I see the government is reviewing its plan to release information about the geographical scope of the contagion once a week only. Good. What a stupid idea that was.
Why is it a stupid idea?
Because if, say, Sussex had a shed load of cases, I'd probably decide not to go there if I could help it. If I went there, caught it, but was only told about the shed load of cases a week later I'd be properly peeved.
So which counties are on your daily “avoid” list?
At least, unlike the US we are publishing the number of tests conducted.
None at the moment. But if there was a geographical cluster then surely we'd want people to know about it, so they could make an informed judgement about whether to avoid the area. Or are you happy for this information to be held back for a week?
Spanish Flu reached the Arctic, and remote Pacific Islands. You can run but...
I heard COVID19 was an RNA virus and liable to mutate quickly. Given viruses have a proclivity to mutate towards less harmful forms could this not just peter out by itself ?
This is called regression to the mean.
If you see someone who is 6 ft 2 inches it is very likely that the next person you see is shorter. That is just because you have seen a tall person, and by definition most people are not tall. It is however possible that the next person is 6ft4in. If you travel on a train today, you are almost certainly going to see someone who is 6ft4 or taller.
All organisms mutate. As a virus reproduces quickly, new mutations are arriving and surviving all the time. At least one of the current strains of the new corona virus is bad, lets say equivalent to a 6'4" person. The next mutation is likely to only be a 5'9" on the virus-badness scale. But it could be a 6'5" virus. In the next few months it is likely that one of the mutations is both 6'5" and survives to cause an outbreak.
Perhaps natural selection also plays a part? Viruses that kill their hosts won't survive so well, and so will tend to be replaced by those that don't. So there will be a natural tendency for viruses to become less lethal over time as the less lethal variants displace the more deadly ones. No idea if this is a significant influence though. Presumably variants that make people cough and sneeze more are also at an advantage when it comes to spreading themselves!
Yes that is also an effect. A different effect. However, from the viewpoint of a virus species, killing off 1 percent of hosts while easily jumping from host to host, is a great trade off. Ebola is different. Ebola kills off too many hosts before they can pass it on, and humans can contain it with some effort. So an Ebloa variant which has a lower death rate would be more sucessful.
If I were the virus president of the Corona Republic I would be urging my subjects to avoid forcing those humans into lock-down mode, Both by flying under the radar (only mild symptoms) and by rapid colonisation. So far things seem to be progressing quite nicely!
A couple of weeks ago, my son was playing some game on his phone in which you are the virus trying to spread as effectively as possible. The best tactics were something like you suggest. Apparently you have to do your best to avoid avoid alerting the humans into developing a vaccine. An alternative strategy was to kill enough people to precipitate a collapse in civilisation and hence end their ability to develop a vaccine!
Johnson, then—and U.S. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel—will be judged in hindsight for decisions taken without that privilege. Did he overreact or underreact? the public will ask. Did he calm a volatile situation or induce panic? Did he show leadership or reveal a lack of it? Is he up to the job? Faced with trying to ensure public confidence in his leadership, Johnson’s first reaction was to turn to experts. Those experts immediately threw the ball back to him.
I've criticised Johnson a lot and will continue to do so but that piece opens weirdly critical that Johnson would seek to follow medical experts on such an issue simply because on a much broader issue of Brexit he would not.
I think you need to read beyond the first two paragraphs.
Johnson, then—and U.S. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel—will be judged in hindsight for decisions taken without that privilege. Did he overreact or underreact? the public will ask. Did he calm a volatile situation or induce panic? Did he show leadership or reveal a lack of it? Is he up to the job? Faced with trying to ensure public confidence in his leadership, Johnson’s first reaction was to turn to experts. Those experts immediately threw the ball back to him.
I've criticised Johnson a lot and will continue to do so but that piece opens weirdly critical that Johnson would seek to follow medical experts on such an issue simply because on a much broader issue of Brexit he would not.
I think the point is that faced with a complex medical/political problem Johnson thought he could fob it off on the experts - but they lobbed it straight back - the difficult decisions will be political “lives vs economic impact”
Less immediately lethal. The “ideal” (from a virus POV) virus is one that is asymptomatic for a long time while still being infectious - like HIV.
Giving this some thought (reluctantly) I would postulate that if a virus has serious ambitions to wipe out most or all of humanity it needs the following key attributes -
Very contagious AND infectious. No symptoms for 28 days. On the 29th day you drop dead.
Once that comes along we will need to develop a vaccine very urgently indeed.
But they don't have "ambitions", and they do evolve from other viruses rather than popping up randomly (largely, they evolve from infecting the same cell at the same time).
It isn't obvious how you leap from the sort of viruses we have now to the sort you are describing in short order. For example, you can see how a lion might benefit from having wings, but that really isn't how evolution works.
Johnson, then—and U.S. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel—will be judged in hindsight for decisions taken without that privilege. Did he overreact or underreact? the public will ask. Did he calm a volatile situation or induce panic? Did he show leadership or reveal a lack of it? Is he up to the job? Faced with trying to ensure public confidence in his leadership, Johnson’s first reaction was to turn to experts. Those experts immediately threw the ball back to him.
I've criticised Johnson a lot and will continue to do so but that piece opens weirdly critical that Johnson would seek to follow medical experts on such an issue simply because on a much broader issue of Brexit he would not.
I think you need to read beyond the first two paragraphs.
I did, thanks for the stupid condescension, and didnt say I hadn't. I wasnt saying the point that there are political issues here not just medical was wrong, but tone is important and making it seem weird Johnson would ever want to listen to an expert in the opening is silly and detracts from the actual point about there being issues for him personally to consider.
I dont see what's controversial about that - by making an unnecessary Brexit based dig it undermines the rest.
Less immediately lethal. The “ideal” (from a virus POV) virus is one that is asymptomatic for a long time while still being infectious - like HIV.
Giving this some thought (reluctantly) I would postulate that if a virus has serious ambitions to wipe out most or all of humanity it needs the following key attributes -
Very contagious AND infectious. No symptoms for 28 days. On the 29th day you drop dead.
Once that comes along we will need to develop a vaccine very urgently indeed.
But they don't have "ambitions", and they do evolve from other viruses rather than popping up randomly (largely, they evolve from infecting the same cell at the same time).
It isn't obvious how you leap from the sort of viruses we have now to the sort you are describing in short order. For example, you can see how a lion might benefit from having wings, but that really isn't how evolution works.
Can you? It might try and land on top of the antelope, I guess, but when the antelope runs off the energy the lion has expended flying through the air plus the extra body weight and ungainliness of the wings would make a successful chase unrealistic. But DYOR.
Less immediately lethal. The “ideal” (from a virus POV) virus is one that is asymptomatic for a long time while still being infectious - like HIV.
Giving this some thought (reluctantly) I would postulate that if a virus has serious ambitions to wipe out most or all of humanity it needs the following key attributes -
Very contagious AND infectious. No symptoms for 28 days. On the 29th day you drop dead.
Once that comes along we will need to develop a vaccine very urgently indeed.
But they don't have "ambitions", and they do evolve from other viruses rather than popping up randomly (largely, they evolve from infecting the same cell at the same time).
It isn't obvious how you leap from the sort of viruses we have now to the sort you are describing in short order. For example, you can see how a lion might benefit from having wings, but that really isn't how evolution works.
Can you? It might try and land on top of the antelope, I guess, but when the antelope runs off the energy the lion has expended flying through the air plus the extra body weight and ungainliness of the wings would make a successful chase unrealistic. But DYOR.
If elephants can do it I'm sure lions could, if they really tried.
Less immediately lethal. The “ideal” (from a virus POV) virus is one that is asymptomatic for a long time while still being infectious - like HIV.
Giving this some thought (reluctantly) I would postulate that if a virus has serious ambitions to wipe out most or all of humanity it needs the following key attributes -
Very contagious AND infectious. No symptoms for 28 days. On the 29th day you drop dead.
Once that comes along we will need to develop a vaccine very urgently indeed.
But they don't have "ambitions", and they do evolve from other viruses rather than popping up randomly (largely, they evolve from infecting the same cell at the same time).
It isn't obvious how you leap from the sort of viruses we have now to the sort you are describing in short order. For example, you can see how a lion might benefit from having wings, but that really isn't how evolution works.
Pity. We could call that Cartesian evolution: I sphinx therefore I am.
Quite. Was just about to post. A strikingly important clarification and Robinson’s tweet shows why hacks shouldn’t dash off twitter posts to convey key information.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
Less immediately lethal. The “ideal” (from a virus POV) virus is one that is asymptomatic for a long time while still being infectious - like HIV.
Giving this some thought (reluctantly) I would postulate that if a virus has serious ambitions to wipe out most or all of humanity it needs the following key attributes -
Very contagious AND infectious. No symptoms for 28 days. On the 29th day you drop dead.
Once that comes along we will need to develop a vaccine very urgently indeed.
But they don't have "ambitions", and they do evolve from other viruses rather than popping up randomly (largely, they evolve from infecting the same cell at the same time).
It isn't obvious how you leap from the sort of viruses we have now to the sort you are describing in short order. For example, you can see how a lion might benefit from having wings, but that really isn't how evolution works.
Pity. We could call that Cartesian evolution: I sphinx therefore I am.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
Jan and Feb would be big 'summer holiday' booking months. This could be very serious for many parts of the economy both UK and abroad.
Sadly my personal circumstances (getting divorced) mean that for me, a summer holiday aboard isn't high on my list of priorities this year.
I see the government is reviewing its plan to release information about the geographical scope of the contagion once a week only. Good. What a stupid idea that was.
Why is it a stupid idea?
Because if, say, Sussex had a shed load of cases, I'd probably decide not to go there if I could help it. If I went there, caught it, but was only told about the shed load of cases a week later I'd be properly peeved.
So which counties are on your daily “avoid” list?
At least, unlike the US we are publishing the number of tests conducted.
Just Yorkshire, but that's not really to do with the coronavirus.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
I wouldnt have thought travel made up much more than 10% in the first place, so either its come to a complete stop or sounds like plenty of other sectors also suffering. Markets are a sell at the moment.
They really should postpone Scotland versus France, unless we have absolute guarantees that the French team and supporters are going direct to Edinburgh and will not be setting foot in England.
Less immediately lethal. The “ideal” (from a virus POV) virus is one that is asymptomatic for a long time while still being infectious - like HIV.
Giving this some thought (reluctantly) I would postulate that if a virus has serious ambitions to wipe out most or all of humanity it needs the following key attributes -
Very contagious AND infectious. No symptoms for 28 days. On the 29th day you drop dead.
Once that comes along we will need to develop a vaccine very urgently indeed.
But they don't have "ambitions", and they do evolve from other viruses rather than popping up randomly (largely, they evolve from infecting the same cell at the same time).
It isn't obvious how you leap from the sort of viruses we have now to the sort you are describing in short order. For example, you can see how a lion might benefit from having wings, but that really isn't how evolution works.
Can you? It might try and land on top of the antelope, I guess, but when the antelope runs off the energy the lion has expended flying through the air plus the extra body weight and ungainliness of the wings would make a successful chase unrealistic. But DYOR.
Fair enough, but the simple point is that even IF the destination is a net improvement, that's not enough in evolutionary terms if the intermediate stages aren't. That's true for animals and also true (though admittedly the process is different and faster) with viruses. So new viruses present new challenges but are highly unlikely to differ quite as radically and fundamentally from those going before as the earlier poster feared.
Less immediately lethal. The “ideal” (from a virus POV) virus is one that is asymptomatic for a long time while still being infectious - like HIV.
Giving this some thought (reluctantly) I would postulate that if a virus has serious ambitions to wipe out most or all of humanity it needs the following key attributes -
Very contagious AND infectious. No symptoms for 28 days. On the 29th day you drop dead.
Once that comes along we will need to develop a vaccine very urgently indeed.
But they don't have "ambitions", and they do evolve from other viruses rather than popping up randomly (largely, they evolve from infecting the same cell at the same time).
It isn't obvious how you leap from the sort of viruses we have now to the sort you are describing in short order. For example, you can see how a lion might benefit from having wings, but that really isn't how evolution works.
Can you? It might try and land on top of the antelope, I guess, but when the antelope runs off the energy the lion has expended flying through the air plus the extra body weight and ungainliness of the wings would make a successful chase unrealistic. But DYOR.
Fair enough, but the simple point is that even IF the destination is a net improvement, that's not enough in evolutionary terms if the intermediate stages aren't. That's true for animals and also true (though admittedly the process is different and faster) with viruses. So new viruses present new challenges but are highly unlikely to differ quite as radically and fundamentally from those going before as the earlier poster feared.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
I wouldnt have thought travel made up much more than 10% in the first place, so either its come to a complete stop or sounds like plenty of other sectors also suffering. Markets are a sell at the moment.
Though if lots of people are stuck indoors self isolating wouldn't that mean more viewers?
The speed at which almost the entire political punditry class wrote Biden off after the Iowa result was something to behold. The consensus opinion of him has now done a complete 180 turn, you'd think he was the second coming of Christ based on CNN's fawning coverage now.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
I wouldnt have thought travel made up much more than 10% in the first place, so either its come to a complete stop or sounds like plenty of other sectors also suffering. Markets are a sell at the moment.
Though if lots of people are stuck indoors self isolating wouldn't that mean more viewers?
No travel, no cinema, no asperational car adverts for new cars they cannot deliver or possibly even let you view...
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
I wouldnt have thought travel made up much more than 10% in the first place, so either its come to a complete stop or sounds like plenty of other sectors also suffering. Markets are a sell at the moment.
Though if lots of people are stuck indoors self isolating wouldn't that mean more viewers?
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
I wouldnt have thought travel made up much more than 10% in the first place, so either its come to a complete stop or sounds like plenty of other sectors also suffering. Markets are a sell at the moment.
Though if lots of people are stuck indoors self isolating wouldn't that mean more viewers?
No point in viewers if advertisers are pulling ads because of economic conditions.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
I wouldnt have thought travel made up much more than 10% in the first place, so either its come to a complete stop or sounds like plenty of other sectors also suffering. Markets are a sell at the moment.
Though if lots of people are stuck indoors self isolating wouldn't that mean more viewers?
No travel, no cinema, no asperational car adverts for new cars they cannot deliver or possibly even let you view...
Beecham's and CareCo are presumably planning an advertising blitz.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
I wouldnt have thought travel made up much more than 10% in the first place, so either its come to a complete stop or sounds like plenty of other sectors also suffering. Markets are a sell at the moment.
Though if lots of people are stuck indoors self isolating wouldn't that mean more viewers?
No travel, no cinema, no asperational car adverts for new cars they cannot deliver or possibly even let you view...
Buy a new car and get 5 litres of hand gel free might work well!
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
I wouldnt have thought travel made up much more than 10% in the first place, so either its come to a complete stop or sounds like plenty of other sectors also suffering. Markets are a sell at the moment.
Though if lots of people are stuck indoors self isolating wouldn't that mean more viewers?
No point in viewers if they aren't buying.
This is why ITV's Christmas programmes are usually rubbish.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
Jan and Feb would be big 'summer holiday' booking months. This could be very serious for many parts of the economy both UK and abroad.
Sadly my personal circumstances (getting divorced) mean that for me, a summer holiday aboard isn't high on my list of priorities this year.
I was reading this morning that tourism is 13% of Italy's GDP. It's hard to imagine the fall in that being less than 50% which would reduce GDP by 6.5% on its own. Italy is heading for a really serious and deep depression, not a recession. With no currency to devalue, no interest rate to cut (and the ECB already sitting at a negative rate anyway) and no fiscal latitude allowed by EZ rules I am at a loss as to how they get out of it. There must be a serious risk that the virus is the straw that breaks the camel's back so far as their Euro membership is concerned.
The speed at which almost the entire political punditry class wrote Biden off after the Iowa result was something to behold. The consensus opinion of him has now done a complete 180 turn, you'd think he was the second coming of Christ based on CNN's fawning coverage now.
The theme of this Dem race generally. Simply laying whichever candidate supposedly had the Big Mo' at any point in time would have you sitting there now with a solid gold book.
Whilst this is true - and I'd not rule out Sanders yet - the important difference as time goes on is that the chaser runs out of road.
We've now had 1499 of 3979 (38%) of pledged delegates allocated. Some of these are in fairly delegate rich states which ought to be pretty good for Sanders, like Massachusetts where he lost, and California where he won but didn't really rack up the numbers he'd have liked.
Before the next debate, there are 371 more (taking us to 47%).
If you're playing catch-up after Iowa awards its 41 delegates, New Hampshire its 24 and Nevada its 36, you've still got 97% of delegates to play for. If you've only got 53% left in play, you simply have to win by bigger and bigger margins to get back in the game.
I'd also query the likelihood of a debate game-changer. For all his brain freeze potential, Biden isn't an amateur and isn't rusty. He's spent a lot of time on the platform with Sanders, he's been solid in head to head VP debates. There's also actually less real potential for drama in a head-to-head (assuming Warren ends it in the next ten days). You can't get a pile-on as there was with Bloomberg.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
Jan and Feb would be big 'summer holiday' booking months. This could be very serious for many parts of the economy both UK and abroad.
Sadly my personal circumstances (getting divorced) mean that for me, a summer holiday aboard isn't high on my list of priorities this year.
I was reading this morning that tourism is 13% of Italy's GDP. It's hard to imagine the fall in that being less than 50% which would reduce GDP by 6.5% on its own. Italy is heading for a really serious and deep depression, not a recession. With no currency to devalue, no interest rate to cut (and the ECB already sitting at a negative rate anyway) and no fiscal latitude allowed by EZ rules I am at a loss as to how they get out of it. There must be a serious risk that the virus is the straw that breaks the camel's back so far as their Euro membership is concerned.
Would devaluation have worked since this will be a global recession?
The speed at which almost the entire political punditry class wrote Biden off after the Iowa result was something to behold. The consensus opinion of him has now done a complete 180 turn, you'd think he was the second coming of Christ based on CNN's fawning coverage now.
The theme of this Dem race generally. Simply laying whichever candidate supposedly had the Big Mo' at any point in time would have you sitting there now with a solid gold book.
Certainly, at current odds, a little Sanders insurance is worth contemplating.
Most people can spot that an income of 50K is richer than themselves.
So what? So they can drink down their envy with half a pint of lager?
My first thought was: do police sergeants really earn that much? Afterall, it's only the second rung on the ladder. But according to the Scotland police website, pay maxes out at £45k [1].
Odd really, the point is made by how little the maximum saving is (assuming that's correct!) there's no need to try and make the £50k wage figure seem more everyman by suggesting that the local police sergeant is getting hit by this.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
Jan and Feb would be big 'summer holiday' booking months. This could be very serious for many parts of the economy both UK and abroad.
Sadly my personal circumstances (getting divorced) mean that for me, a summer holiday aboard isn't high on my list of priorities this year.
I was reading this morning that tourism is 13% of Italy's GDP. It's hard to imagine the fall in that being less than 50% which would reduce GDP by 6.5% on its own. Italy is heading for a really serious and deep depression, not a recession. With no currency to devalue, no interest rate to cut (and the ECB already sitting at a negative rate anyway) and no fiscal latitude allowed by EZ rules I am at a loss as to how they get out of it. There must be a serious risk that the virus is the straw that breaks the camel's back so far as their Euro membership is concerned.
Would devaluation have worked since this will be a global recession?
Uncertain but it would at least be a policy option and one that Italy responded to well pre-Euro. The trick would be to depreciate faster than anyone else without letting it get out of control. Not easy.
The real problem is the fiscal straitjacket. Their debt levels are so high they are supposed to be running surpluses. This was a serious issue between the government and the EU last year. It's going to get much worse. Are they going to impose massive cuts in spending in response to a fall in income? Or are they going to have a soft default by devaluing? I think that they have little choice but if the ECB lets a fiscal splurge go the Euro will be damaged.
With regards to the iceberg assumption that all bar the WHO seem to be making on the mortality, Dr Aylward (the guy in Wuhan) said that it did not seem to be the case that there were lots of people that were basically fine, it was him that came up with the 80/20 split first if I remember correctly.
In the battle for the Senate, Republicans would like to tie Democratic candidates to Sanders and socialism, and generally see Biden as a stronger candidate. Similarly, Democrats were uneasy about Sanders as their standard-bearer, and Biden has made this a point of attack on the campaign trail, arguing he would help Democrats take back the Senate.
“I think Bernie is the easiest to contrast with. Biden would be a little harder to contrast with,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “Truly, I think it’s better for us for Bernie to be the nominee in terms of down-ballot.”
The day after Biden’s big wins, Democrats received the welcome news that Montana Gov. Steve Bullock is poised to enter the race against Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.). Bullock would be a huge recruit for Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last year he wanted to make the 2020 election a “referendum on socialism”...
With regards to the iceberg assumption that all bar the WHO seem to be making on the mortality, Dr Aylward (the guy in Wuhan) said that it did not seem to be the case that there were lots of people that were basically fine, it was him that came up with the 80/20 split first if I remember correctly.
China population 1.5 billion = 80,000 cases, 3,000 dead
With regards to the iceberg assumption that all bar the WHO seem to be making on the mortality, Dr Aylward (the guy in Wuhan) said that it did not seem to be the case that there were lots of people that were basically fine, it was him that came up with the 80/20 split first if I remember correctly.
China population 1.5 billion = 80,000 cases, 3,000 dead
Are you up for being welded into your house for a month?
China is taking some extreme and scary measures, (one of which was to import 40,000 medics to Hubei for 70,000 cases). Western governments are either unwilling or unable to do the same.
The speed at which almost the entire political punditry class wrote Biden off after the Iowa result was something to behold. The consensus opinion of him has now done a complete 180 turn, you'd think he was the second coming of Christ based on CNN's fawning coverage now.
The theme of this Dem race generally. Simply laying whichever candidate supposedly had the Big Mo' at any point in time would have you sitting there now with a solid gold book.
Certainly, at current odds, a little Sanders insurance is worth contemplating.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
Jan and Feb would be big 'summer holiday' booking months. This could be very serious for many parts of the economy both UK and abroad.
Sadly my personal circumstances (getting divorced) mean that for me, a summer holiday aboard isn't high on my list of priorities this year.
I was reading this morning that tourism is 13% of Italy's GDP. It's hard to imagine the fall in that being less than 50% which would reduce GDP by 6.5% on its own. Italy is heading for a really serious and deep depression, not a recession. With no currency to devalue, no interest rate to cut (and the ECB already sitting at a negative rate anyway) and no fiscal latitude allowed by EZ rules I am at a loss as to how they get out of it. There must be a serious risk that the virus is the straw that breaks the camel's back so far as their Euro membership is concerned.
Would devaluation have worked since this will be a global recession?
To some degree, if Italy became 30% cheaper to visit they would bring people in.
I heard COVID19 was an RNA virus and liable to mutate quickly. Given viruses have a proclivity to mutate towards less harmful forms could this not just peter out by itself ?
This is called regression to the mean.
If you see someone who is 6 ft 2 inches it is very likely that the next person you see is shorter. That is just because you have seen a tall person, and by definition most people are not tall. It is however possible that the next person is 6ft4in. If you travel on a train today, you are almost certainly going to see someone who is 6ft4 or taller.
All organisms mutate. As a virus reproduces quickly, new mutations are arriving and surviving all the time. At least one of the current strains of the new corona virus is bad, lets say equivalent to a 6'4" person. The next mutation is likely to only be a 5'9" on the virus-badness scale. But it could be a 6'5" virus. In the next few months it is likely that one of the mutations is both 6'5" and survives to cause an outbreak.
Perhaps natural selection also plays a part? Viruses that kill their hosts won't survive so well, and so will tend to be replaced by those that don't. So there will be a natural tendency for viruses to become less lethal over time as the less lethal variants displace the more deadly ones. No idea if this is a significant influence though. Presumably variants that make people cough and sneeze more are also at an advantage when it comes to spreading themselves!
Less immediately lethal. The “ideal” (from a virus POV) virus is one that is asymptomatic for a long time while still being infectious - like HIV.
Albeit if the virus had an eventual 100% CFR there would soon be no hosts to infect.
Quite true - viruses don’t “want” to kill hosts - it’s often the hosts immune system which does for the host - one of the theories behind why the “Spanish (sic - it almost certainly originated in the US) flu” killed so many young people with robust immune systems.
A really interesting feature of Covid-19 is the relative lack of deaths in the young. The most recent breakdown I saw (a few days old now) had zero deaths in those under 10 years old, out of ~3,000 total deaths.
I can't think of anything else that has such an age profile.
The only explanation I can think of is that pollution damage to the lungs - from coal-burning or tobacco smoking for example - is a key risk factor.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
Jan and Feb would be big 'summer holiday' booking months. This could be very serious for many parts of the economy both UK and abroad.
Sadly my personal circumstances (getting divorced) mean that for me, a summer holiday aboard isn't high on my list of priorities this year.
I was reading this morning that tourism is 13% of Italy's GDP. It's hard to imagine the fall in that being less than 50% which would reduce GDP by 6.5% on its own. Italy is heading for a really serious and deep depression, not a recession. With no currency to devalue, no interest rate to cut (and the ECB already sitting at a negative rate anyway) and no fiscal latitude allowed by EZ rules I am at a loss as to how they get out of it. There must be a serious risk that the virus is the straw that breaks the camel's back so far as their Euro membership is concerned.
Would devaluation have worked since this will be a global recession?
The travel industry certainly looks in for a torrid year.
The wider question is whether the money that would have been spent on holidays gets spent on something else (over and above latex gloves and hand wash) or whether people hunker down and stop spending altogether.
Meanwhile the British Airways sale emails continue to drop into my inbox.
In other news, the tech support for my new PC modem card is in China but emailing them just returns an error message.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
Jan and Feb would be big 'summer holiday' booking months. This could be very serious for many parts of the economy both UK and abroad.
Sadly my personal circumstances (getting divorced) mean that for me, a summer holiday aboard isn't high on my list of priorities this year.
I was reading this morning that tourism is 13% of Italy's GDP. It's hard to imagine the fall in that being less than 50% which would reduce GDP by 6.5% on its own. Italy is heading for a really serious and deep depression, not a recession. With no currency to devalue, no interest rate to cut (and the ECB already sitting at a negative rate anyway) and no fiscal latitude allowed by EZ rules I am at a loss as to how they get out of it. There must be a serious risk that the virus is the straw that breaks the camel's back so far as their Euro membership is concerned.
Would devaluation have worked since this will be a global recession?
To some degree, if Italy became 30% cheaper to visit they would bring people in.
Once they've got over the virus. Which may take some time.
A really interesting feature of Covid-19 is the relative lack of deaths in the young. The most recent breakdown I saw (a few days old now) had zero deaths in those under 10 years old, out of ~3,000 total deaths.
I can't think of anything else that has such an age profile.
The only explanation I can think of is that pollution damage to the lungs - from coal-burning or tobacco smoking for example - is a key risk factor.
Some babies have weak lungs so there should be some fatalities in that group if that was the determining factor. I suspect it is due to the difference in immune systems. As you are growing your immune system is in a "learning mode". Once you are an adult that stops and the immune system reacts differently. Think of Chicken Pox - in kids, a few blisters, in adults incapacitation for a week or two.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
Jan and Feb would be big 'summer holiday' booking months. This could be very serious for many parts of the economy both UK and abroad.
Sadly my personal circumstances (getting divorced) mean that for me, a summer holiday aboard isn't high on my list of priorities this year.
I was reading this morning that tourism is 13% of Italy's GDP. It's hard to imagine the fall in that being less than 50% which would reduce GDP by 6.5% on its own. Italy is heading for a really serious and deep depression, not a recession. With no currency to devalue, no interest rate to cut (and the ECB already sitting at a negative rate anyway) and no fiscal latitude allowed by EZ rules I am at a loss as to how they get out of it. There must be a serious risk that the virus is the straw that breaks the camel's back so far as their Euro membership is concerned.
Would devaluation have worked since this will be a global recession?
To some degree, if Italy became 30% cheaper to visit they would bring people in.
Once they've got over the virus. Which may take some time.
I have a self-organised trip to the Alps booked for May, and yesterday evening I did a whizz round the booking sites to see if the prices had changed. One of my hotels had dropped its prices by 10%, enabling me to cancel and rebook, but otherwise they don’t seem to be dropping prices yet.
I heard COVID19 was an RNA virus and liable to mutate quickly. Given viruses have a proclivity to mutate towards less harmful forms could this not just peter out by itself ?
This is called regression to the mean.
If you see someone who is 6 ft 2 inches it is very likely that the next person you see is shorter. That is just because you have seen a tall person, and by definition most people are not tall. It is however possible that the next person is 6ft4in. If you travel on a train today, you are almost certainly going to see someone who is 6ft4 or taller.
All organisms mutate. As a virus reproduces quickly, new mutations are arriving and surviving all the time. At least one of the current strains of the new corona virus is bad, lets say equivalent to a 6'4" person. The next mutation is likely to only be a 5'9" on the virus-badness scale. But it could be a 6'5" virus. In the next few months it is likely that one of the mutations is both 6'5" and survives to cause an outbreak.
Perhaps natural selection also plays a part? Viruses that kill their hosts won't survive so well, and so will tend to be replaced by those that don't. So there will be a natural tendency for viruses to become less lethal over time as the less lethal variants displace the more deadly ones. No idea if this is a significant influence though. Presumably variants that make people cough and sneeze more are also at an advantage when it comes to spreading themselves!
Less immediately lethal. The “ideal” (from a virus POV) virus is one that is asymptomatic for a long time while still being infectious - like HIV.
Albeit if the virus had an eventual 100% CFR there would soon be no hosts to infect.
Quite true - viruses don’t “want” to kill hosts - it’s often the hosts immune system which does for the host - one of the theories behind why the “Spanish (sic - it almost certainly originated in the US) flu” killed so many young people with robust immune systems.
A really interesting feature of Covid-19 is the relative lack of deaths in the young. The most recent breakdown I saw (a few days old now) had zero deaths in those under 10 years old, out of ~3,000 total deaths.
I can't think of anything else that has such an age profile.
The only explanation I can think of is that pollution damage to the lungs - from coal-burning or tobacco smoking for example - is a key risk factor.
That was my initial thought - and remains as such.
Would love to see some stats on how many of those who are hospitalized/died are urban dwellers and/or smokers.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
Jan and Feb would be big 'summer holiday' booking months. This could be very serious for many parts of the economy both UK and abroad.
Sadly my personal circumstances (getting divorced) mean that for me, a summer holiday aboard isn't high on my list of priorities this year.
I was reading this morning that tourism is 13% of Italy's GDP. It's hard to imagine the fall in that being less than 50% which would reduce GDP by 6.5% on its own. Italy is heading for a really serious and deep depression, not a recession. With no currency to devalue, no interest rate to cut (and the ECB already sitting at a negative rate anyway) and no fiscal latitude allowed by EZ rules I am at a loss as to how they get out of it. There must be a serious risk that the virus is the straw that breaks the camel's back so far as their Euro membership is concerned.
Would devaluation have worked since this will be a global recession?
To some degree, if Italy became 30% cheaper to visit they would bring people in.
Once they've got over the virus. Which may take some time.
I have a self-organised trip to the Alps booked for May, and yesterday evening I did a whizz round the booking sites to see if the prices had changed. One of my hotels had dropped its prices by 10%, enabling me to cancel and rebook, but otherwise they don’t seem to be dropping prices yet.
I presume a lot of people are waiting and seeing, especially people with fully cancellable hotels.
I imagine from the hotel point of view everything going to look fine right up until the point everyone cancels 48 hours before hand.
It's typical that the one year that my other half and I have been super-organised about booking all our travel up ahead is the one year when that hasn't worked to our advantage.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
Jan and Feb would be big 'summer holiday' booking months. This could be very serious for many parts of the economy both UK and abroad.
Sadly my personal circumstances (getting divorced) mean that for me, a summer holiday aboard isn't high on my list of priorities this year.
I was reading this morning that tourism is 13% of Italy's GDP. It's hard to imagine the fall in that being less than 50% which would reduce GDP by 6.5% on its own. Italy is heading for a really serious and deep depression, not a recession. With no currency to devalue, no interest rate to cut (and the ECB already sitting at a negative rate anyway) and no fiscal latitude allowed by EZ rules I am at a loss as to how they get out of it. There must be a serious risk that the virus is the straw that breaks the camel's back so far as their Euro membership is concerned.
Would devaluation have worked since this will be a global recession?
The travel industry certainly looks in for a torrid year.
The wider question is whether the money that would have been spent on holidays gets spent on something else (over and above latex gloves and hand wash) or whether people hunker down and stop spending altogether.
Meanwhile the British Airways sale emails continue to drop into my inbox.
In other news, the tech support for my new PC modem card is in China but emailing them just returns an error message.
modem card? I didn't even know modems existed anymore
It's typical that the one year that my other half and I have been super-organised about booking all our travel up ahead is the one year when that hasn't worked to our advantage.
We have just decided not to bother renewing our annual travel insurance.
It's typical that the one year that my other half and I have been super-organised about booking all our travel up ahead is the one year when that hasn't worked to our advantage.
(via 538) An interesting article on the Ford vaccination drive. (Does it explain the roots of the anti-vax ideology ? Particularly as it was very much a government initiative, rather than physician lead.)
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-public-health-legacy-of-the-1976-swine-flu-outbreak Within 10 months, nearly 25% of the US population, or 45 million citizens, was vaccinated, but serious problems persisted throughout the process (2). Due to the urgency of creating new immunizations for a novel virus, the government used an attenuated “live virus” for the vaccine instead of a inactivated or “killed” form, increasing the probability of adverse side effects among susceptible groups of people receiving the vaccination. Furthermore, prominent American scientists and health professionals began questioning the campaign’s large expense and its drain on scarce public health resources (2).
With President Ford’s reelection campaign looming on the horizon, the campaign increasingly appeared politically motivated. The rationale for mass vaccination seemed to stem from only the barest of biological reasoning – it turned out that the flu wasn’t even related to the virus that caused the grisly 1918 epidemic and, indeed, those who were infected with the flu only suffered from a mild illness while the vaccine, for the reasons stated above, resulted in over four-hundred and fifty people developing the paralyzing Guillain-Barré syndrome. Meanwhile, outside the United States’ borders, the flu never mushroomed into the anticipated public health disaster. It was the pandemic that never was. The New York Times went so far as to dub the whole affair a “fiasco,” damning one of the largest and probably one of the most well-intentioned public health initiatives by the US government...
A really interesting feature of Covid-19 is the relative lack of deaths in the young. The most recent breakdown I saw (a few days old now) had zero deaths in those under 10 years old, out of ~3,000 total deaths.
I can't think of anything else that has such an age profile.
The only explanation I can think of is that pollution damage to the lungs - from coal-burning or tobacco smoking for example - is a key risk factor.
Some babies have weak lungs so there should be some fatalities in that group if that was the determining factor. I suspect it is due to the difference in immune systems. As you are growing your immune system is in a "learning mode". Once you are an adult that stops and the immune system reacts differently. Think of Chicken Pox - in kids, a few blisters, in adults incapacitation for a week or two.
Telegraph: ITV has forecast a slump in advertising of at least 10pc due to coronavirus, as travel companies slash spending to reflect cancelled holiday plans.
Jan and Feb would be big 'summer holiday' booking months. This could be very serious for many parts of the economy both UK and abroad.
Sadly my personal circumstances (getting divorced) mean that for me, a summer holiday aboard isn't high on my list of priorities this year.
I was reading this morning that tourism is 13% of Italy's GDP. It's hard to imagine the fall in that being less than 50% which would reduce GDP by 6.5% on its own. Italy is heading for a really serious and deep depression, not a recession. With no currency to devalue, no interest rate to cut (and the ECB already sitting at a negative rate anyway) and no fiscal latitude allowed by EZ rules I am at a loss as to how they get out of it. There must be a serious risk that the virus is the straw that breaks the camel's back so far as their Euro membership is concerned.
Would devaluation have worked since this will be a global recession?
The travel industry certainly looks in for a torrid year.
The wider question is whether the money that would have been spent on holidays gets spent on something else (over and above latex gloves and hand wash) or whether people hunker down and stop spending altogether.
Meanwhile the British Airways sale emails continue to drop into my inbox.
In other news, the tech support for my new PC modem card is in China but emailing them just returns an error message.
modem card? I didn't even know modems existed anymore
It’s probably my language that is past its sell by. Wifi card?
It's typical that the one year that my other half and I have been super-organised about booking all our travel up ahead is the one year when that hasn't worked to our advantage.
That tour of Lombardy not looking so attractive now?
I heard COVID19 was an RNA virus and liable to mutate quickly. Given viruses have a proclivity to mutate towards less harmful forms could this not just peter out by itself ?
This is called regression to the mean.
If you see someone who is 6 ft 2 inches it is very likely that the next person you see is shorter. That is just because you have seen a tall person, and by definition most people are not tall. It is however possible that the next person is 6ft4in. If you travel on a train today, you are almost certainly going to see someone who is 6ft4 or taller.
All organisms mutate. As a virus reproduces quickly, new mutations are arriving and surviving all the time. At least one of the current strains of the new corona virus is bad, lets say equivalent to a 6'4" person. The next mutation is likely to only be a 5'9" on the virus-badness scale. But it could be a 6'5" virus. In the next few months it is likely that one of the mutations is both 6'5" and survives to cause an outbreak.
Perhaps natural selection also plays a part? Viruses that kill their hosts won't survive so well, and so will tend to be replaced by those that don't. So there will be a natural tendency for viruses to become less lethal over time as the less lethal variants displace the more deadly ones. No idea if this is a significant influence though. Presumably variants that make people cough and sneeze more are also at an advantage when it comes to spreading themselves!
Less immediately lethal. The “ideal” (from a virus POV) virus is one that is asymptomatic for a long time while still being infectious - like HIV.
Albeit if the virus had an eventual 100% CFR there would soon be no hosts to infect.
Quite true - viruses don’t “want” to kill hosts - it’s often the hosts immune system which does for the host - one of the theories behind why the “Spanish (sic - it almost certainly originated in the US) flu” killed so many young people with robust immune systems.
A really interesting feature of Covid-19 is the relative lack of deaths in the young. The most recent breakdown I saw (a few days old now) had zero deaths in those under 10 years old, out of ~3,000 total deaths.
I can't think of anything else that has such an age profile.
The only explanation I can think of is that pollution damage to the lungs - from coal-burning or tobacco smoking for example - is a key risk factor.
That was my initial thought - and remains as such.
Would love to see some stats on how many of those who are hospitalized/died are urban dwellers and/or smokers.
I read that the death rate in China is 50% higher among men than women, with similar rates of infection, and that two-thirds of Chinese men smoke compared with less than 5% of women.
That may give a clue, although there could of course be all sorts of other reasons for male/female difference.
I heard COVID19 was an RNA virus and liable to mutate quickly. Given viruses have a proclivity to mutate towards less harmful forms could this not just peter out by itself ?
This is called regression to the mean.
If you see someone who is 6 ft 2 inches it is very likely that the next person you see is shorter. That is just because you have seen a tall person, and by definition most people are not tall. It is however possible that the next person is 6ft4in. If you travel on a train today, you are almost certainly going to see someone who is 6ft4 or taller.
All organisms mutate. As a virus reproduces quickly, new mutations are arriving and surviving all the time. At least one of the current strains of the new corona virus is bad, lets say equivalent to a 6'4" person. The next mutation is likely to only be a 5'9" on the virus-badness scale. But it could be a 6'5" virus. In the next few months it is likely that one of the mutations is both 6'5" and survives to cause an outbreak.
Perhaps natural selection also plays a part? Viruses that kill their hosts won't survive so well, and so will tend to be replaced by those that don't. So there will be a natural tendency for viruses to become less lethal over time as the less lethal variants displace the more deadly ones. No idea if this is a significant influence though. Presumably variants that make people cough and sneeze more are also at an advantage when it comes to spreading themselves!
Less immediately lethal. The “ideal” (from a virus POV) virus is one that is asymptomatic for a long time while still being infectious - like HIV.
Albeit if the virus had an eventual 100% CFR there would soon be no hosts to infect.
Quite true - viruses don’t “want” to kill hosts - it’s often the hosts immune system which does for the host - one of the theories behind why the “Spanish (sic - it almost certainly originated in the US) flu” killed so many young people with robust immune systems.
A really interesting feature of Covid-19 is the relative lack of deaths in the young. The most recent breakdown I saw (a few days old now) had zero deaths in those under 10 years old, out of ~3,000 total deaths.
I can't think of anything else that has such an age profile.
The only explanation I can think of is that pollution damage to the lungs - from coal-burning or tobacco smoking for example - is a key risk factor.
That was my initial thought - and remains as such.
Would love to see some stats on how many of those who are hospitalized/died are urban dwellers and/or smokers.
Just now we have almost no stats at all. Testing is concentrated on contact cases so almost certainly overstates the infection rate. Until we have a controlled sample of the general population we hardly know anything, including transmission rate, natural resistance or morbidity.
F**k me, does he have no idea how much a tunnel would cost?
They don't have to actually do the thing, they just have to keep coming up with new ideas for it and going away and writing reports about them for the next five years so they don't have to admit that the whole thing was bollocks before the election.
Look into the tunnel for a year, then say, "ok how about if part of it was a bridge and part of it was a tunnel", then explore the Isle of Man roundabout, etc etc.
According to the IOC they didn't even discuss a delay. Which just seemed incredibly stupid to me.
Why not just push it to 2021?
It seems likely by July a lot of countries who were late comers to this will be near their peak levels of infection. And they won't be going to Japan, even if Japan was minded to let them. It's really madness to pretend everything is going to be fine.
It's typical that the one year that my other half and I have been super-organised about booking all our travel up ahead is the one year when that hasn't worked to our advantage.
That tour of Lombardy not looking so attractive now?
F**k me, does he have no idea how much a tunnel would cost?
I loved the idea that tunneling under all those hundreds of tonnes of HE was somehow safer. What could possibly go wrong?
You need to believe harder in this tunnel.
Why? If there is any spare cash I suspect the priority for Belfast is to replace the lost Flybe flights. Oh and build another bloody runway at Heathrow.
More medals for Team GB if only the Brits and Japanese turn up. (One reason the boycotts of the Moscow and Los Angeles Olympics were self-defeating; the ideological and cold war enemy host countries mopped up all the medals.)
F**k me, does he have no idea how much a tunnel would cost?
I loved the idea that tunneling under all those hundreds of tonnes of HE was somehow safer. What could possibly go wrong?
You need to believe harder in this tunnel.
Why? If there is any spare cash I suspect the priority for Belfast is to replace the lost Flybe flights. Oh and build another bloody runway at Heathrow.
It's typical that the one year that my other half and I have been super-organised about booking all our travel up ahead is the one year when that hasn't worked to our advantage.
That tour of Lombardy not looking so attractive now?
F**k me, does he have no idea how much a tunnel would cost?
I loved the idea that tunneling under all those hundreds of tonnes of HE was somehow safer. What could possibly go wrong?
You need to believe harder in this tunnel.
Why? If there is any spare cash I suspect the priority for Belfast is to replace the lost Flybe flights. Oh and build another bloody runway at Heathrow.
It’s another Brexit dividend, so believe in it.
Only because Flybe and those regional airports were big recipients of EU regional airport funding. Which the UK government was apparently going to sustain post-Brexit. With Flybe going under the government has the opportunity to cut loose, at the expense of low cost flights from a lot of smaller Uk airports.
Comments
It isn't obvious how you leap from the sort of viruses we have now to the sort you are describing in short order. For example, you can see how a lion might benefit from having wings, but that really isn't how evolution works.
I dont see what's controversial about that - by making an unnecessary Brexit based dig it undermines the rest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamassu
Sadly my personal circumstances (getting divorced) mean that for me, a summer holiday aboard isn't high on my list of priorities this year.
The consensus opinion of him has now done a complete 180 turn, you'd think he was the second coming of Christ based on CNN's fawning coverage now.
https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-biden-new-hampshire-crash-burn-shows-time-end-campaign-2020-2?r=US&IR=T
https://www.businessinsider.com/march-17-could-be-bernie-last-stand-against-biden-2020-2020-3?r=US&IR=T
Ho ho
Jonah Brown is backing him.
https://twitter.com/pippacrerar/status/1235536440982933506?s=21
We've now had 1499 of 3979 (38%) of pledged delegates allocated. Some of these are in fairly delegate rich states which ought to be pretty good for Sanders, like Massachusetts where he lost, and California where he won but didn't really rack up the numbers he'd have liked.
Before the next debate, there are 371 more (taking us to 47%).
If you're playing catch-up after Iowa awards its 41 delegates, New Hampshire its 24 and Nevada its 36, you've still got 97% of delegates to play for. If you've only got 53% left in play, you simply have to win by bigger and bigger margins to get back in the game.
I'd also query the likelihood of a debate game-changer. For all his brain freeze potential, Biden isn't an amateur and isn't rusty. He's spent a lot of time on the platform with Sanders, he's been solid in head to head VP debates. There's also actually less real potential for drama in a head-to-head (assuming Warren ends it in the next ten days). You can't get a pile-on as there was with Bloomberg.
Odd really, the point is made by how little the maximum saving is (assuming that's correct!) there's no need to try and make the £50k wage figure seem more everyman by suggesting that the local police sergeant is getting hit by this.
[1] https://www.scotland.police.uk/about-us/finance/pay-and-grading-structure/
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1235539464648302592
The real problem is the fiscal straitjacket. Their debt levels are so high they are supposed to be running surpluses. This was a serious issue between the government and the EU last year. It's going to get much worse. Are they going to impose massive cuts in spending in response to a fall in income? Or are they going to have a soft default by devaluing? I think that they have little choice but if the ECB lets a fiscal splurge go the Euro will be damaged.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/486042-republicans-rooting-for-sanders-see-biden-wins-as-setback
Republican senators conceded Wednesday they would rather face Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, as the opposing nominee, instead of Biden, whom they consider more mainstream and tougher to draw a contrast with.
In the battle for the Senate, Republicans would like to tie Democratic candidates to Sanders and socialism, and generally see Biden as a stronger candidate. Similarly, Democrats were uneasy about Sanders as their standard-bearer, and Biden has made this a point of attack on the campaign trail, arguing he would help Democrats take back the Senate.
“I think Bernie is the easiest to contrast with. Biden would be a little harder to contrast with,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “Truly, I think it’s better for us for Bernie to be the nominee in terms of down-ballot.”
The day after Biden’s big wins, Democrats received the welcome news that Montana Gov. Steve Bullock is poised to enter the race against Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.). Bullock would be a huge recruit for Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last year he wanted to make the 2020 election a “referendum on socialism”...
China is taking some extreme and scary measures, (one of which was to import 40,000 medics to Hubei for 70,000 cases). Western governments are either unwilling or unable to do the same.
I can't think of anything else that has such an age profile.
The only explanation I can think of is that pollution damage to the lungs - from coal-burning or tobacco smoking for example - is a key risk factor.
The wider question is whether the money that would have been spent on holidays gets spent on something else (over and above latex gloves and hand wash) or whether people hunker down and stop spending altogether.
Meanwhile the British Airways sale emails continue to drop into my inbox.
In other news, the tech support for my new PC modem card is in China but emailing them just returns an error message.
Would love to see some stats on how many of those who are hospitalized/died are urban dwellers and/or smokers.
I imagine from the hotel point of view everything going to look fine right up until the point everyone cancels 48 hours before hand.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-public-health-legacy-of-the-1976-swine-flu-outbreak
Within 10 months, nearly 25% of the US population, or 45 million citizens, was vaccinated, but serious problems persisted throughout the process (2). Due to the urgency of creating new immunizations for a novel virus, the government used an attenuated “live virus” for the vaccine instead of a inactivated or “killed” form, increasing the probability of adverse side effects among susceptible groups of people receiving the vaccination. Furthermore, prominent American scientists and health professionals began questioning the campaign’s large expense and its drain on scarce public health resources (2).
With President Ford’s reelection campaign looming on the horizon, the campaign increasingly appeared politically motivated. The rationale for mass vaccination seemed to stem from only the barest of biological reasoning – it turned out that the flu wasn’t even related to the virus that caused the grisly 1918 epidemic and, indeed, those who were infected with the flu only suffered from a mild illness while the vaccine, for the reasons stated above, resulted in over four-hundred and fifty people developing the paralyzing Guillain-Barré syndrome. Meanwhile, outside the United States’ borders, the flu never mushroomed into the anticipated public health disaster. It was the pandemic that never was. The New York Times went so far as to dub the whole affair a “fiasco,” damning one of the largest and probably one of the most well-intentioned public health initiatives by the US government...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-dependent_enhancement
(Though I've not seen any published evidence for this outbreak.)
Will also stop issuing visas at its embassies in China and South Korea in attempt to stop spread of coronavirus
https://www.wsj.com/articles/japan-to-quarantine-visitors-from-china-south-korea-11583409804
https://twitter.com/jolyonmaugham/status/1235554324870295552?s=21
That may give a clue, although there could of course be all sorts of other reasons for male/female difference.
Look into the tunnel for a year, then say, "ok how about if part of it was a bridge and part of it was a tunnel", then explore the Isle of Man roundabout, etc etc.
They are going to have a really shit year paying out for cancellation insurance.