Currently we're doing much better contact tracing, quarantines and isolation than the Italians ever did, which is why its growing much slower than in Italy.
Is it growing slower, or are we just a week or so behind? I'm sure the comparison graphs suggested a similar growth.
And while we may be doing some things well, the fact that last night we had 3000 people from Madrid - one of the biggest Covid hotspots in Europe - wandering around Liverpool, suggests we're not exactly being overly risk averse.
My back of an excel spreadsheet calculation suggests that the growth in UK cases this week has been a bit slower compared to when Italy was at the same stage but not by much. The UK on Sunday was "12 days behind Italy" and now you are "14 days behind Italy". I would not find this especially reassuring.
At this stage, Italy was now going at 50% a day. Last 3 days in the UK has been well below that (22% I think yesterday), but still...gulp.
Do you think politically it might prove challenging if we take quite a different ('do-nothing') strategy to others?
The Irish decision is interesting as I thought we might be more in step with each other.
It’s a brave strategy if that’s what they’re going for.
“But but but we want everyone to get herd immunity” is going to ring a bit hollow if the number of deaths jump and people start to panic.
I don’t believe the government have any easy options because I do understand the argument that locking the country down too soon may prolong or defer the thing. But then I thought the idea was that we should be trying to prolong it until we understand how to cope with it better, so the message is a tad confused...
The Italians let it explode and had a pandemic accident.
We want to diffuse the bomb. We want a pandemic by design. We think we can do that.
It's brave Minister.
I imagine this is going to be a very challenging few weeks for our government and its experts.
Everyone will be screaming for them to start doing something but they are like the commanding officers in Zulu, hold steady boys. Wait wait wait, what's this bloody spear thing in my chest?!
Quick question - as a non-cook I eat out a lot, and am getting increasingly aware that public wifi in restaurants etc is insecure.
Which VPN would you recommend for me and family?
I don't know if it's any good, but HideMyAss is popular on our corporate network.
You can also get HideMyAssPro...
Don't use HideMyAss !!! It doesn't Hide your Ass....
PrivateInternetAccess has had a very good reputation for many many years, although there is concern that an Israeli company recently purchased them*. I have used them for ~10 years and never had any outage, always good speeds, and the software is now very solid on all platforms.
* The concern is that because Israel likes to provide the US intell, obviously it could be that Uncle Sam gets a look at what your doing or access to do so.
Is this for mobiles? If I dont do banking etc on public wifi, and dont have bluetooth on do I really need anything beyond normal Apple protection?
Private Internet Acesss (and most major VPNs) have PC / IoS / Android apps. These days it is just a good idea in general to use a VPN at the very least when out in public for a whole variety of reasons, both security and privacy.
How do I know the VPN wont be worse than nothing? Not concerned about US govt or Apple having all my data, half expecting that already, but a small-medium tech firm seems far riskier?
I really don't know how bad and high that peak will be. Government action/inaction will affect that. I would anticipate 5 figure mortalities, but that is just a guess.
The Italians let it explode and had a pandemic accident.
We want to diffuse the bomb. We want a pandemic by design. We think we can do that.
It's brave Minister.
I imagine this is going to be a very challenging few weeks for our government and its experts.
Everyone will be screaming for them to start doing something but they are like the commanding officers in Zulu, hold steady boys. Wait wait wait, FIRE!
If the numbers today show a big leap there is going to be even more pressure. We are surely starting to reach daily increases were the wider public start to think that sounds like quite a lot.
Until there are pictures of people dying in corridors, nothing will change the attitude of the public. As ever, PB is detached from how normal people view the world.
The Italians let it explode and had a pandemic accident.
We want to diffuse the bomb. We want a pandemic by design. We think we can do that.
It's brave Minister.
I imagine this is going to be a very challenging few weeks for our government and its experts.
Everyone will be screaming for them to start doing something but they are like the commanding officers in Zulu, hold steady boys. Wait wait wait, FIRE!
I'm not sure their approach will survive the first death of a prominent person.
Currently we're doing much better contact tracing, quarantines and isolation than the Italians ever did, which is why its growing much slower than in Italy.
Is it growing slower, or are we just a week or so behind? I'm sure the comparison graphs suggested a similar growth.
And while we may be doing some things well, the fact that last night we had 3000 people from Madrid - one of the biggest Covid hotspots in Europe - wandering around Liverpool, suggests we're not exactly being overly risk averse.
My back of an excel spreadsheet calculation suggests that the growth in UK cases this week has been a bit slower compared to when Italy was at the same stage but not by much. The UK on Sunday was "12 days behind Italy" and now you are "14 days behind Italy". I would not find this especially reassuring.
I would. In 4 days those numbers have diverged by 2 days, that's impressive!
What we want as time goes by is for those numbers to continue to diverge even further.
Currently we're doing much better contact tracing, quarantines and isolation than the Italians ever did, which is why its growing much slower than in Italy.
Is it growing slower, or are we just a week or so behind? I'm sure the comparison graphs suggested a similar growth.
And while we may be doing some things well, the fact that last night we had 3000 people from Madrid - one of the biggest Covid hotspots in Europe - wandering around Liverpool, suggests we're not exactly being overly risk averse.
My back of an excel spreadsheet calculation suggests that the growth in UK cases this week has been a bit slower compared to when Italy was at the same stage but not by much. The UK on Sunday was "12 days behind Italy" and now you are "14 days behind Italy". I would not find this especially reassuring.
But there are really two “Italy”s - Lombardy, which is overwhelmed, and should have locked down much earlier, and the rest of the country, which is pretty much where we are, and may have locked down (insofar as they have) too soon?
Unlike Italy, we don’t (yet?) have one region in which the large majority of cases are concentrated.
Quick question - as a non-cook I eat out a lot, and am getting increasingly aware that public wifi in restaurants etc is insecure.
Which VPN would you recommend for me and family?
I don't know if it's any good, but HideMyAss is popular on our corporate network.
You can also get HideMyAssPro...
Don't use HideMyAss !!! It doesn't Hide your Ass....
PrivateInternetAccess has had a very good reputation for many many years, although there is concern that an Israeli company recently purchased them*. I have used them for ~10 years and never had any outage, always good speeds, and the software is now very solid on all platforms.
* The concern is that because Israel likes to provide the US intell, obviously it could be that Uncle Sam gets a look at what your doing or access to do so.
Is this for mobiles? If I dont do banking etc on public wifi, and dont have bluetooth on do I really need anything beyond normal Apple protection?
Private Internet Acesss (and most major VPNs) have PC / IoS / Android apps. These days it is just a good idea in general to use a VPN at the very least when out in public for a whole variety of reasons, both security and privacy.
How do I know the VPN wont be worse than nothing? Not concerned about US govt or Apple having all my data, half expecting that already, but a small-medium tech firm seems far riskier?
PIA have been proved not to store or track your activity. When you connect you get mixed in with a load of other connections, and they have had legal proceeding against them to reveal who was behind particular usage and shown in court on several occasions they aren't able to do so.
The Italians let it explode and had a pandemic accident.
We want to diffuse the bomb. We want a pandemic by design. We think we can do that.
It's brave Minister.
I imagine this is going to be a very challenging few weeks for our government and its experts.
Everyone will be screaming for them to start doing something but they are like the commanding officers in Zulu, hold steady boys. Wait wait wait, FIRE!
If the numbers today show a big leap there is going to be even more pressure. We are surely starting to reach daily increases were the wider public start to think that sounds like quite a lot.
Until there are pictures of people dying in corridors, nothing will change the attitude of the public. As ever, PB is detached from how normal people view the world.
I had several conversations this morning, with the barber, and with a few dog walkers. They seem to think it’s a fuss about nothing. But are annoyed about the bog roll shortage.
Do you think politically it might prove challenging if we take quite a different ('do-nothing') strategy to others?
The Irish decision is interesting as I thought we might be more in step with each other.
It’s a brave strategy if that’s what they’re going for.
“But but but we want everyone to get herd immunity” is going to ring a bit hollow if the number of deaths jump and people start to panic.
I don’t believe the government have any easy options because I do understand the argument that locking the country down too soon may prolong or defer the thing. But then I thought the idea was that we should be trying to prolong it until we understand how to cope with it better, so the message is a tad confused...
Reinforcements are a 100 miles away. We are going to have fight this battle now.
What we need now is George Osborne in his power pose shouting: "We are all in this together".
Currently we're doing much better contact tracing, quarantines and isolation than the Italians ever did, which is why its growing much slower than in Italy.
Is it growing slower, or are we just a week or so behind? I'm sure the comparison graphs suggested a similar growth.
And while we may be doing some things well, the fact that last night we had 3000 people from Madrid - one of the biggest Covid hotspots in Europe - wandering around Liverpool, suggests we're not exactly being overly risk averse.
Its growing slower here. Some people have tried to overlay a cherrypicked few days of graphs to show similar growth but then a few days later those are out of date and it shows divergence. Any long period graph now shows us clearly diverging with Italy.
How many Spaniards do you think are currently in the UK? Do you think they're all in Liverpool?
You can still have exponential growth and diverge from Italy, it just means that the exponential rate is a little lower. Having two fingers cut off is significantly better than having three fingers cut off.
Quick question - as a non-cook I eat out a lot, and am getting increasingly aware that public wifi in restaurants etc is insecure.
Which VPN would you recommend for me and family?
I don't know if it's any good, but HideMyAss is popular on our corporate network.
You can also get HideMyAssPro...
Don't use HideMyAss !!! It doesn't Hide your Ass....
PrivateInternetAccess has had a very good reputation for many many years, although there is concern that an Israeli company recently purchased them*. I have used them for ~10 years and never had any outage, always good speeds, and the software is now very solid on all platforms.
* The concern is that because Israel likes to provide the US intell, obviously it could be that Uncle Sam gets a look at what your doing or access to do so.
Is this for mobiles? If I dont do banking etc on public wifi, and dont have bluetooth on do I really need anything beyond normal Apple protection?
Private Internet Acesss (and most major VPNs) have PC / IoS / Android apps. These days it is just a good idea in general to use a VPN at the very least when out in public for a whole variety of reasons, both security and privacy.
How do I know the VPN wont be worse than nothing? Not concerned about US govt or Apple having all my data, half expecting that already, but a small-medium tech firm seems far riskier?
There is a free VPN in Opera for ios/android. It only protects Opera, not the whole device, and it's a fiddle to make sure it is turned on, but it is less of a faff than a separate app and i trust it a bit more than, as you say, a small tech firm i know nothing else about.
Currently we're doing much better contact tracing, quarantines and isolation than the Italians ever did, which is why its growing much slower than in Italy.
Is it growing slower, or are we just a week or so behind? I'm sure the comparison graphs suggested a similar growth.
And while we may be doing some things well, the fact that last night we had 3000 people from Madrid - one of the biggest Covid hotspots in Europe - wandering around Liverpool, suggests we're not exactly being overly risk averse.
My back of an excel spreadsheet calculation suggests that the growth in UK cases this week has been a bit slower compared to when Italy was at the same stage but not by much. The UK on Sunday was "12 days behind Italy" and now you are "14 days behind Italy". I would not find this especially reassuring.
I would. In 4 days those numbers have diverged by 2 days, that's impressive!
What we want as time goes by is for those numbers to continue to diverge even further.
As always it is the testing. As the increased capacity referred to yesterday goes on line it is possible that there will be an acceleration of reported cases in the UK signifying...not very much.
Currently we're doing much better contact tracing, quarantines and isolation than the Italians ever did, which is why its growing much slower than in Italy.
Is it growing slower, or are we just a week or so behind? I'm sure the comparison graphs suggested a similar growth.
And while we may be doing some things well, the fact that last night we had 3000 people from Madrid - one of the biggest Covid hotspots in Europe - wandering around Liverpool, suggests we're not exactly being overly risk averse.
Its growing slower here. Some people have tried to overlay a cherrypicked few days of graphs to show similar growth but then a few days later those are out of date and it shows divergence. Any long period graph now shows us clearly diverging with Italy.
How many Spaniards do you think are currently in the UK? Do you think they're all in Liverpool?
You can still have exponential growth and diverge from Italy, it just means that the exponential rate is a little lower. Having two fingers cut off is significantly better than having three fingers cut off.
Indeed and that's the whole point of the tried and tested "flatten the curve" strategy we are following.
Currently we're doing much better contact tracing, quarantines and isolation than the Italians ever did, which is why its growing much slower than in Italy.
Is it growing slower, or are we just a week or so behind? I'm sure the comparison graphs suggested a similar growth.
And while we may be doing some things well, the fact that last night we had 3000 people from Madrid - one of the biggest Covid hotspots in Europe - wandering around Liverpool, suggests we're not exactly being overly risk averse.
My back of an excel spreadsheet calculation suggests that the growth in UK cases this week has been a bit slower compared to when Italy was at the same stage but not by much. The UK on Sunday was "12 days behind Italy" and now you are "14 days behind Italy". I would not find this especially reassuring.
I would. In 4 days those numbers have diverged by 2 days, that's impressive!
What we want as time goes by is for those numbers to continue to diverge even further.
As always it is the testing. As the increased capacity referred to yesterday goes on line it is possible that there will be an acceleration of reported cases in the UK signifying...not very much.
Absolutely! Far superior to identify cases sooner, have higher numbers sooner, but then quarantine and isolate those - rather than have it uncontrolled and wild.
Quick question - as a non-cook I eat out a lot, and am getting increasingly aware that public wifi in restaurants etc is insecure.
Which VPN would you recommend for me and family?
I don't know if it's any good, but HideMyAss is popular on our corporate network.
You can also get HideMyAssPro...
Don't use HideMyAss !!! It doesn't Hide your Ass....
PrivateInternetAccess has had a very good reputation for many many years, although there is concern that an Israeli company recently purchased them*. I have used them for ~10 years and never had any outage, always good speeds, and the software is now very solid on all platforms.
* The concern is that because Israel likes to provide the US intell, obviously it could be that Uncle Sam gets a look at what your doing or access to do so.
Is this for mobiles? If I dont do banking etc on public wifi, and dont have bluetooth on do I really need anything beyond normal Apple protection?
Private Internet Acesss (and most major VPNs) have PC / IoS / Android apps. These days it is just a good idea in general to use a VPN at the very least when out in public for a whole variety of reasons, both security and privacy.
How do I know the VPN wont be worse than nothing? Not concerned about US govt or Apple having all my data, half expecting that already, but a small-medium tech firm seems far riskier?
There is a free VPN in Opera for ios/android. It only protects Opera, not the whole device, and it's a fiddle to make sure it is turned on, but it is less of a faff than a separate app and i trust it a bit more than, as you say, a small tech firm i know nothing else about.
I would read the small print very very carefully of any free VPN, for 99% their business model is to sell your activity data. In comparison the likes of PIA, their business model is to guaranteed they do the opposite.
Currently we're doing much better contact tracing, quarantines and isolation than the Italians ever did, which is why its growing much slower than in Italy.
Is it growing slower, or are we just a week or so behind? I'm sure the comparison graphs suggested a similar growth.
And while we may be doing some things well, the fact that last night we had 3000 people from Madrid - one of the biggest Covid hotspots in Europe - wandering around Liverpool, suggests we're not exactly being overly risk averse.
My back of an excel spreadsheet calculation suggests that the growth in UK cases this week has been a bit slower compared to when Italy was at the same stage but not by much. The UK on Sunday was "12 days behind Italy" and now you are "14 days behind Italy". I would not find this especially reassuring.
But there are really two “Italy”s - Lombardy, which is overwhelmed, and should have locked down much earlier, and the rest of the country, which is pretty much where we are, and may have locked down (insofar as they have) too soon?
Unlike Italy, we don’t (yet?) have one region in which the large majority of cases are concentrated.
There's also the evidence from Italy's high death rate that they probably have a higher proportion of undetected cases, and the evidence that the virus was circulating unknown in northern Italy for a quite a while before the first case in Lombardy was confirmed. Both of which make comparisons a bit difficult.
Currently we're doing much better contact tracing, quarantines and isolation than the Italians ever did, which is why its growing much slower than in Italy.
Is it growing slower, or are we just a week or so behind? I'm sure the comparison graphs suggested a similar growth.
And while we may be doing some things well, the fact that last night we had 3000 people from Madrid - one of the biggest Covid hotspots in Europe - wandering around Liverpool, suggests we're not exactly being overly risk averse.
My back of an excel spreadsheet calculation suggests that the growth in UK cases this week has been a bit slower compared to when Italy was at the same stage but not by much. The UK on Sunday was "12 days behind Italy" and now you are "14 days behind Italy". I would not find this especially reassuring.
But there are really two “Italy”s - Lombardy, which is overwhelmed, and should have locked down much earlier, and the rest of the country, which is pretty much where we are, and may have locked down (insofar as they have) too soon?
Unlike Italy, we don’t (yet?) have one region in which the large majority of cases are concentrated.
There's also the evidence from Italy's high death rate that they probably have a higher proportion of undetected cases, and the evidence that the virus was circulating unknown in northern Italy for a quite a while before the first case in Lombardy was confirmed. Both of which make comparisons a bit difficult.
I think it has to be nailed on, giving just how many cases they exported around the world from those who went skiing.
The Italians let it explode and had a pandemic accident.
We want to diffuse the bomb. We want a pandemic by design. We think we can do that.
It's brave Minister.
I imagine this is going to be a very challenging few weeks for our government and its experts.
Everyone will be screaming for them to start doing something but they are like the commanding officers in Zulu, hold steady boys. Wait wait wait, FIRE!
If the numbers today show a big leap there is going to be even more pressure. We are surely starting to reach daily increases were the wider public start to think that sounds like quite a lot.
Until there are pictures of people dying in corridors, nothing will change the attitude of the public. As ever, PB is detached from how normal people view the world.
I had several conversations this morning, with the barber, and with a few dog walkers. They seem to think it’s a fuss about nothing. But are annoyed about the bog roll shortage.
The small number of conversations I have had with none-PBers in recent days have gone the same way: it's all media hype.
Princess Cruises has suspended operations for 2 months, and MacLaren have withdrawn from the Australian Grand Prix after a crew member tested positive.
Quick question - as a non-cook I eat out a lot, and am getting increasingly aware that public wifi in restaurants etc is insecure.
Which VPN would you recommend for me and family?
I don't know if it's any good, but HideMyAss is popular on our corporate network.
You can also get HideMyAssPro...
Don't use HideMyAss !!! It doesn't Hide your Ass....
PrivateInternetAccess has had a very good reputation for many many years, although there is concern that an Israeli company recently purchased them*. I have used them for ~10 years and never had any outage, always good speeds, and the software is now very solid on all platforms.
* The concern is that because Israel likes to provide the US intell, obviously it could be that Uncle Sam gets a look at what your doing or access to do so.
Is this for mobiles? If I dont do banking etc on public wifi, and dont have bluetooth on do I really need anything beyond normal Apple protection?
Private Internet Acesss (and most major VPNs) have PC / IoS / Android apps. These days it is just a good idea in general to use a VPN at the very least when out in public for a whole variety of reasons, both security and privacy.
How do I know the VPN wont be worse than nothing? Not concerned about US govt or Apple having all my data, half expecting that already, but a small-medium tech firm seems far riskier?
There is a free VPN in Opera for ios/android. It only protects Opera, not the whole device, and it's a fiddle to make sure it is turned on, but it is less of a faff than a separate app and i trust it a bit more than, as you say, a small tech firm i know nothing else about.
I would read the small print very very carefully of any free VPN, for 99% their business model is to sell your activity data. In comparison the likes of PIA, their business model is to guaranteed they do the opposite.
Quick question - as a non-cook I eat out a lot, and am getting increasingly aware that public wifi in restaurants etc is insecure.
Which VPN would you recommend for me and family?
I don't know if it's any good, but HideMyAss is popular on our corporate network.
You can also get HideMyAssPro...
Don't use HideMyAss !!! It doesn't Hide your Ass....
PrivateInternetAccess has had a very good reputation for many many years, although there is concern that an Israeli company recently purchased them*. I have used them for ~10 years and never had any outage, always good speeds, and the software is now very solid on all platforms.
* The concern is that because Israel likes to provide the US intell, obviously it could be that Uncle Sam gets a look at what your doing or access to do so.
Is this for mobiles? If I dont do banking etc on public wifi, and dont have bluetooth on do I really need anything beyond normal Apple protection?
Private Internet Acesss (and most major VPNs) have PC / IoS / Android apps. These days it is just a good idea in general to use a VPN at the very least when out in public for a whole variety of reasons, both security and privacy.
How do I know the VPN wont be worse than nothing? Not concerned about US govt or Apple having all my data, half expecting that already, but a small-medium tech firm seems far riskier?
There is a free VPN in Opera for ios/android. It only protects Opera, not the whole device, and it's a fiddle to make sure it is turned on, but it is less of a faff than a separate app and i trust it a bit more than, as you say, a small tech firm i know nothing else about.
I would read the small print very very carefully of any free VPN, for 99% their business model is to sell your activity data. In comparison the likes of PIA, their business model is to guaranteed they do the opposite.
Sure. Opera are basically a browser, though, and they promise they are not logging, never mind selling, what you are up to. Not saying that guarantees anything, of course.
Currently we're doing much better contact tracing, quarantines and isolation than the Italians ever did, which is why its growing much slower than in Italy.
Is it growing slower, or are we just a week or so behind? I'm sure the comparison graphs suggested a similar growth.
And while we may be doing some things well, the fact that last night we had 3000 people from Madrid - one of the biggest Covid hotspots in Europe - wandering around Liverpool, suggests we're not exactly being overly risk averse.
My back of an excel spreadsheet calculation suggests that the growth in UK cases this week has been a bit slower compared to when Italy was at the same stage but not by much. The UK on Sunday was "12 days behind Italy" and now you are "14 days behind Italy". I would not find this especially reassuring.
But there are really two “Italy”s - Lombardy, which is overwhelmed, and should have locked down much earlier, and the rest of the country, which is pretty much where we are, and may have locked down (insofar as they have) too soon?
Unlike Italy, we don’t (yet?) have one region in which the large majority of cases are concentrated.
There's also the evidence from Italy's high death rate that they probably have a higher proportion of undetected cases, and the evidence that the virus was circulating unknown in northern Italy for a quite a while before the first case in Lombardy was confirmed. Both of which make comparisons a bit difficult.
I think it has to be nailed on, giving just how many cases they exported around the world from those who went skiing.
Agreed. The denominator in Italy is almost surely substantially under-estimated (same as Spain). Of course, this does not help the straining of the health system since there are still very many seriously ill people to contend with, but does help put the numbers in some perspective.
I think the US must have it widely, especially on the West Coast. I said 3 weeks ago, I didn't understand given the demographics and time of year that this broke out, how there wasn't many cases there.
I really don't know how bad and high that peak will be. Government action/inaction will affect that. I would anticipate 5 figure mortalities, but that is just a guess.
Thanks for the info Foxy. Some colleagues in the US (who work in flu detection and are at the absolute front line of this epidemiologically) think this is not 1918 but definitely substantially worse than a normal flu season, which would fit with your numbers. Let's see...
You'd have to be pretty pessimistic to think this could ever be worse than 1918. Certainly seems worse than anything we've experienced for a long time though. SARs never really exploded, and if I recall Swine flu did actually have a low mortality rate like regular flu.
Currently we're doing much better contact tracing, quarantines and isolation than the Italians ever did, which is why its growing much slower than in Italy.
Is it growing slower, or are we just a week or so behind? I'm sure the comparison graphs suggested a similar growth.
And while we may be doing some things well, the fact that last night we had 3000 people from Madrid - one of the biggest Covid hotspots in Europe - wandering around Liverpool, suggests we're not exactly being overly risk averse.
My back of an excel spreadsheet calculation suggests that the growth in UK cases this week has been a bit slower compared to when Italy was at the same stage but not by much. The UK on Sunday was "12 days behind Italy" and now you are "14 days behind Italy". I would not find this especially reassuring.
But there are really two “Italy”s - Lombardy, which is overwhelmed, and should have locked down much earlier, and the rest of the country, which is pretty much where we are, and may have locked down (insofar as they have) too soon?
Unlike Italy, we don’t (yet?) have one region in which the large majority of cases are concentrated.
There's also the evidence from Italy's high death rate that they probably have a higher proportion of undetected cases, and the evidence that the virus was circulating unknown in northern Italy for a quite a while before the first case in Lombardy was confirmed. Both of which make comparisons a bit difficult.
I think it has to be nailed on, giving just how many cases they exported around the world from those who went skiing.
Agreed. The denominator in Italy is almost surely substantially under-estimated (same as Spain). Of course, this does not help the straining of the health system since there are still very many seriously ill people to contend with, but does help put the numbers in some perspective.
I think the US must have it widely, especially on the West Coast. I said 3 weeks ago, I didn't understand given the demographics and time of year that this broke out, how there wasn't many cases there.
America seems to be following the "deny there's a problem, forbid testing, let people die, tell people to move on" model.
Quick question - as a non-cook I eat out a lot, and am getting increasingly aware that public wifi in restaurants etc is insecure.
Which VPN would you recommend for me and family?
I don't know if it's any good, but HideMyAss is popular on our corporate network.
You can also get HideMyAssPro...
Don't use HideMyAss !!! It doesn't Hide your Ass....
PrivateInternetAccess has had a very good reputation for many many years, although there is concern that an Israeli company recently purchased them*. I have used them for ~10 years and never had any outage, always good speeds, and the software is now very solid on all platforms.
* The concern is that because Israel likes to provide the US intell, obviously it could be that Uncle Sam gets a look at what your doing or access to do so.
Is this for mobiles? If I dont do banking etc on public wifi, and dont have bluetooth on do I really need anything beyond normal Apple protection?
Private Internet Acesss (and most major VPNs) have PC / IoS / Android apps. These days it is just a good idea in general to use a VPN at the very least when out in public for a whole variety of reasons, both security and privacy.
How do I know the VPN wont be worse than nothing? Not concerned about US govt or Apple having all my data, half expecting that already, but a small-medium tech firm seems far riskier?
There is a free VPN in Opera for ios/android. It only protects Opera, not the whole device, and it's a fiddle to make sure it is turned on, but it is less of a faff than a separate app and i trust it a bit more than, as you say, a small tech firm i know nothing else about.
I would read the small print very very carefully of any free VPN, for 99% their business model is to sell your activity data. In comparison the likes of PIA, their business model is to guaranteed they do the opposite.
Wasn't thinking of a free one.
It is actually quite tricky at the moment. There are a number of big brands whose ownership is rather opaque and quite strong evidence that they are actually all controlled by a single entity which lets say interesting background.
PIA was one of the glowing light in this, proven track record, proven not to log and ownership was known. However, as I say, they recently sold to an Israeli company, which also has an interesting past (albeit not in the same league as the opaquely owned ones).
"Patients with the new coronavirus keep the pathogen in their respiratory tract for as long as 37 days, a new study found, suggesting they could remain infectious for many weeks."
"... doctors in China detected the virus’s RNA in respiratory samples from survivors for a median of 20 days after they became infected"
"By comparison, only a third of patients with SARS still harbored the virus in their respiratory tract after as long as four weeks, the Chinese scientists said."
A third of SARS last 28 days, half of Covid-19 last 20 days and one or two cases of COVID-19 case lasted 37 days. Seems totally consistent to me.
There may be a difference between having detectable virus in your respiratory tract and actually shedding it. Or there may not. Useful to know. Would have a big impact on quarantine.
Quick question - as a non-cook I eat out a lot, and am getting increasingly aware that public wifi in restaurants etc is insecure.
Which VPN would you recommend for me and family?
I don't know if it's any good, but HideMyAss is popular on our corporate network.
You can also get HideMyAssPro...
Don't use HideMyAss !!! It doesn't Hide your Ass....
PrivateInternetAccess has had a very good reputation for many many years, although there is concern that an Israeli company recently purchased them*. I have used them for ~10 years and never had any outage, always good speeds, and the software is now very solid on all platforms.
* The concern is that because Israel likes to provide the US intell, obviously it could be that Uncle Sam gets a look at what your doing or access to do so.
Is this for mobiles? If I dont do banking etc on public wifi, and dont have bluetooth on do I really need anything beyond normal Apple protection?
Private Internet Acesss (and most major VPNs) have PC / IoS / Android apps. These days it is just a good idea in general to use a VPN at the very least when out in public for a whole variety of reasons, both security and privacy.
How do I know the VPN wont be worse than nothing? Not concerned about US govt or Apple having all my data, half expecting that already, but a small-medium tech firm seems far riskier?
There is a free VPN in Opera for ios/android. It only protects Opera, not the whole device, and it's a fiddle to make sure it is turned on, but it is less of a faff than a separate app and i trust it a bit more than, as you say, a small tech firm i know nothing else about.
I would read the small print very very carefully of any free VPN, for 99% their business model is to sell your activity data. In comparison the likes of PIA, their business model is to guaranteed they do the opposite.
Sure. Opera are basically a browser, though, and they promise they are not logging, never mind selling, what you are up to. Not saying that guarantees anything, of course.
I would then trust Opera on that. How are the speeds? Because that is normally the other downside of a free VPN.
Currently we're doing much better contact tracing, quarantines and isolation than the Italians ever did, which is why its growing much slower than in Italy.
Is it growing slower, or are we just a week or so behind? I'm sure the comparison graphs suggested a similar growth.
And while we may be doing some things well, the fact that last night we had 3000 people from Madrid - one of the biggest Covid hotspots in Europe - wandering around Liverpool, suggests we're not exactly being overly risk averse.
My back of an excel spreadsheet calculation suggests that the growth in UK cases this week has been a bit slower compared to when Italy was at the same stage but not by much. The UK on Sunday was "12 days behind Italy" and now you are "14 days behind Italy". I would not find this especially reassuring.
But there are really two “Italy”s - Lombardy, which is overwhelmed, and should have locked down much earlier, and the rest of the country, which is pretty much where we are, and may have locked down (insofar as they have) too soon?
Unlike Italy, we don’t (yet?) have one region in which the large majority of cases are concentrated.
There's also the evidence from Italy's high death rate that they probably have a higher proportion of undetected cases, and the evidence that the virus was circulating unknown in northern Italy for a quite a while before the first case in Lombardy was confirmed. Both of which make comparisons a bit difficult.
I think it has to be nailed on, giving just how many cases they exported around the world from those who went skiing.
Agreed. The denominator in Italy is almost surely substantially under-estimated (same as Spain). Of course, this does not help the straining of the health system since there are still very many seriously ill people to contend with, but does help put the numbers in some perspective.
I think the US must have it widely, especially on the West Coast. I said 3 weeks ago, I didn't understand given the demographics and time of year that this broke out, how there wasn't many cases there.
America seems to be following the "deny there's a problem, forbid testing, let people die, tell people to move on" model.
2 weeks until the CDC gets enough reagents apparently. It's gonna get awful over there.
To the scientists and experts who are following the Chief Medical Officers advice we are doing so.
BoZo fanbois are neither scientists nor experts
When he finally does announce the shutdown far too late you will still be cheering him on
No, you're not a scientist nor an expert. The Chief Medical Officer is.
When Professor Whitty announces a shutdown I will support it because he'll have deemed the timing right then. This has long been a matter of "when" not "if" and its his job to get the timing right.
Currently we're doing much better contact tracing, quarantines and isolation than the Italians ever did, which is why its growing much slower than in Italy.
Is it growing slower, or are we just a week or so behind? I'm sure the comparison graphs suggested a similar growth.
And while we may be doing some things well, the fact that last night we had 3000 people from Madrid - one of the biggest Covid hotspots in Europe - wandering around Liverpool, suggests we're not exactly being overly risk averse.
My back of an excel spreadsheet calculation suggests that the growth in UK cases this week has been a bit slower compared to when Italy was at the same stage but not by much. The UK on Sunday was "12 days behind Italy" and now you are "14 days behind Italy". I would not find this especially reassuring.
But there are really two “Italy”s - Lombardy, which is overwhelmed, and should have locked down much earlier, and the rest of the country, which is pretty much where we are, and may have locked down (insofar as they have) too soon?
Unlike Italy, we don’t (yet?) have one region in which the large majority of cases are concentrated.
There's also the evidence from Italy's high death rate that they probably have a higher proportion of undetected cases, and the evidence that the virus was circulating unknown in northern Italy for a quite a while before the first case in Lombardy was confirmed. Both of which make comparisons a bit difficult.
I think it has to be nailed on, giving just how many cases they exported around the world from those who went skiing.
Agreed. The denominator in Italy is almost surely substantially under-estimated (same as Spain). Of course, this does not help the straining of the health system since there are still very many seriously ill people to contend with, but does help put the numbers in some perspective.
I think the US must have it widely, especially on the West Coast. I said 3 weeks ago, I didn't understand given the demographics and time of year that this broke out, how there wasn't many cases there.
America seems to be following the "deny there's a problem, forbid testing, let people die, tell people to move on" model.
Orange man looked genuinely shaken last night. I think they probably told him just how many people the model says will die.
The Italians let it explode and had a pandemic accident.
We want to diffuse the bomb. We want a pandemic by design. We think we can do that.
It's brave Minister.
I imagine this is going to be a very challenging few weeks for our government and its experts.
Everyone will be screaming for them to start doing something but they are like the commanding officers in Zulu, hold steady boys. Wait wait wait, FIRE!
If the numbers today show a big leap there is going to be even more pressure. We are surely starting to reach daily increases were the wider public start to think that sounds like quite a lot.
Until there are pictures of people dying in corridors, nothing will change the attitude of the public. As ever, PB is detached from how normal people view the world.
I had several conversations this morning, with the barber, and with a few dog walkers. They seem to think it’s a fuss about nothing. But are annoyed about the bog roll shortage.
The small number of conversations I have had with none-PBers in recent days have gone the same way: it's all media hype.
The media have done their usual trick of desensitising people with headlines along the lines of “MILLIONS WILL DIE IN THE UK” etc for weeks and weeks now. So when something happens that is of concern, a lot of people shrug because they think the media are blowing it up out of all proportion (when in fact they are blowing it up out of SOME proportion).
This isn’t going to hit the public until something happens to shift the mood. That could be cases over a certain figure, or a prominent death, or a picture of an overcrowded hospital ward. But then I suspect the dam will break.
Quick question - as a non-cook I eat out a lot, and am getting increasingly aware that public wifi in restaurants etc is insecure.
Which VPN would you recommend for me and family?
I don't know if it's any good, but HideMyAss is popular on our corporate network.
You can also get HideMyAssPro...
Don't use HideMyAss !!! It doesn't Hide your Ass....
PrivateInternetAccess has had a very good reputation for many many years, although there is concern that an Israeli company recently purchased them*. I have used them for ~10 years and never had any outage, always good speeds, and the software is now very solid on all platforms.
* The concern is that because Israel likes to provide the US intell, obviously it could be that Uncle Sam gets a look at what your doing or access to do so.
Is this for mobiles? If I dont do banking etc on public wifi, and dont have bluetooth on do I really need anything beyond normal Apple protection?
Private Internet Acesss (and most major VPNs) have PC / IoS / Android apps. These days it is just a good idea in general to use a VPN at the very least when out in public for a whole variety of reasons, both security and privacy.
How do I know the VPN wont be worse than nothing? Not concerned about US govt or Apple having all my data, half expecting that already, but a small-medium tech firm seems far riskier?
There is a free VPN in Opera for ios/android. It only protects Opera, not the whole device, and it's a fiddle to make sure it is turned on, but it is less of a faff than a separate app and i trust it a bit more than, as you say, a small tech firm i know nothing else about.
I would read the small print very very carefully of any free VPN, for 99% their business model is to sell your activity data. In comparison the likes of PIA, their business model is to guaranteed they do the opposite.
Sure. Opera are basically a browser, though, and they promise they are not logging, never mind selling, what you are up to. Not saying that guarantees anything, of course.
I would then trust Opera on that. How are the speeds? Because that is normally the other downside of a free VPN.
Not terrible, I think, but then the places I use it tend to be places with patchy wifi speeds anyway, so hard to tell.
Currently we're doing much better contact tracing, quarantines and isolation than the Italians ever did, which is why its growing much slower than in Italy.
Is it growing slower, or are we just a week or so behind? I'm sure the comparison graphs suggested a similar growth.
And while we may be doing some things well, the fact that last night we had 3000 people from Madrid - one of the biggest Covid hotspots in Europe - wandering around Liverpool, suggests we're not exactly being overly risk averse.
My back of an excel spreadsheet calculation suggests that the growth in UK cases this week has been a bit slower compared to when Italy was at the same stage but not by much. The UK on Sunday was "12 days behind Italy" and now you are "14 days behind Italy". I would not find this especially reassuring.
But there are really two “Italy”s - Lombardy, which is overwhelmed, and should have locked down much earlier, and the rest of the country, which is pretty much where we are, and may have locked down (insofar as they have) too soon?
Unlike Italy, we don’t (yet?) have one region in which the large majority of cases are concentrated.
There's also the evidence from Italy's high death rate that they probably have a higher proportion of undetected cases, and the evidence that the virus was circulating unknown in northern Italy for a quite a while before the first case in Lombardy was confirmed. Both of which make comparisons a bit difficult.
I think it has to be nailed on, giving just how many cases they exported around the world from those who went skiing.
Agreed. The denominator in Italy is almost surely substantially under-estimated (same as Spain). Of course, this does not help the straining of the health system since there are still very many seriously ill people to contend with, but does help put the numbers in some perspective.
I think the US must have it widely, especially on the West Coast. I said 3 weeks ago, I didn't understand given the demographics and time of year that this broke out, how there wasn't many cases there.
America seems to be following the "deny there's a problem, forbid testing, let people die, tell people to move on" model.
2 weeks until the CDC gets enough reagents apparently. It's gonna get awful over there.
Even with Orange Man in charge, I am genuinely shocked how poor the US reaction is. My feeling is with the US, there have loads of faults, but the past has shown that when they need to pull their finger out they do it and why they have been the world super power.
I genuinely expected a China style response. Part of the problem is clearly they have exported loads of key things to be made in China, but there seems a total paralysis.
Currently we're doing much better contact tracing, quarantines and isolation than the Italians ever did, which is why its growing much slower than in Italy.
Is it growing slower, or are we just a week or so behind? I'm sure the comparison graphs suggested a similar growth.
And while we may be doing some things well, the fact that last night we had 3000 people from Madrid - one of the biggest Covid hotspots in Europe - wandering around Liverpool, suggests we're not exactly being overly risk averse.
My back of an excel spreadsheet calculation suggests that the growth in UK cases this week has been a bit slower compared to when Italy was at the same stage but not by much. The UK on Sunday was "12 days behind Italy" and now you are "14 days behind Italy". I would not find this especially reassuring.
But there are really two “Italy”s - Lombardy, which is overwhelmed, and should have locked down much earlier, and the rest of the country, which is pretty much where we are, and may have locked down (insofar as they have) too soon?
Unlike Italy, we don’t (yet?) have one region in which the large majority of cases are concentrated.
There's also the evidence from Italy's high death rate that they probably have a higher proportion of undetected cases, and the evidence that the virus was circulating unknown in northern Italy for a quite a while before the first case in Lombardy was confirmed. Both of which make comparisons a bit difficult.
I think it has to be nailed on, giving just how many cases they exported around the world from those who went skiing.
Agreed. The denominator in Italy is almost surely substantially under-estimated (same as Spain). Of course, this does not help the straining of the health system since there are still very many seriously ill people to contend with, but does help put the numbers in some perspective.
I think the US must have it widely, especially on the West Coast. I said 3 weeks ago, I didn't understand given the demographics and time of year that this broke out, how there wasn't many cases there.
America seems to be following the "deny there's a problem, forbid testing, let people die, tell people to move on" model.
Orange man looked genuinely shaken last night. I think they probably told him just how many people the model says will die.
He's a narcissist. The only thing that will change is mind is telling him how likely it is that he will die.
Quick question - as a non-cook I eat out a lot, and am getting increasingly aware that public wifi in restaurants etc is insecure.
Which VPN would you recommend for me and family?
I don't know if it's any good, but HideMyAss is popular on our corporate network.
You can also get HideMyAssPro...
Don't use HideMyAss !!! It doesn't Hide your Ass....
PrivateInternetAccess has had a very good reputation for many many years, although there is concern that an Israeli company recently purchased them*. I have used them for ~10 years and never had any outage, always good speeds, and the software is now very solid on all platforms.
* The concern is that because Israel likes to provide the US intell, obviously it could be that Uncle Sam gets a look at what your doing or access to do so.
Is this for mobiles? If I dont do banking etc on public wifi, and dont have bluetooth on do I really need anything beyond normal Apple protection?
Private Internet Acesss (and most major VPNs) have PC / IoS / Android apps. These days it is just a good idea in general to use a VPN at the very least when out in public for a whole variety of reasons, both security and privacy.
How do I know the VPN wont be worse than nothing? Not concerned about US govt or Apple having all my data, half expecting that already, but a small-medium tech firm seems far riskier?
There is a free VPN in Opera for ios/android. It only protects Opera, not the whole device, and it's a fiddle to make sure it is turned on, but it is less of a faff than a separate app and i trust it a bit more than, as you say, a small tech firm i know nothing else about.
I would read the small print very very carefully of any free VPN, for 99% their business model is to sell your activity data. In comparison the likes of PIA, their business model is to guaranteed they do the opposite.
Sure. Opera are basically a browser, though, and they promise they are not logging, never mind selling, what you are up to. Not saying that guarantees anything, of course.
I would then trust Opera on that. How are the speeds? Because that is normally the other downside of a free VPN.
Not terrible, I think, but then the places I use it tend to be places with patchy wifi speeds anyway, so hard to tell.
Can I ask a possibly naive question - why should I be worried about using cafe wifi, e.g. for accessing https sites like mobile banking?
My Hermes delivery from Uniqlo has been sitting at the depot for days. I’m raging.
I think that has more to do with Hermes than Coronavirus...
Maybe, but if I’m going to be quarantined, I want to be quarantined with some new jeans.
Made in China?
Imports from China will be perfectly safe now, especially if its been in the depot for a few days.
Its the delivery driver you need to worry about more.
I actually think the government need to be really be making people aware of this. Which individuals do you interact with that widely circulate, one of the top of that list, delivery drivers.
I am having them drop parcels outside, then I anti-bac it all down and wash hands immediately.
"Patients with the new coronavirus keep the pathogen in their respiratory tract for as long as 37 days, a new study found, suggesting they could remain infectious for many weeks."
"... doctors in China detected the virus’s RNA in respiratory samples from survivors for a median of 20 days after they became infected"
"By comparison, only a third of patients with SARS still harbored the virus in their respiratory tract after as long as four weeks, the Chinese scientists said."
A third of SARS last 28 days, half of Covid-19 last 20 days and one or two cases of COVID-19 case lasted 37 days. Seems totally consistent to me.
There may be a difference between having detectable virus in your respiratory tract and actually shedding it. Or there may not. Useful to know. Would have a big impact on quarantine.
I think the paper talks about shedding
It does.
I posted a link very early this morning, and it was quite clear about the median length of time virus is shed being 20 days, for those individuals who survive. The 'one or two cases' who shed for much longer, died.
Quick question - as a non-cook I eat out a lot, and am getting increasingly aware that public wifi in restaurants etc is insecure.
Which VPN would you recommend for me and family?
I don't know if it's any good, but HideMyAss is popular on our corporate network.
You can also get HideMyAssPro...
Don't use HideMyAss !!! It doesn't Hide your Ass....
PrivateInternetAccess has had a very good reputation for many many years, although there is concern that an Israeli company recently purchased them*. I have used them for ~10 years and never had any outage, always good speeds, and the software is now very solid on all platforms.
* The concern is that because Israel likes to provide the US intell, obviously it could be that Uncle Sam gets a look at what your doing or access to do so.
Is this for mobiles? If I dont do banking etc on public wifi, and dont have bluetooth on do I really need anything beyond normal Apple protection?
Private Internet Acesss (and most major VPNs) have PC / IoS / Android apps. These days it is just a good idea in general to use a VPN at the very least when out in public for a whole variety of reasons, both security and privacy.
How do I know the VPN wont be worse than nothing? Not concerned about US govt or Apple having all my data, half expecting that already, but a small-medium tech firm seems far riskier?
There is a free VPN in Opera for ios/android. It only protects Opera, not the whole device, and it's a fiddle to make sure it is turned on, but it is less of a faff than a separate app and i trust it a bit more than, as you say, a small tech firm i know nothing else about.
I would read the small print very very carefully of any free VPN, for 99% their business model is to sell your activity data. In comparison the likes of PIA, their business model is to guaranteed they do the opposite.
Sure. Opera are basically a browser, though, and they promise they are not logging, never mind selling, what you are up to. Not saying that guarantees anything, of course.
I would then trust Opera on that. How are the speeds? Because that is normally the other downside of a free VPN.
Not terrible, I think, but then the places I use it tend to be places with patchy wifi speeds anyway, so hard to tell.
Can I ask a possibly naive question - why should I be worried about using cafe wifi, e.g. for accessing https sites like mobile banking?
What can go wrong and how likely is it to happen?
Man in the middle attack is the most common issue, where you think you have connected to the cafe wifi, but actually connected to a hackers computer (which passes on the connection). From there they can do all sorts of things.
On a less concerning level, there is also the issue of all your data is likely being logged and sold on but the actual wifi provider.
Why are their experts offering different advice to the ones we are "following" ?
Different health service, demographics, current situation, borders, economy, social interactions etc. Who knew experts had to look at so many factors and come up with something more complicated than the first thought that entered their head?
Can I ask a possibly naive question - why should I be worried about using cafe wifi, e.g. for accessing https sites like mobile banking?
What can go wrong and how likely is it to happen?
If you've got an HTTPS conection (the little padlock in the address bar that every site except pb has nowadays) then in theory you shouldn't have to trust the network. If you're very careful to connect to the bank's site, and not some other one, you should generally be OK.
They may be able to use that to trick you into connecting to a different website and entering your bank password, or they might send some hacker code in another tab, and exploit some other bug in the browser.
So you reduce your risk by using a network you trust (assuming your *home* router hasn't been hacked) and it's better to do that if possible. If you do have to connect on a public network, you might want to use a different browser to the one you use for everything else just for internet banking, as this closes off some of the ways the network could be used to screw with you.
Currently we're doing much better contact tracing, quarantines and isolation than the Italians ever did, which is why its growing much slower than in Italy.
Is it growing slower, or are we just a week or so behind? I'm sure the comparison graphs suggested a similar growth.
And while we may be doing some things well, the fact that last night we had 3000 people from Madrid - one of the biggest Covid hotspots in Europe - wandering around Liverpool, suggests we're not exactly being overly risk averse.
My back of an excel spreadsheet calculation suggests that the growth in UK cases this week has been a bit slower compared to when Italy was at the same stage but not by much. The UK on Sunday was "12 days behind Italy" and now you are "14 days behind Italy". I would not find this especially reassuring.
But there are really two “Italy”s - Lombardy, which is overwhelmed, and should have locked down much earlier, and the rest of the country, which is pretty much where we are, and may have locked down (insofar as they have) too soon?
Unlike Italy, we don’t (yet?) have one region in which the large majority of cases are concentrated.
There's also the evidence from Italy's high death rate that they probably have a higher proportion of undetected cases, and the evidence that the virus was circulating unknown in northern Italy for a quite a while before the first case in Lombardy was confirmed. Both of which make comparisons a bit difficult.
I think it has to be nailed on, giving just how many cases they exported around the world from those who went skiing.
Agreed. The denominator in Italy is almost surely substantially under-estimated (same as Spain). Of course, this does not help the straining of the health system since there are still very many seriously ill people to contend with, but does help put the numbers in some perspective.
To be fair, unless random samples are taken from the overall population and tested, you are always going to be underestimating the number of positives and overestimating the proportion of positives during an outbreak.
I can understand why in Italy and most other countries testing to identify the positives is the priority.
Can I ask a possibly naive question - why should I be worried about using cafe wifi, e.g. for accessing https sites like mobile banking?
What can go wrong and how likely is it to happen?
If you've got an HTTPS conection (the little padlock in the address bar that every site except pb has nowadays) then in theory you shouldn't have to trust the network. If you're very careful to connect to the bank's site, and not some other one, you should generally be OK.
However, any time you connect to a website without using HTTPS, the admin of the wifi, or whoever hacked it, because they're often badly secured, can switch the website you think you're looking at for another one. They may be able to use that to trick you into connecting to a different website and entering your bank password, or they might send some hacker code in another tab, and exploit some other bug in the browser.
So you reduce your risk by using a network you trust (assuming your *home* router hasn't been hacked) and it's better to do that if possible. If you do have to connect on a public network, you might want to use a different browser to the one you use for everything else just for internet banking, as this closes off some of the ways the network could be used to screw with you.
If you are in your early 20s and renting in London and not voting Labour, when are you ever going to vote Labour? If you get to retirement and own your own home in the Home Counties and are still voting Labour then the Tories might have a problem
Can I ask a possibly naive question - why should I be worried about using cafe wifi, e.g. for accessing https sites like mobile banking?
What can go wrong and how likely is it to happen?
If you've got an HTTPS conection (the little padlock in the address bar that every site except pb has nowadays) then in theory you shouldn't have to trust the network. If you're very careful to connect to the bank's site, and not some other one, you should generally be OK.
However, any time you connect to a website without using HTTPS, the admin of the wifi, or whoever hacked it, because they're often badly secured, can switch the website you think you're looking at for another one. They may be able to use that to trick you into connecting to a different website and entering your bank password, or they might send some hacker code in another tab, and exploit some other bug in the browser.
So you reduce your risk by using a network you trust (assuming your *home* router hasn't been hacked) and it's better to do that if possible. If you do have to connect on a public network, you might want to use a different browser to the one you use for everything else just for internet banking, as this closes off some of the ways the network could be used to screw with you.
What about apps? Are they ok?
It's a similar situation: In general apps, especially banking ones, should be designed to work safely over an insecure network, and if they don't then somebody screwed up. But sometimes people screw up, so a secure network is better.
Haha, instant Dow Jones suspension. I wonder if we'll get the second.
Below 22,000 now. Wow!
I know. Another £1200 profit in six minutes, but I need to go out now. Don't like leaving so many positions open. All I can do is put in a few stops and hope.
Can I ask a possibly naive question - why should I be worried about using cafe wifi, e.g. for accessing https sites like mobile banking?
What can go wrong and how likely is it to happen?
If you've got an HTTPS conection (the little padlock in the address bar that every site except pb has nowadays) then in theory you shouldn't have to trust the network. If you're very careful to connect to the bank's site, and not some other one, you should generally be OK.
However, any time you connect to a website without using HTTPS, the admin of the wifi, or whoever hacked it, because they're often badly secured, can switch the website you think you're looking at for another one. They may be able to use that to trick you into connecting to a different website and entering your bank password, or they might send some hacker code in another tab, and exploit some other bug in the browser.
So you reduce your risk by using a network you trust (assuming your *home* router hasn't been hacked) and it's better to do that if possible. If you do have to connect on a public network, you might want to use a different browser to the one you use for everything else just for internet banking, as this closes off some of the ways the network could be used to screw with you.
What about apps? Are they ok?
It's a similar situation: In general apps, especially banking ones, should be designed to work safely over an insecure network, and if they don't then somebody screwed up. But sometimes people screw up, so a secure network is better.
Probably the luddite in me but not heard enough to convince me to use a vpn for a phone, but I will re-enforce my efforts to make sure I dont use public wifi for anything important. Thanks to all for the advice and explanations.
Can I ask a possibly naive question - why should I be worried about using cafe wifi, e.g. for accessing https sites like mobile banking?
What can go wrong and how likely is it to happen?
If you've got an HTTPS conection (the little padlock in the address bar that every site except pb has nowadays) then in theory you shouldn't have to trust the network. If you're very careful to connect to the bank's site, and not some other one, you should generally be OK.
However, any time you connect to a website without using HTTPS, the admin of the wifi, or whoever hacked it, because they're often badly secured, can switch the website you think you're looking at for another one. They may be able to use that to trick you into connecting to a different website and entering your bank password, or they might send some hacker code in another tab, and exploit some other bug in the browser.
So you reduce your risk by using a network you trust (assuming your *home* router hasn't been hacked) and it's better to do that if possible. If you do have to connect on a public network, you might want to use a different browser to the one you use for everything else just for internet banking, as this closes off some of the ways the network could be used to screw with you.
What about apps? Are they ok?
It's a similar situation: In general apps, especially banking ones, should be designed to work safely over an insecure network, and if they don't then somebody screwed up. But sometimes people screw up, so a secure network is better.
Thanks - interesting and useful. What about a 4G connection?
I’ve very disappointed that a number of posters here haven’t offered their services to the government FOC. The government is sorely lacking people who can scrape opinions from Twitter and present them with a “let’s do this” flourish of insight.
Comments
“But but but we want everyone to get herd immunity” is going to ring a bit hollow if the number of deaths jump and people start to panic.
I don’t believe the government have any easy options because I do understand the argument that locking the country down too soon may prolong or defer the thing. But then I thought the idea was that we should be trying to prolong it until we understand how to cope with it better, so the message is a tad confused...
I really don't know how bad and high that peak will be. Government action/inaction will affect that. I would anticipate 5 figure mortalities, but that is just a guess.
What we want as time goes by is for those numbers to continue to diverge even further.
Unlike Italy, we don’t (yet?) have one region in which the large majority of cases are concentrated.
What we need now is George Osborne in his power pose shouting: "We are all in this together".
Because for once, we are.
https://japantoday.com/category/politics/update1-olympics-who-pandemic-declaration-won't-change-tokyo-games-plan-suga
To the scientists and experts who are following the Chief Medical Officers advice we are doing so.
If I can buy from 2 different companies but 1 delivers via DPD and 1 via Hermes I will go with the DPD delivery every time.
America seems to be following the "deny there's a problem, forbid testing, let people die, tell people to move on" model.
PIA was one of the glowing light in this, proven track record, proven not to log and ownership was known. However, as I say, they recently sold to an Israeli company, which also has an interesting past (albeit not in the same league as the opaquely owned ones).
When he finally does announce the shutdown far too late you will still be cheering him on
Obviously it wont go ahead if the situation is at current or worse levels.
2 weeks until the CDC gets enough reagents apparently. It's gonna get awful over there.
When Professor Whitty announces a shutdown I will support it because he'll have deemed the timing right then. This has long been a matter of "when" not "if" and its his job to get the timing right.
Orange man looked genuinely shaken last night. I think they probably told him just how many people the model says will die.
This isn’t going to hit the public until something happens to shift the mood. That could be cases over a certain figure, or a prominent death, or a picture of an overcrowded hospital ward. But then I suspect the dam will break.
Even with Orange Man in charge, I am genuinely shocked how poor the US reaction is. My feeling is with the US, there have loads of faults, but the past has shown that when they need to pull their finger out they do it and why they have been the world super power.
I genuinely expected a China style response. Part of the problem is clearly they have exported loads of key things to be made in China, but there seems a total paralysis.
“Minded to advise (next week) to cancel gatherings over 500 people” is rather wushu washy wording”
Its the delivery driver you need to worry about more.
What can go wrong and how likely is it to happen?
Why are their experts offering different advice to the ones we are "following" ?
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1238074797390729217?s=20
I am having them drop parcels outside, then I anti-bac it all down and wash hands immediately.
https://twitter.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1238070452607737857?s=20
https://twitter.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1238073284983500800?s=20
https://twitter.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1238095037973610503?s=20
I posted a link very early this morning, and it was quite clear about the median length of time virus is shed being 20 days, for those individuals who survive.
The 'one or two cases' who shed for much longer, died.
Then again, if we all take that attitude the economy's really f*cked!
https://twitter.com/philipjcowley/status/1238093683527835648
On a less concerning level, there is also the issue of all your data is likely being logged and sold on but the actual wifi provider.
However, any time you connect to a website without using HTTPS, the admin of the wifi, or whoever hacked it, because they're often badly secured, can switch the website you think you're looking at for another one. They can also interfere with the page as you download it, like these old tricks for turning images upside-down, replacing them with kittens or making them go mysteriously blurry.
They may be able to use that to trick you into connecting to a different website and entering your bank password, or they might send some hacker code in another tab, and exploit some other bug in the browser.
So you reduce your risk by using a network you trust (assuming your *home* router hasn't been hacked) and it's better to do that if possible. If you do have to connect on a public network, you might want to use a different browser to the one you use for everything else just for internet banking, as this closes off some of the ways the network could be used to screw with you.
I can understand why in Italy and most other countries testing to identify the positives is the priority.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/stocks-oil-bitcoin-yields-fall-trump-coronavirus-response-2020-3-1028988769
https://twitter.com/TheUKDemocrat/status/1238097072278077447