To be honest after the multiple resignations, the persistent rumours of visits from the Plod and the bitter leadership campaign I suspect the SNP would take that. It could and should have been a lot worse. It seems that the underlying support for independence is still protecting the SNP somewhat. But the bad news is maybe not finished yet.
The poll is from the end of the Sturgeon era, not the new exciting Yousaf era, as ex-PBer James Kelly explains here
The UK government response was, by international standards, relatively libertarian.
I still can’t fault most goverments on the initial response, it was so far outside the experience of anyone alive, and they all acted in good faith and with the best advise they could find.
Yes, tend to agree.
I was slightly surprised on Eurostar to Brussels yesterday to see that masks are still officially mandatory. Compliance (both on the train and in Brussels) was patchy, but much more than on the Tube, where they are now a rarity. I'm not sure the situation has really changed all that much, but in the UK we've got to a "shrug, let's risk it" stage faster than some countries.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
Maybe there shouldn't have been any lockdowns, except for people in vulnerable categories.
The first lockdown was probably politically unavoidable given the way the media reacted to Italy, irrespective of what the government had done.
A proper government, however, would have taken the attitude "as short as possible" and, in particular, wouldn't have contributed to the scaremongering.
As others have said in this thread, a good way of avoiding lockdowns is to reduce the spread of the virus through other means. At the beginning of a pandemic like this, before vaccines, the main tool you have to reduce spread is behaviour. You want to get the public to change their behaviour.
One way of getting people to change their behaviour is through worry. If people are worried about something, they might change their behaviour. If they're not, they probably won't. Thus, public health campaigns often focus on worry.
There is, also, a government duty to inform the public. At the beginning of a pandemic, that public duty to inform people will entail telling people scary stuff because pandemics are scary.
At the same time, we have to consider whether it is ethical to worry people unduly. Yes, I can change your behaviour if I scare the bejesus out of you, but that doesn't mean I should do that.
So, you end up with questions of whether you're appropriately informing the public, or are you inappropriately scaremongering? Different people come to different conclusions. Generally, I pay attention to the people whose conclusions are based on science and research, rather than those whose conclusions are based on reading the Daily Mail or the Spectator.
In our swine flu research, we found that you could shift behaviour without increasing worry in a couple of ways: increasing people's beliefs in the efficacy of the desired behaviours; and simply repeating messages around desired behaviours over and over. I felt that was a useful way of getting out of this conundrum of worrying over whether you are worrying people.
There are further factors that affect behaviour. In our COVID-19 research, we found that there were significant practical barriers to some behaviours, e.g. financial difficulties and having children were both associated with not self-isolating. If you do more to make behaviours easier, then again you can achieve behaviour change without increasing worry.
It also helps to promote the right behaviours! We should have been promoting mask wearing much earlier. Air filtration has also been mentioned in this discussion. I say this with hindsight, of course.
Again, we'll see what the COVID-19 Inquiry says, but maybe the Johnson Government sometimes favoured scaring people or the threat of criminal sanctions while neglecting other mechanisms for encouraging desired behaviours (removing practical barriers, encouraging social norms). I'd speculate that this is because it was a Conservative government. Conservatives tend to see behaviour change in those terms, whereas a more left-wing government might have focused more on structural factors.
On the point of air filtration, what would your view be on installing air filters in major public settings - hospitals, of course, but also universities, schools, open plan offices and supermarkets?
It seems to me that it might be a very good way of limiting the spread of a great many viruses, but I am completely ignorant of how they work and I don't know what the cost/benefit analysis would be. Any thoughts?
I'm not a virologist or an air filtration engineer, so this is not my specialty. My limited reading of the literature suggests that air filtration can significantly reduce transmission and would be cost effective.
To be honest after the multiple resignations, the persistent rumours of visits from the Plod and the bitter leadership campaign I suspect the SNP would take that. It could and should have been a lot worse. It seems that the underlying support for independence is still protecting the SNP somewhat. But the bad news is maybe not finished yet.
The poll is from the end of the Sturgeon era, not the new exciting Yousaf era, as ex-PBer James Kelly explains here
Clearly that wasn't a crater then. Just starting to descend into it.
I saw some other people post that SeanT's father has passed away recently. If SeanT is reading this then sincere condolences for your loss. From reading an obituary he led quite some life!
(b) By the government's own admission, mask wearing was about having a visible sign that you were trying to do something, not actually about doing something. Far from being promoted earlier, it should never have been promoted at all - it was dehumanising and added to the culture of fear that made restrictions harder to move away from
That's grade A bullshit. Masks, we now know, are effective at reducing spread and we should have promoted their use much earlier than we did.
Wait, that's from a Panelbase poll from BEFORE the leadership result, and before much of the worst of the SNP scandals? Isn't it? That's what the original tweet suggests. Or am I wrong?
So we can expect the next poll to be considerably better/worse for the Nats, depending on whether you think Humza Yousaf is a Churchillian genius comparable with Lincoln/twat
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
Maybe there shouldn't have been any lockdowns, except for people in vulnerable categories.
The first lockdown was probably politically unavoidable given the way the media reacted to Italy, irrespective of what the government had done.
A proper government, however, would have taken the attitude "as short as possible" and, in particular, wouldn't have contributed to the scaremongering.
As others have said in this thread, a good way of avoiding lockdowns is to reduce the spread of the virus through other means. At the beginning of a pandemic like this, before vaccines, the main tool you have to reduce spread is behaviour. You want to get the public to change their behaviour.
One way of getting people to change their behaviour is through worry. If people are worried about something, they might change their behaviour. If they're not, they probably won't. Thus, public health campaigns often focus on worry.
There is, also, a government duty to inform the public. At the beginning of a pandemic, that public duty to inform people will entail telling people scary stuff because pandemics are scary.
At the same time, we have to consider whether it is ethical to worry people unduly. Yes, I can change your behaviour if I scare the bejesus out of you, but that doesn't mean I should do that.
So, you end up with questions of whether you're appropriately informing the public, or are you inappropriately scaremongering? Different people come to different conclusions. Generally, I pay attention to the people whose conclusions are based on science and research, rather than those whose conclusions are based on reading the Daily Mail or the Spectator.
In our swine flu research, we found that you could shift behaviour without increasing worry in a couple of ways: increasing people's beliefs in the efficacy of the desired behaviours; and simply repeating messages around desired behaviours over and over. I felt that was a useful way of getting out of this conundrum of worrying over whether you are worrying people.
There are further factors that affect behaviour. In our COVID-19 research, we found that there were significant practical barriers to some behaviours, e.g. financial difficulties and having children were both associated with not self-isolating. If you do more to make behaviours easier, then again you can achieve behaviour change without increasing worry.
It also helps to promote the right behaviours! We should have been promoting mask wearing much earlier. Air filtration has also been mentioned in this discussion. I say this with hindsight, of course.
Again, we'll see what the COVID-19 Inquiry says, but maybe the Johnson Government sometimes favoured scaring people or the threat of criminal sanctions while neglecting other mechanisms for encouraging desired behaviours (removing practical barriers, encouraging social norms). I'd speculate that this is because it was a Conservative government. Conservatives tend to see behaviour change in those terms, whereas a more left-wing government might have focused more on structural factors.
On the point of air filtration, what would your view be on installing air filters in major public settings - hospitals, of course, but also universities, schools, open plan offices and supermarkets?
It seems to me that it might be a very good way of limiting the spread of a great many viruses, but I am completely ignorant of how they work and I don't know what the cost/benefit analysis would be. Any thoughts?
I'm not a virologist or an air filtration engineer, so this is not my specialty. My limited reading of the literature suggests that air filtration can significantly reduce transmission and would be cost effective.
Fair answer.
If the evidence is it will help then I presume it will never happen, which is a shame.
(b) By the government's own admission, mask wearing was about having a visible sign that you were trying to do something, not actually about doing something. Far from being promoted earlier, it should never have been promoted at all - it was dehumanising and added to the culture of fear that made restrictions harder to move away from
That's grade A bullshit. Masks, we now know, are effective at reducing spread and we should have promoted their use much earlier than we did.
Presumably that depends heavily on everyone using their masks properly? – which in my experience few did in the real world.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
Maybe there shouldn't have been any lockdowns, except for people in vulnerable categories.
Absolutely not. No first lockdown results in the NHS being completely swamped with cases. We barely coped as it was, with all the extra capacity the NHS threw together at short notice (with no direction from the government either - I know people working in local NHS management & they were working seven days a week putting in as much capacity as they could create on such short notice long before the goverment even thought about doing anything).
Remember all those extra temporary hospitals that were thrown up by the government & then never used? Those were for warehousing the dead & dying that would have resulted had we not locked down at all: The relatively low death rate for the first COVID wave gets ripped up if you can only effectively treat 10% of the caseload.
The effects on the country would have been far far worse without that first lockdown. This was so obvious that the population was already starting to act before the government did. They were in many ways following public opinion rather than leading it. Had they led from the outset we might be in a better position now.
To be honest after the multiple resignations, the persistent rumours of visits from the Plod and the bitter leadership campaign I suspect the SNP would take that. It could and should have been a lot worse. It seems that the underlying support for independence is still protecting the SNP somewhat. But the bad news is maybe not finished yet.
The poll is from the end of the Sturgeon era, not the new exciting Yousaf era, as ex-PBer James Kelly explains here
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
They were running the country because the politicians abrogated their responsibility and it was easier not to question the output. I don't blame the modellers and of course the politicians retained power. In my view they made serious and deadly errors.
We all get Lockdown #1 - who could have seen photos from Italy and not reacted in some extreme way but even then there was an argument for advisory rather than mandatory. From that point onwards, however, the government made a series of ever more egregious errors cheered on by the public they had terrified.
Modellers and the CMO presumably wanted as near zero deaths as possible. That was also not the correct metric to use.
I would say let's wait to see the enquiry but the govt has realised that it can scare the people into doing anything it wants and hence I doubt the enquiry will say anything other than well done for locking down we'll do the same again.
Who'd have thought that Steve bloody Baker would end up being an absolutely vital democratic element in the whole process.
Sorry to hear about your father. You can be expecting/anticipating it for any amount of time but when it happens it is a huge blow.
He was an immense talent and The White Hotel is one of those books that has in one way or another stayed with me ever since I first read it dear god now some 40 years ago.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
Maybe there shouldn't have been any lockdowns, except for people in vulnerable categories.
Absolutely not. No first lockdown results in the NHS being completely swamped with cases. We barely coped as it was, with all the extra capacity the NHS threw together at short notice (with no direction from the government either - I know people working in local NHS management & they were working seven days a week putting in as much capacity as they could create on such short notice long before the goverment even thought about doing anything).
Remember all those extra temporary hospitals that were thrown up by the government & then never used? Those were for warehousing the dead & dying that would have resulted had we not locked down at all: The relatively low death rate for the first COVID wave gets ripped up if you can only effectively treat 10% of the caseload.
The effects on the country would have been far far worse without that first lockdown. This was so obvious that the population was already starting to act before the government did. They were in many ways following public opinion rather than leading it. Had they led from the outset we might be in a better position now.
It would appear that lockdown was a success.
Because everyone who opposed it is now saying it wasn't needed.
Which, as I pointed out at the time, was always going to be a bit of a problem...
(b) By the government's own admission, mask wearing was about having a visible sign that you were trying to do something, not actually about doing something. Far from being promoted earlier, it should never have been promoted at all - it was dehumanising and added to the culture of fear that made restrictions harder to move away from
That's grade A bullshit. Masks, we now know, are effective at reducing spread and we should have promoted their use much earlier than we did.
Presumably that depends heavily on everyone using their masks properly? – which in my experience few did in the real world.
They are still asking people to use masks in GP surgeries here, and still handing out the useless masks to people, instead of proper FFP2 masks (and helping them wear them properly).
When I went into hospital for a minor procedure recently, because I'd coughed a couple of times the day before, they gave me a proper FFP2 mask to wear until the PCR test came back negative for Covid, after which it was back to the useless masks.
It's daft. Use proper masks properly or don't bother.
(b) By the government's own admission, mask wearing was about having a visible sign that you were trying to do something, not actually about doing something. Far from being promoted earlier, it should never have been promoted at all - it was dehumanising and added to the culture of fear that made restrictions harder to move away from
That's grade A bullshit. Masks, we now know, are effective at reducing spread and we should have promoted their use much earlier than we did.
Presumably that depends heavily on everyone using their masks properly? – which in my experience few did in the real world.
Partly because there was no government information campaign anywhere to instruct people.
(b) By the government's own admission, mask wearing was about having a visible sign that you were trying to do something, not actually about doing something. Far from being promoted earlier, it should never have been promoted at all - it was dehumanising and added to the culture of fear that made restrictions harder to move away from
That's grade A bullshit. Masks, we now know, are effective at reducing spread and we should have promoted their use much earlier than we did.
I think the evidence on this is at best mixed.
Wearing a mask in a hospital, perhaps.
Putting a mask on to go to the toilet in a restaurant, perhaps not.
(b) By the government's own admission, mask wearing was about having a visible sign that you were trying to do something, not actually about doing something. Far from being promoted earlier, it should never have been promoted at all - it was dehumanising and added to the culture of fear that made restrictions harder to move away from
That's grade A bullshit. Masks, we now know, are effective at reducing spread and we should have promoted their use much earlier than we did.
I think the evidence on this is at best mixed.
Wearing a mask in a hospital, perhaps.
Putting a mask on to go to the toilet in a restaurant, perhaps not.
That depends on what one had been eating previously.
Wait, that's from a Panelbase poll from BEFORE the leadership result, and before much of the worst of the SNP scandals? Isn't it? That's what the original tweet suggests. Or am I wrong?
So we can expect the next poll to be considerably better/worse for the Nats, depending on whether you think Humza Yousaf is a Churchillian genius comparable with Lincoln/twat
The poll attached to the artcile - self-selecting of those hoping to view a train wreck as it might be - says 90% he is the wrong person to be leader. Hard to imagine that the army of SNP keyboard warriors would let that stand, but so it seems.
(b) By the government's own admission, mask wearing was about having a visible sign that you were trying to do something, not actually about doing something. Far from being promoted earlier, it should never have been promoted at all - it was dehumanising and added to the culture of fear that made restrictions harder to move away from
That's grade A bullshit. Masks, we now know, are effective at reducing spread and we should have promoted their use much earlier than we did.
Proper masks worn properly, perhaps.
But that's purely theoretical. I'm talking about real people in the real world.
There seems to be basic unfairness, and maybe sexism too.
Margaret Ferrier gets a four week sanction for a foolish, but not dishonest, breach of the COVID rules. Boris Johnson who instituted systematic breaches and lied about it continuously including to parliament gets the best lawyer our taxpayer money can buy and so far has resisted any sanction. Another woman, Allegra Stratton, who had a bit part at most, is the only person to have resigned over these breaches.
I agree Margaret Ferrier has been treated very harshly ... and may end up losing her job.
If you caught Covid off her on her train journey from Scotland to London and back, you might not think she was treated harshly.
Especially if you then died of it.
One of my biggest bug bears of the entire Covid social madness was people 'blaming' others for catching covid.
It was always 'in the supermarket' or 'from our careless neighbours'
Not, as is most likely, from their own families.
Indeed. I heard the supermarket one far too often: the key flaw in the logic was that one had to be in the supermarket oneself to catch anything in the supermarket. Yet this obvious catch-22 appeared to pass most people by.
Our local supermarket workers were sans mask throughout. And all absolutely fine.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
This is silly. Going rock climbing doesn’t risk infecting a further 1000 people with the desire to go rock climbing & killing 20 of them as a result with the next month.
Pendemics fundamentally alter the basic libertarian calculus on which liberal western societies are usually run. They are unlike most other risks in that individual behaviour doesn’t just affect the individual concerned & those who choose to associate with them, but directly affects every social contact to the nth degree in measurably awful ways.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
(b) By the government's own admission, mask wearing was about having a visible sign that you were trying to do something, not actually about doing something. Far from being promoted earlier, it should never have been promoted at all - it was dehumanising and added to the culture of fear that made restrictions harder to move away from
That's grade A bullshit. Masks, we now know, are effective at reducing spread and we should have promoted their use much earlier than we did.
Presumably that depends heavily on everyone using their masks properly? – which in my experience few did in the real world.
They are still asking people to use masks in GP surgeries here, and still handing out the useless masks to people, instead of proper FFP2 masks (and helping them wear them properly).
When I went into hospital for a minor procedure recently, because I'd coughed a couple of times the day before, they gave me a proper FFP2 mask to wear until the PCR test came back negative for Covid, after which it was back to the useless masks.
It's daft. Use proper masks properly or don't bother.
I had a close relative in hospital recently – was surprised to find masks were mandatory when visiting. Except none of the patients ever wore them, and all the nurses removed them when they were talking either to the patients or to each other. So, the protective element of the regimen was presumably something close to zero?
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
This is silly. Going rock climbing doesn’t risk infecting a further 1000 people with the desire to go rock climbing & killing 20 of them as a result with the next month.
Pendemics fundamentally alter the basic libertarian calculus on which liberal western societies are usually run. They are unlike most other risks in that individual behaviour doesn’t just affect the individual concerned & those who choose to associate with them, but directly affects every social contact to the nth degree in measurably awful ways.
Wow . You are talking about a disease with an infection fatality rate of 0.2% not the Black Death. Go and read A State of Fear by laura Dodsworth.
Wait, that's from a Panelbase poll from BEFORE the leadership result, and before much of the worst of the SNP scandals? Isn't it? That's what the original tweet suggests. Or am I wrong?
So we can expect the next poll to be considerably better/worse for the Nats, depending on whether you think Humza Yousaf is a Churchillian genius comparable with Lincoln/twat
The poll attached to the artcile - self-selecting of those hoping to view a train wreck as it might be - says 90% he is the wrong person to be leader. Hard to imagine that the army of SNP keyboard warriors would let that stand, but so it seems.
A question for you. Were you a resident of Airdrie and Shotts, would you lend your vote to the heinous Labour Party candidate to see off the SNP?
Seeing off the SNP would be the only occasion I would ever conceivably vote blue.
(b) By the government's own admission, mask wearing was about having a visible sign that you were trying to do something, not actually about doing something. Far from being promoted earlier, it should never have been promoted at all - it was dehumanising and added to the culture of fear that made restrictions harder to move away from
That's grade A bullshit. Masks, we now know, are effective at reducing spread and we should have promoted their use much earlier than we did.
Proper masks worn properly, perhaps.
But that's purely theoretical. I'm talking about real people in the real world.
This is the key point. Can anyone point to visiting any venue, anywhere, at anytime during covid where masking was textbook? You only need to read back the posts on PB highlighting the amateurish masking by human beings: the off the nose look; the sitting down rule; the drinking a pint rule; there was even a brief fashion for waitresses hanging them off their ears as medical-themed earrings as I recall.
There seems to be basic unfairness, and maybe sexism too.
Margaret Ferrier gets a four week sanction for a foolish, but not dishonest, breach of the COVID rules. Boris Johnson who instituted systematic breaches and lied about it continuously including to parliament gets the best lawyer our taxpayer money can buy and so far has resisted any sanction. Another woman, Allegra Stratton, who had a bit part at most, is the only person to have resigned over these breaches.
I agree Margaret Ferrier has been treated very harshly ... and may end up losing her job.
If you caught Covid off her on her train journey from Scotland to London and back, you might not think she was treated harshly.
Especially if you then died of it.
One of my biggest bug bears of the entire Covid social madness was people 'blaming' others for catching covid.
It was always 'in the supermarket' or 'from our careless neighbours'
Not, as is most likely, from their own families.
Indeed. I heard the supermarket one far too often: the key flaw in the logic was that one had to be in the supermarket oneself to catch anything in the supermarket. Yet this obvious catch-22 appeared to pass most people by.
Our local supermarket workers were sans mask throughout. And all absolutely fine.
Still look back with horror on the mask fascists.
"all absolutely fine".
Hmmm. I know people who work in the sector who would say that was so much bullshit. There was a lot of Covid in supermarkets.
But then someone who uses the term "mask fascists" is not worth engaging with.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
Maybe there shouldn't have been any lockdowns, except for people in vulnerable categories.
Absolutely not. No first lockdown results in the NHS being completely swamped with cases. We barely coped as it was, with all the extra capacity the NHS threw together at short notice (with no direction from the government either - I know people working in local NHS management & they were working seven days a week putting in as much capacity as they could create on such short notice long before the goverment even thought about doing anything).
Remember all those extra temporary hospitals that were thrown up by the government & then never used? Those were for warehousing the dead & dying that would have resulted had we not locked down at all: The relatively low death rate for the first COVID wave gets ripped up if you can only effectively treat 10% of the caseload.
The effects on the country would have been far far worse without that first lockdown. This was so obvious that the population was already starting to act before the government did. They were in many ways following public opinion rather than leading it. Had they led from the outset we might be in a better position now.
It would appear that lockdown was a success.
Because everyone who opposed it is now saying it wasn't needed.
Which, as I pointed out at the time, was always going to be a bit of a problem...
So you think we should always lockdown for diseases with an infection fatality rate of around 0.2%. Close schools and destroy kids education. You have your view I suppose likely because you had a pleasant lockdown experience working from home with a nice large garden.
(b) By the government's own admission, mask wearing was about having a visible sign that you were trying to do something, not actually about doing something. Far from being promoted earlier, it should never have been promoted at all - it was dehumanising and added to the culture of fear that made restrictions harder to move away from
That's grade A bullshit. Masks, we now know, are effective at reducing spread and we should have promoted their use much earlier than we did.
Presumably that depends heavily on everyone using their masks properly? – which in my experience few did in the real world.
They are still asking people to use masks in GP surgeries here, and still handing out the useless masks to people, instead of proper FFP2 masks (and helping them wear them properly).
When I went into hospital for a minor procedure recently, because I'd coughed a couple of times the day before, they gave me a proper FFP2 mask to wear until the PCR test came back negative for Covid, after which it was back to the useless masks.
It's daft. Use proper masks properly or don't bother.
I had a close relative in hospital recently – was surprised to find masks were mandatory when visiting. Except none of the patients ever wore them, and all the nurses removed them when they were talking either to the patients or to each other. So, the protective element of the regimen was presumably something close to zero?
It's been utter bullshit pretty much from the start. In my mum's care home when the residents (or Covid prisoners as they were) were eventually allowed visits they insisted on visitors wearing masks long after restrictions elsewhere were lifted, the carer's wore masks covering their chin, perhaps their mouth but rarely their nose. Visitors taking off masks once inside the home was only policed patchily.
But when a carer picked up their phone to take a photo for the home's Facebook page - boy did they make sure everyone wore masks for that.
By James Kelly's own admission, the GE Panelbase poll (SNP 40%, SLAB 33%) would lead to the SNP losing 16 seats to Labour... and that's without considering tactical voting. If that's accurate Labour should win Rutherglen and Hamilton West easily.
Sad news. Reading a paper copy of the Telegraph in a coffee shop just now, noticed that one of the obituaries today is the writer DM Thomas, author of The White Hotel. Condolences to his family.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
The amazing thing is most people were perfectly happy for people to die alone and for old people to rot away in care homes.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
If you model the spread in a simple way, with a value of R above 1 when not in lockdown and below 1 when in lockdown (as you are implicitly assuming and which I take issue with in my earlier comment), then imposing a lockdown earlier doesn't reduce the total time spent in lockdown. You yo-yo in and out of lockdown in a similar way to how you would if you waited for a higher infection level before entering lockdown and, overall, you spend the same length of time in lockdown.
What you do achieve is a lower burden of cases overall, and therefore fewer deaths and less additional load on the health service.
From a purely mathematical point of view, I don't think that's true.
If R is 2 with no restrictions, and 0.8 with them, and restrictions are only removed when the case load falls below a certain level, then the earlier you get restrictions on, the less total time is spent in lockdown.
Less time is spent in that lockdown, but then spread starts again earlier and so you go back above your threshold for imposing the next lockdown earlier. Once you've been through the cycle a few times it's a wash.
Excel says you are wrong.
Seriously, go to Excel or Google Sheets and use my Rs and whatever you want as the trigger points for implementing and removing restrictions.
You will find that the earlier you implement restrictions, the less time you spend with them, because declines are more gradual than rises.
1 ~ 2 * 0.8 * 0.8 * 0.8
With those numbers you will spend three-quarters of your time in lockdown whether you impose lockdown early or late.
I think you're assuming that the up and down waves are symmetrical, that doubling and halving take equal.amounts of time.
From memory, Spring 2020 had doubling time of half a week and halving of about two weeks. So yes- letting the virus get out of hand cost more lockdown time than it saved.
To be honest after the multiple resignations, the persistent rumours of visits from the Plod and the bitter leadership campaign I suspect the SNP would take that. It could and should have been a lot worse. It seems that the underlying support for independence is still protecting the SNP somewhat. But the bad news is maybe not finished yet.
The poll is from the end of the Sturgeon era, not the new exciting Yousaf era, as ex-PBer James Kelly explains here
Thanks, I needed a laugh. Not sure where he got 48% from though.
I've grown a fondness for James and ScotGoesPop, because he is so relentlessly, amusingly upbeat about every poll for indy, and he is also polite and intelligent (unlike so many Cybernats); he even talks about other stuff, sometimes
The fact that even he has given in to bouts of despair, in the last few weeks, shows that things must be bad
As he suggests in that blogpost, he is awaiting the first post-Yousaf-leader poll with some dread
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
This is silly. Going rock climbing doesn’t risk infecting a further 1000 people with the desire to go rock climbing & killing 20 of them as a result with the next month.
Pendemics fundamentally alter the basic libertarian calculus on which liberal western societies are usually run. They are unlike most other risks in that individual behaviour doesn’t just affect the individual concerned & those who choose to associate with them, but directly affects every social contact to the nth degree in measurably awful ways.
Wow . You are talking about a disease with an infection fatality rate of 0.2% not the Black Death. Go and read A State of Fear by laura Dodsworth.
No, we're talking about Covid. IFR in the pre-vaccine era can now be seen to have been c. 1.0% - 1.3% thanks to the ONS Infections survey.
Hospitalisation rates were c. 5% in that time as well.
We do not have the hospital capacity to push 5% of the population through hospitals in a matter of a couple of months.
There seems to be basic unfairness, and maybe sexism too.
Margaret Ferrier gets a four week sanction for a foolish, but not dishonest, breach of the COVID rules. Boris Johnson who instituted systematic breaches and lied about it continuously including to parliament gets the best lawyer our taxpayer money can buy and so far has resisted any sanction. Another woman, Allegra Stratton, who had a bit part at most, is the only person to have resigned over these breaches.
I agree Margaret Ferrier has been treated very harshly ... and may end up losing her job.
If you caught Covid off her on her train journey from Scotland to London and back, you might not think she was treated harshly.
Especially if you then died of it.
One of my biggest bug bears of the entire Covid social madness was people 'blaming' others for catching covid.
It was always 'in the supermarket' or 'from our careless neighbours'
Not, as is most likely, from their own families.
Indeed. I heard the supermarket one far too often: the key flaw in the logic was that one had to be in the supermarket oneself to catch anything in the supermarket. Yet this obvious catch-22 appeared to pass most people by.
Our local supermarket workers were sans mask throughout. And all absolutely fine.
Still look back with horror on the mask fascists.
"all absolutely fine".
Hmmm. I know people who work in the sector who would say that was so much bullshit. There was a lot of Covid in supermarkets.
But then someone who uses the term "mask fascists" is not worth engaging with.
Oh really? Such a shame people closed their minds about so much during Covid.
I was exempt during one of the lockdowns (I had ear infections that made it impossible), but nosy busybodies were busybodying!
Claims from one side, so obvious bias, but if it's near the truth, then it's fairly staggering:
"Defense Ministry: Russian, Ukrainian losses in east 10 to 1 some days.
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said on Telegram that there are days in Ukraine's east where the ratio of Russian and Ukrainian losses is "as high as 10 to 1.""
It's slightly interesting listening to some of the putting the other side (my chosen phrase tends to be useful-idiots-for-Putin). Scott Ritter for example has been quoting those ratios the other way round, and claiming that UA has not reconstituted its army 3 times, alongside stuff lining up behind the Nazi / Nao-Nazi Govt of Ukraine and other elements of the Moscow line.
Wait, that's from a Panelbase poll from BEFORE the leadership result, and before much of the worst of the SNP scandals? Isn't it? That's what the original tweet suggests. Or am I wrong?
So we can expect the next poll to be considerably better/worse for the Nats, depending on whether you think Humza Yousaf is a Churchillian genius comparable with Lincoln/twat
The poll attached to the artcile - self-selecting of those hoping to view a train wreck as it might be - says 90% he is the wrong person to be leader. Hard to imagine that the army of SNP keyboard warriors would let that stand, but so it seems.
A question for you. Were you a resident of Airdrie and Shotts, would you lend your vote to the heinous Labour Party candidate to see off the SNP?
Seeing off the SNP would be the only occasion I would ever conceivably vote blue.
I see several people on here for whom the Union is a greater driver of their vote than Party. Would I? I really don't know.
My attachment to the Union is not exactly overwhelming. If there was a properly argued case - with all the pros and cons properly spelt out - I would be fairly relaxed if Scotland then decided it wanted to break away. But the SNP has not made that case. Far from it. It has been massively dishonest, from what I see. In the absence of that well-made case, I have to worry that it would be a potentially fraught leap in the dark for Scotland. So maybe, if it prevented a potential disaster for Scotland, I could vote Labour.
There seems to be basic unfairness, and maybe sexism too.
Margaret Ferrier gets a four week sanction for a foolish, but not dishonest, breach of the COVID rules. Boris Johnson who instituted systematic breaches and lied about it continuously including to parliament gets the best lawyer our taxpayer money can buy and so far has resisted any sanction. Another woman, Allegra Stratton, who had a bit part at most, is the only person to have resigned over these breaches.
I agree Margaret Ferrier has been treated very harshly ... and may end up losing her job.
If you caught Covid off her on her train journey from Scotland to London and back, you might not think she was treated harshly.
Especially if you then died of it.
One of my biggest bug bears of the entire Covid social madness was people 'blaming' others for catching covid.
It was always 'in the supermarket' or 'from our careless neighbours'
Not, as is most likely, from their own families.
Indeed. I heard the supermarket one far too often: the key flaw in the logic was that one had to be in the supermarket oneself to catch anything in the supermarket. Yet this obvious catch-22 appeared to pass most people by.
Our local supermarket workers were sans mask throughout. And all absolutely fine.
Still look back with horror on the mask fascists.
One of mine was, one wasn't.
I swapped to the masked supermarket, as my immune system is now somewhat shot.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
The amazing thing is most people were perfectly happy for people to die alone and for old people to rot away in care homes.
Indeed, most people wanted rules to be tighter.
The way in which otherwise rational individuals surrender freedoms to the state when they're a little bit scared is truly frightening.....
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
This is silly. Going rock climbing doesn’t risk infecting a further 1000 people with the desire to go rock climbing & killing 20 of them as a result with the next month.
Pendemics fundamentally alter the basic libertarian calculus on which liberal western societies are usually run. They are unlike most other risks in that individual behaviour doesn’t just affect the individual concerned & those who choose to associate with them, but directly affects every social contact to the nth degree in measurably awful ways.
Wow . You are talking about a disease with an infection fatality rate of 0.2% not the Black Death. Go and read A State of Fear by laura Dodsworth.
No, we're talking about Covid. IFR in the pre-vaccine era can now be seen to have been c. 1.0% - 1.3% thanks to the ONS Infections survey.
Hospitalisation rates were c. 5% in that time as well.
We do not have the hospital capacity to push 5% of the population through hospitals in a matter of a couple of months.
Yes but that death rate was exagerrated by the pushing of people from hospital into care homes and the liberal use of ventilators in hospital which were a near death sentence. I am sure you are aware too of the rumours that Hancock prescribed midazalom in care homes to elderly residents which also pushed the death rate up.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
The amazing thing is most people were perfectly happy for people to die alone and for old people to rot away in care homes.
Tell you what, I'm still furious and I'll never get over this period - not the virus - I mean the government response to it. Scarred for life.
My poor mother. I know I've banged on about this before on here. She was happy in her care home until Covid. Then suddenly no visitors - which was her sole enjoyment in life - and instead people in masks bringing her meals and in masks taking her plate away. No other contact whatsoever. Not allowed to leave her room. Then the fucking indignity of "window visits". The last18 months of her useful life was lost due to this; when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes.
Then - just before visitors were eventually allowed back - she is diagnosed with vascular dementia, cannot remember the name of her children or husband. I want to know who to sue over this. Fucking Hancock I suppose.
I've just happily accepted a freeze on my rent for the next year, and a guaranteed fifty quid a month increase in the following year, which is about six per cent
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
If you model the spread in a simple way, with a value of R above 1 when not in lockdown and below 1 when in lockdown (as you are implicitly assuming and which I take issue with in my earlier comment), then imposing a lockdown earlier doesn't reduce the total time spent in lockdown. You yo-yo in and out of lockdown in a similar way to how you would if you waited for a higher infection level before entering lockdown and, overall, you spend the same length of time in lockdown.
What you do achieve is a lower burden of cases overall, and therefore fewer deaths and less additional load on the health service.
From a purely mathematical point of view, I don't think that's true.
If R is 2 with no restrictions, and 0.8 with them, and restrictions are only removed when the case load falls below a certain level, then the earlier you get restrictions on, the less total time is spent in lockdown.
Less time is spent in that lockdown, but then spread starts again earlier and so you go back above your threshold for imposing the next lockdown earlier. Once you've been through the cycle a few times it's a wash.
Excel says you are wrong.
Seriously, go to Excel or Google Sheets and use my Rs and whatever you want as the trigger points for implementing and removing restrictions.
You will find that the earlier you implement restrictions, the less time you spend with them, because declines are more gradual than rises.
1 ~ 2 * 0.8 * 0.8 * 0.8
With those numbers you will spend three-quarters of your time in lockdown whether you impose lockdown early or late.
I think you're assuming that the up and down waves are symmetrical, that doubling and halving take equal.amounts of time.
From memory, Spring 2020 had doubling time of half a week and halving of about two weeks. So yes- letting the virus get out of hand cost more lockdown time than it saved.
The curve was symmetrical. The real-time observations of it, however, were two weeks removed.
I think what will do for Boris is his lack of remorse and his stubborn adherence to the lies.
He was given a chance by the Committee. Harman specifically gave him that chance before it retired.
He didn't take it.
I expect it to cost him his seat.
For Boris Johnson, telling lies and having no remorse are just who he is. Like I have been saying since the dawn of time. Absolutely nothing that he has said or done should be a surprise to anyone. The Purnell biography is available from all good bookshops and it continues to surprise me that people are surprised when he reveals himself to be utterly without scruples, shame or morals. He is just not a normal human being guided and constrained by the same internal rules and boundaries as most of us.
As Max Hastings says:
"Almost the only people who think Johnson a nice guy are those who do not know him."
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
The amazing thing is most people were perfectly happy for people to die alone and for old people to rot away in care homes.
Tell you what, I'm still furious and I'll never get over this period - not the virus - I mean the government response to it. Scarred for life.
My poor mother. I know I've banged on about this before on here. She was happy in her care home until Covid. Then suddenly no visitors - which was her sole enjoyment in life - and instead people in masks bringing her meals and in masks taking her plate away. No other contact whatsoever. Not allowed to leave her room. Then the fucking indignity of "window visits". The last18 months of her useful life was lost due to this; when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes.
Then - just before visitors were eventually allowed back - she is diagnosed with vascular dementia, cannot remember the name of her children or husband. I want to know who to sue over this. Fucking Hancock I suppose.
The bit in bold is the great tragedy of the entire thing. And I bet the inquiry never challenges that principle, which will render it completly worthless.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
The amazing thing is most people were perfectly happy for people to die alone and for old people to rot away in care homes.
...quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes...
Interesting thread on an upcoming Ukraine offensive.
Last night, I tweeted that I had been assessing & considering the challenges Ukraine's Army (UA) Commanders were facing in preparing for the “spring offensives.
I said I'd share some thoughts on what I would be thinking if I were among them.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
This is silly. Going rock climbing doesn’t risk infecting a further 1000 people with the desire to go rock climbing & killing 20 of them as a result with the next month.
Pendemics fundamentally alter the basic libertarian calculus on which liberal western societies are usually run. They are unlike most other risks in that individual behaviour doesn’t just affect the individual concerned & those who choose to associate with them, but directly affects every social contact to the nth degree in measurably awful ways.
Wow . You are talking about a disease with an infection fatality rate of 0.2% not the Black Death. Go and read A State of Fear by laura Dodsworth.
Delta had a 0.2% case fatality rate in a vaccinated & partially previously infected population. Alpha, infecting a naive population had a much, much higher fatality rate. (Wikipedia claims 2.88% in the UK drawing on a government publication as a source, but that seems high to me - I suspect government figures may undercount known infections in the population - were they doing the PCR random testing of the whole population to acertain infection rates during the alpha wave?)
I will accept that the tradeoffs for later waves would be different & especially post-vaccination we might have not made the optimal choice.
I will not accept that the first (or arguably any up until mass vaccination) lockdown was un-necessary. The first absolutely was & subsequent ones probably were too, although I’m open to being persuaded otherwise by actual numbers.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
The amazing thing is most people were perfectly happy for people to die alone and for old people to rot away in care homes.
Tell you what, I'm still furious and I'll never get over this period - not the virus - I mean the government response to it. Scarred for life.
My poor mother. I know I've banged on about this before on here. She was happy in her care home until Covid. Then suddenly no visitors - which was her sole enjoyment in life - and instead people in masks bringing her meals and in masks taking her plate away. No other contact whatsoever. Not allowed to leave her room. Then the fucking indignity of "window visits". The last18 months of her useful life was lost due to this; when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes.
Then - just before visitors were eventually allowed back - she is diagnosed with vascular dementia, cannot remember the name of her children or husband. I want to know who to sue over this. Fucking Hancock I suppose.
The bit in bold is the great tragedy of the entire thing. And I bet the inquiry never challenges that principle, which will render it completly worthless.
Inquiry will be the waste of time and typical British whitewash. Remember Hutton. We dont like to think about it but we in fact live in quite a corrupt country.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
The amazing thing is most people were perfectly happy for people to die alone and for old people to rot away in care homes.
Indeed, most people wanted rules to be tighter.
The way in which otherwise rational individuals surrender freedoms to the state when they're a little bit scared is truly frightening.....
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
If you model the spread in a simple way, with a value of R above 1 when not in lockdown and below 1 when in lockdown (as you are implicitly assuming and which I take issue with in my earlier comment), then imposing a lockdown earlier doesn't reduce the total time spent in lockdown. You yo-yo in and out of lockdown in a similar way to how you would if you waited for a higher infection level before entering lockdown and, overall, you spend the same length of time in lockdown.
What you do achieve is a lower burden of cases overall, and therefore fewer deaths and less additional load on the health service.
From a purely mathematical point of view, I don't think that's true.
If R is 2 with no restrictions, and 0.8 with them, and restrictions are only removed when the case load falls below a certain level, then the earlier you get restrictions on, the less total time is spent in lockdown.
Less time is spent in that lockdown, but then spread starts again earlier and so you go back above your threshold for imposing the next lockdown earlier. Once you've been through the cycle a few times it's a wash.
Excel says you are wrong.
Seriously, go to Excel or Google Sheets and use my Rs and whatever you want as the trigger points for implementing and removing restrictions.
You will find that the earlier you implement restrictions, the less time you spend with them, because declines are more gradual than rises.
1 ~ 2 * 0.8 * 0.8 * 0.8
With those numbers you will spend three-quarters of your time in lockdown whether you impose lockdown early or late.
I think you're assuming that the up and down waves are symmetrical, that doubling and halving take equal.amounts of time.
From memory, Spring 2020 had doubling time of half a week and halving of about two weeks. So yes- letting the virus get out of hand cost more lockdown time than it saved.
The curve was symmetrical. The real-time observations of it, however, were two weeks removed.
Erm, what ? How does the second sentence relate at all to the argument as to the shape of the curve ?
Couple of unrelated thoughts about mask-wearing. I have carers coming in twice a day to ‘assist with personal care’ since I’m pretty well disabled since my operation and they all wear masks. Sometimes they even wear them properly! My brother- and sister-law, who haven’t worn masks for ages both went down with Covid last week. Neither of them have been within 200 miles of us!
And in my first year studying pharmacy, before most pb-ers were born, we were taught about constructing sterile rooms, and air-filters were part of the fixtures.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
Maybe there shouldn't have been any lockdowns, except for people in vulnerable categories.
Absolutely not. No first lockdown results in the NHS being completely swamped with cases. We barely coped as it was, with all the extra capacity the NHS threw together at short notice (with no direction from the government either - I know people working in local NHS management & they were working seven days a week putting in as much capacity as they could create on such short notice long before the goverment even thought about doing anything).
Remember all those extra temporary hospitals that were thrown up by the government & then never used? Those were for warehousing the dead & dying that would have resulted had we not locked down at all: The relatively low death rate for the first COVID wave gets ripped up if you can only effectively treat 10% of the caseload.
The effects on the country would have been far far worse without that first lockdown. This was so obvious that the population was already starting to act before the government did. They were in many ways following public opinion rather than leading it. Had they led from the outset we might be in a better position now.
It would appear that lockdown was a success.
Because everyone who opposed it is now saying it wasn't needed.
Which, as I pointed out at the time, was always going to be a bit of a problem...
So you think we should always lockdown for diseases with an infection fatality rate of around 0.2%. Close schools and destroy kids education. You have your view I suppose likely because you had a pleasant lockdown experience working from home with a nice large garden.
I do not have 'a nice large garden.' I have a small garden of about 15 m2 that I was glad of.
I worked twice as hard in lockdown to keep schools open, including delivering all my lessons remotely volunteering to cover for a number of more vulnerable colleagues.
I have left teaching partly because of vile, stupid, dishonest bullies making cretinous comments like yours at a time when I was busting my arse off to keep things going. If they treat me like that they can fuck right off.
You are Jeremy Clarkson without the intelligence and sense of humour. Sod off.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
The amazing thing is most people were perfectly happy for people to die alone and for old people to rot away in care homes.
Tell you what, I'm still furious and I'll never get over this period - not the virus - I mean the government response to it. Scarred for life.
My poor mother. I know I've banged on about this before on here. She was happy in her care home until Covid. Then suddenly no visitors - which was her sole enjoyment in life - and instead people in masks bringing her meals and in masks taking her plate away. No other contact whatsoever. Not allowed to leave her room. Then the fucking indignity of "window visits". The last18 months of her useful life was lost due to this; when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes.
Then - just before visitors were eventually allowed back - she is diagnosed with vascular dementia, cannot remember the name of her children or husband. I want to know who to sue over this. Fucking Hancock I suppose.
Firstly, may I say I have sympathies with you over your experience.
" when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes. "
But surely the alternative was to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Which would have seen lots of people dying early when they could have been saved, and who are now living happy lives. And their relatives would br talking about suing Hancock.
What's more, it may have been your mother's choice to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Others in her home - and the staff - may have had a different opinion.
My own view over this whole awful tragedy has remained pretty much the same throughout: there are no 'right' answers about what to do, only varying levels of 'wrong' answers. And I am blooming glad I wasn't the one having to make these decisions.
Couple of unrelated thoughts about mask-wearing. I have carers coming in twice a day to ‘assist with personal care’ since I’m pretty well disabled since my operation and they all wear masks. Sometimes they even wear them properly! My brother- and sister-law, who haven’t worn masks for ages both went down with Covid last week. Neither of them have been within 200 miles of us!
And in my first year studying pharmacy, before most pb-ers were born, we were taught about constructing sterile rooms, and air-filters were part of the fixtures.
Not sure if you have any hearing loss - but those who do cannot function when someone is wearing a mask. Need to see the lips. I wonder if they can be made transparent?
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
Maybe there shouldn't have been any lockdowns, except for people in vulnerable categories.
Absolutely not. No first lockdown results in the NHS being completely swamped with cases. We barely coped as it was, with all the extra capacity the NHS threw together at short notice (with no direction from the government either - I know people working in local NHS management & they were working seven days a week putting in as much capacity as they could create on such short notice long before the goverment even thought about doing anything).
Remember all those extra temporary hospitals that were thrown up by the government & then never used? Those were for warehousing the dead & dying that would have resulted had we not locked down at all: The relatively low death rate for the first COVID wave gets ripped up if you can only effectively treat 10% of the caseload.
The effects on the country would have been far far worse without that first lockdown. This was so obvious that the population was already starting to act before the government did. They were in many ways following public opinion rather than leading it. Had they led from the outset we might be in a better position now.
It would appear that lockdown was a success.
Because everyone who opposed it is now saying it wasn't needed.
Which, as I pointed out at the time, was always going to be a bit of a problem...
So you think we should always lockdown for diseases with an infection fatality rate of around 0.2%. Close schools and destroy kids education. You have your view I suppose likely because you had a pleasant lockdown experience working from home with a nice large garden.
I do not have 'a nice large garden.' I have a small garden of about 15 m2 that I was glad of.
I worked twice as hard in lockdown to keep schools open, including delivering all my lessons remotely volunteering to cover for a number of more vulnerable colleagues.
I have left teaching partly because of vile, stupid, dishonest bullies making cretinous comments like yours at a time when I was busting my arse off to keep things going. If they treat me like that they can fuck right off.
You are Jeremy Clarkson without the intelligence and sense of humour. Sod off.
Call me a cynic, but I am guessing at what point the anti-vax posts start.
Couple of unrelated thoughts about mask-wearing. I have carers coming in twice a day to ‘assist with personal care’ since I’m pretty well disabled since my operation and they all wear masks. Sometimes they even wear them properly! My brother- and sister-law, who haven’t worn masks for ages both went down with Covid last week. Neither of them have been within 200 miles of us!
And in my first year studying pharmacy, before most pb-ers were born, we were taught about constructing sterile rooms, and air-filters were part of the fixtures.
Not sure if you have any hearing loss - but those who do cannot function when someone is wearing a mask. Need to see the lips. I wonder if they can be made transparent?
Yes. We were issued with them as staff, as were children in my lessons as I have hearing loss.
But they're not a lot of use in my experience as the window mists up easily.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
The amazing thing is most people were perfectly happy for people to die alone and for old people to rot away in care homes.
Tell you what, I'm still furious and I'll never get over this period - not the virus - I mean the government response to it. Scarred for life.
My poor mother. I know I've banged on about this before on here. She was happy in her care home until Covid. Then suddenly no visitors - which was her sole enjoyment in life - and instead people in masks bringing her meals and in masks taking her plate away. No other contact whatsoever. Not allowed to leave her room. Then the fucking indignity of "window visits". The last18 months of her useful life was lost due to this; when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes.
Then - just before visitors were eventually allowed back - she is diagnosed with vascular dementia, cannot remember the name of her children or husband. I want to know who to sue over this. Fucking Hancock I suppose.
Firstly, may I say I have sympathies with you over your experience.
" when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes. "
But surely the alternative was to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Which would have seen lots of people dying early when they could have been saved, and who are now living happy lives. And their relatives would br talking about suing Hancock.
What's more, it may have been your mother's choice to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Others in her home - and the staff - may have had a different opinion.
My own view over this whole awful tragedy has remained pretty much the same throughout: there are no 'right' answers about what to do, only varying levels of 'wrong' answers. And I am blooming glad I wasn't the one having to make these decisions.
Good post, I agree with some of it. I would hazard a guess that people in care homes by large majority prioritise quality of life over quantity in their situations.
Wait, that's from a Panelbase poll from BEFORE the leadership result, and before much of the worst of the SNP scandals? Isn't it? That's what the original tweet suggests. Or am I wrong?
So we can expect the next poll to be considerably better/worse for the Nats, depending on whether you think Humza Yousaf is a Churchillian genius comparable with Lincoln/twat
Couple of unrelated thoughts about mask-wearing. I have carers coming in twice a day to ‘assist with personal care’ since I’m pretty well disabled since my operation and they all wear masks. Sometimes they even wear them properly! My brother- and sister-law, who haven’t worn masks for ages both went down with Covid last week. Neither of them have been within 200 miles of us!
And in my first year studying pharmacy, before most pb-ers were born, we were taught about constructing sterile rooms, and air-filters were part of the fixtures.
AFAIK the latest scientific study showed that masks don't make any difference, with the exception of the industrial-style masks which hardly anyone was wearing.
The guidelines/regulations saying we should wear masks were eminently reasonable by any standard, given the information available at the time. Now, with lots of studies done, it's somewhat unclear how effective they were in practice, but, even if you interpret the mixed evidence as indicating that they weren't effective, it's pretty absurd to blame governments for mandating or encouraging them at the time. After all, even a slight reduction in transmission was worth a lot of lives and illness.
What's more surprising is that in the UK and elsewhere, they continued obsessing about hand-sanitising etc long after it became clear that transmission by touch was not an issue. In addition, it was clear fairly early on that ventilation was a crucial factor. At the very least, even without the benefit of hindsight, by mid-2020 the government should have realised that it was safe for people to meet outdoors, as long as they weren't in a crowd and shouting at each other.
Couple of unrelated thoughts about mask-wearing. I have carers coming in twice a day to ‘assist with personal care’ since I’m pretty well disabled since my operation and they all wear masks. Sometimes they even wear them properly! My brother- and sister-law, who haven’t worn masks for ages both went down with Covid last week. Neither of them have been within 200 miles of us!
And in my first year studying pharmacy, before most pb-ers were born, we were taught about constructing sterile rooms, and air-filters were part of the fixtures.
Not sure if you have any hearing loss - but those who do cannot function when someone is wearing a mask. Need to see the lips. I wonder if they can be made transparent?
I have some hearing loss; I wear hearing aids while awake, but I can usually hear if people are close, or work it out if I know the context.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
The amazing thing is most people were perfectly happy for people to die alone and for old people to rot away in care homes.
Tell you what, I'm still furious and I'll never get over this period - not the virus - I mean the government response to it. Scarred for life.
My poor mother. I know I've banged on about this before on here. She was happy in her care home until Covid. Then suddenly no visitors - which was her sole enjoyment in life - and instead people in masks bringing her meals and in masks taking her plate away. No other contact whatsoever. Not allowed to leave her room. Then the fucking indignity of "window visits". The last18 months of her useful life was lost due to this; when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes.
Then - just before visitors were eventually allowed back - she is diagnosed with vascular dementia, cannot remember the name of her children or husband. I want to know who to sue over this. Fucking Hancock I suppose.
Firstly, may I say I have sympathies with you over your experience.
" when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes. "
But surely the alternative was to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Which would have seen lots of people dying early when they could have been saved, and who are now living happy lives. And their relatives would br talking about suing Hancock.
What's more, it may have been your mother's choice to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Others in her home - and the staff - may have had a different opinion.
My own view over this whole awful tragedy has remained pretty much the same throughout: there are no 'right' answers about what to do, only varying levels of 'wrong' answers. And I am blooming glad I wasn't the one having to make these decisions.
no the majority of those dying were very old people with underlying conditions, Many of these people didnt have a great quality of life before the pandemic. And in an attempt to save some of these old people we destroyed kids education, let people die alone , isolated the elderly in care homes, terrorised the population to death and destroyed many peoples mental health. A healthy society doesnt prioritise the old and sick over the young thats not how things work. But of course we are not a healthy society.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
If you model the spread in a simple way, with a value of R above 1 when not in lockdown and below 1 when in lockdown (as you are implicitly assuming and which I take issue with in my earlier comment), then imposing a lockdown earlier doesn't reduce the total time spent in lockdown. You yo-yo in and out of lockdown in a similar way to how you would if you waited for a higher infection level before entering lockdown and, overall, you spend the same length of time in lockdown.
What you do achieve is a lower burden of cases overall, and therefore fewer deaths and less additional load on the health service.
From a purely mathematical point of view, I don't think that's true.
If R is 2 with no restrictions, and 0.8 with them, and restrictions are only removed when the case load falls below a certain level, then the earlier you get restrictions on, the less total time is spent in lockdown.
Less time is spent in that lockdown, but then spread starts again earlier and so you go back above your threshold for imposing the next lockdown earlier. Once you've been through the cycle a few times it's a wash.
Excel says you are wrong.
Seriously, go to Excel or Google Sheets and use my Rs and whatever you want as the trigger points for implementing and removing restrictions.
You will find that the earlier you implement restrictions, the less time you spend with them, because declines are more gradual than rises.
1 ~ 2 * 0.8 * 0.8 * 0.8
With those numbers you will spend three-quarters of your time in lockdown whether you impose lockdown early or late.
I think you're assuming that the up and down waves are symmetrical, that doubling and halving take equal.amounts of time.
From memory, Spring 2020 had doubling time of half a week and halving of about two weeks. So yes- letting the virus get out of hand cost more lockdown time than it saved.
The curve was symmetrical. The real-time observations of it, however, were two weeks removed.
Erm, what ? How does the second sentence relate at all to the argument as to the shape of the curve ?
We were constantly looking in the rear-view mirror at the time, so the apparent shape of the curve didn’t match the reality of it. Subsequent data has suggested that the curve was much more symmetrical up and down, than we thought at the time.
The guidelines/regulations saying we should wear masks were eminently reasonable by any standard, given the information available at the time. Now, with lots of studies done, it's somewhat unclear how effective they were in practice, but, even if you interpret the mixed evidence as indicating that they weren't effective, it's pretty absurd to blame governments for mandating or encouraging them at the time. After all, even a slight reduction in transmission was worth a lot of lives and illness.
What's more surprising is that in the UK and elsewhere, they continued obsessing about hand-sanitising etc long after it became clear that transmission by touch was not an issue. In addition, it was clear fairly early on that ventilation was a crucial factor. At the very least, even without the benefit of hindsight, by mid-2020 the government should have realised that it was safe for people to meet outdoors, as long as they weren't in a crowd and shouting at each other.
I'm sure they did realise this. The mistake is thinking that they were driven by any other instinct that their own political considerations.
There was a thick strand in government that knew that much of the response was overly-authoritarian and incompatible with liberal democracy, but they did it anyway because of pressure from virtually everyone that mattered - the modellers, Starmer, the NHS, the media. Weak pliable government.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
The amazing thing is most people were perfectly happy for people to die alone and for old people to rot away in care homes.
Tell you what, I'm still furious and I'll never get over this period - not the virus - I mean the government response to it. Scarred for life.
My poor mother. I know I've banged on about this before on here. She was happy in her care home until Covid. Then suddenly no visitors - which was her sole enjoyment in life - and instead people in masks bringing her meals and in masks taking her plate away. No other contact whatsoever. Not allowed to leave her room. Then the fucking indignity of "window visits". The last18 months of her useful life was lost due to this; when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes.
Then - just before visitors were eventually allowed back - she is diagnosed with vascular dementia, cannot remember the name of her children or husband. I want to know who to sue over this. Fucking Hancock I suppose.
Firstly, may I say I have sympathies with you over your experience.
" when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes. "
But surely the alternative was to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Which would have seen lots of people dying early when they could have been saved, and who are now living happy lives. And their relatives would br talking about suing Hancock.
What's more, it may have been your mother's choice to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Others in her home - and the staff - may have had a different opinion.
My own view over this whole awful tragedy has remained pretty much the same throughout: there are no 'right' answers about what to do, only varying levels of 'wrong' answers. And I am blooming glad I wasn't the one having to make these decisions.
no the majority of those dying were very old people with underlying conditions, Many of these people didnt have a great quality of life before the pandemic. And in an attempt to save some of these old people we destroyed kids education, let people die alone , isolated the elderly in care homes, terrorised the population to death and destroyed many peoples mental health. A healthy society doesnt prioritise the old and sick over the young thats not how things work. But of course we are not a healthy society.
" the majority of those dying were very old people with underlying conditions, "
Firstly, even if that's true, it's a bit bad for the non-majority, isn't it? Especially as the virus would have spread more, and there would have been more deaths.
Secondly, my mum is old (I'd never call her 'very old'), and has underlying conditions. She is enjoying her post-Covid life very much, thanks. 'Underlying conditions' does not mean they're going to keel over immediately, or cannot enjoy life. Or deserve to die.
"Many of these people didnt have a great quality of life before the pandemic."
Well, many did. And many still do.
"A healthy society doesnt prioritise the old and sick over the young"
A healthy society tries to look after everyone. Logan's Run was, and should remain, a fiction.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
The amazing thing is most people were perfectly happy for people to die alone and for old people to rot away in care homes.
Tell you what, I'm still furious and I'll never get over this period - not the virus - I mean the government response to it. Scarred for life.
My poor mother. I know I've banged on about this before on here. She was happy in her care home until Covid. Then suddenly no visitors - which was her sole enjoyment in life - and instead people in masks bringing her meals and in masks taking her plate away. No other contact whatsoever. Not allowed to leave her room. Then the fucking indignity of "window visits". The last18 months of her useful life was lost due to this; when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes.
Then - just before visitors were eventually allowed back - she is diagnosed with vascular dementia, cannot remember the name of her children or husband. I want to know who to sue over this. Fucking Hancock I suppose.
Firstly, may I say I have sympathies with you over your experience.
" when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes. "
But surely the alternative was to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Which would have seen lots of people dying early when they could have been saved, and who are now living happy lives. And their relatives would br talking about suing Hancock.
What's more, it may have been your mother's choice to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Others in her home - and the staff - may have had a different opinion.
My own view over this whole awful tragedy has remained pretty much the same throughout: there are no 'right' answers about what to do, only varying levels of 'wrong' answers. And I am blooming glad I wasn't the one having to make these decisions.
no the majority of those dying were very old people with underlying conditions, Many of these people didnt have a great quality of life before the pandemic. And in an attempt to save some of these old people we destroyed kids education, let people die alone , isolated the elderly in care homes, terrorised the population to death and destroyed many peoples mental health. A healthy society doesnt prioritise the old and sick over the young thats not how things work. But of course we are not a healthy society.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but at the time of the initial lockdown no one knew what Covid was like but it really didn’t look good and it did seem that we needed to close things down to stop hospitals being overrun
The guidelines/regulations saying we should wear masks were eminently reasonable by any standard, given the information available at the time. Now, with lots of studies done, it's somewhat unclear how effective they were in practice, but, even if you interpret the mixed evidence as indicating that they weren't effective, it's pretty absurd to blame governments for mandating or encouraging them at the time. After all, even a slight reduction in transmission was worth a lot of lives and illness.
What's more surprising is that in the UK and elsewhere, they continued obsessing about hand-sanitising etc long after it became clear that transmission by touch was not an issue. In addition, it was clear fairly early on that ventilation was a crucial factor. At the very least, even without the benefit of hindsight, by mid-2020 the government should have realised that it was safe for people to meet outdoors, as long as they weren't in a crowd and shouting at each other.
It was the kind of moment where having a national broadcaster should have come into it's own. There could have been an informal nightly 'Live from the Covid war room' type programme to disseminate authoritative information about what we knew and didn't know day by day - almost like an offical version of the YouTube channel that built up a big audience in the early stages of the pandemic that was just one guy trying to analyse and collate everything.
Instead we got press conferences that were saturated with inane questions from political journalists.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
The amazing thing is most people were perfectly happy for people to die alone and for old people to rot away in care homes.
Tell you what, I'm still furious and I'll never get over this period - not the virus - I mean the government response to it. Scarred for life.
My poor mother. I know I've banged on about this before on here. She was happy in her care home until Covid. Then suddenly no visitors - which was her sole enjoyment in life - and instead people in masks bringing her meals and in masks taking her plate away. No other contact whatsoever. Not allowed to leave her room. Then the fucking indignity of "window visits". The last18 months of her useful life was lost due to this; when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes.
Then - just before visitors were eventually allowed back - she is diagnosed with vascular dementia, cannot remember the name of her children or husband. I want to know who to sue over this. Fucking Hancock I suppose.
Firstly, may I say I have sympathies with you over your experience.
" when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes. "
But surely the alternative was to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Which would have seen lots of people dying early when they could have been saved, and who are now living happy lives. And their relatives would br talking about suing Hancock.
What's more, it may have been your mother's choice to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Others in her home - and the staff - may have had a different opinion.
My own view over this whole awful tragedy has remained pretty much the same throughout: there are no 'right' answers about what to do, only varying levels of 'wrong' answers. And I am blooming glad I wasn't the one having to make these decisions.
no the majority of those dying were very old people with underlying conditions, Many of these people didnt have a great quality of life before the pandemic. And in an attempt to save some of these old people we destroyed kids education, let people die alone , isolated the elderly in care homes, terrorised the population to death and destroyed many peoples mental health. A healthy society doesnt prioritise the old and sick over the young thats not how things work. But of course we are not a healthy society.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but at the time of the initial lockdown no one knew what Covid was like but it really didn’t look good and it did seem that we needed to close things down to stop hospitals being overrun
But the Nightingale Hospitals were hardly used. Some of them weren't used at all.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
The amazing thing is most people were perfectly happy for people to die alone and for old people to rot away in care homes.
Tell you what, I'm still furious and I'll never get over this period - not the virus - I mean the government response to it. Scarred for life.
My poor mother. I know I've banged on about this before on here. She was happy in her care home until Covid. Then suddenly no visitors - which was her sole enjoyment in life - and instead people in masks bringing her meals and in masks taking her plate away. No other contact whatsoever. Not allowed to leave her room. Then the fucking indignity of "window visits". The last18 months of her useful life was lost due to this; when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes.
Then - just before visitors were eventually allowed back - she is diagnosed with vascular dementia, cannot remember the name of her children or husband. I want to know who to sue over this. Fucking Hancock I suppose.
Firstly, may I say I have sympathies with you over your experience.
" when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes. "
But surely the alternative was to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Which would have seen lots of people dying early when they could have been saved, and who are now living happy lives. And their relatives would br talking about suing Hancock.
What's more, it may have been your mother's choice to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Others in her home - and the staff - may have had a different opinion.
My own view over this whole awful tragedy has remained pretty much the same throughout: there are no 'right' answers about what to do, only varying levels of 'wrong' answers. And I am blooming glad I wasn't the one having to make these decisions.
no the majority of those dying were very old people with underlying conditions, Many of these people didnt have a great quality of life before the pandemic. And in an attempt to save some of these old people we destroyed kids education, let people die alone , isolated the elderly in care homes, terrorised the population to death and destroyed many peoples mental health. A healthy society doesnt prioritise the old and sick over the young thats not how things work. But of course we are not a healthy society.
These old people you refer to were in most cases much loved mothers or fathers, grandparents or even great grandparents and you dismiss their lives as if they were an inconvenience
Try telling that to their children, grandchildren or great grandchildren and see the reaction you get
It is a sad day when society fails to respect the elderly and those in their later years
Wait, that's from a Panelbase poll from BEFORE the leadership result, and before much of the worst of the SNP scandals? Isn't it? That's what the original tweet suggests. Or am I wrong?
So we can expect the next poll to be considerably better/worse for the Nats, depending on whether you think Humza Yousaf is a Churchillian genius comparable with Lincoln/twat
The poll attached to the artcile - self-selecting of those hoping to view a train wreck as it might be - says 90% he is the wrong person to be leader. Hard to imagine that the army of SNP keyboard warriors would let that stand, but so it seems.
A question for you. Were you a resident of Airdrie and Shotts, would you lend your vote to the heinous Labour Party candidate to see off the SNP?
Seeing off the SNP would be the only occasion I would ever conceivably vote blue.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
The amazing thing is most people were perfectly happy for people to die alone and for old people to rot away in care homes.
Tell you what, I'm still furious and I'll never get over this period - not the virus - I mean the government response to it. Scarred for life.
My poor mother. I know I've banged on about this before on here. She was happy in her care home until Covid. Then suddenly no visitors - which was her sole enjoyment in life - and instead people in masks bringing her meals and in masks taking her plate away. No other contact whatsoever. Not allowed to leave her room. Then the fucking indignity of "window visits". The last18 months of her useful life was lost due to this; when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes.
Then - just before visitors were eventually allowed back - she is diagnosed with vascular dementia, cannot remember the name of her children or husband. I want to know who to sue over this. Fucking Hancock I suppose.
Firstly, may I say I have sympathies with you over your experience.
" when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes. "
But surely the alternative was to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Which would have seen lots of people dying early when they could have been saved, and who are now living happy lives. And their relatives would br talking about suing Hancock.
What's more, it may have been your mother's choice to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Others in her home - and the staff - may have had a different opinion.
My own view over this whole awful tragedy has remained pretty much the same throughout: there are no 'right' answers about what to do, only varying levels of 'wrong' answers. And I am blooming glad I wasn't the one having to make these decisions.
no the majority of those dying were very old people with underlying conditions, Many of these people didnt have a great quality of life before the pandemic. And in an attempt to save some of these old people we destroyed kids education, let people die alone , isolated the elderly in care homes, terrorised the population to death and destroyed many peoples mental health. A healthy society doesnt prioritise the old and sick over the young thats not how things work. But of course we are not a healthy society.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but at the time of the initial lockdown no one knew what Covid was like but it really didn’t look good and it did seem that we needed to close things down to stop hospitals being overrun
But the Nightingale Hospitals were hardly used. Some of them weren't used at all.
Weren't much use without staff, and as I understand it the shortage of staff was the key issue. Basically triage dumping grounds.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
If you model the spread in a simple way, with a value of R above 1 when not in lockdown and below 1 when in lockdown (as you are implicitly assuming and which I take issue with in my earlier comment), then imposing a lockdown earlier doesn't reduce the total time spent in lockdown. You yo-yo in and out of lockdown in a similar way to how you would if you waited for a higher infection level before entering lockdown and, overall, you spend the same length of time in lockdown.
What you do achieve is a lower burden of cases overall, and therefore fewer deaths and less additional load on the health service.
From a purely mathematical point of view, I don't think that's true.
If R is 2 with no restrictions, and 0.8 with them, and restrictions are only removed when the case load falls below a certain level, then the earlier you get restrictions on, the less total time is spent in lockdown.
Less time is spent in that lockdown, but then spread starts again earlier and so you go back above your threshold for imposing the next lockdown earlier. Once you've been through the cycle a few times it's a wash.
Excel says you are wrong.
Seriously, go to Excel or Google Sheets and use my Rs and whatever you want as the trigger points for implementing and removing restrictions.
You will find that the earlier you implement restrictions, the less time you spend with them, because declines are more gradual than rises.
1 ~ 2 * 0.8 * 0.8 * 0.8
With those numbers you will spend three-quarters of your time in lockdown whether you impose lockdown early or late.
I think you're assuming that the up and down waves are symmetrical, that doubling and halving take equal.amounts of time.
From memory, Spring 2020 had doubling time of half a week and halving of about two weeks. So yes- letting the virus get out of hand cost more lockdown time than it saved.
That's explicitly not what I've assumed since I've said you'd spend three times longer on the down wave than in the up wave with the figures posited.
But that's true reservations of whether the wave is small (because you lockdown early) or large (because you lockdown late). With small waves you fit more of them into a year, and so you have, say, nine lockdowns each lasting a month, instead of three lockdowns each lasting three months.
The guidelines/regulations saying we should wear masks were eminently reasonable by any standard, given the information available at the time. Now, with lots of studies done, it's somewhat unclear how effective they were in practice, but, even if you interpret the mixed evidence as indicating that they weren't effective, it's pretty absurd to blame governments for mandating or encouraging them at the time. After all, even a slight reduction in transmission was worth a lot of lives and illness.
What's more surprising is that in the UK and elsewhere, they continued obsessing about hand-sanitising etc long after it became clear that transmission by touch was not an issue. In addition, it was clear fairly early on that ventilation was a crucial factor. At the very least, even without the benefit of hindsight, by mid-2020 the government should have realised that it was safe for people to meet outdoors, as long as they weren't in a crowd and shouting at each other.
It was the kind of moment where having a national broadcaster should have come into it's own. There could have been an informal nightly 'Live from the Covid war room' type programme to disseminate authoritative information about what we knew and didn't know day by day - almost like an offical version of the YouTube channel that built up a big audience in the early stages of the pandemic that was just one guy trying to analyse and collate everything.
Instead we got press conferences that were saturated with inane questions from political journalists.
Like Burley and Rigby who then broke the rules themselves
Wait, that's from a Panelbase poll from BEFORE the leadership result, and before much of the worst of the SNP scandals? Isn't it? That's what the original tweet suggests. Or am I wrong?
So we can expect the next poll to be considerably better/worse for the Nats, depending on whether you think Humza Yousaf is a Churchillian genius comparable with Lincoln/twat
The guidelines/regulations saying we should wear masks were eminently reasonable by any standard, given the information available at the time. Now, with lots of studies done, it's somewhat unclear how effective they were in practice, but, even if you interpret the mixed evidence as indicating that they weren't effective, it's pretty absurd to blame governments for mandating or encouraging them at the time. After all, even a slight reduction in transmission was worth a lot of lives and illness.
What's more surprising is that in the UK and elsewhere, they continued obsessing about hand-sanitising etc long after it became clear that transmission by touch was not an issue. In addition, it was clear fairly early on that ventilation was a crucial factor. At the very least, even without the benefit of hindsight, by mid-2020 the government should have realised that it was safe for people to meet outdoors, as long as they weren't in a crowd and shouting at each other.
It was the kind of moment where having a national broadcaster should have come into it's own. There could have been an informal nightly 'Live from the Covid war room' type programme to disseminate authoritative information about what we knew and didn't know day by day - almost like an offical version of the YouTube channel that built up a big audience in the early stages of the pandemic that was just one guy trying to analyse and collate everything.
Instead we got press conferences that were saturated with inane questions from political journalists.
Yes. There was actually really excellent information and intelligent, informed discussion on Twitter provided you followed people who actually look intelligently at the data and don't have axes to grind*, but the mainstream media were awful.
* Such as James Ward @JamesWard73, Oliver Johnson @BristOliver, and of course Chris Whitty, who was really excellent.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
Modellers were never running the country. That's a fantasy. I was closer to all this than you. I saw Ministers, civil servants and outside advisers coming together to try and solve the myriad of problems caused by the pandemic. But it was always clear that the politicians retained power.
So you haven't changed your view at all?
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
The amazing thing is most people were perfectly happy for people to die alone and for old people to rot away in care homes.
Tell you what, I'm still furious and I'll never get over this period - not the virus - I mean the government response to it. Scarred for life.
My poor mother. I know I've banged on about this before on here. She was happy in her care home until Covid. Then suddenly no visitors - which was her sole enjoyment in life - and instead people in masks bringing her meals and in masks taking her plate away. No other contact whatsoever. Not allowed to leave her room. Then the fucking indignity of "window visits". The last18 months of her useful life was lost due to this; when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes.
Then - just before visitors were eventually allowed back - she is diagnosed with vascular dementia, cannot remember the name of her children or husband. I want to know who to sue over this. Fucking Hancock I suppose.
Firstly, may I say I have sympathies with you over your experience.
" when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes. "
But surely the alternative was to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Which would have seen lots of people dying early when they could have been saved, and who are now living happy lives. And their relatives would br talking about suing Hancock.
What's more, it may have been your mother's choice to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Others in her home - and the staff - may have had a different opinion.
My own view over this whole awful tragedy has remained pretty much the same throughout: there are no 'right' answers about what to do, only varying levels of 'wrong' answers. And I am blooming glad I wasn't the one having to make these decisions.
no the majority of those dying were very old people with underlying conditions, Many of these people didnt have a great quality of life before the pandemic. And in an attempt to save some of these old people we destroyed kids education, let people die alone , isolated the elderly in care homes, terrorised the population to death and destroyed many peoples mental health. A healthy society doesnt prioritise the old and sick over the young thats not how things work. But of course we are not a healthy society.
" the majority of those dying were very old people with underlying conditions, "
Firstly, even if that's true, it's a bit bad for the non-majority, isn't it? Especially as the virus would have spread more, and there would have been more deaths.
Secondly, my mum is old (I'd never call her 'very old'), and has underlying conditions. She is enjoying her post-Covid life very much, thanks. 'Underlying conditions' does not mean they're going to keel over immediately, or cannot enjoy life. Or deserve to die.
"Many of these people didnt have a great quality of life before the pandemic."
Well, many did. And many still do.
"A healthy society doesnt prioritise the old and sick over the young"
A healthy society tries to look after everyone. Logan's Run was, and should remain, a fiction.
Quite.
To take just one example: through the magic of moden medicine, someone with diabetes is no longer consigned to a guaranteed early & painful death but can live a full, productive and happy life. It doesn’t seem to me that their life is worth any more or less than anyone else’s. Yet this is how the carefully anodyne language of “underlying conditions” is used - to imply that these people were somehow a burden on society & were not worth the cost of protecting.
It was untrue then & it is untrue now, even if one were to accept that somewhat morally questionally axoim as a basis for such desicion making in the first place.
Wait, that's from a Panelbase poll from BEFORE the leadership result, and before much of the worst of the SNP scandals? Isn't it? That's what the original tweet suggests. Or am I wrong?
So we can expect the next poll to be considerably better/worse for the Nats, depending on whether you think Humza Yousaf is a Churchillian genius comparable with Lincoln/twat
The poll attached to the artcile - self-selecting of those hoping to view a train wreck as it might be - says 90% he is the wrong person to be leader. Hard to imagine that the army of SNP keyboard warriors would let that stand, but so it seems.
A question for you. Were you a resident of Airdrie and Shotts, would you lend your vote to the heinous Labour Party candidate to see off the SNP?
Seeing off the SNP would be the only occasion I would ever conceivably vote blue.
Yes I would vote Labour to get rid of the SNP.
I most certainly would vote Labour in this contest not least as it would deflate the independence cause
Wait, that's from a Panelbase poll from BEFORE the leadership result, and before much of the worst of the SNP scandals? Isn't it? That's what the original tweet suggests. Or am I wrong?
So we can expect the next poll to be considerably better/worse for the Nats, depending on whether you think Humza Yousaf is a Churchillian genius comparable with Lincoln/twat
By the internationally recognised PB metric of right wing people who don’t live in Scotland would vote for Labour to oust the SNP, the Nats are in DEEP trouble.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
Maybe there shouldn't have been any lockdowns, except for people in vulnerable categories.
Absolutely not. No first lockdown results in the NHS being completely swamped with cases. We barely coped as it was, with all the extra capacity the NHS threw together at short notice (with no direction from the government either - I know people working in local NHS management & they were working seven days a week putting in as much capacity as they could create on such short notice long before the goverment even thought about doing anything).
Remember all those extra temporary hospitals that were thrown up by the government & then never used? Those were for warehousing the dead & dying that would have resulted had we not locked down at all: The relatively low death rate for the first COVID wave gets ripped up if you can only effectively treat 10% of the caseload.
The effects on the country would have been far far worse without that first lockdown. This was so obvious that the population was already starting to act before the government did. They were in many ways following public opinion rather than leading it. Had they led from the outset we might be in a better position now.
It would appear that lockdown was a success.
Because everyone who opposed it is now saying it wasn't needed.
Which, as I pointed out at the time, was always going to be a bit of a problem...
So you think we should always lockdown for diseases with an infection fatality rate of around 0.2%. Close schools and destroy kids education. You have your view I suppose likely because you had a pleasant lockdown experience working from home with a nice large garden.
Firstly, the fatality rate of alpha was more like 1-2%.
& no, even a desease with a 5% fatality rate doesn’t justify locking down the country by itself. What justifies that is the combination of infectivity and fatality rate.
COVID is very unusual - it is and was extremely infectious, with a significant fatality rate. Those two things in combination are what drives the need for a nationwide pandemic response.
(Omicron is ludicrously infectious - we should all be extremely grateful that the desease didn’t linger in some corner of humanity until an omicron-like strain evolved before breaking out into a full scale pandemic, because that outcome would have been horrendous.)
It’s not even worth bothering with your snide ad hominem barbs. ydoethur has already dealt with them admirably.
By the internationally recognised PB metric of right wing people who don’t live in Scotland would vote for Labour to oust the SNP, the Nats are in DEEP trouble.
You do not have to live in Scotland to be interested in its politics and have Scottish connections who absolutely reject the SNP
Wait, that's from a Panelbase poll from BEFORE the leadership result, and before much of the worst of the SNP scandals? Isn't it? That's what the original tweet suggests. Or am I wrong?
So we can expect the next poll to be considerably better/worse for the Nats, depending on whether you think Humza Yousaf is a Churchillian genius comparable with Lincoln/twat
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
This is silly. Going rock climbing doesn’t risk infecting a further 1000 people with the desire to go rock climbing & killing 20 of them as a result with the next month.
Pendemics fundamentally alter the basic libertarian calculus on which liberal western societies are usually run. They are unlike most other risks in that individual behaviour doesn’t just affect the individual concerned & those who choose to associate with them, but directly affects every social contact to the nth degree in measurably awful ways.
Wow . You are talking about a disease with an infection fatality rate of 0.2% not the Black Death. Go and read A State of Fear by laura Dodsworth.
No, we're talking about Covid. IFR in the pre-vaccine era can now be seen to have been c. 1.0% - 1.3% thanks to the ONS Infections survey.
Hospitalisation rates were c. 5% in that time as well.
We do not have the hospital capacity to push 5% of the population through hospitals in a matter of a couple of months.
Yes but that death rate was exagerrated by the pushing of people from hospital into care homes and the liberal use of ventilators in hospital which were a near death sentence. I am sure you are aware too of the rumours that Hancock prescribed midazalom in care homes to elderly residents which also pushed the death rate up.
Wait, that's from a Panelbase poll from BEFORE the leadership result, and before much of the worst of the SNP scandals? Isn't it? That's what the original tweet suggests. Or am I wrong?
So we can expect the next poll to be considerably better/worse for the Nats, depending on whether you think Humza Yousaf is a Churchillian genius comparable with Lincoln/twat
I must say that I intensely dislike the fashion for mocking a person's name like this. Yousaf becomes Useless, Kama-Kwasi for Kwasi Kwarteng, Cruella for Suella.
By the internationally recognised PB metric of right wing people who don’t live in Scotland would vote for Labour to oust the SNP, the Nats are in DEEP trouble.
I was asked a question by MexicanPete and I answered it. I know you are throwing your toys out of the pram but you have accept that your leader is a dud. To think otherwise goes against his previous history. The mere fact he was actuslly elected ought to set off alarm bells
By the internationally recognised PB metric of right wing people who don’t live in Scotland would vote for Labour to oust the SNP, the Nats are in DEEP trouble.
I am a right wing person who does live in Scotland - I'm ambivalent about voting Labour to oust the SNP. TCOTSA would seem to apply.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
And many modellers probably ascribed a zero value to the momentous decision to lock down an entire country and all the implications and consequences of this to our society and its constituents.
Fuckers on here let alone those less well-educated were crying out for more and longer lockdowns which would, famously, allow them more time for charming walks around their apple orchards.
Modellers model. They were asked to model how the disease was expected to spread and how it would spread under different scenarios (e.g. lockdown or not).
Politicians decide policy. It was the politicians job to weigh up the different risks, the different costs, of different actions.
It wasn't the (SPI-M) modellers' job to consider the other consequences to society and its constituents. That is not what they were asked to do. They modelled disease spread in response to Government's questions. Government weighed up the many different factors and chose a path.
Certain people, generally on the right, have this strange fantasy that the modellers were in control. They weren't. Johnson and his Government made the decisions.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. If every day at 5pm the PM and the CMO and whoever the other guy was had come into the room and opined upon the dangers of rock climbing, within the week rock climbing would have been banned. Or cigarettes. Or cycling. Or being driven by @Dura_Ace. But they didn't and those things remain legal subject to sensible, voluntary precautions. Or advice.
I don't for one minute blame the modellers. But then don't say "modellers wanted an earlier lockdown" as though a politician wouldn't take note of that. Modellers, together with the CMO, for some time were running the country and I blame the politicians for that.
This is silly. Going rock climbing doesn’t risk infecting a further 1000 people with the desire to go rock climbing & killing 20 of them as a result with the next month.
Pendemics fundamentally alter the basic libertarian calculus on which liberal western societies are usually run. They are unlike most other risks in that individual behaviour doesn’t just affect the individual concerned & those who choose to associate with them, but directly affects every social contact to the nth degree in measurably awful ways.
Wow . You are talking about a disease with an infection fatality rate of 0.2% not the Black Death. Go and read A State of Fear by laura Dodsworth.
No, we're talking about Covid. IFR in the pre-vaccine era can now be seen to have been c. 1.0% - 1.3% thanks to the ONS Infections survey.
Hospitalisation rates were c. 5% in that time as well.
We do not have the hospital capacity to push 5% of the population through hospitals in a matter of a couple of months.
Yes but that death rate was exagerrated by the pushing of people from hospital into care homes and the liberal use of ventilators in hospital which were a near death sentence. I am sure you are aware too of the rumours that Hancock prescribed midazalom in care homes to elderly residents which also pushed the death rate up.
Wow are the BA pilots doing?
"Hancock prescribed midazalom in care homes" - news that Hancock can prescribe medications.
If Labour cannot win back Rutherglen in a byelection triggered by a recall petition then they cannot win anything. They should be winning it back by a landslide majority over the SNP.
Talking of which Humza Useless was dire at FMQs today. He has appointed a cabinet of second rate failures to make himself look good and the faces of SNP backbenchers today was noteworthy. Both Douglas Ross and Anas Sarwar won't have to look far to choose topics upon which to roast him at PMQs from now on.
As Douglas Ross said today, only one ministerial appointment went to someone who did not publicly support Yousaf. Keeping the Greens in government will also upset a great many Scots.
The SNP might hold the seat if Boris Johnson receives a lenient sentence compared to Ferrier.
If Johnson isn't kicked out, Ferrier might hold the seat...
I don't see how that happens now.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
In terms of what Johnson did, i.e. where he was and what he did in No. 10, you’re probably correct. In terms of all the gatherings that happened in No. 10 under Johnson’s leadership, the drinking culture and the multiple parties, possibly not.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
Long term, second lockdown will cause far more deaths than it saved.
Would you like to provide some evidence, or indeed a rationale, for that statement?
Short(ish) answer: Several reasons, but two stand out: 1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts. 2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Thanks.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Firstly, I've looked back at this exchange, and apologies for sounding a bit pompous - I didn't sound so in my head, but it can be difficult to do 'tone' on the internet!
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
COVID-19 cases were growing exponentially. Lockdown stops most spread. (I am unclear why you say the "relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best".) You can come out of lockdown when cases fall below a certain threshold. If you lockdown sooner, you lockdown when cases are lower and so it takes less time for cases to fall below your threshold. Generally, if you are going to need to lockdown, it makes sense to lockdown earlier. That way you spend less time in lockdown.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
In theory, yes. In practice, covid cases stopped exponentiating well before legal measures were brought in. Presumably because of either natural behaviour change or running out of people to infect. And you can set a threshold and say 'lockdown will finish when this is reached' - but that didn't really happen. Lockdown finished when ministers thought it politically viable to do so. Which given they had spent such an effort frightening the willies out of people, didn't happen quickly.
COVID-19 was never running out of people to infect during these periods.
With 1st lockdown, behaviour change was reducing spread slightly before the lockdown began, but the lockdown reduced spread much more. With 2nd lockdown, I don't recall the rate of increase falling significantly before lockdown was imposed.
Lockdown indeed finished when ministers thought it was politically viable. Ultimately, a decision that has so much impact on society in so many ways has to be a political decision. Generally, Government seemed keen to end lockdowns as soon as reasonably possible, keen to get the credit for bringing freedom to the people. The idea that Government was willingly extending lockdown more than needed isn't very credible.
By spring/summer 2021, yes. Not at the beginning - throughout 2020 the government let the modellers rule.
Not true. First lockdown came later than many modellers advised.
Maybe there shouldn't have been any lockdowns, except for people in vulnerable categories.
Absolutely not. No first lockdown results in the NHS being completely swamped with cases. We barely coped as it was, with all the extra capacity the NHS threw together at short notice (with no direction from the government either - I know people working in local NHS management & they were working seven days a week putting in as much capacity as they could create on such short notice long before the goverment even thought about doing anything).
Remember all those extra temporary hospitals that were thrown up by the government & then never used? Those were for warehousing the dead & dying that would have resulted had we not locked down at all: The relatively low death rate for the first COVID wave gets ripped up if you can only effectively treat 10% of the caseload.
The effects on the country would have been far far worse without that first lockdown. This was so obvious that the population was already starting to act before the government did. They were in many ways following public opinion rather than leading it. Had they led from the outset we might be in a better position now.
It would appear that lockdown was a success.
Because everyone who opposed it is now saying it wasn't needed.
Which, as I pointed out at the time, was always going to be a bit of a problem...
So you think we should always lockdown for diseases with an infection fatality rate of around 0.2%. Close schools and destroy kids education. You have your view I suppose likely because you had a pleasant lockdown experience working from home with a nice large garden.
Firstly, the fatality rate of alpha was more like 1-2%.
& no, even a desease with a 5% fatality rate doesn’t justify locking down the country by itself. What justifies that is the combination of infectivity and fatality rate.
COVID is very unusual - it is and was extremely infectious, with a significant fatality rate. Those two things in combination are what drives the need for a nationwide pandemic response.
(Omicron is ludicrously infectious - we should all be extremely grateful that the desease didn’t linger in some corner of humanity until an omicron-like strain evolved before breaking out into a full scale pandemic, because that outcome would have been horrendous.)
It’s not even worth bothering with your snide ad hominem barbs. ydoethur has already dealt with them admirably.
And Covid had its peak infectivity in the asymptomatic stage, further increasing spread..
A lot of covid measures were lifted from the pandemic flu plan, but by the end of the first wave it was clear that spread was airborne and indoors. I don't think this was acknowledged soon enough.
I was having a chat about covid with matron over coffee the other day. It is hard to be certain as it spreads asymptomatically, but it seems none of our staff were shown to have caught it from each other or from patients. Nearly all who caught it did so via family members, or their children.
Wait, that's from a Panelbase poll from BEFORE the leadership result, and before much of the worst of the SNP scandals? Isn't it? That's what the original tweet suggests. Or am I wrong?
So we can expect the next poll to be considerably better/worse for the Nats, depending on whether you think Humza Yousaf is a Churchillian genius comparable with Lincoln/twat
I must say that I intensely dislike the fashion for mocking a person's name like this. Yousaf becomes Useless, Kama-Kwasi for Kwasi Kwarteng, Cruella for Suella.
DavidL. I see you are claiming the Tasmina Ahmed Sheikh has been struck off. I doubt that is true, though I would be willing to review your evidence. If she has not been struck off, then yours is a "brave" comment :-)
Comments
https://twitter.com/JamesKelly/status/1641363063566630913?s=20
https://www.eurostar.com/uk-en/service-information/coronavirus-and-eurostar-service/travel-requirements
Recommended != mandatory
I saw some other people post that SeanT's father has passed away recently. If SeanT is reading this then sincere condolences for your loss. From reading an obituary he led quite some life!
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/d9c8fa2c-ce5a-11ed-9a78-fca06b87e87b?shareToken=72e2f365e362853e6ecabe88eb81773a
If the evidence is it will help then I presume it will never happen, which is a shame.
Remember all those extra temporary hospitals that were thrown up by the government & then never used? Those were for warehousing the dead & dying that would have resulted had we not locked down at all: The relatively low death rate for the first COVID wave gets ripped up if you can only effectively treat 10% of the caseload.
The effects on the country would have been far far worse without that first lockdown. This was so obvious that the population was already starting to act before the government did. They were in many ways following public opinion rather than leading it. Had they led from the outset we might be in a better position now.
We all get Lockdown #1 - who could have seen photos from Italy and not reacted in some extreme way but even then there was an argument for advisory rather than mandatory. From that point onwards, however, the government made a series of ever more egregious errors cheered on by the public they had terrified.
Modellers and the CMO presumably wanted as near zero deaths as possible. That was also not the correct metric to use.
I would say let's wait to see the enquiry but the govt has realised that it can scare the people into doing anything it wants and hence I doubt the enquiry will say anything other than well done for locking down we'll do the same again.
Who'd have thought that Steve bloody Baker would end up being an absolutely vital democratic element in the whole process.
Sorry to hear about your father. You can be expecting/anticipating it for any amount of time but when it happens it is a huge blow.
He was an immense talent and The White Hotel is one of those books that has in one way or another stayed with me ever since I first read it dear god now some 40 years ago.
Because everyone who opposed it is now saying it wasn't needed.
Which, as I pointed out at the time, was always going to be a bit of a problem...
When I went into hospital for a minor procedure recently, because I'd coughed a couple of times the day before, they gave me a proper FFP2 mask to wear until the PCR test came back negative for Covid, after which it was back to the useless masks.
It's daft. Use proper masks properly or don't bother.
Wearing a mask in a hospital, perhaps.
Putting a mask on to go to the toilet in a restaurant, perhaps not.
But that's purely theoretical. I'm talking about real people in the real world.
Still look back with horror on the mask fascists.
Pendemics fundamentally alter the basic libertarian calculus on which liberal western societies are usually run. They are unlike most other risks in that individual behaviour doesn’t just affect the individual concerned & those who choose to associate with them, but directly affects every social contact to the nth degree in measurably awful ways.
You still don't accept that making it illegal for family members to see each other, inc in care homes; making it illegal to leave the country; dictating when you can leave your own house and how many people can be in your garden are examples, among others, of massive state over-reach? Regardless of what the emergency is, we have principles and categorical imperatives, this is a liberal democracy not China.
Seeing off the SNP would be the only occasion I would ever conceivably vote blue.
Hmmm. I know people who work in the sector who would say that was so much bullshit. There was a lot of Covid in supermarkets.
But then someone who uses the term "mask fascists" is not worth engaging with.
But when a carer picked up their phone to take a photo for the home's Facebook page - boy did they make sure everyone wore masks for that.
If that's accurate Labour should win Rutherglen and Hamilton West easily.
Sad news. Reading a paper copy of the Telegraph in a coffee shop just now, noticed that one of the obituaries today is the writer DM Thomas, author of The White Hotel. Condolences to his family.
From memory, Spring 2020 had doubling time of half a week and halving of about two weeks. So yes- letting the virus get out of hand cost more lockdown time than it saved.
I've grown a fondness for James and ScotGoesPop, because he is so relentlessly, amusingly upbeat about every poll for indy, and he is also polite and intelligent (unlike so many Cybernats); he even talks about other stuff, sometimes
The fact that even he has given in to bouts of despair, in the last few weeks, shows that things must be bad
As he suggests in that blogpost, he is awaiting the first post-Yousaf-leader poll with some dread
Hospitalisation rates were c. 5% in that time as well.
We do not have the hospital capacity to push 5% of the population through hospitals in a matter of a couple of months.
I was exempt during one of the lockdowns (I had ear infections that made it impossible), but nosy busybodies were busybodying!
My attachment to the Union is not exactly overwhelming. If there was a properly argued case - with all the pros and cons properly spelt out - I would be fairly relaxed if Scotland then decided it wanted to break away. But the SNP has not made that case. Far from it. It has been massively dishonest, from what I see. In the absence of that well-made case, I have to worry that it would be a potentially fraught leap in the dark for Scotland. So maybe, if it prevented a potential disaster for Scotland, I could vote Labour.
Just not LibDem though!
White Hotel was one novel which had a profound effect on me.
All the very best. Look after yourself.
I swapped to the masked supermarket, as my immune system is now somewhat shot.
The way in which otherwise rational individuals surrender freedoms to the state when they're a little bit scared is truly frightening.....
My poor mother. I know I've banged on about this before on here. She was happy in her care home until Covid. Then suddenly no visitors - which was her sole enjoyment in life - and instead people in masks bringing her meals and in masks taking her plate away. No other contact whatsoever. Not allowed to leave her room. Then the fucking indignity of "window visits". The last18 months of her useful life was lost due to this; when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes.
Then - just before visitors were eventually allowed back - she is diagnosed with vascular dementia, cannot remember the name of her children or husband. I want to know who to sue over this. Fucking Hancock I suppose.
"Almost the only people who think Johnson a nice guy are those who do not know him."
Last night, I tweeted that I had been assessing & considering the challenges Ukraine's Army (UA) Commanders were facing in preparing for the “spring offensives.
I said I'd share some thoughts on what I would be thinking if I were among them.
This is that 🧵 1/
https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1641470497270509568
TL;DR - It is going to be v tough for Ukraine and not a war winner. Russia will hope to limit losses and then sue for peace.
I will accept that the tradeoffs for later waves would be different & especially post-vaccination we might have not made the optimal choice.
I will not accept that the first (or arguably any up until mass vaccination) lockdown was un-necessary. The first absolutely was & subsequent ones probably were too, although I’m open to being persuaded otherwise by actual numbers.
School is much easier when every pupil doesn't come in.
Anyway, to cheer you up, boing, boing.
I have carers coming in twice a day to ‘assist with personal care’ since I’m pretty well disabled since my operation and they all wear masks. Sometimes they even wear them properly!
My brother- and sister-law, who haven’t worn masks for ages both went down with Covid last week. Neither of them have been within 200 miles of us!
And in my first year studying pharmacy, before most pb-ers were born, we were taught about constructing sterile rooms, and air-filters were part of the fixtures.
I worked twice as hard in lockdown to keep schools open, including delivering all my lessons remotely volunteering to cover for a number of more vulnerable colleagues.
I have left teaching partly because of vile, stupid, dishonest bullies making cretinous comments like yours at a time when I was busting my arse off to keep things going. If they treat me like that they can fuck right off.
You are Jeremy Clarkson without the intelligence and sense of humour. Sod off.
" when quantity of life was prioritised over quality of life against her wishes. "
But surely the alternative was to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Which would have seen lots of people dying early when they could have been saved, and who are now living happy lives. And their relatives would br talking about suing Hancock.
What's more, it may have been your mother's choice to prioritise quantity of life over quality of life. Others in her home - and the staff - may have had a different opinion.
My own view over this whole awful tragedy has remained pretty much the same throughout: there are no 'right' answers about what to do, only varying levels of 'wrong' answers. And I am blooming glad I wasn't the one having to make these decisions.
But they're not a lot of use in my experience as the window mists up easily.
Moreover, they look hideous.
Come to think of it, so do I.
Heavens to Betsy!
What's more surprising is that in the UK and elsewhere, they continued obsessing about hand-sanitising etc long after it became clear that transmission by touch was not an issue. In addition, it was clear fairly early on that ventilation was a crucial factor. At the very least, even without the benefit of hindsight, by mid-2020 the government should have realised that it was safe for people to meet outdoors, as long as they weren't in a crowd and shouting at each other.
There was a thick strand in government that knew that much of the response was overly-authoritarian and incompatible with liberal democracy, but they did it anyway because of pressure from virtually everyone that mattered - the modellers, Starmer, the NHS, the media. Weak pliable government.
Firstly, even if that's true, it's a bit bad for the non-majority, isn't it? Especially as the virus would have spread more, and there would have been more deaths.
Secondly, my mum is old (I'd never call her 'very old'), and has underlying conditions. She is enjoying her post-Covid life very much, thanks. 'Underlying conditions' does not mean they're going to keel over immediately, or cannot enjoy life. Or deserve to die.
"Many of these people didnt have a great quality of life before the pandemic."
Well, many did. And many still do.
"A healthy society doesnt prioritise the old and sick over the young"
A healthy society tries to look after everyone. Logan's Run was, and should remain, a fiction.
Instead we got press conferences that were saturated with inane questions from political journalists.
Try telling that to their children, grandchildren or great grandchildren and see the reaction you get
It is a sad day when society fails to respect the elderly and those in their later years
But that's true reservations of whether the wave is small (because you lockdown early) or large (because you lockdown late). With small waves you fit more of them into a year, and so you have, say, nine lockdowns each lasting a month, instead of three lockdowns each lasting three months.
* Such as James Ward @JamesWard73, Oliver Johnson @BristOliver, and of course Chris Whitty, who was really excellent.
To take just one example: through the magic of moden medicine, someone with diabetes is no longer consigned to a guaranteed early & painful death but can live a full, productive and happy life. It doesn’t seem to me that their life is worth any more or less than anyone else’s. Yet this is how the carefully anodyne language of “underlying conditions” is used - to imply that these people were somehow a burden on society & were not worth the cost of protecting.
It was untrue then & it is untrue now, even if one were to accept that somewhat morally questionally axoim as a basis for such desicion making in the first place.
Another Tory scribe with his finger on the pulse
https://capx.co/in-defence-of-boris-johnson/
& no, even a desease with a 5% fatality rate doesn’t justify locking down the country by itself. What justifies that is the combination of infectivity and fatality rate.
COVID is very unusual - it is and was extremely infectious, with a significant fatality rate. Those two things in combination are what drives the need for a nationwide pandemic response.
(Omicron is ludicrously infectious - we should all be extremely grateful that the desease didn’t linger in some corner of humanity until an omicron-like strain evolved before breaking out into a full scale pandemic, because that outcome would have been horrendous.)
It’s not even worth bothering with your snide ad hominem barbs. ydoethur has already dealt with them admirably.
These must be very difficult times for you
Wow are the BA pilots doing?
Seems a recent trait.
Talking of which Humza Useless was dire at FMQs today. He has appointed a cabinet of second rate failures to make himself look good and the faces of SNP backbenchers today was noteworthy. Both Douglas Ross and Anas Sarwar won't have to look far to choose topics upon which to roast him at PMQs from now on.
As Douglas Ross said today, only one ministerial appointment went to someone who did not publicly support Yousaf. Keeping the Greens in government will also upset a great many Scots.
A lot of covid measures were lifted from the pandemic flu plan, but by the end of the first wave it was clear that spread was airborne and indoors. I don't think this was acknowledged soon enough.
I was having a chat about covid with matron over coffee the other day. It is hard to be certain as it spreads asymptomatically, but it seems none of our staff were shown to have caught it from each other or from patients. Nearly all who caught it did so via family members, or their children.