long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
The theory is that the more people who have had it and have immunity, the less likely it is to spread and reach those who lack immunity. My understanding is that in cases like Italy it is the swamping of the ICU system that has led to a higher proportion of deaths. So I would suppose that overall the chances of both catching it and subsequently dying from it are much reduced if you still lack immunity.
But that is a very cautious layman's interpretation and could be very wide of the mark.
That’s my understanding too. By reducing the chance of their getting it, we make sure we have the capacity to cope with those that do.
What does this “coping” consist of? There is no cure. “Coping” just seems to be a polite way of saying that those admitted to hospital die in beds rather than on trollies or on the floor.
And what does the “testing” actually achieve? Not saying it’s wrong or unnecessary but what is it for, exactly?
People clearly have more chance of survival in a hospital bed on a ventilator than if turned away and sent home, or left in an ordinary hospital bed or trolley.
Antigen testing now is most important to avoid health professionals having to isolate for longer than necessary. And as a monitor of progress. Case numbers are too high to get back to a contract tracing strategy, although the object of the lockdown seems to be to make returning to this approach viable. Meanwhile we await an antibody test.
"On Monday, former supreme court justice Lord Sumption said that excessive measures were in danger of turning Britain into a “police state”, singling out Derbyshire police – which deployed drones and dyed a lagoon black – for “trying to shame people in using their undoubted right to take exercise in the country and wrecking beauty spots in the fells”."
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
"On Monday, former supreme court justice Lord Sumption said that excessive measures were in danger of turning Britain into a “police state”, singling out Derbyshire police – which deployed drones and dyed a lagoon black – for “trying to shame people in using their undoubted right to take exercise in the country and wrecking beauty spots in the fells”."
"On Monday, former supreme court justice Lord Sumption said that excessive measures were in danger of turning Britain into a “police state”, singling out Derbyshire police – which deployed drones and dyed a lagoon black – for “trying to shame people in using their undoubted right to take exercise in the country and wrecking beauty spots in the fells”."
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
The theory is that the more people who have had it and have immunity, the less likely it is to spread and reach those who lack immunity. My understanding is that in cases like Italy it is the swamping of the ICU system that has led to a higher proportion of deaths. So I would suppose that overall the chances of both catching it and subsequently dying from it are much reduced if you still lack immunity.
But that is a very cautious layman's interpretation and could be very wide of the mark.
That’s my understanding too. By reducing the chance of their getting it, we make sure we have the capacity to cope with those that do.
What does this “coping” consist of? There is no cure. “Coping” just seems to be a polite way of saying that those admitted to hospital die in beds rather than on trollies or on the floor.
And what does the “testing” actually achieve? Not saying it’s wrong or unnecessary but what is it for, exactly?
It seems to be for effective management of human resources in the NHS in the short term (weeks), and of wider society in the longer term (months). If people test positive for having *had* the virus then they cannot be shedding it and can get back to work and go shopping etc.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
True, but I'd rather have a 10% chance of dying after a 5% chance of catching it than a 10% chance of dying after a 50% chance of catching it.
Given the state of my lungs I probably have a very high chance of dying if I catch it. So until and unless a vaccine is developed I am going to have to live the life of a recluse. That does not fill me with a lot of hope. Life without seeing my family is not really worth living TBH.
I am not going to criticise the government as I am sure that there must be much work going on that we are not aware of, particularly from experts. I just don’t understand what the long-term strategy is - saving the NHS is all very well - but in the end isn’t the strategy the same as it’s always been - “herd immunity” but just over a long time frame. I wish I knew what the strategy is for at risk people other than just hiding them away.
As well as the possibility of vaccine, there is the development of effective treatments. Perhaps targeted antivirals, perhaps monoclonal antibodies, or simply convalescent serum. In addition the virus could just Peter out or become less virulent. Where there is life, there is hope. Hang in there @Cyclefree.
I'm intrigued by this terrifying disease which mysteriously came and then vanished:
One that I got interested in as well after reading Wolf Hall. Thomas Cromwell lost both his wife and children to this. Fine in the morning, dead by the evening. Scary indeed.
"On Monday, former supreme court justice Lord Sumption said that excessive measures were in danger of turning Britain into a “police state”, singling out Derbyshire police – which deployed drones and dyed a lagoon black – for “trying to shame people in using their undoubted right to take exercise in the country and wrecking beauty spots in the fells”."
Police chiefs are drawing up new guidance warning forces not to overreach their lockdown enforcement powers after withering criticism of controversial tactics deployed to stop the spread of coronavirus, the Guardian has learned.
The intervention comes amid growing concern that some forces are going beyond their legal powers to stop the spread of Covid-19, with one issuing a summons to a household for shopping for non-essential items and another telling locals that exercise was “limited to an hour a day”.
...
The source of confusion for frontline officers appears to be a gap between what the emergency legislation actually orders and what the government has said it wants people to do.
On the over-reaction of various police forces, surely it's not too much to ask that they should be able to read and understand a page and a half of exceptionally simple regulations?
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
The theory is that the more people who have had it and have immunity, the less likely it is to spread and reach those who lack immunity. My understanding is that in cases like Italy it is the swamping of the ICU system that has led to a higher proportion of deaths. So I would suppose that overall the chances of both catching it and subsequently dying from it are much reduced if you still lack immunity.
But that is a very cautious layman's interpretation and could be very wide of the mark.
That’s my understanding too. By reducing the chance of their getting it, we make sure we have the capacity to cope with those that do.
What does this “coping” consist of? There is no cure. “Coping” just seems to be a polite way of saying that those admitted to hospital die in beds rather than on trollies or on the floor.
And what does the “testing” actually achieve? Not saying it’s wrong or unnecessary but what is it for, exactly?
People clearly have more chance of survival in a hospital bed on a ventilator than if turned away and sent home, or left in an ordinary hospital bed or trolley.
Antigen testing now is most important to avoid health professionals having to isolate for longer than necessary. And as a monitor of progress. Case numbers are too high to get back to a contract tracing strategy, although the object of the lockdown seems to be to make returning to this approach viable. Meanwhile we await an antibody test.
The trouble with lack of contact tracing is, besides there being no contact tracing, we do not know *where* people caught the virus. If we knew that we might be able to restart some activities. If some things (religious services, for instance) are more dangerous then some others must by definition be less dangerous and could possibly be restarted. We just don't know.
On the over-reaction of various police forces, surely it's not too much to ask that they should be able to read and understand a page and a half of exceptionally simple regulations?
As per the Guardian, the issue is that the government’s advice - both as printed on gov.uk and as explained verbally by the PM and others - goes further than the letter of the regulations. My guess is that they decided it wasn’t practical to legislate for some of the stuff the government is advising, so the legislation falls short.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
The impression I got was that the 1% mortality rate was for a standard cross section of the population with elderly and those with underlying conditions being part of the calculation. If you can successfully isolate that portion of the population into the 40% who don't catch it then the CFR should be a great deal less than 1%
The simple fact of the matter is Boris and the Tories are unelectable now after the mess they have made of covid 19. Just the like coming US election is anyone but Trump, all UK elections next ten years will be anyone but Boris and the Tories, no real scrutiny of the opposition getting the votes.
Five clear categories of failure.
Planning and contingency for such an occurrence on a party in power a decade. Nursing numbers, ventilators, and training in this category.
Wasting time. we were weeks ahead of Italy, frittered that time and cost lives playing politics. Government clearly split, Ideological herd immunity v science and threat to nhs. Muddled comms.
The governments failure on testing is unwillingness to learn from other countries. Instead of quickly using a network of public and private laboratories, the UK used just one lab — Public Health England’s Colindale facility in north London, which was processing about 500 tests a day.
We don’t know the route cause of governments PPE failure yet. But is there still a patchy picture in NHS frontline? And and what of nursing and staff in care homes, if the government has a policy to protect them they have a funny way of sharing it.
It’s clear the Economic response, as well as being pro state employee and anti free enterprise and entrepreneurship is so divisive, is unaffordable and unworkable compared to the promises being made.
Johnson's lefty critics basically seem to be arguing that being locked down by the state and be made to queue to get into a supermarket was something that should be done sooner rather than later.
Hmm...
No, the failure was that the government lost time when it could have taken *less* disruptive measures (cancel events, please work from home where practical etc, better quarantine and tracking when entering the country from known hot-spots, clear messaging) but *sooner*.
Because the UK (and other western governments) left the response so late, they've had to resort to very extreme measures like stopping anyone leaving their house. Many of the things they're now stopping people do probably have quite small impact in proportion to the disruption they cause, but they have to do them because there's no margin for error before the hospital system collapses.
On the over-reaction of various police forces, surely it's not too much to ask that they should be able to read and understand a page and a half of exceptionally simple regulations?
As per the Guardian, the issue is that the government’s advice - both as printed on gov.uk and as explained verbally by the PM and others - goes further than the letter of the regulations. My guess is that they decided it wasn’t practical to legislate for some of the stuff the government is advising, so the legislation falls short.
Yes, well maybe I'm over-picky, but I can't help feeling that it's not unreasonable to expect the police to be able to read the actual sodding regulations. A big ask I know - these regulations stretch to all of a page and a half - but enforcing the law is supposed to be their day job.
On the over-reaction of various police forces, surely it's not too much to ask that they should be able to read and understand a page and a half of exceptionally simple regulations?
As per the Guardian, the issue is that the government’s advice - both as printed on gov.uk and as explained verbally by the PM and others - goes further than the letter of the regulations. My guess is that they decided it wasn’t practical to legislate for some of the stuff the government is advising, so the legislation falls short.
People complain about journalists asking the wrong questions but in light of police forces not properly understanding the regulations, and even more so the public, maybe some questions are legitimate.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
The impression I got was that the 1% mortality rate was for a standard cross section of the population with elderly and those with underlying conditions being part of the calculation. If you can successfully isolate that portion of the population into the 40% who don't catch it then the CFR should be a great deal less than 1%
And there remains the mystery of the ratio of mild or asymptomatic cases, for which we only have a few sometimes contradictory clues.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
The impression I got was that the 1% mortality rate was for a standard cross section of the population with elderly and those with underlying conditions being part of the calculation. If you can successfully isolate that portion of the population into the 40% who don't catch it then the CFR should be a great deal less than 1%
As I said the other night, perhaps the most efficient way to end this would be to deliberately infect everyone under the age of 60 with no underlying health conditions with the virus.
It would rely on people to volunteer, but if getting back to work is not incentive enough it would be cheaper to pay people to be infected than to pay furlough forever and job seekers allowance bill that will result from extended quarantine.
You'd go to the clinic, be assessed, ensure you have no serious medical conditions, then infected. You wait it out, possibly in a hotel (there are plenty going begging the government could commandeer). Then in two weeks, you're clear.
Herd immunity this way could be achieved in a month, using only healthy people. Cheaper, faster and more effective than three months of quarantine.
I thought Andy Burnham's measured approach to the Tories is the right tone...to things like HS2 and now Covid 19....
If Andy Burnham had won in 2015.......the last 5 years of British politics would have been profoundly different....for the Tories too...
Makes me even more angry with Corbyn et al....
Burnham should have tried to inspire the membership in 2015 and he might have won.
All candidates except Corbyn pivoted to austerity light.
I was going to vote Burnham until he joined YC and L4%K in dropping opposition to austerity.
Burnham massively overestimated LK's appeal, and massively underestimated Corbyn. He assumed the left had nowhere else to given Corbyn was evidently unelectable, and thought he needed to stop all LK's votes from transferring to YC in the final round. That was a pretty big mistake.
I thought Andy Burnham's measured approach to the Tories is the right tone...to things like HS2 and now Covid 19....
If Andy Burnham had won in 2015.......the last 5 years of British politics would have been profoundly different....for the Tories too...
Makes me even more angry with Corbyn et al....
Burnham should have tried to inspire the membership in 2015 and he might have won.
All candidates except Corbyn pivoted to austerity light.
I was going to vote Burnham until he joined YC and L4%K in dropping opposition to austerity.
I am sure L4%K means something to the initiated...
Liz 4% Kendall
The least successful leadership candidate in Labour history
Jesus. Get over it. You are obsessed.
If she had been more successful then maybe Labour wouldn't have gone down to one of the worst defeats it has ever endured?
Yes, it’s all Liz’s fault!
Kendall's leadership campaign was odd -- not so much "vote for Liz Kendall" as "vote for a hypothetical other candidate who looks a lot like Tony Blair".
The simple fact of the matter is Boris and the Tories are unelectable now after the mess they have made of covid 19. Just the like coming US election is anyone but Trump, all UK elections next ten years will be anyone but Boris and the Tories, no real scrutiny of the opposition getting the votes.
Five clear categories of failure.
Planning and contingency for such an occurrence on a party in power a decade. Nursing numbers, ventilators, and training in this category.
Wasting time. we were weeks ahead of Italy, frittered that time and cost lives playing politics. Government clearly split, Ideological herd immunity v science and threat to nhs. Muddled comms.
The governments failure on testing is unwillingness to learn from other countries. Instead of quickly using a network of public and private laboratories, the UK used just one lab — Public Health England’s Colindale facility in north London, which was processing about 500 tests a day.
We don’t know the route cause of governments PPE failure yet. But is there still a patchy picture in NHS frontline? And and what of nursing and staff in care homes, if the government has a policy to protect them they have a funny way of sharing it.
It’s clear the Economic response, as well as being pro state employee and anti free enterprise and entrepreneurship is so divisive, is unaffordable and unworkable compared to the promises being made.
The current poll numbers wouldn’t bear that hypothesis out. I am not sensing a backlash in the country against the government right now, in fact, if anything there seems to be more goodwill for Boris and co than I ever saw during the election campaign.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
Except mortality is not going to be 1% imho.
Further update. This research estimates 0.2% mortality rate. This would being the total death rate to 75 000 to achieve herd immunity. Grim but in some sense doable with the Nightingale hospitals and a flattened curve.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
The impression I got was that the 1% mortality rate was for a standard cross section of the population with elderly and those with underlying conditions being part of the calculation. If you can successfully isolate that portion of the population into the 40% who don't catch it then the CFR should be a great deal less than 1%
As I said the other night, perhaps the most efficient way to end this would be to deliberately infect everyone under the age of 60 with no underlying health conditions with the virus.
It would rely on people to volunteer, but if getting back to work is not incentive enough it would be cheaper to pay people to be infected than to pay furlough forever and job seekers allowance bill that will result from extended quarantine.
You'd go to the clinic, be assessed, ensure you have no serious medical conditions, then infected. You wait it out, possibly in a hotel (there are plenty going begging the government could commandeer). Then in two weeks, you're clear.
Herd immunity this way could be achieved in a month, using only healthy people. Cheaper, faster and more effective than three months of quarantine.
The problem with this otherwise brilliant plan is that many of the people under 60 still get very sick, some die and many more suffer permanent lung damage.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
True, but I'd rather have a 10% chance of dying after a 5% chance of catching it than a 10% chance of dying after a 50% chance of catching it.
Given the state of my lungs I probably have a very high chance of dying if I catch it. So until and unless a vaccine is developed I am going to have to live the life of a recluse. That does not fill me with a lot of hope. Life without seeing my family is not really worth living TBH.
I am not going to criticise the government as I am sure that there must be much work going on that we are not aware of, particularly from experts. I just don’t understand what the long-term strategy is - saving the NHS is all very well - but in the end isn’t the strategy the same as it’s always been - “herd immunity” but just over a long time frame. I wish I knew what the strategy is for at risk people other than just hiding them away.
Surely the long-term strategy has to be develop a vaccine.
And if there isn’t.....?
It’s very likely indeed that there will be (and very unlikely any vaccine will be ready for mass use in a shorter timeframe than discussed). But it’s probably a bit early to develop a solid long term strategy, as we still don’t have much more than an educated guess as to how many have been infected, and what the overall mortality rate might be. It shouldn’t be much longer than two to three months before there is enough testing (particularly for bold antibodies) done to have a much better idea of that.
That’s one ground for hope.
Another is that there are treatments (antivirals and other disease modifying treatments) which are already in clinical trials with hospitalised patients, where results will be out much, much sooner than for any vaccine. Some of these could be available very quickly on a large scale.
I understand the fear - I have a mother in her eighties, and a father in his nineties, who is locked down in a care home, and whom I might not see again. I’m not thinking ahead more than a month or so for now.
On the over-reaction of various police forces, surely it's not too much to ask that they should be able to read and understand a page and a half of exceptionally simple regulations?
As per the Guardian, the issue is that the government’s advice - both as printed on gov.uk and as explained verbally by the PM and others - goes further than the letter of the regulations. My guess is that they decided it wasn’t practical to legislate for some of the stuff the government is advising, so the legislation falls short.
Yes, well maybe I'm over-picky, but I can't help feeling that it's not unreasonable to expect the police to be able to read the actual sodding regulations. A big ask I know - these regulations stretch to all of a page and a half - but enforcing the law is supposed to be their day job.
Yes! As I have been saying ad nauseam on here and on Twitter all day....
"Student's disgust as couple spit at him 'and call him scumbag' while out on his daily exercise Jonny Whitfield was abused by a couple who pulled up alongside him in a car"
Question: If Capitalism is so good why does it need to be bailed out with Socialism every 10 years or so?
Answer - it doesn't.
1992,2001,2008,2020
Oh goodness have we not moved on from capitalism v socialism? Maybe you don’t want to move on, rather than lifting your gaze to the holistic picture you go to same old comfort blankets.
When you keep presenting it as only choice between the cosy time tested capitalism we do so well v socialism capitalism reset, you embarrass yourselves. This virus reveals there is liberal instinct v an authoritarian instinct alive and well throughout the world as much in culture as it is political choice. Politics that is not left or right. Politics democracy finds hard to disrupt because it is culture. One example in recent years conservatism is dying, Conservative party’s controlled by non conservatives, siren voices call to the Conservative flock tempting them to stray. Brexit is this.
by breaking away from Europe, you are moving Britain towards economic and social liberalism, and away from Conservatism. Brexit is killing Conservatism in Britain.
It’s not that all things stand still and stay the same. All the while we stand and we watch the Phoenix boil in her own blood, it slowly changes us tick by tock, slice by slice careful not to betray the journey. To keep and to cultivate all that is good, we need awareness of change, and we need to act. That, like all empires who decline and fall, is what we are missing.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
Except mortality is not going to be 1% imho.
Further update. This research estimates 0.2% mortality rate. This would being the total death rate to 75 000 to achieve herd immunity. Grim but in some sense doable with the Nightingale hospitals and a flattened curve.
That’s a guesstimate. Until we have much harder figures from testing, contemplating policy decisions along those lines simply isn’t tenable, particularly as it won’t take that long to have much better figures.
Shopping update: Sainsbury's had a longer queue (about 20 minutes) to get in; there were more staff and outlines of feet 2m apart for the queue. This was before the rain and hail. Some tissues (not my brand) and toilet rolls were back on the shelves; no soap or kitchen roll. Fruit and veg looked a bit close to use dates. Some but not enough Coke.
Ordered fish and chips by phone so they could start cooking it before I got there. They did not, however.
I thought Andy Burnham's measured approach to the Tories is the right tone...to things like HS2 and now Covid 19....
If Andy Burnham had won in 2015.......the last 5 years of British politics would have been profoundly different....for the Tories too...
Makes me even more angry with Corbyn et al....
Burnham should have tried to inspire the membership in 2015 and he might have won.
All candidates except Corbyn pivoted to austerity light.
I was going to vote Burnham until he joined YC and L4%K in dropping opposition to austerity.
I am sure L4%K means something to the initiated...
Liz 4% Kendall
The least successful leadership candidate in Labour history
Jesus. Get over it. You are obsessed.
It was a comment about why Andy Burnham lost.
She is the least successful leadership candidate in Labour history though.
Aren't you over it yet?
No, BJO, Corbyn is the least successful leadership candidate in Labour history.
He has done more to ensure Tory hegemony than any previous candidate.
One shouldn't completely blame Corbyn. His supporters put their faith not only with him but also a kitchen cabinet of people who have never run a GE election and seemed to have no idea how to do so. I am talking Murphy, Milne, Len, Murray etc etc.
I thought Andy Burnham's measured approach to the Tories is the right tone...to things like HS2 and now Covid 19....
If Andy Burnham had won in 2015.......the last 5 years of British politics would have been profoundly different....for the Tories too...
Makes me even more angry with Corbyn et al....
Burnham should have tried to inspire the membership in 2015 and he might have won.
All candidates except Corbyn pivoted to austerity light.
I was going to vote Burnham until he joined YC and L4%K in dropping opposition to austerity.
Burnham massively overestimated LK's appeal, and massively underestimated Corbyn. He assumed the left had nowhere else to given Corbyn was evidently unelectable, and thought he needed to stop all LK's votes from transferring to YC in the final round. That was a pretty big mistake.
Yes L4%K only stayed in the contest as a favour to YC who begged her not to drop out otherwise she would have been seen as the right wing candidate which at the time she was desperate to avoid.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
The impression I got was that the 1% mortality rate was for a standard cross section of the population with elderly and those with underlying conditions being part of the calculation. If you can successfully isolate that portion of the population into the 40% who don't catch it then the CFR should be a great deal less than 1%
As I said the other night, perhaps the most efficient way to end this would be to deliberately infect everyone under the age of 60 with no underlying health conditions with the virus.
It would rely on people to volunteer, but if getting back to work is not incentive enough it would be cheaper to pay people to be infected than to pay furlough forever and job seekers allowance bill that will result from extended quarantine.
You'd go to the clinic, be assessed, ensure you have no serious medical conditions, then infected. You wait it out, possibly in a hotel (there are plenty going begging the government could commandeer). Then in two weeks, you're clear.
Herd immunity this way could be achieved in a month, using only healthy people. Cheaper, faster and more effective than three months of quarantine.
The problem with this otherwise brilliant plan is that many of the people under 60 still get very sick, some die and many more suffer permanent lung damage.
Yes, mostly people with underlying health conditions and the clinically obese. Once you filter for other conditions the mortality rate for under 60s is very, very, very low.
The point of being assessed prior to being infected is to ensure that only the healthy population are given a dose of this.
The other point here is that we are not dealing with people who *otherwise would not have got the virus*, in the absence of a vaccine the herd immunity strategy is the only viable one. People will get this anyway, over the course of the next couple of years.
If we were to infect everyone who is healthy, all at once, we would actually reduce the chance of the sick and those with pre-existing health conditions catching this.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
The impression I got was that the 1% mortality rate was for a standard cross section of the population with elderly and those with underlying conditions being part of the calculation. If you can successfully isolate that portion of the population into the 40% who don't catch it then the CFR should be a great deal less than 1%
As I said the other night, perhaps the most efficient way to end this would be to deliberately infect everyone under the age of 60 with no underlying health conditions with the virus.
It would rely on people to volunteer, but if getting back to work is not incentive enough it would be cheaper to pay people to be infected than to pay furlough forever and job seekers allowance bill that will result from extended quarantine.
You'd go to the clinic, be assessed, ensure you have no serious medical conditions, then infected. You wait it out, possibly in a hotel (there are plenty going begging the government could commandeer). Then in two weeks, you're clear.
Herd immunity this way could be achieved in a month, using only healthy people. Cheaper, faster and more effective than three months of quarantine.
I'd be okay with being infected with it, despite having asthma. I want to get it over with as soon as possible and get immunity. If something goes wrong, bad luck for me.
Police chiefs are drawing up new guidance warning forces not to overreach their lockdown enforcement powers after withering criticism of controversial tactics deployed to stop the spread of coronavirus, the Guardian has learned.
The intervention comes amid growing concern that some forces are going beyond their legal powers to stop the spread of Covid-19, with one issuing a summons to a household for shopping for non-essential items and another telling locals that exercise was “limited to an hour a day”.
...
The source of confusion for frontline officers appears to be a gap between what the emergency legislation actually orders and what the government has said it wants people to do.
Why the fuck do they need new guidance? For crying out loud. All the twits need to do is print off the bloody regulations - you know the actual laws - and give them to each police officer and tell them to read them.
Christ Almighty!! Give me Zoom and half an hour and I could explain the blasted things to them - if understanding plain bloody English is beyond them.
"On Monday, former supreme court justice Lord Sumption said that excessive measures were in danger of turning Britain into a “police state”, singling out Derbyshire police – which deployed drones and dyed a lagoon black – for “trying to shame people in using their undoubted right to take exercise in the country and wrecking beauty spots in the fells”."
On the over-reaction of various police forces, surely it's not too much to ask that they should be able to read and understand a page and a half of exceptionally simple regulations?
As per the Guardian, the issue is that the government’s advice - both as printed on gov.uk and as explained verbally by the PM and others - goes further than the letter of the regulations. My guess is that they decided it wasn’t practical to legislate for some of the stuff the government is advising, so the legislation falls short.
Yes, well maybe I'm over-picky, but I can't help feeling that it's not unreasonable to expect the police to be able to read the actual sodding regulations. A big ask I know - these regulations stretch to all of a page and a half - but enforcing the law is supposed to be their day job.
Yes! As I have been saying ad nauseam on here and on Twitter all day....
A reasonably informed debate about this on Newsnight this evening. (And an fairly long feature showing a couple of officers doing their job quite sensitively and professionally, FWIW.)
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
Except mortality is not going to be 1% imho.
Further update. This research estimates 0.2% mortality rate. This would being the total death rate to 75 000 to achieve herd immunity. Grim but in some sense doable with the Nightingale hospitals and a flattened curve.
That’s a guesstimate. Until we have much harder figures from testing, contemplating policy decisions along those lines simply isn’t tenable, particularly as it won’t take that long to have much better figures.
Absolutely agreed. Segregation and routine testing is the only sensible way to manage this in the medium term.
I thought Andy Burnham's measured approach to the Tories is the right tone...to things like HS2 and now Covid 19....
If Andy Burnham had won in 2015.......the last 5 years of British politics would have been profoundly different....for the Tories too...
Makes me even more angry with Corbyn et al....
Burnham should have tried to inspire the membership in 2015 and he might have won.
All candidates except Corbyn pivoted to austerity light.
I was going to vote Burnham until he joined YC and L4%K in dropping opposition to austerity.
Burnham massively overestimated LK's appeal, and massively underestimated Corbyn. He assumed the left had nowhere else to given Corbyn was evidently unelectable, and thought he needed to stop all LK's votes from transferring to YC in the final round. That was a pretty big mistake.
Yes L4%K only stayed in the contest as a favour to YC who begged her not to drop out otherwise she would have been seen as the right wing candidate which at the time she was desperate to avoid.
And Corbyn stayed in the contest to trash the party for a generation. No contest.
Shopping update: Sainsbury's had a longer queue (about 20 minutes) to get in; there were more staff and outlines of feet 2m apart for the queue. This was before the rain and hail. Some tissues (not my brand) and toilet rolls were back on the shelves; no soap or kitchen roll. Fruit and veg looked a bit close to use dates. Some but not enough Coke.
Ordered fish and chips by phone so they could start cooking it before I got there. They did not, however.
Do these queues happen only in the morning ?
Because I don't see them in the evening.
Plenty of toilet roll and soap in Asda and even some dry pasta but chickpeas and lentils are now rare.
I thought Andy Burnham's measured approach to the Tories is the right tone...to things like HS2 and now Covid 19....
If Andy Burnham had won in 2015.......the last 5 years of British politics would have been profoundly different....for the Tories too...
Makes me even more angry with Corbyn et al....
Burnham should have tried to inspire the membership in 2015 and he might have won.
All candidates except Corbyn pivoted to austerity light.
I was going to vote Burnham until he joined YC and L4%K in dropping opposition to austerity.
Burnham massively overestimated LK's appeal, and massively underestimated Corbyn. He assumed the left had nowhere else to given Corbyn was evidently unelectable, and thought he needed to stop all LK's votes from transferring to YC in the final round. That was a pretty big mistake.
Yes L4%K only stayed in the contest as a favour to YC who begged her not to drop out otherwise she would have been seen as the right wing candidate which at the time she was desperate to avoid.
And Corbyn stayed in the contest to trash the party for a generation. No contest.
Corbyn came within a few thousand votes of becoming PM in 2017.
L4%K came within a few thousand votes of being forever known as L5%K
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
True, but I'd rather have a 10% chance of dying after a 5% chance of catching it than a 10% chance of dying after a 50% chance of catching it.
Given the state of my lungs I probably have a very high chance of dying if I catch it. So until and unless a vaccine is developed I am going to have to live the life of a recluse. That does not fill me with a lot of hope. Life without seeing my family is not really worth living TBH.
I am not going to criticise the government as I am sure that there must be much work going on that we are not aware of, particularly from experts. I just don’t understand what the long-term strategy is - saving the NHS is all very well - but in the end isn’t the strategy the same as it’s always been - “herd immunity” but just over a long time frame. I wish I knew what the strategy is for at risk people other than just hiding them away.
Surely the long-term strategy has to be develop a vaccine.
And if there isn’t.....?
It’s very likely indeed that there will be (and very unlikely any vaccine will be ready for mass use in a shorter timeframe than discussed). But it’s probably a bit early to develop a solid long term strategy, as we still don’t have much more than an educated guess as to how many have been infected, and what the overall mortality rate might be. It shouldn’t be much longer than two to three months before there is enough testing (particularly for bold antibodies) done to have a much better idea of that.
That’s one ground for hope.
Another is that there are treatments (antivirals and other disease modifying treatments) which are already in clinical trials with hospitalised patients, where results will be out much, much sooner than for any vaccine. Some of these could be available very quickly on a large scale.
I understand the fear - I have a mother in her eighties, and a father in his nineties, who is locked down in a care home, and whom I might not see again. I’m not thinking ahead more than a month or so for now.
I feel for you. I am finding it unbearable not being able to see my sons. The youngest has started writing me proper letters - as he used to do as a child to his grand-dad. It is very sweet.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
The impression I got was that the 1% mortality rate was for a standard cross section of the population with elderly and those with underlying conditions being part of the calculation. If you can successfully isolate that portion of the population into the 40% who don't catch it then the CFR should be a great deal less than 1%
As I said the other night, perhaps the most efficient way to end this would be to deliberately infect everyone under the age of 60 with no underlying health conditions with the virus.
It would rely on people to volunteer, but if getting back to work is not incentive enough it would be cheaper to pay people to be infected than to pay furlough forever and job seekers allowance bill that will result from extended quarantine.
You'd go to the clinic, be assessed, ensure you have no serious medical conditions, then infected. You wait it out, possibly in a hotel (there are plenty going begging the government could commandeer). Then in two weeks, you're clear.
Herd immunity this way could be achieved in a month, using only healthy people. Cheaper, faster and more effective than three months of quarantine.
I'd be okay with being infected with it, despite having asthma. I want to get it over with as soon as possible and get immunity. If something goes wrong, bad luck for me.
As would I, despite having some minor underlying health conditions and probably being considered medium risk, at best.
As the quarantine goes on and we watch the world from our windows, how many more people will say "f*ck it, I want to catch this so I can get on with my life."
That number will increase exponentially if, as others have said, a test to see if you have had it (and can therefore move about freely) becomes widely available.
The simple fact of the matter is Boris and the Tories are unelectable now after the mess they have made of covid 19. Just the like coming US election is anyone but Trump, all UK elections next ten years will be anyone but Boris and the Tories, no real scrutiny of the opposition getting the votes.
Five clear categories of failure.
Planning and contingency for such an occurrence on a party in power a decade. Nursing numbers, ventilators, and training in this category.
Wasting time. we were weeks ahead of Italy, frittered that time and cost lives playing politics. Government clearly split, Ideological herd immunity v science and threat to nhs. Muddled comms.
The governments failure on testing is unwillingness to learn from other countries. Instead of quickly using a network of public and private laboratories, the UK used just one lab — Public Health England’s Colindale facility in north London, which was processing about 500 tests a day.
We don’t know the route cause of governments PPE failure yet. But is there still a patchy picture in NHS frontline? And and what of nursing and staff in care homes, if the government has a policy to protect them they have a funny way of sharing it.
It’s clear the Economic response, as well as being pro state employee and anti free enterprise and entrepreneurship is so divisive, is unaffordable and unworkable compared to the promises being made.
It was the scientists pushing the herd immunity idea not the politicians. So your politicians vs scientists idea is as much garbage as the rest of your ideas.
I thought Andy Burnham's measured approach to the Tories is the right tone...to things like HS2 and now Covid 19....
If Andy Burnham had won in 2015.......the last 5 years of British politics would have been profoundly different....for the Tories too...
Makes me even more angry with Corbyn et al....
Burnham should have tried to inspire the membership in 2015 and he might have won.
All candidates except Corbyn pivoted to austerity light.
I was going to vote Burnham until he joined YC and L4%K in dropping opposition to austerity.
Burnham massively overestimated LK's appeal, and massively underestimated Corbyn. He assumed the left had nowhere else to given Corbyn was evidently unelectable, and thought he needed to stop all LK's votes from transferring to YC in the final round. That was a pretty big mistake.
Yes L4%K only stayed in the contest as a favour to YC who begged her not to drop out otherwise she would have been seen as the right wing candidate which at the time she was desperate to avoid.
And Corbyn stayed in the contest to trash the party for a generation. No contest.
Corbyn came within a few thousand votes of becoming PM in 2017.
L4%K came within a few thousand votes of being forever known as L5%K
Corbyn took us back to the 1930s and gave us Boris for five years. He is without equal. Even the SDP left Labour in a stronger position.
The ironic thing is that Corbyn was ever only a pastiche of a socialist. A nostalgic relic from a bygone socialist utopia that never was.
Police chiefs are drawing up new guidance warning forces not to overreach their lockdown enforcement powers after withering criticism of controversial tactics deployed to stop the spread of coronavirus, the Guardian has learned.
The intervention comes amid growing concern that some forces are going beyond their legal powers to stop the spread of Covid-19, with one issuing a summons to a household for shopping for non-essential items and another telling locals that exercise was “limited to an hour a day”.
...
The source of confusion for frontline officers appears to be a gap between what the emergency legislation actually orders and what the government has said it wants people to do.
Why the fuck do they need new guidance? For crying out loud. All the twits need to do is print off the bloody regulations - you know the actual laws - and give them to each police officer and tell them to read them.
Christ Almighty!! Give me Zoom and half an hour and I could explain the blasted things to them - if understanding plain bloody English is beyond them.
There does seem to be a fairly widespread confusion about the difference between the regulations and the government advice (or officers’ particular interpretation of it). I’m not even sure all of them realise that they are not the same thing.
(OTOH, were there widespread flouting of the advice, but within the regulations, the latter would probably be extended quite quickly.)
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
The impression I got was that the 1% mortality rate was for a standard cross section of the population with elderly and those with underlying conditions being part of the calculation. If you can successfully isolate that portion of the population into the 40% who don't catch it then the CFR should be a great deal less than 1%
As I said the other night, perhaps the most efficient way to end this would be to deliberately infect everyone under the age of 60 with no underlying health conditions with the virus.
It would rely on people to volunteer, but if getting back to work is not incentive enough it would be cheaper to pay people to be infected than to pay furlough forever and job seekers allowance bill that will result from extended quarantine.
You'd go to the clinic, be assessed, ensure you have no serious medical conditions, then infected. You wait it out, possibly in a hotel (there are plenty going begging the government could commandeer). Then in two weeks, you're clear.
Herd immunity this way could be achieved in a month, using only healthy people. Cheaper, faster and more effective than three months of quarantine.
The problem with this otherwise brilliant plan is that many of the people under 60 still get very sick, some die and many more suffer permanent lung damage.
Yes, mostly people with underlying health conditions and the clinically obese. Once you filter for other conditions the mortality rate for under 60s is very, very, very low.
The point of being assessed prior to being infected is to ensure that only the healthy population are given a dose of this.
The other point here is that we are not dealing with people who *otherwise would not have got the virus*, in the absence of a vaccine the herd immunity strategy is the only viable one. People will get this anyway, over the course of the next couple of years.
If we were to infect everyone who is healthy, all at once, we would actually reduce the chance of the sick and those with pre-existing health conditions catching this.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
The impression I got was that the 1% mortality rate was for a standard cross section of the population with elderly and those with underlying conditions being part of the calculation. If you can successfully isolate that portion of the population into the 40% who don't catch it then the CFR should be a great deal less than 1%
As I said the other night, perhaps the most efficient way to end this would be to deliberately infect everyone under the age of 60 with no underlying health conditions with the virus.
It would rely on people to volunteer, but if getting back to work is not incentive enough it would be cheaper to pay people to be infected than to pay furlough forever and job seekers allowance bill that will result from extended quarantine.
You'd go to the clinic, be assessed, ensure you have no serious medical conditions, then infected. You wait it out, possibly in a hotel (there are plenty going begging the government could commandeer). Then in two weeks, you're clear.
Herd immunity this way could be achieved in a month, using only healthy people. Cheaper, faster and more effective than three months of quarantine.
I'd be okay with being infected with it, despite having asthma. I want to get it over with as soon as possible and get immunity. If something goes wrong, bad luck for me.
Volunteer for NHS Nightingale. Exposure guaranteed.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
The impression I got was that the 1% mortality rate was for a standard cross section of the population with elderly and those with underlying conditions being part of the calculation. If you can successfully isolate that portion of the population into the 40% who don't catch it then the CFR should be a great deal less than 1%
As I said the other night, perhaps the most efficient way to end this would be to deliberately infect everyone under the age of 60 with no underlying health conditions with the virus.
It would rely on people to volunteer, but if getting back to work is not incentive enough it would be cheaper to pay people to be infected than to pay furlough forever and job seekers allowance bill that will result from extended quarantine.
You'd go to the clinic, be assessed, ensure you have no serious medical conditions, then infected. You wait it out, possibly in a hotel (there are plenty going begging the government could commandeer). Then in two weeks, you're clear.
Herd immunity this way could be achieved in a month, using only healthy people. Cheaper, faster and more effective than three months of quarantine.
I'd be okay with being infected with it, despite having asthma. I want to get it over with as soon as possible and get immunity. If something goes wrong, bad luck for me.
As would I, despite having some minor underlying health conditions and probably being considered medium risk, at best.
As the quarantine goes on and we watch the world from our windows, how many more people will say "f*ck it, I want to catch this so I can get on with my life."
That number will increase exponentially if, as others have said, a test to see if you have had it (and can therefore move about freely) becomes widely available.
I don't think lock down will be able to go on longer than June.
I get the feeling people are probably prepared to put up with this for three months but I think the idea people would let this carry on for six months is for the birds.
The simple fact of the matter is Boris and the Tories are unelectable now after the mess they have made of covid 19. Just the like coming US election is anyone but Trump, all UK elections next ten years will be anyone but Boris and the Tories, no real scrutiny of the opposition getting the votes.
Five clear categories of failure.
Planning and contingency for such an occurrence on a party in power a decade. Nursing numbers, ventilators, and training in this category.
Wasting time. we were weeks ahead of Italy, frittered that time and cost lives playing politics. Government clearly split, Ideological herd immunity v science and threat to nhs. Muddled comms.
The governments failure on testing is unwillingness to learn from other countries. Instead of quickly using a network of public and private laboratories, the UK used just one lab — Public Health England’s Colindale facility in north London, which was processing about 500 tests a day.
We don’t know the route cause of governments PPE failure yet. But is there still a patchy picture in NHS frontline? And and what of nursing and staff in care homes, if the government has a policy to protect them they have a funny way of sharing it.
It’s clear the Economic response, as well as being pro state employee and anti free enterprise and entrepreneurship is so divisive, is unaffordable and unworkable compared to the promises being made.
It was the scientists pushing the herd immunity idea not the politicians. So your politicians vs scientists idea is as much garbage as the rest of your ideas.
I personally think BJ has done quite well overall.
The only big failing is the level of tests compared to the most successful nations.
I think our outcomes will be mid table ie worse than Germany, S Korea and possibly France. Better than the USA Italy and Spain.
If so BJ wins in 2024 imo unless we repeat austerity.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
The impression I got was that the 1% mortality rate was for a standard cross section of the population with elderly and those with underlying conditions being part of the calculation. If you can successfully isolate that portion of the population into the 40% who don't catch it then the CFR should be a great deal less than 1%
As I said the other night, perhaps the most efficient way to end this would be to deliberately infect everyone under the age of 60 with no underlying health conditions with the virus.
It would rely on people to volunteer, but if getting back to work is not incentive enough it would be cheaper to pay people to be infected than to pay furlough forever and job seekers allowance bill that will result from extended quarantine.
You'd go to the clinic, be assessed, ensure you have no serious medical conditions, then infected. You wait it out, possibly in a hotel (there are plenty going begging the government could commandeer). Then in two weeks, you're clear.
Herd immunity this way could be achieved in a month, using only healthy people. Cheaper, faster and more effective than three months of quarantine.
The problem with this otherwise brilliant plan is that many of the people under 60 still get very sick, some die and many more suffer permanent lung damage.
Yes, mostly people with underlying health conditions and the clinically obese. Once you filter for other conditions the mortality rate for under 60s is very, very, very low.
The point of being assessed prior to being infected is to ensure that only the healthy population are given a dose of this.
The other point here is that we are not dealing with people who *otherwise would not have got the virus*, in the absence of a vaccine the herd immunity strategy is the only viable one. People will get this anyway, over the course of the next couple of years.
If we were to infect everyone who is healthy, all at once, we would actually reduce the chance of the sick and those with pre-existing health conditions catching this.
I think you are quoting the symptomatic Case Fatality Rate. The infection Fatality Rate incorporates all of the asymptomatic cases as well. With those, the denominator will be much smaller (likely at least an order of magnitude, so 1/5000 or smaller). But to be certain of this, we need the serological studies, which is why so much effort is being invested in a good quality antibody test.
The simple fact of the matter is Boris and the Tories are unelectable now after the mess they have made of covid 19. Just the like coming US election is anyone but Trump, all UK elections next ten years will be anyone but Boris and the Tories, no real scrutiny of the opposition getting the votes.
Five clear categories of failure.
Planning and contingency for such an occurrence on a party in power a decade. Nursing numbers, ventilators, and training in this category.
Wasting time. we were weeks ahead of Italy, frittered that time and cost lives playing politics. Government clearly split, Ideological herd immunity v science and threat to nhs. Muddled comms.
The governments failure on testing is unwillingness to learn from other countries. Instead of quickly using a network of public and private laboratories, the UK used just one lab — Public Health England’s Colindale facility in north London, which was processing about 500 tests a day.
We don’t know the route cause of governments PPE failure yet. But is there still a patchy picture in NHS frontline? And and what of nursing and staff in care homes, if the government has a policy to protect them they have a funny way of sharing it.
It’s clear the Economic response, as well as being pro state employee and anti free enterprise and entrepreneurship is so divisive, is unaffordable and unworkable compared to the promises being made.
It was the scientists pushing the herd immunity idea not the politicians. So your politicians vs scientists idea is as much garbage as the rest of your ideas.
I personally think BJ has done quite well overall.
The only big failing is the level of tests compared to the most successful nations.
I think our outcomes will be mid table ie worse than Germany, S Korea and possibly France. Better than the USA Italy and Spain.
If so BJ wins in 2024 imo unless we repeat austerity.
The economy is going to contract by 15%+ in one quarter. No government can possibly survive that kind of catastrophe.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
The impression I got was that the 1% mortality rate was for a standard cross section of the population with elderly and those with underlying conditions being part of the calculation. If you can successfully isolate that portion of the population into the 40% who don't catch it then the CFR should be a great deal less than 1%
As I said the other night, perhaps the most efficient way to end this would be to deliberately infect everyone under the age of 60 with no underlying health conditions with the virus.
It would rely on people to volunteer, but if getting back to work is not incentive enough it would be cheaper to pay people to be infected than to pay furlough forever and job seekers allowance bill that will result from extended quarantine.
You'd go to the clinic, be assessed, ensure you have no serious medical conditions, then infected. You wait it out, possibly in a hotel (there are plenty going begging the government could commandeer). Then in two weeks, you're clear.
Herd immunity this way could be achieved in a month, using only healthy people. Cheaper, faster and more effective than three months of quarantine.
The problem with this otherwise brilliant plan is that many of the people under 60 still get very sick, some die and many more suffer permanent lung damage.
Yes, mostly people with underlying health conditions and the clinically obese. Once you filter for other conditions the mortality rate for under 60s is very, very, very low.
The point of being assessed prior to being infected is to ensure that only the healthy population are given a dose of this.
The other point here is that we are not dealing with people who *otherwise would not have got the virus*, in the absence of a vaccine the herd immunity strategy is the only viable one. People will get this anyway, over the course of the next couple of years.
If we were to infect everyone who is healthy, all at once, we would actually reduce the chance of the sick and those with pre-existing health conditions catching this.
I think you are quoting the symptomatic Case Fatality Rate. The infection Fatality Rate incorporates all of the asymptomatic cases as well. With those, the denominator will be much smaller (likely at least an order of magnitude, so 1/5000 or smaller). But to be certain of this, we need the serological studies, which is why so much effort is being invested in a good quality antibody test.
The simple fact of the matter is Boris and the Tories are unelectable now after the mess they have made of covid 19. Just the like coming US election is anyone but Trump, all UK elections next ten years will be anyone but Boris and the Tories, no real scrutiny of the opposition getting the votes.
Five clear categories of failure.
Planning and contingency for such an occurrence on a party in power a decade. Nursing numbers, ventilators, and training in this category.
Wasting time. we were weeks ahead of Italy, frittered that time and cost lives playing politics. Government clearly split, Ideological herd immunity v science and threat to nhs. Muddled comms.
The governments failure on testing is unwillingness to learn from other countries. Instead of quickly using a network of public and private laboratories, the UK used just one lab — Public Health England’s Colindale facility in north London, which was processing about 500 tests a day.
We don’t know the route cause of governments PPE failure yet. But is there still a patchy picture in NHS frontline? And and what of nursing and staff in care homes, if the government has a policy to protect them they have a funny way of sharing it.
It’s clear the Economic response, as well as being pro state employee and anti free enterprise and entrepreneurship is so divisive, is unaffordable and unworkable compared to the promises being made.
It was the scientists pushing the herd immunity idea not the politicians. So your politicians vs scientists idea is as much garbage as the rest of your ideas.
I personally think BJ has done quite well overall.
The only big failing is the level of tests compared to the most successful nations.
I think our outcomes will be mid table ie worse than Germany, S Korea and possibly France. Better than the USA Italy and Spain.
If so BJ wins in 2024 imo unless we repeat austerity.
The economy is going to contract by 15%+ in one quarter. No government can possibly survive that kind of catastrophe.
The next election is in the bag for Labour.
The only bag the Labour Party will be in is a body bag.
I thought Andy Burnham's measured approach to the Tories is the right tone...to things like HS2 and now Covid 19....
If Andy Burnham had won in 2015.......the last 5 years of British politics would have been profoundly different....for the Tories too...
Makes me even more angry with Corbyn et al....
Burnham should have tried to inspire the membership in 2015 and he might have won.
All candidates except Corbyn pivoted to austerity light.
I was going to vote Burnham until he joined YC and L4%K in dropping opposition to austerity.
Burnham massively overestimated LK's appeal, and massively underestimated Corbyn. He assumed the left had nowhere else to given Corbyn was evidently unelectable, and thought he needed to stop all LK's votes from transferring to YC in the final round. That was a pretty big mistake.
Yes L4%K only stayed in the contest as a favour to YC who begged her not to drop out otherwise she would have been seen as the right wing candidate which at the time she was desperate to avoid.
And Corbyn stayed in the contest to trash the party for a generation. No contest.
Corbyn came within a few thousand votes of becoming PM in 2017.
L4%K came within a few thousand votes of being forever known as L5%K
Corbyn took us back to the 1930s and gave us Boris for five years. He is without equal. Even the SDP left Labour in a stronger position.
The ironic thing is that Corbyn was ever only a pastiche of a socialist. A nostalgic relic from a bygone socialist utopia that never was.
To what do you attribute the fact he came within a few thousand votes of becoming PMin 2017 via the biggest increase in vote share since WW2.
His biggest failing was to allow Boris a Brexit election when almost everybody knew we would lose. The GE2019 Labour campaign was pathetic
The simple fact of the matter is Boris and the Tories are unelectable now after the mess they have made of covid 19. Just the like coming US election is anyone but Trump, all UK elections next ten years will be anyone but Boris and the Tories, no real scrutiny of the opposition getting the votes.
Five clear categories of failure.
Planning and contingency for such an occurrence on a party in power a decade. Nursing numbers, ventilators, and training in this category.
Wasting time. we were weeks ahead of Italy, frittered that time and cost lives playing politics. Government clearly split, Ideological herd immunity v science and threat to nhs. Muddled comms.
The governments failure on testing is unwillingness to learn from other countries. Instead of quickly using a network of public and private laboratories, the UK used just one lab — Public Health England’s Colindale facility in north London, which was processing about 500 tests a day.
We don’t know the route cause of governments PPE failure yet. But is there still a patchy picture in NHS frontline? And and what of nursing and staff in care homes, if the government has a policy to protect them they have a funny way of sharing it.
It’s clear the Economic response, as well as being pro state employee and anti free enterprise and entrepreneurship is so divisive, is unaffordable and unworkable compared to the promises being made.
It was the scientists pushing the herd immunity idea not the politicians. So your politicians vs scientists idea is as much garbage as the rest of your ideas.
I personally think BJ has done quite well overall.
The only big failing is the level of tests compared to the most successful nations.
I think our outcomes will be mid table ie worse than Germany, S Korea and possibly France. Better than the USA Italy and Spain.
If so BJ wins in 2024 imo unless we repeat austerity.
The economy is going to contract by 15%+ in one quarter. No government can possibly survive that kind of catastrophe.
The next election is in the bag for Labour.
The only bag the Labour Party will be in is a body bag.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
As I understand the numbers, herd immunity is achieved at 40% of the population. COVID19 mortality is unknown but it is greater by an order of magnitude than flu, which is also very infectious, and less than SARS, which is much less infectious. Probably 1% to 3%. This means, I think, a quarter of a million or so people need to die in the UK before we reach herd immunity.
This death is a somewhat horrible one. Currently the hospital system is coping after seeing 1400 deaths. We are talking about a scale of need that is 100 times bigger. The effect on the healthcare system is unimaginable.
We need a vaccine. Failing that we need to isolate the infected from the uninfected and the vulnerable from everyone else. And we need to test, test and test.
I thought it was 60%? Although of course in reality it’s a sliding scale.
Sorry you're right I got the percentages the wrong way round. So approximately 400 000 deaths are needed to get to herd immunity at 1% mortality, I reckon.
The impression I got was that the 1% mortality rate was for a standard cross section of the population with elderly and those with underlying conditions being part of the calculation. If you can successfully isolate that portion of the population into the 40% who don't catch it then the CFR should be a great deal less than 1%
As I said the other night, perhaps the most efficient way to end this would be to deliberately infect everyone under the age of 60 with no underlying health conditions with the virus.
It would rely on people to volunteer, but if getting back to work is not incentive enough it would be cheaper to pay people to be infected than to pay furlough forever and job seekers allowance bill that will result from extended quarantine.
You'd go to the clinic, be assessed, ensure you have no serious medical conditions, then infected. You wait it out, possibly in a hotel (there are plenty going begging the government could commandeer). Then in two weeks, you're clear.
Herd immunity this way could be achieved in a month, using only healthy people. Cheaper, faster and more effective than three months of quarantine.
The problem with this otherwise brilliant plan is that many of the people under 60 still get very sick, some die and many more suffer permanent lung damage.
Yes, mostly people with underlying health conditions and the clinically obese. Once you filter for other conditions the mortality rate for under 60s is very, very, very low.
The point of being assessed prior to being infected is to ensure that only the healthy population are given a dose of this.
The other point here is that we are not dealing with people who *otherwise would not have got the virus*, in the absence of a vaccine the herd immunity strategy is the only viable one. People will get this anyway, over the course of the next couple of years.
If we were to infect everyone who is healthy, all at once, we would actually reduce the chance of the sick and those with pre-existing health conditions catching this.
The chance of someone aged 35-44 dying of _anything_ in the next year is 1 in 663. So what?
Again, my point is that maybe at least half of those 50,000 people are going to get it anyway over the next year, so why not allow them to choose the risk?
The longer this lockdown goes on, the more people will choose that risk. Because they will be unemployable otherwise. Cooped up in their homes, which may not be nice at all. Living half a life.
We have already had anecdotes in the form of GideonWise (aged 33?) who has had this and survived it. The more anecodotes people hear from their friends the more they will go "yeah, I'll chance it." Particularly when those who have survived it are back at their jobs, socialising, and posting instagram from their holidays, while you're sat under house arrest, waiting for your next government handout.
long time lurker, tempted back. posted (and even wrote an article ten years ago). not sure why I'm posting again. Corona related I think. Current madness will either be seen as a monumental testament to modern ingenuity avoiding monumental death, or mass hysteria. Three years and we get the answer.
I fear it might endure as another Y2K moment. All those who lack the knowledge of all the work that went into averting disaster and who have an axe to grind for or against a particular position or party will use any lack of hundreds of thousands of deaths as 'evidence' it was all a giant waste. Sadly and annoyingly many of those doing this will be from the more extreme elements of my own libertarian persuasion.
Edit. Oh and very welcome back.
A technical question: let us say a significant proportion of the population develops immunity and there is no vaccine. What happens to people who are at high risk if they do catch it? How do they benefit? There is still no cure, the risk of death is great. So do they have to stay isolated for ever?
True, but I'd rather have a 10% chance of dying after a 5% chance of catching it than a 10% chance of dying after a 50% chance of catching it.
Given the state of my lungs I probably have a very high chance of dying if I catch it. So until and unless a vaccine is developed I am going to have to live the life of a recluse. That does not fill me with a lot of hope. Life without seeing my family is not really worth living TBH.
I am not going to criticise the government as I am sure that there must be much work going on that we are not aware of, particularly from experts. I just don’t understand what the long-term strategy is - saving the NHS is all very well - but in the end isn’t the strategy the same as it’s always been - “herd immunity” but just over a long time frame. I wish I knew what the strategy is for at risk people other than just hiding them away.
As well as the possibility of vaccine, there is the development of effective treatments. Perhaps targeted antivirals, perhaps monoclonal antibodies, or simply convalescent serum. In addition the virus could just Peter out or become less virulent. Where there is life, there is hope. Hang in there @Cyclefree.
I'm intrigued by this terrifying disease which mysteriously came and then vanished:
One that I got interested in as well after reading Wolf Hall. Thomas Cromwell lost both his wife and children to this. Fine in the morning, dead by the evening. Scary indeed.
I got the third and final book delivered the other day (so should I disappear for a bit, you’ll know why). A much more recent, and even more puzzling pandemic than the ‘sweating sickness’ (which @ydoethur mentioned the other day): https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/140/8/2246/3970828
"On Monday, former supreme court justice Lord Sumption said that excessive measures were in danger of turning Britain into a “police state”, singling out Derbyshire police – which deployed drones and dyed a lagoon black – for “trying to shame people in using their undoubted right to take exercise in the country and wrecking beauty spots in the fells”."
I thought Andy Burnham's measured approach to the Tories is the right tone...to things like HS2 and now Covid 19....
If Andy Burnham had won in 2015.......the last 5 years of British politics would have been profoundly different....for the Tories too...
Makes me even more angry with Corbyn et al....
Burnham should have tried to inspire the membership in 2015 and he might have won.
All candidates except Corbyn pivoted to austerity light.
I was going to vote Burnham until he joined YC and L4%K in dropping opposition to austerity.
Burnham massively overestimated LK's appeal, and massively underestimated Corbyn. He assumed the left had nowhere else to given Corbyn was evidently unelectable, and thought he needed to stop all LK's votes from transferring to YC in the final round. That was a pretty big mistake.
Yes L4%K only stayed in the contest as a favour to YC who begged her not to drop out otherwise she would have been seen as the right wing candidate which at the time she was desperate to avoid.
And Corbyn stayed in the contest to trash the party for a generation. No contest.
Corbyn came within a few thousand votes of becoming PM in 2017.
L4%K came within a few thousand votes of being forever known as L5%K
Corbyn took us back to the 1930s and gave us Boris for five years. He is without equal. Even the SDP left Labour in a stronger position.
The ironic thing is that Corbyn was ever only a pastiche of a socialist. A nostalgic relic from a bygone socialist utopia that never was.
To what do you attribute the fact he came within a few thousand votes of becoming PMin 2017 via the biggest increase in vote share since WW2.
His biggest failing was to allow Boris a Brexit election when almost everybody knew we would lose. The GE2019 Labour campaign was pathetic
He lost in 2017 and lost in 2019, leaving a mountain to climb. A total catastrophe. Corbyn = five wasted years, possibly more. Surprised you have courage to mention LK when you supported this disaster.
Police chiefs are drawing up new guidance warning forces not to overreach their lockdown enforcement powers after withering criticism of controversial tactics deployed to stop the spread of coronavirus, the Guardian has learned.
The intervention comes amid growing concern that some forces are going beyond their legal powers to stop the spread of Covid-19, with one issuing a summons to a household for shopping for non-essential items and another telling locals that exercise was “limited to an hour a day”.
...
The source of confusion for frontline officers appears to be a gap between what the emergency legislation actually orders and what the government has said it wants people to do.
Why the fuck do they need new guidance? For crying out loud. All the twits need to do is print off the bloody regulations - you know the actual laws - and give them to each police officer and tell them to read them.
Christ Almighty!! Give me Zoom and half an hour and I could explain the blasted things to them - if understanding plain bloody English is beyond them.
There does seem to be a fairly widespread confusion about the difference between the regulations and the government advice (or officers’ particular interpretation of it). I’m not even sure all of them realise that they are not the same thing.
(OTOH, were there widespread flouting of the advice, but within the regulations, the latter would probably be extended quite quickly.)
If police officers do not understand the difference between the law and advice they have no business being police officers frankly. This is basic stuff.
The regulations are written in pretty clear English on a page and a bit. What needs to be hammered home is that their purpose is to keep people apart as much as possible so as to avoid / reduce the risk of infection.
Keep that purpose in mind when out - and you can’t really go wrong.
Police chiefs are drawing up new guidance warning forces not to overreach their lockdown enforcement powers after withering criticism of controversial tactics deployed to stop the spread of coronavirus, the Guardian has learned.
The intervention comes amid growing concern that some forces are going beyond their legal powers to stop the spread of Covid-19, with one issuing a summons to a household for shopping for non-essential items and another telling locals that exercise was “limited to an hour a day”.
...
The source of confusion for frontline officers appears to be a gap between what the emergency legislation actually orders and what the government has said it wants people to do.
Why the fuck do they need new guidance? For crying out loud. All the twits need to do is print off the bloody regulations - you know the actual laws - and give them to each police officer and tell them to read them.
Christ Almighty!! Give me Zoom and half an hour and I could explain the blasted things to them - if understanding plain bloody English is beyond them.
There does seem to be a fairly widespread confusion about the difference between the regulations and the government advice (or officers’ particular interpretation of it). I’m not even sure all of them realise that they are not the same thing.
(OTOH, were there widespread flouting of the advice, but within the regulations, the latter would probably be extended quite quickly.)
If police officers do not understand the difference between the law and advice they have no business being police officers frankly. This is basic stuff.
The regulations are written in pretty clear English on a page and a bit. What needs to be hammered home is that their purpose is to keep people apart as much as possible so as to avoid / reduce the risk of infection.
Keep that purpose in mind when out - and you can’t really go wrong.
"Thomas Schaefer, the finance minister of Germany's Hesse state, has committed suicide apparently after becoming "deeply worried" over how to cope with the economic fallout from the coronavirus, state premier Volker Bouffier said on Sunday."
I thought Andy Burnham's measured approach to the Tories is the right tone...to things like HS2 and now Covid 19....
If Andy Burnham had won in 2015.......the last 5 years of British politics would have been profoundly different....for the Tories too...
Makes me even more angry with Corbyn et al....
Burnham should have tried to inspire the membership in 2015 and he might have won.
All candidates except Corbyn pivoted to austerity light.
I was going to vote Burnham until he joined YC and L4%K in dropping opposition to austerity.
Burnham massively overestimated LK's appeal, and massively underestimated Corbyn. He assumed the left had nowhere else to given Corbyn was evidently unelectable, and thought he needed to stop all LK's votes from transferring to YC in the final round. That was a pretty big mistake.
Yes L4%K only stayed in the contest as a favour to YC who begged her not to drop out otherwise she would have been seen as the right wing candidate which at the time she was desperate to avoid.
And Corbyn stayed in the contest to trash the party for a generation. No contest.
Corbyn came within a few thousand votes of becoming PM in 2017.
L4%K came within a few thousand votes of being forever known as L5%K
Corbyn took us back to the 1930s and gave us Boris for five years. He is without equal. Even the SDP left Labour in a stronger position.
The ironic thing is that Corbyn was ever only a pastiche of a socialist. A nostalgic relic from a bygone socialist utopia that never was.
To what do you attribute the fact he came within a few thousand votes of becoming PMin 2017 via the biggest increase in vote share since WW2.
His biggest failing was to allow Boris a Brexit election when almost everybody knew we would lose. The GE2019 Labour campaign was pathetic
He lost in 2017 and lost in 2019, leaving a mountain to climb. A total catastrophe. Corbyn = five wasted years, possibly more. Surprised you have courage to mention LK when you supported this disaster.
So you dont want to admit how close we came in 2017. Or who wanted Labour to go full out Remoan in 2019 Campaign.
The longer this lockdown goes on, the more people will choose that risk. Because they will be unemployable otherwise. Cooped up in their homes, which may not be nice at all. Living half a life.
We have already had anecdotes in the form of GideonWise (aged 33?) who has had this and survived it. The more anecodotes people hear from their friends the more they will go "yeah, I'll chance it." Particularly when those who have survived it are back at their jobs, socialising, and posting instagram from their holidays, while you're sat under house arrest, waiting for your next government handout.
I'm not sure that's the choice. I mean, *I'm* not under house arrest. OK, it's not a sure thing that this blessed state of affairs will continue but for now it looks promising. *You're* under house arrest, but that's because your government was too slow to do less disruptive things. I don't think it'll make that mistake again.
That said, I do think it's plausible that some places will just fail to contain this and give up, and some young people will end up just moving to those places.
I thought Andy Burnham's measured approach to the Tories is the right tone...to things like HS2 and now Covid 19....
If Andy Burnham had won in 2015.......the last 5 years of British politics would have been profoundly different....for the Tories too...
Makes me even more angry with Corbyn et al....
Burnham should have tried to inspire the membership in 2015 and he might have won.
All candidates except Corbyn pivoted to austerity light.
I was going to vote Burnham until he joined YC and L4%K in dropping opposition to austerity.
Burnham massively overestimated LK's appeal, and massively underestimated Corbyn. He assumed the left had nowhere else to given Corbyn was evidently unelectable, and thought he needed to stop all LK's votes from transferring to YC in the final round. That was a pretty big mistake.
Yes L4%K only stayed in the contest as a favour to YC who begged her not to drop out otherwise she would have been seen as the right wing candidate which at the time she was desperate to avoid.
And Corbyn stayed in the contest to trash the party for a generation. No contest.
Corbyn came within a few thousand votes of becoming PM in 2017.
L4%K came within a few thousand votes of being forever known as L5%K
Corbyn took us back to the 1930s and gave us Boris for five years. He is without equal. Even the SDP left Labour in a stronger position.
The ironic thing is that Corbyn was ever only a pastiche of a socialist. A nostalgic relic from a bygone socialist utopia that never was.
To what do you attribute the fact he came within a few thousand votes of becoming PMin 2017 via the biggest increase in vote share since WW2.
His biggest failing was to allow Boris a Brexit election when almost everybody knew we would lose. The GE2019 Labour campaign was pathetic
He lost in 2017 and lost in 2019, leaving a mountain to climb. A total catastrophe. Corbyn = five wasted years, possibly more. Surprised you have courage to mention LK when you supported this disaster.
So you dont want to admit how close we came in 2017. Or who wanted Labour to go full out Remoan in 2019 Campaign.
We lost. Get it? L o s t. There is no runners up prize. No morale victory. Just a Tory government. That is it. Nothing to be proud of. Just failure.
I thought Andy Burnham's measured approach to the Tories is the right tone...to things like HS2 and now Covid 19....
If Andy Burnham had won in 2015.......the last 5 years of British politics would have been profoundly different....for the Tories too...
Makes me even more angry with Corbyn et al....
Burnham should have tried to inspire the membership in 2015 and he might have won.
All candidates except Corbyn pivoted to austerity light.
I was going to vote Burnham until he joined YC and L4%K in dropping opposition to austerity.
Burnham massively overestimated LK's appeal, and massively underestimated Corbyn. He assumed the left had nowhere else to given Corbyn was evidently unelectable, and thought he needed to stop all LK's votes from transferring to YC in the final round. That was a pretty big mistake.
Yes L4%K only stayed in the contest as a favour to YC who begged her not to drop out otherwise she would have been seen as the right wing candidate which at the time she was desperate to avoid.
And Corbyn stayed in the contest to trash the party for a generation. No contest.
Corbyn came within a few thousand votes of becoming PM in 2017.
L4%K came within a few thousand votes of being forever known as L5%K
Corbyn took us back to the 1930s and gave us Boris for five years. He is without equal. Even the SDP left Labour in a stronger position.
The ironic thing is that Corbyn was ever only a pastiche of a socialist. A nostalgic relic from a bygone socialist utopia that never was.
To what do you attribute the fact he came within a few thousand votes of becoming PMin 2017 via the biggest increase in vote share since WW2.
His biggest failing was to allow Boris a Brexit election when almost everybody knew we would lose. The GE2019 Labour campaign was pathetic
He lost in 2017 and lost in 2019, leaving a mountain to climb. A total catastrophe. Corbyn = five wasted years, possibly more. Surprised you have courage to mention LK when you supported this disaster.
So you dont want to admit how close we came in 2017. Or who wanted Labour to go full out Remoan in 2019 Campaign.
We lost. Get it? L o s t. There is no runners up prize. No morale victory. Just a Tory government. That is it. Nothing to be proud of. Just failure.
Comments
Antigen testing now is most important to avoid health professionals having to isolate for longer than necessary. And as a monitor of progress. Case numbers are too high to get back to a contract tracing strategy, although the object of the lockdown seems to be to make returning to this approach viable. Meanwhile we await an antibody test.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpur_Hill_Quarry
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-22843481
The intervention comes amid growing concern that some forces are going beyond their legal powers to stop the spread of Covid-19, with one issuing a summons to a household for shopping for non-essential items and another telling locals that exercise was “limited to an hour a day”.
...
The source of confusion for frontline officers appears to be a gap between what the emergency legislation actually orders and what the government has said it wants people to do.
She is the least successful leadership candidate in Labour history though.
Aren't you over it yet?
Five clear categories of failure.
Planning and contingency for such an occurrence on a party in power a decade. Nursing numbers, ventilators, and training in this category.
Wasting time. we were weeks ahead of Italy, frittered that time and cost lives playing politics. Government clearly split, Ideological herd immunity v science and threat to nhs. Muddled comms.
The governments failure on testing is unwillingness to learn from other countries. Instead of quickly using a network of public and private laboratories, the UK used just one lab — Public Health England’s Colindale facility in north London, which was processing about 500 tests a day.
https://www.ft.com/content/fa747fbd-c19e-4bac-9c37-d46afc9393fb
We don’t know the route cause of governments PPE failure yet. But is there still a patchy picture in NHS frontline? And and what of nursing and staff in care homes, if the government has a policy to protect them they have a funny way of sharing it.
It’s clear the Economic response, as well as being pro state employee and anti free enterprise and entrepreneurship is so divisive, is unaffordable and unworkable compared to the promises being made.
Oh wait, they just didn't do it right - and of course you need to break eggs to make an omelette
Because the UK (and other western governments) left the response so late, they've had to resort to very extreme measures like stopping anyone leaving their house. Many of the things they're now stopping people do probably have quite small impact in proportion to the disruption they cause, but they have to do them because there's no margin for error before the hospital system collapses.
It would rely on people to volunteer, but if getting back to work is not incentive enough it would be cheaper to pay people to be infected than to pay furlough forever and job seekers allowance bill that will result from extended quarantine.
You'd go to the clinic, be assessed, ensure you have no serious medical conditions, then infected. You wait it out, possibly in a hotel (there are plenty going begging the government could commandeer). Then in two weeks, you're clear.
Herd immunity this way could be achieved in a month, using only healthy people. Cheaper, faster and more effective than three months of quarantine.
He has done more to ensure Tory hegemony than any previous candidate.
https://www.phc.ox.ac.uk/covid-19/evidence-service/reviews/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates
But it’s probably a bit early to develop a solid long term strategy, as we still don’t have much more than an educated guess as to how many have been infected, and what the overall mortality rate might be. It shouldn’t be much longer than two to three months before there is enough testing (particularly for bold antibodies) done to have a much better idea of that.
That’s one ground for hope.
Another is that there are treatments (antivirals and other disease modifying treatments) which are already in clinical trials with hospitalised patients, where results will be out much, much sooner than for any vaccine. Some of these could be available very quickly on a large scale.
I understand the fear - I have a mother in her eighties, and a father in his nineties, who is locked down in a care home, and whom I might not see again.
I’m not thinking ahead more than a month or so for now.
Jonny Whitfield was abused by a couple who pulled up alongside him in a car"
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/wigan-shevington-coronavirus-spat-crime-18007125
When you keep presenting it as only choice between the cosy time tested capitalism we do so well v socialism capitalism reset, you embarrass yourselves. This virus reveals there is liberal instinct v an authoritarian instinct alive and well throughout the world as much in culture as it is political choice. Politics that is not left or right. Politics democracy finds hard to disrupt because it is culture. One example in recent years conservatism is dying, Conservative party’s controlled by non conservatives, siren voices call to the Conservative flock tempting them to stray. Brexit is this.
by breaking away from Europe, you are moving Britain towards economic and social liberalism, and away from Conservatism. Brexit is killing Conservatism in Britain.
It’s not that all things stand still and stay the same. All the while we stand and we watch the Phoenix boil in her own blood, it slowly changes us tick by tock, slice by slice careful not to betray the journey. To keep and to cultivate all that is good, we need awareness of change, and we need to act. That, like all empires who decline and fall, is what we are missing.
Until we have much harder figures from testing, contemplating policy decisions along those lines simply isn’t tenable, particularly as it won’t take that long to have much better figures.
Ordered fish and chips by phone so they could start cooking it before I got there. They did not, however.
The point of being assessed prior to being infected is to ensure that only the healthy population are given a dose of this.
The other point here is that we are not dealing with people who *otherwise would not have got the virus*, in the absence of a vaccine the herd immunity strategy is the only viable one. People will get this anyway, over the course of the next couple of years.
If we were to infect everyone who is healthy, all at once, we would actually reduce the chance of the sick and those with pre-existing health conditions catching this.
Christ Almighty!! Give me Zoom and half an hour and I could explain the blasted things to them - if understanding plain bloody English is beyond them.
Somehow this is now believed to be CV-19 lockdown related.
(And an fairly long feature showing a couple of officers doing their job quite sensitively and professionally, FWIW.)
Because I don't see them in the evening.
Plenty of toilet roll and soap in Asda and even some dry pasta but chickpeas and lentils are now rare.
L4%K came within a few thousand votes of being forever known as L5%K
As the quarantine goes on and we watch the world from our windows, how many more people will say "f*ck it, I want to catch this so I can get on with my life."
That number will increase exponentially if, as others have said, a test to see if you have had it (and can therefore move about freely) becomes widely available.
The ironic thing is that Corbyn was ever only a pastiche of a socialist. A nostalgic relic from a bygone socialist utopia that never was.
(OTOH, were there widespread flouting of the advice, but within the regulations, the latter would probably be extended quite quickly.)
What assumption are you making about the death rate for young, healthy people? Per this the chance of a healthy person under *40* dying from it seems to be something like 1/500, so that's maybe 50,000 dead people, and that's only deaths, not lung damage, and in the best part of your sample.
I get the feeling people are probably prepared to put up with this for three months but I think the idea people would let this carry on for six months is for the birds.
The only big failing is the level of tests compared to the most successful nations.
I think our outcomes will be mid table ie worse than Germany, S Korea and possibly France. Better than the USA Italy and Spain.
If so BJ wins in 2024 imo unless we repeat austerity.
The next election is in the bag for Labour.
Tories 13,636,684
Labour 12,878,460
His biggest failing was to allow Boris a Brexit election when almost everybody knew we would lose. The GE2019 Labour campaign was pathetic
Again, my point is that maybe at least half of those 50,000 people are going to get it anyway over the next year, so why not allow them to choose the risk?
The longer this lockdown goes on, the more people will choose that risk. Because they will be unemployable otherwise. Cooped up in their homes, which may not be nice at all. Living half a life.
We have already had anecdotes in the form of GideonWise (aged 33?) who has had this and survived it. The more anecodotes people hear from their friends the more they will go "yeah, I'll chance it." Particularly when those who have survived it are back at their jobs, socialising, and posting instagram from their holidays, while you're sat under house arrest, waiting for your next government handout.
A much more recent, and even more puzzling pandemic than the ‘sweating sickness’ (which @ydoethur mentioned the other day):
https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/140/8/2246/3970828
The regulations are written in pretty clear English on a page and a bit. What needs to be hammered home is that their purpose is to keep people apart as much as possible so as to avoid / reduce the risk of infection.
Keep that purpose in mind when out - and you can’t really go wrong.
Another 20 seats from the Tories and Jezza would have been minority PM
"Thomas Schaefer, the finance minister of Germany's Hesse state, has committed suicide apparently after becoming "deeply worried" over how to cope with the economic fallout from the coronavirus, state premier Volker Bouffier said on Sunday."
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2020/03/german-state-minister-kills-coronavirus-hits-economy-200329165242615.html
Or who wanted Labour to go full out Remoan in 2019 Campaign.
That said, I do think it's plausible that some places will just fail to contain this and give up, and some young people will end up just moving to those places.
Whereas when everything is going well then you can risk Lab.
So if we now have a few years of very difficult economic times then that makes a Con win more likely.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2020/mar/30/lockdown-china-coronavirus-outbreak
Who says lockdown can't be fun!
Goodnight.
https://twitter.com/piersmorgan/status/1244671306710290439
https://twitter.com/ClarkeMicah/status/1244727920721047552