I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
You'd make a really shit Doctor.
And a shit author, using the word realistic in such an inappropriate fashion.
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
Alternatively, if 98% of people who contract the disease live through it and for most of them, their lives can return to normal pretty quickly, then perhaps there comes a point when extreme restriction measures both fail to work and are more damaging?
"Capital Economics said the rate of economic contraction is now likely to be a staggering 25pc (annualised) over the first quarter - using proxy measures of real activity - a level unseen in modern times. “For much of February, economic activity effectively ceased in China,” said Mark Williams, the group’s chief Asia economist."
25%? Bloody hell.
The boss of Maersk estimated that Chinese factory production halved in February, and I think in Wuhan Province car sales were down over 90%. Even it there is an almost immediate resumption of normal life, which is unlikely, a lot of economies may go into recession.
Yet the “will there be a 2020 US recession” has today gone out from 2.85 to 2.90 on BFE.
I've just backed it at 2.9
When would this market be settled?
For the purposes of this market a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth based on rates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). We will only settle once final quarterly revisions have been released by the BEA....
Depends on the economic figures, I guess. Earliest, some time this summer; latest, some time next year.
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
You'd make a really shit Doctor.
I'm sorry about Liverpool.
It's fine, I called it a while back, and it is still less painful than what happened in 2014.
The question is do we think if the government tried to impose the sort of Chinese restrictions here in the UK people would abide by them?
I fear that enough twats wouldn't and thus make it all null and void, as unlike China you don't have to worry about your social credit score being zero'ed, with at best you being unable to use the bus for the next couple of years to worst being sent off to a re-education camp with a load of Uighurs.
"Capital Economics said the rate of economic contraction is now likely to be a staggering 25pc (annualised) over the first quarter - using proxy measures of real activity - a level unseen in modern times. “For much of February, economic activity effectively ceased in China,” said Mark Williams, the group’s chief Asia economist."
25%? Bloody hell.
The boss of Maersk estimated that Chinese factory production halved in February, and I think in Wuhan Province car sales were down over 90%. Even it there is an almost immediate resumption of normal life, which is unlikely, a lot of economies may go into recession.
Yet the “will there be a 2020 US recession” has today gone out from 2.85 to 2.90 on BFE.
I've just backed it at 2.9
When would this market be settled?
For the purposes of this market a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth based on rates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). We will only settle once final quarterly revisions have been released by the BEA....
Depends on the economic figures, I guess. Earliest, some time this summer; latest, some time next year.
I can't help feeling that we'd all be safer if Jeremy Hunt were Health Secretary rather than Matt Hancock.
I think Matt Hancock is pretty good - certainly one of the more reliable members of the cabinet. The problem in this case is at a higher level.
I could go with "I can't help feeling that we'd all be safer if Jeremy Hunt were Prime Minister rather than Boris Johnson." (As he came quite close to being)
I would be happy for Hunt to return as Health Secretary but I'm quite glad he's not Prime Minister. He would never have gotten Johnson's revised deal, nor been prepared to have Australian style trade as the backup in case we can't get Canadian style.
It might all turn out to be something about not very much but do you not think that wiffling about which form of Brexit we have (and Johnson could seriously screw this up anyway), might be the wrong criterion for judging a PM's effectiveness? Bigger challenges may be at hand.
I can't help feeling that we'd all be safer if Jeremy Hunt were Health Secretary rather than Matt Hancock.
I think Matt Hancock is pretty good - certainly one of the more reliable members of the cabinet. The problem in this case is at a higher level.
I could go with "I can't help feeling that we'd all be safer if Jeremy Hunt were Prime Minister rather than Boris Johnson." (As he came quite close to being)
I would be happy for Hunt to return as Health Secretary but I'm quite glad he's not Prime Minister. He would never have gotten Johnson's revised deal, nor been prepared to have Australian style trade as the backup in case we can't get Canadian style.
It might all turn out to be something about not very much but do you not think that wiffling about which form of Brexit we have (and Johnson could seriously screw this up anyway), might be the wrong criterion for judging a PM's effectiveness? Bigger challenges may be at hand.
No. It is this countries biggest long-term challenge for this Parliament.
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
Alternatively, if 98% of people who contract the disease live through it and for most of them, their lives can return to normal pretty quickly, then perhaps there comes a point when extreme restriction measures both fail to work and are more damaging?
Yes there comes a point in time. Definitely. But let's start talking about that after a year because at the moment I want the bottom curve (those who locked down early) and not the top curve (those who didn't).
Pasting again as part of my public information campaign. From: Nonpharmaceutical Interventions Implemented by US Cities During the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
All of which would be fine had you not taken two different worst case estimates, which are almost certainly mutually exclusive, and multiply them together to provide your own guesstimate of deaths.... while claiming that most epidemiologists agreed with you.
(Guardian) Prof Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, has responded to media reports of a dog in Hong Kong being tested “weak positive” for coronavirus.
“There is no evidence that the human novel coronavirus can infect dogs and it would be incredible for a virus to make so many species jumps in such a short space of time,” he said.
“We have to differentiate between real infection and just detecting the presence of a virus – these are very different – and the fact that the test result was weakly positive would suggest that this is environmental contamination or simply the presence of coronavirus shed from the human contact that has ended up in the dog’s samples.
“In truth this is incredibly irresponsible because the last thing we need to do is create mass hysteria about the possibility of dogs being infected, and therefore potentially transmitting this virus when there is absolutely no evidence for this whatsoever.”
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
You'd make a really shit Doctor.
I'm sorry about Liverpool.
It's fine, I called it a while back, and it is still less painful than what happened in 2014.
lol
I think Trump is fucked by the bug, and what's more, I think they know it. His team is panicking:
Yes there comes a point in time. Definitely. But let's start talking about that after a year because at the moment I want the bottom curve (those who locked down early) and not the top curve (those who didn't).
Pasting again as part of my public information campaign. From: Nonpharmaceutical Interventions Implemented by US Cities During the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic
According to the UK Govt's own pandemic plan we're not planning to quarantine cities, restrict mass gatherings, shut schools, or impose external travel restrictions. However I strongly suspect that that plan will be abandoned pretty quickly.
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
Alternatively, if 98% of people who contract the disease live through it and for most of them, their lives can return to normal pretty quickly, then perhaps there comes a point when extreme restriction measures both fail to work and are more damaging?
Yes there comes a point in time. Definitely. But let's start talking about that after a year because at the moment I want the bottom curve (those who locked down early) and not the top curve (those who didn't).
Pasting again as part of my public information campaign. From: Nonpharmaceutical Interventions Implemented by US Cities During the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
You'd make a really shit Doctor.
I'm sorry about Liverpool.
It's fine, I called it a while back, and it is still less painful than what happened in 2014.
I don't believe for a second that Liverpool wouldn't get the League Title, they clearly would. The linked article just says "might not", they would get it but it would forever have an asterisk next to it.
As a Tranmere/Liverpool fan I'm more bothered what it will do to Tranmere. Currently in the relegation zone, though with a game in hand, ending the season now would likely mean relegation rather than a chance to recover out of the relegation zone.
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
Alternatively, if 98% of people who contract the disease live through it and for most of them, their lives can return to normal pretty quickly, then perhaps there comes a point when extreme restriction measures both fail to work and are more damaging?
Yep. That post makes it sound like the Battle of the Somme.
This isn’t the Battle of the Somme. And I’d much rather have coronavirus.
The question is do we think if the government tried to impose the sort of Chinese restrictions here in the UK people would abide by them?
I fear that enough twats wouldn't and thus make it all null and void, as unlike China you don't have to worry about your social credit score being zero'ed, with at best you being unable to use the bus for the next couple of years to worst being sent off to a re-education camp with a load of Uighurs.
Depends how much of an area needs it. If you need to do a midsize city/town or three then it's possibly doable with the army, beyond that and it's exceptionally difficult.
(Guardian) Prof Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, has responded to media reports of a dog in Hong Kong being tested “weak positive” for coronavirus.
“There is no evidence that the human novel coronavirus can infect dogs and it would be incredible for a virus to make so many species jumps in such a short space of time,” he said.
“We have to differentiate between real infection and just detecting the presence of a virus – these are very different – and the fact that the test result was weakly positive would suggest that this is environmental contamination or simply the presence of coronavirus shed from the human contact that has ended up in the dog’s samples.
“In truth this is incredibly irresponsible because the last thing we need to do is create mass hysteria about the possibility of dogs being infected, and therefore potentially transmitting this virus when there is absolutely no evidence for this whatsoever.”
Yes yes yes.
Please we need to hear from the experts.
Where is the public information campaign from PHE? Where is Boris having been briefed by our very best?
A report on the BBC that Boris chaired Cobra on Monday is just not going to cut it.
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
Alternatively, if 98% of people who contract the disease live through it and for most of them, their lives can return to normal pretty quickly, then perhaps there comes a point when extreme restriction measures both fail to work and are more damaging?
Yes there comes a point in time. Definitely. But let's start talking about that after a year because at the moment I want the bottom curve (those who locked down early) and not the top curve (those who didn't).
Pasting again as part of my public information campaign. From: Nonpharmaceutical Interventions Implemented by US Cities During the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic
The interventions are: close schools, ban public gatherings, isolate and quarantine.
The comparison is not so simple, though, owing to the much longer incubation period for the coronavirus. Such measures would have to be in force for a much longer period (which is not to say that we ought not to be planning for them).
(Guardian) Prof Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, has responded to media reports of a dog in Hong Kong being tested “weak positive” for coronavirus.
“There is no evidence that the human novel coronavirus can infect dogs and it would be incredible for a virus to make so many species jumps in such a short space of time,” he said.
“We have to differentiate between real infection and just detecting the presence of a virus – these are very different – and the fact that the test result was weakly positive would suggest that this is environmental contamination or simply the presence of coronavirus shed from the human contact that has ended up in the dog’s samples.
“In truth this is incredibly irresponsible because the last thing we need to do is create mass hysteria about the possibility of dogs being infected, and therefore potentially transmitting this virus when there is absolutely no evidence for this whatsoever.”
Yes yes yes.
Please we need to hear from the experts.
Where is the public information campaign from PHE? Where is Boris having been briefed by our very best?
A report on the BBC that Boris chaired Cobra on Monday is just not going to cut it.
I can't help feeling that we'd all be safer if Jeremy Hunt were Health Secretary rather than Matt Hancock.
I think Matt Hancock is pretty good - certainly one of the more reliable members of the cabinet. The problem in this case is at a higher level.
I could go with "I can't help feeling that we'd all be safer if Jeremy Hunt were Prime Minister rather than Boris Johnson." (As he came quite close to being)
I would be happy for Hunt to return as Health Secretary but I'm quite glad he's not Prime Minister. He would never have gotten Johnson's revised deal, nor been prepared to have Australian style trade as the backup in case we can't get Canadian style.
It might all turn out to be something about not very much but do you not think that wiffling about which form of Brexit we have (and Johnson could seriously screw this up anyway), might be the wrong criterion for judging a PM's effectiveness? Bigger challenges may be at hand.
I’m really glad I took your tip and laid Boris to leave his office before 31st Dec 2023.
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
Alternatively, if 98% of people who contract the disease live through it and for most of them, their lives can return to normal pretty quickly, then perhaps there comes a point when extreme restriction measures both fail to work and are more damaging?
Yes there comes a point in time. Definitely. But let's start talking about that after a year because at the moment I want the bottom curve (those who locked down early) and not the top curve (those who didn't).
Pasting again as part of my public information campaign. From: Nonpharmaceutical Interventions Implemented by US Cities During the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic
The interventions are: close schools, ban public gatherings, isolate and quarantine.
The comparison is not so simple, though, owing to the much longer incubation period for the coronavirus. Such measures would have to be in force for a much longer period (which is not to say that we ought not to be planning for them).
Yes. That's why Chris Witty is talking about locking down for at least 2 months.
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
You'd make a really shit Doctor.
I'm sorry about Liverpool.
It's fine, I called it a while back, and it is still less painful than what happened in 2014.
I don't believe for a second that Liverpool wouldn't get the League Title, they clearly would. The linked article just says "might not", they would get it but it would forever have an asterisk next to it.
As a Tranmere/Liverpool fan I'm more bothered what it will do to Tranmere. Currently in the relegation zone, though with a game in hand, ending the season now would likely mean relegation rather than a chance to recover out of the relegation zone.
I can't help feeling that we'd all be safer if Jeremy Hunt were Health Secretary rather than Matt Hancock.
I think Matt Hancock is pretty good - certainly one of the more reliable members of the cabinet. The problem in this case is at a higher level.
I could go with "I can't help feeling that we'd all be safer if Jeremy Hunt were Prime Minister rather than Boris Johnson." (As he came quite close to being)
I would be happy for Hunt to return as Health Secretary but I'm quite glad he's not Prime Minister. He would never have gotten Johnson's revised deal, nor been prepared to have Australian style trade as the backup in case we can't get Canadian style.
It might all turn out to be something about not very much but do you not think that wiffling about which form of Brexit we have (and Johnson could seriously screw this up anyway), might be the wrong criterion for judging a PM's effectiveness? Bigger challenges may be at hand.
I’m really glad I took your tip and laid Boris to leave his office before 31st Dec 2023.
*strictly speaking that’s ceases to be leader of the Tories
(Guardian) Prof Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, has responded to media reports of a dog in Hong Kong being tested “weak positive” for coronavirus.
“There is no evidence that the human novel coronavirus can infect dogs and it would be incredible for a virus to make so many species jumps in such a short space of time,” he said.
“We have to differentiate between real infection and just detecting the presence of a virus – these are very different – and the fact that the test result was weakly positive would suggest that this is environmental contamination or simply the presence of coronavirus shed from the human contact that has ended up in the dog’s samples.
“In truth this is incredibly irresponsible because the last thing we need to do is create mass hysteria about the possibility of dogs being infected, and therefore potentially transmitting this virus when there is absolutely no evidence for this whatsoever.”
Yes yes yes.
Please we need to hear from the experts.
Where is the public information campaign from PHE? Where is Boris having been briefed by our very best?
A report on the BBC that Boris chaired Cobra on Monday is just not going to cut it.
No time for the bunker now Boris.
There's been experts on the media every day since this began FFS.
Why do we need to see Boris being briefed by our very best (rather than it simply happening) when we have the briefings going out to us all on the media too?
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
A better analogy is the patient goes in with a sore toe. Doctor eadric suggests cutting off the leg because it might be gangrene (worst case scenario) and if so there's a 90% chance it will spread and kill the patient. Doctor PB notes that it's much more likely (say in 99% of symptoms like this) to be a localised infection with near zero risk of death and suggests close monitoring to determine what it really is (worst case scenario is still gangrene, but unlikely).
Occasionally (one time in 1000) the patient is better following Dr eadric's advice, but most of the time doing so means unnecessarily losing a leg.
Both doctors agree on what the worst case scenario is, but Doctor PB takes into account that the worst case scenario is unlikely to happen.
For those of us using Betfair exchange there are of course parallels with stocks and shares. Calling the market, laying and cutting losses, buying when the price is favourable, staying green etc. etc. etc.
No one with any nous ties up their money for a year and waits with their thumb up their bum. You work the market.
To counter this, normally speaking as a general rule in favourable market conditions you can stick your investment into stocks and shares and play the long game, often in the hands of a middle man investor. Fine.
The problem comes when the markets hit a big correction, as now. Then if you don't read it and act fast you can face losses from which you may never recover.
We 'may' be in a situation where some market values don't recover for 5 years or more. For those with pensions this is extremely serious.
Actually that is 100% diametrically wrong
You should buy and hold. Don’t try to work the market. Fidelity has a famous study that says something like if you missed only the 30 performing days in a year the equity market return would be less than debt
Buy - drip feed - and hold. Trade infrequently.
Don’t look at the market from day to day
Be patient. Be calm. Be disciplined. Doing nothing is usually better than doing something
Against the essentially random short and medium term market swings, yes.
When there is a discrete event that will clearly damage the world economy and take markets down with it, possibly for an extended period, not so much.
Last week I seem to recall Charles castigating Mr Meeks for his article on Coronavirus. Irresponsible, Charles said. We understand the virus well, he went on.
No further comment necessary.
You remember incorrectly
I said we are working hard and learning fast (we understand the coronavirus genus well)
I castigated him first his worst case scenario
Coronavirus will probably become endemic and seasonal. The world is not going to come to an end
For those of us using Betfair exchange there are of course parallels with stocks and shares. Calling the market, laying and cutting losses, buying when the price is favourable, staying green etc. etc. etc.
No one with any nous ties up their money for a year and waits with their thumb up their bum. You work the market.
To counter this, normally speaking as a general rule in favourable market conditions you can stick your investment into stocks and shares and play the long game, often in the hands of a middle man investor. Fine.
The problem comes when the markets hit a big correction, as now. Then if you don't read it and act fast you can face losses from which you may never recover.
We 'may' be in a situation where some market values don't recover for 5 years or more. For those with pensions this is extremely serious.
Actually that is 100% diametrically wrong
You should buy and hold. Don’t try to work the market. Fidelity has a famous study that says something like if you missed only the 30 performing days in a year the equity market return would be less than debt
Buy - drip feed - and hold. Trade infrequently.
Don’t look at the market from day to day
Be patient. Be calm. Be disciplined. Doing nothing is usually better than doing something
I thought you were saying the other day that your dad sold all his equities before the gfc. How did that work out for his NAV?
It was in December 1999.
But my father was the #3 best performing fund manager in the U.K. from 1970-1999.
You should buy and hold. Don’t try to work the market. Fidelity has a famous study that says something like if you missed only the 30 performing days in a year the equity market return would be less than debt
Buy - drip feed - and hold. Trade infrequently.
Don’t look at the market from day to day
Be patient. Be calm. Be disciplined. Doing nothing is usually better than doing something
Whilst I agree with your general point, I do think this oft-repeated stuff about 'missing the N best performing days' is utter garbage. No-one could conceivably manage to arrange things so as to get out of equities the evening before the best days and go back in the morning after them, on any trading strategy. Plus you could make exactly the inverse argument about missing the worst-performing days: if you managed that, you'd be a genius investor (transaction costs aside, of course). It's just not a realistic scenario at all.
Baker McKenzie have sent everyone home from their London office.
PB is still drastically underestimating the scale of all this.
Baker McKenzie has shut its London office due to a suspected outbreak of the coronavirus infection.
The law firm shuttered the 100 New Bridge Street office on Thursday afternoon as a pre-emptive measure, sending home more than 1,100 people.
RollOnFriday understands a person working at Baker McKenzie recently returned from northern Italy and is now unwell. Sources said the firm will make a decision on Sunday whether to re-open on Monday.
In a statement the firm told RollOnFriday, “Our priority is the health and wellbeing of our people and our clients and we have asked our London office employees to work from home for the time being while we are taking precautionary measures in response to a potential case of the COVID-19.”
”We have a well-established agile working programme - including sophisticated technology and IT systems for home working - which allows us to take these precautionary measures without impacting our client service delivery.”
“We continue to closely monitor the situation and are following the advice and guidance issued by the Government and Public Health England.”
(Guardian) Prof Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, has responded to media reports of a dog in Hong Kong being tested “weak positive” for coronavirus.
“There is no evidence that the human novel coronavirus can infect dogs and it would be incredible for a virus to make so many species jumps in such a short space of time,” he said.
“We have to differentiate between real infection and just detecting the presence of a virus – these are very different – and the fact that the test result was weakly positive would suggest that this is environmental contamination or simply the presence of coronavirus shed from the human contact that has ended up in the dog’s samples.
“In truth this is incredibly irresponsible because the last thing we need to do is create mass hysteria about the possibility of dogs being infected, and therefore potentially transmitting this virus when there is absolutely no evidence for this whatsoever.”
Yes yes yes.
Please we need to hear from the experts.
Where is the public information campaign from PHE? Where is Boris having been briefed by our very best?
A report on the BBC that Boris chaired Cobra on Monday is just not going to cut it.
No time for the bunker now Boris.
There's been experts on the media every day since this began FFS.
Why do we need to see Boris being briefed by our very best (rather than it simply happening) when we have the briefings going out to us all on the media too?
Maybe because the public need some leadership and guidance on what to do here? If you don't think Boris should be communicating what we should be doing then what actually is his purpose? Maybe we should just bin him off altogether?
It's a rhetorical question by the way as I have no interest in engaging further with someone who just last week compared an extremely deadly and highly contagious virus with someone drowning in a swimming pool. You are a lost cause.
For those of us using Betfair exchange there are of course parallels with stocks and shares. Calling the market, laying and cutting losses, buying when the price is favourable, staying green etc. etc. etc.
No one with any nous ties up their money for a year and waits with their thumb up their bum. You work the market.
To counter this, normally speaking as a general rule in favourable market conditions you can stick your investment into stocks and shares and play the long game, often in the hands of a middle man investor. Fine.
The problem comes when the markets hit a big correction, as now. Then if you don't read it and act fast you can face losses from which you may never recover.
We 'may' be in a situation where some market values don't recover for 5 years or more. For those with pensions this is extremely serious.
Actually that is 100% diametrically wrong
You should buy and hold. Don’t try to work the market. Fidelity has a famous study that says something like if you missed only the 30 performing days in a year the equity market return would be less than debt
Buy - drip feed - and hold. Trade infrequently.
Don’t look at the market from day to day
Be patient. Be calm. Be disciplined. Doing nothing is usually better than doing something
Against the essentially random short and medium term market swings, yes.
When there is a discrete event that will clearly damage the world economy and take markets down with it, possibly for an extended period, not so much.
Last week I seem to recall Charles castigating Mr Meeks for his article on Coronavirus. Irresponsible, Charles said. We understand the virus well, he went on.
No further comment necessary.
You remember incorrectly
I said we are working hard and learning fast (we understand the coronavirus genus well)
I castigated him first his worst case scenario
Coronavirus will probably become endemic and seasonal. The world is not going to come to an end
endemic and seasonal with a fatality rate higher than flu doesn't sound like a great combination.
I can't help feeling that we'd all be safer if Jeremy Hunt were Health Secretary rather than Matt Hancock.
We’d all be better off if Hunt was PM.
If Hunt were Tory leader Corbyn might now be PM as he would have extended again and the Brexit Party split the Tory vote
Total tosh. All the evidence indicates the recent election was an anti-Corbyn election. It is odd how as someone who voted Remain you are now so obsessed by Brexit. Let's face it, Hunt would have beaten Corbyn, because anyone could have. "Boris" as you so obsequiously like to call him will hopefully soon have a decent LoTO to call the incompetent oaf to account.
We will start to return to politics as usual hopefully, and eventually the Tory Party will start to realise it needs to return to being broad church and it cannot just be a right wing populist party for swivel-eyed nutters and sycophantic fanbois.
Wow - so many swivel eyes give you an 80 seat majority. Who knew?
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
Alternatively, if 98% of people who contract the disease live through it and for most of them, their lives can return to normal pretty quickly, then perhaps there comes a point when extreme restriction measures both fail to work and are more damaging?
Yep. That post makes it sound like the Battle of the Somme.
This isn’t the Battle of the Somme. And I’d much rather have coronavirus.
I assume once you get the virus and survive you have immunity against it.
For those of us using Betfair exchange there are of course parallels with stocks and shares. Calling the market, laying and cutting losses, buying when the price is favourable, staying green etc. etc. etc.
No one with any nous ties up their money for a year and waits with their thumb up their bum. You work the market.
To counter this, normally speaking as a general rule in favourable market conditions you can stick your investment into stocks and shares and play the long game, often in the hands of a middle man investor. Fine.
The problem comes when the markets hit a big correction, as now. Then if you don't read it and act fast you can face losses from which you may never recover.
We 'may' be in a situation where some market values don't recover for 5 years or more. For those with pensions this is extremely serious.
Actually that is 100% diametrically wrong
You should buy and hold. Don’t try to work the market. Fidelity has a famous study that says something like if you missed only the 30 performing days in a year the equity market return would be less than debt
Buy - drip feed - and hold. Trade infrequently.
Don’t look at the market from day to day
Be patient. Be calm. Be disciplined. Doing nothing is usually better than doing something
That’s exactly my strategy.
It works, most of the time. A global crisis is the exception, so it’s best to keep an eye out in case you see one coming.
If you held through black Monday, white Wednesday, the internet crash, Iraq invasion or GFC you’d be ahead
You’re just postulating a bigger event: of course if you call it right you’ll come out ahead. I’ve a former colleague who bet his life savings shorting Bear Stearns. But most people don’t get it right
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
You'd make a really shit Doctor.
I'm sorry about Liverpool.
It's fine, I called it a while back, and it is still less painful than what happened in 2014.
lol
I think Trump is fucked by the bug, and what's more, I think they know it. His team is panicking:
Stock market corrections are usually due to a change in investor confidence for no particular reason, if I understand correctly and thus are usually unpredictable.
This seems very different. The fall in shares is because of fears about a very real event that's happening now. It's a rational response. Even if the spread of the virus does not become a pandemic, it seems obvious to me that there are going to be serious economic consequences for months ahead.
If a whole year of earnings are lost on average , perhaps spread over two years, then rationally the P/E ratio should drop from 13.7 to 12.7 i.e. an 8% fall. The market is already 9% down from its peak at FTSE 7600 but I reckon it will overshoot to say 16% down (FTSE 6100) before it recovers to around present levels. But DYOR
Reducing P/E by 1 doesnt feel quite right instinctively, shouldnt the loss of the current year earnings be very different to future earnings (i.e far bigger share of the PE than 1). Its generally more predictable, more useful, but also will be used as a baseline for future valuations come 2022/2023.
The theoretical value is the NPV of the future earnings stream at an appropriate discount rate. Year one will account for 1 in the P/E and the future years will discount back to the rest of the P/E.
But you make a good point in your final sentence. Also the discount rate is important and if it is 'fear on' the rate will be higher and the P/E lower regardless of the underlying earnings stream.
My post was a quick and dirty estimate to try to get a feel for the scale of the correction. It might well be useless so don't invest on the basis of it!
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor security." Not happy with abandoning the "democrat" principles over the last couple of years, they are abandoning the "liberal" bit too.
For those of us using Betfair exchange there are of course parallels with stocks and shares. Calling the market, laying and cutting losses, buying when the price is favourable, staying green etc. etc. etc.
No one with any nous ties up their money for a year and waits with their thumb up their bum. You work the market.
To counter this, normally speaking as a general rule in favourable market conditions you can stick your investment into stocks and shares and play the long game, often in the hands of a middle man investor. Fine.
The problem comes when the markets hit a big correction, as now. Then if you don't read it and act fast you can face losses from which you may never recover.
We 'may' be in a situation where some market values don't recover for 5 years or more. For those with pensions this is extremely serious.
Actually that is 100% diametrically wrong
You should buy and hold. Don’t try to work the market. Fidelity has a famous study that says something like if you missed only the 30 performing days in a year the equity market return would be less than debt
Buy - drip feed - and hold. Trade infrequently.
Don’t look at the market from day to day
Be patient. Be calm. Be disciplined. Doing nothing is usually better than doing something
That’s exactly my strategy.
It works, most of the time. A global crisis is the exception, so it’s best to keep an eye out in case you see one coming.
If you held through black Monday, white Wednesday, the internet crash, Iraq invasion or GFC you’d be ahead
You’re just postulating a bigger event: of course if you call it right you’ll come out ahead. I’ve a former colleague who bet his life savings shorting Bear Stearns. But most people don’t get it right
True. But if you’d sold, or shorted, toward the beginning of any of those events, and reentered the market later, you’d likely be even more ahead.
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
Alternatively, if 98% of people who contract the disease live through it and for most of them, their lives can return to normal pretty quickly, then perhaps there comes a point when extreme restriction measures both fail to work and are more damaging?
Yep. That post makes it sound like the Battle of the Somme.
This isn’t the Battle of the Somme. And I’d much rather have coronavirus.
I assume once you get the virus and survive you have immunity against it.
You can just about argue education is investment (it will mainly be spent on children of whom 80-90% will stay in the UK and 20-30% will one day get good jobs returning lots of tax to the exchequer) but it’s hard to say Health is.
A whopping great proportion of the Health budget is keeping the economically unproductive and non-working elderly alive*.
(*i don’t say that to be callous - only to make a point about investment returns)
Nah, there's only one useful difference between investment and current spending, and that is whether it is lumpy. In company accounts, it is sensible to spread the cost of some big purchase of capital equipment over several years, because otherwise you get a distorted picture in the year you incur the expenditure. On the other hand, spending which you are going to incur every year is not investment.
For this reason, I am suspicious of the usefulness of the distinction at all in national accounts, because at central government level there is so much regular capital expenditure that it's really just routine yearly stuff: for example, you build new schools every year.
I mostly agree with this, but I think you can define capital expenditure, in government and political terms, as spending that you can cut without the damaging effects being noticed until much later. So in terms of education, you have:
1. Current spending on employing teachers. If you halve this spending and double class sizes/half teacher's pay, then it will be noticed immediately.
2. Investment spending on building new schools. If you cut this completely then at first it won't make a difference, but ten years down the line it becomes increasingly obvious.
Given the skewed incentives for politicians to concentrate on the short-term - because in the long-term your political opponents are in office - you can make an argument that you should make it easier for governments to spend on long-term projects. Otherwise the politician will cut capital spending and give it away in tax cuts to win re-election.
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
The basic issue is the stats are interdependent
You are taking the extreme end of every projection and multiplying them together
It has minimal statistical validity as an approach
Dr Fox has told us previously that in a widespread pandemic there could be 600,000 deaths. That is a generic PHE estimate for a pandemic. But based on the specifics of this one, it could be North or South of that. I'm sure the infectious disease modellers, who are crunching the numbers properly in PHE will have some good estimates. But safe to say, it is going to be a big number.
Those comparing it with RTAs or seasonal flu or drowning in swimming pools are somewhat mistaken.
(Guardian) Prof Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, has responded to media reports of a dog in Hong Kong being tested “weak positive” for coronavirus.
“There is no evidence that the human novel coronavirus can infect dogs and it would be incredible for a virus to make so many species jumps in such a short space of time,” he said.
“We have to differentiate between real infection and just detecting the presence of a virus – these are very different – and the fact that the test result was weakly positive would suggest that this is environmental contamination or simply the presence of coronavirus shed from the human contact that has ended up in the dog’s samples.
“In truth this is incredibly irresponsible because the last thing we need to do is create mass hysteria about the possibility of dogs being infected, and therefore potentially transmitting this virus when there is absolutely no evidence for this whatsoever.”
Yes yes yes.
Please we need to hear from the experts.
Where is the public information campaign from PHE? Where is Boris having been briefed by our very best?
A report on the BBC that Boris chaired Cobra on Monday is just not going to cut it.
No time for the bunker now Boris.
There's been experts on the media every day since this began FFS.
Why do we need to see Boris being briefed by our very best (rather than it simply happening) when we have the briefings going out to us all on the media too?
Maybe because the public need some leadership and guidance on what to do here? If you don't think Boris should be communicating what we should be doing then what actually is his purpose? Maybe we should just bin him off altogether?
It's a rhetorical question by the way as I have no interest in engaging further with someone who just last week compared an extremely deadly and highly contagious virus with someone drowning in a swimming pool. You are a lost cause.
The public does need some leadership and guidance. They are getting it.
Boris is a leader, there are other people better qualified and able to do briefings to the media and they are doing so regularly.
Also, Richard Nabavi chortling and scoffing at me and saying "meh, this is not news, a couple of deaths in Europe"
I pointed out to him that this comment might age as well as Roger's, on day one of the Great Recession, when he said "this will all be forgotten by Friday".
Incidentally, I am not SeanT, etc
No, you can't be SeanT, because he had a good grasp of English. You on the other hand failed 100% to understand the very simple point I was making: the distinction between something being important, and something being front-page news.
You were ridiculously insouciant and alarmingly complacent about this thing...
Sigh.. no I wasn't. I was responding to the very specific question you asked, which was why it wasn't front-page news that day and in the preceding few days. As I patiently but unsuccessfully tried to explain to you, the reason was that at the time there wasn't very much new to report: just a very small number of new cases in Europe, and a rise in far-east cases and deaths which was similar to the previous week.
As soon as there was something new to report - notably the Italian cluster, and the subsequent increases elsewhere - it went straight back to the front pages and top of the news bulletins. That is how this 'news' stuff works. You should talk to SeanT about it, he's some kind of peripheral journalist, I believe, so I expect he could explain it to you.
I'm guessing Biden will close the gap even further with Sanders when he wins the South Carolina primary on Saturday. There may be some easy profits to be made by cashing out at the right time.
For those of us using Betfair exchange there are of course parallels with stocks and shares. Calling the market, laying and cutting losses, buying when the price is favourable, staying green etc. etc. etc.
No one with any nous ties up their money for a year and waits with their thumb up their bum. You work the market.
To counter this, normally speaking as a general rule in favourable market conditions you can stick your investment into stocks and shares and play the long game, often in the hands of a middle man investor. Fine.
The problem comes when the markets hit a big correction, as now. Then if you don't read it and act fast you can face losses from which you may never recover.
We 'may' be in a situation where some market values don't recover for 5 years or more. For those with pensions this is extremely serious.
Actually that is 100% diametrically wrong
You should buy and hold. Don’t try to work the market. Fidelity has a famous study that says something like if you missed only the 30 performing days in a year the equity market return would be less than debt
Buy - drip feed - and hold. Trade infrequently.
Don’t look at the market from day to day
Be patient. Be calm. Be disciplined. Doing nothing is usually better than doing something
Against the essentially random short and medium term market swings, yes.
When there is a discrete event that will clearly damage the world economy and take markets down with it, possibly for an extended period, not so much.
Last week I seem to recall Charles castigating Mr Meeks for his article on Coronavirus. Irresponsible, Charles said. We understand the virus well, he went on.
No further comment necessary.
You remember incorrectly
I said we are working hard and learning fast (we understand the coronavirus genus well)
I castigated him first his worst case scenario
Coronavirus will probably become endemic and seasonal. The world is not going to come to an end
endemic and seasonal with a fatality rate higher than flu doesn't sound like a great combination.
We don’t know the death rates yet
In addition there’s going to be an overlap between those vulnerable to flu thereby reducing* the absolute number of incremental deaths
* I was goi g to say “cannibalising” but didn’t want to upset poor @eadric
Congratulations! Being an uncle or aunt is great fun - you can enjoy all the good bits and when it goes totally pear shaped you just hand them back....
Dr Fox has told us previously that in a widespread pandemic there could be 600,000 deaths. That is a generic PHE estimate for a pandemic. But based on the specifics of this one, it could be North or South of that. I'm sure the infectious disease modellers, who are crunching the numbers properly in PHE will have some good estimates. But safe to say, it is going to be a big number.
Those comparing it with RTAs or seasonal flu or drowning in swimming pools are somewhat mistaken.
We'll see.
As it stands we're currently at a grand total of 0 deaths on the penultimate day of winter.
Dr Fox has told us previously that in a widespread pandemic there could be 600,000 deaths. That is a generic PHE estimate for a pandemic. But based on the specifics of this one, it could be North or South of that. I'm sure the infectious disease modellers, who are crunching the numbers properly in PHE will have some good estimates. But safe to say, it is going to be a big number.
Those comparing it with RTAs or seasonal flu or drowning in swimming pools are somewhat mistaken.
We'll see.
As it stands we're currently at a grand total of 0 deaths on the penultimate day of winter.
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
They could start by telling us
1) how many people in Britain have been tested (15 have tested positive);
As of 27 February, a total of 7,690 people have been tested in the UK, of which 7,675 were confirmed negative and 15 positive.
The Department of Health and Social Care will be publishing updated data on this page every day at 2pm until further notice.
When a clinician suspects novel coronavirus (COVID-19), they take samples from the nose, throat and deeper respiratory samples, package and send them safely to PHE Colindale. PHE can provide a laboratory result from this specific virus on the same working day.
Lesson one to anyone who has ever worked professionally where they need clean hands - don't miss between the fingers and the fingertips. Ironically the finger tips are the most omitted place normally.
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
You'd make a really shit Doctor.
I'm sorry about Liverpool.
It's fine, I called it a while back, and it is still less painful than what happened in 2014.
lol
I think Trump is fucked by the bug, and what's more, I think they know it. His team is panicking:
"efficiency and competence are not exactly his administration’s strong suits. " If Trump did nothing it would be better, he is part of the problem from Climate Change to epidemic planning.
One problem is how to measure who's died of the virus, because if someone was very ill anyway and wasn't going to live long, do you include them in the statistics? Some countries will probably do so, others won't. So the comparison across nations may not be very exact.
Dr Fox has told us previously that in a widespread pandemic there could be 600,000 deaths. That is a generic PHE estimate for a pandemic. But based on the specifics of this one, it could be North or South of that. I'm sure the infectious disease modellers, who are crunching the numbers properly in PHE will have some good estimates. But safe to say, it is going to be a big number.
Those comparing it with RTAs or seasonal flu or drowning in swimming pools are somewhat mistaken.
We'll see.
As it stands we're currently at a grand total of 0 deaths on the penultimate day of winter.
Actually, 1 - a Brit just died on the ship
0 in the UK.
If the Brit had come home to get our medical treatment they may have survived.
Dr Fox has told us previously that in a widespread pandemic there could be 600,000 deaths. That is a generic PHE estimate for a pandemic. But based on the specifics of this one, it could be North or South of that. I'm sure the infectious disease modellers, who are crunching the numbers properly in PHE will have some good estimates. But safe to say, it is going to be a big number.
Those comparing it with RTAs or seasonal flu or drowning in swimming pools are somewhat mistaken.
We'll see.
As it stands we're currently at a grand total of 0 deaths on the penultimate day of winter.
Actually, 1 - a Brit just died on the ship
0 in the UK.
If the Brit had come home to get our medical treatment they may have survived.
Japan does not appear to have handled the Diamond Princess well.
For those of us using Betfair exchange there are of course parallels with stocks and shares. Calling the market, laying and cutting losses, buying when the price is favourable, staying green etc. etc. etc.
No one with any nous ties up their money for a year and waits with their thumb up their bum. You work the market.
To counter this, normally speaking as a general rule in favourable market conditions you can stick your investment into stocks and shares and play the long game, often in the hands of a middle man investor. Fine.
The problem comes when the markets hit a big correction, as now. Then if you don't read it and act fast you can face losses from which you may never recover.
We 'may' be in a situation where some market values don't recover for 5 years or more. For those with pensions this is extremely serious.
Actually that is 100% diametrically wrong
You should buy and hold. Don’t try to work the market. Fidelity has a famous study that says something like if you missed only the 30 performing days in a year the equity market return would be less than debt
Buy - drip feed - and hold. Trade infrequently.
Don’t look at the market from day to day
Be patient. Be calm. Be disciplined. Doing nothing is usually better than doing something
Against the essentially random short and medium term market swings, yes.
When there is a discrete event that will clearly damage the world economy and take markets down with it, possibly for an extended period, not so much.
Last week I seem to recall Charles castigating Mr Meeks for his article on Coronavirus. Irresponsible, Charles said. We understand the virus well, he went on.
No further comment necessary.
You remember incorrectly
I said we are working hard and learning fast (we understand the coronavirus genus well)
I castigated him first his worst case scenario
Coronavirus will probably become endemic and seasonal. The world is not going to come to an end
endemic and seasonal with a fatality rate higher than flu doesn't sound like a great combination.
We don’t know the death rates yet
In addition there’s going to be an overlap between those vulnerable to flu thereby reducing* the absolute number of incremental deaths
* I was goi g to say “cannibalising” but didn’t want to upset poor @eadric
Well in Italy the death rate is over 2%. In China it is 3.5%, in Japan it is around 1%. Only in Korea does it seem to be significantly lower than that. These are not insignificant rates if the virus spreads to a large number of people.
Lesson one to anyone who has ever worked professionally where they need clean hands - don't miss between the fingers and the fingertips. Ironically the finger tips are the most omitted place normally.
One thing I learned on Twitter today, after washing your hands in a public loo do NOT use the air dryer, as it is a brilliant vector for viruses.
New paper towels is the way to go
Yeah air dryers, even the Dyson one, are basically bacteria blowers.
First off GDP =/ Tax. £1bn in lost growth is not equivalent to £1bn in govt expenditure.
Secondly those studies compare the UK to a basket of somewhat similar countries, which would be okay if not for the fact that one of the countries involved usually has a 40-50% weighting and also went through a big change in 2016: Trump, who has enabled US growth fuelled by massive fiscal recklessness.
To make it very simple, imagine that you have 3 identical children. You tell them to jog 50m. Child 1 (USA), Child 2 (UK), Child 3 (France) all complete it in 10 seconds. The average of child 1 and 3 is 10 seconds, equivalent to child 2. Then you give child 1 a load of sugar, and tell it to run the next 50m (massive fiscal stimulus), while putting a purple rosette on child 2, and leaving child 3 unaffected.
It takes Child 1 only 5 seconds to run the next 50m, while Child 2 and 3 take 10 seconds.
You then average out child 1 and 3 to get 7.5 seconds, while child 2 took 10 seconds. Does that mean that the purple rosette cost child 2 2.5 seconds? That study says yes.
I mostly agree with this, but I think you can define capital expenditure, in government and political terms, as spending that you can cut without the damaging effects being noticed until much later. So in terms of education, you have:
1. Current spending on employing teachers. If you halve this spending and double class sizes/half teacher's pay, then it will be noticed immediately.
2. Investment spending on building new schools. If you cut this completely then at first it won't make a difference, but ten years down the line it becomes increasingly obvious.
Given the skewed incentives for politicians to concentrate on the short-term - because in the long-term your political opponents are in office - you can make an argument that you should make it easier for governments to spend on long-term projects. Otherwise the politician will cut capital spending and give it away in tax cuts to win re-election.
Dr Fox has told us previously that in a widespread pandemic there could be 600,000 deaths. That is a generic PHE estimate for a pandemic. But based on the specifics of this one, it could be North or South of that. I'm sure the infectious disease modellers, who are crunching the numbers properly in PHE will have some good estimates. But safe to say, it is going to be a big number.
Those comparing it with RTAs or seasonal flu or drowning in swimming pools are somewhat mistaken.
We'll see.
As it stands we're currently at a grand total of 0 deaths on the penultimate day of winter.
Actually, 1 - a Brit just died on the ship
0 in the UK.
If the Brit had come home to get our medical treatment they may have survived.
Yes the figures are for where the positive sample was taken/tested and not nationality.
One problem is how to measure who's died of the virus, because if someone was very ill anyway and wasn't going to live long, do you include them in the statistics? Some countries will probably do so, others won't. So the comparison across nations may not be very exact.
That was the point the Italian doctor interviewed in today’s Italian paper was making, if someone was seriously ill anyway and tests positive for the virus, the death is being credited to the virus. Projecting these stats onto the healthy population is obviously going to over-estimate.
What are the chances Trump tries to use the coronavirus epidemic to suspend the election?
More likely to try to introduce restriction zones in 'high Democrat-voting' - sorry, 'high risk' - areas.
Being serious though, he can't try to suspend the election. Apart from the fact the courts would almost certainly rule against (neither WW2 not the Civil War stopped elections), to try to suspend them would be to admit failure.
The public does need some leadership and guidance. They are getting it.
Boris is a leader, there are other people better qualified and able to do briefings to the media and they are doing so regularly.
Being not an expert himself hasn't stopped him "talking to the nation" about things in the past - e.g. Irish border checks or optimum sentences for violent criminals.
Lesson one to anyone who has ever worked professionally where they need clean hands - don't miss between the fingers and the fingertips. Ironically the finger tips are the most omitted place normally.
One thing I learned on Twitter today, after washing your hands in a public loo do NOT use the air dryer, as it is a brilliant vector for viruses.
New paper towels is the way to go
Indeed professionals with clean hands would never dream of using an air dryer. Paper towels work. Catch it, bin it, kill it - not spray it all around the f***ing area!
First off GDP =/ Tax. £1bn in lost growth is not equivalent to £1bn in govt expenditure.
Secondly those studies compare the UK to a basket of somewhat similar countries, which would be okay if not for the fact that one of the countries involved usually has a 40-50% weighting and also went through a big change in 2016: Trump, who has enabled US growth fuelled by massive fiscal recklessness.
To make it very simple, imagine that you have 3 identical children. You tell them to jog 50m. Child 1 (USA), Child 2 (UK), Child 3 (France) all complete it in 10 seconds. The average of child 1 and 3 is 10 seconds, equivalent to child 2. Then you give child 1 a load of sugar, and tell it to run the next 50m (massive fiscal stimulus), while putting a purple rosette on child 2, and leaving child 3 unaffected.
It takes Child 1 only 5 seconds to run the next 50m, while Child 2 and 3 take 10 seconds.
You then average out child 1 and 3 to get 7.5 seconds, while child 2 took 10 seconds. Does that mean that the purple rosette cost child 2 2.5 seconds? That study says yes.
Lesson one to anyone who has ever worked professionally where they need clean hands - don't miss between the fingers and the fingertips. Ironically the finger tips are the most omitted place normally.
One thing I learned on Twitter today, after washing your hands in a public loo do NOT use the air dryer, as it is a brilliant vector for viruses.
New paper towels is the way to go
Yeah air dryers, even the Dyson one, are basically bacteria blowers.
I don't have a strong opinion either way and use both, but refusing to disclose how much you've been paid by someone with a vested interest in your research showing results in a particular direction is... questionable.
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
They could start by telling us
1) how many people in Britain have been tested (15 have tested positive);
As of 27 February, a total of 7,690 people have been tested in the UK, of which 7,675 were confirmed negative and 15 positive.
The Department of Health and Social Care will be publishing updated data on this page every day at 2pm until further notice.
When a clinician suspects novel coronavirus (COVID-19), they take samples from the nose, throat and deeper respiratory samples, package and send them safely to PHE Colindale. PHE can provide a laboratory result from this specific virus on the same working day.
As far as I understand the UK is one of the only countries to have started testing early lots of samples for COVID 19, to determine if the virus is already widespread but undetected. This is a really sensible thing to be doing.
For those of us using Betfair exchange there are of course parallels with stocks and shares. Calling the market, laying and cutting losses, buying when the price is favourable, staying green etc. etc. etc.
No one with any nous ties up their money for a year and waits with their thumb up their bum. You work the market.
To counter this, normally speaking as a general rule in favourable market conditions you can stick your investment into stocks and shares and play the long game, often in the hands of a middle man investor. Fine.
The problem comes when the markets hit a big correction, as now. Then if you don't read it and act fast you can face losses from which you may never recover.
We 'may' be in a situation where some market values don't recover for 5 years or more. For those with pensions this is extremely serious.
Actually that is 100% diametrically wrong
You should buy and hold. Don’t try to work the market. Fidelity has a famous study that says something like if you missed only the 30 performing days in a year the equity market return would be less than debt
Buy - drip feed - and hold. Trade infrequently.
Don’t look at the market from day to day
Be patient. Be calm. Be disciplined. Doing nothing is usually better than doing something
That’s exactly my strategy.
It works, most of the time. A global crisis is the exception, so it’s best to keep an eye out in case you see one coming.
If you held through black Monday, white Wednesday, the internet crash, Iraq invasion or GFC you’d be ahead
You’re just postulating a bigger event: of course if you call it right you’ll come out ahead. I’ve a former colleague who bet his life savings shorting Bear Stearns. But most people don’t get it right
You have got yourself a perfectly serviceable rule of thumb there, but rules of thumb give way to specific exceptions. What we had four weeks ago was a once in a lifetime anomaly of a black swan which anyone who was paying attention could see coming a mile off, irrespective of their market prowess. Events have already proved what the right course of action was. It wasn't holding come what may.
Fun fact: the ftse was where it is now (nominally) in June 2007. EDIT now July 2000.
(Guardian) Prof Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, has responded to media reports of a dog in Hong Kong being tested “weak positive” for coronavirus.
“There is no evidence that the human novel coronavirus can infect dogs and it would be incredible for a virus to make so many species jumps in such a short space of time,” he said.
“We have to differentiate between real infection and just detecting the presence of a virus – these are very different – and the fact that the test result was weakly positive would suggest that this is environmental contamination or simply the presence of coronavirus shed from the human contact that has ended up in the dog’s samples.
“In truth this is incredibly irresponsible because the last thing we need to do is create mass hysteria about the possibility of dogs being infected, and therefore potentially transmitting this virus when there is absolutely no evidence for this whatsoever.”
Yes yes yes.
Please we need to hear from the experts.
Where is the public information campaign from PHE? Where is Boris having been briefed by our very best?
A report on the BBC that Boris chaired Cobra on Monday is just not going to cut it.
No time for the bunker now Boris.
There's been experts on the media every day since this began FFS.
Why do we need to see Boris being briefed by our very best (rather than it simply happening) when we have the briefings going out to us all on the media too?
Maybe because the public need some leadership and guidance on what to do here? If you don't think Boris should be communicating what we should be doing then what actually is his purpose? Maybe we should just bin him off altogether?
It's a rhetorical question by the way as I have no interest in engaging further with someone who just last week compared an extremely deadly and highly contagious virus with someone drowning in a swimming pool. You are a lost cause.
Boris is fucking this up. He's meant to be Churchill. This is the War.
I laughed when I heard that the emergency Cobra meeting is to be on Monday. Real sense of urgency there.
Lesson one to anyone who has ever worked professionally where they need clean hands - don't miss between the fingers and the fingertips. Ironically the finger tips are the most omitted place normally.
One thing I learned on Twitter today, after washing your hands in a public loo do NOT use the air dryer, as it is a brilliant vector for viruses.
New paper towels is the way to go
Yeah air dryers, even the Dyson one, are basically bacteria blowers.
This is the kind of basic, useful advice that HMG should be pumping out hourly to the people.
This is an emergency. They should be comandeering airtime on the TV. Public Service Broadcasts 24/7.
I get a sense of dither from the government. Not good.
24/7 emergency government broadcasts? Great way to incite a panic. Anyone who uses virtually any media source and has a reading age above 6 is getting the message loud and clear.
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Imagine a patient with gangrene in his little toe. The doctor comes along, examines him, and says "The best treatment might be to chop off the leg."
At this point the patient says, What the hell, why would you do that?
The doctor replies: Because if I don't things could get really bad.
The patient will then ask: OK, how bad, what's the worst case scenario?
If the doctor replies, "there's a 1% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you", the patient will make an informed choice to refuse the amputation. If the doctor says "there's a 90% chance of the gangrene spreading and killing you.", the patient will reluctantly accept the amputation.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
Alternatively, if 98% of people who contract the disease live through it and for most of them, their lives can return to normal pretty quickly, then perhaps there comes a point when extreme restriction measures both fail to work and are more damaging?
Yes there comes a point in time. Definitely. But let's start talking about that after a year because at the moment I want the bottom curve (those who locked down early) and not the top curve (those who didn't).
Pasting again as part of my public information campaign. From: Nonpharmaceutical Interventions Implemented by US Cities During the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic
I was criticised earlier for conjecturing what they might be, but I believe they are useful, indeed necessary.
Putting the country into Wuham style lockdown will be horribly painful and cause serious damage - like an amputation. But if there is a realistic worst case scenario of mass death and a 70% infection rate, etc etc, if we DON'T do this, then Britain will reluctantly accept this severe restriction.
The government needs to start levelling with the voters. Brutal honesty is the only way.
The basic issue is the stats are interdependent
You are taking the extreme end of every projection and multiplying them together
It has minimal statistical validity as an approach
The REASONABLE "worst case scenario", according to the UK government, is 500,000 dead in the UK.
Can't say for sure, but it looks like they are using the exact same method as me. Take a worst case scenario infection rate - 80% (exact same as me), and take a worst case scenario death rate - in their case it is the CFR of China ex-Hubei, roughly 1%.
"It came as reports revealed a government 'worst-case' planning memo has predicted more than 80 per cent of the 66million people in Britain could contract the disease, of which 500,000 may die.
The 'Covid-19 Reasonable Worst Case Scenario' report was produced by the government's National Security Communications Team, which is overseen by the Cabinet Office, and said schools could be closed, transport networks shut down and public gatherings prevented if an outbreak were to take hold in the UK."
Lesson one to anyone who has ever worked professionally where they need clean hands - don't miss between the fingers and the fingertips. Ironically the finger tips are the most omitted place normally.
One thing I learned on Twitter today, after washing your hands in a public loo do NOT use the air dryer, as it is a brilliant vector for viruses.
New paper towels is the way to go
Beware the paper towel lobby such as the European Tissue Symposium (yes it exists). As long as you dont touch the floor or the hand dryer itself there is no problem.
Lesson one to anyone who has ever worked professionally where they need clean hands - don't miss between the fingers and the fingertips. Ironically the finger tips are the most omitted place normally.
One thing I learned on Twitter today, after washing your hands in a public loo do NOT use the air dryer, as it is a brilliant vector for viruses.
New paper towels is the way to go
Yeah air dryers, even the Dyson one, are basically bacteria blowers.
I don't have a strong opinion either way and use both, but refusing to disclose how much you've been paid by someone with a vested interest in your research showing results in a particular direction is... questionable.
One problem is how to measure who's died of the virus, because if someone was very ill anyway and wasn't going to live long, do you include them in the statistics? Some countries will probably do so, others won't. So the comparison across nations may not be very exact.
At this stage, all deaths for someone who is COVID-19 positive and dies of a plausible illness (eg pneumonia, but not a ski-ing accident) will be recorded as a COVId-19 death. This will be the same in all countries. In a few months there will be enough data to try to estimate the excess deaths by this outbreak, but this will be a population-wide estimate not a patient-by-patient reassesment.
First off GDP =/ Tax. £1bn in lost growth is not equivalent to £1bn in govt expenditure.
Secondly those studies compare the UK to a basket of somewhat similar countries, which would be okay if not for the fact that one of the countries involved usually has a 40-50% weighting and also went through a big change in 2016: Trump, who has enabled US growth fuelled by massive fiscal recklessness.
To make it very simple, imagine that you have 3 identical children. You tell them to jog 50m. Child 1 (USA), Child 2 (UK), Child 3 (France) all complete it in 10 seconds. The average of child 1 and 3 is 10 seconds, equivalent to child 2. Then you give child 1 a load of sugar, and tell it to run the next 50m (massive fiscal stimulus), while putting a purple rosette on child 2, and leaving child 3 unaffected.
It takes Child 1 only 5 seconds to run the next 50m, while Child 2 and 3 take 10 seconds.
You then average out child 1 and 3 to get 7.5 seconds, while child 2 took 10 seconds. Does that mean that the purple rosette cost child 2 2.5 seconds? That study says yes.
Can’t we have the sugar?
Not when there's 9.9km left to run and all sugar highs are followed by a severe sugar crash.
You should buy and hold. Don’t try to work the market. Fidelity has a famous study that says something like if you missed only the 30 performing days in a year the equity market return would be less than debt
Buy - drip feed - and hold. Trade infrequently.
Don’t look at the market from day to day
Be patient. Be calm. Be disciplined. Doing nothing is usually better than doing something
Against the essentially random short and medium term market swings, yes.
When there is a discrete event that will clearly damage the world economy and take markets down with it, possibly for an extended period, not so much.
Last week I seem to recall Charles castigating Mr Meeks for his article on Coronavirus. Irresponsible, Charles said. We understand the virus well, he went on.
No further comment necessary.
You remember incorrectly
I said we are working hard and learning fast (we understand the coronavirus genus well)
I castigated him first his worst case scenario
Coronavirus will probably become endemic and seasonal. The world is not going to come to an end
endemic and seasonal with a fatality rate higher than flu doesn't sound like a great combination.
We don’t know the death rates yet
In addition there’s going to be an overlap between those vulnerable to flu thereby reducing* the absolute number of incremental deaths
* I was goi g to say “cannibalising” but didn’t want to upset poor @eadric
Well in Italy the death rate is over 2%. In China it is 3.5%, in Japan it is around 1%. Only in Korea does it seem to be significantly lower than that. These are not insignificant rates if the virus spreads to a large number of people.
The question is, what is the death rate when you don't have access to intensive care facilities? When there are only a few dozen, or even a few hundred, cases you can deal with them in your normal facilities. You can't do that with a few tens of thousands, never mind a couple of million - and if, say, 5% of cases do become critical and 50% of the population are infected (not all at once, of course), then those facilities wouldn't be available.
Comments
Depends on the economic figures, I guess.
Earliest, some time this summer; latest, some time next year.
I fear that enough twats wouldn't and thus make it all null and void, as unlike China you don't have to worry about your social credit score being zero'ed, with at best you being unable to use the bus for the next couple of years to worst being sent off to a re-education camp with a load of Uighurs.
https://www.bea.gov/index.php/news/blog/2015-06-19/why-does-bea-revise-gdp-estimates
Pasting again as part of my public information campaign. From: Nonpharmaceutical Interventions Implemented by US Cities During the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic
Prof Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, has responded to media reports of a dog in Hong Kong being tested “weak positive” for coronavirus.
“There is no evidence that the human novel coronavirus can infect dogs and it would be incredible for a virus to make so many species jumps in such a short space of time,” he said.
“We have to differentiate between real infection and just detecting the presence of a virus – these are very different – and the fact that the test result was weakly positive would suggest that this is environmental contamination or simply the presence of coronavirus shed from the human contact that has ended up in the dog’s samples.
“In truth this is incredibly irresponsible because the last thing we need to do is create mass hysteria about the possibility of dogs being infected, and therefore potentially transmitting this virus when there is absolutely no evidence for this whatsoever.”
(Just like the Martians)
Link
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17684187
The interventions are: close schools, ban public gatherings, isolate and quarantine.
As a Tranmere/Liverpool fan I'm more bothered what it will do to Tranmere. Currently in the relegation zone, though with a game in hand, ending the season now would likely mean relegation rather than a chance to recover out of the relegation zone.
This isn’t the Battle of the Somme. And I’d much rather have coronavirus.
Not as difficult as the US though...
Please we need to hear from the experts.
Where is the public information campaign from PHE? Where is Boris having been briefed by our very best?
A report on the BBC that Boris chaired Cobra on Monday is just not going to cut it.
No time for the bunker now Boris.
Such measures would have to be in force for a much longer period (which is not to say that we ought not to be planning for them).
Why do we need to see Boris being briefed by our very best (rather than it simply happening) when we have the briefings going out to us all on the media too?
Occasionally (one time in 1000) the patient is better following Dr eadric's advice, but most of the time doing so means unnecessarily losing a leg.
Both doctors agree on what the worst case scenario is, but Doctor PB takes into account that the worst case scenario is unlikely to happen.
I said we are working hard and learning fast (we understand the coronavirus genus well)
I castigated him first his worst case scenario
Coronavirus will probably become endemic and seasonal. The world is not going to come to an end
But my father was the #3 best performing fund manager in the U.K. from 1970-1999.
Most people are not like him.
It's a rhetorical question by the way as I have no interest in engaging further with someone who just last week compared an extremely deadly and highly contagious virus with someone drowning in a swimming pool. You are a lost cause.
You’re just postulating a bigger event: of course if you call it right you’ll come out ahead. I’ve a former colleague who bet his life savings shorting Bear Stearns. But most people don’t get it right
WE ARE AN UNCLE!
But you make a good point in your final sentence. Also the discount rate is important and if it is 'fear on' the rate will be higher and the P/E lower regardless of the underlying earnings stream.
My post was a quick and dirty estimate to try to get a feel for the scale of the correction. It might well be useless so don't invest on the basis of it!
https://twitter.com/EdwardJDavey/status/1233301094534647809
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor security." Not happy with abandoning the "democrat" principles over the last couple of years, they are abandoning the "liberal" bit too.
I wrote letters in support of this guy:
https://www.fairtrials.org/case-study/andrew-symeou
1. Current spending on employing teachers. If you halve this spending and double class sizes/half teacher's pay, then it will be noticed immediately.
2. Investment spending on building new schools. If you cut this completely then at first it won't make a difference, but ten years down the line it becomes increasingly obvious.
Given the skewed incentives for politicians to concentrate on the short-term - because in the long-term your political opponents are in office - you can make an argument that you should make it easier for governments to spend on long-term projects. Otherwise the politician will cut capital spending and give it away in tax cuts to win re-election.
You are taking the extreme end of every projection and multiplying them together
It has minimal statistical validity as an approach
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Those comparing it with RTAs or seasonal flu or drowning in swimming pools are somewhat mistaken.
Boris is a leader, there are other people better qualified and able to do briefings to the media and they are doing so regularly.
As soon as there was something new to report - notably the Italian cluster, and the subsequent increases elsewhere - it went straight back to the front pages and top of the news bulletins. That is how this 'news' stuff works. You should talk to SeanT about it, he's some kind of peripheral journalist, I believe, so I expect he could explain it to you.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.128161111
In addition there’s going to be an overlap between those vulnerable to flu thereby reducing* the absolute number of incremental deaths
* I was goi g to say “cannibalising” but didn’t want to upset poor @eadric
As it stands we're currently at a grand total of 0 deaths on the penultimate day of winter.
https://ofdollarsanddata.com/borrow-if-you-dare/
https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1233406823245500418
The Department of Health and Social Care will be publishing updated data on this page every day at 2pm until further notice.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-information-for-the-public
When a clinician suspects novel coronavirus (COVID-19), they take samples from the nose, throat and deeper respiratory samples, package and send them safely to PHE Colindale. PHE can provide a laboratory result from this specific virus on the same working day.
If Trump did nothing it would be better, he is part of the problem from Climate Change to epidemic planning.
If the Brit had come home to get our medical treatment they may have survived.
First off GDP =/ Tax. £1bn in lost growth is not equivalent to £1bn in govt expenditure.
Secondly those studies compare the UK to a basket of somewhat similar countries, which would be okay if not for the fact that one of the countries involved usually has a 40-50% weighting and also went through a big change in 2016: Trump, who has enabled US growth fuelled by massive fiscal recklessness.
To make it very simple, imagine that you have 3 identical children. You tell them to jog 50m. Child 1 (USA), Child 2 (UK), Child 3 (France) all complete it in 10 seconds. The average of child 1 and 3 is 10 seconds, equivalent to child 2. Then you give child 1 a load of sugar, and tell it to run the next 50m (massive fiscal stimulus), while putting a purple rosette on child 2, and leaving child 3 unaffected.
It takes Child 1 only 5 seconds to run the next 50m, while Child 2 and 3 take 10 seconds.
You then average out child 1 and 3 to get 7.5 seconds, while child 2 took 10 seconds. Does that mean that the purple rosette cost child 2 2.5 seconds? That study says yes.
Being serious though, he can't try to suspend the election. Apart from the fact the courts would almost certainly rule against (neither WW2 not the Civil War stopped elections), to try to suspend them would be to admit failure.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/25/hand-dryers-paper-towels-hygiene-dyson-airblade
I don't have a strong opinion either way and use both, but refusing to disclose how much you've been paid by someone with a vested interest in your research showing results in a particular direction is... questionable.
Fun fact: the ftse was where it is now (nominally) in June 2007. EDIT now July 2000.