I still can't get my head round the fact that 44,000 people died in the UK from flu in thw winter of 2014/2015 and nobody raised as much as an eyebrow.
I get that this virus is much worse but 44,000 flu deaths! Blinking heck, across five months that's 9k per month (roughly 300 a day). That's still big numbers.
I`m with you. I think it`s because CV-19 is new and scary. And there is no vaccine yet. I continue to believe - though my view is not well represented on this forum - that the global response is an error. A very serious health crisis is being parlayed into a very serious economic and loss of liberty crisis.
There is no 100per cent vaccine for flu either..iirc they guess which strain is most likely but others willl know more
I still can't get my head round the fact that 44,000 people died in the UK from flu in thw winter of 2014/2015 and nobody raised as much as an eyebrow.
I get that this virus is much worse but 44,000 flu deaths! Blinking heck, across five months that's 9k per month (roughly 300 a day). That's still big numbers.
I agree. It's not that I think the coronavirus reaction is wrong, but it is remarkable what we tolerate since it is normalised. Road traffic deaths is another.
And it's not inevitable. Some Scandi countries have invested into 'Vision Zero' programs to dramatically reduce road traffic deaths and I believe Hong Kong generally takes the flu much more seriously than us (closing schools etc to stymie outbreaks).
The WHO estimates that globally about 4.6 million people die from air pollution every year. That's around 12,500 every day.
True, though at least in the UK we're actually getting better at that remarkably quickly.
I haven' seen anyone else mention it yet,so I quote from the Guardian live blog:
The British government is not taking part in European Union procurement schemes to buy ventilators, protective gear for medical staff or coronavirus testing kit, the Guardian understands.
UK and EU sources confirmed the government is not currently participating in any of the EU’s bulk-buying schemes linked to tackling coronavirus.
The UK’s absence from the schemes emerged as the European commission declared on Tuesday that a joint effort to buy protective medical gear on behalf of 25 member states was “a success”.
The commission said it expected the equipment to be available two weeks after the member states leading the procurement sign the contracts.
Two other procurement schemes, to supply ventilators and laboratory equipment needed for coronavirus testing, are at an earlier stage, with calls for tenders launched last week. Nearly all EU countries, 25 out of 27, are participating in the procurement scheme on ventilators, while 19 are joining forces to buy laboratory equipment.
I still can't get my head round the fact that 44,000 people died in the UK from flu in thw winter of 2014/2015 and nobody raised as much as an eyebrow.
I get that this virus is much worse but 44,000 flu deaths! Blinking heck, across five months that's 9k per month (roughly 300 a day). That's still big numbers.
We definitely have had news coverage when there has been a particular bad flu season.
The problems start if the all arrive in a period of four weeks concentrated around a few hot spots. Then the system starts to break down.
I still can't get my head round the fact that 44,000 people died in the UK from flu in thw winter of 2014/2015 and nobody raised as much as an eyebrow.
I get that this virus is much worse but 44,000 flu deaths! Blinking heck, across five months that's 9k per month (roughly 300 a day). That's still big numbers.
I`m with you. I think it`s because CV-19 is new and scary. And there is no vaccine yet. I continue to believe - though my view is not well represented on this forum - that the global response is an error. A very serious health crisis is being parlayed into a very serious economic and loss of liberty crisis.
I'm in the 'overblown' camp. I accept we need to protect the NHS and some special measures are required for this virus but completely collapsing the economy seems a bit barking to me when the maximum number of deaths was considered to be 400k (250k of whom would likely die anyway). I'm pretty sure we could have cut that 400k armageddon prediction by a third just by forcibly isolating over 70s for three months.
I still can't get my head round the fact that 44,000 people died in the UK from flu in thw winter of 2014/2015 and nobody raised as much as an eyebrow.
I get that this virus is much worse but 44,000 flu deaths! Blinking heck, across five months that's 9k per month (roughly 300 a day). That's still big numbers.
SSSSHHHHHH! Don't mention that Government Stat, you will get a barage of abuse, those 44,000 deaths don't count becuase it was flu. Thats an average of 473 deaths a day due to flu. Do you remember the afternoon annoucement from the Department of Health informing the country of these deaths?
You say this, but the Government does organise a large vaccination program and public information campaign every year to try and reduce flu deaths. And the coronavirus is:
1. More contagious; 2. More dangerous; and 3. We don't have a vaccine.
So comparing the responses doesn't necessarily make our reaction now look out of place.
Don't let Big Dom see this paper, he will back pestering all the egg-heads to go for herd-immunity again.
If it's true, why would that be a bad thing? If (God forbid) China is going to see another upsurge, our strategy of trying to contain this will once again be called into question. We can't have this malarkey every time it flares up.
Also, if everybody starts driving miles and miles to get their daily exercise, then they need to keep filling their cars up, so we get queues at the petrol station and of course interacting with the pumps, the control panels etc.
Good point. Maybe even a point not everyone would think of. So isn't it useful having journalists ask these questions? Or do you think that only having people who meet your criteria for common sense follow the rules will slow the spread sufficiently?
I still can't get my head round the fact that 44,000 people died in the UK from flu in thw winter of 2014/2015 and nobody raised as much as an eyebrow.
I get that this virus is much worse but 44,000 flu deaths! Blinking heck, across five months that's 9k per month (roughly 300 a day). That's still big numbers.
SSSSHHHHHH! Don't mention that Government Stat, you will get a barage of abuse, those 44,000 deaths don't count becuase it was flu. Thats an average of 473 deaths a day due to flu. Do you remember the afternoon annoucement from the Department of Health informing the country of these deaths?
I saw you having a kicking yesterday. I had one last week for going out on the piss
Also, if everybody starts driving miles and miles to get their daily exercise, then they need to keep filling their cars up, so we get queues at the petrol station and of course interacting with the pumps, the control panels etc.
Good point. Maybe even a point not everyone would think of. So isn't it useful having journalists ask these questions? Or do you think that only having people who meet your criteria for common sense follow the rules will slow the spread sufficiently?
It wasn't a journalist asking a government minister, it was a stupid tweet. And the government have made it clear no you shouldn't be going distances to do this. So the journalists should instead at this point in time helping the government with clear statements.
Kay Burley was wasting every bodies time asking a niche question about a freelance journalist friend who was thinking about covering this story.
If the government was to literally go through every single scenario, they would have to be on rolling news 24hrs a day.
Hello all, I just joined this forum after lurking for a while.
I actually joined in order to ask what the collective opinion of Nassim Taleb is?
I have read the Black Swan and thought it was good (though would have preferred if it was an essay).
Though I have a suspicion he doesn't understand this crisis (he has in the past said no one knows anything, perhaps he should extend that to himself).
He seems quite arrogant, I have a sneaking suspicion he isn't half as clever as he thinks he is.
Also any suggestions on other popular writers on the topic of risk, that I may want to read?
Cheers
Read this rant of mine and this follow-up to see why I wasn't impressed with one of his more recent interventions on Corona, not gonna bore PB by reposting them in full!!
Also ... why stick with "popular writers"? A lot of pop-sci writing is pretty cruddy, unfortunately, especially writers who have developed the art of a particular format (a "neat" and shareable TED talk, a quotable book which cherrypicks research from different areas to suggest there's some underlying theme) and frankly books and TED talks get out of date pretty fast (e.g. no doubting Daniel Kahneman is a great guy and if you're not aware of the key findings of his research you're going through life with blinkers on - but lots of people still try to "catch up" with him by reading his more accessible "Thinking Fast and Slow" which has had huge sections rendered redundant by the Replication Crisis in psychology). There's something to be said for doing some "proper" rather than "popular" education and getting yourself up to the level where you can handle reading an actual research paper. Now obviously you can't do this for every topic in the world, but understanding topics like risk and biases is pretty fundamental. Would also have to say undergraduate-level textbooks are often surprisingly accessible and often a wiser investment than a pop-sci book!
I read around the internet, that fabulous source for hard facts, that Germany is massaging the figures. Basically, they're discounting from fatalities and critical condition anyone with an underlying health condition.
This is denied but it would be one explanation.
(Assuming that's true) the authorities might be able to hide the dead on a day-to-day-strict-definition basis but it's going very difficult to hide a spike from a year-on-year view. And they also risk long term repuational blowback from the population if they try.
Why on earth would you assume it's true? It's an absurd suggestion, (which I can also confirm is not true). Why would "the authorities" (whoever they might be) even want to hide Covid-19 deaths? And how exactly would "they" manage such a thing? There's an ugly strain of anti-German prejudice in England (some kind of weird inferiority complex maybe) - like I said before - how come nobody is suggesting Australia is massaging the figures even though they have an even lower death rate?
You hit it on the head , just anti - German prejudice because they do everything much better than England.
There must be an explanation for the lack of people in ICUs in Germany. A “great healthcare system” doesn’t really explain that. I’d think that if their healthcare system was the reason for the success, you’d have large numbers of people in ICU, but then recovering.
Not simply lots of people having mild symptoms.
Be nice if they could pinpoint what it is. Likely combination of sausages , sauerkraut and beer, if only, we could enjoy getting immunity.
Not sure about all the wibblings about nasty prejudice etc.
I would say it is mainly down to counting things differently, time factors, and the different age profiles of the first cases.
The BBC and friends have been very keen to have a go at the NHS and its masters, by praising other systems - eg Italy best in the world (really - doesn't seem to exist much in the south).
A very interesting article in the FT (no paywall); Oxford epidemiologists think that there might be far more undetected cases than the Imperial College modelling shows, with as much as half the UK population already infected. Could be good news if true:
I haven' seen anyone else mention it yet,so I quote from the Guardian live blog:
The British government is not taking part in European Union procurement schemes to buy ventilators, protective gear for medical staff or coronavirus testing kit, the Guardian understands.
UK and EU sources confirmed the government is not currently participating in any of the EU’s bulk-buying schemes linked to tackling coronavirus.
The UK’s absence from the schemes emerged as the European commission declared on Tuesday that a joint effort to buy protective medical gear on behalf of 25 member states was “a success”.
The commission said it expected the equipment to be available two weeks after the member states leading the procurement sign the contracts.
Two other procurement schemes, to supply ventilators and laboratory equipment needed for coronavirus testing, are at an earlier stage, with calls for tenders launched last week. Nearly all EU countries, 25 out of 27, are participating in the procurement scheme on ventilators, while 19 are joining forces to buy laboratory equipment.
Forgive my possible overcynicism, but bitter past experience with public sector procurement processes compels me to ask: how long is it expected/likely to take for the contracts to be signed?
I still can't get my head round the fact that 44,000 people died in the UK from flu in thw winter of 2014/2015 and nobody raised as much as an eyebrow.
I get that this virus is much worse but 44,000 flu deaths! Blinking heck, across five months that's 9k per month (roughly 300 a day). That's still big numbers.
I`m with you. I think it`s because CV-19 is new and scary. And there is no vaccine yet. I continue to believe - though my view is not well represented on this forum - that the global response is an error. A very serious health crisis is being parlayed into a very serious economic and loss of liberty crisis.
I'm in the 'overblown' camp. I accept we need to protect the NHS and some special measures are required for this virus but completely collapsing the economy seems a bit barking to me when the maximum number of deaths was considered to be 400k (250k of whom would likely die anyway). I'm pretty sure we could have cut that 400k armageddon prediction by a third just by forcibly isolating over 70s for three months.
Given the amount of money which the government is throwing at this, the NHS could have been massively supported with just a proportion of this sum over the crisis period.
Lockdown will also cost lives. What about suicides due to loss of livelihoods? We have to live with this new virus, at least until a vaccine is found. That`s the reality. I worry that the global response goes much too far, that it is a political response from scared politicians.
Isolating the elderly and vulnerable would have been sensible, but shutting down the economy for everyone is a threat to the livelihoods of everyone and the loss of freedom is simply astonishing. Could the costs end up being worse than the virus itself? These costs will be borne disproportionally by the young.
My family`s plans for the future are pretty much destroyed. My pension fund is down 30%. My daughter`s GCSEs cancelled. What jobs can these school leavers expect with a destroyed economy?
I`ve been saying this all along and I know I`ll be criticised which upsets me so I`m off from the forum for a while so don`t bother.
I think I have a winner for dickhead question this evening. Is the government allowing big building sites open only because they got a donation from a firm?
If it was only about business donors, they wouldn't have shut any business, they would be going full Trump.
A very interesting article in the FT (no paywall); Oxford epidemiologists think that there might be far more undetected cases than the Imperial College modelling shows, with as much as half the UK population already infected. Could be good news if true:
How could London be suddenly getting loads of hospitalisations if 50% of people had already been infected nationwide (and presumably more than that in London) ?
Severity due to viral load?
But why would viral load be so high now, when it would have been higher when 50% of people were getting infected?
Most tests are still coming back negative at the moment.
If people have had it and recovered (i.e. eliminated/virtually eliminated the virus from their bodies) then the current tests (for virus present in the samples) would come back negative.
Other reasons to doubt the model, but a lack of current positive tests is not necessarily one of them.
I haven' seen anyone else mention it yet,so I quote from the Guardian live blog:
The British government is not taking part in European Union procurement schemes to buy ventilators, protective gear for medical staff or coronavirus testing kit, the Guardian understands.
UK and EU sources confirmed the government is not currently participating in any of the EU’s bulk-buying schemes linked to tackling coronavirus.
The UK’s absence from the schemes emerged as the European commission declared on Tuesday that a joint effort to buy protective medical gear on behalf of 25 member states was “a success”.
The commission said it expected the equipment to be available two weeks after the member states leading the procurement sign the contracts.
Two other procurement schemes, to supply ventilators and laboratory equipment needed for coronavirus testing, are at an earlier stage, with calls for tenders launched last week. Nearly all EU countries, 25 out of 27, are participating in the procurement scheme on ventilators, while 19 are joining forces to buy laboratory equipment.
The government is Brexiteer stupid. By all means look for other sources but if you have access to a supply for vital equipment you take it.
A very interesting article in the FT (no paywall); Oxford epidemiologists think that there might be far more undetected cases than the Imperial College modelling shows, with as much as half the UK population already infected. Could be good news if true:
How could London be suddenly getting loads of hospitalisations if 50% of people had already been infected nationwide (and presumably more than that in London) ?
The theory would be that 50% are infected, but a much smaller proportion are symptomatic, and a smaller number again bad enough to need medical care.
That alone is enough to swamp medical capacity.
The virus will keep going, it still has the other 50% of the popn to work through...
I haven' seen anyone else mention it yet,so I quote from the Guardian live blog:
The British government is not taking part in European Union procurement schemes to buy ventilators, protective gear for medical staff or coronavirus testing kit, the Guardian understands.
UK and EU sources confirmed the government is not currently participating in any of the EU’s bulk-buying schemes linked to tackling coronavirus.
The UK’s absence from the schemes emerged as the European commission declared on Tuesday that a joint effort to buy protective medical gear on behalf of 25 member states was “a success”.
The commission said it expected the equipment to be available two weeks after the member states leading the procurement sign the contracts.
Two other procurement schemes, to supply ventilators and laboratory equipment needed for coronavirus testing, are at an earlier stage, with calls for tenders launched last week. Nearly all EU countries, 25 out of 27, are participating in the procurement scheme on ventilators, while 19 are joining forces to buy laboratory equipment.
The government is Brexiteer stupid. By all means look for other sources but if you have access to a supply for vital equipment you take it.
The key word there are 'the Guardian understands'. Nuff said.
Hancock has stuck it to Khan this evening, TFL must run it at maximum possible capacity.
That isn't the answer though it's the best I expected from the hapless Hancock. The advice is to stay at home and not travel - the tubes are not full of essential key workers but construction workers and others who are unable to comply with the Government regulations because either their employers won't let them or they are terrified of losing a job on which they are dependent.
In the US, President Donald Tump has been cautioning against a prolonged shut down or issuing stay-at-home orders.
Trump, speaking a virtual ‘town hall’ meeting, said that a country could be destroyed by shutting it down and pointed to other causes of large numbers of death in an attempt to defend his administration’s approach to the coronavirus outbreak.
“Well you have to make the decision. I brought some numbers here. We lose thousands and thousands of people per year to the flu. We don’t turn the country off,” Trump said.
“We lose thousands of people a year to the flu. We never turn the country off. We lose thousands of people per year to automobile accidents.”
That appearance by Trump is being covered in detail here by my colleagues in the US
Deputy Chief Medical Officer making it clear in her view those trying to compare death numbers across countries are comparing apples and oranges at this stage.
Sweden and Israel going for herd immunity it seems. Are there others? Has Netherlands stopped?
Source for Israel? As I understand it, they moved into full lockdown long before we did, and on the basis of far fewer cases/deaths. They also have the advantage of huge standing and reserve armies to implement it.
Hello all, I just joined this forum after lurking for a while.
I actually joined in order to ask what the collective opinion of Nassim Taleb is?
I have read the Black Swan and thought it was good (though would have preferred if it was an essay).
Though I have a suspicion he doesn't understand this crisis (he has in the past said no one knows anything, perhaps he should extend that to himself).
He seems quite arrogant, I have a sneaking suspicion he isn't half as clever as he thinks he is.
Also any suggestions on other popular writers on the topic of risk, that I may want to read?
Cheers
Read this rant of mine and this follow-up to see why I wasn't impressed with one of his more recent interventions on Corona, not gonna bore PB by reposting them in full!!
Also ... why stick with "popular writers"? A lot of pop-sci writing is pretty cruddy, unfortunately, especially writers who have developed the art of a particular format (a "neat" and shareable TED talk, a quotable book which cherrypicks research from different areas to suggest there's some underlying theme) and frankly books and TED talks get out of date pretty fast (e.g. no doubting Daniel Kahneman is a great guy and if you're not aware of the key findings of his research you're going through life with blinkers on - but lots of people still try to "catch up" with him by reading his more accessible "Thinking Fast and Slow" which has had huge sections rendered redundant by the Replication Crisis in psychology). There's something to be said for doing some "proper" rather than "popular" education and getting yourself up to the level where you can handle reading an actual research paper. Now obviously you can't do this for every topic in the world, but understanding topics like risk and biases is pretty fundamental. Would also have to say undergraduate-level textbooks are often surprisingly accessible and often a wiser investment than a pop-sci book!
Thanks for the tips, yes I have heard this field be referenced as "insight porn".
My fear about going to the "proper" research books is not being able to handle the maths, but obviously I could try to improve that.
Hancock has stuck it to Khan this evening, TFL must run it at maximum possible capacity.
That isn't the answer though it's the best I expected from the hapless Hancock. The advice is to stay at home and not travel - the tubes are not full of essential key workers but construction workers and others who are unable to comply with the Government regulations because either their employers won't let them or they are terrified of losing a job on which they are dependent.
Yes and no...my understanding is they are running it on a sunday service and with loads of stations closed.
But yes the government does need to get on to the more tw@tish businesses who seem to think they are essential when they aren't, in the way I am guessing Mike Ashley got a call last night to tell him to pack it in.
I haven' seen anyone else mention it yet,so I quote from the Guardian live blog:
The British government is not taking part in European Union procurement schemes to buy ventilators, protective gear for medical staff or coronavirus testing kit, the Guardian understands.
UK and EU sources confirmed the government is not currently participating in any of the EU’s bulk-buying schemes linked to tackling coronavirus.
The UK’s absence from the schemes emerged as the European commission declared on Tuesday that a joint effort to buy protective medical gear on behalf of 25 member states was “a success”.
The commission said it expected the equipment to be available two weeks after the member states leading the procurement sign the contracts.
Two other procurement schemes, to supply ventilators and laboratory equipment needed for coronavirus testing, are at an earlier stage, with calls for tenders launched last week. Nearly all EU countries, 25 out of 27, are participating in the procurement scheme on ventilators, while 19 are joining forces to buy laboratory equipment.
Forgive my possible overcynicism, but bitter past experience with public sector procurement processes compels me to ask: how long is it expected/likely to take for the contracts to be signed?
Given how calm the overall situation is and how relaxed the responses from national health authorities are, it seems reasonable to expect that your "past bitter experiences" will be exactly replicated.
In the US, President Donald Tump has been cautioning against a prolonged shut down or issuing stay-at-home orders.
Trump, speaking a virtual ‘town hall’ meeting, said that a country could be destroyed by shutting it down and pointed to other causes of large numbers of death in an attempt to defend his administration’s approach to the coronavirus outbreak.
“Well you have to make the decision. I brought some numbers here. We lose thousands and thousands of people per year to the flu. We don’t turn the country off,” Trump said.
“We lose thousands of people a year to the flu. We never turn the country off. We lose thousands of people per year to automobile accidents.”
That appearance by Trump is being covered in detail here by my colleagues in the US
It's a 2 hour virtual town hall on Fox News. They have Trump, Pence, Birx and surgeon general Adams in the Rose Garden.
Deputy Chief Medical Officer making it clear in her view those trying to compare death numbers across countries are comparing apples and oranges at this stage.
It pretty much confirms what we've suspected for some time on PB, that Germany is measuring deaths in a different way to other countries.
A very interesting article in the FT (no paywall); Oxford epidemiologists think that there might be far more undetected cases than the Imperial College modelling shows, with as much as half the UK population already infected. Could be good news if true:
How could London be suddenly getting loads of hospitalisations if 50% of people had already been infected nationwide (and presumably more than that in London) ?
The theory would be that 50% are infected, but a much smaller proportion are symptomatic, and a smaller number again bad enough to need medical care.
That alone is enough to swamp medical capacity.
The virus will keep going, it still has the other 50% of the popn to work through...
That isn't how viruses (viri?) work. Herd immunity kicks in bigly past about 60%, because most of the potential carriers are immune. So it should slow down significantly from this point onwards, if it's true that 50% have had it and now have had immunity conferred upon them.
I keep wondering if I actually had it last November. I know this makes no sense, but the bug I caught then was like nothing else I've ever experienced, and matched the experiences of people with positive CV19 diagnoses almost exactly - fever, dry cough, breathing difficulties. The latter in particular was scary as hell. It also hung around for a few weeks, and re-strengthened after I went back to work prematurely, which also seems to tie in with what's being reported.
A very interesting article in the FT (no paywall); Oxford epidemiologists think that there might be far more undetected cases than the Imperial College modelling shows, with as much as half the UK population already infected. Could be good news if true:
How could London be suddenly getting loads of hospitalisations if 50% of people had already been infected nationwide (and presumably more than that in London) ?
Severity due to viral load?
But why would viral load be so high now, when it would have been higher when 50% of people were getting infected?
Most tests are still coming back negative at the moment.
If people have had it and recovered (i.e. eliminated/virtually eliminated the virus from their bodies) then the current tests (for virus present in the samples) would come back negative.
Other reasons to doubt the model, but a lack of current positive tests is not necessarily one of them.
Oxford v Imperial. Who to believe? Alumni of Cambridge and UCL are disqualified from responding.
Deputy Chief Medical Officer making it clear in her view those trying to compare death numbers across countries are comparing apples and oranges at this stage.
A very interesting article in the FT (no paywall); Oxford epidemiologists think that there might be far more undetected cases than the Imperial College modelling shows, with as much as half the UK population already infected. Could be good news if true:
How could London be suddenly getting loads of hospitalisations if 50% of people had already been infected nationwide (and presumably more than that in London) ?
Previous deaths recorded as respiratory failure/ pneumonia? They would not have been tested for this virus. Hope that they are right or partly right but only random sampling with a reliable immunity test can confirm at this stage. I expect that there will be indirect confirmation/ refutation by the course of the epidemic but more difficult to verify due to multiple factors.
Lockdown will also cost lives. What about suicides due to loss of livelihoods? We have to live with this new virus, at least until a vaccine is found. That`s the reality. I worry that the global response goes much too far, that it is a political response from scared politicians.
Isolating the elderly and vulnerable would have been sensible, but shutting down the economy for everyone is a threat to the livelihoods of everyone and the loss of freedom is simply astonishing. Could the costs end up being worse than the virus itself? These costs will be borne disproportionally by the young.
My family`s plans for the future are pretty much destroyed. My pension fund is down 30%. My daughter`s GCSEs cancelled. What jobs can these school leavers expect with a destroyed economy?
I`ve been saying this all along and I know I`ll be criticised which upsets me so I`m off from the forum for a while so don`t bother.
It does seem absurd that we have to trash the economy to prevent a new virus like this knocking over the NHS.
I bet it would have been much cheaper to have run ICU capacity at ten times what we need for the last umpteen years. Bit like holding excess capital and accepting lower profits in return for a security blanket.
Black Swan insurance. Looks like a waste of money until it isn't.
Hello all, I just joined this forum after lurking for a while.
I actually joined in order to ask what the collective opinion of Nassim Taleb is?
I have read the Black Swan and thought it was good (though would have preferred if it was an essay).
Though I have a suspicion he doesn't understand this crisis (he has in the past said no one knows anything, perhaps he should extend that to himself).
He seems quite arrogant, I have a sneaking suspicion he isn't half as clever as he thinks he is.
Also any suggestions on other popular writers on the topic of risk, that I may want to read?
Cheers
Read this rant of mine and this follow-up to see why I wasn't impressed with one of his more recent interventions on Corona, not gonna bore PB by reposting them in full!!
Also ... why stick with "popular writers"? A lot of pop-sci writing is pretty cruddy, unfortunately, especially writers who have developed the art of a particular format (a "neat" and shareable TED talk, a quotable book which cherrypicks research from different areas to suggest there's some underlying theme) and frankly books and TED talks get out of date pretty fast (e.g. no doubting Daniel Kahneman is a great guy and if you're not aware of the key findings of his research you're going through life with blinkers on - but lots of people still try to "catch up" with him by reading his more accessible "Thinking Fast and Slow" which has had huge sections rendered redundant by the Replication Crisis in psychology). There's something to be said for doing some "proper" rather than "popular" education and getting yourself up to the level where you can handle reading an actual research paper. Now obviously you can't do this for every topic in the world, but understanding topics like risk and biases is pretty fundamental. Would also have to say undergraduate-level textbooks are often surprisingly accessible and often a wiser investment than a pop-sci book!
Thanks for the tips, yes I have heard this field be referenced as "insight porn".
My fear about going to the "proper" research books is not being able to handle the maths, but obviously I could try to improve that.
"Insight porn" is a great name for it! The problem comes when the virality of an idea exceeds its usefulness as a way of describing or explaining the world...
Never been a better time to brush on basic maths'n'stats (I'd also chuck in operational research and decision theory), there are so many more free resources out there online than when I was learning this stuff back when I were nobbut-a-lad.
But it isn't like you need be able to crunch out algebra and calculus yourself either. More important to understand what numbers mean than the exact way the computer calculated them... a lot of people who produce research don't have a clue to be honest. If they grasp the idea of the difference between mean and median and mode, what a standard deviation is, and a confidence interval or p-value, and if we're stretching things, the barebones of Bayesian methods (do you know your prior from your posterior, and what's a credible interval?) you're doing okay!
I'd say a good understanding of statistical sins is important - how can data be compared or presented to produce misleading results. How to lie with statistics is the classic, but Ben Goldacre has written some good stuff about various statistical cheats and fiddles or downright mistakes that crop up way too often in medical research.
I haven' seen anyone else mention it yet,so I quote from the Guardian live blog:
The British government is not taking part in European Union procurement schemes to buy ventilators, protective gear for medical staff or coronavirus testing kit, the Guardian understands.
UK and EU sources confirmed the government is not currently participating in any of the EU’s bulk-buying schemes linked to tackling coronavirus.
The UK’s absence from the schemes emerged as the European commission declared on Tuesday that a joint effort to buy protective medical gear on behalf of 25 member states was “a success”.
The commission said it expected the equipment to be available two weeks after the member states leading the procurement sign the contracts.
Two other procurement schemes, to supply ventilators and laboratory equipment needed for coronavirus testing, are at an earlier stage, with calls for tenders launched last week. Nearly all EU countries, 25 out of 27, are participating in the procurement scheme on ventilators, while 19 are joining forces to buy laboratory equipment.
Forgive my possible overcynicism, but bitter past experience with public sector procurement processes compels me to ask: how long is it expected/likely to take for the contracts to be signed?
Given how calm the overall situation is and how relaxed the responses from national health authorities are, it seems reasonable to expect that your "past bitter experiences" will be exactly replicated.
The point is, Endillion's cynicism towards public procurement should apply even more so to the "British ventilators" as that ventilator isn't fully designed yet and hasn't been productised at all by those fingered to make it. Not saying that the new ventilator shouldn't be progressed, but having another source in the bag seems a good idea and it appears only Brexit ideology is preventing it being taken up. We won't have enough of these things and should go for as many as we can get.
Hope people realise the lockdownsare gonna need several weeks if not months before the tide turns.
Hope the government realise that this lockdown will tolerated for a month at best. If we get a hot spell in mid April like last year it will be all over.
A very interesting article in the FT (no paywall); Oxford epidemiologists think that there might be far more undetected cases than the Imperial College modelling shows, with as much as half the UK population already infected. Could be good news if true:
In a way that would be amazing news if 50% of the population already have it.
"The modelling by Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease group indicates that Covid-19 reached the UK by mid-January at the latest."
That would mean Italy probably had it in December, that means it spread from China almost as soon as it emerged. Possible I guess.
The key statistic from their preliminary findings is that only one in a thousand who are infected might need hospital treatment. That is so far along from existing assumptions that it would be a game changer.
It would make stock markets a buy.
It would also explain how quickly things seem to have settled down in China, and even Iran, where hospital cases and deaths seemed to be getting out of hand, then suddenly slowed almost to a halt. The explanation would be that the virus ran out of new victims.
A very interesting article in the FT (no paywall); Oxford epidemiologists think that there might be far more undetected cases than the Imperial College modelling shows, with as much as half the UK population already infected. Could be good news if true:
How could London be suddenly getting loads of hospitalisations if 50% of people had already been infected nationwide (and presumably more than that in London) ?
The theory would be that 50% are infected, but a much smaller proportion are symptomatic, and a smaller number again bad enough to need medical care.
That alone is enough to swamp medical capacity.
The virus will keep going, it still has the other 50% of the popn to work through...
But nowhere near 50% are testing positive. It seems like wishful thinking to me unfortunately.
Hope people realise the lockdownsare gonna need several weeks if not months before the tide turns.
Hope the government realise that this lockdown will tolerated for a month at best. If we get a hot spell in mid April like last year it will be all over.
I think that depends a lot on what's happening in other countries. If lots of places are out of lockdown and with no second spike visible then people will agitate, but if the US has reopened as per Trump's recent comments and is having 10k deaths per day I expect that would quell a lot of dissent over here.
A very interesting article in the FT (no paywall); Oxford epidemiologists think that there might be far more undetected cases than the Imperial College modelling shows, with as much as half the UK population already infected. Could be good news if true:
How could London be suddenly getting loads of hospitalisations if 50% of people had already been infected nationwide (and presumably more than that in London) ?
Severity due to viral load?
But why would viral load be so high now, when it would have been higher when 50% of people were getting infected?
Most tests are still coming back negative at the moment.
If people have had it and recovered (i.e. eliminated/virtually eliminated the virus from their bodies) then the current tests (for virus present in the samples) would come back negative.
Other reasons to doubt the model, but a lack of current positive tests is not necessarily one of them.
Oxford v Imperial. Who to believe? Alumni of Cambridge and UCL are disqualified from responding.
This UCL alumnus wishes to point out that Oxbridge vs Imperial is a wash in our books, and that it's King's we hate above all others.
Hope people realise the lockdownsare gonna need several weeks if not months before the tide turns.
Hope the government realise that this lockdown will tolerated for a month at best. If we get a hot spell in mid April like last year it will be all over.
There were more people out and about in the park and along the coastal path today than for the last fortnight, presumably because so many more aren’t working now. And the weather is suddenly like spring.
Hope people realise the lockdownsare gonna need several weeks if not months before the tide turns.
Hope the government realise that this lockdown will tolerated for a month at best. If we get a hot spell in mid April like last year it will be all over.
There were more people out and about in the park and along the coastal path today than for the last fortnight, presumably because so many more aren’t working now. And the weather is suddenly like spring.
A very interesting article in the FT (no paywall); Oxford epidemiologists think that there might be far more undetected cases than the Imperial College modelling shows, with as much as half the UK population already infected. Could be good news if true:
How could London be suddenly getting loads of hospitalisations if 50% of people had already been infected nationwide (and presumably more than that in London) ?
Severity due to viral load?
But why would viral load be so high now, when it would have been higher when 50% of people were getting infected?
Most tests are still coming back negative at the moment.
If people have had it and recovered (i.e. eliminated/virtually eliminated the virus from their bodies) then the current tests (for virus present in the samples) would come back negative.
Other reasons to doubt the model, but a lack of current positive tests is not necessarily one of them.
Oxford v Imperial. Who to believe? Alumni of Cambridge and UCL are disqualified from responding.
Pray that it is Oxford, and the antibodies test confirms in very quick order.
A very interesting article in the FT (no paywall); Oxford epidemiologists think that there might be far more undetected cases than the Imperial College modelling shows, with as much as half the UK population already infected. Could be good news if true:
A very interesting article in the FT (no paywall); Oxford epidemiologists think that there might be far more undetected cases than the Imperial College modelling shows, with as much as half the UK population already infected. Could be good news if true:
How could London be suddenly getting loads of hospitalisations if 50% of people had already been infected nationwide (and presumably more than that in London) ?
Severity due to viral load?
But why would viral load be so high now, when it would have been higher when 50% of people were getting infected?
Most tests are still coming back negative at the moment.
If people have had it and recovered (i.e. eliminated/virtually eliminated the virus from their bodies) then the current tests (for virus present in the samples) would come back negative.
Other reasons to doubt the model, but a lack of current positive tests is not necessarily one of them.
Oxford v Imperial. Who to believe? Alumni of Cambridge and UCL are disqualified from responding.
For the first time in my life I'm rooting for the dump, I'm not chanting GDBO on this occasion.
Is anyone keeping a note of companies to have trashed their reputation during the current crisis? So far I have Britannia Hotels, Wetherspoons and JD Sports. Any others?
Assuming Mike Ashley's reputation couldn't get any lower?
I haven' seen anyone else mention it yet,so I quote from the Guardian live blog:
The British government is not taking part in European Union procurement schemes to buy ventilators, protective gear for medical staff or coronavirus testing kit, the Guardian understands.
UK and EU sources confirmed the government is not currently participating in any of the EU’s bulk-buying schemes linked to tackling coronavirus.
The UK’s absence from the schemes emerged as the European commission declared on Tuesday that a joint effort to buy protective medical gear on behalf of 25 member states was “a success”.
The commission said it expected the equipment to be available two weeks after the member states leading the procurement sign the contracts.
Two other procurement schemes, to supply ventilators and laboratory equipment needed for coronavirus testing, are at an earlier stage, with calls for tenders launched last week. Nearly all EU countries, 25 out of 27, are participating in the procurement scheme on ventilators, while 19 are joining forces to buy laboratory equipment.
Forgive my possible overcynicism, but bitter past experience with public sector procurement processes compels me to ask: how long is it expected/likely to take for the contracts to be signed?
Given how calm the overall situation is and how relaxed the responses from national health authorities are, it seems reasonable to expect that your "past bitter experiences" will be exactly replicated.
The point is, Endillion's cynicism towards public procurement should apply even more so to the "British ventilators" as that ventilator isn't fully designed yet and hasn't been productised at all by those fingered to make it. Not saying that the new ventilator shouldn't be progressed, but having another source in the bag seems a good idea and it appears only Brexit ideology is preventing it being taken up. We won't have enough of these things and should go for as many as we can get.
Yes, I think the question should be "is there a viable alternative to public sector procurement processes"?
Any public health authority will be streamlining its procurement processes and drop bureaucratic hurdles as much as possible in the current situation. And I don't see any alternative to "public sector procurement" right now.
Hope people realise the lockdownsare gonna need several weeks if not months before the tide turns.
Hope the government realise that this lockdown will tolerated for a month at best. If we get a hot spell in mid April like last year it will be all over.
Not tolerated? Why can’t they just do as they are told, could see the argument if it was after six months but 4 weeks?
A very interesting article in the FT (no paywall); Oxford epidemiologists think that there might be far more undetected cases than the Imperial College modelling shows, with as much as half the UK population already infected. Could be good news if true:
How could London be suddenly getting loads of hospitalisations if 50% of people had already been infected nationwide (and presumably more than that in London) ?
Severity due to viral load?
But why would viral load be so high now, when it would have been higher when 50% of people were getting infected?
Most tests are still coming back negative at the moment.
If people have had it and recovered (i.e. eliminated/virtually eliminated the virus from their bodies) then the current tests (for virus present in the samples) would come back negative.
Other reasons to doubt the model, but a lack of current positive tests is not necessarily one of them.
Oxford v Imperial. Who to believe? Alumni of Cambridge and UCL are disqualified from responding.
For the first time in my life I'm rooting for the dump, I'm not chanting GDBO on this occasion.
Conversely, as an Oxford man I have always thought Trinity College Cambridge was the scientific gold standard. Perhaps they could pull their finger out?
Hope people realise the lockdownsare gonna need several weeks if not months before the tide turns.
Hope the government realise that this lockdown will tolerated for a month at best. If we get a hot spell in mid April like last year it will be all over.
There were more people out and about in the park and along the coastal path today than for the last fortnight, presumably because so many more aren’t working now. And the weather is suddenly like spring.
Hope people realise the lockdownsare gonna need several weeks if not months before the tide turns.
Hope the government realise that this lockdown will tolerated for a month at best. If we get a hot spell in mid April like last year it will be all over.
I think that depends a lot on what's happening in other countries. If lots of places are out of lockdown and with no second spike visible then people will agitate, but if the US has reopened as per Trump's recent comments and is having 10k deaths per day I expect that would quell a lot of dissent over here.
It’s not just attitudes though - if temperatures hit 25C+then it will be uncomfortably warm at home, perhaps even dangerously so. Anyone who lives in a flat will not be staying at home.
There is a prominent politician with form for Yes Minister references. Ms Arcuri's company was named Hacker House, after the distinguished former prime minister.
Hope people realise the lockdownsare gonna need several weeks if not months before the tide turns.
Hope the government realise that this lockdown will tolerated for a month at best. If we get a hot spell in mid April like last year it will be all over.
There were more people out and about in the park and along the coastal path today than for the last fortnight, presumably because so many more aren’t working now. And the weather is suddenly like spring.
A very interesting article in the FT (no paywall); Oxford epidemiologists think that there might be far more undetected cases than the Imperial College modelling shows, with as much as half the UK population already infected. Could be good news if true:
How could London be suddenly getting loads of hospitalisations if 50% of people had already been infected nationwide (and presumably more than that in London) ?
The theory would be that 50% are infected, but a much smaller proportion are symptomatic, and a smaller number again bad enough to need medical care.
That alone is enough to swamp medical capacity.
The virus will keep going, it still has the other 50% of the popn to work through...
But nowhere near 50% are testing positive. It seems like wishful thinking to me unfortunately.
Re the Imperial model, the following thread will reassure all the coders here...
The Oxford model is massively simpler than the ones in the Imperial study or the in-house ones at PHE (there's some cross-over of staff between the Imperial, PHE and LSHTM teams in fact ... almost certainly need to bung some other unis in there too, a lot of the modelling code has a very long life of its own and the people who contribute it do tend to flit between institutions).
If the Oxford results seem at variance with other data sources, remember they're simply not inputs to the model at all - no testing data, no ICU data, no location or age data (the Oxford model isn't compartmentalised either by age or by region!), just the national daily deaths. (Unless I misread when I skimmed the paper...)
OK. Full Italian numbers are out, and while they are worse than yesterday they are broadly supportive of the thesis that (a) cases have peaked in Veneto and Lombardy, and (b) they are close to peak in the rest of Italy.
1. Tests increased 17,066 yesterday to 21,496 today. Positive cases increased from 3,780 to 5,249. The increase looks to be due to more testing, rather than greater virus incidence.
Most importantly, if we discount yesterday as the low number of tests distort the figures somewhat, then this is the lowest Italian new cases number since 18 March (when they were also running significantly fewer tests).
2. The number of positive tests in Lombardy (1,942), while higher than yesterday is 40% below peak. There is a similar trend in Veneto (443) where it is 25% below peak.
We will need to see more numbers to confirm this trend. However, it is reasonable to hope than new infections will be below 1,000/day by the middle of next week, and to drop to the low hundreds by the same time the week after.
I still can't get my head round the fact that 44,000 people died in the UK from flu in thw winter of 2014/2015 and nobody raised as much as an eyebrow.
I get that this virus is much worse but 44,000 flu deaths! Blinking heck, across five months that's 9k per month (roughly 300 a day). That's still big numbers.
I`m with you. I think it`s because CV-19 is new and scary. And there is no vaccine yet. I continue to believe - though my view is not well represented on this forum - that the global response is an error. A very serious health crisis is being parlayed into a very serious economic and loss of liberty crisis.
I'm in the 'overblown' camp. I accept we need to protect the NHS and some special measures are required for this virus but completely collapsing the economy seems a bit barking to me when the maximum number of deaths was considered to be 400k (250k of whom would likely die anyway). I'm pretty sure we could have cut that 400k armageddon prediction by a third just by forcibly isolating over 70s for three months.
Given the amount of money which the government is throwing at this, the NHS could have been massively supported with just a proportion of this sum over the crisis period.
Lockdown will also cost lives. What about suicides due to loss of livelihoods? We have to live with this new virus, at least until a vaccine is found. That`s the reality. I worry that the global response goes much too far, that it is a political response from scared politicians.
Isolating the elderly and vulnerable would have been sensible, but shutting down the economy for everyone is a threat to the livelihoods of everyone and the loss of freedom is simply astonishing. Could the costs end up being worse than the virus itself? These costs will be borne disproportionally by the young.
My family`s plans for the future are pretty much destroyed. My pension fund is down 30%. My daughter`s GCSEs cancelled. What jobs can these school leavers expect with a destroyed economy?
I`ve been saying this all along and I know I`ll be criticised which upsets me so I`m off from the forum for a while so don`t bother.
A very interesting article in the FT (no paywall); Oxford epidemiologists think that there might be far more undetected cases than the Imperial College modelling shows, with as much as half the UK population already infected. Could be good news if true:
In a way that would be amazing news if 50% of the population already have it.
"The modelling by Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease group indicates that Covid-19 reached the UK by mid-January at the latest."
That would mean Italy probably had it in December, that means it spread from China almost as soon as it emerged. Possible I guess.
The key statistic from their preliminary findings is that only one in a thousand who are infected might need hospital treatment. That is so far along from existing assumptions that it would be a game changer.
It would make stock markets a buy.
It would also explain how quickly things seem to have settled down in China, and even Iran, where hospital cases and deaths seemed to be getting out of hand, then suddenly slowed almost to a halt. The explanation would be that the virus ran out of new victims.
On the basis of buy on the rumour I've just thrown another grand into the market.
To allay Fenster's alarm somewhat, in the UK approx. 800,000 people die every year, mostly from old age. Doctors rarely sign a death certificate attributing the cause of death as 'old age' but insert the illness - flu, pneumonia - that tipped them over the edge. It is likely that these figures are totted up and added to the figures for flu deaths and it is only when the flu season increases this figure dramatically that it makes news. Unfortunately, I can't include road deaths or air pollution deaths in this hypothesis.
Quiet out and about on my run just now. And 100% observance of social distancing, runners and dog walkers alike veering almost ostentatiously onto grass verges and into the road.
Observance hereabouts very strong. But it's only day 2...
I still can't get my head round the fact that 44,000 people died in the UK from flu in thw winter of 2014/2015 and nobody raised as much as an eyebrow.
I get that this virus is much worse but 44,000 flu deaths! Blinking heck, across five months that's 9k per month (roughly 300 a day). That's still big numbers.
I`m with you. I think it`s because CV-19 is new and scary. And there is no vaccine yet. I continue to believe - though my view is not well represented on this forum - that the global response is an error. A very serious health crisis is being parlayed into a very serious economic and loss of liberty crisis.
I'm in the 'overblown' camp. I accept we need to protect the NHS and some special measures are required for this virus but completely collapsing the economy seems a bit barking to me when the maximum number of deaths was considered to be 400k (250k of whom would likely die anyway). I'm pretty sure we could have cut that 400k armageddon prediction by a third just by forcibly isolating over 70s for three months.
Given the amount of money which the government is throwing at this, the NHS could have been massively supported with just a proportion of this sum over the crisis period.
Lockdown will also cost lives. What about suicides due to loss of livelihoods? We have to live with this new virus, at least until a vaccine is found. That`s the reality. I worry that the global response goes much too far, that it is a political response from scared politicians.
Isolating the elderly and vulnerable would have been sensible, but shutting down the economy for everyone is a threat to the livelihoods of everyone and the loss of freedom is simply astonishing. Could the costs end up being worse than the virus itself? These costs will be borne disproportionally by the young.
My family`s plans for the future are pretty much destroyed. My pension fund is down 30%. My daughter`s GCSEs cancelled. What jobs can these school leavers expect with a destroyed economy?
I`ve been saying this all along and I know I`ll be criticised which upsets me so I`m off from the forum for a while so don`t bother.
This is a complicated subject and there are people around with far more expertise than me on this. But some tips:-
1. Do you know what types of apple and pear trees you have? Ie eating or cooking apples.
2. You can lop off the very tall branches waving about at the top. You will lose this year’s crop though - from those branches anyway.
3. The ideal time to prune is in early winter - after the fruit has been picked. Then you can do a really vigorous cutback: take out the straggly stems at the top and side and some of the centre branches so as to let light and air into the centre of the tree. Aim for a sort of wine glass / goblet shape - and don’t be afraid to prune hard - cut just above a leaf node rather than any old where in the middle of the branch.
4. A vigorous pruning in winter will stimulate the plant to send out new fresh shoots lower down and next year’s crop will be easier to pick and the trees more attractive to look at.
5. Given how straggly they look now I would be inclined to take out any obviously dead or unattractive looking stems now - just a few - then a bit more pruning of the taller stems in mid-summer (August onwards) and then a really good winter pruning to get the trees down to a smaller and more attractive shape in mid-winter: November onwards. That will make it much easier to keep on top of the pruning every year since the trees will just need a general trim to stay in shape.
6. Worth also looking closely at the branches to make sure there are no diseased branches. And if there are cutting them off. The RHS website has quite a good description of the sorts of problems fruit trees can face.
Hope this helps. Also make sure the secateurs are the right size for the thicker branches.
I'm not sure it's sound maths to try comparing day by day.
If, in a few days, our rates have continued to move away from Italy AND it's confirmed that there isn't a change in measurement that's affecting everything, then we can *maybe* start thinking a little more positively. Until then I wouldn't draw any conclusions at all.
Me neither, that’s why I am highlighting the person who did it when he thought it was a way of having a risk free pop at our government - if we’d stayed on Italy’s trajectory, he’d have been pointing it out... we haven’t so he isn’t.
A very interesting article in the FT (no paywall); Oxford epidemiologists think that there might be far more undetected cases than the Imperial College modelling shows, with as much as half the UK population already infected. Could be good news if true:
In a way that would be amazing news if 50% of the population already have it.
"The modelling by Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease group indicates that Covid-19 reached the UK by mid-January at the latest."
That would mean Italy probably had it in December, that means it spread from China almost as soon as it emerged. Possible I guess.
The key statistic from their preliminary findings is that only one in a thousand who are infected might need hospital treatment. That is so far along from existing assumptions that it would be a game changer.
It would make stock markets a buy.
It would also explain how quickly things seem to have settled down in China, and even Iran, where hospital cases and deaths seemed to be getting out of hand, then suddenly slowed almost to a halt. The explanation would be that the virus ran out of new victims.
On the basis of buy on the rumour I've just thrown another grand into the market.
I’ve also started to gingerly buy back some of the stocks I sold in February, I still think the magnitude of the bad news likely from the US will drive markets lower, but we are at least at a level that we can be reasonable confident the market will re-achieve in the medium term.
Plus, if the good news turns out to be on the money, markets will rise.
Plus, if there is an inflationary spike on the back of the stimulus/rescue packages, you don’t want to stay in cash.
There does appear to be a growing collection of data and anecdote hinting that the level of mild/asymptomatic infection might be greater than so far assumed. Perhaps Rand Paul is a white swan; who’d have thought.
Comments
https://naei.beis.gov.uk/emissionsapp/
The British government is not taking part in European Union procurement schemes to buy ventilators, protective gear for medical staff or coronavirus testing kit, the Guardian understands.
UK and EU sources confirmed the government is not currently participating in any of the EU’s bulk-buying schemes linked to tackling coronavirus.
The UK’s absence from the schemes emerged as the European commission declared on Tuesday that a joint effort to buy protective medical gear on behalf of 25 member states was “a success”.
The commission said it expected the equipment to be available two weeks after the member states leading the procurement sign the contracts.
Two other procurement schemes, to supply ventilators and laboratory equipment needed for coronavirus testing, are at an earlier stage, with calls for tenders launched last week. Nearly all EU countries, 25 out of 27, are participating in the procurement scheme on ventilators, while 19 are joining forces to buy laboratory equipment.
1. More contagious;
2. More dangerous; and
3. We don't have a vaccine.
So comparing the responses doesn't necessarily make our reaction now look out of place.
Kay Burley was wasting every bodies time asking a niche question about a freelance journalist friend who was thinking about covering this story.
If the government was to literally go through every single scenario, they would have to be on rolling news 24hrs a day.
Highly recommend https://medium.com/@d_spiegel as has already been pointed out by others.
Also ... why stick with "popular writers"? A lot of pop-sci writing is pretty cruddy, unfortunately, especially writers who have developed the art of a particular format (a "neat" and shareable TED talk, a quotable book which cherrypicks research from different areas to suggest there's some underlying theme) and frankly books and TED talks get out of date pretty fast (e.g. no doubting Daniel Kahneman is a great guy and if you're not aware of the key findings of his research you're going through life with blinkers on - but lots of people still try to "catch up" with him by reading his more accessible "Thinking Fast and Slow" which has had huge sections rendered redundant by the Replication Crisis in psychology). There's something to be said for doing some "proper" rather than "popular" education and getting yourself up to the level where you can handle reading an actual research paper. Now obviously you can't do this for every topic in the world, but understanding topics like risk and biases is pretty fundamental. Would also have to say undergraduate-level textbooks are often surprisingly accessible and often a wiser investment than a pop-sci book!
Watch the birdie!
Currently infected: 54.030 (+3.612)
Deaths: 6.820 (+743)
Healed: 8.326 (+894)
Total new cases: 5.249
I would say it is mainly down to counting things differently, time factors, and the different age profiles of the first cases.
The BBC and friends have been very keen to have a go at the NHS and its masters, by praising other systems - eg Italy best in the world (really - doesn't seem to exist much in the south).
Time will tell.
But I do not know that many people. I used to, but not so much now. You lose touch, people move away, they die.
Lockdown will also cost lives. What about suicides due to loss of livelihoods? We have to live with this new virus, at least until a vaccine is found. That`s the reality. I worry that the global response goes much too far, that it is a political response from scared politicians.
Isolating the elderly and vulnerable would have been sensible, but shutting down the economy for everyone is a threat to the livelihoods of everyone and the loss of freedom is simply astonishing. Could the costs end up being worse than the virus itself? These costs will be borne disproportionally by the young.
My family`s plans for the future are pretty much destroyed. My pension fund is down 30%. My daughter`s GCSEs cancelled. What jobs can these school leavers expect with a destroyed economy?
I`ve been saying this all along and I know I`ll be criticised which upsets me so I`m off from the forum for a while so don`t bother.
If it was only about business donors, they wouldn't have shut any business, they would be going full Trump.
Other reasons to doubt the model, but a lack of current positive tests is not necessarily one of them.
That alone is enough to swamp medical capacity.
The virus will keep going, it still has the other 50% of the popn to work through...
Is the 743 new deaths in Italy more or less than recent numbers?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/
But then the tide has to go out again.
In the US, President Donald Tump has been cautioning against a prolonged shut down or issuing stay-at-home orders.
Trump, speaking a virtual ‘town hall’ meeting, said that a country could be destroyed by shutting it down and pointed to other causes of large numbers of death in an attempt to defend his administration’s approach to the coronavirus outbreak.
“Well you have to make the decision. I brought some numbers here. We lose thousands and thousands of people per year to the flu. We don’t turn the country off,” Trump said.
“We lose thousands of people a year to the flu. We never turn the country off. We lose thousands of people per year to automobile accidents.”
That appearance by Trump is being covered in detail here by my colleagues in the US
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/1584727140-bennett-isolating-the-elderly-as-nation-develops-herd-immunity-is-key-to-defeating-virus
but I first saw it on guido some days ago.
My fear about going to the "proper" research books is not being able to handle the maths, but obviously I could try to improve that.
But yes the government does need to get on to the more tw@tish businesses who seem to think they are essential when they aren't, in the way I am guessing Mike Ashley got a call last night to tell him to pack it in.
I keep wondering if I actually had it last November. I know this makes no sense, but the bug I caught then was like nothing else I've ever experienced, and matched the experiences of people with positive CV19 diagnoses almost exactly - fever, dry cough, breathing difficulties. The latter in particular was scary as hell. It also hung around for a few weeks, and re-strengthened after I went back to work prematurely, which also seems to tie in with what's being reported.
https://video.foxnews.com/v/5614615980001#sp=watch-live
I bet it would have been much cheaper to have run ICU capacity at ten times what we need for the last umpteen years. Bit like holding excess capital and accepting lower profits in return for a security blanket.
Black Swan insurance. Looks like a waste of money until it isn't.
Never been a better time to brush on basic maths'n'stats (I'd also chuck in operational research and decision theory), there are so many more free resources out there online than when I was learning this stuff back when I were nobbut-a-lad.
But it isn't like you need be able to crunch out algebra and calculus yourself either. More important to understand what numbers mean than the exact way the computer calculated them... a lot of people who produce research don't have a clue to be honest. If they grasp the idea of the difference between mean and median and mode, what a standard deviation is, and a confidence interval or p-value, and if we're stretching things, the barebones of Bayesian methods (do you know your prior from your posterior, and what's a credible interval?) you're doing okay!
I'd say a good understanding of statistical sins is important - how can data be compared or presented to produce misleading results. How to lie with statistics is the classic, but Ben Goldacre has written some good stuff about various statistical cheats and fiddles or downright mistakes that crop up way too often in medical research.
It would make stock markets a buy.
It would also explain how quickly things seem to have settled down in China, and even Iran, where hospital cases and deaths seemed to be getting out of hand, then suddenly slowed almost to a halt. The explanation would be that the virus ran out of new victims.
Trump asks "do you blame the Governor for that?" - ignored
Then, we can all get on with our lives.
Any public health authority will be streamlining its procurement processes and drop bureaucratic hurdles as much as possible in the current situation. And I don't see any alternative to "public sector procurement" right now.
The only question is which subject I'll teach, I've shortlisted it to maths, history, languages, and the sciences.
In fact I reckon I could become a Vice-Chancellor.
There is a prominent politician with form for Yes Minister references. Ms Arcuri's company was named Hacker House, after the distinguished former prime minister.
https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1241835454707699713
The Oxford model is massively simpler than the ones in the Imperial study or the in-house ones at PHE (there's some cross-over of staff between the Imperial, PHE and LSHTM teams in fact ... almost certainly need to bung some other unis in there too, a lot of the modelling code has a very long life of its own and the people who contribute it do tend to flit between institutions).
If the Oxford results seem at variance with other data sources, remember they're simply not inputs to the model at all - no testing data, no ICU data, no location or age data (the Oxford model isn't compartmentalised either by age or by region!), just the national daily deaths. (Unless I misread when I skimmed the paper...)
1. Tests increased 17,066 yesterday to 21,496 today. Positive cases increased from 3,780 to 5,249. The increase looks to be due to more testing, rather than greater virus incidence.
Most importantly, if we discount yesterday as the low number of tests distort the figures somewhat, then this is the lowest Italian new cases number since 18 March (when they were also running significantly fewer tests).
2. The number of positive tests in Lombardy (1,942), while higher than yesterday is 40% below peak. There is a similar trend in Veneto (443) where it is 25% below peak.
We will need to see more numbers to confirm this trend. However, it is reasonable to hope than new infections will be below 1,000/day by the middle of next week, and to drop to the low hundreds by the same time the week after.
Observance hereabouts very strong. But it's only day 2...
Keep your chin up. This won't be forever.
(For @MattW and anyone else interested).
On the pruning of apple and pear trees:-
This is a complicated subject and there are people around with far more expertise than me on this. But some tips:-
1. Do you know what types of apple and pear trees you have? Ie eating or cooking apples.
2. You can lop off the very tall branches waving about at the top. You will lose this year’s crop though - from those branches anyway.
3. The ideal time to prune is in early winter - after the fruit has been picked. Then you can do a really vigorous cutback: take out the straggly stems at the top and side and some of the centre branches so as to let light and air into the centre of the tree. Aim for a sort of wine glass / goblet shape - and don’t be afraid to prune hard - cut just above a leaf node rather than any old where in the middle of the branch.
4. A vigorous pruning in winter will stimulate the plant to send out new fresh shoots lower down and next year’s crop will be easier to pick and the trees more attractive to look at.
5. Given how straggly they look now I would be inclined to take out any obviously dead or unattractive looking stems now - just a few - then a bit more pruning of the taller stems in mid-summer (August onwards) and then a really good winter pruning to get the trees down to a smaller and more attractive shape in mid-winter: November onwards. That will make it much easier to keep on top of the pruning every year since the trees will just need a general trim to stay in shape.
6. Worth also looking closely at the branches to make sure there are no diseased branches. And if there are cutting them off. The RHS website has quite a good description of the sorts of problems fruit trees can face.
Hope this helps. Also make sure the secateurs are the right size for the thicker branches.
'Just how bad will Covid-19 become for America?'
Every time I make progress, Trump manages to lower the bar for worst case scenario, I'm on my twelfth revision.
Plus, if the good news turns out to be on the money, markets will rise.
Plus, if there is an inflationary spike on the back of the stimulus/rescue packages, you don’t want to stay in cash.
There does appear to be a growing collection of data and anecdote hinting that the level of mild/asymptomatic infection might be greater than so far assumed. Perhaps Rand Paul is a white swan; who’d have thought.