Constant discussion about U.K. potentially being the next Italy/Spain etc, but what about Netherlands (and similar - Belgium). Some absolute horror numbers in areas of Europe which perhaps are going relatively in-noticed because smaller populations meaning smaller numbers of absolute cases. Netherlands, despite having a quarter of U.K. population have half U.K. cases and 2/3 of deaths. Belgium (1/6 population) has half U.K. cases and 1/3 deaths.
Is there constant discussion on that? AFAIK we have fallen well behind Italy's pace.
Whatever happened to that Uk vs Italy “14 days” table ?
It's been filed away next to henrietta's mathematical equations.
I can't work out if we're going to have rampant deflation or rampant inflation from this. I think house prices could take a hit mind.
Who knows. But I reckon it will be inflation.
There's almost no velocity of money now though. Unless you're trying to buy PPE, inflation needs to have a large velocity of money and that has almost stopped.
High unemployment + negative economic growth = downwards pressure on inflation, usually. Oil prices are also at recent lows, and as you say spending is grinding to a halt. The main upwards indicator right now is low interest rates, bu they were already pretty low to start with, so the minor cut shouldn't change much. The massive increase in government spending is mostly just replacing what would've been regular income. My vote is for deflation.
So those people who spent all weekend moving money out of their bank accounts are ahead of the game and writing mug on our foreheads for being slow to act on this? Moving it it to what though? What assets won’t depreciate? jewellery? Water?
Remember again there's someone still working in Downing Street who said Britain didn't really need its farms and fishing fleet.
Sigh - that was in the context of an extreme hypothetical - quite common in Operational Research. You ask - if we take X to an extreme, what is the result Y.
In the case of farming - a large amount of money is spent on subsidy. What do we get for it? What would the landscape be, if we removed it?
A classic in this field was the study in WWII proposing to remove all defensive armament from RAF bombers. If you went all the way to redesigning the planes to not have the structural capability to carry the armament, then they would be 100mph faster and have half the crew. While not adopted, due to the politics of the matter, it is noteworthy that the Air Ministry dropped defensive armament for future designs.
If I recall correctly that was the Mossie, and de Havilland had to virtually build it themselves (full size mockup?) before the Air Ministry would order a single prototype.
Nope - later, after the Mosquito. The idea had been mooted several times by aircraft designers - the basic reasoning was that if you designed for speed, a bomber would be as fast as a fighter. Or nearly. So the intercept curve would be close to impossible.
The Mosquito was nearly binned by the failure of the Blenheim to do exactly that - survive by speed. It worked because the onset of compression effects made speeds above 400mph really, really difficult - otherwise by the time it was in production, speeds would have jumped again, and it would have been another Blenheim. The Mosquito survived with clever lobbying and the promise of testing armament - got as far as a mocked up turret in one prototype IIRC.
De Havilland had some idea of compression issues. As did Supermarine. Famously, Hawker didn't.
The study to remove all defensive armament was after Mosquitos demonstrated *cruise* speeds north of 300, while loaded.
There will come a time (possibly not too far away) when I’d prefer to take my chances with Covid19 - even at risk to my own life - than spend one more day locked down inside my house.
It’s no life.
This is not a personal criticism but it is not about "you". If people respond in this way the more vulnerable members of our society are at increased risk as the virus will have more vectors to facilitate spread.
I can sympathise with your state of mind, indeed I share it. I am lucky enough to live in a place where I can go for a fairly long walk each day with absolutely minimal proximity to anyone. Without that I would be going mad and I still miss meeting up with friends, going for coffee or lunch together, etc enormously. I have some written work to do but I find it incredibly hard to focus on it. My productivity has collapsed. I recognise precursors to depression in this...
I recognise that. I have stuff to do, and am finding it very difficult to apply myself.
Constant discussion about U.K. potentially being the next Italy/Spain etc, but what about Netherlands (and similar - Belgium). Some absolute horror numbers in areas of Europe which perhaps are going relatively in-noticed because smaller populations meaning smaller numbers of absolute cases. Netherlands, despite having a quarter of U.K. population have half U.K. cases and 2/3 of deaths. Belgium (1/6 population) has half U.K. cases and 1/3 deaths.
Sweden is the one to follow - no lockdown.
If they show about the same number of cases / deaths then why bother with a lockdown.
Yep. Sweden will be fascinating and could be really important.
Last I saw Sweden was thinking of changing its approach - Holland tried same and look at how that went for them - their health system is already overwhelmed
@Pulpstar - I think deflation is what should happen. But then that's what should have happened after the GFC. It didn't, and I don't expect governments will allow it to happen this time. The money printed over the next few years will make what happened after the GFC look like a blip.
And Endillion is wrong downthread that the government package is simply "replacing" lost income. Because the lost income, in retail, travel, hospitality and leisure, would have come from other people's bank accounts, and those accounts (i.e. people with steady income - pensioners and many of the employed) simply aren't spending. Meanwhile supply is shrinking as production and trade are disrupted. When this 'wall of money' is released, an inflationary spike looks likely IMO.
The humorous recommendation downthread that Beib_C should plan to spend her 'saving' on shoes makes the point. A lot of people will be chasing fewer shoes.
Dare I say that looks a pretty public sector viewpoint where wages are still being paid and pent up demand being created. A sole trader like me is taking a very substantial hit from this crisis and will have reduced spending for at least the next 2 years. No holidays, no unnecessary travel, make do and mend, retirement date once again fading into the far distance.
Fair challenge. In the medium term I agree some sort of slump is likely. But it remains my view that when the restrictions are loosened and some sort of normality returns, an inflationary spike is a credible risk - arising from the extra money being injected, people's desire to spend, and shortages of supply.
You highlight that the rescue package isn't falling evenly or fairly. The difference between the UK's set of "schemes" and the US 'helicopter money' approach has so far received a lot less attention and analysis in the media than I would have expected?
Constant discussion about U.K. potentially being the next Italy/Spain etc, but what about Netherlands (and similar - Belgium). Some absolute horror numbers in areas of Europe which perhaps are going relatively in-noticed because smaller populations meaning smaller numbers of absolute cases. Netherlands, despite having a quarter of U.K. population have half U.K. cases and 2/3 of deaths. Belgium (1/6 population) has half U.K. cases and 1/3 deaths.
Sweden is the one to follow - no lockdown.
If they show about the same number of cases / deaths then why bother with a lockdown.
Yep. Sweden will be fascinating and could be really important.
Last I saw Sweden was thinking of changing its approach - Holland tried same and look at how that went for them - their health system is already overwhelmed
I think it's probably the correct approach for a 'generic' viral pandemic, but the issue is that this specific viral pandemic requires extensive use of assisted breathing - so the critical path becomes the capacity of the healthcare system to assist people breathing. Which is why we are all stuck at home.
I can't work out if we're going to have rampant deflation or rampant inflation from this. I think house prices could take a hit mind.
Who knows. But I reckon it will be inflation.
There's almost no velocity of money now though. Unless you're trying to buy PPE, inflation needs to have a large velocity of money and that has almost stopped.
High unemployment + negative economic growth = downwards pressure on inflation, usually. Oil prices are also at recent lows, and as you say spending is grinding to a halt. The main upwards indicator right now is low interest rates, bu they were already pretty low to start with, so the minor cut shouldn't change much. The massive increase in government spending is mostly just replacing what would've been regular income. My vote is for deflation.
So those people who spent all weekend moving money out of their bank accounts are ahead of the game and writing mug on our foreheads for being slow to act on this? Moving it it to what though? What assets won’t depreciate? jewellery? Water?
Remember again there's someone still working in Downing Street who said Britain didn't really need its farms and fishing fleet.
Sigh - that was in the context of an extreme hypothetical - quite common in Operational Research. You ask - if we take X to an extreme, what is the result Y.
In the case of farming - a large amount of money is spent on subsidy. What do we get for it? What would the landscape be, if we removed it?
A classic in this field was the study in WWII proposing to remove all defensive armament from RAF bombers. If you went all the way to redesigning the planes to not have the structural capability to carry the armament, then they would be 100mph faster and have half the crew. While not adopted, due to the politics of the matter, it is noteworthy that the Air Ministry dropped defensive armament for future designs.
Fine - but the weakness of that approach to thinking is that you overlook some variable that in reality turns out to be critical.
It appears the "what if we let the young get infected" herd immunity approach (apparently worked up by the UK prior to Corona appearing on the scene) didn't factor in the number of hospital ventilators as a critical constraint.
I doubt that "what if we get rid of all our farms" factored in the possibility that world trade would be seriously interrupted. Had it done so, no-one would be foolish enough to posit such a question in the first place, even as a hypothetical.
I, too, see positives emerging from this. I'm hoping it's an opportunity for re-configuration. The capitalist greed of the world economy which has sought to suck the life out of Mother Nature is being taught a long and very painful karmic lesson.
I also see re-configuration in our personal lives. People are networking in new ways and finding different opportunities to be resourceful. They are also facing up to death: the possibility that it might strike is not something most people consider. Learning a little humility in the face of our mortality is not always a bad thing.
The mighty are being laid low.
I would not be bothered if Covid-19 carried me off. I feel like I have had more than enough of the world already.
Bev - do you have friends and family you can talk to?
Things are not great for sure but they will improve and life for most will go on and lots of people will learn to really appreciate things again rather than taking them for granted.
Agreed - we face an indetermined period of this. Critical that we look after each other's mental health.
Hence the volunteer effort to phone people as a regular check up - that by itself could make a big difference.
I have set up an extended family WhatsApp group, to support some of the more isolated. Seems to have boosted morale somewhat.
In other news Next have offered to make scrubs for our hospital staff. We do not have enough for people to wear who are not theatre or ICU staff, and many staff are reluctant to wear own clothes as per uniform policy, and risk contaminating family and non work areas.
Well done Next. Hope people are keeping a list of 'good' companies.
Next is a Leicester based company, so not sure how wide their offer goes. Welcomed by my colleagues though.
There have been stirrings of mutiny over PPE too, which is ominous, with staff refusing to see patients until it is provided, according to the HSJ (paywalled).
Mr. B, that's terrible to hear. Beyond corona itself, and the economic impact, there's going to be a significant degree of psychological difficulty to handle as well.
I am already suffering on that front Mr Dancer...
Personally, I can understand Herr Schafer's actions.
I am really sorry to hear that.
Stay here and chat, if it helps.
Yes definitely.
Even before this crisis I was only going out of the house twice a week due to my caring duties. Even that level of getting out and not being isolated at home was very very hard to cope with. One of my coping methods has been spending a lot of time on here.
@Pulpstar - I think deflation is what should happen. But then that's what should have happened after the GFC. It didn't, and I don't expect governments will allow it to happen this time. The money printed over the next few years will make what happened after the GFC look like a blip.
And Endillion is wrong downthread that the government package is simply "replacing" lost income. Because the lost income, in retail, travel, hospitality and leisure, would have come from other people's bank accounts, and those accounts (i.e. people with steady income - pensioners and many of the employed) simply aren't spending. Meanwhile supply is shrinking as production and trade are disrupted. When this 'wall of money' is released, an inflationary spike looks likely IMO.
The humorous recommendation downthread that Beib_C should plan to spend her 'saving' on shoes makes the point. A lot of people will be chasing fewer shoes.
Dare I say that looks a pretty public sector viewpoint where wages are still being paid and pent up demand being created. A sole trader like me is taking a very substantial hit from this crisis and will have reduced spending for at least the next 2 years. No holidays, no unnecessary travel, make do and mend, retirement date once again fading into the far distance.
Fair challenge. In the medium term I agree some sort of slump is likely. But it remains my view that when the restrictions are loosened and some sort of normality returns, an inflationary spike is a credible risk - arising from the extra money being injected, people's desire to spend, and shortages of supply.
You highlight that the rescue package isn't falling evenly or fairly. The difference between the UK's set of "schemes" and the US 'helicopter money' approach has so far received a lot less attention and analysis in the media than I would have expected?
We are indulging in massive QE and public spending once again. Last time, in 2008/9 we got away with it because there were enormous deflationary pressures caused by the collapse of trillions of "funny money" pyramids built on supposed securities. This time we don't have that so I agree inflation is a risk, indeed it may be necessary to reduce the debt burden.
On the government's allocation I am not so sure. Whilst I am getting no help it seems right to me that the available help is focused on those most at risk, the gig workers, the casually employed, those on the margins. The US system seems a waste of available resources to me.
As we start to hear from those who are suffering from the isolation aspects of this shutdown, perhaps we can hear an apology from those screaming for Boris to lock us all down sooner?
Johnson looked like shit on Sky News. The engraver is getting ready to start putting @Paristonda on the trophy. I presume the hypothetical tory leadership contest would be Sunak vs Raab. Alien vs Predator.
I notice that a lot of these politicians look shit when they are broadcast from home. Whether it's the likes of Skype that make people look terrible, or whether its the TV makeup department that normally makes people look better, I don't know?
Isn't it just also possible that, with or without illness, they are knackered. I did find the original comment in quite bad taste.
How can renewable energy stay profitable if oil keeps dumping?
It is the capital cost that is the issue with alternative energy, so no new windmills will be built. But those that already exist will continue to turn because there is close to zero marginal cost of production.
More optimistically, an example of catastrophic market failure will finally get the world to introduce a carbon tax, which should be a no-brainer anyway.
Unfortunately, with the most dangerous criminal organisation in history running the most powerful country in the world, it's hard to be optimistic.
I agree. How do we solve a problem like China?
Glad you agree that the US Republican party is the most dangerous organisation in history, and that we need a carbon tax. As for Chinese issues, If you mean by "we" the rest of the world outside China, then good leadership from the USA is also an essential factor.
Agreed. 'We' don't solve a problem like China, unless 'we' is a relatively united front of democracies.
There will come a time (possibly not too far away) when I’d prefer to take my chances with Covid19 - even at risk to my own life - than spend one more day locked down inside my house.
It’s no life.
This is not a personal criticism but it is not about "you". If people respond in this way the more vulnerable members of our society are at increased risk as the virus will have more vectors to facilitate spread.
I can sympathise with your state of mind, indeed I share it. I am lucky enough to live in a place where I can go for a fairly long walk each day with absolutely minimal proximity to anyone. Without that I would be going mad and I still miss meeting up with friends, going for coffee or lunch together, etc enormously. I have some written work to do but I find it incredibly hard to focus on it. My productivity has collapsed. I recognise precursors to depression in this.
It does suggest that the behavioural psychologists who argued that it was important that we didn't lock down too soon rather knew what they were talking about, doesn't it?
TBH I am having no difficulties staying locked down - I don't want to be infected and I don't want to infect others - that really is it as far as I am concerned.
Mind you I was stuck indoors for 3 months in 1981 with hardly any tv and no internet - so this seems a lot easier this time around
The gap between rhetoric and reality is a concern. It appears to be growing.
If press releases and tweets about tests or ventilators saved lives we would not have a problem.
This doesn't appear to be a concern to me. I would prefer that they saved those 3000 tests for those who need them rather than go out and find 3000 people to test to make up the 10,000, interesting though that would be.
I wonder if there is actually a case for a 'poll' test? Would we be able to gage national levels of infection?
Another is that some monitoring is being done I think via the Blood Donation Service. I do not know if that is documented publicly, but I heard that via PHE.
As with any sample regime it needs adjusting - eg blood donors are skewed to the younger and the healthly.
There's always more happening than the media dream of :-) .
@Pulpstar - I think deflation is what should happen. But then that's what should have happened after the GFC. It didn't, and I don't expect governments will allow it to happen this time. The money printed over the next few years will make what happened after the GFC look like a blip.
And Endillion is wrong downthread that the government package is simply "replacing" lost income. Because the lost income, in retail, travel, hospitality and leisure, would have come from other people's bank accounts, and those accounts (i.e. people with steady income - pensioners and many of the employed) simply aren't spending. Meanwhile supply is shrinking as production and trade are disrupted. When this 'wall of money' is released, an inflationary spike looks likely IMO.
The humorous recommendation downthread that Beib_C should plan to spend her 'saving' on shoes makes the point. A lot of people will be chasing fewer shoes.
Dare I say that looks a pretty public sector viewpoint where wages are still being paid and pent up demand being created. A sole trader like me is taking a very substantial hit from this crisis and will have reduced spending for at least the next 2 years. No holidays, no unnecessary travel, make do and mend, retirement date once again fading into the far distance.
Fair challenge. In the medium term I agree some sort of slump is likely. But it remains my view that when the restrictions are loosened and some sort of normality returns, an inflationary spike is a credible risk - arising from the extra money being injected, people's desire to spend, and shortages of supply.
You highlight that the rescue package isn't falling evenly or fairly. The difference between the UK's set of "schemes" and the US 'helicopter money' approach has so far received a lot less attention and analysis in the media than I would have expected?
We are indulging in massive QE and public spending once again. Last time, in 2008/9 we got away with it because there were enormous deflationary pressures caused by the collapse of trillions of "funny money" pyramids built on supposed securities. This time we don't have that so I agree inflation is a risk, indeed it may be necessary to reduce the debt burden.
On the government's allocation I am not so sure. Whilst I am getting no help it seems right to me that the available help is focused on those most at risk, the gig workers, the casually employed, those on the margins. The US system seems a waste of available resources to me.
The risk with the US scheme is that it creates unintended winners, by splurging money to everyone. Doubtless Trump's people had an ulterior motive.
The risk with the UK scheme is that it creates unintended losers - such as the self employed people who fall through the criteria for various reasons, such as recently started businesses, or people paying themselves with dividends.
Personally, I would have taken the US approach, and used the taxation system to recover the costs from those benefiting or relatively unaffected.
I can't work out if we're going to have rampant deflation or rampant inflation from this. I think house prices could take a hit mind.
Who knows. But I reckon it will be inflation.
There's almost no velocity of money now though. Unless you're trying to buy PPE, inflation needs to have a large velocity of money and that has almost stopped.
High unemployment + negative economic growth = downwards pressure on inflation, usually. Oil prices are also at recent lows, and as you say spending is grinding to a halt. The main upwards indicator right now is low interest rates, bu they were already pretty low to start with, so the minor cut shouldn't change much. The massive increase in government spending is mostly just replacing what would've been regular income. My vote is for deflation.
So those people who spent all weekend moving money out of their bank accounts are ahead of the game and writing mug on our foreheads for being slow to act on this? Moving it it to what though? What assets won’t depreciate? jewellery? Water?
Did you ever think you would read a Bloomberg article like it in your lifetime? English millennials Josh and Rose not seeing a tin of beans again for decades.
So how do other countries around the world, who need those materials, who need to meet the promise there will be plenty of food on supermarket shelves respond? If we throw money at it, make deals with presidents and governments, we are back to the Irish potato famine aren’t we? 🥔
I can't work out if we're going to have rampant deflation or rampant inflation from this. I think house prices could take a hit mind.
Who knows. But I reckon it will be inflation.
There's almost no velocity of money now though. Unless you're trying to buy PPE, inflation needs to have a large velocity of money and that has almost stopped.
High unemployment + negative economic growth = downwards pressure on inflation, usually. Oil prices are also at recent lows, and as you say spending is grinding to a halt. The main upwards indicator right now is low interest rates, bu they were already pretty low to start with, so the minor cut shouldn't change much. The massive increase in government spending is mostly just replacing what would've been regular income. My vote is for deflation.
So those people who spent all weekend moving money out of their bank accounts are ahead of the game and writing mug on our foreheads for being slow to act on this? Moving it it to what though? What assets won’t depreciate? jewellery? Water?
Remember again there's someone still working in Downing Street who said Britain didn't really need its farms and fishing fleet.
Sigh - that was in the context of an extreme hypothetical - quite common in Operational Research. You ask - if we take X to an extreme, what is the result Y.
In the case of farming - a large amount of money is spent on subsidy. What do we get for it? What would the landscape be, if we removed it?
A classic in this field was the study in WWII proposing to remove all defensive armament from RAF bombers. If you went all the way to redesigning the planes to not have the structural capability to carry the armament, then they would be 100mph faster and have half the crew. While not adopted, due to the politics of the matter, it is noteworthy that the Air Ministry dropped defensive armament for future designs.
Fine - but the weakness of that approach to thinking is that you overlook some variable that in reality turns out to be critical.
It appears the "what if we let the young get infected" herd immunity approach (apparently worked up by the UK prior to Corona appearing on the scene) didn't factor in the number of hospital ventilators as a critical constraint.
I doubt that "what if we get rid of all our farms" factored in the possibility that world trade would be seriously interrupted. Had it done so, no-one would be foolish enough to posit such a question in the first place, even as a hypothetical.
The answer to that is another question - "What would be the cost of stockpiles to give food security vs domestic production?"
Given that we stockpile to a certain extent at the moment...
The point is to explore the decision space - and that is precisely because it exposes weakness in both existing and possible actions.
The government seems to have dropped the subsidies/support for horse breeders. This means that we as a nation have a critical deficiency in the ability to rapidly generate a cavalry force for continental warfare. How could we let this happen?
Indeed. Removing interiors might save some weight, but the cargo will still have to go in the usual place as the cabin floor can't take that much weight nor secure the load.
The pictures of the luftwaffe planes taking Italian patients were interesting. Basically looks like a regular airliner, overhead bins in place, but with the seats stripped out.
You may have a point about weight, but "securing the load' is what all airline seats do. The floor has aeroquip track the entire length.
Though it does illustrate another problem common to Youtubers -- sound. Proper telly does not require interviewees to wear massive gaming headsets, for instance, and sound is better balanced so all speakers are heard at the same volume.
The gap between rhetoric and reality is a concern. It appears to be growing.
If press releases and tweets about tests or ventilators saved lives we would not have a problem.
This doesn't appear to be a concern to me. I would prefer that they saved those 3000 tests for those who need them rather than go out and find 3000 people to test to make up the 10,000, interesting though that would be.
I wonder if there is actually a case for a 'poll' test? Would we be able to gage national levels of infection?
Another is that some monitoring is being done I think via the Blood Donation Service. I do not know if that is documented publicly, but I heard that via PHE.
As with any sample regime it needs adjusting - eg blood donors are skewed to the younger and the healthly.
There's always more happening than the media dream of :-) .
Sadly, this is exactly what the media could be asking about. But can't be bothered. It would be a bit technical and we wouldn't want them to headaches.
Constant discussion about U.K. potentially being the next Italy/Spain etc, but what about Netherlands (and similar - Belgium). Some absolute horror numbers in areas of Europe which perhaps are going relatively in-noticed because smaller populations meaning smaller numbers of absolute cases. Netherlands, despite having a quarter of U.K. population have half U.K. cases and 2/3 of deaths. Belgium (1/6 population) has half U.K. cases and 1/3 deaths.
Sweden is the one to follow - no lockdown.
If they show about the same number of cases / deaths then why bother with a lockdown.
The gap between rhetoric and reality is a concern. It appears to be growing.
If press releases and tweets about tests or ventilators saved lives we would not have a problem.
This doesn't appear to be a concern to me. I would prefer that they saved those 3000 tests for those who need them rather than go out and find 3000 people to test to make up the 10,000, interesting though that would be.
I wonder if there is actually a case for a 'poll' test? Would we be able to gage national levels of infection?
Another is that some monitoring is being done I think via the Blood Donation Service. I do not know if that is documented publicly, but I heard that via PHE.
As with any sample regime it needs adjusting - eg blood donors are skewed to the younger and the healthly.
There's always more happening than the media dream of :-) .
Hmm...I am giving blood on Wednesday (outside! Legitimately! Yeah!) and have had to promise hand on heart that I don't have the virus, that no one I have been in contact with in the last 14 days has had the virus, that the virus is not a FB friend etc etc.
Johnson looked like shit on Sky News. The engraver is getting ready to start putting @Paristonda on the trophy. I presume the hypothetical tory leadership contest would be Sunak vs Raab. Alien vs Predator.
I notice that a lot of these politicians look shit when they are broadcast from home. Whether it's the likes of Skype that make people look terrible, or whether its the TV makeup department that normally makes people look better, I don't know?
Isn't it just also possible that, with or without illness, they are knackered. I did find the original comment in quite bad taste.
Total aside - Bearing in mind that many judgements are made on appearance over substance, I wonder if that will relatively help people who are used to makeup. That would not be middle-aged men.
I, too, see positives emerging from this. I'm hoping it's an opportunity for re-configuration. The capitalist greed of the world economy which has sought to suck the life out of Mother Nature is being taught a long and very painful karmic lesson.
I also see re-configuration in our personal lives. People are networking in new ways and finding different opportunities to be resourceful. They are also facing up to death: the possibility that it might strike is not something most people consider. Learning a little humility in the face of our mortality is not always a bad thing.
The mighty are being laid low.
I would not be bothered if Covid-19 carried me off. I feel like I have had more than enough of the world already.
Bev - do you have friends and family you can talk to?
Things are not great for sure but they will improve and life for most will go on and lots of people will learn to really appreciate things again rather than taking them for granted.
Agreed - we face an indetermined period of this. Critical that we look after each other's mental health.
Hence the volunteer effort to phone people as a regular check up - that by itself could make a big difference.
I have set up an extended family WhatsApp group, to support some of the more isolated. Seems to have boosted morale somewhat.
In other news Next have offered to make scrubs for our hospital staff. We do not have enough for people to wear who are not theatre or ICU staff, and many staff are reluctant to wear own clothes as per uniform policy, and risk contaminating family and non work areas.
Well done Next. Hope people are keeping a list of 'good' companies.
Next is a Leicester based company, so not sure how wide their offer goes. Welcomed by my colleagues though.
There have been stirrings of mutiny over PPE too, which is ominous, with staff refusing to see patients until it is provided, according to the HSJ (paywalled).
Not quite as critical as your situation, but we have a nationwide shortage of Breathing Apparatus Safety Wash and wipes. Bearing in mind that we don't have individual BA masks so that 4 BA sets on an appliance are used by the whole station complement (nigh on 30 people on a large station), it's causing a certain amount of consternation!
How can renewable energy stay profitable if oil keeps dumping?
It is the capital cost that is the issue with alternative energy, so no new windmills will be built. But those that already exist will continue to turn because there is close to zero marginal cost of production.
More optimistically, an example of catastrophic market failure will finally get the world to introduce a carbon tax, which should be a no-brainer anyway.
Unfortunately, with the most dangerous criminal organisation in history running the most powerful country in the world, it's hard to be optimistic.
I agree. How do we solve a problem like China?
Glad you agree that the US Republican party is the most dangerous organisation in history, and that we need a carbon tax. As for Chinese issues, If you mean by "we" the rest of the world outside China, then good leadership from the USA is also an essential factor.
Agreed. 'We' don't solve a problem like China, unless 'we' is a relatively united front of democracies.
I am not quite sure what you are proposing, but surely this is a particularly poor time to have a trade war.
Certainly, I for one would be grateful for some of that Chinese made PPE.
@Pulpstar - I think deflation is what should happen. But then that's what should have happened after the GFC. It didn't, and I don't expect governments will allow it to happen this time. The money printed over the next few years will make what happened after the GFC look like a blip.
And Endillion is wrong downthread that the government package is simply "replacing" lost income. Because the lost income, in retail, travel, hospitality and leisure, would have come from other people's bank accounts, and those accounts (i.e. people with steady income - pensioners and many of the employed) simply aren't spending. Meanwhile supply is shrinking as production and trade are disrupted. When this 'wall of money' is released, an inflationary spike looks likely IMO.
The humorous recommendation downthread that Beib_C should plan to spend her 'saving' on shoes makes the point. A lot of people will be chasing fewer shoes.
Dare I say that looks a pretty public sector viewpoint where wages are still being paid and pent up demand being created. A sole trader like me is taking a very substantial hit from this crisis and will have reduced spending for at least the next 2 years. No holidays, no unnecessary travel, make do and mend, retirement date once again fading into the far distance.
Fair challenge. In the medium term I agree some sort of slump is likely. But it remains my view that when the restrictions are loosened and some sort of normality returns, an inflationary spike is a credible risk - arising from the extra money being injected, people's desire to spend, and shortages of supply.
You highlight that the rescue package isn't falling evenly or fairly. The difference between the UK's set of "schemes" and the US 'helicopter money' approach has so far received a lot less attention and analysis in the media than I would have expected?
We are indulging in massive QE and public spending once again. Last time, in 2008/9 we got away with it because there were enormous deflationary pressures caused by the collapse of trillions of "funny money" pyramids built on supposed securities. This time we don't have that so I agree inflation is a risk, indeed it may be necessary to reduce the debt burden.
On the government's allocation I am not so sure. Whilst I am getting no help it seems right to me that the available help is focused on those most at risk, the gig workers, the casually employed, those on the margins. The US system seems a waste of available resources to me.
The risk with the US scheme is that it creates unintended winners, by splurging money to everyone. Doubtless Trump's people had an ulterior motive.
The risk with the UK scheme is that it creates unintended losers - such as the self employed people who fall through the criteria for various reasons, such as recently started businesses, or people paying themselves with dividends.
Personally, I would have taken the US approach, and used the taxation system to recover the costs from those benefiting or relatively unaffected.
Many of the unintended winners of UBI are deserving anyway, essentially all the key workers would get paid twice, and the poorest in society who are most reliant on income rather than assets/savings get a bigger share of the bailout too. Those two groups are a very significant proportion of the "unintended" winners.
Well - living in a country which has just extended and enhanced the lockdown I am in very good spirits. Got smartened up for my weekly shoppinh trip to Mercadona this morning. Everyone charming and friendly, no queues and nothing absent from the shelves. The sutuation in central and northern Spain is dire but other European countries are now providing help which is very heartening. We can get through this.
The Nightingale Hospital in London really looks incredible. What a fantastic achievement all around.
It seems a good model for London full stop. Why build all these pissy little local general hospitals? Having said that Whipps Cross is a bit of a mega hospital and certainly used to be a shit hole (my grandparents spent time there, and my grandfather died there) so maybe there is a size you don't want to go above for the long term.
I can't work out if we're going to have rampant deflation or rampant inflation from this. I think house prices could take a hit mind.
Who knows. But I reckon it will be inflation.
There's almost no velocity of money now though. Unless you're trying to buy PPE, inflation needs to have a large velocity of money and that has almost stopped.
High unemployment + negative economic growth = downwards pressure on inflation, usually. Oil prices are also at recent lows, and as you say spending is grinding to a halt. The main upwards indicator right now is low interest rates, bu they were already pretty low to start with, so the minor cut shouldn't change much. The massive increase in government spending is mostly just replacing what would've been regular income. My vote is for deflation.
So those people who spent all weekend moving money out of their bank accounts are ahead of the game and writing mug on our foreheads for being slow to act on this? Moving it it to what though? What assets won’t depreciate? jewellery? Water?
Remember again there's someone still working in Downing Street who said Britain didn't really need its farms and fishing fleet.
Sigh - that was in the context of an extreme hypothetical - quite common in Operational Research. You ask - if we take X to an extreme, what is the result Y.
In the case of farming - a large amount of money is spent on subsidy. What do we get for it? What would the landscape be, if we removed it?
A classic in this field was the study in WWII proposing to remove all defensive armament from RAF bombers. If you went all the way to redesigning the planes to not have the structural capability to carry the armament, then they would be 100mph faster and have half the crew. While not adopted, due to the politics of the matter, it is noteworthy that the Air Ministry dropped defensive armament for future designs.
If I recall correctly that was the Mossie, and de Havilland had to virtually build it themselves (full size mockup?) before the Air Ministry would order a single prototype.
Nope - later, after the Mosquito. The idea had been mooted several times by aircraft designers - the basic reasoning was that if you designed for speed, a bomber would be as fast as a fighter. Or nearly. So the intercept curve would be close to impossible.
The Mosquito was nearly binned by the failure of the Blenheim to do exactly that - survive by speed. It worked because the onset of compression effects made speeds above 400mph really, really difficult - otherwise by the time it was in production, speeds would have jumped again, and it would have been another Blenheim. The Mosquito survived with clever lobbying and the promise of testing armament - got as far as a mocked up turret in one prototype IIRC.
De Havilland had some idea of compression issues. As did Supermarine. Famously, Hawker didn't.
The study to remove all defensive armament was after Mosquitos demonstrated *cruise* speeds north of 300, while loaded.
The Mosquito is one of my two fave aircraft of WW2, the other being the Short Sunderland.
A few years I did knock up a spreadsheet of the (my estimated) cumulative effect of hypothentically replacing all our 4 engned bombers with Mossies. The initial total bombload was much lower but with a much smaller rate of loss I think I had the Mosquitoes overtaking within about 6-12 months. Can't remember my input parameters though.
There was a major worrying development in the current crisis this weekend. My mum has worked out how to make WhatsApp video calls.
Oh dear. On that general topic one of the few advantages of the crisis is the minimising of pointless meetings. With new technology it is quite possible for people who go in for Zoom and all that to reinstate them in forms even more inconvenient and generally boring than face to face. I am having to lie very low to get on with what matters and ignore all these new blandishments. It's hard enough finding time to ignore all the pointless emails and not read their worthless attachments.
Video calls with your mum are of course a top priority.
@Pulpstar - I think deflation is what should happen. But then that's what should have happened after the GFC. It didn't, and I don't expect governments will allow it to happen this time. The money printed over the next few years will make what happened after the GFC look like a blip.
And Endillion is wrong downthread that the government package is simply "replacing" lost income. Because the lost income, in retail, travel, hospitality and leisure, would have come from other people's bank accounts, and those accounts (i.e. people with steady income - pensioners and many of the employed) simply aren't spending. Meanwhile supply is shrinking as production and trade are disrupted. When this 'wall of money' is released, an inflationary spike looks likely IMO.
The humorous recommendation downthread that Beib_C should plan to spend her 'saving' on shoes makes the point. A lot of people will be chasing fewer shoes.
Dare I say that looks a pretty public sector viewpoint where wages are still being paid and pent up demand being created. A sole trader like me is taking a very substantial hit from this crisis and will have reduced spending for at least the next 2 years. No holidays, no unnecessary travel, make do and mend, retirement date once again fading into the far distance.
Fair challenge. In the medium term I agree some sort of slump is likely. But it remains my view that when the restrictions are loosened and some sort of normality returns, an inflationary spike is a credible risk - arising from the extra money being injected, people's desire to spend, and shortages of supply.
You highlight that the rescue package isn't falling evenly or fairly. The difference between the UK's set of "schemes" and the US 'helicopter money' approach has so far received a lot less attention and analysis in the media than I would have expected?
I don't think the US helicopter money is any fairer... I have a steady income, completely unaffected by C-19; my brother is a self-employed plumber whose work is drying up* rapidly. We'd both benefit under the US approach whereas he needs the help, I don't.
Indeed. Removing interiors might save some weight, but the cargo will still have to go in the usual place as the cabin floor can't take that much weight nor secure the load.
The pictures of the luftwaffe planes taking Italian patients were interesting. Basically looks like a regular airliner, overhead bins in place, but with the seats stripped out.
You may have a point about weight, but "securing the load' is what all airline seats do. The floor has aeroquip track the entire length.
Indeed it does, but pax seats, even in 4s, don't ever weigh more than half a tonne when loaded up.
It could be done theoretically for small, light objects, with lots of nets and aeroquip fasteners, but would take forever to bring everything in through the pax doors, tie them all down securely then calculate weight and balance - as opposed to just using the containers in the hold, which can be turned around completely in under an hour.
The Nightingale Hospital in London really looks incredible. What a fantastic achievement all around.
It seems a good model for London full stop. Why build all these pissy little local general hospitals? Having said that Whipps Cross is a bit of a mega hospital and certainly used to be a shit hole (my grandparents spent time there, and my grandfather died there) so maybe there is a size you don't want to go above for the long term.
Time from incident to ED being a survival factor I would have thought would be the answer to why have lots of local hospitals
For those of you interested in the stock markets, I think we are now about to have a long, long, bear run. The little peaks of unreality, to which the US is particularly prone, are going to be flattened as the reality bites.
We are in WW2 and Great Depression territory. A once-in-a-generation or even century event, the magnitude of which is only slowly dawning on some commentators.
My advice? Don't touch stocks and shares until at least the autumn, possibly longer. Although be ready to go big if a vaccine is proven.
As for withdrawing cash to buy other commodities, that is fantastically daft. Unless you think the banking system is about to crash why get out of cash when the world economies are deflationary? Cash is going up in relative value, not down.
I mean, obviously, Gold would have been great in January when I advised buying it but I'm not sure that it's great value now.
How can renewable energy stay profitable if oil keeps dumping?
It is the capital cost that is the issue with alternative energy, so no new windmills will be built. But those that already exist will continue to turn because there is close to zero marginal cost of production.
More optimistically, an example of catastrophic market failure will finally get the world to introduce a carbon tax, which should be a no-brainer anyway.
Unfortunately, with the most dangerous criminal organisation in history running the most powerful country in the world, it's hard to be optimistic.
I agree. How do we solve a problem like China?
Glad you agree that the US Republican party is the most dangerous organisation in history, and that we need a carbon tax. As for Chinese issues, If you mean by "we" the rest of the world outside China, then good leadership from the USA is also an essential factor.
Agreed. 'We' don't solve a problem like China, unless 'we' is a relatively united front of democracies.
I am not quite sure what you are proposing, but surely this is a particularly poor time to have a trade war.
Certainly, I for one would be grateful for some of that Chinese made PPE.
I am really interested in your observations of Japan's situation. For some time they seemed to be similar to SK in being able to control this virus without wreaking the economy but as you point out after the Olympics was finally abandoned the evidence is a lot less supportive of that. How do you see this going?
I was originally skeptical of the Olympics conspiracy theory but now I think there's something in it, albeit *confined to Tokyo*. If you look at the data by prefecture it was quite weird how despite being an international city and tourism and transport hub Tokyo managed to keep extremely low numbers compared to the rest of Japan. Then as the conspiracy theorists predicted as soon as the game was up and the Olympics were postponed the Tokyo numbers soared.
That aside, I'd break the Japanese response into 4 phases: 1) Cruise ship: All kinds of incompetence, which put the central government under pressure producing 2) Early action: Work from home where possible, libraries and community centres close, events cancelled, schools closed. This really seems like it worked - the number of new cases per day flattened and may have started to drop. The testing may have been hokey but the general picture must be right. But then as people saw the numbers drop, we got 3) Complacency: The government announced that it would let schools reopen, and although they didn't say it, people took it as a signal that the crisis was over and started going out again. Crucially they did this right before a 3-day weekend. What's worse, the strict quarantine requirements on people from China weren't matched when the same thing happened in Europe and the US, so people were walking around as if there was no covid19 any more, when in fact it was everywhere. 4) OH SHIT: Which is where we are now, back to a supercharged version of (2), with a request to stay indoors in several cities.
So I definitely think it looks like the kind of measures taken in (2) were effective, and in *practical* terms it would certainly be possible to continue them indefinitely. Whether you could persuade people to do them indefinitely is another question - I suspect you'd need more coercion, at least for the most extreme risks - for example there were people going to crowded nightclubs again, and the government should have closed them. And when you start to relax the earlier measures you took, you need to be careful not to send a message that the problem has gone away. This is also somewhere where I think it might help to take with one hand what you give with the other and match general relaxation with more targeted crackdowns on higher-risk areas, which we should have more information about as time goes by.
The other optimistic thing is that there's a lot of best-practice-ish things that SK etc have done and Japan hasn't, so if you can get that initial stabilization we got without doing everything right, you should be able to get even better results.
PS. This video from a guy I know who has more contact with the Japanese healthcare system than he'd like has some really interesting stuff about things that Japan already did because it has a history of serious flu epidemics - there's quite a bit in here that would be practical for other countries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biVlGogYDfI
Oh and the other immensely sensible activity for those of you with gardens and plots is to sow seeds like never before. Grow-your-own is a fantastic investment this year.
I can't work out if we're going to have rampant deflation or rampant inflation from this. I think house prices could take a hit mind.
Who knows. But I reckon it will be inflation.
There's almost no velocity of money now though. Unless you're trying to buy PPE, inflation needs to have a large velocity of money and that has almost stopped.
High unemployment + negative economic growth = downwards pressure on inflation, usually. Oil prices are also at recent lows, and as you say spending is grinding to a halt. The main upwards indicator right now is low interest rates, bu they were already pretty low to start with, so the minor cut shouldn't change much. The massive increase in government spending is mostly just replacing what would've been regular income. My vote is for deflation.
So those people who spent all weekend moving money out of their bank accounts are ahead of the game and writing mug on our foreheads for being slow to act on this? Moving it it to what though? What assets won’t depreciate? jewellery? Water?
Remember again there's someone still working in Downing Street who said Britain didn't really need its farms and fishing fleet.
Sigh - that was in the context of an extreme hypothetical - quite common in Operational Research. You ask - if we take X to an extreme, what is the result Y.
In the case of farming - a large amount of money is spent on subsidy. What do we get for it? What would the landscape be, if we removed it?
A classic in this field was the study in WWII proposing to remove all defensive armament from RAF bombers. If you went all the way to redesigning the planes to not have the structural capability to carry the armament, then they would be 100mph faster and have half the crew. While not adopted, due to the politics of the matter, it is noteworthy that the Air Ministry dropped defensive armament for future designs.
If I recall correctly that was the Mossie, and de Havilland had to virtually build it themselves (full size mockup?) before the Air Ministry would order a single prototype.
Nope - later, after the Mosquito. The idea had been mooted several times by aircraft designers - the basic reasoning was that if you designed for speed, a bomber would be as fast as a fighter. Or nearly. So the intercept curve would be close to impossible.
The Mosquito was nearly binned by the failure of the Blenheim to do exactly that - survive by speed. It worked because the onset of compression effects made speeds above 400mph really, really difficult - otherwise by the time it was in production, speeds would have jumped again, and it would have been another Blenheim. The Mosquito survived with clever lobbying and the promise of testing armament - got as far as a mocked up turret in one prototype IIRC.
De Havilland had some idea of compression issues. As did Supermarine. Famously, Hawker didn't.
The study to remove all defensive armament was after Mosquitos demonstrated *cruise* speeds north of 300, while loaded.
The Mosquito is one of my two fave aircraft of WW2, the other being the Short Sunderland.
A few years I did knock up a spreadsheet of the (my estimated) cumulative effect of hypothentically replacing all our 4 engned bombers with Mossies. The initial total bombload was much lower but with a much smaller rate of loss I think I had the Mosquitoes overtaking within about 6-12 months. Can't remember my input parameters though.
Not enough piano makers...
The study I am talking of was essentially - 4 Merlins, 10K payload, 3 crew, metal construction. Think Lancaster with a much smaller and lighter fuselage.
IIRC De Havilland did some sketches for a 4 engined Super Mosquito. Along with a Sabre engined derivative.
The Mosquito got its performance from being the minimum aircraft to carry the load, not from the wooden construction.
How can renewable energy stay profitable if oil keeps dumping?
It is the capital cost that is the issue with alternative energy, so no new windmills will be built. But those that already exist will continue to turn because there is close to zero marginal cost of production.
More optimistically, an example of catastrophic market failure will finally get the world to introduce a carbon tax, which should be a no-brainer anyway.
Unfortunately, with the most dangerous criminal organisation in history running the most powerful country in the world, it's hard to be optimistic.
I agree. How do we solve a problem like China?
Glad you agree that the US Republican party is the most dangerous organisation in history, and that we need a carbon tax. As for Chinese issues, If you mean by "we" the rest of the world outside China, then good leadership from the USA is also an essential factor.
Agreed. 'We' don't solve a problem like China, unless 'we' is a relatively united front of democracies.
I am not quite sure what you are proposing, but surely this is a particularly poor time to have a trade war.
Certainly, I for one would be grateful for some of that Chinese made PPE.
The Nightingale Hospital in London really looks incredible. What a fantastic achievement all around.
It seems a good model for London full stop. Why build all these pissy little local general hospitals? Having said that Whipps Cross is a bit of a mega hospital and certainly used to be a shit hole (my grandparents spent time there, and my grandfather died there) so maybe there is a size you don't want to go above for the long term.
If you were building hospitals from scratch today, then that is the model you would go for. The issue is everyone likes having a hospital nearby so if you try and close or downgrade a smaller hospital everyone is up in arms.
If you think London has a lot of hospitals, then you haven't been to Scotland, where every small rural town still has a 10 bed cottage hospital.
Government officials and executives at rival ventilator companies said they suspected that Covidien had acquired Newport to prevent it from building a cheaper product that would undermine Covidien’s profits from its existing ventilator business.
Indeed. Removing interiors might save some weight, but the cargo will still have to go in the usual place as the cabin floor can't take that much weight nor secure the load.
The pictures of the luftwaffe planes taking Italian patients were interesting. Basically looks like a regular airliner, overhead bins in place, but with the seats stripped out.
That was an A310 MRTT which is a military variant and has a reinforced floor to allow conversion between cargo, self loading cargo and medevac.
There was a major worrying development in the current crisis this weekend. My mum has worked out how to make WhatsApp video calls.
My mum hasn't even mastered a mobile phone despite many attempts by her children and grandchildren to help her.
Smart phones, iPads, PCs, the internet, email, on-line banking/shopping, Facebook, Whatsapp, Skype etc. are so far beyond her ken they might as well be science fiction to her.
Overall, that's a real shame but it's not going to change now, sadly.
So be pleased @AlastairMeeks that your mum has embraced technology.
How can renewable energy stay profitable if oil keeps dumping?
It is the capital cost that is the issue with alternative energy, so no new windmills will be built. But those that already exist will continue to turn because there is close to zero marginal cost of production.
More optimistically, an example of catastrophic market failure will finally get the world to introduce a carbon tax, which should be a no-brainer anyway.
Unfortunately, with the most dangerous criminal organisation in history running the most powerful country in the world, it's hard to be optimistic.
I agree. How do we solve a problem like China?
Glad you agree that the US Republican party is the most dangerous organisation in history, and that we need a carbon tax. As for Chinese issues, If you mean by "we" the rest of the world outside China, then good leadership from the USA is also an essential factor.
Agreed. 'We' don't solve a problem like China, unless 'we' is a relatively united front of democracies.
I am not quite sure what you are proposing, but surely this is a particularly poor time to have a trade war.
Certainly, I for one would be grateful for some of that Chinese made PPE.
For those of you interested in the stock markets, I think we are now about to have a long, long, bear run. The little peaks of unreality, to which the US is particularly prone, are going to be flattened as the reality bites.
We are in WW2 and Great Depression territory. A once-in-a-generation or even century event, the magnitude of which is only slowly dawning on some commentators.
My advice? Don't touch stocks and shares until at least the autumn, possibly longer. Although be ready to go big if a vaccine is proven.
As for withdrawing cash to buy other commodities, that is fantastically daft. Unless you think the banking system is about to crash why get out of cash when the world economies are deflationary? Cash is going up in relative value, not down.
I mean, obviously, Gold would have been great in January when I advised buying it but I'm not sure that it's great value now.
Gold spent most of the last few weeks trading below where it was at any point in January, and has recently recovered to around 3-4% above that point.
Do you even look at the markets when you think up this drivel?
The gap between rhetoric and reality is a concern. It appears to be growing.
If press releases and tweets about tests or ventilators saved lives we would not have a problem.
This doesn't appear to be a concern to me. I would prefer that they saved those 3000 tests for those who need them rather than go out and find 3000 people to test to make up the 10,000, interesting though that would be.
I wonder if there is actually a case for a 'poll' test? Would we be able to gage national levels of infection?
Another is that some monitoring is being done I think via the Blood Donation Service. I do not know if that is documented publicly, but I heard that via PHE.
As with any sample regime it needs adjusting - eg blood donors are skewed to the younger and the healthly.
There's always more happening than the media dream of :-) .
Sadly, this is exactly what the media could be asking about. But can't be bothered. It would be a bit technical and we wouldn't want them to headaches.
Leeds Live news website has this quotation:
"It should be stressed that one reason Sheffield has so many cases - 387 as of March 29 - is because it is a national testing area and therefore, is recording more cases."
which to me implies there is some degree of random testing going on there, not just selected groups showing symptoms. I can't see a figure for how many tests have been done there though compared to, say, Leeds.
The Nightingale Hospital in London really looks incredible. What a fantastic achievement all around.
It seems a good model for London full stop. Why build all these pissy little local general hospitals? Having said that Whipps Cross is a bit of a mega hospital and certainly used to be a shit hole (my grandparents spent time there, and my grandfather died there) so maybe there is a size you don't want to go above for the long term.
If you were building hospitals from scratch today, then that is the model you would go for. The issue is everyone likes having a hospital nearby so if you try and close or downgrade a smaller hospital everyone is up in arms.
If you think London has a lot of hospitals, then you haven't been to Scotland, where every small rural town still has a 10 bed cottage hospital.
But the costs of travel to and from these larger, distant hospitals, including the significant cost of visiting friends and family who are in one, is mostly (apart from ambulance costs) an externality to the NHS, which can therefore ignore it, but a very real cost to society.
I just want to repeat my apology to you last night about my criticism of your comments on Boris self isolation. Sometimes I get things wrong and this was one of them
Johnson looked like shit on Sky News. The engraver is getting ready to start putting @Paristonda on the trophy. I presume the hypothetical tory leadership contest would be Sunak vs Raab. Alien vs Predator.
I notice that a lot of these politicians look shit when they are broadcast from home. Whether it's the likes of Skype that make people look terrible, or whether its the TV makeup department that normally makes people look better, I don't know?
Isn't it just also possible that, with or without illness, they are knackered. I did find the original comment in quite bad taste.
Total aside - Bearing in mind that many judgements are made on appearance over substance, I wonder if that will relatively help people who are used to makeup. That would not be middle-aged men.
I suspect that's got a lot to do with it - remember the commentary when Sophie Raworth had to step in for Anna Ford without hair & make up?
Which is why some of them may not be looking as glam as usual: ITV newsreader Mary Nightingale revealing on Twitter on Tuesday that fans were worried she was unwell after she did her own 'TV make-up'.
Though it does illustrate another problem common to Youtubers -- sound. Proper telly does not require interviewees to wear massive gaming headsets, for instance, and sound is better balanced so all speakers are heard at the same volume.
The ideal setup for sound looks like a radio studio - everyone with a large high-quality desk-mounted mic positioned just in front of them, and wearing headphones with no speakers to cause feedback. Exactly as Sargon has in that video.
Looks crap on TV though, which is why they use those little lapel mics or head-mounted "Madonna-style" mics instead.
The Nightingale Hospital in London really looks incredible. What a fantastic achievement all around.
It seems a good model for London full stop. Why build all these pissy little local general hospitals? Having said that Whipps Cross is a bit of a mega hospital and certainly used to be a shit hole (my grandparents spent time there, and my grandfather died there) so maybe there is a size you don't want to go above for the long term.
Time from incident to ED being a survival factor I would have thought would be the answer to why have lots of local hospitals
On the contrary, the extra time taken to get to designated trauma centres pays off with much better survival. For the same reason stroke care is done in 4 London hospitals, rather than everywhere.
It is the more humdrum and elective stuff that needs local provision.
How can renewable energy stay profitable if oil keeps dumping?
It is the capital cost that is the issue with alternative energy, so no new windmills will be built. But those that already exist will continue to turn because there is close to zero marginal cost of production.
More optimistically, an example of catastrophic market failure will finally get the world to introduce a carbon tax, which should be a no-brainer anyway.
Unfortunately, with the most dangerous criminal organisation in history running the most powerful country in the world, it's hard to be optimistic.
I agree. How do we solve a problem like China?
Glad you agree that the US Republican party is the most dangerous organisation in history, and that we need a carbon tax. As for Chinese issues, If you mean by "we" the rest of the world outside China, then good leadership from the USA is also an essential factor.
Agreed. 'We' don't solve a problem like China, unless 'we' is a relatively united front of democracies.
I am not quite sure what you are proposing, but surely this is a particularly poor time to have a trade war.
Certainly, I for one would be grateful for some of that Chinese made PPE.
China hasn't contained the virus. It is going through a trough but until they have genuinely eradicated all new cases and seen all existing patients discharged, the virus will continue to have a foothold. Slackening the stringent controls will see a new surge. The difference this time is that the party machine may try to pretend to the world otherwise.
There will come a time (possibly not too far away) when I’d prefer to take my chances with Covid19 - even at risk to my own life - than spend one more day locked down inside my house.
It’s no life.
This is not a personal criticism but it is not about "you". If people respond in this way the more vulnerable members of our society are at increased risk as the virus will have more vectors to facilitate spread.
I can sympathise with your state of mind, indeed I share it. I am lucky enough to live in a place where I can go for a fairly long walk each day with absolutely minimal proximity to anyone. Without that I would be going mad and I still miss meeting up with friends, going for coffee or lunch together, etc enormously. I have some written work to do but I find it incredibly hard to focus on it. My productivity has collapsed. I recognise precursors to depression in this.
It does suggest that the behavioural psychologists who argued that it was important that we didn't lock down too soon rather knew what they were talking about, doesn't it?
Like when people retire. I started working from home, and being single, about ten years ago and it does change you
Life hasn't stopped completely. If things can still be progressed in some fashion they should be.
How on Earth can that be justified as a priority. If government has spare capacity there is no shortage of more urgent and more important things for the government to work on.
The Nightingale Hospital in London really looks incredible. What a fantastic achievement all around.
It seems a good model for London full stop. Why build all these pissy little local general hospitals? Having said that Whipps Cross is a bit of a mega hospital and certainly used to be a shit hole (my grandparents spent time there, and my grandfather died there) so maybe there is a size you don't want to go above for the long term.
If you were building hospitals from scratch today, then that is the model you would go for. The issue is everyone likes having a hospital nearby so if you try and close or downgrade a smaller hospital everyone is up in arms.
If you think London has a lot of hospitals, then you haven't been to Scotland, where every small rural town still has a 10 bed cottage hospital.
London is a small place compared to Scotland. The Scots will have to have some pretty small hospitals if they don't want to make people drive a hundreds miles or so to get to one. I grew up in North Wales, where there is a similar problem. They closed a number of the smaller hospitals, and as a result in some places, things like complications in childbirth can easily mean a trip in the air ambulance!
China hasn't contained the virus. It is going through a trough but until they have genuinely eradicated all new cases and seen all existing patients discharged, the virus will continue to have a foothold. Slackening the stringent controls will see a new surge. The difference this time is that the party machine may try to pretend to the world otherwise.
They tried to pretend the first time too so is that different?
How can renewable energy stay profitable if oil keeps dumping?
It is the capital cost that is the issue with alternative energy, so no new windmills will be built. But those that already exist will continue to turn because there is close to zero marginal cost of production.
More optimistically, an example of catastrophic market failure will finally get the world to introduce a carbon tax, which should be a no-brainer anyway.
Unfortunately, with the most dangerous criminal organisation in history running the most powerful country in the world, it's hard to be optimistic.
I agree. How do we solve a problem like China?
Glad you agree that the US Republican party is the most dangerous organisation in history, and that we need a carbon tax. As for Chinese issues, If you mean by "we" the rest of the world outside China, then good leadership from the USA is also an essential factor.
Agreed. 'We' don't solve a problem like China, unless 'we' is a relatively united front of democracies.
I am not quite sure what you are proposing, but surely this is a particularly poor time to have a trade war.
Certainly, I for one would be grateful for some of that Chinese made PPE.
Yes, according to all the conspiracy theorists. Another thing they're talking about is how this crisis will benefit big corporations at the expense of small businesses — and then I saw this on the Economist's website:
The Nightingale Hospital in London really looks incredible. What a fantastic achievement all around.
It seems a good model for London full stop. Why build all these pissy little local general hospitals? Having said that Whipps Cross is a bit of a mega hospital and certainly used to be a shit hole (my grandparents spent time there, and my grandfather died there) so maybe there is a size you don't want to go above for the long term.
Time from incident to ED being a survival factor I would have thought would be the answer to why have lots of local hospitals
On the contrary, the extra time taken to get to designated trauma centres pays off with much better survival. For the same reason stroke care is done in 4 London hospitals, rather than everywhere.
It is the more humdrum and elective stuff that needs local provision.
Interesting and noted, I was surmising it might be a factor but you are the expert
As we start to hear from those who are suffering from the isolation aspects of this shutdown, perhaps we can hear an apology from those screaming for Boris to lock us all down sooner?
Those people don’t apologise, they just change the subject
For those of you interested in the stock markets, I think we are now about to have a long, long, bear run. The little peaks of unreality, to which the US is particularly prone, are going to be flattened as the reality bites.
We are in WW2 and Great Depression territory. A once-in-a-generation or even century event, the magnitude of which is only slowly dawning on some commentators.
My advice? Don't touch stocks and shares until at least the autumn, possibly longer. Although be ready to go big if a vaccine is proven.
As for withdrawing cash to buy other commodities, that is fantastically daft. Unless you think the banking system is about to crash why get out of cash when the world economies are deflationary? Cash is going up in relative value, not down.
I mean, obviously, Gold would have been great in January when I advised buying it but I'm not sure that it's great value now.
Do you even look at the markets when you think up this drivel?
You're lecturing someone who has been near 100% correct about this pandemic and predicted the crash back in January? Chutzpah!
Obviously last week saw a dead-cat bounce across the pond, hence Gold dipped.
Oh and the other immensely sensible activity for those of you with gardens and plots is to sow seeds like never before. Grow-your-own is a fantastic investment this year.
Which is why mail order seed companies have now sold out for the time being and the government has ordered garden centres to close ... !
There will come a time (possibly not too far away) when I’d prefer to take my chances with Covid19 - even at risk to my own life - than spend one more day locked down inside my house.
It’s no life.
This is not a personal criticism but it is not about "you". If people respond in this way the more vulnerable members of our society are at increased risk as the virus will have more vectors to facilitate spread.
I can sympathise with your state of mind, indeed I share it. I am lucky enough to live in a place where I can go for a fairly long walk each day with absolutely minimal proximity to anyone. Without that I would be going mad and I still miss meeting up with friends, going for coffee or lunch together, etc enormously. I have some written work to do but I find it incredibly hard to focus on it. My productivity has collapsed. I recognise precursors to depression in this.
It does suggest that the behavioural psychologists who argued that it was important that we didn't lock down too soon rather knew what they were talking about, doesn't it?
Like when people retire. I started working from home, and being single, about ten years ago and it does change you
Apparently a big change in retirement was the take up in activities and hobbies by the retired. Previously, the model was very much people retiring and lapsing into inactivity and going downhill quite rapidly.
The difference between the previous generations and the current lot of 70s is staggering.
Re. mental health, yes it's tough. But we also have a responsibility to others who may catch this.
For myself, I would rather learn to be in my own space than catch this thing, which is nasty. And I don't want to spread it around and be morally guilty of manslaughter.
I get the impression social distancing is a personal responsibility in Sweden rather than government enforced. You are expected to do it.
I wouldn't interpret any Swedish success in minimising infection as a green light to remove restrictions elsewhere, unless people take a similar personal responsibility.
Presumably the Swedish government reserves the right to impose measures if the the advisory ones aren't effective.
It does highlight the personal liberty question. We need to take more personal responsibility if we want to avoid governments removing our liberties.
I can't work out if we're going to have rampant deflation or rampant inflation from this. I think house prices could take a hit mind.
Who knows. But I reckon it will be inflation.
There's almost no velocity of money now though. Unless you're trying to buy PPE, inflation needs to have a large velocity of money and that has almost stopped.
High unemployment + negative economic growth = downwards pressure on inflation, usually. Oil prices are also at recent lows, and as you say spending is grinding to a halt. The main upwards indicator right now is low interest rates, bu they were already pretty low to start with, so the minor cut shouldn't change much. The massive increase in government spending is mostly just replacing what would've been regular income. My vote is for deflation.
So those people who spent all weekend moving money out of their bank accounts are ahead of the game and writing mug on our foreheads for being slow to act on this? Moving it it to what though? What assets won’t depreciate? jewellery? Water?
Remember again there's someone still working in Downing Street who said Britain didn't really need its farms and fishing fleet.
Sigh - that was in the context of an extreme hypothetical - quite common in Operational Research. You ask - if we take X to an extreme, what is the result Y.
In the case of farming - a large amount of money is spent on subsidy. What do we get for it? What would the landscape be, if we removed it?
A classic in this field was the study in WWII proposing to remove all defensive armament from RAF bombers. If you went all the way to redesigning the planes to not have the structural capability to carry the armament, then they would be 100mph faster and have half the crew. While not adopted, due to the politics of the matter, it is noteworthy that the Air Ministry dropped defensive armament for future designs.
If I recall correctly that was the Mossie, and de Havilland had to virtually build it themselves (full size mockup?) before the Air Ministry would order a single prototype.
Nope - later, after the Mosquito. The idea had been mooted several times by aircraft designers - the basic reasoning was that if you designed for speed, a bomber would be as fast as a fighter. Or nearly. So the intercept curve would be close to impossible.
The Mosquito was nearly binned by the failure of the Blenheim to do exactly that - survive by speed. It worked because the onset of compression effects made speeds above 400mph really, really difficult - otherwise by the time it was in production, speeds would have jumped again, and it would have been another Blenheim. The Mosquito survived with clever lobbying and the promise of testing armament - got as far as a mocked up turret in one prototype IIRC.
De Havilland had some idea of compression issues. As did Supermarine. Famously, Hawker didn't.
The study to remove all defensive armament was after Mosquitos demonstrated *cruise* speeds north of 300, while loaded.
The Mosquito is one of my two fave aircraft of WW2, the other being the Short Sunderland.
A few years I did knock up a spreadsheet of the (my estimated) cumulative effect of hypothentically replacing all our 4 engned bombers with Mossies. The initial total bombload was much lower but with a much smaller rate of loss I think I had the Mosquitoes overtaking within about 6-12 months. Can't remember my input parameters though.
Not enough piano makers...
The study I am talking of was essentially - 4 Merlins, 10K payload, 3 crew, metal construction. Think Lancaster with a much smaller and lighter fuselage.
IIRC De Havilland did some sketches for a 4 engined Super Mosquito. Along with a Sabre engined derivative.
The Mosquito got its performance from being the minimum aircraft to carry the load, not from the wooden construction.
At a tangent, has anyone looked at giving Coastal Command some Lancasters to close the submarine gap much earlier in the Battle of the Atlantic?
Life hasn't stopped completely. If things can still be progressed in some fashion they should be.
How on Earth can that be justified as a priority. If government has spare capacity there is no shortage of more urgent and more important things for the government to work on.
I dont know how much resource it would take up or whether it is being treated as a priority or not. It may be it does not take up all that much given the early stages of the process, and there may be limits to how many people can be usefully diverted onto more critical Covid 19 tasks. Its like getting 1000 volunteers - it might be great, but you probably cannot use them all effectively.
You're acting like literally nothing else may be permitted to happen while this is going on.
I dont think it's a priority. But that doesnt mean it's an outrage that its happening nor a sign that focus on more important things is not being given due attention.
Comments
The Mosquito was nearly binned by the failure of the Blenheim to do exactly that - survive by speed. It worked because the onset of compression effects made speeds above 400mph really, really difficult - otherwise by the time it was in production, speeds would have jumped again, and it would have been another Blenheim. The Mosquito survived with clever lobbying and the promise of testing armament - got as far as a mocked up turret in one prototype IIRC.
De Havilland had some idea of compression issues. As did Supermarine. Famously, Hawker didn't.
The study to remove all defensive armament was after Mosquitos demonstrated *cruise* speeds north of 300, while loaded.
I have stuff to do, and am finding it very difficult to apply myself.
You highlight that the rescue package isn't falling evenly or fairly. The difference between the UK's set of "schemes" and the US 'helicopter money' approach has so far received a lot less attention and analysis in the media than I would have expected?
It appears the "what if we let the young get infected" herd immunity approach (apparently worked up by the UK prior to Corona appearing on the scene) didn't factor in the number of hospital ventilators as a critical constraint.
I doubt that "what if we get rid of all our farms" factored in the possibility that world trade would be seriously interrupted. Had it done so, no-one would be foolish enough to posit such a question in the first place, even as a hypothetical.
There have been stirrings of mutiny over PPE too, which is ominous, with staff refusing to see patients until it is provided, according to the HSJ (paywalled).
Even before this crisis I was only going out of the house twice a week due to my caring duties. Even that level of getting out and not being isolated at home was very very hard to cope with. One of my coping methods has been spending a lot of time on here.
And in crisis, there is Samaritans.
Phone number: 116 123
On the government's allocation I am not so sure. Whilst I am getting no help it seems right to me that the available help is focused on those most at risk, the gig workers, the casually employed, those on the margins. The US system seems a waste of available resources to me.
'We' don't solve a problem like China, unless 'we' is a relatively united front of democracies.
Mind you I was stuck indoors for 3 months in 1981 with hardly any tv and no internet - so this seems a lot easier this time around
https://www.rcgp.org.uk/clinical-and-research/about/clinical-news/2020/march/covid-19-next-steps-in-primary-care-surveillance.aspx
Another is that some monitoring is being done I think via the Blood Donation Service. I do not know if that is documented publicly, but I heard that via PHE.
As with any sample regime it needs adjusting - eg blood donors are skewed to the younger and the healthly.
There's always more happening than the media dream of :-) .
The risk with the UK scheme is that it creates unintended losers - such as the self employed people who fall through the criteria for various reasons, such as recently started businesses, or people paying themselves with dividends.
Personally, I would have taken the US approach, and used the taxation system to recover the costs from those benefiting or relatively unaffected.
So how do other countries around the world, who need those materials, who need to meet the promise there will be plenty of food on supermarket shelves respond? If we throw money at it, make deals with presidents and governments, we are back to the Irish potato famine aren’t we? 🥔
Given that we stockpile to a certain extent at the moment...
The point is to explore the decision space - and that is precisely because it exposes weakness in both existing and possible actions.
The government seems to have dropped the subsidies/support for horse breeders. This means that we as a nation have a critical deficiency in the ability to rapidly generate a cavalry force for continental warfare. How could we let this happen?
Although given recent days that seems a big one!
You may have a point about weight, but "securing the load' is what all airline seats do. The floor has aeroquip track the entire length.
Though it does illustrate another problem common to Youtubers -- sound. Proper telly does not require interviewees to wear massive gaming headsets, for instance, and sound is better balanced so all speakers are heard at the same volume.
If they don't, people will squeal about the government's lack of resolve.
I have thought for some weeks this is a no-win situation for the government.
But, helpfully, the United States has demonstrated what happens if you cock up the response. That may adjust matters considerably.
Certainly, I for one would be grateful for some of that Chinese made PPE.
A few years I did knock up a spreadsheet of the (my estimated) cumulative effect of hypothentically replacing all our 4 engned bombers with Mossies. The initial total bombload was much lower but with a much smaller rate of loss I think I had the Mosquitoes overtaking within about 6-12 months. Can't remember my input parameters though.
Video calls with your mum are of course a top priority.
(*Sorry about the pun!)
It could be done theoretically for small, light objects, with lots of nets and aeroquip fasteners, but would take forever to bring everything in through the pax doors, tie them all down securely then calculate weight and balance - as opposed to just using the containers in the hold, which can be turned around completely in under an hour.
We are in WW2 and Great Depression territory. A once-in-a-generation or even century event, the magnitude of which is only slowly dawning on some commentators.
My advice? Don't touch stocks and shares until at least the autumn, possibly longer. Although be ready to go big if a vaccine is proven.
As for withdrawing cash to buy other commodities, that is fantastically daft. Unless you think the banking system is about to crash why get out of cash when the world economies are deflationary? Cash is going up in relative value, not down.
I mean, obviously, Gold would have been great in January when I advised buying it but I'm not sure that it's great value now.
That aside, I'd break the Japanese response into 4 phases:
1) Cruise ship: All kinds of incompetence, which put the central government under pressure producing
2) Early action: Work from home where possible, libraries and community centres close, events cancelled, schools closed. This really seems like it worked - the number of new cases per day flattened and may have started to drop. The testing may have been hokey but the general picture must be right. But then as people saw the numbers drop, we got
3) Complacency: The government announced that it would let schools reopen, and although they didn't say it, people took it as a signal that the crisis was over and started going out again. Crucially they did this right before a 3-day weekend. What's worse, the strict quarantine requirements on people from China weren't matched when the same thing happened in Europe and the US, so people were walking around as if there was no covid19 any more, when in fact it was everywhere.
4) OH SHIT: Which is where we are now, back to a supercharged version of (2), with a request to stay indoors in several cities.
So I definitely think it looks like the kind of measures taken in (2) were effective, and in *practical* terms it would certainly be possible to continue them indefinitely. Whether you could persuade people to do them indefinitely is another question - I suspect you'd need more coercion, at least for the most extreme risks - for example there were people going to crowded nightclubs again, and the government should have closed them. And when you start to relax the earlier measures you took, you need to be careful not to send a message that the problem has gone away. This is also somewhere where I think it might help to take with one hand what you give with the other and match general relaxation with more targeted crackdowns on higher-risk areas, which we should have more information about as time goes by.
The other optimistic thing is that there's a lot of best-practice-ish things that SK etc have done and Japan hasn't, so if you can get that initial stabilization we got without doing everything right, you should be able to get even better results.
PS. This video from a guy I know who has more contact with the Japanese healthcare system than he'd like has some really interesting stuff about things that Japan already did because it has a history of serious flu epidemics - there's quite a bit in here that would be practical for other countries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biVlGogYDfI
The study I am talking of was essentially - 4 Merlins, 10K payload, 3 crew, metal construction. Think Lancaster with a much smaller and lighter fuselage.
IIRC De Havilland did some sketches for a 4 engined Super Mosquito. Along with a Sabre engined derivative.
The Mosquito got its performance from being the minimum aircraft to carry the load, not from the wooden construction.
https://order-order.com/2020/03/30/richs-monday-morning-view-335/
The last of the rapidly disappearing deniers.
If you think London has a lot of hospitals, then you haven't been to Scotland, where every small rural town still has a 10 bed cottage hospital.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renkioi_Hospital
Smart phones, iPads, PCs, the internet, email, on-line banking/shopping, Facebook, Whatsapp, Skype etc. are so far beyond her ken they might as well be science fiction to her.
Overall, that's a real shame but it's not going to change now, sadly.
So be pleased @AlastairMeeks that your mum has embraced technology.
Do you even look at the markets when you think up this drivel?
"It should be stressed that one reason Sheffield has so many cases - 387 as of March 29 - is because it is a national testing area and therefore, is recording more cases."
which to me implies there is some degree of random testing going on there, not just selected groups showing symptoms. I can't see a figure for how many tests have been done there though compared to, say, Leeds.
I just want to repeat my apology to you last night about my criticism of your comments on Boris self isolation. Sometimes I get things wrong and this was one of them
I know you do not wish him harm
Best wishes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/2794683.stm
And of course now its "DIY" for them too:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8155135/How-British-TV-hosts-having-hair-make-amid-coronavirus-pandemic.html
Which is why some of them may not be looking as glam as usual: ITV newsreader Mary Nightingale revealing on Twitter on Tuesday that fans were worried she was unwell after she did her own 'TV make-up'.
Looks crap on TV though, which is why they use those little lapel mics or head-mounted "Madonna-style" mics instead.
It is the more humdrum and elective stuff that needs local provision.
I grew up in North Wales, where there is a similar problem. They closed a number of the smaller hospitals, and as a result in some places, things like complications in childbirth can easily mean a trip in the air ambulance!
When your mother learns
1) How to use the last seen/online info to ring you there & then and/or berate you for being up at such a time.
2) Mistaking status updates for a chat with you.
https://www.economist.com/business/2020/03/26/the-pandemic-shock-will-make-big-powerful-firms-even-mightier
Obviously last week saw a dead-cat bounce across the pond, hence Gold dipped.
The difference between the previous generations and the current lot of 70s is staggering.
For myself, I would rather learn to be in my own space than catch this thing, which is nasty. And I don't want to spread it around and be morally guilty of manslaughter.
I wouldn't interpret any Swedish success in minimising infection as a green light to remove restrictions elsewhere, unless people take a similar personal responsibility.
Presumably the Swedish government reserves the right to impose measures if the the advisory ones aren't effective.
It does highlight the personal liberty question. We need to take more personal responsibility if we want to avoid governments removing our liberties.
You're acting like literally nothing else may be permitted to happen while this is going on.
I dont think it's a priority. But that doesnt mean it's an outrage that its happening nor a sign that focus on more important things is not being given due attention.