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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The UK’s big Coronavirus gamble – not taking measures now that
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The UK’s big Coronavirus gamble – not taking measures now that other nations have in place
Chart from my live on #Newsnight just now. Right or wrong, there’s no doubt the UK is increasingly an outlier in our Covid response. pic.twitter.com/ZczXx8M48c
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Personally, I am very pleased with that.
My Condolences for your loss and best wishes to southam / Joff and family
How different is our approach from Germany's?
So we'll get the worst of all worlds on our pandemic response.
One benefit of that approach is that when tighter lock-downs are introduced the majority should be ready to comply.
My own perspective (though separated by a decade) is closer to Mike's, & I have numerous family issues, too.
With 8/9 games left, the PL can conclude the PL in 3/4 weeks with 2/3 games a week.
Then prepare to lock yourself away for 6 months. Dont let people in. If they have something they drop it off outside.
Buy some books, some paints and a Netflix subscription. Start being kind to your spouse. Get a bread maker too, they are ace.
I have no idea how promotion, relegation and Liverpool are resolved. I can see lots of clubs litigating and frankly a legal minefield
Almost all real life problems involve more than one area of expertise. As soon as you have input from more than one field somebody needs to synthesise the expert output.
In any one area, different experts often - almost always - have different views. As soon as that happens, somebody needs to discriminate.
Decisions belong to whoever they belong to. The duty of the government to decide and to choose is not delegable to experts or to anyone else.
If you think you are not bright enough to synthesise or discriminate, you may well be right, in which case leave the conversation to others who can.
The "expertise only" theory also falls into the same rabbit hole that logical positivism did. It is self-defeating because in its own terms it must be the output of experts to be valid, so you need an expertologist to validate it. But then to know whether to trust him you need an expert on expertologists. And to know whether to trust him...
True (and banal) story:
I was told 7 years ago by a competent senior consultant oncologist - as expert an expert as you get - that I should not have a colonoscopy (which he would therefore not arrange for me to have) because there was no real possibility that I had cancer.
His secretary booked the colonoscopy by mistake and I thought wtf, let's have it anyway to be on the safe side (Cries of yebbut I suppose you thought you knew better than the expert huh, and went and wasted NHS time and money).
I had cancer. I am now alive. There is no doubt at all that without that colonoscopy happening then, the disease would have progressed from stage 3 to 4 before anyone knew about it, and that would have been that.
And that isn't a freak 1 in 100,000 case which in no way invalidates the overall point, it's a banal everyday illustration of the proper way to process expert advice. Note in particular:
No suggestion he was incompetent - he was just on this occasion wrong.
His expertise is oncology, but this was a question about oncology and about my risk tolerance levels. Thanks partly to his input I know more about the *combination* of those things than he does.
His interests and mine are largely but not exactly aligned. He wants to minimise cancer in the totality of his potential patients, I want to minimise cancer in me. We therefore assign different values to me getting that colonoscopy slot.
So all in all "I suppose you think you know better than the experts" is about as intelligent a position, as saying you have had enough of them.
Meanwhile I and my division are working from home, I just didn’t bother to inform HR...
Some of the lower league clubs are fecked if the season is cancelled.
The economic damage is the real killer. Had the announcement been made that schools were starting an extended school holiday as of Monday when would they have been reopening?
1. Countries only seem to have been included if their entry can have Xs added (where are The Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, etc. etc.
2. The X's (and certainly the x's) don't seem to be consistent and often relate to individual decisions taken by mayors/governors of specific regions.
3. Conversely, the UK's approach of closing affected schools, cancelling mass gatherings in some regions (e.g. Scotland) doesn't warrant an x for some reason.
The chart is just populist rabble-rousing of the worse kind imo.
A big burning question I have is on the vaccine. I keep hearing a debate about the timing of it being available. No chance of earlier than 2021 is the consensus.
Implication is that it is just a matter of time. If not 2021 then probably 2022.
If this is the case - high degree of confidence that a vaccine will be ready to roll at some point in the next couple of years - my sense is that the markets are getting close to being oversold now.
But is this the case? Are we usually able to come up with vaccines for these things?
The ideal is that our elderly hide at home and the rest of us have horrible weeks in bed and don't trouble hospitals too much
If pressure on hospitals grows sharply (either too many seriously ill young people, or oldies taking too many risks) then we lock down. Rinse and repeat
Edit/ the strategy surely requires a lockdown at the end anyway, so it is safe for those in isolation to emerge
But if person C has to accept the advice of person A (CMO with all his resources) or person B the case for B has to be remarkably strong before there is a rational reason for C to choose their advice.
It would be the equivalent of a friend of yours potentially needing a colonoscopy and you deciding for them instead of letting the oncologist decide.
Football is over until the autumn if not further
But the issue is then, could you close them if needed post Easter, after having 5 weeks off.
Closing them now is too soon. I agree with the Government 100% on this.
I'm not sure LBW decisions are governed under English law.
Ten years ago my then-75 year old father collapsed, and the doctors advised my mother there was no point in resuscitation.
She insisted otherwise.
Ten years later my father seems healthier than ever.
Sadly though my mother died not long after the incident above, from a cancer that was not diagnosed until too late.
Doctors have to make judgments, and these are not infallible.
And Liverpool are relatively minor in this. Liverpool are champions elect already everybody knows that. It matters far, far more for clubs like West Ham and West Brom etc
The Basingstoke Gazette reports that it was told by an employee of Basingstoke and North Hampshire hospital that the woman, who was showing coronavirus symptoms, was moved into a ward with critically unwell women.
According to the paper:
The unwell patient remained on the ward around critically ill people for hours until results revealed she had coronavirus. Nurses in normal uniform and without protective gear moved her.
The member of staff contacted this newspaper after being appalled by the practice which they claim will lead to a ‘dangerous spread’ of the disease and warns the hospital is on the brink of an outbreak.
Now a patient who was forced to temporarily share the ward with the Covid-19 sufferer is displaying symptoms of the disease.
You can read more on the Basingstoke Gazette website.
Daily Mail email to staff - government advice not good enough, we're going further
I can understand some wanting it to be different but in the scheme of things football cannot be a consideration
It is has a more than nodding acquaintanceship with dishonesty without being actually downright mendacious.
https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/1238155454108151808
My son's boyfriend? His parents don't like him anyway, have told him to not be neurotic and go to (a different) college who have told him they don't want him there.
Despite the strategy being sound, there are plenty of idiots out there.
*From 11.59pm on Sunday (March 15), all new visitors who had been to Italy, France, Spain and Germany within the last 14 days will not be allowed entry or transit.
*With immediate effect, Singapore will cease port calls for all cruise vessels.
* All ticketed cultural, sports and entertainment events, with 250 participants or more, must be deferred or cancelled. For events that have already been committed to, organisers must demonstrate that satisfactory precautionary measures have been put in place before they can proceed.
* For gatherings, organisers should reduce crowding and improve ventilation. For example, participants could be seated at least 1m apart from one another, and reduce contact such as by not shaking hands.
* Employers should put in place measures to reduce close contact, such as implementing tele-commuting and video-conferencing, staggering work hours and allowing staff to commute at off-peak hours.
* At public venues, measures to reduce close contact could include seats set at least a metre apart at dining venues, while entertainment venues and tourist attractions such as casinos, cinemas, theme parks, museums and galleries could limit the number of visitors at any one time and increase spacing among visitors.
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/covid-19-singapore-rolls-out-more-measures-including-limiting-where-possible-the
Schools still open.
It is complex and there is likely to be incredible uncertainty. This is a judgement call and it has been made. We will all have to deal with that the best way we can.
But we should all be clear about how we should be protecting ourselves.
Public health guidance is couched to be targeted at the average person in the population. I think, on the whole, most people on here are slightly better informed.
As you know, what is going to happen is extremely serious and I urge everyone if they haven't yet taken this seriously to start doing their own individualised plan. Don't trust the government to act in your own best interests, they are simply now counting numbers, like they counted the numbers of Tommys during WW1.
The UK will be either held up as the example of how it should have been done or exactly the opposite and on a political level the Tories will be finished.
You'll be damn sure they'll try every legal route to stop that happening.
Oh...
This Slowly, slowly catchy monkey approach makes sense to me as I suspect current lock downs for 2-4 weeks will actually be 2-4 months minimum.
Epidemiologists are really enjoying their day in the sun!
Aside from the obvious, Better Call Saul, The Sinner, Money Heist, Ozarks, Occupied, Nobel, Victim Number 8.
If I was an academic in their position and the PM just binned all our recommendations, there is no way you go over the waterfall in their boat.
Instead, again this morning they are out front and centre saying herd immunity is the policy we have decided after modelling this since start of January.
Why are you getting so hung up about a chart which makes that objective point on Newsnight? If the viewer comes away from that segment informed that we are taking a different strategy to most other countries, then they have correctly been informed.
I can't help but think a lot of the armchair armchair critics on here are just undertaking some displacement activity to occupy theirs minds rather than focusing on the train-crash heading our way.
It doesn't matter what Newsnight really says or does. But it would likely be a far better use of time now discussing what micro plans all our communities, families, schools, hospitals should be putting together given the master plan and framework the government has decided upon.