Wrt the scientist. The USA can be supremely Puritan at times. Surprising "interventions" from concerned folk when you order a third glass of wine. Relationships at work simply aren't treated the same as here. They are generally frowned upon, if not specifically outlawed completely. You can't argue it was consensual between colleagues. That isn't looked on favourably either. It's impossible to view it through our cultural lens, where meeting at work is one of the leading ways to form a relationship. America is simply a different society to the UK (and Europe) in this regard. It has nothing to do with "woke" whatsoever.
Even in Britain, it is common to have rules limiting relationships between different staff levels, and not just because of concerns about power being abused. If you work for a large company, have a look at your own guidelines.
Indeed. But, from my experience, at least, relationships between those at the same level were viewed very differently to here. It is almost as if work time belongs solely to your employer. Any time spent on anything whatsoever, other than 100% laser-focused effort on maximising their profits is immoral. It's Puritanism. And Capitalism. In an ironic mating.
anyone know how to find long term(ish) bills for debate in Parliament. Looked the the parliament website but can only find listings for the next three weeks?
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
Crace in the Guardian has commented how well Partygate has worked out for Johnson. Investigated and penalised for the most minor of offences which handily brought down Sunak, and not even investigated for the more egregious breach events he attended.
Gray would have seen Johnson off in January, but Met intervention (not investigation) into Johnson's conduct has neutralised that problem five months later.
Even better, the LOTO has been investigated and will have to resign on the issuing of an FPN.
Johnson either has friends in high places or he has sold his soul to the Devil 😈. Probably both.
Would the Devil pay anything for Johnson's soul?
It must look like a shrivelled and rancid walnut, giving off a strange odour.
Maybe the Devil is female. Johnson is catnip to the female of a species.
Cats don't get thoroughly fed up of catnip in a very short time, though.
I would add one thing. It wasn’t just the UK that overturned centuries of liberty and due process in a trice. The whole world has done it
So I see it more as a human failure rather than a specific British political failure. Tho if we want to stop it ever happening again, we need British political solutions
A little time ago, I saw an academic paper on the varying responses to COVID. The authors were of the Beat-On-Sweden persuasion. One of their metrics was that, horrifyingly to the authors, Sweden had used voluntary rules rather than legal enforcement of COVID rules.
One thing they didn't look at was the effectiveness of voluntary advice vs legal rules. How much (if anything) did we gain by making lockdown a legal matter?
NOTE: The header breaks Section 14.3.1.2 (Schedule 23) of the Amended Regulations For PB Headers On Legal Matters (2021). There is no inclusion of the phrases "Lessons Will Be Learned" or "For The Greater Good".
People blather on when discussing (edit!) Sweden - but what about Norway/Denmark, etc. And indeed vs those countries Sweden did "badly" (there is an article to be discussed as to the damage down the line they avoided). But vs all of Europe Sweden did pretty well and certainly much better than many.
Absolutely agreed. In essence, the Nordic group of countries diverged from others, so we can learn from their baseline.
Biggest takeaways seem to be: - Smaller average household size (the hardest transmission to block is within-household. Smaller household sizes give a lower route for this). We need more housing, with smaller sizes (ie 1-2 bedroom stuff rather than 4-5 bedroom stuff) and to make it easier to disperse down (better support for single-parent families) - Stronger adherence to taking time of work sick (better sick pay provisions) - Stronger adherence to voluntary rules promulgated by the Government. No idea how we could do this one, though.
Those areas give some possibilities for a step-change down to the Nordic baseline. As you say, Sweden did do considerably worse than the other Nordic countries, but the lower baseline gave the option for the more voluntary route to work and just get R below 1.
Another great @Cyclefree header, and very little to take issue with in what it contains.
It's worth pointing out, however, what it doesn't contain - any comment on why the government could implement these disastrous restrictions on our freedoms - and that was because both the official opposion and the media demanded not only whatever we ended up with, but more. I fear that if the same thing happens again, the same mistakes will be made because they will be able to dismiss the small number of people opposed to them as nutters, just like they did last time.
And for that we, sadly but necessarily, have to look at the opinion polls. All hugely in favour of restrictions. Wasn't there one wherein around 10% of people wanted nightclubs to remain closed forever.
And PB contained some of the most vocal lockdown cheerleaders.
It was a vicious cycle where most normal people, who only get their news from the TV and radio, were reacting to the scaremongering the news was putting out, and with SKS continuing to demand more and harder restrictions for longer, they never had to put out an opposing view (other than, perhaps, to ridicule it).
A little time ago, I saw an academic paper on the varying responses to COVID. The authors were of the Beat-On-Sweden persuasion. One of their metrics was that, horrifyingly to the authors, Sweden had used voluntary rules rather than legal enforcement of COVID rules.
One thing they didn't look at was the effectiveness of voluntary advice vs legal rules. How much (if anything) did we gain by making lockdown a legal matter?
NOTE: The header breaks Section 14.3.1.2 (Schedule 23) of the Amended Regulations For PB Headers On Legal Matters (2021). There is no inclusion of the phrases "Lessons Will Be Learned" or "For The Greater Good".
People blather on when discussing (edit!) Sweden - but what about Norway/Denmark, etc. And indeed vs those countries Sweden did "badly" (there is an article to be discussed as to the damage down the line they avoided). But vs all of Europe Sweden did pretty well and certainly much better than many.
Absolutely agreed. In essence, the Nordic group of countries diverged from others, so we can learn from their baseline.
Biggest takeaways seem to be: - Smaller average household size (the hardest transmission to block is within-household. Smaller household sizes give a lower route for this). We need more housing, with smaller sizes (ie 1-2 bedroom stuff rather than 4-5 bedroom stuff) and to make it easier to disperse down (better support for single-parent families) - Stronger adherence to taking time of work sick (better sick pay provisions) - Stronger adherence to voluntary rules promulgated by the Government. No idea how we could do this one, though.
Those areas give some possibilities for a step-change down to the Nordic baseline. As you say, Sweden did do considerably worse than the other Nordic countries, but the lower baseline gave the option for the more voluntary route to work and just get R below 1.
Sweden only did "worse" if you prioritise COVID above everything else and crowd everything else out.
If you prioritise freedom and liberty and respect for personal decision making then Sweden did better. Far, far better.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
This is an interesting read. A scientist who has been destroyed by having a consensual sexual relationship, which was not reported to his employer. Was then consequently "Weinstin'ed out of science".
People want to believe these things are more complicated than they seem. That may well be true. But to my mind this is not progress at all - It as a tribal witch hunt, with revolutionary justice being dispatched through kangaroo courts - all masquerading as due process.
If the Republicans can sort themselves out, they will win in 2024.
Actually, the Sabatini story sounds rather complicated. The article presents only one side of the story (Sabatini's).
I am not sure I would draw any conclusions from the article.
Having sex with your postdoc/grad student will get you fired from your job at most Universities. That has been the case for at least a decade.
(Of course, things were different in the past. Otherwise, we would never have heard of Schrodinger or Feynman.)
Having sex with one’s postdoc, i.e. one staff member in a relationship with another, wouldn’t get you fired. A line manager in a relationship with whom they line manage raises HR concerns, but is not forbidden. One would, I presume, be expected to report the relationship up the chain of command and arrange new line management arrangements. A relationship with one’s student is a different matter.
Your postdoc is someone you hired. You will write letters of recommendation for. You will have an enormous influence over his/her future job prospects. You have a mentoring and nurturing role.
You will be fired if you have sex with someone for whom you have professional responsibility.
It is not entirely clear from the Sabatini article, but it seems as though this is what probably happened. She knew him as a grad student, she was hired by him (or encouraged by him to come to his lab as a postdoc). Remember, we just have Sabatini's version of events.
Sex with another academic, another staff member, is slightly different.
However, I personally have never slept with an academic. I recommend this course of action to everyone.
I maybe misread the story but I thought she was an independent academic, not in his lab?
I think different institutions will differ to some extent in this. A post doc is staff and potentially fair game, but it would need to be declared to the institution. We have this stipulation about relationships with colleagues here. Its quite common to have married academics, as I am sure you know. Its also common that one will be more senior than the other, so their is always a chance of undue influence on careers. the most important thing is openness to the employer. This can in some ways feel intrusive, but it is to protect you and them.
anyone know how to find long term(ish) bills for debate in Parliament. Looked the the parliament website but can only find listings for the next three weeks?
If you're looking for something that was in the Queen's Speech but isn't listed at https://bills.parliament.uk/, I don't think you'll find it - until a bill is intorduced and gets its first reading it won't be online as it's only a theoretical bill.
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
The problem with your suggestion here is that in early 2020 the government had a pandemic plan, and when the pandemic hit, the media stampeded them into a panic and the first thing they did was throw it in the bin.
Remeber the daily assault on a Government minister on GMTV/SKY on how the lockdown measures were not going far enough and how the Government was killing people, all of which were cheered on this site. How many retweets did Scott do on this?
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
In the UK, wave 1 of Covid had peaked before lockdown.
A little time ago, I saw an academic paper on the varying responses to COVID. The authors were of the Beat-On-Sweden persuasion. One of their metrics was that, horrifyingly to the authors, Sweden had used voluntary rules rather than legal enforcement of COVID rules.
One thing they didn't look at was the effectiveness of voluntary advice vs legal rules. How much (if anything) did we gain by making lockdown a legal matter?
NOTE: The header breaks Section 14.3.1.2 (Schedule 23) of the Amended Regulations For PB Headers On Legal Matters (2021). There is no inclusion of the phrases "Lessons Will Be Learned" or "For The Greater Good".
People blather on when discussing (edit!) Sweden - but what about Norway/Denmark, etc. And indeed vs those countries Sweden did "badly" (there is an article to be discussed as to the damage down the line they avoided). But vs all of Europe Sweden did pretty well and certainly much better than many.
Absolutely agreed. In essence, the Nordic group of countries diverged from others, so we can learn from their baseline.
Biggest takeaways seem to be: - Smaller average household size (the hardest transmission to block is within-household. Smaller household sizes give a lower route for this). We need more housing, with smaller sizes (ie 1-2 bedroom stuff rather than 4-5 bedroom stuff) and to make it easier to disperse down (better support for single-parent families) - Stronger adherence to taking time of work sick (better sick pay provisions) - Stronger adherence to voluntary rules promulgated by the Government. No idea how we could do this one, though.
Those areas give some possibilities for a step-change down to the Nordic baseline. As you say, Sweden did do considerably worse than the other Nordic countries, but the lower baseline gave the option for the more voluntary route to work and just get R below 1.
Point 2, one benefit from the last two years has been a decrease in presenteeism and a more general acceptance that if you're ill, you shouldn't be at work.
Point 3 should be fine, voluntary rules probably were enough for the first wave to peak and defintely were enough for the two Omicron waves to peak.
A little time ago, I saw an academic paper on the varying responses to COVID. The authors were of the Beat-On-Sweden persuasion. One of their metrics was that, horrifyingly to the authors, Sweden had used voluntary rules rather than legal enforcement of COVID rules.
One thing they didn't look at was the effectiveness of voluntary advice vs legal rules. How much (if anything) did we gain by making lockdown a legal matter?
NOTE: The header breaks Section 14.3.1.2 (Schedule 23) of the Amended Regulations For PB Headers On Legal Matters (2021). There is no inclusion of the phrases "Lessons Will Be Learned" or "For The Greater Good".
People blather on when discussing (edit!) Sweden - but what about Norway/Denmark, etc. And indeed vs those countries Sweden did "badly" (there is an article to be discussed as to the damage down the line they avoided). But vs all of Europe Sweden did pretty well and certainly much better than many.
Absolutely agreed. In essence, the Nordic group of countries diverged from others, so we can learn from their baseline.
Biggest takeaways seem to be: - Smaller average household size (the hardest transmission to block is within-household. Smaller household sizes give a lower route for this). We need more housing, with smaller sizes (ie 1-2 bedroom stuff rather than 4-5 bedroom stuff) and to make it easier to disperse down (better support for single-parent families) - Stronger adherence to taking time of work sick (better sick pay provisions) - Stronger adherence to voluntary rules promulgated by the Government. No idea how we could do this one, though.
Those areas give some possibilities for a step-change down to the Nordic baseline. As you say, Sweden did do considerably worse than the other Nordic countries, but the lower baseline gave the option for the more voluntary route to work and just get R below 1.
Key difference: Nordic people are not on average arseholes. English people are. We are the country that brought you Hillsborough where 97 people were not crushed to death by the sheer weight of senior police officers and the Sun newspaper but by the sheer weight of arseholes. What was the Swedish Hillsborough?
A little time ago, I saw an academic paper on the varying responses to COVID. The authors were of the Beat-On-Sweden persuasion. One of their metrics was that, horrifyingly to the authors, Sweden had used voluntary rules rather than legal enforcement of COVID rules.
One thing they didn't look at was the effectiveness of voluntary advice vs legal rules. How much (if anything) did we gain by making lockdown a legal matter?
NOTE: The header breaks Section 14.3.1.2 (Schedule 23) of the Amended Regulations For PB Headers On Legal Matters (2021). There is no inclusion of the phrases "Lessons Will Be Learned" or "For The Greater Good".
People blather on when discussing (edit!) Sweden - but what about Norway/Denmark, etc. And indeed vs those countries Sweden did "badly" (there is an article to be discussed as to the damage down the line they avoided). But vs all of Europe Sweden did pretty well and certainly much better than many.
Absolutely agreed. In essence, the Nordic group of countries diverged from others, so we can learn from their baseline.
Biggest takeaways seem to be: - Smaller average household size (the hardest transmission to block is within-household. Smaller household sizes give a lower route for this). We need more housing, with smaller sizes (ie 1-2 bedroom stuff rather than 4-5 bedroom stuff) and to make it easier to disperse down (better support for single-parent families) - Stronger adherence to taking time of work sick (better sick pay provisions) - Stronger adherence to voluntary rules promulgated by the Government. No idea how we could do this one, though.
Those areas give some possibilities for a step-change down to the Nordic baseline. As you say, Sweden did do considerably worse than the other Nordic countries, but the lower baseline gave the option for the more voluntary route to work and just get R below 1.
Sweden only did "worse" if you prioritise COVID above everything else and crowd everything else out.
If you prioritise freedom and liberty and respect for personal decision making then Sweden did better. Far, far better.
As Tegnell kept saying: 'judge my decisions in a year or two, not now'.
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
In the UK, wave 1 of Covid had peaked before lockdown.
Another great @Cyclefree header, and very little to take issue with in what it contains.
It's worth pointing out, however, what it doesn't contain - any comment on why the government could implement these disastrous restrictions on our freedoms - and that was because both the official opposion and the media demanded not only whatever we ended up with, but more. I fear that if the same thing happens again, the same mistakes will be made because they will be able to dismiss the small number of people opposed to them as nutters, just like they did last time.
And for that we, sadly but necessarily, have to look at the opinion polls. All hugely in favour of restrictions. Wasn't there one wherein around 10% of people wanted nightclubs to remain closed forever.
And PB contained some of the most vocal lockdown cheerleaders.
It was a vicious cycle where most normal people, who only get their news from the TV and radio, were reacting to the scaremongering the news was putting out, and with SKS continuing to demand more and harder restrictions for longer, they never had to put out an opposing view (other than, perhaps, to ridicule it).
But you had the same patterns in almost every country. Only a small minority consistently opposed the shutdown of society. You can't blame Starmer for Switzerland or Slovakia.
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
In the UK, wave 1 of Covid had peaked before lockdown.
Citation ( and a mountain of salt) required.
Peak deaths was the 8th April 2020, 3 weeks back from there is before lockdown
Can’t see odds on betfair for this. But I am surprised no one has tipped Andy Street as next PM.
I work on the basis that Johnson now stays in post. Street’s term as Mayor finishes the likely year of the next general. BJ has in my view a higher chance of winning that election than most here credit him with.
It would be an obvious career step for Andy Street to enter Parliament. He would be immediately appointed to Cabinet. And would become the obvious successor.
Edit: equally if BoJo loses the election, the Tories may go for a new broom in opposition and choose the newly elected Street as leader.
anyone know how to find long term(ish) bills for debate in Parliament. Looked the the parliament website but can only find listings for the next three weeks?
If you're looking for something that was in the Queen's Speech but isn't listed at https://bills.parliament.uk/, I don't think you'll find it - until a bill is intorduced and gets its first reading it won't be online as it's only a theoretical bill.
thanks - its more for departmental spending approvals - Estimates?
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
Not at all. At some point you have to ask about the quid pro quo. They indulged in them because they worried that the NHS would be overwhelmed and that would not be a good look for any government. And even if they did it from the goodness of their hearts because of public safety I would still question whether such measures were appropriate in terms of the restrictions on liberty.
OK - March 2020 everyone was panicking (not those at Cheltenham or on the Central Line but I digress) and I get that with the pictures from Northern Italy the government went into panic mode also. It was the unknown and a national lockdown was an understandable circuit break. Which is where @Cyclefree's article comes in. Because it was introduced with such cavalier disregard for due process that actually there can be questions asked about its validity as a response given the huge sacrifices in liberty, process and executive power that it entailed.
Dare I say that X thousand deaths were worth the principle of liberty (trying not to over-dramatise)? Perhaps.
I still maintain the view that incentivising vaccination through the tax & benefits system would have been the way to do it.
Most people want to do the right thing, the children's ward midwives and nurses were particularly scathing about the effects of lockdown (Decreased clinic hours and so forth) on neonatal health.
& the big message from the state should have been one of... support... ' If you're a vulnerable individual we'll assist you to shield'.
Another great @Cyclefree header, and very little to take issue with in what it contains.
It's worth pointing out, however, what it doesn't contain - any comment on why the government could implement these disastrous restrictions on our freedoms - and that was because both the official opposion and the media demanded not only whatever we ended up with, but more. I fear that if the same thing happens again, the same mistakes will be made because they will be able to dismiss the small number of people opposed to them as nutters, just like they did last time.
And for that we, sadly but necessarily, have to look at the opinion polls. All hugely in favour of restrictions. Wasn't there one wherein around 10% of people wanted nightclubs to remain closed forever.
And PB contained some of the most vocal lockdown cheerleaders.
It was a vicious cycle where most normal people, who only get their news from the TV and radio, were reacting to the scaremongering the news was putting out, and with SKS continuing to demand more and harder restrictions for longer, they never had to put out an opposing view (other than, perhaps, to ridicule it).
But you had the same patterns in almost every country. Only a small minority consistently opposed the shutdown of society. You can't blame Starmer for Switzerland or Slovakia.
Is of course a good point (and one that @Leon made also).
But where O where was our legendary we stand alone we happy breed white cliffs of Dover bloody-mindedness when we needed it most.
I still maintain the view that incentivising vaccination through the tax & benefits system would have been the way to do it.
Most people want to do the right thing, the children's ward midwives and nurses were particularly scathing about the effects of lockdown (Decreased clinic hours and so forth) on neonatal health.
& the big message from the state should have been one of... support... ' If you're a vulnerable individual we'll assist you to shield'.
In act, scrap the whole tax/benefits system mucking around for vaccinations.
anyone know how to find long term(ish) bills for debate in Parliament. Looked the the parliament website but can only find listings for the next three weeks?
If you're looking for something that was in the Queen's Speech but isn't listed at https://bills.parliament.uk/, I don't think you'll find it - until a bill is intorduced and gets its first reading it won't be online as it's only a theoretical bill.
thanks - its more for departmental spending approvals - Estimates?
Estimates are done immediately after the Budget, IIRC?
I still maintain the view that incentivising vaccination through the tax & benefits system would have been the way to do it.
Most people want to do the right thing, the children's ward midwives and nurses were particularly scathing about the effects of lockdown (Decreased clinic hours and so forth) on neonatal health.
& the big message from the state should have been one of... support... ' If you're a vulnerable individual we'll assist you to shield'.
In act, scrap the whole tax/benefits system mucking around for vaccinations.
£100 straight cash for each vaccination, simples.
As an economist friend of mine said - same with isolation. Pay people 2x, 3x what they would otherwise be earning. Jeez the govt spunked enough money up the wall and this might have helped achieve their aim of more effective isolation.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
The government indulged in them because they didn't want to take the risk of being blamed for the sainted NHS falling over.
I still maintain the view that incentivising vaccination through the tax & benefits system would have been the way to do it.
Most people want to do the right thing, the children's ward midwives and nurses were particularly scathing about the effects of lockdown (Decreased clinic hours and so forth) on neonatal health.
& the big message from the state should have been one of... support... ' If you're a vulnerable individual we'll assist you to shield'.
In act, scrap the whole tax/benefits system mucking around for vaccinations.
£100 straight cash for each vaccination, simples.
You'll end up with some folk having more pricks than a hedgehog though....
I still maintain the view that incentivising vaccination through the tax & benefits system would have been the way to do it.
Most people want to do the right thing, the children's ward midwives and nurses were particularly scathing about the effects of lockdown (Decreased clinic hours and so forth) on neonatal health.
& the big message from the state should have been one of... support... ' If you're a vulnerable individual we'll assist you to shield'.
In act, scrap the whole tax/benefits system mucking around for vaccinations.
£100 straight cash for each vaccination, simples.
As an economist friend of mine said - same with isolation. Pay people 2x, 3x what they would otherwise be earning. Jeez the govt spunked enough money up the wall and this might have helped achieve their aim of more effective isolation.
Yeah Rishi's scheme turned into a game of 'Who had the brass neck to set up a company, claim, buy a new motor then wind up'.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
Not at all. At some point you have to ask about the quid pro quo. They indulged in them because they worried that the NHS would be overwhelmed and that would not be a good look for any government. And even if they did it from the goodness of their hearts because of public safety I would still question whether such measures were appropriate in terms of the restrictions on liberty.
OK - March 2020 everyone was panicking (not those at Cheltenham or on the Central Line but I digress) and I get that with the pictures from Northern Italy the government went into panic mode also. It was the unknown and a national lockdown was an understandable circuit break. Which is where @Cyclefree's article comes in. Because it was introduced with such cavalier disregard for due process that actually there can be questions asked about its validity as a response given the huge sacrifices in liberty, process and executive power that it entailed.
Dare I say that X thousand deaths were worth the principle of liberty (trying not to over-dramatise)? Perhaps.
The first lockdown - of three weeks - was understandable in the circumstances, the governement probably felt politically it had no choice, and they probably were right to think that.
But they should have spent part of every day of those three weeks analysing whether it had actually been necessary. By the end of the three weeks it was looking quite likely, to people looking at the actual data, that it probably hadn't been - and by the end of six weeks it was blindingly obvious that it was being counter-productive.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
Not at all. At some point you have to ask about the quid pro quo. They indulged in them because they worried that the NHS would be overwhelmed and that would not be a good look for any government. And even if they did it from the goodness of their hearts because of public safety I would still question whether such measures were appropriate in terms of the restrictions on liberty.
OK - March 2020 everyone was panicking (not those at Cheltenham or on the Central Line but I digress) and I get that with the pictures from Northern Italy the government went into panic mode also. It was the unknown and a national lockdown was an understandable circuit break. Which is where @Cyclefree's article comes in. Because it was introduced with such cavalier disregard for due process that actually there can be questions asked about its validity as a response given the huge sacrifices in liberty, process and executive power that it entailed.
Dare I say that X thousand deaths were worth the principle of liberty (trying not to over-dramatise)? Perhaps.
Perhaps the lack of due process, despite advance warning of the pandemic from Italy and elsewhere, is that the Prime Minister thinks he is above law and custom, and his chief of staff thought he should be.
"The US National Federation of Independent Business index is a little frightening. The numbers expecting the economy to improve have fallen to the lowest ever recorded, lower than the Lehman crisis and lower than the Volcker squeeze in the 1980."
I still maintain the view that incentivising vaccination through the tax & benefits system would have been the way to do it.
Most people want to do the right thing, the children's ward midwives and nurses were particularly scathing about the effects of lockdown (Decreased clinic hours and so forth) on neonatal health.
& the big message from the state should have been one of... support... ' If you're a vulnerable individual we'll assist you to shield'.
In act, scrap the whole tax/benefits system mucking around for vaccinations.
£100 straight cash for each vaccination, simples.
You'll end up with some folk having more pricks than a hedgehog though....
Unlikely to be more pricks than the Cabinet though ...
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
In the UK, wave 1 of Covid had peaked before lockdown.
Those analyses are based on hospitalisations/deaths and are very limited if - as likely - there was a differential behaviour response between e.g. those of working age and those older (who had different options for reducing risk, depending on need or not to go into offices for work, and different baseline risk of hospitalisation and death). In short, those most likely to end up in hospital were likely more voluntarily locked down earlier than the general population.
It's hard to be absolutely certain, before the era of mass testing. However, the trends in cases and hospitalisations for the later peaks are informative on the relationship with lockdown. You need to have a good argument for why there should be a different relationship for the first wave.
I still maintain the view that incentivising vaccination through the tax & benefits system would have been the way to do it.
Most people want to do the right thing, the children's ward midwives and nurses were particularly scathing about the effects of lockdown (Decreased clinic hours and so forth) on neonatal health.
& the big message from the state should have been one of... support... ' If you're a vulnerable individual we'll assist you to shield'.
In act, scrap the whole tax/benefits system mucking around for vaccinations.
£100 straight cash for each vaccination, simples.
As an economist friend of mine said - same with isolation. Pay people 2x, 3x what they would otherwise be earning. Jeez the govt spunked enough money up the wall and this might have helped achieve their aim of more effective isolation.
Yeah Rishi's scheme turned into a game of 'Who had the brass neck to set up a company, claim, buy a new motor then wind up'.
There wasn't even a test that a firm had to have been in existence on say 1st March 2020 before it all hit?
Can’t see odds on betfair for this. But I am surprised no one has tipped Andy Street as next PM.
I work on the basis that Johnson now stays in post. Street’s term as Mayor finishes the likely year of the next general. BJ has in my view a higher chance of winning that election than most here credit him with.
It would be an obvious career step for Andy Street to enter Parliament. He would be immediately appointed to Cabinet. And would become the obvious successor.
Edit: equally if BoJo loses the election, the Tories may go for a new broom in opposition and choose the newly elected Street as leader.
Interesting suggestion, although the time value of money becomes important with inflation at 9%.
Have we any idea that he might be interested in a run for Parliament aged 60, as opposed to retiring to a nice island somewhere with a large pension?
Edit: if BJ loses the election, then Street can’t possibly be next PM.
I still maintain the view that incentivising vaccination through the tax & benefits system would have been the way to do it.
Most people want to do the right thing, the children's ward midwives and nurses were particularly scathing about the effects of lockdown (Decreased clinic hours and so forth) on neonatal health.
& the big message from the state should have been one of... support... ' If you're a vulnerable individual we'll assist you to shield'.
In act, scrap the whole tax/benefits system mucking around for vaccinations.
£100 straight cash for each vaccination, simples.
You'll end up with some folk having more pricks than a hedgehog though....
I'm sure some people would have borrowed antivaxxers phones and headed in eleven times. But it'd be relatively few - compare the gain from that to a single fraudulent bounceback loan claim. Small beer. The £100 cash would have circulated round the economy too
Can’t see odds on betfair for this. But I am surprised no one has tipped Andy Street as next PM.
I work on the basis that Johnson now stays in post. Street’s term as Mayor finishes the likely year of the next general. BJ has in my view a higher chance of winning that election than most here credit him with.
It would be an obvious career step for Andy Street to enter Parliament. He would be immediately appointed to Cabinet. And would become the obvious successor.
Edit: equally if BoJo loses the election, the Tories may go for a new broom in opposition and choose the newly elected Street as leader.
I still maintain the view that incentivising vaccination through the tax & benefits system would have been the way to do it.
Most people want to do the right thing, the children's ward midwives and nurses were particularly scathing about the effects of lockdown (Decreased clinic hours and so forth) on neonatal health.
& the big message from the state should have been one of... support... ' If you're a vulnerable individual we'll assist you to shield'.
In act, scrap the whole tax/benefits system mucking around for vaccinations.
£100 straight cash for each vaccination, simples.
As an economist friend of mine said - same with isolation. Pay people 2x, 3x what they would otherwise be earning. Jeez the govt spunked enough money up the wall and this might have helped achieve their aim of more effective isolation.
Yeah Rishi's scheme turned into a game of 'Who had the brass neck to set up a company, claim, buy a new motor then wind up'.
I am still salty that nobody on here told me how to do it at the time.
Can’t see odds on betfair for this. But I am surprised no one has tipped Andy Street as next PM.
I work on the basis that Johnson now stays in post. Street’s term as Mayor finishes the likely year of the next general. BJ has in my view a higher chance of winning that election than most here credit him with.
It would be an obvious career step for Andy Street to enter Parliament. He would be immediately appointed to Cabinet. And would become the obvious successor.
Edit: equally if BoJo loses the election, the Tories may go for a new broom in opposition and choose the newly elected Street as leader.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
The government indulged in them because they didn't want to take the risk of being blamed for the sainted NHS falling over.
That’s what happens, when one of the worst healthcare systems in the OECD becomes a national religion.
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
The problem with your suggestion here is that in early 2020 the government had a pandemic plan, and when the pandemic hit, the media stampeded them into a panic and the first thing they did was throw it in the bin.
The government had a flu plan, which was largely based around hand washing and avoiding contaminated surfaces etc. Covid wasn't flu. We'll need a range of plans for pathogens with different spread vectors. We might still be caught out, of course, by something novel. But - with hindsight - it was a mistake to focus so much on flu, understandable as that was given the bird and swine-flu events of the preceding years.
We know more now - not only on another type of pathogen, but also on human behaviour response, the costs of lockdowns on different sections of communities, what kinds of measures were most effective againt Covid (and also infer, from cases of other things, what would be effective against different types of pathogen) which should enable us to do better next time.
Good stuff, Cyclefree. The question I find myself unable to answer is how much forgiveness to allow in the circumstances of an emergency. I remember the head of WHO saying that we cannot allow fear of mistakes to delay needed action. He said it was inevitable that mistakes would be made with actions done in a rush, but that inaction would have worse consequences.
I was doing pandemic work from early February. I remember how chaotic the situation was in March and I am sympathetic about the challenges Government faced. I have no love for this administration, but I am loath to be too critical of actions in that period.
However, my sympathies evaporate as we move through the calendar. By the time Partygate gets going in late May, we should've been in a better situation in terms of responding to scientific advice, making sure the legal framework was on a good footing, and so on.
We also need to plan for next time. Hopefully there won't be a next time for many decades, but there could be. We had some good pandemic plans in place in the areas I work in. It should be possible to have pandemic plans in place for issues like what emergency legislation might be needed.
Today's YouGov should terrify the Tories: Labour 39 Conservative 31 LibDem 12 Green 7 SNP 5 Labour+LibDem+Green on 58% is potential Tory meltdown territory.
I still maintain the view that incentivising vaccination through the tax & benefits system would have been the way to do it.
Most people want to do the right thing, the children's ward midwives and nurses were particularly scathing about the effects of lockdown (Decreased clinic hours and so forth) on neonatal health.
& the big message from the state should have been one of... support... ' If you're a vulnerable individual we'll assist you to shield'.
In act, scrap the whole tax/benefits system mucking around for vaccinations.
£100 straight cash for each vaccination, simples.
As an economist friend of mine said - same with isolation. Pay people 2x, 3x what they would otherwise be earning. Jeez the govt spunked enough money up the wall and this might have helped achieve their aim of more effective isolation.
Yeah Rishi's scheme turned into a game of 'Who had the brass neck to set up a company, claim, buy a new motor then wind up'.
There wasn't even a test that a firm had to have been in existence on say 1st March 2020 before it all hit?
Jeez...
My employer's accountants said someone used their place of business for a claim. They didn't know him from Adam.
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
In the UK, wave 1 of Covid had peaked before lockdown.
Those analyses are based on hospitalisations/deaths and are very limited if - as likely - there was a differential behaviour response between e.g. those of working age and those older (who had different options for reducing risk, depending on need or not to go into offices for work, and different baseline risk of hospitalisation and death). In short, those most likely to end up in hospital were likely more voluntarily locked down earlier than the general population.
It's hard to be absolutely certain, before the era of mass testing. However, the trends in cases and hospitalisations for the later peaks are informative on the relationship with lockdown. You need to have a good argument for why there should be a different relationship for the first wave.
The case for restrictions always seemed to me to revolve around the unspoken assumption that the "activity vs R" graph looked something like this:
If, in fact, it looked more like the below, and voluntary action goes past the first break point, then the case for laws rather than guidance is raher weak.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
Not at all. At some point you have to ask about the quid pro quo. They indulged in them because they worried that the NHS would be overwhelmed and that would not be a good look for any government. And even if they did it from the goodness of their hearts because of public safety I would still question whether such measures were appropriate in terms of the restrictions on liberty.
OK - March 2020 everyone was panicking (not those at Cheltenham or on the Central Line but I digress) and I get that with the pictures from Northern Italy the government went into panic mode also. It was the unknown and a national lockdown was an understandable circuit break. Which is where @Cyclefree's article comes in. Because it was introduced with such cavalier disregard for due process that actually there can be questions asked about its validity as a response given the huge sacrifices in liberty, process and executive power that it entailed.
Dare I say that X thousand deaths were worth the principle of liberty (trying not to over-dramatise)? Perhaps.
Perhaps the lack of due process, despite advance warning of the pandemic from Italy and elsewhere, is that the Prime Minister thinks he is above law and custom, and his chief of staff thought he should be.
Well I yield to no one in my position as foremost believer of Boris to be a useless solipsistic twat but thank the lord he and his evidently libertarian instincts and sheer arrogance were in charge. He still - I think unwillingly - yielded to the 5pm government by Chief Medical Officer but I can't help but thinking that with almost anyone else in charge (saving Steve Baker et al) we would have been in an even worse (ie fewer liberties) position than we were and for longer.
Such a draconian stripping of our civil liberties was a monumental and catastrophic blunder and entirely unnecessary as Sweden showed who got through the pandemic without doing so.
Let those who want to shelter from a virus take actions if they wish to do so, and support them if they wish to do so, but absolutely never again should we strip people of their fundamental freedoms.
You're bloody optimistic. Another disease will come. And your argument is simply refuted by the reflection that your libertarian philosophy would allow Mary Malone to take any catering job and spread typhoid without restriction. Even laissez-faire USA had to do something with her.
Execution of gmt policy over the last feww years, yes, arguable. But not the basic principle.
Thanks for this. Very insightful as always. Just a couple of comments.
It's not only North Korea but all jurisdictions will have the facility to act by government fiat in particular emergency situations. I'm not sure Cyclefree fully acknowledges the significance of this.
Therefore to my mind the big issue is not that of big and arbitrary government - for which like Cyclefree I have no fondness. The use of emergency powers when faced with an unknown degree of disaster is unavoidable. Societal collapse did not happen, ghastly though all this was, and that in part is because government acted by decree.
No, the big issue, which should not be confused with the necessity of government decree in emergency is competence, consistency, moral leadership, lawfulness, the boring stuff of rapid drafting of rules in emergency, and the ability of those with state powers, police etc, to act as grown ups. And, as Cyclefree points out, here the fail was and is epic.
And finally Cyclefree, while hitting the target, does not, SFAICS, offer solutions to how, given the massive limitations of competence in our overgrown state, it could have been done better.
And if Labour knows they are not telling us.
Exactly, with both.
Pretty much the only way to have it on individual responsibility would be to somehow criminalise the effects of poor individual choices on others. As it's impossible to go: "You infected a bunch of people, some of whom died; although you were fine with the disease's effects on you, those to who you passed it on were not."
And that can't happen. You don't leave it to personal choice whether or not you quarantine to things, or whether Mary Malone is allowed to work as a chef. You can't.
The coherence, consistency, and process of the legislation were a ball of chalk, and that's where the Government should have got it right. Yes, it was confusing as to what was happening, but that doesn't justify making inconsistent decrees and incoherent ones.
At the end of the day, we did get huge and unsustainable pressures on the healthcare system. When England has capacity for around 100,000 acute and general patients, runs at 75,000-95,000 by default, and then gets a flood of thousand of extra patients coming in, growing exponentially, you can't sit back and say, "Oh, chaps, please try to avoid spreading this thing."
At the first wave peak, England had 3,000 new patients per day. It peaked at 19,000 covid patients. Fortunately, it wasn't running exceptionally hot to start with and did what it could to reduce other patients (and we'll experience the impacts of that for a while) so it survived. Had we decided to let that 3,000 per day continue doubling a little while longer, it wouldn't have worked out well.
At the second wave peak, we exceeded 4,000 new covid patients every day. The total of covid patients maxed out at just under 35,000, and at a time when the health service runs hottest - at its highest loading. Unsurprisingly, the death rate increased as patients were triaged, other patients had cancellations and reduced care, and we will see the knock-on effects from that for years.
They took huge and draconian steps to stem the spread of the virus that was causing this. I hated that and I'm still convinced that the Tiers system could have been made to work if people had gone for the higher tiers sooner and we hadn't had all the carping about it being unnecessary/false positives/it's dropping/you can't have a second wave/etc.
The limits of individual libertarianism are where and how it affects others. In a pandemic, people AREN'T just making choices for their own health and family health, but for that of everyone "downstream" of themselves. And yes, even if you make the right choices and comply, you may well pass it on, but you'll have done whatever you can to reduce that. Safe drivers can crash, but that doesn't excuse reckless drivers.
Your premise is flawed.
Aware of the taboo of using the word "flu" in any discussion about Covid, nevertheless "influenza and pneumonia" kills thousands of people every year. We didn't impose any restrictions for that. The issue was always hospital capacity. Otherwise we would arrest everyone who had the flu (knowingly or unknowingly and went on the tube in London).
Influenza is very different and we've actually taken it into account with the scaling of the NHS. Covid admissions were different by multiple orders of magnitude. With apologies for the crudity, I put the previous several years influenza admissions (green) on the same scale as the covid admissions (red) up until January.
On the subject of the header, the real problem for democracies is the lure of authoritarianism and the difficulties of holding it off. The measures were popular. Authoritarianism goes much further than Covid rules. As @Cyclefree points out, it has successfully encroached in to other areas like the policing of protest. The next frontier will be 'protection from harrassment', with calls going around to make things like staring at people illegal.
We saw this all too clearly in Scotland where Nicola consistently sought to go that little bit further for that little bit longer to show how "responsible" she was and how much she cared. I lamented on many occasions that this was wildly popular. Indeed, slightly contrary to @Cyclefree's piece most of the criticism at the time was focused on Boris's "reckless" behaviour and instinctive desire to limit such regulations. The stick he got for "prematurely" ending the restrictions was extreme. He was quite brave to do what he did then and on earlier occasions such as Christmas.
She didn't go further/longer so much as was more coherent and consistent, if you recall - particularly around that on/off Christmas episode, as we discussed at the time.
Wasn't it after BJ's 'bravery' in loosening restrictions over Xmas 2020 that there was a massive spike in UK Covid deaths?
I think that related to trying to open up to an extent to keep society going at the same time as worse weather (winter - predictable) and the alpha variant (the Johnson Variant or the Kent Variant) - less predictable.
Hindsight is great and with hindsight the best thing we could have done would have been to keep as locked down as possible until all the over 50's had had their jabs, but we didn't know for sure until November 2020 that we would have such powerful vaccinations.
I still maintain the view that incentivising vaccination through the tax & benefits system would have been the way to do it.
Most people want to do the right thing, the children's ward midwives and nurses were particularly scathing about the effects of lockdown (Decreased clinic hours and so forth) on neonatal health.
& the big message from the state should have been one of... support... ' If you're a vulnerable individual we'll assist you to shield'.
In act, scrap the whole tax/benefits system mucking around for vaccinations.
£100 straight cash for each vaccination, simples.
As an economist friend of mine said - same with isolation. Pay people 2x, 3x what they would otherwise be earning. Jeez the govt spunked enough money up the wall and this might have helped achieve their aim of more effective isolation.
Yeah Rishi's scheme turned into a game of 'Who had the brass neck to set up a company, claim, buy a new motor then wind up'.
There wasn't even a test that a firm had to have been in existence on say 1st March 2020 before it all hit?
Jeez...
Funnily enough, someone I know runs a company which was set up before then but wasn't able to start trading as scheduled (in April 2020), and she was knocked back for any form of government support because she couldn't demonstrate a trading history before covid.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
The problem with your suggestion here is that in early 2020 the government had a pandemic plan, and when the pandemic hit, the media stampeded them into a panic and the first thing they did was throw it in the bin.
They had an influenza pandemic plan, which they tried to follow at first, but it turned out that covid spread faster, differently, and with a pronounced pre-symptomatic period, so a plan for dealing with a different disease was binned.
Comparing the Met's report with Sue Gray (if we ever see it) could be 'interesting'!
Will be getting redacted / revised as we speak.
The police won’t tell her, even off the record, who they fined. And she is being told it cannot contain the photo’s - just vague drawings to set a picture of what a made up party looks like.
I still maintain the view that incentivising vaccination through the tax & benefits system would have been the way to do it.
Most people want to do the right thing, the children's ward midwives and nurses were particularly scathing about the effects of lockdown (Decreased clinic hours and so forth) on neonatal health.
& the big message from the state should have been one of... support... ' If you're a vulnerable individual we'll assist you to shield'.
In act, scrap the whole tax/benefits system mucking around for vaccinations.
£100 straight cash for each vaccination, simples.
As an economist friend of mine said - same with isolation. Pay people 2x, 3x what they would otherwise be earning. Jeez the govt spunked enough money up the wall and this might have helped achieve their aim of more effective isolation.
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
In the UK, wave 1 of Covid had peaked before lockdown.
Those analyses are based on hospitalisations/deaths and are very limited if - as likely - there was a differential behaviour response between e.g. those of working age and those older (who had different options for reducing risk, depending on need or not to go into offices for work, and different baseline risk of hospitalisation and death). In short, those most likely to end up in hospital were likely more voluntarily locked down earlier than the general population.
It's hard to be absolutely certain, before the era of mass testing. However, the trends in cases and hospitalisations for the later peaks are informative on the relationship with lockdown. You need to have a good argument for why there should be a different relationship for the first wave.
The case for restrictions always seemed to me to revolve around the unspoken assumption that the "activity vs R" graph looked something like this:
If, in fact, it looked more like the below, and voluntary action goes past the first break point, then the case for laws rather than guidance is raher weak.
You've posted this before and I've agreed that the second graph is closer to reality than the first. Not sure what else you want me to say
I don't think anyone thought the first graph was correct. Although it does depend how you define 'activity'. If activity was some measure of time exposed (taking into account distances say) then you'd probably get a pretty smooth curve between the two, rather than a straight line.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
Not at all. At some point you have to ask about the quid pro quo. They indulged in them because they worried that the NHS would be overwhelmed and that would not be a good look for any government. And even if they did it from the goodness of their hearts because of public safety I would still question whether such measures were appropriate in terms of the restrictions on liberty.
OK - March 2020 everyone was panicking (not those at Cheltenham or on the Central Line but I digress) and I get that with the pictures from Northern Italy the government went into panic mode also. It was the unknown and a national lockdown was an understandable circuit break. Which is where @Cyclefree's article comes in. Because it was introduced with such cavalier disregard for due process that actually there can be questions asked about its validity as a response given the huge sacrifices in liberty, process and executive power that it entailed.
Dare I say that X thousand deaths were worth the principle of liberty (trying not to over-dramatise)? Perhaps.
Perhaps the lack of due process, despite advance warning of the pandemic from Italy and elsewhere, is that the Prime Minister thinks he is above law and custom, and his chief of staff thought he should be.
Well I yield to no one in my position as foremost believer of Boris to be a useless solipsistic twat but thank the lord he and his evidently libertarian instincts and sheer arrogance were in charge. He still - I think unwillingly - yielded to the 5pm government by Chief Medical Officer but I can't help but thinking that with almost anyone else in charge (saving Steve Baker et al) we would have been in an even worse (ie fewer liberties) position than we were and for longer.
Actuallty, I'm not so sure about that. If SKS had been PM, he would have still gone hell-for-leather for restrictions, but Boris as LOTO would not habve been anywhere near so supine.
Can’t see odds on betfair for this. But I am surprised no one has tipped Andy Street as next PM.
I work on the basis that Johnson now stays in post. Street’s term as Mayor finishes the likely year of the next general. BJ has in my view a higher chance of winning that election than most here credit him with.
It would be an obvious career step for Andy Street to enter Parliament. He would be immediately appointed to Cabinet. And would become the obvious successor.
Edit: equally if BoJo loses the election, the Tories may go for a new broom in opposition and choose the newly elected Street as leader.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
Not at all. At some point you have to ask about the quid pro quo. They indulged in them because they worried that the NHS would be overwhelmed and that would not be a good look for any government. And even if they did it from the goodness of their hearts because of public safety I would still question whether such measures were appropriate in terms of the restrictions on liberty.
OK - March 2020 everyone was panicking (not those at Cheltenham or on the Central Line but I digress) and I get that with the pictures from Northern Italy the government went into panic mode also. It was the unknown and a national lockdown was an understandable circuit break. Which is where @Cyclefree's article comes in. Because it was introduced with such cavalier disregard for due process that actually there can be questions asked about its validity as a response given the huge sacrifices in liberty, process and executive power that it entailed.
Dare I say that X thousand deaths were worth the principle of liberty (trying not to over-dramatise)? Perhaps.
Perhaps the lack of due process, despite advance warning of the pandemic from Italy and elsewhere, is that the Prime Minister thinks he is above law and custom, and his chief of staff thought he should be.
Well I yield to no one in my position as foremost believer of Boris to be a useless solipsistic twat but thank the lord he and his evidently libertarian instincts and sheer arrogance were in charge. He still - I think unwillingly - yielded to the 5pm government by Chief Medical Officer but I can't help but thinking that with almost anyone else in charge (saving Steve Baker et al) we would have been in an even worse (ie fewer liberties) position than we were and for longer.
Absolutely no doubt that had Starmer been in charge lockdowns would have been considerably longer and now we would face even more problems with child development, mental health and waiting lists and so on.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
Not at all. At some point you have to ask about the quid pro quo. They indulged in them because they worried that the NHS would be overwhelmed and that would not be a good look for any government. And even if they did it from the goodness of their hearts because of public safety I would still question whether such measures were appropriate in terms of the restrictions on liberty.
OK - March 2020 everyone was panicking (not those at Cheltenham or on the Central Line but I digress) and I get that with the pictures from Northern Italy the government went into panic mode also. It was the unknown and a national lockdown was an understandable circuit break. Which is where @Cyclefree's article comes in. Because it was introduced with such cavalier disregard for due process that actually there can be questions asked about its validity as a response given the huge sacrifices in liberty, process and executive power that it entailed.
Dare I say that X thousand deaths were worth the principle of liberty (trying not to over-dramatise)? Perhaps.
Perhaps the lack of due process, despite advance warning of the pandemic from Italy and elsewhere, is that the Prime Minister thinks he is above law and custom, and his chief of staff thought he should be.
Well I yield to no one in my position as foremost believer of Boris to be a useless solipsistic twat but thank the lord he and his evidently libertarian instincts and sheer arrogance were in charge. He still - I think unwillingly - yielded to the 5pm government by Chief Medical Officer but I can't help but thinking that with almost anyone else in charge (saving Steve Baker et al) we would have been in an even worse (ie fewer liberties) position than we were and for longer.
Indeed. Imagine if we'd still had an authoritarian like Theresa May or Priti Patel in charge?
It would have been far worse with us locking down more like China and keeping lockdown far longer like Continental Europe did.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
The government indulged in them because they didn't want to take the risk of being blamed for the sainted NHS falling over.
And the Scientists told them to, iSage probably still thinks we should be in lockdown now.
Today's YouGov should terrify the Tories: Labour 39 Conservative 31 LibDem 12 Green 7 SNP 5 Labour+LibDem+Green on 58% is potential Tory meltdown territory.
I said it would take another two weeks for the big meltdown to begin. Looks like I may have been wrong.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
Not at all. At some point you have to ask about the quid pro quo. They indulged in them because they worried that the NHS would be overwhelmed and that would not be a good look for any government. And even if they did it from the goodness of their hearts because of public safety I would still question whether such measures were appropriate in terms of the restrictions on liberty.
OK - March 2020 everyone was panicking (not those at Cheltenham or on the Central Line but I digress) and I get that with the pictures from Northern Italy the government went into panic mode also. It was the unknown and a national lockdown was an understandable circuit break. Which is where @Cyclefree's article comes in. Because it was introduced with such cavalier disregard for due process that actually there can be questions asked about its validity as a response given the huge sacrifices in liberty, process and executive power that it entailed.
Dare I say that X thousand deaths were worth the principle of liberty (trying not to over-dramatise)? Perhaps.
Perhaps the lack of due process, despite advance warning of the pandemic from Italy and elsewhere, is that the Prime Minister thinks he is above law and custom, and his chief of staff thought he should be.
Well I yield to no one in my position as foremost believer of Boris to be a useless solipsistic twat but thank the lord he and his evidently libertarian instincts and sheer arrogance were in charge. He still - I think unwillingly - yielded to the 5pm government by Chief Medical Officer but I can't help but thinking that with almost anyone else in charge (saving Steve Baker et al) we would have been in an even worse (ie fewer liberties) position than we were and for longer.
Actuallty, I'm not so sure about that. If SKS had been PM, he would have still gone hell-for-leather for restrictions, but Boris as LOTO would not habve been anywhere near so supine.
You think Johnson would have run against a populist cause to save the NHS that enjoyed something like a 75% approval rating?
Such a draconian stripping of our civil liberties was a monumental and catastrophic blunder and entirely unnecessary as Sweden showed who got through the pandemic without doing so.
Let those who want to shelter from a virus take actions if they wish to do so, and support them if they wish to do so, but absolutely never again should we strip people of their fundamental freedoms.
You're bloody optimistic. Another disease will come. And your argument is simply refuted by the reflection that your libertarian philosophy would allow Mary Malone to take any catering job and spread typhoid without restriction. Even laissez-faire USA had to do something with her.
Execution of gmt policy over the last feww years, yes, arguable. But not the basic principle.
Thanks for this. Very insightful as always. Just a couple of comments.
It's not only North Korea but all jurisdictions will have the facility to act by government fiat in particular emergency situations. I'm not sure Cyclefree fully acknowledges the significance of this.
Therefore to my mind the big issue is not that of big and arbitrary government - for which like Cyclefree I have no fondness. The use of emergency powers when faced with an unknown degree of disaster is unavoidable. Societal collapse did not happen, ghastly though all this was, and that in part is because government acted by decree.
No, the big issue, which should not be confused with the necessity of government decree in emergency is competence, consistency, moral leadership, lawfulness, the boring stuff of rapid drafting of rules in emergency, and the ability of those with state powers, police etc, to act as grown ups. And, as Cyclefree points out, here the fail was and is epic.
And finally Cyclefree, while hitting the target, does not, SFAICS, offer solutions to how, given the massive limitations of competence in our overgrown state, it could have been done better.
And if Labour knows they are not telling us.
Exactly, with both.
Pretty much the only way to have it on individual responsibility would be to somehow criminalise the effects of poor individual choices on others. As it's impossible to go: "You infected a bunch of people, some of whom died; although you were fine with the disease's effects on you, those to who you passed it on were not."
And that can't happen. You don't leave it to personal choice whether or not you quarantine to things, or whether Mary Malone is allowed to work as a chef. You can't.
The coherence, consistency, and process of the legislation were a ball of chalk, and that's where the Government should have got it right. Yes, it was confusing as to what was happening, but that doesn't justify making inconsistent decrees and incoherent ones.
At the end of the day, we did get huge and unsustainable pressures on the healthcare system. When England has capacity for around 100,000 acute and general patients, runs at 75,000-95,000 by default, and then gets a flood of thousand of extra patients coming in, growing exponentially, you can't sit back and say, "Oh, chaps, please try to avoid spreading this thing."
At the first wave peak, England had 3,000 new patients per day. It peaked at 19,000 covid patients. Fortunately, it wasn't running exceptionally hot to start with and did what it could to reduce other patients (and we'll experience the impacts of that for a while) so it survived. Had we decided to let that 3,000 per day continue doubling a little while longer, it wouldn't have worked out well.
At the second wave peak, we exceeded 4,000 new covid patients every day. The total of covid patients maxed out at just under 35,000, and at a time when the health service runs hottest - at its highest loading. Unsurprisingly, the death rate increased as patients were triaged, other patients had cancellations and reduced care, and we will see the knock-on effects from that for years.
They took huge and draconian steps to stem the spread of the virus that was causing this. I hated that and I'm still convinced that the Tiers system could have been made to work if people had gone for the higher tiers sooner and we hadn't had all the carping about it being unnecessary/false positives/it's dropping/you can't have a second wave/etc.
The limits of individual libertarianism are where and how it affects others. In a pandemic, people AREN'T just making choices for their own health and family health, but for that of everyone "downstream" of themselves. And yes, even if you make the right choices and comply, you may well pass it on, but you'll have done whatever you can to reduce that. Safe drivers can crash, but that doesn't excuse reckless drivers.
Your premise is flawed.
Aware of the taboo of using the word "flu" in any discussion about Covid, nevertheless "influenza and pneumonia" kills thousands of people every year. We didn't impose any restrictions for that. The issue was always hospital capacity. Otherwise we would arrest everyone who had the flu (knowingly or unknowingly and went on the tube in London).
I think Tiers was working until alpha came along. After that it collapsed.
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
In the UK, wave 1 of Covid had peaked before lockdown.
Those analyses are based on hospitalisations/deaths and are very limited if - as likely - there was a differential behaviour response between e.g. those of working age and those older (who had different options for reducing risk, depending on need or not to go into offices for work, and different baseline risk of hospitalisation and death). In short, those most likely to end up in hospital were likely more voluntarily locked down earlier than the general population.
It's hard to be absolutely certain, before the era of mass testing. However, the trends in cases and hospitalisations for the later peaks are informative on the relationship with lockdown. You need to have a good argument for why there should be a different relationship for the first wave.
The case for restrictions always seemed to me to revolve around the unspoken assumption that the "activity vs R" graph looked something like this:
If, in fact, it looked more like the below, and voluntary action goes past the first break point, then the case for laws rather than guidance is raher weak.
You've posted this before and I've agreed that the second graph is closer to reality than the first. Not sure what else you want me to say
I don't think anyone thought the first graph was correct. Although it does depend how you define 'activity'. If activity was some measure of time exposed (taking into account distances say) then you'd probably get a pretty smooth curve between the two, rather than a straight line.
"Activity" is a pretty vague term, I agree, but I'm seeing it as some sort of measure of time spent in close contact with non-household members (and "close contact" is a pretty vague term too, I know).
I certainly think the politicians and even the experts just assumed the first graph was at least a reasonable approximation to reality, with all their talk of "R budget" and so on.
This is an interesting read. A scientist who has been destroyed by having a consensual sexual relationship, which was not reported to his employer. Was then consequently "Weinstin'ed out of science".
People want to believe these things are more complicated than they seem. That may well be true. But to my mind this is not progress at all - It as a tribal witch hunt, with revolutionary justice being dispatched through kangaroo courts - all masquerading as due process.
If the Republicans can sort themselves out, they will win in 2024.
Actually, the Sabatini story sounds rather complicated. The article presents only one side of the story (Sabatini's).
I am not sure I would draw any conclusions from the article.
Having sex with your postdoc/grad student will get you fired from your job at most Universities. That has been the case for at least a decade.
(Of course, things were different in the past. Otherwise, we would never have heard of Schrodinger or Feynman.)
Having sex with one’s postdoc, i.e. one staff member in a relationship with another, wouldn’t get you fired. A line manager in a relationship with whom they line manage raises HR concerns, but is not forbidden. One would, I presume, be expected to report the relationship up the chain of command and arrange new line management arrangements. A relationship with one’s student is a different matter.
Your postdoc is someone you hired. You will write letters of recommendation for. You will have an enormous influence over his/her future job prospects. You have a mentoring and nurturing role.
You will be fired if you have sex with someone for whom you have professional responsibility.
It is not entirely clear from the Sabatini article, but it seems as though this is what probably happened. She knew him as a grad student, she was hired by him (or encouraged by him to come to his lab as a postdoc). Remember, we just have Sabatini's version of events.
Sex with another academic, another staff member, is slightly different.
However, I personally have never slept with an academic. I recommend this course of action to everyone.
I maybe misread the story but I thought she was an independent academic, not in his lab?
I think different institutions will differ to some extent in this. A post doc is staff and potentially fair game, but it would need to be declared to the institution. We have this stipulation about relationships with colleagues here. Its quite common to have married academics, as I am sure you know. Its also common that one will be more senior than the other, so their is always a chance of undue influence on careers. the most important thing is openness to the employer. This can in some ways feel intrusive, but it is to protect you and them.
The line that was quoted was that she was mentored by him whilst a graduate student.
The verb there, mentor, covers such a range of possibilities - from 'helpful chats about possible research ideas' to 'hired as a postdoc'.
What does the article actually say?
"Knouse was an incoming cancer researcher at the Whitehead, where she would also head her own lab; hers focused on liver regeneration."
She's a pretty senior member of staff herself.
"True, he didn’t supervise Knouse. He didn’t work directly with her. He never threatened her or proposed a quid pro quo. And he certainly didn’t have the power to fire her. But, according to the report, he had “experience, stature, and age” over her."
Right.
It all rapidly descends into he said/she said.
The two broader details that should be more worrying would be:
*this isn't the only case in US academia right now. And, of course, UK universities seem to follow US ones like a dog to poop.
*the mission creep from investigating a single, probably ill-advised, relationship to "“While we have not found any evidence that Sabatini discriminates against or fails to support females in his lab, we find that Sabatini’s propensity to praise or gravitate toward those in the lab that mirror his desired personality traits, scientific success, or view of ‘science above all else,’ creates additional obstacles for female lab members,”" ...
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
The funny thing is you would have been cancelled for saying this even a year ago. Now of course the two groups aren't like for like because we're talking about life expectancy at circa 80, which is longer.
Comparing the Met's report with Sue Gray (if we ever see it) could be 'interesting'!
Will be getting redacted / revised as we speak.
The police won’t tell her, even off the record, who they fined. And she is being told it cannot contain the photo’s - just vague drawings to set a picture of what a made up party looks like.
It’s really beginning to stink now.
The Gov'ts relationship with the MET seems as unhealthily close as ever even post Dick.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Captain Hindsight did. He would have kept us locked up earlier, later, longer, tighter. Christmas 2021 would have been a very shitty affair, left to SKS.
He was of course being guided "by the science". Which was massively pessimistic, once the nation was getting vaxxed.
Not all the science. Many scientists were saying they were worried about omicron given the limited data, not that many calling for action outside of iSage. Some of the modelling was eye-watering, to be sure, but not all (there were also models that said we would be ok). SKS was wrong at the end of 2021 and (I think) I said so at the time. To me, it looked opportunistic (a stick to beat the government with if things did go bad) and lowered my opinion of him. Johnson et al got the response to the Omicron situation about right, perhaps they could have even done less than they did, but they resisted panic at least.
My issue with the modelling is that I believe what was being shown to government was cherry picked by someone (I don't know who) to make them take action. This was done with honest intentions as that person believed action needed to be taken and wouldn't have been if a more realistic set of models had been shown. But it was badly handled.
Anyway, with apologies for posting so much (I've had quite a few thoughts on this - probably fuelled by the fact that lockdowns with a severely autistic child are really not much fun at all and you're horribly aware of how traumatic he finds it and I really want to avoid them ever again):
- The entire stuff about outside activity away from others was painfully slow to be accepted and promulgated. I know it's hindsight and second-guessing, but one of my more vivid memories of the week before lockdown was walking around the green spaces of one of the new developments in our village, talking with the chair and vice-chair of the parish council. We were working out how to set up and run the support network for those shielding in the village to get them their groceries and necessary support.
And we'd chosen to walk around outside and a couple of metres from each other due to the fact that if you don't breathe in anything emitted by anyone else, you couldn't get infected. If we were aware of this, the Government should have been aware.
- The studies on HEPA air filtering and far-UV look very promising. In effect: make indoors the same as outdoors from the point of view of any respiratory virus. If you could do this, then the entire equation on R shifts lower, which makes a big difference NPI-wise. If it's a bit expensive, roll out to schools first.
- I do have some sympathy for the Government with respect to the "schools going back for one day" debacle in January 2021. Closing schools was rightly the final resort, and I suspect they'd looked at modelling based on the first wave and had hints that they might have been able to keep schools open then (in retrospect). But the increased infectivity of Alpha made the situation different. I do wonder if primary schools could still have been kept open anyway (less spread through smaller children and the priority was arguably higher for them), but you just know there would be complaints about "why are 10-year-olds fine to mingle but 11-year-olds are forbidden? What magically changes between Year 6 and Year 7?"
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
The funny thing is you would have been cancelled for saying this even a year ago. Now of course the two groups aren't like for like because we're talking about life expectancy at circa 80, which is longer.
It's bit misleading too you could kill every 82 year old in the country tommorow and the average age of the genocide would be 82. They wouldn't have all expected to die on the 21st May 2022, mind.
Such a draconian stripping of our civil liberties was a monumental and catastrophic blunder and entirely unnecessary as Sweden showed who got through the pandemic without doing so.
Let those who want to shelter from a virus take actions if they wish to do so, and support them if they wish to do so, but absolutely never again should we strip people of their fundamental freedoms.
You're bloody optimistic. Another disease will come. And your argument is simply refuted by the reflection that your libertarian philosophy would allow Mary Malone to take any catering job and spread typhoid without restriction. Even laissez-faire USA had to do something with her.
Execution of gmt policy over the last feww years, yes, arguable. But not the basic principle.
Thanks for this. Very insightful as always. Just a couple of comments.
It's not only North Korea but all jurisdictions will have the facility to act by government fiat in particular emergency situations. I'm not sure Cyclefree fully acknowledges the significance of this.
Therefore to my mind the big issue is not that of big and arbitrary government - for which like Cyclefree I have no fondness. The use of emergency powers when faced with an unknown degree of disaster is unavoidable. Societal collapse did not happen, ghastly though all this was, and that in part is because government acted by decree.
No, the big issue, which should not be confused with the necessity of government decree in emergency is competence, consistency, moral leadership, lawfulness, the boring stuff of rapid drafting of rules in emergency, and the ability of those with state powers, police etc, to act as grown ups. And, as Cyclefree points out, here the fail was and is epic.
And finally Cyclefree, while hitting the target, does not, SFAICS, offer solutions to how, given the massive limitations of competence in our overgrown state, it could have been done better.
And if Labour knows they are not telling us.
Exactly, with both.
Pretty much the only way to have it on individual responsibility would be to somehow criminalise the effects of poor individual choices on others. As it's impossible to go: "You infected a bunch of people, some of whom died; although you were fine with the disease's effects on you, those to who you passed it on were not."
And that can't happen. You don't leave it to personal choice whether or not you quarantine to things, or whether Mary Malone is allowed to work as a chef. You can't.
The coherence, consistency, and process of the legislation were a ball of chalk, and that's where the Government should have got it right. Yes, it was confusing as to what was happening, but that doesn't justify making inconsistent decrees and incoherent ones.
At the end of the day, we did get huge and unsustainable pressures on the healthcare system. When England has capacity for around 100,000 acute and general patients, runs at 75,000-95,000 by default, and then gets a flood of thousand of extra patients coming in, growing exponentially, you can't sit back and say, "Oh, chaps, please try to avoid spreading this thing."
At the first wave peak, England had 3,000 new patients per day. It peaked at 19,000 covid patients. Fortunately, it wasn't running exceptionally hot to start with and did what it could to reduce other patients (and we'll experience the impacts of that for a while) so it survived. Had we decided to let that 3,000 per day continue doubling a little while longer, it wouldn't have worked out well.
At the second wave peak, we exceeded 4,000 new covid patients every day. The total of covid patients maxed out at just under 35,000, and at a time when the health service runs hottest - at its highest loading. Unsurprisingly, the death rate increased as patients were triaged, other patients had cancellations and reduced care, and we will see the knock-on effects from that for years.
They took huge and draconian steps to stem the spread of the virus that was causing this. I hated that and I'm still convinced that the Tiers system could have been made to work if people had gone for the higher tiers sooner and we hadn't had all the carping about it being unnecessary/false positives/it's dropping/you can't have a second wave/etc.
The limits of individual libertarianism are where and how it affects others. In a pandemic, people AREN'T just making choices for their own health and family health, but for that of everyone "downstream" of themselves. And yes, even if you make the right choices and comply, you may well pass it on, but you'll have done whatever you can to reduce that. Safe drivers can crash, but that doesn't excuse reckless drivers.
Your premise is flawed.
Aware of the taboo of using the word "flu" in any discussion about Covid, nevertheless "influenza and pneumonia" kills thousands of people every year. We didn't impose any restrictions for that. The issue was always hospital capacity. Otherwise we would arrest everyone who had the flu (knowingly or unknowingly and went on the tube in London).
Influenza is very different and we've actually taken it into account with the scaling of the NHS. Covid admissions were different by multiple orders of magnitude. With apologies for the crudity, I put the previous several years influenza admissions (green) on the same scale as the covid admissions (red) up until January.
It is the principle. The flu (typically, not in bad years) kills far fewer people. But it still kills thousands of people and we previously never dreamed of legally preventing people passing it on.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
Not at all. At some point you have to ask about the quid pro quo. They indulged in them because they worried that the NHS would be overwhelmed and that would not be a good look for any government. And even if they did it from the goodness of their hearts because of public safety I would still question whether such measures were appropriate in terms of the restrictions on liberty.
OK - March 2020 everyone was panicking (not those at Cheltenham or on the Central Line but I digress) and I get that with the pictures from Northern Italy the government went into panic mode also. It was the unknown and a national lockdown was an understandable circuit break. Which is where @Cyclefree's article comes in. Because it was introduced with such cavalier disregard for due process that actually there can be questions asked about its validity as a response given the huge sacrifices in liberty, process and executive power that it entailed.
Dare I say that X thousand deaths were worth the principle of liberty (trying not to over-dramatise)? Perhaps.
Perhaps the lack of due process, despite advance warning of the pandemic from Italy and elsewhere, is that the Prime Minister thinks he is above law and custom, and his chief of staff thought he should be.
Well I yield to no one in my position as foremost believer of Boris to be a useless solipsistic twat but thank the lord he and his evidently libertarian instincts and sheer arrogance were in charge. He still - I think unwillingly - yielded to the 5pm government by Chief Medical Officer but I can't help but thinking that with almost anyone else in charge (saving Steve Baker et al) we would have been in an even worse (ie fewer liberties) position than we were and for longer.
Absolutely no doubt that had Starmer been in charge lockdowns would have been considerably longer and now we would face even more problems with child development, mental health and waiting lists and so on.
I suspect: First peak - similar. January 2021 peak - Starmer would likely have acted sooner (i.e. followed the science) and there would have been a smaller peak with fewer deaths Omicron peak - Starmer would have had another lockdown, which would have been needless self harm at that point.
So, a bit more of a mixed bag, for me. Also possible that a harder lockdown sooner could have been a shorter lockdown - some countries that went early and went fast didn't really spend longer in high restrictions than we did. But I am glad Starmer wasn't in charge in December 2021.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
The problem with your suggestion here is that in early 2020 the government had a pandemic plan, and when the pandemic hit, the media stampeded them into a panic and the first thing they did was throw it in the bin.
They had an influenza pandemic plan, which they tried to follow at first, but it turned out that covid spread faster, differently, and with a pronounced pre-symptomatic period, so a plan for dealing with a different disease was binned.
The long pre-symptomatic period associated with this virus was the real kicker.
Constantly having to look two weeks in the rear view mirror, made the management of this particular pandemic much more difficult than the baseline case for a novel virus.
If the pre-symptomatic period was only a day or two, a week of national quarantine would have pretty much eradicated it at the start.
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
The problem with your suggestion here is that in early 2020 the government had a pandemic plan, and when the pandemic hit, the media stampeded them into a panic and the first thing they did was throw it in the bin.
They had an influenza pandemic plan, which they tried to follow at first, but it turned out that covid spread faster, differently, and with a pronounced pre-symptomatic period, so a plan for dealing with a different disease was binned.
What's particularly absurd is that there are some areas that *still* follow the influenza pandemic plan. Take the DoE where in the most recent COVID guidelines for schools published Feb-22 the number 1 thing under 'Hygiene' is 'Frequent and thorough hand cleaning should now be regular practice. You should continue to ensure that pupils clean their hands regularly. This can be done with soap and water or hand sanitiser.' (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1057106/220224_Schools_guidance.pdf) - This is well over 18 months since we confirmed that COVID spreads in the air and not on the surface, but on we go... I dread to think when, or if, that guidance will ever be removed.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
Not at all. At some point you have to ask about the quid pro quo. They indulged in them because they worried that the NHS would be overwhelmed and that would not be a good look for any government. And even if they did it from the goodness of their hearts because of public safety I would still question whether such measures were appropriate in terms of the restrictions on liberty.
OK - March 2020 everyone was panicking (not those at Cheltenham or on the Central Line but I digress) and I get that with the pictures from Northern Italy the government went into panic mode also. It was the unknown and a national lockdown was an understandable circuit break. Which is where @Cyclefree's article comes in. Because it was introduced with such cavalier disregard for due process that actually there can be questions asked about its validity as a response given the huge sacrifices in liberty, process and executive power that it entailed.
Dare I say that X thousand deaths were worth the principle of liberty (trying not to over-dramatise)? Perhaps.
Perhaps the lack of due process, despite advance warning of the pandemic from Italy and elsewhere, is that the Prime Minister thinks he is above law and custom, and his chief of staff thought he should be.
Well I yield to no one in my position as foremost believer of Boris to be a useless solipsistic twat but thank the lord he and his evidently libertarian instincts and sheer arrogance were in charge. He still - I think unwillingly - yielded to the 5pm government by Chief Medical Officer but I can't help but thinking that with almost anyone else in charge (saving Steve Baker et al) we would have been in an even worse (ie fewer liberties) position than we were and for longer.
Absolutely no doubt that had Starmer been in charge lockdowns would have been considerably longer and now we would face even more problems with child development, mental health and waiting lists and so on.
I suspect: First peak - similar. January 2021 peak - Starmer would likely have acted sooner (i.e. followed the science) and there would have been a smaller peak with fewer deaths Omicron peak - Starmer would have had another lockdown, which would have been needless self harm at that point.
So, a bit more of a mixed bag, for me. Also possible that a harder lockdown sooner could have been a shorter lockdown - some countries that went early and went fast didn't really spend longer in high restrictions than we did. But I am glad Starmer wasn't in charge in December 2021.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
In the UK, wave 1 of Covid had peaked before lockdown.
Citation ( and a mountain of salt) required.
Its true that many adaptations were starting before the official lockdown. Pubs were empty, some offices etc were already switching to WFH, as did my Uni. But its tricky to prove that the peak had happened before lockdown as we didn't really have much in the way of testing back then, and thus must make assumptions based on hopsital and death data, rather than actually measuring infections.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
If you had something that doubled, trebled, quadrupled, or quintupled the death rate at every age, the average age of death wouldn't change, would it? Still doesn't mean it's not a problem.
And the hospitalisation ages (and especially ICU occupancy ages) were pretty different. Most of those in ICU were under 60.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
Not at all. At some point you have to ask about the quid pro quo. They indulged in them because they worried that the NHS would be overwhelmed and that would not be a good look for any government. And even if they did it from the goodness of their hearts because of public safety I would still question whether such measures were appropriate in terms of the restrictions on liberty.
OK - March 2020 everyone was panicking (not those at Cheltenham or on the Central Line but I digress) and I get that with the pictures from Northern Italy the government went into panic mode also. It was the unknown and a national lockdown was an understandable circuit break. Which is where @Cyclefree's article comes in. Because it was introduced with such cavalier disregard for due process that actually there can be questions asked about its validity as a response given the huge sacrifices in liberty, process and executive power that it entailed.
Dare I say that X thousand deaths were worth the principle of liberty (trying not to over-dramatise)? Perhaps.
Perhaps the lack of due process, despite advance warning of the pandemic from Italy and elsewhere, is that the Prime Minister thinks he is above law and custom, and his chief of staff thought he should be.
Well I yield to no one in my position as foremost believer of Boris to be a useless solipsistic twat but thank the lord he and his evidently libertarian instincts and sheer arrogance were in charge. He still - I think unwillingly - yielded to the 5pm government by Chief Medical Officer but I can't help but thinking that with almost anyone else in charge (saving Steve Baker et al) we would have been in an even worse (ie fewer liberties) position than we were and for longer.
Absolutely no doubt that had Starmer been in charge lockdowns would have been considerably longer and now we would face even more problems with child development, mental health and waiting lists and so on.
I suspect: First peak - similar. January 2021 peak - Starmer would likely have acted sooner (i.e. followed the science) and there would have been a smaller peak with fewer deaths Omicron peak - Starmer would have had another lockdown, which would have been needless self harm at that point.
So, a bit more of a mixed bag, for me. Also possible that a harder lockdown sooner could have been a shorter lockdown - some countries that went early and went fast didn't really spend longer in high restrictions than we did. But I am glad Starmer wasn't in charge in December 2021.
BIB: Fewer Covid deaths.
Other deaths count too.
Yep, fair point that. Hard to calculate those, particularly as some are probably still incoming (just as important, nonetheless)
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
In the UK, wave 1 of Covid had peaked before lockdown.
Citation ( and a mountain of salt) required.
Peak deaths was the 8th April 2020, 3 weeks back from there is before lockdown
Which assumes an exact 3 weeks to death for every patient - citation for that one?
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
Great header. My view is that the overall approach - "lockdown" - was correct but its implementation was poor. There should have been less complexity and a greater emphasis on guidance not law when it came to personal life as opposed to commercial and business life. My personal bugbear (despite no experience of it) was the restrictions on visiting infirm and/or dying people. These were (imo) inhumane and unjustified.
Can’t see odds on betfair for this. But I am surprised no one has tipped Andy Street as next PM.
I work on the basis that Johnson now stays in post. Street’s term as Mayor finishes the likely year of the next general. BJ has in my view a higher chance of winning that election than most here credit him with.
It would be an obvious career step for Andy Street to enter Parliament. He would be immediately appointed to Cabinet. And would become the obvious successor.
Edit: equally if BoJo loses the election, the Tories may go for a new broom in opposition and choose the newly elected Street as leader.
Burnham vs Street.
Battle of the mayors!!!!
Battle Mayorale
I was working on the assumption it would be Street vs Streeting.
Such a draconian stripping of our civil liberties was a monumental and catastrophic blunder and entirely unnecessary as Sweden showed who got through the pandemic without doing so.
Let those who want to shelter from a virus take actions if they wish to do so, and support them if they wish to do so, but absolutely never again should we strip people of their fundamental freedoms.
You're bloody optimistic. Another disease will come. And your argument is simply refuted by the reflection that your libertarian philosophy would allow Mary Malone to take any catering job and spread typhoid without restriction. Even laissez-faire USA had to do something with her.
Execution of gmt policy over the last feww years, yes, arguable. But not the basic principle.
Thanks for this. Very insightful as always. Just a couple of comments.
It's not only North Korea but all jurisdictions will have the facility to act by government fiat in particular emergency situations. I'm not sure Cyclefree fully acknowledges the significance of this.
Therefore to my mind the big issue is not that of big and arbitrary government - for which like Cyclefree I have no fondness. The use of emergency powers when faced with an unknown degree of disaster is unavoidable. Societal collapse did not happen, ghastly though all this was, and that in part is because government acted by decree.
No, the big issue, which should not be confused with the necessity of government decree in emergency is competence, consistency, moral leadership, lawfulness, the boring stuff of rapid drafting of rules in emergency, and the ability of those with state powers, police etc, to act as grown ups. And, as Cyclefree points out, here the fail was and is epic.
And finally Cyclefree, while hitting the target, does not, SFAICS, offer solutions to how, given the massive limitations of competence in our overgrown state, it could have been done better.
And if Labour knows they are not telling us.
Exactly, with both.
Pretty much the only way to have it on individual responsibility would be to somehow criminalise the effects of poor individual choices on others. As it's impossible to go: "You infected a bunch of people, some of whom died; although you were fine with the disease's effects on you, those to who you passed it on were not."
And that can't happen. You don't leave it to personal choice whether or not you quarantine to things, or whether Mary Malone is allowed to work as a chef. You can't.
The coherence, consistency, and process of the legislation were a ball of chalk, and that's where the Government should have got it right. Yes, it was confusing as to what was happening, but that doesn't justify making inconsistent decrees and incoherent ones.
At the end of the day, we did get huge and unsustainable pressures on the healthcare system. When England has capacity for around 100,000 acute and general patients, runs at 75,000-95,000 by default, and then gets a flood of thousand of extra patients coming in, growing exponentially, you can't sit back and say, "Oh, chaps, please try to avoid spreading this thing."
At the first wave peak, England had 3,000 new patients per day. It peaked at 19,000 covid patients. Fortunately, it wasn't running exceptionally hot to start with and did what it could to reduce other patients (and we'll experience the impacts of that for a while) so it survived. Had we decided to let that 3,000 per day continue doubling a little while longer, it wouldn't have worked out well.
At the second wave peak, we exceeded 4,000 new covid patients every day. The total of covid patients maxed out at just under 35,000, and at a time when the health service runs hottest - at its highest loading. Unsurprisingly, the death rate increased as patients were triaged, other patients had cancellations and reduced care, and we will see the knock-on effects from that for years.
They took huge and draconian steps to stem the spread of the virus that was causing this. I hated that and I'm still convinced that the Tiers system could have been made to work if people had gone for the higher tiers sooner and we hadn't had all the carping about it being unnecessary/false positives/it's dropping/you can't have a second wave/etc.
The limits of individual libertarianism are where and how it affects others. In a pandemic, people AREN'T just making choices for their own health and family health, but for that of everyone "downstream" of themselves. And yes, even if you make the right choices and comply, you may well pass it on, but you'll have done whatever you can to reduce that. Safe drivers can crash, but that doesn't excuse reckless drivers.
Your premise is flawed.
Aware of the taboo of using the word "flu" in any discussion about Covid, nevertheless "influenza and pneumonia" kills thousands of people every year. We didn't impose any restrictions for that. The issue was always hospital capacity. Otherwise we would arrest everyone who had the flu (knowingly or unknowingly and went on the tube in London).
Influenza is very different and we've actually taken it into account with the scaling of the NHS. Covid admissions were different by multiple orders of magnitude. With apologies for the crudity, I put the previous several years influenza admissions (green) on the same scale as the covid admissions (red) up until January.
It is the principle. The flu (typically, not in bad years) kills far fewer people. But it still kills thousands of people and we previously never dreamed of legally preventing people passing it on.
Scale matters.
It seems to me that in this case things worked out mostly OK: a democratically elected government made the best decisions they could under the uncertain information they had at the time, enforcing restrictions that saved lives & prevented the NHS from being overwhelmed, leading to far greater deaths. Once the main danger had passed, throse restrictions were removed.
Prior to this, the same democratically elected government has decided that the annual deaths from flu don’t justify such actions.
Today's YouGov should terrify the Tories: Labour 39 Conservative 31 LibDem 12 Green 7 SNP 5 Labour+LibDem+Green on 58% is potential Tory meltdown territory.
I said it would take another two weeks for the big meltdown to begin. Looks like I may have been wrong.
We will get a Teche this morning which might show if there is tentative evidence the Tories have suddenly dropped or if this is YouGov being its usual variety bucket self (it had a one point lead 2 weeks ago). Also worth watching if there is a short term knee jerk 'damn it, the slippery eel got away with it again'
This is an interesting read. A scientist who has been destroyed by having a consensual sexual relationship, which was not reported to his employer. Was then consequently "Weinstin'ed out of science".
People want to believe these things are more complicated than they seem. That may well be true. But to my mind this is not progress at all - It as a tribal witch hunt, with revolutionary justice being dispatched through kangaroo courts - all masquerading as due process.
If the Republicans can sort themselves out, they will win in 2024.
Actually, the Sabatini story sounds rather complicated. The article presents only one side of the story (Sabatini's).
I am not sure I would draw any conclusions from the article.
Having sex with your postdoc/grad student will get you fired from your job at most Universities. That has been the case for at least a decade.
(Of course, things were different in the past. Otherwise, we would never have heard of Schrodinger or Feynman.)
Having sex with one’s postdoc, i.e. one staff member in a relationship with another, wouldn’t get you fired. A line manager in a relationship with whom they line manage raises HR concerns, but is not forbidden. One would, I presume, be expected to report the relationship up the chain of command and arrange new line management arrangements. A relationship with one’s student is a different matter.
Your postdoc is someone you hired. You will write letters of recommendation for. You will have an enormous influence over his/her future job prospects. You have a mentoring and nurturing role.
You will be fired if you have sex with someone for whom you have professional responsibility.
It is not entirely clear from the Sabatini article, but it seems as though this is what probably happened. She knew him as a grad student, she was hired by him (or encouraged by him to come to his lab as a postdoc). Remember, we just have Sabatini's version of events.
Sex with another academic, another staff member, is slightly different.
However, I personally have never slept with an academic. I recommend this course of action to everyone.
I maybe misread the story but I thought she was an independent academic, not in his lab?
I think different institutions will differ to some extent in this. A post doc is staff and potentially fair game ...
SNIP
Mmm ... I am not sure whether I'd recommend using a metaphor from big game hunting in this context
I would add one thing. It wasn’t just the UK that overturned centuries of liberty and due process in a trice. The whole world has done it
So I see it more as a human failure rather than a specific British political failure. Tho if we want to stop it ever happening again, we need British political solutions
If it wasn't for Italy we (and others) wouldn't have done it. Discuss.
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
In the UK, wave 1 of Covid had peaked before lockdown.
Citation ( and a mountain of salt) required.
Peak deaths was the 8th April 2020, 3 weeks back from there is before lockdown
Which assumes an exact 3 weeks to death for every patient - citation for that one?
No, it assumes an average of 3 weeks from infection to death. Last I heard that was still the generally-accepted figure?
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
In the UK, wave 1 of Covid had peaked before lockdown.
Citation ( and a mountain of salt) required.
Its true that many adaptations were starting before the official lockdown. Pubs were empty, some offices etc were already switching to WFH, as did my Uni. But its tricky to prove that the peak had happened before lockdown as we didn't really have much in the way of testing back then, and thus must make assumptions based on hopsital and death data, rather than actually measuring infections.
A large part of the initial wave, would have been the spike in deaths at care homes. This would have happened irrespective of the imposition of wider societal restrictions.
It was pretty much impossible to have stopped it going through care homes, and that process was further aided by the need to discharge elderly from hospitals at a time of limited testing capability.
Such a draconian stripping of our civil liberties was a monumental and catastrophic blunder and entirely unnecessary as Sweden showed who got through the pandemic without doing so.
Let those who want to shelter from a virus take actions if they wish to do so, and support them if they wish to do so, but absolutely never again should we strip people of their fundamental freedoms.
You're bloody optimistic. Another disease will come. And your argument is simply refuted by the reflection that your libertarian philosophy would allow Mary Malone to take any catering job and spread typhoid without restriction. Even laissez-faire USA had to do something with her.
Execution of gmt policy over the last feww years, yes, arguable. But not the basic principle.
Thanks for this. Very insightful as always. Just a couple of comments.
It's not only North Korea but all jurisdictions will have the facility to act by government fiat in particular emergency situations. I'm not sure Cyclefree fully acknowledges the significance of this.
Therefore to my mind the big issue is not that of big and arbitrary government - for which like Cyclefree I have no fondness. The use of emergency powers when faced with an unknown degree of disaster is unavoidable. Societal collapse did not happen, ghastly though all this was, and that in part is because government acted by decree.
No, the big issue, which should not be confused with the necessity of government decree in emergency is competence, consistency, moral leadership, lawfulness, the boring stuff of rapid drafting of rules in emergency, and the ability of those with state powers, police etc, to act as grown ups. And, as Cyclefree points out, here the fail was and is epic.
And finally Cyclefree, while hitting the target, does not, SFAICS, offer solutions to how, given the massive limitations of competence in our overgrown state, it could have been done better.
And if Labour knows they are not telling us.
Exactly, with both.
Pretty much the only way to have it on individual responsibility would be to somehow criminalise the effects of poor individual choices on others. As it's impossible to go: "You infected a bunch of people, some of whom died; although you were fine with the disease's effects on you, those to who you passed it on were not."
And that can't happen. You don't leave it to personal choice whether or not you quarantine to things, or whether Mary Malone is allowed to work as a chef. You can't.
The coherence, consistency, and process of the legislation were a ball of chalk, and that's where the Government should have got it right. Yes, it was confusing as to what was happening, but that doesn't justify making inconsistent decrees and incoherent ones.
At the end of the day, we did get huge and unsustainable pressures on the healthcare system. When England has capacity for around 100,000 acute and general patients, runs at 75,000-95,000 by default, and then gets a flood of thousand of extra patients coming in, growing exponentially, you can't sit back and say, "Oh, chaps, please try to avoid spreading this thing."
At the first wave peak, England had 3,000 new patients per day. It peaked at 19,000 covid patients. Fortunately, it wasn't running exceptionally hot to start with and did what it could to reduce other patients (and we'll experience the impacts of that for a while) so it survived. Had we decided to let that 3,000 per day continue doubling a little while longer, it wouldn't have worked out well.
At the second wave peak, we exceeded 4,000 new covid patients every day. The total of covid patients maxed out at just under 35,000, and at a time when the health service runs hottest - at its highest loading. Unsurprisingly, the death rate increased as patients were triaged, other patients had cancellations and reduced care, and we will see the knock-on effects from that for years.
They took huge and draconian steps to stem the spread of the virus that was causing this. I hated that and I'm still convinced that the Tiers system could have been made to work if people had gone for the higher tiers sooner and we hadn't had all the carping about it being unnecessary/false positives/it's dropping/you can't have a second wave/etc.
The limits of individual libertarianism are where and how it affects others. In a pandemic, people AREN'T just making choices for their own health and family health, but for that of everyone "downstream" of themselves. And yes, even if you make the right choices and comply, you may well pass it on, but you'll have done whatever you can to reduce that. Safe drivers can crash, but that doesn't excuse reckless drivers.
Your premise is flawed.
Aware of the taboo of using the word "flu" in any discussion about Covid, nevertheless "influenza and pneumonia" kills thousands of people every year. We didn't impose any restrictions for that. The issue was always hospital capacity. Otherwise we would arrest everyone who had the flu (knowingly or unknowingly and went on the tube in London).
Influenza is very different and we've actually taken it into account with the scaling of the NHS. Covid admissions were different by multiple orders of magnitude. With apologies for the crudity, I put the previous several years influenza admissions (green) on the same scale as the covid admissions (red) up until January.
It is the principle. The flu (typically, not in bad years) kills far fewer people. But it still kills thousands of people and we previously never dreamed of legally preventing people passing it on.
Scale matters.
It seems to me that in this case things worked out mostly OK: a democratically elected government made the best decisions they could under the uncertain information they had at the time, enforcing restrictions that saved lives & prevented the NHS from being overwhelmed, leading to far greater deaths. Once the main danger had passed, throse restrictions were removed.
Prior to this, the same democratically elected government has decided that the annual deaths from flu don’t justify such actions.
Representative democracy works?
"Once the main danger had passed" seems to give it a degree of timeliness that is perhaps not justified.
Such a draconian stripping of our civil liberties was a monumental and catastrophic blunder and entirely unnecessary as Sweden showed who got through the pandemic without doing so.
Let those who want to shelter from a virus take actions if they wish to do so, and support them if they wish to do so, but absolutely never again should we strip people of their fundamental freedoms.
You're bloody optimistic. Another disease will come. And your argument is simply refuted by the reflection that your libertarian philosophy would allow Mary Malone to take any catering job and spread typhoid without restriction. Even laissez-faire USA had to do something with her.
Execution of gmt policy over the last feww years, yes, arguable. But not the basic principle.
Thanks for this. Very insightful as always. Just a couple of comments.
It's not only North Korea but all jurisdictions will have the facility to act by government fiat in particular emergency situations. I'm not sure Cyclefree fully acknowledges the significance of this.
Therefore to my mind the big issue is not that of big and arbitrary government - for which like Cyclefree I have no fondness. The use of emergency powers when faced with an unknown degree of disaster is unavoidable. Societal collapse did not happen, ghastly though all this was, and that in part is because government acted by decree.
No, the big issue, which should not be confused with the necessity of government decree in emergency is competence, consistency, moral leadership, lawfulness, the boring stuff of rapid drafting of rules in emergency, and the ability of those with state powers, police etc, to act as grown ups. And, as Cyclefree points out, here the fail was and is epic.
And finally Cyclefree, while hitting the target, does not, SFAICS, offer solutions to how, given the massive limitations of competence in our overgrown state, it could have been done better.
And if Labour knows they are not telling us.
Exactly, with both.
Pretty much the only way to have it on individual responsibility would be to somehow criminalise the effects of poor individual choices on others. As it's impossible to go: "You infected a bunch of people, some of whom died; although you were fine with the disease's effects on you, those to who you passed it on were not."
And that can't happen. You don't leave it to personal choice whether or not you quarantine to things, or whether Mary Malone is allowed to work as a chef. You can't.
The coherence, consistency, and process of the legislation were a ball of chalk, and that's where the Government should have got it right. Yes, it was confusing as to what was happening, but that doesn't justify making inconsistent decrees and incoherent ones.
At the end of the day, we did get huge and unsustainable pressures on the healthcare system. When England has capacity for around 100,000 acute and general patients, runs at 75,000-95,000 by default, and then gets a flood of thousand of extra patients coming in, growing exponentially, you can't sit back and say, "Oh, chaps, please try to avoid spreading this thing."
At the first wave peak, England had 3,000 new patients per day. It peaked at 19,000 covid patients. Fortunately, it wasn't running exceptionally hot to start with and did what it could to reduce other patients (and we'll experience the impacts of that for a while) so it survived. Had we decided to let that 3,000 per day continue doubling a little while longer, it wouldn't have worked out well.
At the second wave peak, we exceeded 4,000 new covid patients every day. The total of covid patients maxed out at just under 35,000, and at a time when the health service runs hottest - at its highest loading. Unsurprisingly, the death rate increased as patients were triaged, other patients had cancellations and reduced care, and we will see the knock-on effects from that for years.
They took huge and draconian steps to stem the spread of the virus that was causing this. I hated that and I'm still convinced that the Tiers system could have been made to work if people had gone for the higher tiers sooner and we hadn't had all the carping about it being unnecessary/false positives/it's dropping/you can't have a second wave/etc.
The limits of individual libertarianism are where and how it affects others. In a pandemic, people AREN'T just making choices for their own health and family health, but for that of everyone "downstream" of themselves. And yes, even if you make the right choices and comply, you may well pass it on, but you'll have done whatever you can to reduce that. Safe drivers can crash, but that doesn't excuse reckless drivers.
Your premise is flawed.
Aware of the taboo of using the word "flu" in any discussion about Covid, nevertheless "influenza and pneumonia" kills thousands of people every year. We didn't impose any restrictions for that. The issue was always hospital capacity. Otherwise we would arrest everyone who had the flu (knowingly or unknowingly and went on the tube in London).
Influenza is very different and we've actually taken it into account with the scaling of the NHS. Covid admissions were different by multiple orders of magnitude. With apologies for the crudity, I put the previous several years influenza admissions (green) on the same scale as the covid admissions (red) up until January.
It is the principle. The flu (typically, not in bad years) kills far fewer people. But it still kills thousands of people and we previously never dreamed of legally preventing people passing it on.
Scale matters.
It seems to me that in this case things worked out mostly OK: a democratically elected government made the best decisions they could under the uncertain information they had at the time, enforcing restrictions that saved lives & prevented the NHS from being overwhelmed, leading to far greater deaths. Once the main danger had passed, throse restrictions were removed.
Prior to this, the same democratically elected government has decided that the annual deaths from flu don’t justify such actions.
Representative democracy works?
I said early on that there was huge public support for these measures. So yes.
Comments
But, from my experience, at least, relationships between those at the same level were viewed very differently to here.
It is almost as if work time belongs solely to your employer. Any time spent on anything whatsoever, other than 100% laser-focused effort on maximising their profits is immoral.
It's Puritanism. And Capitalism. In an ironic mating.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
I would add one thing. It wasn’t just the UK that overturned centuries of liberty and due process in a trice. The whole world has done it
So I see it more as a human failure rather than a specific British political failure. Tho if we want to stop it ever happening again, we need British political solutions
Biggest takeaways seem to be:
- Smaller average household size (the hardest transmission to block is within-household. Smaller household sizes give a lower route for this). We need more housing, with smaller sizes (ie 1-2 bedroom stuff rather than 4-5 bedroom stuff) and to make it easier to disperse down (better support for single-parent families)
- Stronger adherence to taking time of work sick (better sick pay provisions)
- Stronger adherence to voluntary rules promulgated by the Government. No idea how we could do this one, though.
Those areas give some possibilities for a step-change down to the Nordic baseline. As you say, Sweden did do considerably worse than the other Nordic countries, but the lower baseline gave the option for the more voluntary route to work and just get R below 1.
If you prioritise freedom and liberty and respect for personal decision making then Sweden did better. Far, far better.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
I think different institutions will differ to some extent in this. A post doc is staff and potentially fair game, but it would need to be declared to the institution. We have this stipulation about relationships with colleagues here.
Its quite common to have married academics, as I am sure you know. Its also common that one will be more senior than the other, so their is always a chance of undue influence on careers. the most important thing is openness to the employer. This can in some ways feel intrusive, but it is to protect you and them.
Point 3 should be fine, voluntary rules probably were enough for the first wave to peak and defintely were enough for the two Omicron waves to peak.
I work on the basis that Johnson now stays in post. Street’s term as Mayor finishes the likely year of the next general. BJ has in my view a higher chance of winning that election than most here credit him with.
It would be an obvious career step for Andy Street to enter Parliament. He would be immediately appointed to Cabinet. And would become the obvious successor.
Edit: equally if BoJo loses the election, the Tories may go for a new broom in opposition and choose the newly elected Street as leader.
OK - March 2020 everyone was panicking (not those at Cheltenham or on the Central Line but I digress) and I get that with the pictures from Northern Italy the government went into panic mode also. It was the unknown and a national lockdown was an understandable circuit break. Which is where @Cyclefree's article comes in. Because it was introduced with such cavalier disregard for due process that actually there can be questions asked about its validity as a response given the huge sacrifices in liberty, process and executive power that it entailed.
Dare I say that X thousand deaths were worth the principle of liberty (trying not to over-dramatise)? Perhaps.
Most people want to do the right thing, the children's ward midwives and nurses were particularly scathing about the effects of lockdown (Decreased clinic hours and so forth) on neonatal health.
& the big message from the state should have been one of... support...
' If you're a vulnerable individual we'll assist you to shield'.
But where O where was our legendary we stand alone we happy breed white cliffs of Dover bloody-mindedness when we needed it most.
£100 straight cash for each vaccination, simples.
But they should have spent part of every day of those three weeks analysing whether it had actually been necessary. By the end of the three weeks it was looking quite likely, to people looking at the actual data, that it probably hadn't been - and by the end of six weeks it was blindingly obvious that it was being counter-productive.
"The US National Federation of Independent Business index is a little frightening. The numbers expecting the economy to improve have fallen to the lowest ever recorded, lower than the Lehman crisis and lower than the Volcker squeeze in the 1980."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/05/19/monetarists-right-inflation-now-have-different-warning/
It's hard to be absolutely certain, before the era of mass testing. However, the trends in cases and hospitalisations for the later peaks are informative on the relationship with lockdown. You need to have a good argument for why there should be a different relationship for the first wave.
Jeez...
Have we any idea that he might be interested in a run for Parliament aged 60, as opposed to retiring to a nice island somewhere with a large pension?
Edit: if BJ loses the election, then Street can’t possibly be next PM.
The £100 cash would have circulated round the economy too
You should turn this into a thread header.
Battle of the mayors!!!!
We know more now - not only on another type of pathogen, but also on human behaviour response, the costs of lockdowns on different sections of communities, what kinds of measures were most effective againt Covid (and also infer, from cases of other things, what would be effective against different types of pathogen) which should enable us to do better next time.
The next big flu winter comes along....
I was doing pandemic work from early February. I remember how chaotic the situation was in March and I am sympathetic about the challenges Government faced. I have no love for this administration, but I am loath to be too critical of actions in that period.
However, my sympathies evaporate as we move through the calendar. By the time Partygate gets going in late May, we should've been in a better situation in terms of responding to scientific advice, making sure the legal framework was on a good footing, and so on.
We also need to plan for next time. Hopefully there won't be a next time for many decades, but there could be. We had some good pandemic plans in place in the areas I work in. It should be possible to have pandemic plans in place for issues like what emergency legislation might be needed.
Labour 39
Conservative 31
LibDem 12
Green 7
SNP 5
Labour+LibDem+Green on 58% is potential Tory meltdown territory.
If, in fact, it looked more like the below, and voluntary action goes past the first break point, then the case for laws rather than guidance is raher weak.
Covid admissions were different by multiple orders of magnitude. With apologies for the crudity, I put the previous several years influenza admissions (green) on the same scale as the covid admissions (red) up until January.
Hindsight is great and with hindsight the best thing we could have done would have been to keep as locked down as possible until all the over 50's had had their jabs, but we didn't know for sure until November 2020 that we would have such powerful vaccinations.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/average-age-of-coronavirus-fatalities-is-82-pcwqrzdzz
It’s really beginning to stink now.
I don't think anyone thought the first graph was correct. Although it does depend how you define 'activity'. If activity was some measure of time exposed (taking into account distances say) then you'd probably get a pretty smooth curve between the two, rather than a straight line.
Rishi Sunak becomes first frontline politician to join The Sunday Times Rich List
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-becomes-first-frontline-politician-to-join-sunday-times-rich-list-2022-zksx9bprq
Wouldn't Michael Heseltine have qualified, assuming the Rich List was published in the 1980s?
It would have been far worse with us locking down more like China and keeping lockdown far longer like Continental Europe did.
I certainly think the politicians and even the experts just assumed the first graph was at least a reasonable approximation to reality, with all their talk of "R budget" and so on.
The verb there, mentor, covers such a range of possibilities - from 'helpful chats about possible research ideas' to 'hired as a postdoc'.
What does the article actually say?
"Knouse was an incoming cancer researcher at the Whitehead, where she would also head her own lab; hers focused on liver regeneration."
She's a pretty senior member of staff herself.
"True, he didn’t supervise Knouse. He didn’t work directly with her. He never threatened her or proposed a quid pro quo. And he certainly didn’t have the power to fire her. But, according to the report, he had “experience, stature, and age” over her."
Right.
It all rapidly descends into he said/she said.
The two broader details that should be more worrying would be:
*this isn't the only case in US academia right now. And, of course, UK universities seem to follow US ones like a dog to poop.
*the mission creep from investigating a single, probably ill-advised, relationship to "“While we have not found any evidence that Sabatini discriminates against or fails to support females in his lab, we find that Sabatini’s propensity to praise or gravitate toward those in the lab that mirror his desired personality traits, scientific success, or view of ‘science above all else,’ creates additional obstacles for female lab members,”" ...
But it was badly handled.
- The entire stuff about outside activity away from others was painfully slow to be accepted and promulgated. I know it's hindsight and second-guessing, but one of my more vivid memories of the week before lockdown was walking around the green spaces of one of the new developments in our village, talking with the chair and vice-chair of the parish council. We were working out how to set up and run the support network for those shielding in the village to get them their groceries and necessary support.
And we'd chosen to walk around outside and a couple of metres from each other due to the fact that if you don't breathe in anything emitted by anyone else, you couldn't get infected. If we were aware of this, the Government should have been aware.
- The studies on HEPA air filtering and far-UV look very promising. In effect: make indoors the same as outdoors from the point of view of any respiratory virus. If you could do this, then the entire equation on R shifts lower, which makes a big difference NPI-wise. If it's a bit expensive, roll out to schools first.
- I do have some sympathy for the Government with respect to the "schools going back for one day" debacle in January 2021. Closing schools was rightly the final resort, and I suspect they'd looked at modelling based on the first wave and had hints that they might have been able to keep schools open then (in retrospect). But the increased infectivity of Alpha made the situation different. I do wonder if primary schools could still have been kept open anyway (less spread through smaller children and the priority was arguably higher for them), but you just know there would be complaints about "why are 10-year-olds fine to mingle but 11-year-olds are forbidden? What magically changes between Year 6 and Year 7?"
First peak - similar.
January 2021 peak - Starmer would likely have acted sooner (i.e. followed the science) and there would have been a smaller peak with fewer deaths
Omicron peak - Starmer would have had another lockdown, which would have been needless self harm at that point.
So, a bit more of a mixed bag, for me. Also possible that a harder lockdown sooner could have been a shorter lockdown - some countries that went early and went fast didn't really spend longer in high restrictions than we did. But I am glad Starmer wasn't in charge in December 2021.
This will all be in the distribution. The median age of death is about 3 years higher, and the modal higher still.
There is also the measurement error in determining what people actually died of (rather than with), and the conversion to loss of QALYs.
Constantly having to look two weeks in the rear view mirror, made the management of this particular pandemic much more difficult than the baseline case for a novel virus.
If the pre-symptomatic period was only a day or two, a week of national quarantine would have pretty much eradicated it at the start.
Other deaths count too.
If you had something that doubled, trebled, quadrupled, or quintupled the death rate at every age, the average age of death wouldn't change, would it? Still doesn't mean it's not a problem.
And the hospitalisation ages (and especially ICU occupancy ages) were pretty different. Most of those in ICU were under 60.
The JCVI’s current view is that in autumn 2022, a COVID-19 vaccine should be offered to:
— residents in a care home for older adults and staff
— frontline health and social care workers
— all those 65 years of age and over
— adults aged 16 to 64 years who are in a clinical risk group
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-provides-interim-advice-on-an-autumn-covid-19-booster-programme
It seems to me that in this case things worked out mostly OK: a democratically elected government made the best decisions they could under the uncertain information they had at the time, enforcing restrictions that saved lives & prevented the NHS from being overwhelmed, leading to far greater deaths. Once the main danger had passed, throse restrictions were removed.
Prior to this, the same democratically elected government has decided that the annual deaths from flu don’t justify such actions.
Representative democracy works?
Also worth watching if there is a short term knee jerk 'damn it, the slippery eel got away with it again'
It was pretty much impossible to have stopped it going through care homes, and that process was further aided by the need to discharge elderly from hospitals at a time of limited testing capability.
It's out there!