Why is the NHS still not testing people even its employees? Example of woman who died at 80 and otherwise would probably have lived to 90 because she had no 'underlying conditions'
The NHS is testing thousands of people per day and testing is ramping up.
There's a limit to how many people can be tested and have those tests processed at once. Testing NHS employees is a priority but until more testing can be done its not just a case of saying "test everyone" and then its done.
I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....
Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.
Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.
Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.
However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.
Filming on all BBC Studios’ continuing dramas - Casualty, Doctors, EastEnders, Holby City, Pobol y Cwm and River City - will be suspended following the latest government update about coronavirus, the BBC has said.
Why is the NHS still not testing people even its employees? Example of woman who died at 80 and otherwise would probably have lived to 90 because she had no 'underlying conditions'
The NHS is testing thousands of people per day and testing is ramping up.
There's a limit to how many people can be tested and have those tests processed at once. Testing NHS employees is a priority but until more testing can be done its not just a case of saying "test everyone" and then its done.
Why is the NHS still not testing people even its employees? Example of woman who died at 80 and otherwise would probably have lived to 90 because she had no 'underlying conditions'
The NHS is testing thousands of people per day and testing is ramping up.
There's a limit to how many people can be tested and have those tests processed at once. Testing NHS employees is a priority but until more testing can be done its not just a case of saying "test everyone" and then its done.
I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....
Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.
Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.
Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.
However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.
Unlike Boris, he doesn't look slightly out of his depth.
I've heard several people, generally apolitical, opine variations of 'not sure he's up to it'.
I've been trying to think about how Covid-19 would drive change. I have to admit that it hadn't occurred to me that it would give a rocket boost to the move to a cashless society.
I reckon it will have quite a profound effect on some individuals. I know a lot of people who work stupid hours, are clearly unhappy doing it, but do it out of habit/fear of change/desire to hold onto status etc. It wouldn't surprise me if many individuals who work like that suddenly realise what they are missing with their family/life balance and will end up never going back to work. Stepping off the hamster wheel will have a weird psychological effect on them.
It's also why I am calling peak London. The attraction of cities will reduce, and an awful lot of people are going to find out they don't need to be there so often, or indeed at all.
If it's peak London, then it's also peak globalisation.
Peak inner London was 1911, think there might have been some globalisation since then!
I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....
Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.
Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.
Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.
However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.
£330bn is a peashooter?
More will need to be done and he has said it, but he's using a bazooka - the issue is we need an array of bazookas.
....Collectively, our study provides novel contributions to the understanding of the breadth and kinetics of immune responses during a non-severe case of COVID-19. This patient did not experience complications of respiratory failure or acute respiratory distress syndrome, did not require supplemental oxygenation, and was discharged within a week of hospitalization, consistent with non-severe but symptomatic disease. We have provided evidence on the recruitment of immune cell populations (ASCs, TFH cells and activated CD4+ and CD8+ T cells), together with IgM and IgG SARS-CoV-2-binding antibodies, in the patient’s blood before the resolution of symptoms. We propose that these immune parameters should be characterized in larger cohorts of people with COVID-19 with different disease severities to determine whether they could be used to predict disease outcome and evaluate new interventions that might minimize severity and/or to inform protective vaccine candidates. Furthermore, our study indicates that robust multi-factorial immune responses can be elicited to the newly emerged virus SARS-CoV-2 and, similar to the avian H7N9 disease8, early adaptive immune responses might correlate with better clinical outcomes.
I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....
Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.
Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.
Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.
However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.
£330bn is a peashooter?
Mostly 1 year loans to businesses who would still be bust at the end of the 1 year?
I've been trying to think about how Covid-19 would drive change. I have to admit that it hadn't occurred to me that it would give a rocket boost to the move to a cashless society.
I reckon it will have quite a profound effect on some individuals. I know a lot of people who work stupid hours, are clearly unhappy doing it, but do it out of habit/fear of change/desire to hold onto status etc. It wouldn't surprise me if many individuals who work like that suddenly realise what they are missing with their family/life balance and will end up never going back to work. Stepping off the hamster wheel will have a weird psychological effect on them.
It's also why I am calling peak London. The attraction of cities will reduce, and an awful lot of people are going to find out they don't need to be there so often, or indeed at all.
If it's peak London, then it's also peak globalisation.
Peak inner London was 1911, think there might have been some globalisation since then!
London goes in cycles. Its maximum population record from 1939 held until just a few years ago, it having grown considerably before the war with all the 1930s semis thrown up in the suburbs.
After the war with all the bomb damage, London kids who had seen a slice of country life during evacuation, and better cheaper transport for commuters, people moved out of London and its population steadily declined thru the 40s-70s.
In the 1980s its population turned around and in recent years the growth has accelerated, much of it immigrants or kids of immigrants.
I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....
Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.
Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.
Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.
However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.
Unlike Boris, he doesn't look slightly out of his depth.
I've heard several people, generally apolitical, opine variations of 'not sure he's up to it'.
Sunak is not up to it? Yes unfortunately that is just prejudice based on his youthfulness and stature (hopefully nothing worse).
He very much is up to it. To me he comes across as a misfit and weirdo with a nice smile. Cummings is probably impressed by him.
Lots of people in the general public don't like misfits and weirdos. The general population also don't like small men or skinny men. So he'll have to battle those prejudices. But if people can get past that and actually listen to him then they will be impressed.
I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....
Food chains are offering free drinks and discounts to NHS staff amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
McDonald’s said all emergency services personnel and health and social workers in the UK would be able to collect free drinks at all restaurants while government guidance allows them to stay open.
The chain’s restaurants are to become takeaways, drive-thrus and delivery operations as the company attempts to cope with the outbreak.
This morning, the official Pret Twitter account said hot drinks would be “on the house” for all employees with a valid NHS staff card, and discounts are being offered on food.
I don't believe the difference between intervention and nothing ranges from 12,000 to 3,500,000. The figures at both ends are surely wrong.
The Diamond Princess shows why the 3.5 million figure is nonsense. That ship was the perfect breeding ground for the virus and the majority of people were aged over 60, they had 16 days in quarantine living on top of each other yet only 20% of passengers tested postive with 25% having no symptons.
A large proportion of the population must be immune to Covid-19
That's a poor comparison, as everyone on the Diamond Princess got proper healthcare when needed. The Iranian doomsday scenario would be the exact opposite of that. Say 50-60% of the population infected, but essentially no healthcare because the system is overwhelmed, and people dying from all the other things that the Iranian healthcare system has to do.
I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....
Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.
Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.
Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.
However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.
£330bn is a peashooter?
More will need to be done and he has said it, but he's using a bazooka - the issue is we need an array of bazookas.
On its own, versus a might foe, a peashooter is useless. 100 peashooters together, not quite so useless.
But like the health strategy, which we eventually realised, it is better to be aggressive first rather than later. Otherwise you end up paying more in the long-run.
Surely the one political thing this crisis has killed stone dead is the 'Red Wall' stuff. In a national calamity, the Tories can't start showing favouritism to certain regions - it's got to be a full national unity or Boris will go the same way as Churchill in 1945. (But fun while it lasted I suppose.)
Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.
A few days it dawned on me there's not going to be any live sport for the next few months.
No football, no rugby, and no cricket, that might lead to blood in this household.
I wonder if county championship cricket could be played.
Would fill up the sports schedules nicely.
Unlikely, if the cricket season starts later than June then it is possible that the county championship is cancelled this season, the counties want to ensure the T20 blast goes on in full because that where they get most of the match day income.
I've been trying to think about how Covid-19 would drive change. I have to admit that it hadn't occurred to me that it would give a rocket boost to the move to a cashless society.
I reckon it will have quite a profound effect on some individuals. I know a lot of people who work stupid hours, are clearly unhappy doing it, but do it out of habit/fear of change/desire to hold onto status etc. It wouldn't surprise me if many individuals who work like that suddenly realise what they are missing with their family/life balance and will end up never going back to work. Stepping off the hamster wheel will have a weird psychological effect on them.
It's also why I am calling peak London. The attraction of cities will reduce, and an awful lot of people are going to find out they don't need to be there so often, or indeed at all.
If it's peak London, then it's also peak globalisation.
Peak inner London was 1911, think there might have been some globalisation since then!
London goes in cycles. Its maximum population record from 1939 held until just a few years ago, it having grown considerably before the war with all the 1930s semis thrown up in the suburbs.
After the war with all the bomb damage, London kids who had seen a slice of country life during evacuation, and better cheaper transport for commuters, people moved out of London and its population steadily declined thru the 40s-70s.
In the 1980s its population turned around and in recent years the growth has accelerated, much of it immigrants or kids of immigrants.
Indeed and house prices make a slump in its growth inevitable regardless of the coronavirus crash.
Why have a 40 sq m2 1 bed flat in London for the same price as a 130 sq m2 detached house with pool and tennis court in Barcelona suburbs?
Three reasons - inertia, tied to London for work, and the most important reason, because the asset holders believe the London property will rise faster than the Barcelona one almost purely based on past returns. Its a ponzi scheme.
When you think how quickly single travellers created cluster outbreaks in Italy, Spain, Washington State and the rest, and how despite tons of effort the Italians never conclusively traced back to Patient Zero, it seems optimistic to suggest that it will be so easy to prevent or stamp on recurrences in future?
It is an interesting argument, which seems intuitively correct:
...However, they make structural mistakes in analyzing outbreak response. They ignore standard Contact Tracing [2] allowing isolation of infected prior to symptoms. They also ignore door-to-door monitoring to identify cases with symptoms [3]. Their conclusions that there will be resurgent outbreaks are wrong. After a few weeks of lockdown almost all infectious people are identified and their contacts are isolated prior to symptoms and cannot infect others [4]. The outbreak can be stopped completely with no resurgence as in China, where new cases were down to one yesterday, after excluding imported international travelers that are quarantined.
Their assumptions are equivalent to ergodicity, as they consider new infections to be a function of infected fraction and immunity, and not influenced by where in the trajectory of the outbreak they are, distinguishing going up from going down...
Of course it is dependent on sufficiently reducing the number of new cases via lockdown so that contact tracing becomes effective again.
And 'sufficiently' is likely not trivial to define.
More widespread testing would, of course, reduce modelling uncertainties.
Surely the one political thing this crisis has killed stone dead is the 'Red Wall' stuff. In a national calamity, the Tories can't start showing favouritism to certain regions - it's got to be a full national unity or Boris will go the same way as Churchill in 1945. (But fun while it lasted I suppose.)
Quite the opposite. Red Wall stuff isn't about showing favouritism to the North, it is ending the decades-long cross-party neglect of the North, by Southern Civil Servants, that in the past have done a vicious circle of deeming the South to be product so that is where investment should go.
Spending on all regions is precisely what the Red Wall stuff is about. Levelling up the regions.
Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.
A few days it dawned on me there's not going to be any live sport for the next few months.
No football, no rugby, and no cricket, that might lead to blood in this household.
I wonder if county championship cricket could be played.
Would fill up the sports schedules nicely.
The chess candidates tournament is happening, it's pretty exciting, and the live commentary on chess24 is usually quite entertaining. Round 2 starts in half an hour
When you think how quickly single travellers created cluster outbreaks in Italy, Spain, Washington State and the rest, and how despite tons of effort the Italians never conclusively traced back to Patient Zero, it seems optimistic to suggest that it will be so easy to prevent or stamp on recurrences in future?
But in a situation where social distancing is being practiced, would the outcome not perhaps be different ?
I don't believe the difference between intervention and nothing ranges from 12,000 to 3,500,000. The figures at both ends are surely wrong.
The Diamond Princess shows why the 3.5 million figure is nonsense. That ship was the perfect breeding ground for the virus and the majority of people were aged over 60, they had 16 days in quarantine living on top of each other yet only 20% of passengers tested postive with 25% having no symptons.
A large proportion of the population must be immune to Covid-19
That's a poor comparison, as everyone on the Diamond Princess got proper healthcare when needed. The Iranian doomsday scenario would be the exact opposite of that. Say 50-60% of the population infected, but essentially no healthcare because the system is overwhelmed, and people dying from all the other things that the Iranian healthcare system has to do.
The oft mentioned ski chalet was the same. A whole ski holiday living on top of each other and sharing a chalet with no precautions, yet half of them were uninfected.
Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.
A few days it dawned on me there's not going to be any live sport for the next few months.
No football, no rugby, and no cricket, that might lead to blood in this household.
I wonder if county championship cricket could be played.
Would fill up the sports schedules nicely.
The chess candidates tournament is happening, it's pretty exciting, and the live commentary on chess24 is usually quite entertaining. Round 2 starts in half an hour
Nah, professional chess has been utterly ruined by VAR.
I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....
Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.
Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.
Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.
However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.
Unlike Boris, he doesn't look slightly out of his depth.
I've heard several people, generally apolitical, opine variations of 'not sure he's up to it'.
Sunak is not up to it? Yes unfortunately that is just prejudice based on his youthfulness and stature (hopefully nothing worse).
He very much is up to it. To me he comes across as a misfit and weirdo with a nice smile. Cummings is probably impressed by him.
Lots of people in the general public don't like misfits and weirdos. The general population also don't like small men or skinny men. So he'll have to battle those prejudices. But if people can get past that and actually listen to him then they will be impressed.
His plan is still not ambitious enough though.
The comments related to Johnson, not Sunak. (Which I could have made clearer.)
Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.
A few days it dawned on me there's not going to be any live sport for the next few months.
No football, no rugby, and no cricket, that might lead to blood in this household.
I wonder if county championship cricket could be played.
Would fill up the sports schedules nicely.
The chess candidates tournament is happening, it's pretty exciting, and the live commentary on chess24 is usually quite entertaining. Round 2 starts in half an hour
Of all the sports...sitting stationary facing an opponent who is breathing on you for hours on end?!??? I would ahve thought of all the sports, cricket was the saftest from a Covid-19 perspective.
Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.
A few days it dawned on me there's not going to be any live sport for the next few months.
No football, no rugby, and no cricket, that might lead to blood in this household.
I wonder if county championship cricket could be played.
Would fill up the sports schedules nicely.
You could get social distancing with the crowds. Even the players are further from each other than the local supermarkets and there is almost zero physical contact.
I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....
Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.
Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.
Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.
However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.
£330bn is a peashooter?
Mostly 1 year loans to businesses who would still be bust at the end of the 1 year?
If a business needs to be propped up by government for more than a year, it is not a viable business. Businesses need to be able to adapt to the new situation quickly and those that can't will go to the wall unfortunately.
When things eventually return to normal then new businesses will be able to emerge and things will start to recover.
I don't buy the idea that everything must be preserved as it was before the virus outbreak and infinite amounts of government money thrown at the problem that we'll be paying for for decades.
I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....
Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.
Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.
Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.
However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.
Unlike Boris, he doesn't look slightly out of his depth.
I've heard several people, generally apolitical, opine variations of 'not sure he's up to it'.
Sunak is not up to it? Yes unfortunately that is just prejudice based on his youthfulness and stature (hopefully nothing worse).
He very much is up to it. To me he comes across as a misfit and weirdo with a nice smile. Cummings is probably impressed by him.
Lots of people in the general public don't like misfits and weirdos. The general population also don't like small men or skinny men. So he'll have to battle those prejudices. But if people can get past that and actually listen to him then they will be impressed.
His plan is still not ambitious enough though.
Uh oh, sounds like the Rory-watchers have a new crush.
Quick question and apologies if this has already been answered.
If all the major economies in the world introduce massive relief packages, why cant this just be written off. Debt is just a paper exercise in these instances.
Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.
A few days it dawned on me there's not going to be any live sport for the next few months.
No football, no rugby, and no cricket, that might lead to blood in this household.
I wonder if county championship cricket could be played.
Would fill up the sports schedules nicely.
The chess candidates tournament is happening, it's pretty exciting, and the live commentary on chess24 is usually quite entertaining. Round 2 starts in half an hour
Of all the sports...sitting stationary facing an opponent who is breathing on you for hours on end?!??? I would ahve thought of all the sports, cricket was the saftest from a Covid-19 perspective.
You can set live chess up to be non face to face very easily if you want to. 2 boards, back to back.
One player calls E4, other player moves the opponent's piece to E4 etc.
I don't believe the difference between intervention and nothing ranges from 12,000 to 3,500,000. The figures at both ends are surely wrong.
The Diamond Princess shows why the 3.5 million figure is nonsense. That ship was the perfect breeding ground for the virus and the majority of people were aged over 60, they had 16 days in quarantine living on top of each other yet only 20% of passengers tested postive with 25% having no symptons.
A large proportion of the population must be immune to Covid-19
That's a poor comparison, as everyone on the Diamond Princess got proper healthcare when needed. The Iranian doomsday scenario would be the exact opposite of that. Say 50-60% of the population infected, but essentially no healthcare because the system is overwhelmed, and people dying from all the other things that the Iranian healthcare system has to do.
The oft mentioned ski chalet was the same. A whole ski holiday living on top of each other and sharing a chalet with no precautions, yet half of them were uninfected.
That doesn't make a good comparison either. Any of those people who developed any serious symptoms got healthcare. What the Iranians are being warned about is an outbreak becoming so large that there's no real healthcare, not just for coronavirus but for everything. If things got bad enough you will get outbreaks of other diseases too.
Sunak has established a direction of travel from which there is no turning back. He will be throwing a lot more than £330 billion at this. The interesting thing is what happens then.
I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....
Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.
Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.
Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.
However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.
£330bn is a peashooter?
Mostly 1 year loans to businesses who would still be bust at the end of the 1 year?
If a business needs to be propped up by government for more than a year, it is not a viable business. Businesses need to be able to adapt to the new situation quickly and those that can't will go to the wall unfortunately.
When things eventually return to normal then new businesses will be able to emerge and things will start to recover.
I don't buy the idea that everything must be preserved as it was before the virus outbreak and infinite amounts of government money thrown at the problem that we'll be paying for for decades.
Plenty of businesses dont have reserves of 4 months costs whilst still being perfectly viable pre and post covid 19.
It is an interesting argument, which seems intuitively correct:
...However, they make structural mistakes in analyzing outbreak response. They ignore standard Contact Tracing [2] allowing isolation of infected prior to symptoms. They also ignore door-to-door monitoring to identify cases with symptoms [3]. Their conclusions that there will be resurgent outbreaks are wrong. After a few weeks of lockdown almost all infectious people are identified and their contacts are isolated prior to symptoms and cannot infect others [4]. The outbreak can be stopped completely with no resurgence as in China, where new cases were down to one yesterday, after excluding imported international travelers that are quarantined.
Their assumptions are equivalent to ergodicity, as they consider new infections to be a function of infected fraction and immunity, and not influenced by where in the trajectory of the outbreak they are, distinguishing going up from going down...
Of course it is dependent on sufficiently reducing the number of new cases via lockdown so that contact tracing becomes effective again.
And 'sufficiently' is likely not trivial to define.
More widespread testing would, of course, reduce modelling uncertainties.
I agree there is some merit in this critique. The expert input for this decision by the government is not just coming from this Imperial team, there is at least one more academic team who are experts in Infectious Disease Models and PHE will have their own experts. Hopefully the different groups have taken different approaches to conceptualising this problem.
More broadly, I think it is important to use models to inform decisions but we must not forget the BASICS. That is, we must keep sense checking the information provided to us against observed reality.
Some people choose to put their faith in experts but those experts sometimes choose to put their faith into models. That's dangerous. We must always think for ourselves, listen to evidence and make a judgement. Then think again, listen to new evidence and make a further judgement.
Crucially, it is important not to forget how to think.
I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....
Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.
Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.
Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.
However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.
£330bn is a peashooter?
Mostly 1 year loans to businesses who would still be bust at the end of the 1 year?
If a business needs to be propped up by government for more than a year, it is not a viable business. Businesses need to be able to adapt to the new situation quickly and those that can't will go to the wall unfortunately.
When things eventually return to normal then new businesses will be able to emerge and things will start to recover.
I don't buy the idea that everything must be preserved as it was before the virus outbreak and infinite amounts of government money thrown at the problem that we'll be paying for for decades.
Plenty of businesses dont have reserves of 4 months costs whilst still being perfectly viable pre and post covid 19.
Yes but if the "during" part of covid 19 is say 2 or even 3 years are we going to keep paying for these "viable" businesses? This could be the new normal.
There would be much lower economic cost to letting them fail and new businesses replace them afterwards if it goes on too long.
Sunak has established a direction of travel from which there is no turning back. He will be throwing a lot more than £330 billion at this. The interesting thing is what happens then.
There will have to be a turning back at some point.
Sunak has established a direction of travel from which there is no turning back. He will be throwing a lot more than £330 billion at this. The interesting thing is what happens then.
How much of the loan guarantees is real spending by the government? £10-30bn? He hasn't thrown £330bn at it. He says there is more to come and he will do whatever it takes, so yes there will definitely be more, some of it big.
I don't believe the difference between intervention and nothing ranges from 12,000 to 3,500,000. The figures at both ends are surely wrong.
The Diamond Princess shows why the 3.5 million figure is nonsense. That ship was the perfect breeding ground for the virus and the majority of people were aged over 60, they had 16 days in quarantine living on top of each other yet only 20% of passengers tested postive with 25% having no symptons.
A large proportion of the population must be immune to Covid-19
That's a poor comparison, as everyone on the Diamond Princess got proper healthcare when needed. The Iranian doomsday scenario would be the exact opposite of that. Say 50-60% of the population infected, but essentially no healthcare because the system is overwhelmed, and people dying from all the other things that the Iranian healthcare system has to do.
Why is healthcare relevant, I was talking about infection
I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....
Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.
Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.
Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.
However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.
Unlike Boris, he doesn't look slightly out of his depth.
I've heard several people, generally apolitical, opine variations of 'not sure he's up to it'.
Johnson is an entirely peripheral figure. I do not remember a PM ever being more irrelevant. Sunak is a grown-up. Johnson isn't. The contrast is stark. And soon Johnson will be facing a grown-up from across the dispatch box as well. Interesting times.
Sunak has established a direction of travel from which there is no turning back. He will be throwing a lot more than £330 billion at this. The interesting thing is what happens then.
How much of the loan guarantees is real spending by the government? £10-30bn? He hasn't thrown £330bn at it. He says there is more to come and he will do whatever it takes, so yes there will definitely be more, some of it big.
That is the thing. Loans are not going to help anything very much. Real money will have to be thrown at it. A shedload.
Globalisation was already looking ropey due to concerns about climate change, migration, social change and the global super-rich flaunting it nakedly.
If Covid19 does anything it will turbo-boost mitigation away from that.
Yes, there will be GDP growth costs (nominally) from lost efficiency but people won't care because this event has just blown a massive hole in everyone's GDP.
Sunak has established a direction of travel from which there is no turning back. He will be throwing a lot more than £330 billion at this. The interesting thing is what happens then.
There will have to be a turning back at some point.
Or the country will go bankrupt.
The country borrowed 20% per annum through WWII.
This is the worst economic catastrophe since then. If the government forces the economy to shutdown the government must carry the can for that.
It is an interesting argument, which seems intuitively correct:
...However, they make structural mistakes in analyzing outbreak response. They ignore standard Contact Tracing [2] allowing isolation of infected prior to symptoms. They also ignore door-to-door monitoring to identify cases with symptoms [3]. Their conclusions that there will be resurgent outbreaks are wrong. After a few weeks of lockdown almost all infectious people are identified and their contacts are isolated prior to symptoms and cannot infect others [4]. The outbreak can be stopped completely with no resurgence as in China, where new cases were down to one yesterday, after excluding imported international travelers that are quarantined.
Their assumptions are equivalent to ergodicity, as they consider new infections to be a function of infected fraction and immunity, and not influenced by where in the trajectory of the outbreak they are, distinguishing going up from going down...
Of course it is dependent on sufficiently reducing the number of new cases via lockdown so that contact tracing becomes effective again.
And 'sufficiently' is likely not trivial to define.
More widespread testing would, of course, reduce modelling uncertainties.
I agree there is some merit in this critique. The expert input for this decision by the government is not just coming from this Imperial team, there is at least one more academic team who are experts in Infectious Disease Models and PHE will have their own experts. Hopefully the different groups have taken different approaches to conceptualising this problem.
More broadly, I think it is important to use models to inform decisions but we must not forget the BASICS. That is, we must keep sense checking the information provided to us against observed reality.
Some people choose to put their faith in experts but those experts sometimes choose to put their faith into models. That's dangerous. We must always think for ourselves, listen to evidence and make a judgement. Then think again, listen to new evidence and make a further judgement.
Crucially, it is important not to forget how to think.
It will be a blessing if we stop critiquing arguments based on who made them rather than what they say.
Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.
I reckon in all seriousness there's going to be a lot more alcoholism about. Like how the Russians coped with communism.
I have sworn off the drink for the duration. Last drink was Friday. I am sure that's not adding to my irritation. Not at all...
I've patented "phone pubs" in my company, unofficially.
We will Skype in a few of us on Thursday night. Each will have a beer in hand.
Has anyone used Zoom? I'm trying to re-establish a discussion group with a bunch of reasonably tech savvy..... all Facebook/Google/email using ...... OAPs Don't THINK they've all got Skype.
I don't believe the difference between intervention and nothing ranges from 12,000 to 3,500,000. The figures at both ends are surely wrong.
The Diamond Princess shows why the 3.5 million figure is nonsense. That ship was the perfect breeding ground for the virus and the majority of people were aged over 60, they had 16 days in quarantine living on top of each other yet only 20% of passengers tested postive with 25% having no symptons.
A large proportion of the population must be immune to Covid-19
That's a poor comparison, as everyone on the Diamond Princess got proper healthcare when needed. The Iranian doomsday scenario would be the exact opposite of that. Say 50-60% of the population infected, but essentially no healthcare because the system is overwhelmed, and people dying from all the other things that the Iranian healthcare system has to do.
The oft mentioned ski chalet was the same. A whole ski holiday living on top of each other and sharing a chalet with no precautions, yet half of them were uninfected.
That doesn't make a good comparison either. Any of those people who developed any serious symptoms got healthcare. What the Iranians are being warned about is an outbreak becoming so large that there's no real healthcare, not just for coronavirus but for everything. If things got bad enough you will get outbreaks of other diseases too.
Data from the ship wouldn't have told us anything particularly useful about case fatality rates for the reasons you describe. It would however have told us whether there is an upper limit to infection in the population. I think there might well be based on this case-study and the Italian chalet example whereby despite repeated exposure some of them simply did not get the lurgy.
I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....
Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.
Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.
Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.
However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.
£330bn is a peashooter?
Mostly 1 year loans to businesses who would still be bust at the end of the 1 year?
If a business needs to be propped up by government for more than a year, it is not a viable business. Businesses need to be able to adapt to the new situation quickly and those that can't will go to the wall unfortunately.
When things eventually return to normal then new businesses will be able to emerge and things will start to recover.
I don't buy the idea that everything must be preserved as it was before the virus outbreak and infinite amounts of government money thrown at the problem that we'll be paying for for decades.
Plenty of businesses dont have reserves of 4 months costs whilst still being perfectly viable pre and post covid 19.
Yes but if the "during" part of covid 19 is say 2 or even 3 years are we going to keep paying for these "viable" businesses? This could be the new normal.
There would be much lower economic cost to letting them fail and new businesses replace them afterwards if it goes on too long.
I dont think lockdown is mentally or socially possible for that long regardless of the economy.
Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.
A few days it dawned on me there's not going to be any live sport for the next few months.
No football, no rugby, and no cricket, that might lead to blood in this household.
I wonder if county championship cricket could be played.
Would fill up the sports schedules nicely.
The chess candidates tournament is happening, it's pretty exciting, and the live commentary on chess24 is usually quite entertaining. Round 2 starts in half an hour
Of all the sports...sitting stationary facing an opponent who is breathing on you for hours on end?!??? I would ahve thought of all the sports, cricket was the saftest from a Covid-19 perspective.
You can set live chess up to be non face to face very easily if you want to. 2 boards, back to back.
One player calls E4, other player moves the opponent's piece to E4 etc.
Or you can just play online !
You could play darts by Skype - you don't have to play on the same board.
Sunak has established a direction of travel from which there is no turning back. He will be throwing a lot more than £330 billion at this. The interesting thing is what happens then.
There will have to be a turning back at some point.
Or the country will go bankrupt.
I meant there can be no turnback in how the crissi is managed from an economic and financial perspective. How the aftermath is dealt with is going to be the interesting bit.
Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.
A few days it dawned on me there's not going to be any live sport for the next few months.
No football, no rugby, and no cricket, that might lead to blood in this household.
I wonder if county championship cricket could be played.
Would fill up the sports schedules nicely.
Unlikely, if the cricket season starts later than June then it is possible that the county championship is cancelled this season, the counties want to ensure the T20 blast goes on in full because that where they get most of the match day income.
Sports plan for Rishi's consideration -- persuade organisers to end the shutdowns and run behind closed doors instead to keep the vast television audiences entertained. Government to pay clubs, venues and their suppliers based on last season's receipts for the same events.
I for one am happy that we have Rishi in lock-step with the PM. Not sure how this situation would have played out if No.10 didn't have confidence that an independent No. 11 and Sajid's Spads were going to do the right thing....
Sunak is ten times as impressive as Javid. I didn't take to Javid's speaking style at all, and he lost me when he did that silly legs-apart stance.
Haha pretty much where I was with Javid.
Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.
However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.
Unlike Boris, he doesn't look slightly out of his depth.
I've heard several people, generally apolitical, opine variations of 'not sure he's up to it'.
Johnson is an entirely peripheral figure. I do not remember a PM ever being more irrelevant. Sunak is a grown-up. Johnson isn't. The contrast is stark. And soon Johnson will be facing a grown-up from across the dispatch box as well. Interesting times.
Johnson waffles, and can't help chucking in a 'smart' comment every so often just to show how clever and how educated he is. From what I've seen, people trying that on in Court get eaten alive.
Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.
A few days it dawned on me there's not going to be any live sport for the next few months.
No football, no rugby, and no cricket, that might lead to blood in this household.
I wonder if county championship cricket could be played.
Would fill up the sports schedules nicely.
The chess candidates tournament is happening, it's pretty exciting, and the live commentary on chess24 is usually quite entertaining. Round 2 starts in half an hour
Of all the sports...sitting stationary facing an opponent who is breathing on you for hours on end?!??? I would ahve thought of all the sports, cricket was the saftest from a Covid-19 perspective.
Most sports can be done safely IMO its just the spectators who are really at risk.
Day 2.5 of WFH. I think if I have to do 3 months of this there is going to be blood.
A few days it dawned on me there's not going to be any live sport for the next few months.
No football, no rugby, and no cricket, that might lead to blood in this household.
I’ve bought a PS4 on the back of it!
How about we play out the remaining football season on Fifa? Each club gets to nominate its two best players (they must be playing staff) and the four-player online games are broadcast live on Sky Sports?
Globalisation was already looking ropey due to concerns about climate change, migration, social change and the global super-rich flaunting it nakedly.
If Covid19 does anything it will turbo-boost mitigation away from that.
Yes, there will be GDP growth costs (nominally) from lost efficiency but people won't care because this event has just blown a massive hole in everyone's GDP.
I agree with everything you have written there. Small c conservatives have often struggled to make this case. Now it will be very straight-forward.
Sunak has established a direction of travel from which there is no turning back. He will be throwing a lot more than £330 billion at this. The interesting thing is what happens then.
How much of the loan guarantees is real spending by the government? £10-30bn? He hasn't thrown £330bn at it. He says there is more to come and he will do whatever it takes, so yes there will definitely be more, some of it big.
That is the thing. Loans are not going to help anything very much. Real money will have to be thrown at it. A shedload.
Hopefully not all of it at businesses. If a cafe, say, is getting no customers for the next few months and is being sustained by a government handout or loan during that time, I don't see why they'd retain their staff over that period.
Comments
Sunak is impressive because he is likely to know more than those briefing him and definitely more than the political journalists asking him questions. Therefore he doesn't need to bluster or bluff on tricky questions he just talks as if he is an expert, which he probably is.
However, he is still using a peashooter when we need a bazooka. Hopefully he is aware of that and he is working to fix it.
No football, no rugby, and no cricket, that might lead to blood in this household.
Filming on all BBC Studios’ continuing dramas - Casualty, Doctors, EastEnders, Holby City, Pobol y Cwm and River City - will be suspended following the latest government update about coronavirus, the BBC has said.
Apart from you there's DavidL and Pulpstar and maybe others I don't know about.
https://twitter.com/ChelseaFC/status/1240216826740695041
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapphire_&_Steel
Not the most romantic of encounters.
I've heard several people, generally apolitical, opine variations of 'not sure he's up to it'.
Ideally we should be seeing Sanders further down on 2016 levels.
More will need to be done and he has said it, but he's using a bazooka - the issue is we need an array of bazookas.
Breadth of concomitant immune responses prior to patient recovery: a case report of non-severe COVID-19
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0819-2
....Collectively, our study provides novel contributions to the understanding of the breadth and kinetics of immune responses during a non-severe case of COVID-19. This patient did not experience complications of respiratory failure or acute respiratory distress syndrome, did not require supplemental oxygenation, and was discharged within a week of hospitalization, consistent with non-severe but symptomatic disease. We have provided evidence on the recruitment of immune cell populations (ASCs, TFH cells and activated CD4+ and CD8+ T cells), together with IgM and IgG SARS-CoV-2-binding antibodies, in the patient’s blood before the resolution of symptoms. We propose that these immune parameters should be characterized in larger cohorts of people with COVID-19 with different disease severities to determine whether they could be used to predict disease outcome and evaluate new interventions that might minimize severity and/or to inform protective vaccine candidates. Furthermore, our study indicates that robust multi-factorial immune responses can be elicited to the newly emerged virus SARS-CoV-2 and, similar to the avian H7N9 disease8, early adaptive immune responses might correlate with better clinical outcomes.
After the war with all the bomb damage, London kids who had seen a slice of country life during evacuation, and better cheaper transport for commuters, people moved out of London and its population steadily declined thru the 40s-70s.
In the 1980s its population turned around and in recent years the growth has accelerated, much of it immigrants or kids of immigrants.
He very much is up to it. To me he comes across as a misfit and weirdo with a nice smile. Cummings is probably impressed by him.
Lots of people in the general public don't like misfits and weirdos. The general population also don't like small men or skinny men. So he'll have to battle those prejudices. But if people can get past that and actually listen to him then they will be impressed.
His plan is still not ambitious enough though.
Food chains are offering free drinks and discounts to NHS staff amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
McDonald’s said all emergency services personnel and health and social workers in the UK would be able to collect free drinks at all restaurants while government guidance allows them to stay open.
The chain’s restaurants are to become takeaways, drive-thrus and delivery operations as the company attempts to cope with the outbreak.
This morning, the official Pret Twitter account said hot drinks would be “on the house” for all employees with a valid NHS staff card, and discounts are being offered on food.
Pret
✔
@Pret
This one is on us 💚
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8,244
8:44 AM - Mar 18, 2020
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3,061 people are talking about this
https://necsi.edu/review-of-ferguson-et-al-impact-of-non-pharmaceutical-interventions
Would fill up the sports schedules nicely.
But like the health strategy, which we eventually realised, it is better to be aggressive first rather than later. Otherwise you end up paying more in the long-run.
Any updates ?
https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/09/fictional-band-space-netflix-conspiracies-icelands-dadi-og-gagnamagnid-took-eurovision-12372114/
Why have a 40 sq m2 1 bed flat in London for the same price as a 130 sq m2 detached house with pool and tennis court in Barcelona suburbs?
Three reasons - inertia, tied to London for work, and the most important reason, because the asset holders believe the London property will rise faster than the Barcelona one almost purely based on past returns. Its a ponzi scheme.
...However, they make structural mistakes in analyzing outbreak response. They ignore standard Contact Tracing [2] allowing isolation of infected prior to symptoms. They also ignore door-to-door monitoring to identify cases with symptoms [3]. Their conclusions that there will be resurgent outbreaks are wrong. After a few weeks of lockdown almost all infectious people are identified and their contacts are isolated prior to symptoms and cannot infect others [4]. The outbreak can be stopped completely with no resurgence as in China, where new cases were down to one yesterday, after excluding imported international travelers that are quarantined.
Their assumptions are equivalent to ergodicity, as they consider new infections to be a function of infected fraction and immunity, and not influenced by where in the trajectory of the outbreak they are, distinguishing going up from going down...
Of course it is dependent on sufficiently reducing the number of new cases via lockdown so that contact tracing becomes effective again.
And 'sufficiently' is likely not trivial to define.
More widespread testing would, of course, reduce modelling uncertainties.
Spending on all regions is precisely what the Red Wall stuff is about. Levelling up the regions.
(Which I could have made clearer.)
It's the perfect sport in the new corona age.
When things eventually return to normal then new businesses will be able to emerge and things will start to recover.
I don't buy the idea that everything must be preserved as it was before the virus outbreak and infinite amounts of government money thrown at the problem that we'll be paying for for decades.
We will Skype in a few of us on Thursday night. Each will have a beer in hand.
If all the major economies in the world introduce massive relief packages, why cant this just be written off. Debt is just a paper exercise in these instances.
One player calls E4, other player moves the opponent's piece to E4 etc.
Or you can just play online !
More broadly, I think it is important to use models to inform decisions but we must not forget the BASICS. That is, we must keep sense checking the information provided to us against observed reality.
Some people choose to put their faith in experts but those experts sometimes choose to put their faith into models. That's dangerous. We must always think for ourselves, listen to evidence and make a judgement. Then think again, listen to new evidence and make a further judgement.
Crucially, it is important not to forget how to think.
There would be much lower economic cost to letting them fail and new businesses replace them afterwards if it goes on too long.
Or the country will go bankrupt.
This fellow is quite clever...
https://twitter.com/statsbombiq/status/1239858211315908608?s=21
If Covid19 does anything it will turbo-boost mitigation away from that.
Yes, there will be GDP growth costs (nominally) from lost efficiency but people won't care because this event has just blown a massive hole in everyone's GDP.
This is the worst economic catastrophe since then. If the government forces the economy to shutdown the government must carry the can for that.
Don't THINK they've all got Skype.
https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/17/nomi-new-japanese-trend-drinking-online-turning-self-isolation-room-personal-pub-12409713/
From what I've seen, people trying that on in Court get eaten alive.
Most sports can be done safely IMO its just the spectators who are really at risk.
You think I'm joking?
Nope, I'm serious.