The difference in approach between the UK and a country like Belgium is rather worrying. They can't both be right.
They could both be right if they have different goals, for example the Belgians prioritize stopping their parents from dying of asphyxiation in a hospital corridor while the British prioritize having a drink with their mates.
One piece of govt intervention on this that I think would go down a treat is if they were to commission tens of thousands of hand sanitizers and deliver a dozen to each household
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
What are your success/failure criteria?
All the data says we will be at Italian levels of infection within two weeks. ie 15,000 cases. 1500 critical cases, and nightmare. So within a fortnight we will know for SURE.
My guess is that within 7 days we will know if we are following that trajectory. ie Italy had 3000 cases about a week ago. If we have 3000 cases in a week we will know that we are on the Italian path and Boris and Co have made a tragic and epochal mistake.
According to Worldometer the UK has 20 critical cases; Italy has 1,153. Maybe that's what makes the UK advisers think we're 4 weeks behind.
Even Jeremy Hunt says in an interview with C4 that the UK is following the wrong policy.
Well, he's more polite than that but his view is fairly clear.
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.
We are told with MMR that "herd immunity" requires an 80-90% rate of immunity from vaccination. To get to those levels with COVID19 requires a "take it on the chin" approach.
To be fair that's just because of how infectious Measles is, you're still looking at needing 50-66% for this virus though.
Yes, I accept that the herd immunity level is lower for COVID19, but that level is far from trivial.
The difference in approach between the UK and a country like Belgium is rather worrying. They can't both be right.
Generally locking everything down may not do a great deal in the long term but if people have got see their granny's die they want to know that everything that possibly can be done has been done to prevent it.
If Boris thinks people will thank him for doing nothing while they watch their granny dying he'd better think again and get real! Whatever Tory party is left after this will have him out quicker than he can say Brexit!
Anyone concerned about their elderly relatives can take appropriate action but nothing's guaranteed.
I have advised my mum not to got out (she doesn't much anyway). She's effectively self-isolating but she needs someone visitng regularly for shopping and other things around the house she can't do herself, so there remains a risk. Even if there was a vaccine I doubt she'd have it (she irrationally distrusts them and doesn't have the flu vaccine for example).
I’m sorry but this just seems totally irrelevant at the moment. We are in real danger of economic collapse. We are facing the premature death of at least tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens. Our country has made an incredibly ballsy call to accept this, to almost uniquely not close schools, to continue to meet at large sporting events and to continue with our social life in the face of death. I really can’t think of anything else.
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
What are your success/failure criteria?
All the data says we will be at Italian levels of infection within two weeks. ie 15,000 cases. 1500 critical cases, and nightmare. So within a fortnight we will know for SURE.
My guess is that within 7 days we will know if we are following that trajectory. ie Italy had 3000 cases about a week ago. If we have 3000 cases in a week we will know that we are on the Italian path and Boris and Co have made a tragic and epochal mistake.
According to Worldometer the UK has 20 critical cases; Italy has 1,153. Maybe that's what makes the UK advisers think we're 4 weeks behind.
Even Jeremy Hunt says in an interview with C4 that the UK is following the wrong policy.
Well, he's more polite than that but his view is fairly clear.
One piece of govt intervention on this that I think would go down a treat is if they were to commission tens of thousands of hand sanitizers and deliver a dozen to each household
Er... that would need hundreds of millions, not tens of thousands.
One piece of govt intervention on this that I think would go down a treat is if they were to commission tens of thousands of hand sanitizers and deliver a dozen to each household
Given the political direction of travel towards free menstrual products, the urgency of the situation and the repeated government advice about hand-washing, this may not be (maths aside) a crazy policy!
Would have some downsides eg people becoming reliant on handwash and waiting for the next tranche of deliveries rather than going out and buying their own when they run out...
One piece of govt intervention on this that I think would go down a treat is if they were to commission tens of thousands of hand sanitizers and deliver a dozen to each household
Er... that would need hundreds of millions, not tens of thousands.
What is a hundred million, if it is not a certain number of tens of thousands? (Ten thousand of them, to be exact...)
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.
That's where the science inevitably shades into political judgement. Arguably the optimum solution is to let the number of cases run right up to the limit of what the NHS can cope with, do the lockdown then to reduce the numbers and keep repeating until there's enough herd immunity in the population. The question is how close to health service collapse are you willing to go before applying the brakes?
Do you feel lucky?
Really, you do need to anticipate that point by a couple of weeks, or you guarantee an ICU overcrowding crisis.
Fair point, which is sort of what worries me.
The UK does seem to be letting things spin a bit further than many other countries, and that is probably rational on a certain reading of the scientific models. But it could be like a driver systematically going a bit too fast round corners; mostly nothing bad happens, but sometimes something very bad happens. And fairly or not, the current No 10 team have form for going further into grey areas than is prudent...
Also, does anyone know why PB cannot be accessed by normal Chrome, yet is available on Vanilla?
Yes - chrome have implemented new cookie settings which mean vanilla doesn't seem to work if you are trying to login from the pb website - I told @rcs1000 about the issue yesterday but can't offer a fix as I don't know what the fix actually is (I know it took Microsoft a while to fix their login system for this issue)..
Chrome is working fine with me on my MacBook.
are you logged in already or are you trying to log in. I'm logged in in Vanilla but I cannot login on the PB site.
Already logged in.
Yep - as I said the problem is the initial setting of cookies as you try to login - the latest version of chrome now rejects them,,
I think the government has the right approach in delaying the big measures to the last possible moment. My team have been working at home for a few days and everyone agrees they nearly had enough. Video conferencing is no substitute for human interaction.
Have you got Slack or Discord or something? You need somewhere where you can do background chatter that you can dip in and out of. Don't just try to recreate office meetings online, embrace the whole medium...
I like Teams but can never forget the hour when I had an escalated issue and the entirety of Microsoft's D365 3rd level support were in my chat window debugging an Azure SQL performance issue..
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
What are your success/failure criteria?
All the data says we will be at Italian levels of infection within two weeks. ie 15,000 cases. 1500 critical cases, and nightmare. So within a fortnight we will know for SURE.
My guess is that within 7 days we will know if we are following that trajectory. ie Italy had 3000 cases about a week ago. If we have 3000 cases in a week we will know that we are on the Italian path and Boris and Co have made a tragic and epochal mistake.
According to Worldometer the UK has 20 critical cases; Italy has 1,153. Maybe that's what makes the UK advisers think we're 4 weeks behind.
Even Jeremy Hunt says in an interview with C4 that the UK is following the wrong policy.
Well, he's more polite than that but his view is fairly clear.
Hunt studied PPE at Uni. Not virology.
"Should you let more old people die to avoid interrupting your social life" is philosophy, not virology.
The difference in approach between the UK and a country like Belgium is rather worrying. They can't both be right.
They could both be right if they have different goals, for example the Belgians prioritize stopping their parents from dying of asphyxiation in a hospital corridor while the British prioritize having a drink with their mates.
What are the people who were going to go to the pub in Belgium going to do?
A lot of them will be young people who can be fairly blasé about the virus. They are not going to get too ill. They can shrug it off.
In your world, you seem to believe they will self-isolate apparently indefinitely.
When you ban an activity, you need to think what will these people be doing now they are not in pub, drinking and socialising.
A whole generation of young people are not going to sacrifice one or two years of their life sitting in a darkened room, curled up with improving books or teaching themselves new coding languages.
They might do that -- grumpily -- for a couple of weeks.
So, it is perfectly correct to time any ban (which will happen in the UK) for maximum effect.
What’s going on in Denmark? And how are all these countries going to pay for this? Placing a lot of reliance on the resilience of the Euro to public debt.
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.
That's where the science inevitably shades into political judgement. Arguably the optimum solution is to let the number of cases run right up to the limit of what the NHS can cope with, do the lockdown then to reduce the numbers and keep repeating until there's enough herd immunity in the population. The question is how close to health service collapse are you willing to go before applying the brakes?
Do you feel lucky?
Really, you do need to anticipate that point by a couple of weeks, or you guarantee an ICU overcrowding crisis.
Fair point, which is sort of what worries me.
The UK does seem to be letting things spin a bit further than many other countries, and that is probably rational on a certain reading of the scientific models. But it could be like a driver systematically going a bit too fast round corners; mostly nothing bad happens, but sometimes something very bad happens. And fairly or not, the current No 10 team have form for going further into grey areas than is prudent...
Are you including Chris Whitty, who was Professor of Public and International Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and still practices there I think, in that?...
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.
That's where the science inevitably shades into political judgement. Arguably the optimum solution is to let the number of cases run right up to the limit of what the NHS can cope with, do the lockdown then to reduce the numbers and keep repeating until there's enough herd immunity in the population. The question is how close to health service collapse are you willing to go before applying the brakes?
Do you feel lucky?
Really, you do need to anticipate that point by a couple of weeks, or you guarantee an ICU overcrowding crisis.
We've got 20 critical Covid-19 cases at the moment according to Worldometer, so some way off saturating ICU capacity (although I appreciate it's busy all the time anyway)
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.
That's where the science inevitably shades into political judgement. Arguably the optimum solution is to let the number of cases run right up to the limit of what the NHS can cope with, do the lockdown then to reduce the numbers and keep repeating until there's enough herd immunity in the population. The question is how close to health service collapse are you willing to go before applying the brakes?
Do you feel lucky?
Yes... that's probably about right.
Go too early, and you inflict massive unnecessary economic damage.
Go too late, and lots of people get the Coronavirus and hospitals are overloaded.
Am I right in assuming that someon who has had Covid-19 and recovered is no longer infectious? (In contrast to, say, HIV)
WIth HIV the virus lives long term in the body, the immune system is weakend by the virus, so AFAIU the immune system cannot fight it enough to get rid of it.
Normal viruses are identified by the immune system and the white blood cells kill off the virus. After a long enough period, a few weeks to a couple of months, you have none of the virus left to pass on.
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.
We are told with MMR that "herd immunity" requires an 80-90% rate of immunity from vaccination. To get to those levels with COVID19 requires a "take it on the chin" approach.
To be fair that's just because of how infectious Measles is, you're still looking at needing 50-66% for this virus though.
Yes but... every if 10% of the population have immunity, then the next outbreak will spread 10% slower. And if it's 50% it will travel half as quickly. So even modest levels of immunity in the general population slow the growth trend meaningfully.
Not according to the Guardian. Nor has the Netherlands.
The small x indicates partial shutdown in specific areas, I believe. Parts of southern Netherlands have more stringent regulations in force than elsewhere.
Mother-in-law died this evening, not of the virus, just old age - she was 92. She went peacefully. Her last words were “That’s lovely”, as my wife tucked her up in bed. She then fell into her last sleep. It’s been the most extraordinary year. I have seen up close what I already knew: my wife is an extraordinary woman with unlimited resources of selfless love. What she gave her Mum over these last 15 months is as close to holy as I will ever know.
An interesting piece but I’d counter it with two observations:
a) We’ve recently seen an example of the courts putting Gvt in its place and we should be gladdened by that; and
b) Even in the case of the Labour Party, it seems to be in the process of correcting its errors.
Basically, I think we have good checks and balances in this country. But you’re right that we should be cautious.
True - up to a point.
But note that the response to (a) has been a manifesto promise to stop the courts doing so. That is a promise to remove or reduce an important check and balance.
On (b) I am not so sure. Labour have said all sorts of good things. Even Corbyn did so. Action has been lacking. There is a reason for that and I am not at all convinced that Labour has really inquired into why that is.
And, second, the fact that Labour’s immune system was so weak that the virus of anti-semitism took hold so easily is what is concerning. Again I am not sure that Labour has really understood why it has rotted and weakened from the inside. Until it does it is hard to make really effective changes.
It’s a change of culture which is needed not simply a better disciplinary system.
It is wort noting that Labour hasn't actually dealt with the anti-semitism problem yet. Kind of squashed it into a corner, but the people concerned haven't been got rid of.
Quite. I think they are hoping that the EHRC report will tell them what to do, Corbyn will retire and that will be that. And it isn’t - not by a long way. Corbyn and allies should be expelled, frankly.
Not according to the Guardian. Nor has the Netherlands.
Nor has the USA, so that chart looks like fake news.
Maybe it's all part of a government plot to drum up demand for restrictions, so that when they are introduced they are warmly received by a gratefult public.
Parts of Catalonia in lockdown specifically because of the number of cases. I know its relationship with Spain is complex, but there's something particiularly concerning about both the Spanish and Italian outbreaks so far.
What’s going on in Denmark? And how are all these countries going to pay for this? Placing a lot of reliance on the resilience of the Euro to public debt.
They'll pay for it by making it clear that the ECB will make massive purchases of government debt if required.
Indeed, I would be staggered if they weren't already doing that.
What are the people who were going to go to the pub in Belgium going to do?
A lot of them will be young people who can be fairly blasé about the virus. They are not going to get too ill. They can shrug it off.
In your world, you seem to believe they will self-isolate apparently indefinitely.
When you ban an activity, you need to think what will these people be doing now they are not in pub, drinking and socialising.
A whole generation of young people are not going to sacrifice one or two years of their life sitting in a darkened room, curled up with improving books or teaching themselves new coding languages.
They might do that -- grumpily -- for a couple of weeks.
So, it is perfectly correct to time any ban (which will happen in the UK) for maximum effect.
I think people's tolerance for avoiding spreading a deadly disease that's in the new killing more people every day and laying waste to the economy is greater than you imagine.
Not nationally. I think that is why it has a small x. There are a few specific places where schools have closed, and as of now I have not read of any state closing all schools. In Germany education like health "is a state matter" so the federal government could only advise on schools closing anyway.
Mother-in-law died this evening, not of the virus, just old age - she was 92. She went peacefully. Her last words were “That’s lovely”, as my wife tucked her up in bed. She then fell into her last sleep. It’s been the most extraordinary year. I have seen up close what I already knew: my wife is an extraordinary woman with unlimited resources of selfless love. What she gave her Mum over these last 15 months is as close to holy as I will ever know.
The difference in approach between the UK and a country like Belgium is rather worrying. They can't both be right.
They could both be right if they have different goals, for example the Belgians prioritize stopping their parents from dying of asphyxiation in a hospital corridor while the British prioritize having a drink with their mates.
What are the people who were going to go to the pub in Belgium going to do?
A lot of them will be young people who can be fairly blasé about the virus. They are not going to get too ill. They can shrug it off.
In your world, you seem to believe they will self-isolate apparently indefinitely.
When you ban an activity, you need to think what will these people be doing now they are not in pub, drinking and socialising.
A whole generation of young people are not going to sacrifice one or two years of their life sitting in a darkened room, curled up with improving books or teaching themselves new coding languages.
They might do that -- grumpily -- for a couple of weeks.
So, it is perfectly correct to time any ban (which will happen in the UK) for maximum effect.
Yep, maybe the Belgians are just conducting a test to see what happens before things get serious.
If some of these countries aren’t careful they may have to worry about people starving.
Mother-in-law died this evening, not of the virus, just old age - she was 92. She went peacefully. Her last words were “That’s lovely”, as my wife tucked her up in bed. She then fell into her last sleep. It’s been the most extraordinary year. I have seen up close what I already knew: my wife is an extraordinary woman with unlimited resources of selfless love. What she gave her Mum over these last 15 months is as close to holy as I will ever know.
Mother-in-law died this evening, not of the virus, just old age - she was 92. She went peacefully. Her last words were “That’s lovely”, as my wife tucked her up in bed. She then fell into her last sleep. It’s been the most extraordinary year. I have seen up close what I already knew: my wife is an extraordinary woman with unlimited resources of selfless love. What she gave her Mum over these last 15 months is as close to holy as I will ever know.
I'm so sorry for your loss, that sounds like a peaceful passing. My best wishes to you and your wife.
Mother-in-law died this evening, not of the virus, just old age - she was 92. She went peacefully. Her last words were “That’s lovely”, as my wife tucked her up in bed. She then fell into her last sleep. It’s been the most extraordinary year. I have seen up close what I already knew: my wife is an extraordinary woman with unlimited resources of selfless love. What she gave her Mum over these last 15 months is as close to holy as I will ever know.
Really sorry to hear this Southam, particularly as we were only talking about your protecting her earlier today. Your wife sounds like a complete star and to be honest from your postings on here recently so do you.
Mother-in-law died this evening, not of the virus, just old age - she was 92. She went peacefully. Her last words were “That’s lovely”, as my wife tucked her up in bed. She then fell into her last sleep. It’s been the most extraordinary year. I have seen up close what I already knew: my wife is an extraordinary woman with unlimited resources of selfless love. What she gave her Mum over these last 15 months is as close to holy as I will ever know.
“In light of Arsenal’s announcement tonight confirming that their first-team coach Mikel Arteta has tested positive for COVID-19, the Premier League will convene an emergency club meeting tomorrow morning regarding future fixtures.”
And I thought TSE was just having a bit of fun when he mooted the possibility that Liverpool might be robbed of their title by covid-19.
The EPL is finished. Likewise the UCL, the euros, and probably the Lympix. That much is clear
Sure I saw something to the effect that the Olympics are likely to be postponed.
There's no option but to postpone it.
IIRC I'm sure I read that the current contract contains a delay clause which allows Tokyo to put it back to the end of the year.
I think they're going to have to. The logistics of putting the Olympic Games back by several months must be very complex: they can't sit on their hands until early July whilst they wait to see whether or not this thing peters out faster than everyone's currently expecting.
So the only difference between ourselves and Germany is they have done some limited school closures in hotspot areas and they have closed down some sporting events.
As someone said earlier they seem to be following a pretty similar tactic to ourselves, although perhaps a little further along.
The Govt's decision is the most ballsy called made by a PM (albeit likely very heavily influenced by the experts) for a very long time. I am in no position to contradict the experts on what is appropriate, but with every day that passes it feels like these decisions will be something that is widely studied for a very long time to come.
Our Western lives are very soft, and I can't help but feel that when I'm old and grey (or more likely bald) I'll be telling my grandchildren about this, in the same way that my grandfather told me about how he developed his hated of goats from the WW2 evacuations.
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.
That's where the science inevitably shades into political judgement. Arguably the optimum solution is to let the number of cases run right up to the limit of what the NHS can cope with, do the lockdown then to reduce the numbers and keep repeating until there's enough herd immunity in the population. The question is how close to health service collapse are you willing to go before applying the brakes?
Do you feel lucky?
Really, you do need to anticipate that point by a couple of weeks, or you guarantee an ICU overcrowding crisis.
We've got 20 critical Covid-19 cases at the moment according to Worldometer, so some way off saturating ICU capacity (although I appreciate it's busy all the time anyway)
We have 5 000-10 000 cases at present according to the CMO. 5-10% will become critically ill, to the point of needing ICU. So between 250 and 1000 cases needing ICU in about 7-10 days time. We have about 5 000 ICU beds in the country. These are not sitting empty at the moment.
A rerun of the same argument that ran in the Thatcher years from thinly disguised political opponents masquerading as independents. Guardian reading folk always hate blue governments pandering to the needs of the great unwashed, this post is from the same mould. Of course treasured institutions like the legal system, civil service and the media will be up for reform when they've so patently been running an agenda against the wishes of a majority. Death of democracy? Or a democracy actually asserting itself?
I haven’t read the Guardian for years, apart from occasional articles posted on here or sent to me by friends and family. I was banned, in fact, by Comment is Free for pointing out many of the hypocrisies and other idiocies inflicted on their readers by some of their journalists: Seamus Milne and Ms Toynbee were particular targets of mine.
It was great fun until I got banned.
You have not noted that one of my biggest criticisms in the header is reserved for Labour and its supporters, of whom the Guardian is one. Not me.
I wasn't having a go at you, I was just pointing out we've been here before and survived. I'm not convinced extremism is on the rise, and I think our democracy is working exactly as it should. Even the monarchy.
Well, that was the point of my first article. We have been here before but the institutional memory has gone and there is a fair amount of complacency around.
I hope our democracy works as it should but I am more worried than I have been because I have seen one of the two main parties fall into the grip of a leader with no real attachment to Western liberal values and the other to be eager to destroy everything that stands in its way, to have forgotten the “conserve” bit in its name.
“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance” as someone once said.
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.
That's where the science inevitably shades into political judgement. Arguably the optimum solution is to let the number of cases run right up to the limit of what the NHS can cope with, do the lockdown then to reduce the numbers and keep repeating until there's enough herd immunity in the population. The question is how close to health service collapse are you willing to go before applying the brakes?
Do you feel lucky?
Really, you do need to anticipate that point by a couple of weeks, or you guarantee an ICU overcrowding crisis.
Fair point, which is sort of what worries me.
The UK does seem to be letting things spin a bit further than many other countries, and that is probably rational on a certain reading of the scientific models. But it could be like a driver systematically going a bit too fast round corners; mostly nothing bad happens, but sometimes something very bad happens. And fairly or not, the current No 10 team have form for going further into grey areas than is prudent...
Are you including Chris Whitty, who was Professor of Public and International Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and still practices there I think, in that?...
Sigh....
Without knowing his brief, none of us know. The question "How can we best achieve these aims?" is a scientific question, and I'm sure that all the relevant experts, Professor Whitty included, are giving top-notch advice.
The question "What should we do? How should we trade off the competing risks and benefits?" is fundamentally political, and I hope that No 10 isn't intending to palm off that responsibility onto the boffins.
One piece of govt intervention on this that I think would go down a treat is if they were to commission tens of thousands of hand sanitizers and deliver a dozen to each household
Given the political direction of travel towards free menstrual products, the urgency of the situation and the repeated government advice about hand-washing, this may not be (maths aside) a crazy policy!
Would have some downsides eg people becoming reliant on handwash and waiting for the next tranche of deliveries rather than going out and buying their own when they run out...
One piece of govt intervention on this that I think would go down a treat is if they were to commission tens of thousands of hand sanitizers and deliver a dozen to each household
Er... that would need hundreds of millions, not tens of thousands.
What is a hundred million, if it is not a certain number of tens of thousands? (Ten thousand of them, to be exact...)
The fact that I also thought that and was just about to draft a post, demonstrates yet again that there is herd pedantry on PB.
“In light of Arsenal’s announcement tonight confirming that their first-team coach Mikel Arteta has tested positive for COVID-19, the Premier League will convene an emergency club meeting tomorrow morning regarding future fixtures.”
And I thought TSE was just having a bit of fun when he mooted the possibility that Liverpool might be robbed of their title by covid-19.
The EPL is finished. Likewise the UCL, the euros, and probably the Lympix. That much is clear
Sure I saw something to the effect that the Olympics are likely to be postponed.
There's no option but to postpone it.
IIRC I'm sure I read that the current contract contains a delay clause which allows Tokyo to put it back to the end of the year.
I think they're going to have to. The logistics of putting the Olympic Games back by several months must be very complex: they can't sit on their hands until early July whilst they wait to see whether or not this thing peters out faster than everyone's currently expecting.
All the athletes will be building their training programs around the olympics...
The Govt's decision is the most ballsy called made by a PM (albeit likely very heavily influenced by the experts) for a very long time. I am in no position to contradict the experts on what is appropriate, but with every day that passes it feels like these decisions will be something that is widely studied for a very long time to come.
Our Western lives are very soft, and I can't help but feel that when I'm old and grey (or more likely bald) I'll be telling my grandchildren about this, in the same way that my grandfather told me about how he developed his hated of goats from the WW2 evacuations.
Mother-in-law died this evening, not of the virus, just old age - she was 92. She went peacefully. Her last words were “That’s lovely”, as my wife tucked her up in bed. She then fell into her last sleep. It’s been the most extraordinary year. I have seen up close what I already knew: my wife is an extraordinary woman with unlimited resources of love. What she gave her Mum over these last 15 months is as close to holy as I will ever know.
Every sympathy for you and your wife, SO. Really glad it was peaceful and in the setting and situation she would have wanted. It's not just your wife (who sounds wonderful!), I think any reader of this forum for the last few days would have been touched by your obvious care and concern for your mother-in-law and how weightily you were treating the decisions on what you could do to protect her. May she rest in peace. On a practical note - sorry if it's too soon to bear thinking about, I'm not expecting to be so active on here for a while so just wanted to get it in while I could - all best wishes for the funeral, and hope it isn't disrupted by everything going on outside.
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.
We are told with MMR that "herd immunity" requires an 80-90% rate of immunity from vaccination. To get to those levels with COVID19 requires a "take it on the chin" approach.
To be fair that's just because of how infectious Measles is, you're still looking at needing 50-66% for this virus though.
Yes, I accept that the herd immunity level is lower for COVID19, but that level is far from trivial.
Indeed, and it's worrying there hasn't been push-back on this point.
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.
We are told with MMR that "herd immunity" requires an 80-90% rate of immunity from vaccination. To get to those levels with COVID19 requires a "take it on the chin" approach.
To be fair that's just because of how infectious Measles is, you're still looking at needing 50-66% for this virus though.
Yes but... every if 10% of the population have immunity, then the next outbreak will spread 10% slower. And if it's 50% it will travel half as quickly. So even modest levels of immunity in the general population slow the growth trend meaningfully.
I'll be fascinated to know how you plan to infect 10% (in fact it'll have to be significantly more than 10% for 10% to develop immunity) with a virus that leads to a significant fraction requiring medical treatment that doesn't collapse the NHS.
Unless the plan is to use the young as guinea pigs...
Mother-in-law died this evening, not of the virus, just old age - she was 92. She went peacefully. Her last words were “That’s lovely”, as my wife tucked her up in bed. She then fell into her last sleep. It’s been the most extraordinary year. I have seen up close what I already knew: my wife is an extraordinary woman with unlimited resources of selfless love. What she gave her Mum over these last 15 months is as close to holy as I will ever know.
Mother-in-law died this evening, not of the virus, just old age - she was 92. She went peacefully. Her last words were “That’s lovely”, as my wife tucked her up in bed. She then fell into her last sleep. It’s been the most extraordinary year. I have seen up close what I already knew: my wife is an extraordinary woman with unlimited resources of selfless love. What she gave her Mum over these last 15 months is as close to holy as I will ever know.
“In light of Arsenal’s announcement tonight confirming that their first-team coach Mikel Arteta has tested positive for COVID-19, the Premier League will convene an emergency club meeting tomorrow morning regarding future fixtures.”
And I thought TSE was just having a bit of fun when he mooted the possibility that Liverpool might be robbed of their title by covid-19.
The EPL is finished. Likewise the UCL, the euros, and probably the Lympix. That much is clear
Sure I saw something to the effect that the Olympics are likely to be postponed.
There's no option but to postpone it.
IIRC I'm sure I read that the current contract contains a delay clause which allows Tokyo to put it back to the end of the year.
I think they're going to have to. The logistics of putting the Olympic Games back by several months must be very complex: they can't sit on their hands until early July whilst they wait to see whether or not this thing peters out faster than everyone's currently expecting.
All the athletes will be building their training programs around the olympics...
One piece of govt intervention on this that I think would go down a treat is if they were to commission tens of thousands of hand sanitizers and deliver a dozen to each household
Er... that would need hundreds of millions, not tens of thousands.
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.
That's where the science inevitably shades into political judgement. Arguably the optimum solution is to let the number of cases run right up to the limit of what the NHS can cope with, do the lockdown then to reduce the numbers and keep repeating until there's enough herd immunity in the population. The question is how close to health service collapse are you willing to go before applying the brakes?
Do you feel lucky?
Really, you do need to anticipate that point by a couple of weeks, or you guarantee an ICU overcrowding crisis.
Fair point, which is sort of what worries me.
The UK does seem to be letting things spin a bit further than many other countries, and that is probably rational on a certain reading of the scientific models. But it could be like a driver systematically going a bit too fast round corners; mostly nothing bad happens, but sometimes something very bad happens. And fairly or not, the current No 10 team have form for going further into grey areas than is prudent...
Are you including Chris Whitty, who was Professor of Public and International Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and still practices there I think, in that?...
Sigh....
Without knowing his brief, none of us know. The question "How can we best achieve these aims?" is a scientific question, and I'm sure that all the relevant experts, Professor Whitty included, are giving top-notch advice.
The question "What should we do? How should we trade off the competing risks and benefits?" is fundamentally political, and I hope that No 10 isn't intending to palm off that responsibility onto the boffins.
One would assume that if the Government were going off on its own trajectory and doing something that its advisors thought calamitous that said advisors would speak out, even at the cost of having to resign to do so.
After all, this is a case both of professional reputation and of life and death itself.
So, whilst the quality of the advice being given can and will be assessed only by its impact upon events, there is no particular reason to suppose that the Government is departing from it radically.
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.
We are told with MMR that "herd immunity" requires an 80-90% rate of immunity from vaccination. To get to those levels with COVID19 requires a "take it on the chin" approach.
To be fair that's just because of how infectious Measles is, you're still looking at needing 50-66% for this virus though.
Yes but... every if 10% of the population have immunity, then the next outbreak will spread 10% slower. And if it's 50% it will travel half as quickly. So even modest levels of immunity in the general population slow the growth trend meaningfully.
I'll be fascinated to know how you plan to infect 10% (in fact it'll have to be significantly more than 10% for 10% to develop immunity) with a virus that leads to a significant fraction requiring medical treatment that doesn't collapse the NHS.
Unless the plan is to use the young as guinea pigs...
I'm not planning to infect anyone!
My point is that two week shutdowns every two months (for example) would result in each outbreak being less severe than the previous one, because each time there would be slightly more people with immunity.
Mother-in-law died this evening, not of the virus, just old age - she was 92. She went peacefully. Her last words were “That’s lovely”, as my wife tucked her up in bed. She then fell into her last sleep. It’s been the most extraordinary year. I have seen up close what I already knew: my wife is an extraordinary woman with unlimited resources of selfless love. What she gave her Mum over these last 15 months is as close to holy as I will ever know.
Despite the many disagreements people have on here you have always come across as fundamentally a good person, so if your wife is your better half then she must be truly exceptional.
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.
That's where the science inevitably shades into political judgement. Arguably the optimum solution is to let the number of cases run right up to the limit of what the NHS can cope with, do the lockdown then to reduce the numbers and keep repeating until there's enough herd immunity in the population. The question is how close to health service collapse are you willing to go before applying the brakes?
Do you feel lucky?
Really, you do need to anticipate that point by a couple of weeks, or you guarantee an ICU overcrowding crisis.
Fair point, which is sort of what worries me.
The UK does seem to be letting things spin a bit further than many other countries, and that is probably rational on a certain reading of the scientific models. But it could be like a driver systematically going a bit too fast round corners; mostly nothing bad happens, but sometimes something very bad happens. And fairly or not, the current No 10 team have form for going further into grey areas than is prudent...
Are you including Chris Whitty, who was Professor of Public and International Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and still practices there I think, in that?...
Sigh....
Without knowing his brief, none of us know. The question "How can we best achieve these aims?" is a scientific question, and I'm sure that all the relevant experts, Professor Whitty included, are giving top-notch advice.
The question "What should we do? How should we trade off the competing risks and benefits?" is fundamentally political, and I hope that No 10 isn't intending to palm off that responsibility onto the boffins.
Exactly. It’s a bit like an expert witness in court. The court has to have due regard to the expert’s expertise, to give due weight to their opinion in the area of the expertise but ultimately cannot derogate the duty of making the decision itself. The government is the same.
So cancelling football matches is not just a question of whether they risk spreading the virus. It is also a question of judgment as to whether society needs to prioritise, to bring home to the feckless the seriousness of the situation and to create the sort of mindset we might need to get through this. These are not decisions to defer to the experts. I hope Boris has got them right.
Mother-in-law died this evening, not of the virus, just old age - she was 92. She went peacefully. Her last words were “That’s lovely”, as my wife tucked her up in bed. She then fell into her last sleep. It’s been the most extraordinary year. I have seen up close what I already knew: my wife is an extraordinary woman with unlimited resources of selfless love. What she gave her Mum over these last 15 months is as close to holy as I will ever know.
Gulp. People seem excited that Boris stood behind a podium and did something different. A different battle plan that will *definitely* cause more short term deaths. In the long run who knows? But that's the gamble.
Meanwhile those in the front line are bracing themselves to go over the top. Our fantastic NHS workers good luck. Likewise our teachers will be on the frontline too. Many will be high risk and exposed to this virus. Good luck.
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.
We are told with MMR that "herd immunity" requires an 80-90% rate of immunity from vaccination. To get to those levels with COVID19 requires a "take it on the chin" approach.
To be fair that's just because of how infectious Measles is, you're still looking at needing 50-66% for this virus though.
Yes but... every if 10% of the population have immunity, then the next outbreak will spread 10% slower. And if it's 50% it will travel half as quickly. So even modest levels of immunity in the general population slow the growth trend meaningfully.
I'll be fascinated to know how you plan to infect 10% (in fact it'll have to be significantly more than 10% for 10% to develop immunity) with a virus that leads to a significant fraction requiring medical treatment that doesn't collapse the NHS.
Unless the plan is to use the young as guinea pigs...
I'm not planning to infect anyone!
My point is that two week shutdowns every two months (for example) would result in each outbreak being less severe than the previous one, because each time there would be slightly more people with immunity.
No, but the government effectively is.
The trouble is with this theory there are so many variables that could screw it up, it's a classic case of being too clever by half.
And as I said earlier, given the damage done to individuals even with mild symptoms this could well be storing up problems for the future.
The Govt's decision is the most ballsy called made by a PM (albeit likely very heavily influenced by the experts) for a very long time. I am in no position to contradict the experts on what is appropriate, but with every day that passes it feels like these decisions will be something that is widely studied for a very long time to come.
Our Western lives are very soft, and I can't help but feel that when I'm old and grey (or more likely bald) I'll be telling my grandchildren about this, in the same way that my grandfather told me about how he developed his hated of goats from the WW2 evacuations.
Do tell. What did the goats do?
Haha, after several years of goats milk and cheese I think that it drove him mad! A few years before he passed, when I was around 10, he made me a model farm for me (which I still have), and provided loads of tractors, every type of farm animal... bar goats. He'd opened all the farm animal packs just to chuck the goats away!
I’m sorry but this just seems totally irrelevant at the moment. We are in real danger of economic collapse. We are facing the premature death of at least tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens. Our country has made an incredibly ballsy call to accept this, to almost uniquely not close schools, to continue to meet at large sporting events and to continue with our social life in the face of death. I really can’t think of anything else.
@DavidL: I am at higher risk than some because of my health issue, I am very worried about what this will do to my daughter’s business and to my sons searching for employment. I have over 30 cousins, spouses, children and aunts and uncles in Italy. My own work has dried up for the moment.
So yes this is very worrying indeed. But I am not going to dwell on it every moment of my waking day.
But while semi-self-isolated up here in deepest rural Cumbria I am reading and thinking and writing about other things. Because we can both walk and chew gum at the same time, right?
They are reporting that 2 patients in a secure mental facilities in Washington State have it...So they will clearly have had limited exposure to the outside world.
It literally must be absolutely everywhere in that state.
My sincere condolences to you, your wife and family. The care and tenderness you have shown in your posts about your mother-in-law and wife is a credit to you. I hope you will all find the comfort you need.
Not according to the Guardian. Nor has the Netherlands.
Nor has the USA, so that chart looks like fake news.
No it’s not. Lots of school districts in the worst affected areas have closed or will from Monday. I think the small “x” means “limited” or “in some areas”
Mother-in-law died this evening, not of the virus, just old age - she was 92. She went peacefully. Her last words were “That’s lovely”, as my wife tucked her up in bed. She then fell into her last sleep. It’s been the most extraordinary year. I have seen up close what I already knew: my wife is an extraordinary woman with unlimited resources of selfless love. What she gave her Mum over these last 15 months is as close to holy as I will ever know.
May I add my condolences Southam. What poignant and beautiful last words.
They are reporting that 2 patients in a secure mental facilities in Washington State have it...So they will clearly have had limited exposure to the outside world.
It literally must be absolutely everywhere in that state.
I'm very inclined to believe the CMO's estimates of cases are much closer to the truth than the tested figures.
Shutting schools seems like the most brainless of kneejerks.
Boris has gone up in my estimation. Maybe the chief science guy and the epi-whats-its folks are all wrong, but he hasn't gone for the populist answer.
If the science guys are right then all these countries who have shut every last thing down as of yesterday will simply have a massive flare up again in 3 months when everyone has gone half mad being holed up and are coming out again.
We're moving from out of the contain phase, but what steps did we ever take to try and contain the virus in the actual contain phase ?
Contact tracing, testing and isolation.
I've no problem with our contain stage given what has been said about the futility of travel planes.
My issue is upon announcing we are now in the delay stage the government has proceed to do fuck all to delay.
What support is being offered to the working poor who cannot afford to take 7 days off work?
There are other steps I would have liked to have seen from the government:-
1. A much firmer statement that people should, wherever possible, be working from home. 2. A plan for how we deal with the elderly and disabled who need social care and therefore visitors to feed, clean and wash etc. 3. If small businesses like pubs etc have to close temporarily, how will they be supported so that a whole sector is not wiped out. Perhaps some liaison with insurers is needed. A rise in unemployment is not optimal, after all.
If the government thinks we are really "4 weeks behind Italy" we are about to find out, in the next week, if they have made the gravest error in recent British history.
If they are wrong I will never vote Tory again. I might well be dead anyway. If they are right, I honour their intellectual bravery and audacity.
This is an enormous gamble on the herd immunity theory given how little we fully understand about the virus. This strategy is an experiment, with a potential to backfire quite spectacularly.
That's where the science inevitably shades into political judgement. Arguably the optimum solution is to let the number of cases run right up to the limit of what the NHS can cope with, do the lockdown then to reduce the numbers and keep repeating until there's enough herd immunity in the population. The question is how close to health service collapse are you willing to go before applying the brakes?
Do you feel lucky?
Really, you do need to anticipate that point by a couple of weeks, or you guarantee an ICU overcrowding crisis.
Fair point, which is sort of what worries me.
The UK does seem to be letting things spin a bit further than many other countries, and that is probably rational on a certain reading of the scientific models. But it could be like a driver systematically going a bit too fast round corners; mostly nothing bad happens, but sometimes something very bad happens. And fairly or not, the current No 10 team have form for going further into grey areas than is prudent...
Are you including Chris Whitty, who was Professor of Public and International Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and still practices there I think, in that?...
Sigh....
Without knowing his brief, none of us know. The question "How can we best achieve these aims?" is a scientific question, and I'm sure that all the relevant experts, Professor Whitty included, are giving top-notch advice.
The question "What should we do? How should we trade off the competing risks and benefits?" is fundamentally political, and I hope that No 10 isn't intending to palm off that responsibility onto the boffins.
Exactly. It’s a bit like an expert witness in court. The court has to have due regard to the expert’s expertise, to give due weight to their opinion in the area of the expertise but ultimately cannot derogate the duty of making the decision itself. The government is the same.
So cancelling football matches is not just a question of whether they risk spreading the virus. It is also a question of judgment as to whether society needs to prioritise, to bring home to the feckless the seriousness of the situation and to create the sort of mindset we might need to get through this. These are not decisions to defer to the experts. I hope Boris has got them right.
The government is providing no leadership so the clubs will make their own decision. I imagine tomorrow they will set out their own plans and decide if they want to go ahead.
Likewise in many other sectors. We are going to have to figure it out ourselves because the signalling from the top is almost non-existent.
However at least we know now not to plan foreign school trips.
American death in Kansas a couple days after finding the first case. The US is riddled with it. Nailed on for more deaths than all of Europe combined atm.
Thanks to all of you for your kind words. You demonstrate the goodness that underpins so much of the human spirit. We love, we endure, the darkness turns to light.
Comments
I hope Boris has got this right, I fear he has not.
Well, he's more polite than that but his view is fairly clear.
Edit - found it on twitter
https://twitter.com/andre_spicer/status/1238241224697565185
I have advised my mum not to got out (she doesn't much anyway). She's effectively self-isolating but she needs someone visitng regularly for shopping and other things around the house she can't do herself, so there remains a risk. Even if there was a vaccine I doubt she'd have it (she irrationally distrusts them and doesn't have the flu vaccine for example).
Would have some downsides eg people becoming reliant on handwash and waiting for the next tranche of deliveries rather than going out and buying their own when they run out... What is a hundred million, if it is not a certain number of tens of thousands? (Ten thousand of them, to be exact...)
The UK does seem to be letting things spin a bit further than many other countries, and that is probably rational on a certain reading of the scientific models. But it could be like a driver systematically going a bit too fast round corners; mostly nothing bad happens, but sometimes something very bad happens. And fairly or not, the current No 10 team have form for going further into grey areas than is prudent...
A lot of them will be young people who can be fairly blasé about the virus. They are not going to get too ill. They can shrug it off.
In your world, you seem to believe they will self-isolate apparently indefinitely.
When you ban an activity, you need to think what will these people be doing now they are not in pub, drinking and socialising.
A whole generation of young people are not going to sacrifice one or two years of their life sitting in a darkened room, curled up with improving books or teaching themselves new coding languages.
They might do that -- grumpily -- for a couple of weeks.
So, it is perfectly correct to time any ban (which will happen in the UK) for maximum effect.
Sigh....
Go too early, and you inflict massive unnecessary economic damage.
Go too late, and lots of people get the Coronavirus and hospitals are overloaded.
Normal viruses are identified by the immune system and the white blood cells kill off the virus. After a long enough period, a few weeks to a couple of months, you have none of the virus left to pass on.
Maybe it's all part of a government plot to drum up demand for restrictions, so that when they are introduced they are warmly received by a gratefult public.
Indeed, I would be staggered if they weren't already doing that.
PS. This question is also not virology.
If some of these countries aren’t careful they may have to worry about people starving.
Deepest condolences to you both.
I think they're going to have to. The logistics of putting the Olympic Games back by several months must be very complex: they can't sit on their hands until early July whilst they wait to see whether or not this thing peters out faster than everyone's currently expecting.
As someone said earlier they seem to be following a pretty similar tactic to ourselves, although perhaps a little further along.
Our Western lives are very soft, and I can't help but feel that when I'm old and grey (or more likely bald) I'll be telling my grandchildren about this, in the same way that my grandfather told me about how he developed his hated of goats from the WW2 evacuations.
I hope our democracy works as it should but I am more worried than I have been because I have seen one of the two main parties fall into the grip of a leader with no real attachment to Western liberal values and the other to be eager to destroy everything that stands in its way, to have forgotten the “conserve” bit in its name.
“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance” as someone once said.
The question "What should we do? How should we trade off the competing risks and benefits?" is fundamentally political, and I hope that No 10 isn't intending to palm off that responsibility onto the boffins.
My thoughts are with you and your wife @SouthamObserver this evening.
Unless the plan is to use the young as guinea pigs...
After all, this is a case both of professional reputation and of life and death itself.
So, whilst the quality of the advice being given can and will be assessed only by its impact upon events, there is no particular reason to suppose that the Government is departing from it radically.
My point is that two week shutdowns every two months (for example) would result in each outbreak being less severe than the previous one, because each time there would be slightly more people with immunity.
My sincere condolences to you and your family.
So cancelling football matches is not just a question of whether they risk spreading the virus. It is also a question of judgment as to whether society needs to prioritise, to bring home to the feckless the seriousness of the situation and to create the sort of mindset we might need to get through this. These are not decisions to defer to the experts. I hope Boris has got them right.
Meanwhile those in the front line are bracing themselves to go over the top. Our fantastic NHS workers good luck. Likewise our teachers will be on the frontline too. Many will be high risk and exposed to this virus. Good luck.
The trouble is with this theory there are so many variables that could screw it up, it's a classic case of being too clever by half.
And as I said earlier, given the damage done to individuals even with mild symptoms this could well be storing up problems for the future.
So yes this is very worrying indeed. But I am not going to dwell on it every moment of my waking day.
But while semi-self-isolated up here in deepest rural Cumbria I am reading and thinking and writing about other things. Because we can both walk and chew gum at the same time, right?
It literally must be absolutely everywhere in that state.
I've no problem with our contain stage given what has been said about the futility of travel planes.
My issue is upon announcing we are now in the delay stage the government has proceed to do fuck all to delay.
What support is being offered to the working poor who cannot afford to take 7 days off work?
My sincere condolences to you, your wife and family. The care and tenderness you have shown in your posts about your mother-in-law and wife is a credit to you. I hope you will all find the comfort you need.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
"What will survive of us is love."
(P Larkin)
If the science guys are right then all these countries who have shut every last thing down as of yesterday will simply have a massive flare up again in 3 months when everyone has gone half mad being holed up and are coming out again.
1. A much firmer statement that people should, wherever possible, be working from home.
2. A plan for how we deal with the elderly and disabled who need social care and therefore visitors to feed, clean and wash etc.
3. If small businesses like pubs etc have to close temporarily, how will they be supported so that a whole sector is not wiped out. Perhaps some liaison with insurers is needed. A rise in unemployment is not optimal, after all.
Likewise in many other sectors. We are going to have to figure it out ourselves because the signalling from the top is almost non-existent.
However at least we know now not to plan foreign school trips.
Pence/Biden match up is now 2.02 on BF
I shouldn't worry. In any event the regressives* will spend their every breath demonising the actions of the government.
A zero savings worker is straight into debt.