly reliant on the scientists. And Blair would have called the US President to see what his policy should be.
I genuinely don't know about Major. He is an intelligent and thoughtful guy, but would he have struggled to challenge the scientists? I don't know.
German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has a blunt message for her European counterparts: Forget your lofty ideas about the Continent defending itself and get real.
Kramp-Karrenbauer is doubling down on her dismissal of the idea of European strategic autonomy, which sparked a diplomatic blow-up with French President Emmanuel Macron, and which she sees as farther off than ever.
I'm down for Tuesday next week, being peek by repoted date.
after that we will be in the half term lul, as there are less tests done at school, and after that for cases to be falling natraly.
With all the stuff about "Delta precludes herd immunity", if boosters get us to just 95% (and as maarsh says, indications are that 98-99% is closer to the mark) and those with just 2 doses or infection-immunity average 80% immunity, then boosting that 40 million and assuming the rest largely have 2 doses or have infection-immunity puts us at 89% immune overall.
Enough to pass the HIT for an R0 of 9, let alone Delta's 6-7.
But I could be wrong on that, I am no scientist.
What makes Thatcher's handling of AIDS even more admirable is the fact it was seen to be protecting homosexuals, a group that was badly maligned by the media and others.
Lest we forget a senior policeman said of AIDS victims were a ‘human cesspool of their own making’.
A politician obsessed with popularity wouldn't have expended quite so much energy trying to save the lives of gay people.
If I was to rate the PM's in order I'd say Thatcher first, then Boris. Then Cameron - he always took the NHS seriously given his own personal concerns and I'd be worried he'd go too far down the "protect the NHS" road, but I think Osborne would have been able to keep him in check. Without Osborne by his side I'd be much more worried about Cameron.
Major just middling.
Then my rogue's gallery would be Brown, then May and absolutely worst of all Blair.
Overall as a PM I'd have Blair ahead of Major, Brown and May. But Blair would have been horrendous in this. Even without a pandemic he was prepared to detain people for 90 days without charge. Even without a pandemic he wanted to introduce ID Cards. Under the cover of the pandemic he'd have introduced ID Cards and other restrictions that he tried to push through but failed and the Civil Service would have made them permanent.
The best person who should be trusted with authoritarian powers is someone who doesn't want to wield them. That's one of the things that makes Boris one of the best possible PMs for this pandemic - and it make Blair the worst possible choice. Even worse than May or Brown.
If Pfizer and other pharma had unlimited time to develop these vaccines we would have got that trial and the whole world would consider three doses a full course, not two.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1451211349900599296?t=_WDvbn2IMFuMO6V4ThxgDw&s=19
One thing I do disagree with you about is where the burden of proof lies. If you are proposing a novel theory for the cause of any observation - such as changing climate being due to man made gases - then it is incumbent from a scientific point of view to eliminate all other potential natural causes. This is why some climate advocates went so strong on trying to undermine earlier warming periods claiming they were not warmer than now (they were) or that they were only regional (they were not). It was actually this that got my back up more than anything.
In the end I do not consider this a fight worth spending too much time on as I think the end result will probably be a better world than the one we have now. It doesn't change the underlying science which, as I say, is dodgy but getting the right result for the wrong reasons is not the worst outcome in the world.
Of course an addendum to this is that to get that right result we do need to do it in the right way and at the moment I fear that we are not doing that. We are driven too much by the claim we need to do something rather than the need to do the right thing. Hence the issues with energy shortages, chopping down rainforests for biofuels and letting a 17 year old brat drive the narrative. (I threw that last one in to stir up a bit of controversy
Westminster Voting Intention:
CON: 39% (-4)
LAB: 34% (+4)
LDM: 8% (-3)
GRN: 8% (+2)
SNP: 5% (+1)
RFM: 2% (-1)
Fieldwork 14-18 Oct
Changes w/ 23-27 Sep
https://www.kantarpublic.com/inspiration/thought-leadership/two-in-five-britons-report-that-their-household-income-has-fallen-behind-the-cost-of-living
Ditto Theresa May, I suppose. Who knows - in charge of a majority, she may have come across as entirely competent and in command.
Obviously there will be more cases coming in over the next few days as the systems catch up but I'm not sure this will push this Tuesday higher than 47k.
Monday was 5k higher than the previous week, though, so there's something a bit odd going on. It might still be down to the testing centre failure.
It depends upon what your priorities are? My priority is ASAP ensuring all restrictions are lifted.
The UK was the first nation in Europe to do so (AFAIK) and the first major nation on the planet to have a vaccine rollout. That makes it the best response to the pandemic on the continent and second to Israel the best response to the pandemic on the planet.
Could other leaders have done better? I think Thatcher would have yes. But I don't think anyone else would have, just as no other contemporary leader has done better other than (much as I loathe him) Netanyahu.
Who of the previous leaders would have lifted restrictions faster than Boris? Any of them? Maybe Thatcher, other than that no I don't think so. Any of my rogue's gallery (Brown, May and Blair) I think we'd still be under restrictions today just as most continental Europeans as well as New Zealanders etc still are. Blair would have abused the opportunity set us up for restrictions for years to come too.
If the UK had been quicker to close the borders at the beginning of the pandemic, or when it was incredibly obvious that there was a big problem in India with Delta, the number of cases seeded could have been dramatically lower.
Likewise, there was too much prevarication over vaccinating teenagers and over booster shots.
It's not that decisions were wrong - it was that they made too slowly. I think both Blair and Thatcher were more sure of themselves (and Cameron was too), and would have made faster decisions. And those faster decisions would have meant less authoritarian decisions were needed.
He stole a can of beer.
https://twitter.com/drogoberor/status/1451151239266324481
Scientists on both sides lied their heads off, to great applause. When those clowns at UEA were rumbled there.was a poster here saying effectively Praise them, their very lies are.truer than our truths.
I was persuaded not to defect to the LibDems in 2003. In hindsight that was a mistake.