Do most people really need to go more than once a week? When I was a youngster, that's exactly what we did, in fact I think it might have even been every 2 weeks.
It seems a cultural thing now, that people don't think about meals for the week ahead and end up going every day or two.
I last shopped 3 weeks ago and still fine.
I think that there is a much greater tendency now to eat fresh produce instead of frozen or tinned. This inevitably results in more shopping trips. One or other of us, nearly always my wife, would go pretty much daily under normal circumstances. Our target now is 2x a week and this is a serious challenge on our fridge capacity.
An unfair comparison. The US map will always look much busier, even during normal times.
Gov't has told people to "get home". Our airports should be closed to all but repatriation and freight already tbh. You have to wonder who on earth is flying for non repatriation reasons at the moment though.
Looks like a handful of flights throughout the entire country. No doubt there are some critical jobs that require people to move around a lot, so having some availability is probably a good thing.
Been told by an aircrew friend that very few people on flights - generally people physically needed to do essential work the other end.
What you need to understand is that for serious introverts, it's more effort to socialise than to isolate. I find background noise and other people damned distracting.
Ironically, due to shopping for parents, I've actually gone out more during the lockdown than I did before...
That said, if you want to express your respect through the medium of buying one of my books (I understand if you decide against purchasing Sir Edric and the Plague), that's always welcome
Do most people really need to go more than once a week? When I was a youngster, that's exactly what we did, in fact I think it might have even been every 2 weeks.
It seems a cultural thing now, that people don't think about meals for the week ahead and end up going every day or two.
I last shopped 3 weeks ago and still fine.
I think that there is a much greater tendency now to eat fresh produce instead of frozen or tinned. This inevitably results in more shopping trips. One or other of us, nearly always my wife, would go pretty much daily under normal circumstances. Our target now is 2x a week and this is a serious challenge on our fridge capacity.
And that is also what happened in the even older days, before home freezers.
On topic, I went over the top ages ago suggesting the Labour Party would rig the leadership election so its too late for me to change my mind. I hope to be made a fool of by the sweeping Starmer victory. However, all the signs are there that something is afoot, and the situation we find ourselves in provides them with the perfect cover to pull a coup off.
Despite the polls I remain convinced that a significant percentage of the membership remain wedded to Corbyn and Corbynism. Not the membership who turn out to meetings (eg the 26 out of 700 in Stockton South who went to their selection meeting), its the "silent majority" I refer to. For some of these not to vote RLB is like asking Nazi Party members in June 1945 to suddenly support the communists.
And why would anyone be surprised at a "shock" RLB victory. After all Jeremy won, Jeremy won. They've nationalised the railways and private hospitals. They're paying people's salaries. There is a wave of public revulsion towards evil capitalists like Ashley and Branson and Martin. People are helping each other. And you suggest Labour members will throw all this away and vote for a man who is basically a Tory himself? No! They will follow True Socialism and vote for RLB. A narrow win, but a win. So they will say.
Deputy? Would be genuinely hilarious if it was ding-dong Burgon, but that would be so outlandish as to highlight the theft of the leadership position. Better to install a pliable half on board traitor like Rayner.
You should seek Mental Health treatment.
'For some of these not to vote RLB is like asking Nazi Party members in June 1945 to suddenly support the communists.'
Of course lots of them did.
Fun history - the Gestapo started with the Prussian Political Police who were quite successful at putting the hammer on various Nazi activities. When the Nazis came to power Heydrich re-tasked them....
When the war ended, quite a lot ended up working in the Stasi, and enthusiastically went back to hunting (other) Nazis.
There is an urban legend that when the wall came down, a bunch of ancient retirees volunteered to help the unified Germany hunt down any communists....
'My skills are transferrable and I cope well with change.'
I read a piece by someone who was targeted by the Stasi. They thought once the Wall came down, the reckoning would happen. Exactly what you wrote. The Stasi people knew how to get people to do things they wouldn't ordinarily do. That's a highly marketable skill in the corporate world. Meanwhile their victims who had been excluded from proper jobs struggled in a period of high unemployment.
A note on why it is taking some time to get our new tests.
Usually to evaluate a new diagnostic you compare its accuracy with a gold-standard. The gold-standard could be the PCR-test that PHE has been doing. You compare the positives and negatives with the true result and create the 2x2 matrix with true positives etc.
However, we know that the PCR test is itself not perfectly accurate with perhaps a 75% sensitivity. Therefore to validate the new point of care tests we will need a better gold-standard. So we will likely have to follow-up a cohort of symptomatic patients for 2-3 weeks and use a clinical diagnosis as the gold-standard, e.g. CT scans.
So that requires: (1) a group of competing POC tests ready to go; (2) the recruitment of hundreds of patients perhaps at different stages of disease; (3) a 2-3 week follow-up of each with scans etc; (4) a few days to analyse the data. Add all that together and you probably have about 4-6 weeks required. It can't be rushed. We need to be patient and get the right test.
Do most people really need to go more than once a week? When I was a youngster, that's exactly what we did, in fact I think it might have even been every 2 weeks.
It seems a cultural thing now, that people don't think about meals for the week ahead and end up going every day or two.
I last shopped 3 weeks ago and still fine.
I think that there is a much greater tendency now to eat fresh produce instead of frozen or tinned. This inevitably results in more shopping trips. One or other of us, nearly always my wife, would go pretty much daily under normal circumstances. Our target now is 2x a week and this is a serious challenge on our fridge capacity.
Just as this was kicking off we replaced the freezer in our kitchen with a second fridge with a little ice box. Enough freezer capacity for our needs and much more space for fresh food.
The government has to tread carefully A few restive opinion former voices like William Hague and Tody Young are starting to question the wisdom of a long lockdown. They are also looking at the size of the economic hit with horror, and calculating how many deaths a prolonged recesssion might cause.
The government does not have as long on this as it thinks it does. It better ramp up preparations now, much as it can, and prepare for a loosening.
The pressures are building. It would be very easy to lose control of a situation like this.
The biggest factor will be boredom. A lot of my home workers are itching to come back.
I will never complain about the coffee in the reading room again. Well, not for at least a month.
How anyone could want to work from home all the time is beyond me.
Agreed. Its terrible. And unproductive. I have a new respect for the authors on this site who have the self discipline to apply themselves consistently to their craft in that way.
Is it that unproductive though? How many people working from home are still doing what it takes to do their job?
One of the big changes that might come out of this is the realisation that many can work four day weeks.
On lockdown fatigue, don't forget we're in still in the ramp up stage of the disease. We're broadly tracking Italy, if hopefully a bit slower. Once we get to the stage where hospitals are struggling to cope, it won't feel hypothetical. The risk is at ramp down, if the government lets go too quickly and we have to go through the whole thing again.
At the moment I am told that Ninewells Hospital in Dundee is as quiet as it has ever been. Wards cleared out, outpatients cancelled, elective surgery deferred indefinitely, doctors (including those returned to service) twiddling their thumbs. I really hope it stays like that.
Well my local hospital, Torrevieja on the Costa Blanca has 17 covid 19 cases in icu and 70 requiring hospitalization. This taking almost all of the 1000+ staff to cope and additional resource has now been drafted in. The cases must come from further up the coast because south of Torrevieja there has only been a handful of cases.
Is there any information about the percentage of these cases who are expats?
Not that I have seen there would be no reason to break them down. I will trawl through the English language free papers.
Do most people really need to go more than once a week? When I was a youngster, that's exactly what we did, in fact I think it might have even been every 2 weeks.
It seems a cultural thing now, that people don't think about meals for the week ahead and end up going every day or two.
I last shopped 3 weeks ago and still fine.
I think that there is a much greater tendency now to eat fresh produce instead of frozen or tinned. This inevitably results in more shopping trips. One or other of us, nearly always my wife, would go pretty much daily under normal circumstances. Our target now is 2x a week and this is a serious challenge on our fridge capacity.
Just as this was kicking off we replaced the freezer in our kitchen with a second fridge with a little ice box. Enough freezer capacity for our needs and much more space for fresh food.
Mrs U wasn't very pleased with me when I ordered a big shiny newfangled coffee machine and a new chest freezer....not hearing so many complaints now.
Our local fish and chip shop has closed until further notice.
Anyone else seeing their takeaways shut down shop?
My local chinese is cash only, I want to support them but it's not recommended to pay in cash right now ><</p>
They are the guys taking the risk from your cash. Tell them to give the change to charity if you don't want the risk coming back to you. (Although, that risk is already there in taking their food off them.)
In my fish and chip shop, I pay cash and when change is proffered, step back and point at the tips jar. Everyone's a winner.
A note on why it is taking some time to get our new tests.
Usually to evaluate a new diagnostic you compare its accuracy with a gold-standard. The gold-standard could be the PCR-test that PHE has been doing. You compare the positives and negatives with the true result and create the 2x2 matrix with true positives etc.
However, we know that the PCR test is itself not perfectly accurate with perhaps a 75% sensitivity. Therefore to validate the new point of care tests we will need a better gold-standard. So we will likely have to follow-up a cohort of symptomatic patients for 2-3 weeks and use a clinical diagnosis as the gold-standard, e.g. CT scans.
How on earth can a CT scan be the "gold standard" for infection by a particular virus?
On lockdown fatigue, don't forget we're in still in the ramp up stage of the disease. We're broadly tracking Italy, if hopefully a bit slower. Once we get to the stage where hospitals are struggling to cope, it won't feel hypothetical.
The risk is at ramp down, if the government lets go too quickly and we have to go through the whole thing again.
At the moment I am told that Ninewells Hospital in Dundee is as quiet as it has ever been. Wards cleared out, outpatients cancelled, elective surgery deferred indefinitely, doctors (including those returned to service) twiddling their thumbs. I really hope it stays like that.
Its the same in Winchester, Southampton and Bournemouth hospitals. Wards are closed, nurses shifts are cancelled. In the community at surgeries it is even quieter. Everything is done over the phone. Virtually no patients coming in.
When I went to the hospital yesterday there were 6 people in Out Patients and we were all seen in minutes - the standard invite letter said you may have to wait for 2-3 hours.
He never quite puts a clear figure out, as a prediction, but he is clearly preparing his readers for 100,000s of dead Americans.
Something like a world war. If he is right.
Well even the white house have said 100-200k haven't they? Boasting that it won't be 2 million as predicted (quickly skipping over the bit about that being if you took no action at all).
A note on why it is taking some time to get our new tests.
Usually to evaluate a new diagnostic you compare its accuracy with a gold-standard. The gold-standard could be the PCR-test that PHE has been doing. You compare the positives and negatives with the true result and create the 2x2 matrix with true positives etc.
However, we know that the PCR test is itself not perfectly accurate with perhaps a 75% sensitivity. Therefore to validate the new point of care tests we will need a better gold-standard. So we will likely have to follow-up a cohort of symptomatic patients for 2-3 weeks and use a clinical diagnosis as the gold-standard, e.g. CT scans.
How on earth can a CT scan be the "gold standard" for infection by a particular virus?
Because in the absence of anything better, it is (alongside other markers/clinical judgement).
Because good old 'Two Es' has messed up everything he's ever touched in his life, and there's no reason to believe the coronavirus would be any different?
You have strayed into churlishness. Led the Labour Party for 5 years. Changed it in his own image. Came quite close to becoming PM in 2017. And as you say, not the brightest. Neither from a particularly privileged background. The very definition of an over-achiever.
Sometimes I feel like I might be being a bit too churlish towards people like Corbyn. Then I remember what he wanted to do to me and mine and to everything I love about this country and I realize that I could never generate the scorn he deserves in a hundred lifetimes.
The government has to tread carefully A few restive opinion former voices like William Hague and Tody Young are starting to question the wisdom of a long lockdown. They are also looking at the size of the economic hit with horror, and calculating how many deaths a prolonged recesssion might cause.
The government does not have as long on this as it thinks it does. It better ramp up preparations now, much as it can, and prepare for a loosening.
The pressures are building. It would be very easy to lose control of a situation like this.
The biggest factor will be boredom. A lot of my home workers are itching to come back.
I will never complain about the coffee in the reading room again. Well, not for at least a month.
How anyone could want to work from home all the time is beyond me.
Agreed. Its terrible. And unproductive. I have a new respect for the authors on this site who have the self discipline to apply themselves consistently to their craft in that way.
Is it that unproductive though? How many people working from home are still doing what it takes to do their job?
One of the big changes that might come out of this is the realisation that many can work four day weeks.
And if you are one of those who have had their pay cut by 20% for the duration it only seems fair to reduce your hours by a similar proportion.
Sure, the chattering classes will be affected big time, but if you are a self employed tradesman, for instance, with no savings (very common) then you are in big trouble now if you cannot work. And s/e people tend to regard their income as their turnover.
Looking at my s/e tax return, for example, Sunak is covering 80% of net proft, but above this line most of my outgoings are fixed and still have to be paid, Examples include: car tax, insurance and servicing, telephone, broadband, professional subscriptions, accountancy fees, computer costs, finance payments etc ets. Previously these fixed expenses were coming out of turnover. Now, during lockdown, they have to come out of net profit.
And this is where huge amounts of self employed will be caught out.
You see, those items should only BE business expenses. The clue of 'wholly and necessary' (or whatever the definition is - I'm an accountant, not a tax accountant) was there because they related to your business. In theory, if your business is gone, so as these expenses.
Ring your insurer and get the business cover taken off your car. Don't drive 100 miles to see a client. Ditch your 'work' mobile. Etc etc.
Except of course, whether accidently or deliberately (and I've seen a lot of the latter), huge amounts of personal expenditure ends up on SA tax returns.
No - these are fixed business expenditures. For example my car is apportioned 75% /25% business/personal. It is purely the 75% I`m talking about, in this example, and this sits above the net profit line not below it.
Well even the white house have said 100-200k haven't they? Boasting that it won't be 2 million as predicted (quickly skipping over the bit about that being if you took no action at all).
Trump is going to keep the deaths below 2 million and win a "great victory".
WfH is fab; it allows me to earn an urban professional's wage without either the awfulness of living in a big city or wasting my life on a long commute.
He never quite puts a clear figure out, as a prediction, but he is clearly preparing his readers for 100,000s of dead Americans.
Something like a world war. If he is right.
Well even the white house have said 100-200k haven't they? Boasting that it won't be 2 million as predicted (quickly skipping over the bit about that being if you took no action at all).
He says the White House is looking at 400,000 dead - ‘and even that may be optimistic’
650,000 died in the American Civil War.
If we follow the American model it suggests 50-100,000 dead in the UK
IF IF IF IF IF
Much that we should be doing better with testing, I think the organisation on expanding capacity and all around preparedness is a total different level to America. And perhaps we could have gone earlier with the lockdown, but I don't think we have left it way too late either.
I said weeks and weeks ago, I just couldn't believe it wasn't in the US...and now we know it has more than likely been circulating for ages and so they are much worse starting positions and they really still pissing in the wind with the crazy non-leadership (and divisive nature) of Trump.
I am not exactly optimistic for their chances. A divided nation, ill prepared and a healthcare system that makes it even harder to try and contain such an outbreak.
He never quite puts a clear figure out, as a prediction, but he is clearly preparing his readers for 100,000s of dead Americans.
Something like a world war. If he is right.
Well even the white house have said 100-200k haven't they? Boasting that it won't be 2 million as predicted (quickly skipping over the bit about that being if you took no action at all).
He says the White House is looking at 400,000 dead - ‘and even that may be optimistic’
650,000 died in the American Civil War.
If we follow the American model it suggests 50-100,000 dead in the UK
IF IF IF IF IF
I don't think so. The American growth curve is like no others because of their botched response. In their favour is they have the best healthcare system in the world and enormous potential to ramp up construction of the necessary kit. However, they are playing catch-up and their healthcare system only actually operates for a certain sub-set of the population.
The government has to tread carefully A few restive opinion former voices like William Hague and Tody Young are starting to question the wisdom of a long lockdown. They are also looking at the size of the economic hit with horror, and calculating how many deaths a prolonged recesssion might cause.
The government does not have as long on this as it thinks it does. It better ramp up preparations now, much as it can, and prepare for a loosening.
The pressures are building. It would be very easy to lose control of a situation like this.
The biggest factor will be boredom. A lot of my home workers are itching to come back.
I will never complain about the coffee in the reading room again. Well, not for at least a month.
How anyone could want to work from home all the time is beyond me.
Agreed. Its terrible. And unproductive. I have a new respect for the authors on this site who have the self discipline to apply themselves consistently to their craft in that way.
Is it that unproductive though? How many people working from home are still doing what it takes to do their job?
One of the big changes that might come out of this is the realisation that many can work four day weeks.
I could, but not as productively as I wouldnt enjoy my job as much.
The Netherlands now has the 3rd biggest increase in Covid 19 deaths and the 5th biggest increase in Covid 19 cases in the world https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
They were following a herd immunity strategy at one point, IIRC
So are Sweden but things seem to be going okay for them at the moment so maybe it isn't the important factor. It may have something to do with the very high population density in the Netherlands.
End of the school holidays mind May or at worst after the early May bank holiday will be tolerable for full lock down.
Gradual release of schools back, non food shops open, barbers etc.
Then cafes, pubs etc a week or so later.
Ridiculous thing to say, considering we are still in March. Of course it has to depend on what happens in April, and what more we learn about the virus.
Sometimes I feel like I might be being a bit too churlish towards people like Corbyn. Then I remember what he wanted to do to me and mine and to everything I love about this country and I realize that I could never generate the scorn he deserves in a hundred lifetimes.
I recognize the sincerity and the passion but am baffled by it. How can a high gini coefficient inspire such devotion?
The Netherlands now has the 3rd biggest increase in Covid 19 deaths and the 5th biggest increase in Covid 19 cases in the world https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
They were following a herd immunity strategy at one point, IIRC
So are Sweden but things seem to be going okay for them at the moment so maybe it isn't the important factor.
Not sure that’s true any more. Swedish death toll is sharply rising. And it has more deaths than Norway, Finland and Denmark combined
I can see why flying with more than one person aboard would be a bad idea, but what's the problem with solo flying?
Getting to and from the airfield for a start.
From the link, the main objection does seem to be that it is easier to have a blanket ban on unnecessary travel than a 100-page document filled with subclauses and footnotes.
The document says, in addressing the point: In some GA flights, the risk of transmission is undeniably negligible, for example where the flight is a solo flight, from a private airstrip, in which no ground travel is required to access the airstrip. Nevertheless, such flights should not take place, in light of the blanket nature of the directive above, and the risk of an accident resulting in the need for social distancing measures to be abandoned. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-recreational-general-aviation/coronavirus-covid-19-recreational-general-aviation
Do most people really need to go more than once a week? When I was a youngster, that's exactly what we did, in fact I think it might have even been every 2 weeks.
It seems a cultural thing now, that people don't think about meals for the week ahead and end up going every day or two.
I last shopped 3 weeks ago and still fine.
I think that there is a much greater tendency now to eat fresh produce instead of frozen or tinned. This inevitably results in more shopping trips. One or other of us, nearly always my wife, would go pretty much daily under normal circumstances. Our target now is 2x a week and this is a serious challenge on our fridge capacity.
Once a day is a lot of time spent shopping. The delivery services (used to be able to) deliver fresh produce weekly which would last a week at least.
But of course not for me to criticise peoples' shopping habits.
"The app, which will operate on an opt-in basis, will be released either just before or just after the lockdown is lifted. If someone tests positive for COVID-19, they will be able to upload those contacts, who can then be alerted - after a suitable delay, to avoid accidentally identifying an individual - via the app."
It has to be mandatory. The app, plus the digital plague survivor badge. It is the only way. We can't have people just fancying to do this or not. It has to be the law, or don't bother at all.
Also, this better not be anybody who fancies uploading saying they had it. It will be like that optional online survey thing that found 10% of people had it, when it clearly wasn't true at the time.
This has to the be funniest Covid-19 story so far.
Astrophysicist gets magnets stuck up nose while inventing coronavirus device
Australian Dr Daniel Reardon ended up in hospital after inserting magnets in his nostrils while building a necklace that warns you when you touch your face
The government has to tread carefully A few restive opinion former voices like William Hague and Tody Young are starting to question the wisdom of a long lockdown. They are also looking at the size of the economic hit with horror, and calculating how many deaths a prolonged recesssion might cause.
The government does not have as long on this as it thinks it does. It better ramp up preparations now, much as it can, and prepare for a loosening.
The pressures are building. It would be very easy to lose control of a situation like this.
The biggest factor will be boredom. A lot of my home workers are itching to come back.
I will never complain about the coffee in the reading room again. Well, not for at least a month.
How anyone could want to work from home all the time is beyond me.
Agreed. Its terrible. And unproductive. I have a new respect for the authors on this site who have the self discipline to apply themselves consistently to their craft in that way.
Is it that unproductive though? How many people working from home are still doing what it takes to do their job?
One of the big changes that might come out of this is the realisation that many can work four day weeks.
Your posts have been required reading throughout this Mark – some sharp observations and well as not a little empathy. I jump to them.
I agree with you more than David here – insofar as I think a mixture of home and group working is best for most professionals. I think most will crave some human face time while accepting that doing essentially solitary written project work or making calls when surrounded by a cast of thousands is nonsensical.
Unfortunately Toby doesn't understand what he is doing with his calculations and makes reference to a figure (£30K per QALY) without actually understanding it. £1.5M is well within the range that governments have previously paid to save a life. But he has confused the mitigation strategy as life continuing as normal. Half the measures the government implemented would have been necessary even without lockdown.
tldr - he's totally wrong in many different ways. I appreciate journalists still want to write at the moment but when they don't know what they are talking about, what's the point?
The government has to tread carefully A few restive opinion former voices like William Hague and Tody Young are starting to question the wisdom of a long lockdown. They are also looking at the size of the economic hit with horror, and calculating how many deaths a prolonged recesssion might cause.
The government does not have as long on this as it thinks it does. It better ramp up preparations now, much as it can, and prepare for a loosening.
The pressures are building. It would be very easy to lose control of a situation like this.
The biggest factor will be boredom. A lot of my home workers are itching to come back.
I will never complain about the coffee in the reading room again. Well, not for at least a month.
How anyone could want to work from home all the time is beyond me.
Agreed. Its terrible. And unproductive. I have a new respect for the authors on this site who have the self discipline to apply themselves consistently to their craft in that way.
Is it that unproductive though? How many people working from home are still doing what it takes to do their job?
One of the big changes that might come out of this is the realisation that many can work four day weeks.
Your posts have been required reading throughout this Mark – some sharp observations and well as not a little empathy. I jump to them.
I agree with you more than David here – insofar as I think a mixture of home and group working is best for most professionals. I think most will crave some human face time while accepting that doing essentially solitary written project work or making calls when surrounded by a cast of thousands is nonsensical.
A note on why it is taking some time to get our new tests.
Usually to evaluate a new diagnostic you compare its accuracy with a gold-standard. The gold-standard could be the PCR-test that PHE has been doing. You compare the positives and negatives with the true result and create the 2x2 matrix with true positives etc.
However, we know that the PCR test is itself not perfectly accurate with perhaps a 75% sensitivity. Therefore to validate the new point of care tests we will need a better gold-standard. So we will likely have to follow-up a cohort of symptomatic patients for 2-3 weeks and use a clinical diagnosis as the gold-standard, e.g. CT scans.
How on earth can a CT scan be the "gold standard" for infection by a particular virus?
Because in the absence of anything better, it is (alongside other markers/clinical judgement).
As an aside, before I get some work done, I mentioned a few weeks before things got serious about how extroverts sometimes nag introverts to try and be more like them.
I imagine this situation feels like the enforced reverse of that, which is why I sympathise even with those who have neither especial health nor financial worries. Of course, most of us have at least one of those, even if it's vicarious.
He never quite puts a clear figure out, as a prediction, but he is clearly preparing his readers for 100,000s of dead Americans.
Something like a world war. If he is right.
Well even the white house have said 100-200k haven't they? Boasting that it won't be 2 million as predicted (quickly skipping over the bit about that being if you took no action at all).
He says the White House is looking at 400,000 dead - ‘and even that may be optimistic’
650,000 died in the American Civil War.
If we follow the American model it suggests 50-100,000 dead in the UK
IF IF IF IF IF
I don't think so. The American growth curve is like no others because of their botched response. In their favour is they have the best healthcare system in the world and enormous potential to ramp up construction of the necessary kit. However, they are playing catch-up and their healthcare system only actually operates for a certain sub-set of the population.
The USA may have had the best health system in the sixties but not now. The USA performs worse on health outcomes than any of its rich world peers. The gap is also getting bigger as other countries improve outcomes while the American ones stay static.
The Netherlands now has the 3rd biggest increase in Covid 19 deaths and the 5th biggest increase in Covid 19 cases in the world https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
They were following a herd immunity strategy at one point, IIRC
So are Sweden but things seem to be going okay for them at the moment so maybe it isn't the important factor.
Not sure that’s true any more. Swedish death toll is sharply rising. And it has more deaths than Norway, Finland and Denmark combined
Apparently they have one of the lowest number of ICU beds per capita in Europe, so they won't have much head room.
There’s an intriguing sub plot concealed in that article. Denmark has closed its border with Sweden and because of Sweden’s policies, the danish expect the frontier to remain shut “for a long time after the virus”
Schengen is maybe finished.
I suspect you might be right. Certainly, I would expect the border at Menton to remain for a long time now – features at the very end of Two for the Road which dates that wonderful film.
He never quite puts a clear figure out, as a prediction, but he is clearly preparing his readers for 100,000s of dead Americans.
Something like a world war. If he is right.
Well even the white house have said 100-200k haven't they? Boasting that it won't be 2 million as predicted (quickly skipping over the bit about that being if you took no action at all).
He says the White House is looking at 400,000 dead - ‘and even that may be optimistic’
650,000 died in the American Civil War.
If we follow the American model it suggests 50-100,000 dead in the UK
IF IF IF IF IF
I don't think so. The American growth curve is like no others because of their botched response. In their favour is they have the best healthcare system in the world and enormous potential to ramp up construction of the necessary kit. However, they are playing catch-up and their healthcare system only actually operates for a certain sub-set of the population.
The USA may have had the best health system in the sixties but not now. The USA performs worse on health outcomes than any of its rich world peers. The gap is also getting bigger as other countries improve outcomes while the American ones stay static.
The best description I have heard is that the USA has the best sick care....
I live in Almeria in south-east Spain. Found out today that all of the Mayors agreed not to release local statistics of Covid 19 cases because 'it is not needed'. WTF. The UK has lousy weather but is not the worst place when it comes to transparency of information.
My friends parents are called Al and Maria, and bought a place there on the back of it!
Like you I don't watch much telly and the thought of sitting through twenty or so hour-long episodes of something puts me off.
Detectorists is short, fun, quirky, interesting and profound in an understated, life-affirming way. I really enjoyed it and I can't really describe why, which must be a good thing!
A note on why it is taking some time to get our new tests.
Usually to evaluate a new diagnostic you compare its accuracy with a gold-standard. The gold-standard could be the PCR-test that PHE has been doing. You compare the positives and negatives with the true result and create the 2x2 matrix with true positives etc.
However, we know that the PCR test is itself not perfectly accurate with perhaps a 75% sensitivity. Therefore to validate the new point of care tests we will need a better gold-standard. So we will likely have to follow-up a cohort of symptomatic patients for 2-3 weeks and use a clinical diagnosis as the gold-standard, e.g. CT scans.
How on earth can a CT scan be the "gold standard" for infection by a particular virus?
Because in the absence of anything better, it is (alongside other markers/clinical judgement).
You can't understand my point?
If you prefer it was called the reference standard (which is also traditional) then that might be a less offensive nomenclature?
The point is not the merits of any one particular CT scan, it is that with 3-weeks of follow-up data, including potentially repeated PCR-tests, you can be fairly clear whether a patient has had Covid-19. But it takes time. A one-off PCR-test the next day is not going to be enough. So we must wait.
My Nazis voting communist comment was somewhat tongue in cheek, though not as obviously as I thought.
Again, I hope to be proven to be a fool by a Starmer win. But dead certs in politics have unraveled before our eyes so many times recently, and the cult are emboldened more than ever by the opportunity that the pandemic presents them to further win the argument...
There is a balance to be made between saving lives from coronavirus and not costing lives due to economic damage. However, we don't yet know how many lives the lockdown is saving. If it turns out that mortality is much lower than current estimates (and hospital attendance also much lower) then the calculation changes and at that point we can ease the lockdown. The alternative, delay lockdown until we know is less easy to pivot from quickly - lockdown takes a while to work an numbers keep increasing for a time, so if you get to high numbers first the results could be catastrophic. It may be that the economic damage from lockdown is greater than the lives it saves, but we simply are not in a position to know that yet, so I think it's sensible to try and severely reduce infections before we have that information.
Nitpick on his point about QUALYs - it's true that NICE work on a £20k-£30k per QUALY figure, but that's from a health service provider (NHS) perspective. Many/most/all of the treatments funded also have societal costs that are not generally considered - so e.g. we fund interventions that results in weeks off work, with a cost to the economy, purely on the basis that they cost the NHS less than £30k (or £20k...) per QUALY gained. So for some treatments, society already values a QUALY above £30k.
Nitpick 2 - my reading of the draft Oxford paper doesn't say they think 50% are already infected, just that if you assume low mortality you can fit a model that would give current figures at around 50% of the population infected. It's not clear to me from the draft paper that the authors really believe that. It's one set of assumptions that fit the data, not the only set.
A couple of days ago the United States death count graph was the only one I saw on Worldometer where the slope of the logarithmic graph was increasing.
That's monumentally bad, though it has improved over the last couple of days.
A note on why it is taking some time to get our new tests.
Usually to evaluate a new diagnostic you compare its accuracy with a gold-standard. The gold-standard could be the PCR-test that PHE has been doing. You compare the positives and negatives with the true result and create the 2x2 matrix with true positives etc.
However, we know that the PCR test is itself not perfectly accurate with perhaps a 75% sensitivity. Therefore to validate the new point of care tests we will need a better gold-standard. So we will likely have to follow-up a cohort of symptomatic patients for 2-3 weeks and use a clinical diagnosis as the gold-standard, e.g. CT scans.
How on earth can a CT scan be the "gold standard" for infection by a particular virus?
End of the school holidays mind May or at worst after the early May bank holiday will be tolerable for full lock down.
Gradual release of schools back, non food shops open, barbers etc.
Then cafes, pubs etc a week or so later.
Ridiculous thing to say, considering we are still in March. Of course it has to depend on what happens in April, and what more we learn about the virus.
End of the school holidays mind May or at worst after the early May bank holiday will be tolerable for full lock down.
Gradual release of schools back, non food shops open, barbers etc.
Then cafes, pubs etc a week or so later.
Given a two week or so feed through for any effects to be seen, I'd expect to see at least two weeks between any two stages of lifting restrictions, to give a handle on what effect lifting the first set of restrictions might have.
That we didn't have such a gap between applying restrictions here suggests to me that figures from elsewhere (or cases here exceeding internal predictions) convinced the advisors that quicker action was needed without waiting to fully observe the effects of initial measures.
He never quite puts a clear figure out, as a prediction, but he is clearly preparing his readers for 100,000s of dead Americans.
Something like a world war. If he is right.
Well even the white house have said 100-200k haven't they? Boasting that it won't be 2 million as predicted (quickly skipping over the bit about that being if you took no action at all).
He says the White House is looking at 400,000 dead - ‘and even that may be optimistic’
650,000 died in the American Civil War.
If we follow the American model it suggests 50-100,000 dead in the UK
IF IF IF IF IF
I don't think so. The American growth curve is like no others because of their botched response. In their favour is they have the best healthcare system in the world and enormous potential to ramp up construction of the necessary kit. However, they are playing catch-up and their healthcare system only actually operates for a certain sub-set of the population.
The USA may have had the best health system in the sixties but not now. The USA performs worse on health outcomes than any of its rich world peers. The gap is also getting bigger as other countries improve outcomes while the American ones stay static.
The best description I have heard is that the USA has the best sick care....
I don't think that's true either, across the board. The USA has good treatment of diseases that are prevalent in normally healthy demographics - cancers in particular - because treatment is funded by workplace insurance schemes. It's woeful at treating chronic diseases due to age and poverty.
He never quite puts a clear figure out, as a prediction, but he is clearly preparing his readers for 100,000s of dead Americans.
Something like a world war. If he is right.
Well even the white house have said 100-200k haven't they? Boasting that it won't be 2 million as predicted (quickly skipping over the bit about that being if you took no action at all).
He says the White House is looking at 400,000 dead - ‘and even that may be optimistic’
650,000 died in the American Civil War.
If we follow the American model it suggests 50-100,000 dead in the UK
IF IF IF IF IF
I don't think so. The American growth curve is like no others because of their botched response. In their favour is they have the best healthcare system in the world and enormous potential to ramp up construction of the necessary kit. However, they are playing catch-up and their healthcare system only actually operates for a certain sub-set of the population.
The USA may have had the best health system in the sixties but not now. The USA performs worse on health outcomes than any of its rich world peers. The gap is also getting bigger as other countries improve outcomes while the American ones stay static.
The best description I have heard is that the USA has the best sick care....
I don't think that's true either, across the board. The USA has good treatment of diseases that are prevalent in normally healthy demographics - cancers in particular - because treatment is funded by workplace insurance schemes. It's woeful at treating chronic diseases due to age and poverty.
That awful stat suggests a 19 year old has died, and with no underlying conditions?
Ugh.
(BBC) A 12-year-old girl is thought to be the youngest victim in Europe of the coronavirus pandemic.
"We have today a difficult message to announce, emotionally it's a difficult moment because it involves a child," virologist Emmanuel André said on Tuesday. "It's a rare event and we're very distressed by it."
The girl had a fever for three days but her condition then worsened. She has not been named but her school in Ghent is said to be in close contact with her parents as well as other pupils' families. Belgium has lost 705 people to the pandemic and has almost 5,000 more in hospital.
A 14-year-old died in Portugal and a girl of 16 called Julie died last week in Paris....
That awful stat suggests a 19 year old has died, and with no underlying conditions?
Ugh.
I actually don't know. The weird way its written it isn't 100% clear, does it mean that's the age range of those with health conditions or not, I honestly don't know.
Did store visits for work into Tesco / Co-op / Sainsburys / Asda / Morrisons this morning. We've seen some wild swings on sales data and reports of long queues outside stores which are quiet inside. No queues to get into any of them, stores mostly reasonably busy but clearly with a stock position which is in recovery after weeks of locust stripping.
What was clear was that unlike in previous weeks shoppers and staff looked very wary of each other. So I think the "be afraid" message is starting to resonate.
Comments
https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1244917677761626112?s=20
What you need to understand is that for serious introverts, it's more effort to socialise than to isolate. I find background noise and other people damned distracting.
Ironically, due to shopping for parents, I've actually gone out more during the lockdown than I did before...
That said, if you want to express your respect through the medium of buying one of my books (I understand if you decide against purchasing Sir Edric and the Plague), that's always welcome
Usually to evaluate a new diagnostic you compare its accuracy with a gold-standard. The gold-standard could be the PCR-test that PHE has been doing. You compare the positives and negatives with the true result and create the 2x2 matrix with true positives etc.
However, we know that the PCR test is itself not perfectly accurate with perhaps a 75% sensitivity. Therefore to validate the new point of care tests we will need a better gold-standard. So we will likely have to follow-up a cohort of symptomatic patients for 2-3 weeks and use a clinical diagnosis as the gold-standard, e.g. CT scans.
So that requires: (1) a group of competing POC tests ready to go; (2) the recruitment of hundreds of patients perhaps at different stages of disease; (3) a 2-3 week follow-up of each with scans etc; (4) a few days to analyse the data. Add all that together and you probably have about 4-6 weeks required. It can't be rushed. We need to be patient and get the right test.
One of the big changes that might come out of this is the realisation that many can work four day weeks.
From today, Waitrose is lifting its restrictions on items that shoppers can buy in its 338 UK stores.
https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1244940565575274497?s=20
The nation can sleep soundly once more.
People should not take part in recreational flying during the current coronavirus outbreak.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-recreational-general-aviation
Belgium also seen a big jump in cases and deaths
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
I said weeks and weeks ago, I just couldn't believe it wasn't in the US...and now we know it has more than likely been circulating for ages and so they are much worse starting positions and they really still pissing in the wind with the crazy non-leadership (and divisive nature) of Trump.
I am not exactly optimistic for their chances. A divided nation, ill prepared and a healthcare system that makes it even harder to try and contain such an outbreak.
(I know Young is well embedded in the Johnson clique. That's worrying in itself).
https://twitter.com/robertwiblin/status/1244975394668806151?s=20
The document says, in addressing the point:
In some GA flights, the risk of transmission is undeniably negligible, for example where the flight is a solo flight, from a private airstrip, in which no ground travel is required to access the airstrip. Nevertheless, such flights should not take place, in light of the blanket nature of the directive above, and the risk of an accident resulting in the need for social distancing measures to be abandoned.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-recreational-general-aviation/coronavirus-covid-19-recreational-general-aviation
We have to work with what we know, not what we might hope to be true.
But of course not for me to criticise peoples' shopping habits.
Oh no no no no...
"The app, which will operate on an opt-in basis, will be released either just before or just after the lockdown is lifted. If someone tests positive for COVID-19, they will be able to upload those contacts, who can then be alerted - after a suitable delay, to avoid accidentally identifying an individual - via the app."
It has to be mandatory. The app, plus the digital plague survivor badge. It is the only way. We can't have people just fancying to do this or not. It has to be the law, or don't bother at all.
Also, this better not be anybody who fancies uploading saying they had it. It will be like that optional online survey thing that found 10% of people had it, when it clearly wasn't true at the time.
Astrophysicist gets magnets stuck up nose while inventing coronavirus device
Australian Dr Daniel Reardon ended up in hospital after inserting magnets in his nostrils while building a necklace that warns you when you touch your face
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/mar/30/astrophysicist-gets-magnets-stuck-up-nose-while-inventing-coronavirus-device
Click on the article to see his face.
I agree with you more than David here – insofar as I think a mixture of home and group working is best for most professionals. I think most will crave some human face time while accepting that doing essentially solitary written project work or making calls when surrounded by a cast of thousands is nonsensical.
And the four-day week point is sound.
tldr - he's totally wrong in many different ways. I appreciate journalists still want to write at the moment but when they don't know what they are talking about, what's the point?
Why anyone listens to him or Hitchens is beyond me
I imagine this situation feels like the enforced reverse of that, which is why I sympathise even with those who have neither especial health nor financial worries. Of course, most of us have at least one of those, even if it's vicarious.
He also fails to spell Sunak's name correctly – pretty egregious for a journalist.
The point is not the merits of any one particular CT scan, it is that with 3-weeks of follow-up data, including potentially repeated PCR-tests, you can be fairly clear whether a patient has had Covid-19. But it takes time. A one-off PCR-test the next day is not going to be enough. So we must wait.
Again, I hope to be proven to be a fool by a Starmer win. But dead certs in politics have unraveled before our eyes so many times recently, and the cult are emboldened more than ever by the opportunity that the pandemic presents them to further win the argument...
Starts at 3 mins 40 secs:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000h7st
Nitpick on his point about QUALYs - it's true that NICE work on a £20k-£30k per QUALY figure, but that's from a health service provider (NHS) perspective. Many/most/all of the treatments funded also have societal costs that are not generally considered - so e.g. we fund interventions that results in weeks off work, with a cost to the economy, purely on the basis that they cost the NHS less than £30k (or £20k...) per QUALY gained. So for some treatments, society already values a QUALY above £30k.
Nitpick 2 - my reading of the draft Oxford paper doesn't say they think 50% are already infected, just that if you assume low mortality you can fit a model that would give current figures at around 50% of the population infected. It's not clear to me from the draft paper that the authors really believe that. It's one set of assumptions that fit the data, not the only set.
That's monumentally bad, though it has improved over the last couple of days.
Whereas of course his name was really spelled, 'James Gordon Brown.'
That we didn't have such a gap between applying restrictions here suggests to me that figures from elsewhere (or cases here exceeding internal predictions) convinced the advisors that quicker action was needed without waiting to fully observe the effects of initial measures.
New methodology - will include suicides, RTC and old age.
FWIW
This sounds entirely credible in the court of the mad President...
https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/1244821345227202561
https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1244967829805375488?s=21
A 12-year-old girl is thought to be the youngest victim in Europe of the coronavirus pandemic.
"We have today a difficult message to announce, emotionally it's a difficult moment because it involves a child," virologist Emmanuel André said on Tuesday. "It's a rare event and we're very distressed by it."
The girl had a fever for three days but her condition then worsened. She has not been named but her school in Ghent is said to be in close contact with her parents as well as other pupils' families. Belgium has lost 705 people to the pandemic and has almost 5,000 more in hospital.
A 14-year-old died in Portugal and a girl of 16 called Julie died last week in Paris....
No-one is being tested apart from hospital patients with respiratory symptoms, and a few staff.
What was clear was that unlike in previous weeks shoppers and staff looked very wary of each other. So I think the "be afraid" message is starting to resonate.
The two are not mutually incompatible.....