I wonder if it’s not inconceivable that Hillary overtakes Sanders in the betting later this week.
I really don't like Hillary, she irritates me in a way I cannot define.
But if were an American given the choice of Trump, Biden, Sanders - or Hillary, I'd jump at the chance of a first female president.
She is sane, boring, averagely competent, and centrist, and is not quite as likely to die as Sanders or Biden. All quite appealing right now, I'd have thought.
However Sanders could have had a unique opportunity to shift America's healthcare. All water under the bridge now I expect, as a centrist Democrat will only practise limited mitigation rather than solution of the American healthcare problem.
A public option rather than Medicare for all is probably the best solution, the former closer to German public insurance healthcare rather thsn UK taxpayer funder single payer NHS
I doubt that the Democrats under Hilary, Biden or Buttigieg will even pass that.
Without an external movement to match the crisis like Sanders', I expect the vested interests to reassert themselves - even in this crisis. The corrupting of the american political system by special interests runs incredibly deep.
It is having a big Democratic majority in both houses of Congress as well as the Presidency that will initiate change, not just an external movement, probably even bigger than that which passed the Obamacare compromise in 2010
Seems like a lifetime since I last posted on here, Been lurking a bit recently though, lots of old names, lots of new names.
Anyway, I just want to back Stewart on the area that affects me mostly, to say that he probably does know the science and seems to be, in at least this regard, ahead of the government.
Initial studies said that children were not much affected by the virus and were not spreading it to any great degree. More recent evidence coming out of China (Shenzhen) has shown that this has changed, however, so that children are most definitely spreading it, likely often without much in the way of symptoms.
Essentially they are primed to catch it from relatives, go to school, infect others and, before anyone know it, pass it to their own family. Keeping them all at home at least stops the last of those and keeps it within initial families. I hope that findings like this are acted upon before its too late.
Different evidence, different interpretations, different trade-offs, different decisions.
Exactly. There is nothing that can be called ‘the science’, given that what we know is rapidly changing. Anything the government is doing is based on what they, or Whitty, has chosen to believe at this point in time.
That is not correct. Yours is a fundamentally medievalist and anti-scientific outlook.
The modelling of epidemics is a mature science. It is much easier than modelling climate change, for example.
There is an abundance of data in a number of countries. The data are constraining.
So, it is not true that the government, or Whitty, have just "chosen to believe [something] at this point in time."
Early study showed one thing, later study has shown another. It is this particular virus that we have still to learn much about.
There seems to be some scope creep (woke creep?) on the anointed days at the moment.
International Women’s Day now seems to go on for a full week (with all companies noisily proclaim their celebration of it, including mine) and Pride now doesn’t seem far off being a year round thing now with universal flags, lanyards and events.
Of course, it’s impossible to criticise without seeming like a bigot so I wonder if (like how the Iowa caucus ended up where it did, with state after state trying to outbid each other to be first in the nomination race) we’ll simply end up with it all being the new status quo.
My son’s school has had its Poppy Day mural up since October.
It’s also an issue with things like that too, yes.
People are so nervous and desperate to be seen to be doing the right thing these days (or perhaps too accurately: too afraid of taking the risk to be seen not to be, which they perhaps calculate simply isn’t worth it)
Another example, of political journalists this time, not knowing when to STFU.
The general public are never going to take this seriously, if the usual political backbiting continues in the background.
Criticism of Trump's Covid-19 related behaviour is valid on several grounds. The argument that opponents from the media and the Democratic Party are critical simply by their own partisanship in this instance is not true.
There seems to be some scope creep (woke creep?) on the anointed days at the moment.
International Women’s Day now seems to go on for a full week (with all companies noisily proclaim their celebration of it, including mine) and Pride now doesn’t seem far off being a year round thing now with universal flags, lanyards and events.
Of course, it’s impossible to criticise without seeming like a bigot so I wonder if (like how the Iowa caucus ended up where it did, with state after state trying to outbid each other to be first in the nomination race) we’ll simply end up with it all being the new status quo.
Deaths are skyrocketing. Things seem to be ramping up, we're at start of the slope.
I believe the number of new cases in France, today, was actually a little lower.
Still shooting up - but lower. Maybe the first sign of containment working?
We must hope so.
Or France tightening their testing criteria to no longer test mild cases?
Congrats! You have officially taken over my position as PB's Coronavirus Pessimist-in-Residence. Enjoy the role: it comes with much criticism, but at least you get to laugh, darkly, at the flailing Don't Panickers, as they finally succumb to reality.
Whilst I appreciate there is some humour intended in this post, what you've actually been is utterly, unconstructively ghoulish. However the Coronavirus situation turns out, nobody here will have been helped one tiny bit by your histrionic oeuvre.
Not strictly true. I believe I helped Ishmael to offload his shares some time before the Crash. About five weeks ago. When I told you all exactly what was going to happen, and predicted that this story would dominate the news for the next year.
You said the same pointless adolescent know-nothing shit to me then, as well, and you then went back to arguing about care home wage structure. So it's all good. Carry on.
Another example, of political journalists this time, not knowing when to STFU.
The general public are never going to take this seriously, if the usual political backbiting continues in the background.
Criticism of Trump's Covid-19 related behaviour is valid on several grounds. The argument that opponents from the media and the Democratic Party are critical simply by their own partisanship in this instance is not true.
I agree that criticism of the US action on Covid-19 is valid, but this is a UK political media story talking about UK government “insiders”, rather than domestic US opposition to the Administration.
Most of the Lobby have never known a genuinely serious domestic crisis before, certainly not in the age of Twitter and 24-hour news channels. It shows, and not in a good way.
If they want to be taken seriously, they need to start printing the advise of the government and their advisors, with as little “opinion” as possible.
A girl in my daughter's class flew back from Turin at the weekend after a week in Italy. Slightly surprised that rather than self-isolating she's gone into school. Not entirely sure what I should be expecting.
There seems to be some scope creep (woke creep?) on the anointed days at the moment.
International Women’s Day now seems to go on for a full week (with all companies noisily proclaim their celebration of it, including mine) and Pride now doesn’t seem far off being a year round thing now with universal flags, lanyards and events.
Of course, it’s impossible to criticise without seeming like a bigot so I wonder if (like how the Iowa caucus ended up where it did, with state after state trying to outbid each other to be first in the nomination race) we’ll simply end up with it all being the new status quo.
How many of your senior management do not identify as men? Without that, it’s just a pathetic exercise in PR. I can name a number of other major UK companies whose LinkedIn pages will be filled with this and yet if one looks at who is in charge, testicles not competence is king.
A girl in my daughter's class flew back from Turin at the weekend after a week in Italy. Slightly surprised that rather than self-isolating she's gone into school. Not entirely sure what I should be expecting.
Not this. It’s irresponsible and should be stopped.
There was an Italian man yesterday who tweeted that he'd visited northern Italy for a couple of days and then returned to the UK, with no checks whatsoever at the airport.
I wonder if it’s not inconceivable that Hillary overtakes Sanders in the betting later this week.
I really don't like Hillary, she irritates me in a way I cannot define.
But if were an American given the choice of Trump, Biden, Sanders - or Hillary, I'd jump at the chance of a first female president.
She is sane, boring, averagely competent, and centrist, and is not quite as likely to die as Sanders or Biden. All quite appealing right now, I'd have thought.
However Sanders could have had a unique opportunity to shift America's healthcare. All water under the bridge now I expect, as a centrist Democrat will only practise limited mitigation rather than solution of the American healthcare problem.
A public option rather than Medicare for all is probably the best solution, the former closer to German public insurance healthcare rather thsn UK taxpayer funder single payer NHS
I doubt that the Democrats under Hilary, Biden or Buttigieg will even pass that.
Without an external movement to match the crisis like Sanders', I expect the vested interests to reassert themselves - even in this crisis. The corrupting of the american political system by special interests runs incredibly deep.
It is having a big Democratic majority in both houses of Congress as well as the Presidency that will initiate change, not just an external movement, probably even bigger than that which passed the Obamacare compromise in 2010
That change is limited by the backgrounds of those involved. Clyburn was a kingmaker in the affordable care act, and Biden's recent comeback, for instance, and is expected to be so again. He's taken millions from pharmaceutical companies and excluded them from the Act.
If anything, campaign finance reform in America has to come first, however urgent the health crisis.
Interesting polls. I'm not at all convinced that a questionably competent Biden can outperform some of those Sanders numbers in the autumn, but this crisis may be his one get-out, as it could have been Sanders' one rare opportunity for radical change on health.
So let's assume that some proportion of people in the UK don't get the flu vaccination.
Does everyone in the UK then go on to develop flu?
No. Nothing like. Which is why I remain extremely doubtful about the extrapolations of exponential maths in the real world. But that doesn’t make this anything but bad.
So let's assume that some proportion of people in the UK don't get the flu vaccination.
Does everyone in the UK then go on to develop flu?
No. Nothing like. Which is why I remain extremely doubtful about the extrapolations of exponential maths in the real world. But that doesn’t make this anything but bad.
Oh absolutely. The problem as we are seeing is if everyone isn't going to get it but thinks they are going to get it.
True. Hillary also has two terrible flaws as a candidate - not trusting anyone outside "her" group and having no in depth knowledge of "how it works". Relatives of mine in New York (Democrats since FDR etc) saw her come in as Senator, and demand that large swathes of the party infrastructure be turned over to her people. Alot of deep knowledge was removed and replaced with new people, often on inflated salaries. She managed to p**s off a very large number of people in the NY party by doing this.
The attempted takeover of the national party was on similar lines. And there her lack of understanding of where to campaign meant she over-ruled the genuine experts. Including Bill.
Yes, she seemed to have a talent for putting together a terrible team. Remember Mark Penn from the race against Obama? And apparently the campaigns that fished most heavily from her pool this time were the Warren and Harris ones, two promising-looking candidates who ended up face-planting.
I wonder if it’s not inconceivable that Hillary overtakes Sanders in the betting later this week.
I really don't like Hillary, she irritates me in a way I cannot define.
But if were an American given the choice of Trump, Biden, Sanders - or Hillary, I'd jump at the chance of a first female president.
She is sane, boring, averagely competent, and centrist, and is not quite as likely to die as Sanders or Biden. All quite appealing right now, I'd have thought.
However Sanders could have had a unique opportunity to shift America's healthcare. All water under the bridge now I expect, as a centrist Democrat will only practise limited mitigation rather than solution of the American healthcare problem.
A public option rather than Medicare for all is probably the best solution, the former closer to German public insurance healthcare rather thsn UK taxpayer funder single payer NHS
I doubt that the Democrats under Hilary, Biden or Buttigieg will even pass that.
Without an external movement to match the crisis like Sanders', I expect the vested interests to reassert themselves - even in this crisis. The corrupting of the american political system by special interests runs incredibly deep.
It is having a big Democratic majority in both houses of Congress as well as the Presidency that will initiate change, not just an external movement, probably even bigger than that which passed the Obamacare compromise in 2010
That change is limited by the backgrounds of those involved. Clyburn was a kingmaker in the affordable care act, and Biden's recent comeback, for instance, and is expected to be so again. He's taken millions from pharmaceutical companies and excluded them from the Act.
If anything, campaign finance reform in America has to come first, however urgent the health crisis.
Which is why it would take a big Democratic Senate majority as well as in the House and a Democratic President to over come resistance even internally, however as I have said I think a public option as Biden wants is both better and more realistic than single payer as Sanders wants
So what they are saying they are not going to test for Coronavirus either now or later but the assumption now is that people with flu like symptoms now don't have the virus but later they will due to the spread. This means no actual control until the disease is rampant and doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
No that's not what they're saying. They're doing over a thousand tests per day.
It seems countries that are successful at reducing the death rate have three lines of defence. The first line is lots of testing to ensure cases are picked up early. Those then go into quarantine to ensure they don't pass the virus on. The second line of defence is effective separation of those with the virus from those without. The third line is the availability of high quality intensive care for those that are seriously ill.
If our government says we assume those with mild symptoms don't have the Coronavirus we effectively bypass the first line of defence. It also makes the second line much less effective because mild cases are probably just as infectious as serious ones, but these won't be in quarantine. So we are relying on the third line of defence in a system that is likely to be overwhelmed, cf Italy and Hubei.
It may just be that we don't have the resources to test at the required level. Which is disappointing, especially as Korea is testing at ten times the rate we are. We are where we are, I guess. So we fall back on the second line of defence, but we are not really doing that either at the moment. The only form of containment we have in place right now is the government urging people to wash their hands.
I was pleased to find my local branch was still stocked with coffee filters, would have hated to have been unable to make coffee on my return from Cyprus next week.
There seems to be some scope creep (woke creep?) on the anointed days at the moment.
International Women’s Day now seems to go on for a full week (with all companies noisily proclaim their celebration of it, including mine) and Pride now doesn’t seem far off being a year round thing now with universal flags, lanyards and events.
Of course, it’s impossible to criticise without seeming like a bigot so I wonder if (like how the Iowa caucus ended up where it did, with state after state trying to outbid each other to be first in the nomination race) we’ll simply end up with it all being the new status quo.
Year round equality.
The horror.
Congratulations on missing (wilfully) the point entirely, and entirely predictably.
For your comment to be true it would need to be the case that equality only happened on those two days, and didn’t happen on any other day of the year.
That is palpably not the case. Almost all companies now have very well developed diversity and equality policies, and it’s now also the law, so what these events do to “advance” either cause is marginal. Instead they are basically about people and companies grandstanding to earn a bit of kudos.
The trouble is that when you grandstand constantly it ceases to become grandstanding at all: it just becomes meaningless and background noise.
A girl in my daughter's class flew back from Turin at the weekend after a week in Italy. Slightly surprised that rather than self-isolating she's gone into school. Not entirely sure what I should be expecting.
Not this. It’s irresponsible and should be stopped.
So what they are saying they are not going to test for Coronavirus either now or later but the assumption now is that people with flu like symptoms now don't have the virus but later they will due to the spread. This means no actual control until the disease is rampant and doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
No that's not what they're saying. They're doing over a thousand tests per day.
It seems countries that are successful at reducing the death rate have three lines of defence. The first line is lots of testing to ensure cases are picked up early. Those then go into quarantine to ensure they don't pass the virus on. The second line of defence is effective separation of those with the virus from those without. The third line is the availability of high quality intensive care for those that are seriously ill.
If our government says we assume those with mild symptoms don't have the Coronavirus we effectively bypass the first line of defence. It also makes the second line much less effective because mild cases are probably just as infectious as serious ones, but these won't be in quarantine. So we are relying on the third line of defence in a system that is likely to be overwhelmed, cf Italy and Hubei.
It may just be that we don't have the resources to test at the required level. Which is disappointing, especially as Korea is testing at ten times the rate we are. We are where we are, I guess. So we fall back on the second line of defence, but we are not really doing that either at the moment. The only form of containment we have in place right now is the government urging people to wash their hands.
None of this fills me with confidence.
Wait, aren't the UK government doing loads of testing? There was a stat earlier saying the detection rate was under 1%.
True. Hillary also has two terrible flaws as a candidate - not trusting anyone outside "her" group and having no in depth knowledge of "how it works". Relatives of mine in New York (Democrats since FDR etc) saw her come in as Senator, and demand that large swathes of the party infrastructure be turned over to her people. Alot of deep knowledge was removed and replaced with new people, often on inflated salaries. She managed to p**s off a very large number of people in the NY party by doing this.
The attempted takeover of the national party was on similar lines. And there her lack of understanding of where to campaign meant she over-ruled the genuine experts. Including Bill.
Yes, she seemed to have a talent for putting together a terrible team. Remember Mark Penn from the race against Obama? And apparently the campaigns that fished most heavily from her pool this time were the Warren and Harris ones, two promising-looking candidates who ended up face-planting.
Yet, almost won. Despite her manifest flaws. Biden is palpably leaking his brains from his ears, but provided he doesn’t say something indelibly stupid in the final Democratic debates, he has every opportunity. That’s before his vaunted “charisma” (a euphemism for reminding people of their avoidable, slightly handsy, great uncle?) takes hold.
I was pleased to find my local branch was still stocked with coffee filters, would have hated to have been unable to make coffee on my return from Cyprus next week.
The Met elite Coronavirus posts are pretty hackneyed and unfunny. I’ve seen four variations on the olives/focaccia theme plus at least one saying how Met eliters won’t be able to bear holidaying in the UK, when holidaying the UK is actually rather popular with the urban middle classes!
More positive comment from a friend who's a statistician, but not a medic. -
'I think the dramatic slowdown in China and even in Korea canʼt all be due to authoritarian control and obedience. I think there must be a lot of undiagnosed cases conferring resistance, so the [case fatality rate] is probably not as high as first thought.'
Yes, people make a big deal of the authoritarian nature of the Chinese response but by and large people *want* to reduce their risk. This is an unusual case where the irrational fear response (scared of an unusual but new risk with, so far, a low base rate) serves the common good (a strong reaction everywhere reduces spread in the crucial few cases where it counts).
What you need is for the government to take a lead. Japan has shut down nearly all events with no coercion, and got millions of people working from home with just a recommendation. People want to do this, but they don't want to look like they're panicking or not taking their jobs seriously.
The countries like Britain that refuse to do the things that are working in east Asia will just end up doing far more disruptive things when the problem is worse.
And that's why President Trump may have made a terrible error.
(From a political point of view) he should have said "This is terrible! And it's all the fault of foreigners! Specifically Chinese foreigners!"
Because the power of positive thinking breaks down when someone you know gets the disease. Or you lose a relative.
At that point, you start to stress. And the first question you ask is "why didn't the government do more?"
The 35% will look very different when their local hospital is breaking down with ICU requiring patients and members of their own extended family are lying on the floor desperate for a ventilator.
Trump's crazy world of through the looking glass all news except my news is fake is about to hit brute, terrible reality.
Deaths are skyrocketing. Things seem to be ramping up, we're at start of the slope.
I believe the number of new cases in France, today, was actually a little lower.
Still shooting up - but lower. Maybe the first sign of containment working?
We must hope so.
Or France tightening their testing criteria to no longer test mild cases?
Congrats! You have officially taken over my position as PB's Coronavirus Pessimist-in-Residence. Enjoy the role: it comes with much criticism, but at least you get to laugh, darkly, at the flailing Don't Panickers, as they finally succumb to reality.
I have to say, even by your standards, this is quite an overreaction to France's cases not soaring, which is likely largely the case because of the weekend. Regardless, their neighbours to the south, east, and north are all increasing rapidly, so even if they have somehow contained this it won't last for long. Bar a few nations, this isn't a war that can be won on a national level.
You're emotionally swinging like a possessed pendulum.
So what they are saying they are not going to test for Coronavirus either now or later but the assumption now is that people with flu like symptoms now don't have the virus but later they will due to the spread. This means no actual control until the disease is rampant and doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
No that's not what they're saying. They're doing over a thousand tests per day.
It seems countries that are successful at reducing the death rate have three lines of defence. The first line is lots of testing to ensure cases are picked up early. Those then go into quarantine to ensure they don't pass the virus on. The second line of defence is effective separation of those with the virus from those without. The third line is the availability of high quality intensive care for those that are seriously ill.
If our government says we assume those with mild symptoms don't have the Coronavirus we effectively bypass the first line of defence. It also makes the second line much less effective because mild cases are probably just as infectious as serious ones, but these won't be in quarantine. So we are relying on the third line of defence in a system that is likely to be overwhelmed, cf Italy and Hubei.
It may just be that we don't have the resources to test at the required level. Which is disappointing, especially as Korea is testing at ten times the rate we are. We are where we are, I guess. So we fall back on the second line of defence, but we are not really doing that either at the moment. The only form of containment we have in place right now is the government urging people to wash their hands.
None of this fills me with confidence.
Wait, aren't the UK government doing loads of testing? There was a stat earlier saying the detection rate was under 1%.
It doesn't seem the government/medical officers expect those with mild flu like symptoms to be tested early enough not to spread the virus onto others, if it turns out they do have the novel coronavirus. They are not asking them to self isolate. The UK is testing at one tenth the rate of South Korea.
Seems like a lifetime since I last posted on here, Been lurking a bit recently though, lots of old names, lots of new names.
Anyway, I just want to back Stewart on the area that affects me mostly, to say that he probably does know the science and seems to be, in at least this regard, ahead of the government.
Initial studies said that children were not much affected by the virus and were not spreading it to any great degree. More recent evidence coming out of China (Shenzhen) has shown that this has changed, however, so that children are most definitely spreading it, likely often without much in the way of symptoms.
Essentially they are primed to catch it from relatives, go to school, infect others and, before anyone know it, pass it to their own family. Keeping them all at home at least stops the last of those and keeps it within initial families. I hope that findings like this are acted upon before its too late.
Different evidence, different interpretations, different trade-offs, different decisions.
Exactly. There is nothing that can be called ‘the science’, given that what we know is rapidly changing. Anything the government is doing is based on what they, or Whitty, has chosen to believe at this point in time.
That is not correct. Yours is a fundamentally medievalist and anti-scientific outlook.
The modelling of epidemics is a mature science. It is much easier than modelling climate change, for example.
There is an abundance of data in a number of countries. The data are constraining.
So, it is not true that the government, or Whitty, have just "chosen to believe [something] at this point in time."
It's interesting to compare modelling epidemics and climate.
Both ultimately reduce to two parameters. For epidemics it is R0, the number of people each infected person passes the infection onto, and CFR, the case fatality rate, the number of infected people who will die. Climate modelling hinges on delta-F, the change in radiative forcing at the top of the atmosphere, and ECS, the equilibrium climate sensitivity, the amount of warming that will result from each unit of radiative forcing.
It is much easier to measure the two parameters for epidemics than for climate change - which is why much climate modelling allows those parameters to be an emergent property created by the model physics, rather than set by the modeller. Modelling epidemics in the same way as the climate would require modelling directly the interaction of the virus with the hosts immune system, etc.
However, there is another thing that both systems have in common. Our choices have an effect on the value of the parameters. We can choose how much radiative forcing perturbs the Earth's climate, and we can reduce the transmission rate by changing our behaviour.
I was pleased to find my local branch was still stocked with coffee filters, would have hated to have been unable to make coffee on my return from Cyprus next week.
My local Aldi had about 800 packets of toilet roll for sale today
I was pleased to find my local branch was still stocked with coffee filters, would have hated to have been unable to make coffee on my return from Cyprus next week.
Waitrose was short of toilet paper and strong bread flour last Wednesday, had no problem finding both products in Tesco a mile away. How far it reflects smaller stock level in store, or rise in demand is open to question.
No signs of fist fights or trolley wars over last sun dried foccacia loaf.
I was pleased to find my local branch was still stocked with coffee filters, would have hated to have been unable to make coffee on my return from Cyprus next week.
My local Aldi had about 800 packets of toilet roll for sale today
More positive comment from a friend who's a statistician, but not a medic. -
'I think the dramatic slowdown in China and even in Korea canʼt all be due to authoritarian control and obedience. I think there must be a lot of undiagnosed cases conferring resistance, so the [case fatality rate] is probably not as high as first thought.'
Yes, people make a big deal of the authoritarian nature of the Chinese response but by and large people *want* to reduce their risk. This is an unusual case where the irrational fear response (scared of an unusual but new risk with, so far, a low base rate) serves the common good (a strong reaction everywhere reduces spread in the crucial few cases where it counts).
What you need is for the government to take a lead. Japan has shut down nearly all events with no coercion, and got millions of people working from home with just a recommendation. People want to do this, but they don't want to look like they're panicking or not taking their jobs seriously.
The countries like Britain that refuse to do the things that are working in east Asia will just end up doing far more disruptive things when the problem is worse.
This is an eloquently argued exposition of my position. I had a semi argument with my wife earlier, who is still rather relaxed about the whole thing.
I was pleased to find my local branch was still stocked with coffee filters, would have hated to have been unable to make coffee on my return from Cyprus next week.
My local Aldi had about 800 packets of toilet roll for sale today
10 confirmed cases in the DMV (District, Maryland, Virginia) metro area.
DC Public Health lab has the capacity to test 50 per day, VA 400, MD 1000 with plans to double by Friday. Private lab testing should come online this week too, cutting the wait time for results from 1 week (!!!) when CDC did it all, to a couple of hours to even less.
So we'll probably have surplus testing capacity by the end of the week, but it is way too late to be getting there.
I'll be at a National Defense University/Johns Hopkins workshop on Thursday, so might have more accurate data on the situation in the US after that.
More positive comment from a friend who's a statistician, but not a medic. -
'I think the dramatic slowdown in China and even in Korea canʼt all be due to authoritarian control and obedience. I think there must be a lot of undiagnosed cases conferring resistance, so the [case fatality rate] is probably not as high as first thought.'
Yes, people make a big deal of the authoritarian nature of the Chinese response but by and large people *want* to reduce their risk. This is an unusual case where the irrational fear response (scared of an unusual but new risk with, so far, a low base rate) serves the common good (a strong reaction everywhere reduces spread in the crucial few cases where it counts).
What you need is for the government to take a lead. Japan has shut down nearly all events with no coercion, and got millions of people working from home with just a recommendation. People want to do this, but they don't want to look like they're panicking or not taking their jobs seriously.
The countries like Britain that refuse to do the things that are working in east Asia will just end up doing far more disruptive things when the problem is worse.
I just got the slightly sinking feeling we might be having a little bit of reverse psychology played on us.
CMO: you know, we might have tell all mild fevers to self isolate in 10-14 days time. People: Wtaf, do it NOW!! (All exit to self isolate)
The 320,000 sample - without knowing the corresponding known infection rate for the area - doesn't tell you much. If it was an area with 5,000 known cases, and they found another 1,600, well that's quite a lot.
If it was one with 50,000, then it's obviously not.
I am tempted to say what I think, but I think some people may think of less of me.
So, I will only say Nikki Haley is 95 for GOP nominee.
If Trump succumbs (not necessarily death, but -say- getting seriously sick), then why wouldn't Pence be the nominee?
If the Republican nominee were to die before the election, the rules of the Republican Party authorize the Republican National Committee to fill the vacancy, either by (re)convening a national convention or by having RNC state representatives vote.
I am tempted to say what I think, but I think some people may think of less of me.
So, I will only say Nikki Haley is 95 for GOP nominee.
If Trump succumbs (not necessarily death, but -say- getting seriously sick), then why wouldn't Pence be the nominee?
If the Republican nominee were to die before the election, the rules of the Republican Party authorize the Republican National Committee to fill the vacancy, either by (re)convening a national convention or by having RNC state representatives vote.
Sure.
But wouldn't they choose the sitting Vice President rather that someone else?
I am tempted to say what I think, but I think some people may think of less of me.
So, I will only say Nikki Haley is 95 for GOP nominee.
If Trump succumbs (not necessarily death, but -say- getting seriously sick), then why wouldn't Pence be the nominee?
If the Republican nominee were to die before the election, the rules of the Republican Party authorize the Republican National Committee to fill the vacancy, either by (re)convening a national convention or by having RNC state representatives vote.
Either case would seem to give the Establishment GOP greater relative influence than the current primary process does, so someone more centrist who'd presumably normally have a tough time getting through the primary process might have more chance via this route.
I think it's quite inspiring. It shows what you can do if you put energy behind a policy. I'm sure there are things we can learn from this without having to go all police state. .
I am tempted to say what I think, but I think some people may think of less of me.
So, I will only say Nikki Haley is 95 for GOP nominee.
If Trump succumbs (not necessarily death, but -say- getting seriously sick), then why wouldn't Pence be the nominee?
If the Republican nominee were to die before the election, the rules of the Republican Party authorize the Republican National Committee to fill the vacancy, either by (re)convening a national convention or by having RNC state representatives vote.
Sure.
But wouldn't they choose the sitting Vice President rather that someone else?
I am tempted to say what I think, but I think some people may think of less of me.
So, I will only say Nikki Haley is 95 for GOP nominee.
If Trump succumbs (not necessarily death, but -say- getting seriously sick), then why wouldn't Pence be the nominee?
If the Republican nominee were to die before the election, the rules of the Republican Party authorize the Republican National Committee to fill the vacancy, either by (re)convening a national convention or by having RNC state representatives vote.
Either case would seem to give the Establishment GOP greater relative influence than the current primary process does, so someone more centrist who'd presumably normally have a tough time getting through the primary process might have more chance via this route.
The government is ready to extend to the whole of Italy the measures launched in the night between Saturday and Sunday for Lombardy and 14 provinces: it will be possible to move only for "proven work needs or situations of need" or "health reasons".
From the signing of the decree - which according to sources consulted by the Corriere will take place in the next few hours - anyone moving from one municipality to another must have a justification and submit a self-certification for control. The procedures for self-certifying the reasonableness of one's move have been defined on Monday: a form is required (download it here) to be presented at the time of the check. Those who cannot download and print it can copy the text and take the declaration with them. Those who have to make the same move can use a single form specifying that it is a fixed commitment. The same applies also to those who have family needs that are repeated daily or at fixed intervals and can therefore indicate the frequency of the trips without the need to use different forms.
I am tempted to say what I think, but I think some people may think of less of me.
So, I will only say Nikki Haley is 95 for GOP nominee.
If Trump succumbs (not necessarily death, but -say- getting seriously sick), then why wouldn't Pence be the nominee?
If the Republican nominee were to die before the election, the rules of the Republican Party authorize the Republican National Committee to fill the vacancy, either by (re)convening a national convention or by having RNC state representatives vote.
Sure.
But wouldn't they choose the sitting Vice President rather that someone else?
It's simply the path of least resistance.
Why wouldn't normal personal ambition and brutal politics not pertain? All the vultures would be eying their chances, surely?
Had my Mum and Dad's much beloved family pooch put down today. Me and Mum stayed with her, Dad couldn't do it. Not been the best day. Apologies if I've been tetchier than usual.
I was pleased to find my local branch was still stocked with coffee filters, would have hated to have been unable to make coffee on my return from Cyprus next week.
My local Aldi had about 800 packets of toilet roll for sale today
The government is ready to extend to the whole of Italy the measures launched in the night between Saturday and Sunday for Lombardy and 14 provinces: it will be possible to move only for "proven work needs or situations of need" or "health reasons".
From the signing of the decree - which according to sources consulted by the Corriere will take place in the next few hours - anyone moving from one municipality to another must have a justification and submit a self-certification for control. The procedures for self-certifying the reasonableness of one's move have been defined on Monday: a form is required (download it here) to be presented at the time of the check. Those who cannot download and print it can copy the text and take the declaration with them. Those who have to make the same move can use a single form specifying that it is a fixed commitment. The same applies also to those who have family needs that are repeated daily or at fixed intervals and can therefore indicate the frequency of the trips without the need to use different forms.
Again, a nice warning period before implementation.
Had my Mum and Dad's much beloved family pooch put down today. Me and Mum stayed with her, Dad couldn't do it. Not been the best day. Apologies if I've been tetchier than usual.
I fear we (the West) might be making a serious strategic mistake here based on some faulty baseline assumptions.
The basic assumption which pervades the whole strategy is that contact tracing and hand washing is the only serious containment measure.
The view seems to be that serious lockdown can only ever be used to mitigate the effects once the virus has taken hold. This view seems to be based on the fact that the costs of lockdown are too high for containment and should only be used once the virus has definitely taken off.
But..
The WORLD is choosing to lock down NOW. So the costs of lockdown are there anyway, they are baked in everywhere. So we are going to bear the costs but never reap the benefits.
I am tempted to say what I think, but I think some people may think of less of me.
So, I will only say Nikki Haley is 95 for GOP nominee.
If Trump succumbs (not necessarily death, but -say- getting seriously sick), then why wouldn't Pence be the nominee?
If the Republican nominee were to die before the election, the rules of the Republican Party authorize the Republican National Committee to fill the vacancy, either by (re)convening a national convention or by having RNC state representatives vote.
Either case would seem to give the Establishment GOP greater relative influence than the current primary process does, so someone more centrist who'd presumably normally have a tough time getting through the primary process might have more chance via this route.
Comments
People are so nervous and desperate to be seen to be doing the right thing these days (or perhaps too accurately: too afraid of taking the risk to be seen not to be, which they perhaps calculate simply isn’t worth it)
Most of the Lobby have never known a genuinely serious domestic crisis before, certainly not in the age of Twitter and 24-hour news channels. It shows, and not in a good way.
If they want to be taken seriously, they need to start printing the advise of the government and their advisors, with as little “opinion” as possible.
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1237085989912395776?s=20
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1237084872793100290?s=20
If anything, campaign finance reform in America has to come first, however urgent the health crisis.
Does everyone in the UK then go on to develop flu?
Interesting polls. I'm not at all convinced that a questionably competent Biden can outperform some of those Sanders numbers in the autumn, but this crisis may be his one get-out, as it could have been Sanders' one rare opportunity for radical change on health.
* unless it is Tulsi. In which case the whole world has finally flipped.
If our government says we assume those with mild symptoms don't have the Coronavirus we effectively bypass the first line of defence. It also makes the second line much less effective because mild cases are probably just as infectious as serious ones, but these won't be in quarantine. So we are relying on the third line of defence in a system that is likely to be overwhelmed, cf Italy and Hubei.
It may just be that we don't have the resources to test at the required level. Which is disappointing, especially as Korea is testing at ten times the rate we are. We are where we are, I guess. So we fall back on the second line of defence, but we are not really doing that either at the moment. The only form of containment we have in place right now is the government urging people to wash their hands.
None of this fills me with confidence.
(From a political point of view) he should have said "This is terrible! And it's all the fault of foreigners! Specifically Chinese foreigners!"
Because the power of positive thinking breaks down when someone you know gets the disease. Or you lose a relative.
At that point, you start to stress. And the first question you ask is "why didn't the government do more?"
EDIT: WINDSCREEN WIPERS
"All the candidates" would be any person who ever held office for the Dems.
What you need is for the government to take a lead. Japan has shut down nearly all events with no coercion, and got millions of people working from home with just a recommendation. People want to do this, but they don't want to look like they're panicking or not taking their jobs seriously.
The countries like Britain that refuse to do the things that are working in east Asia will just end up doing far more disruptive things when the problem is worse.
Trump's crazy world of through the looking glass all news except my news is fake is about to hit brute, terrible reality.
Both ultimately reduce to two parameters. For epidemics it is R0, the number of people each infected person passes the infection onto, and CFR, the case fatality rate, the number of infected people who will die. Climate modelling hinges on delta-F, the change in radiative forcing at the top of the atmosphere, and ECS, the equilibrium climate sensitivity, the amount of warming that will result from each unit of radiative forcing.
It is much easier to measure the two parameters for epidemics than for climate change - which is why much climate modelling allows those parameters to be an emergent property created by the model physics, rather than set by the modeller. Modelling epidemics in the same way as the climate would require modelling directly the interaction of the virus with the hosts immune system, etc.
However, there is another thing that both systems have in common. Our choices have an effect on the value of the parameters. We can choose how much radiative forcing perturbs the Earth's climate, and we can reduce the transmission rate by changing our behaviour.
https://twitter.com/EliStokols/status/1237107093548740608
No signs of fist fights or trolley wars over last sun dried foccacia loaf.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/volunteers-paid-3500-infected-coronavirus-17888089#ICID=Android_DailyPostNewsApp_AppShare
So, I will only say Nikki Haley is 95 for GOP nominee.
https://twitter.com/AbraarKaran/status/1236680331706675200
https://twitter.com/AbraarKaran/status/1236680333887668225
DC Public Health lab has the capacity to test 50 per day, VA 400, MD 1000 with plans to double by Friday. Private lab testing should come online this week too, cutting the wait time for results from 1 week (!!!) when CDC did it all, to a couple of hours to even less.
So we'll probably have surplus testing capacity by the end of the week, but it is way too late to be getting there.
I'll be at a National Defense University/Johns Hopkins workshop on Thursday, so might have more accurate data on the situation in the US after that.
CMO: you know, we might have tell all mild fevers to self isolate in 10-14 days time.
People: Wtaf, do it NOW!! (All exit to self isolate)
If it was one with 50,000, then it's obviously not.
But wouldn't they choose the sitting Vice President rather that someone else?
It's simply the path of least resistance.
Either case would seem to give the Establishment GOP greater relative influence than the current primary process does, so someone more centrist who'd presumably normally have a tough time getting through the primary process might have more chance via this route.
.
The government is ready to extend to the whole of Italy the measures launched in the night between Saturday and Sunday for Lombardy and 14 provinces: it will be possible to move only for "proven work needs or situations of need" or "health reasons".
From the signing of the decree - which according to sources consulted by the Corriere will take place in the next few hours - anyone moving from one municipality to another must have a justification and submit a self-certification for control. The procedures for self-certifying the reasonableness of one's move have been defined on Monday: a form is required (download it here) to be presented at the time of the check. Those who cannot download and print it can copy the text and take the declaration with them. Those who have to make the same move can use a single form specifying that it is a fixed commitment. The same applies also to those who have family needs that are repeated daily or at fixed intervals and can therefore indicate the frequency of the trips without the need to use different forms.
"One of Europe's most elderly nations" might be better...
The basic assumption which pervades the whole strategy is that contact tracing and hand washing is the only serious containment measure.
The view seems to be that serious lockdown can only ever be used to mitigate the effects once the virus has taken hold. This view seems to be based on the fact that the costs of lockdown are too high for containment and should only be used once the virus has definitely taken off.
But..
The WORLD is choosing to lock down NOW. So the costs of lockdown are there anyway, they are baked in everywhere. So we are going to bear the costs but never reap the benefits.