People are already irate with the lockdown, especially younger people. The novelty is beginning to wear out.
Well, the young people are going to have to learn that the freedoms they take for granted have been hard won in the past - and will need to be hard won again. God knows how their tiny attention spans would have coped with the five year lockdown of WW2 that several of my nearest neighbours endured. The same neighbours that would most likely have fifty, sixty year marriages destroyed as one or other of them was taken if the virus ran riot.
The Govt. does need to be able to dangle a carrot though. A back on form Boris saying if you are all good boys and girls, social distance, stop being dickheads with your buffets and BBQs, then by 1st June, x y and z will be permitted again.
But only if.
And if things are really well ahead of the curve, the Govt. can make itself hugley popular by bringing x or y or z out of the deep freeze a week or two earlier.
WW2 was many things but it was not a five year lockdown. Very few of the freedoms that we are currently without were lost. After the end of the Blitz and the start of the Nazi invasion of the USSR life returned to something approaching normal on the Home Front albeit with a lot less food. Serious consideration was given to restarting league football at one point, and there was nothing to stop you playing it or nearly any other sport, regional competitions proliferated. In June 1940 40,000 saw West Ham win the Football League War Cup at Wembley the very day the 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions crossed the Seine. By 1943 the South League Cup Final between Arsenal and Charlton saw 75,000 people there. Pubs, churches, cinemas, theatres, concert halls also remained open. You could go out on dates, get pissed, and most young people did and enjoyed it. This is a completely different challenge, WW2 comparisons are bollocks, moaning about “young people” does them a disservice.
Er - this isn't much more than a 5 day lockdown so far either. Get a grip.
MM was impliedly suggesting there had been a five year lockdown. That’s the point.
The point is that the UK has been on a lockdown less severe than in Spain or Italy for a little over a week. One that is very heavily supported in opinion polling despite all the efforts of the press to cavil and undermine on a daily basis. It's not going to last for ever but it is the right strategy for the next few weeks.
I agree. My post said nothing to the contrary. It was a complaint against facile comparisons to WW2, comparisons which need to stop.
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
The US Medical establishment really shouldn’t be throwing stones....
Isn't that a function of how expensive and inefficient the US system is compared to ours which is built around efficiency?
US system is out of reach for many people and ludicrously expensive but as a result has a lot of redundancy in it which ours doesn't.
Yes, an almost totally public system (as in the UK) will work out cheaper in general, and is easier to organise centrally in a time of crisis - but has little in the way of excess capacity to cope with a pandemic.
A mostly private system (as in the US) will be the opposite, having excess capacity but being more difficult to organise centrally and more expensive in normal times.
Both of these systems are sub-optimal, in normal times and in crisis times.
The 'ideal' system lies somewhere in between the two. Germany seems to be doing well at the moment, as was Singapore earlier.
Germany spend massive amounts more on their health care per head than us.
Maybe we could spend as much as the Germans?
Maybe we could - just list the kind of tax level you want ordinary people to shell out to pay for it. Then stand up and argue your case in a GE. See. Easy.
Mate, I'm not the one suggesting we adopt another countries healthcare system without paying for it.
My apologies I thought it was. So many do without considering what has to be given up in order to achieve it. At the end of the day we get the systems the public are prepared to pay for. Maybe after this there will be even more allocated to health - although economic reality has to intrude at some point even into healthcare.
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
No lockdown in Shanghai or Schenzen - factories up and running.
The personal experience of people will vary a lot, but many will struggle with not going out beyond medicine/food, and seeing savings whittled away.
This would be a lot easier to deal with if we didn't have a disease to which no-one is immune and the severity of which varies from no symptoms at all to death. But we don't get to pick our pandemics.
Absolutely. That's why we have lockdown. We have no alternative in practice. If we don't impose it now we will have to do it later, deeper, longer, with more death and economic cost. We're already doing a more onerous and costly lockdown than we need to because we have made that mistake once already. Why make the same mistake a second time?
You say "If we don't impose it now we will have to do it later, deeper, longer, with more death and economic cost."
I disagree. Many will be immune.
But unless we know who is immune (and we don't know if anyone is or can be when you look at the most common coronavirus which we call the common cold) how do you let anyone out.
There are currently just too many unknowns here for anyone to predict the future.
Have some sympathy for the households that had the virus early (obviously not tested but classic symptoms) and came out of the 14 day household quarantine on the day the full lockdown was announced... Everyone slowly going up the wall (and attempting to help neighbours in isolation as a means to leave the house!)
People are already irate with the lockdown, especially younger people. The novelty is beginning to wear out.
Well, the young people are going to have to learn that the freedoms they take for granted have been hard won in the past - and will need to be hard won again. God knows how their tiny attention spans would have coped with the five year lockdown of WW2 that several of my nearest neighbours endured. The same neighbours that would most likely have fifty, sixty year marriages destroyed as one or other of them was taken if the virus ran riot.
The Govt. does need to be able to dangle a carrot though. A back on form Boris saying if you are all good boys and girls, social distance, stop being dickheads with your buffets and BBQs, then by 1st June, x y and z will be permitted again.
But only if.
And if things are really well ahead of the curve, the Govt. can make itself hugley popular by bringing x or y or z out of the deep freeze a week or two earlier.
WW2 was many things but it was not a five year lockdown. Very few of the freedoms that we are currently without were lost. After the end of the Blitz and the start of the Nazi invasion of the USSR life returned to something approaching normal on the Home Front albeit with a lot less food. Serious consideration was given to restarting league football at one point, and there was nothing to stop you playing it or nearly any other sport, regional competitions proliferated. In June 1940 40,000 saw West Ham win the Football League War Cup at Wembley the very day the 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions crossed the Seine. By 1943 the South League Cup Final between Arsenal and Charlton saw 75,000 people there. Pubs, churches, cinemas, theatres, concert halls also remained open. You could go out on dates, get pissed, and most young people did and enjoyed it. This is a completely different challenge, WW2 comparisons are bollocks, moaning about “young people” does them a disservice.
Er - this isn't much more than a 5 day lockdown so far either. Get a grip.
MM was impliedly suggesting there had been a five year lockdown. That’s the point.
It was a five year lockdown on travel. Fuel was very hard to come by - not much chance of going for a walk in thr Lake District then. And your foreign travel destinations were rather limited (unless you had a uniform).
Food hoarding wasn't an option as you had the state decide how much you could buy. And on the day it was introduced, nobody had a clue how long those retrictions would last. Or even if your current Government would be the one ending them.
The young are not being expected to go off and give their lives to win this conflict. If they were being asked to, then yes, you'd expect them too to go out on dates, get pissed and enjoy it. They are however being asked to stay safe by staying home a few weeks with an inadequate supply of bog rolls and an unlimited supply of box sets.
Interesting thread header. I wonder if Mike posted today to have plausible April Fools' deniability!
Now that we have a lockdown, it makes sense to wait 3 weeks to see the effect it has. If the effect is minimal on transmission, then there's not much point.
However the evidence from other countries so far is that it has a very significant impact. Indeed, a lockdown for a few months may be enough to beat the virus.
On the economic impact - I think that we should see a very rapid recovery once the lockdown ends. The counterfactual is pretty bad for the economy in any case.
I definitely think it's unwise for the govt to box itself in with a timescale now. They should wait and see the impact of current measures and be guided by the science.
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
You may me right, Tyson. As I said, there are no good options. Philosophy doesn`t, and shouldn`t, flinch.
I`m a liberal, I value freedom above anything else, which is why I tend to load the dice in the way I do. If you are a collectivist you will load the dice in favour of health. If you are a conservative you may choose the economy. We hold different ideologies, and that is why we see things through very different lenses.
Thank you for your feedback, I always look out for your posts in particular and I appreciate them very highly, you are one of the best posters on here. .
You hit a nerve with me this morning....my sister posted me some videos of some young doctors (including her son) after a shift on a Covid ward yesterday..they were learning how to do an intricate dance move...just silly, but it brought tears to my eyes thinking that these young medics are risking their lives....
I think it's okay for the focus to be on fighting the virus for the time being. Come May/June, if the government thinks this needs to carry on, then I think at that point the government needs to start explaining how it intends to pay for all of this.
The question is, how can people keep two very disparate groups onside. Firstly, a group who cannot countenance being locked down for much longer than a couple of months for various reasons, financial, mental etc, so their main goal is an end to the lockdown. Secondly, a group whose primary goal is survival and who will do anything to avoid getting the virus,including extending the lockdown.
These groups cannot get all of what they want, unless the government starts to treat them differently. Those who want to keep locked down should be able to do so, without penalty regarding their jobs. Those who want greater freedom and risk the outcome can so, without sanction. What is left is how interaction between the two groups can be kept at an absolute minimum.
I can't see any other way of catering to both groups than having this temporary divide.
Interesting thread header. I wonder if Mike posted today to have plausible April Fools' deniability!
Now that we have a lockdown, it makes sense to wait 3 weeks to see the effect it has. If the effect is minimal on transmission, then there's not much point.
However the evidence from other countries so far is that it has a very significant impact. Indeed, a lockdown for a few months may be enough to beat the virus.
On the economic impact - I think that we should see a very rapid recovery once the lockdown ends. The counterfactual is pretty bad for the economy in any case.
I definitely think it's unwise for the govt to box itself in with a timescale now. They should wait and see the impact of current measures and be guided by the science.
This is a guest slot not written by me and does not contain my views
The personal experience of people will vary a lot, but many will struggle with not going out beyond medicine/food, and seeing savings whittled away.
This would be a lot easier to deal with if we didn't have a disease to which no-one is immune and the severity of which varies from no symptoms at all to death. But we don't get to pick our pandemics.
Absolutely. That's why we have lockdown. We have no alternative in practice. If we don't impose it now we will have to do it later, deeper, longer, with more death and economic cost. We're already doing a more onerous and costly lockdown than we need to because we have made that mistake once already. Why make the same mistake a second time?
You say "If we don't impose it now we will have to do it later, deeper, longer, with more death and economic cost."
I disagree. Many will be immune.
I was trying to run the numbers the other night. Herd immunity (end of epidemic) is estimated at 60% to 70% . Infectiousness is about the same as flu and less than SARS. Mortality (IFR) rate isn't known but it is greater than flu at about 0.04% and less than SARS, approx 10%. We're looking at something between 75 000 and 500 000 deaths in the UK to get to that immunity naturally.
The UK had so far had 1700 COVID19 deaths and hospitals are beginning to feel the strain in some places. We're talking here about a death rate that is orders of magnitude higher.
Excellent post. This point of view really needs putting.
I tend to agree. And as for 0.5% of the population inevitably getting it? Not so (Diamond Princess).
Although NHS capacity is of course an issue.
NHS capacity is not an issue it is the issue. The whole anti-lockdown argument falls down on the point that without it our entire healthcare system would have collapsed in weeks if not days.
People are latching on to the "greater good" as a justification but in many cases it is just rationalising the fact that they don't like the personal inconvenience and sacrifice involved. (None of us do)
I also think there are now some serious questions needing to be asked of the government in respect of our seeming failings to increase testing sufficiently and provide sufficient PPE.
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
China did not have tens of thousands of deaths.....my wife works on medical journals which includes a number of contributors from China..the level of transparency (since the mishaps at the start) from China, and from the health sector in particular has been one of the positive things about Covid 19....
How is your wife getting on with work, considering the PPE equipment you listed the other day.....??
How is your company doing...considering it's employees are using this crisis to skive...
Stocky....has a liberal view that I find grossly irresponsible in this time.....
You on the other hand are something quite sinister...and you are deliberately spreading misinformation and falsehoods which I find very worrying...
People are already irate with the lockdown, especially younger people. The novelty is beginning to wear out.
Well, the young people are going to have to learn that the freedoms they take for granted have been hard won in the past - and will need to be hard won again. God knows how their tiny attention spans would have coped with the five year lockdown of WW2 that several of my nearest neighbours endured. The same neighbours that would most likely have fifty, sixty year marriages destroyed as one or other of them was taken if the virus ran riot.
The Govt. does need to be able to dangle a carrot though. A back on form Boris saying if you are all good boys and girls, social distance, stop being dickheads with your buffets and BBQs, then by 1st June, x y and z will be permitted again.
But only if.
And if things are really well ahead of the curve, the Govt. can make itself hugley popular by bringing x or y or z out of the deep freeze a week or two earlier.
WW2 was many things but it was not a five year lockdown. Very few of the freedoms that we are currently without were lost. After the end of the Blitz and the start of the Nazi invasion of the USSR life returned to something approaching normal on the Home Front albeit with a lot less food. Serious consideration was given to restarting league football at one point, and there was nothing to stop you playing it or nearly any other sport, regional competitions proliferated. In June 1940 40,000 saw West Ham win the Football League War Cup at Wembley the very day the 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions crossed the Seine. By 1943 the South League Cup Final between Arsenal and Charlton saw 75,000 people there. Pubs, churches, cinemas, theatres, concert halls also remained open. You could go out on dates, get pissed, and most young people did and enjoyed it. This is a completely different challenge, WW2 comparisons are bollocks, moaning about “young people” does them a disservice.
Er - this isn't much more than a 5 day lockdown so far either. Get a grip.
MM was impliedly suggesting there had been a five year lockdown. That’s the point.
The point is that the UK has been on a lockdown less severe than in Spain or Italy for a little over a week. One that is very heavily supported in opinion polling despite all the efforts of the press to cavil and undermine on a daily basis. It's not going to last for ever but it is the right strategy for the next few weeks.
I agree. My post said nothing to the contrary. It was a complaint against facile comparisons to WW2, comparisons which need to stop.
You're wasting your time. There are some people who are compelled to talk about WW2, no matter how irrelevant. Let them retreat into their comfort zone if it makes them feel better.
The lockdown isn't so bad once you get used to it. It is like a long summer holiday. The government is paying for it with borrowed money, much of it from China. Could Sunak please announce how this money is going to be paid back? This question based on the premise that the lockdown is not completely lifted so that the economy does not return to normal soon. When will the government start repaying the money?
Perhaps they could cancel debt owned by China ?
Call it a deposit on future reparations.
A debt default? An interesting way to get the economy going...
Not a default if we are due the money..
I couldn't disagree more.
One of the UK's rarely mentioned economic strengths and reason we are a head of world commerce is we are one of the only major nations in the world to have never defaulted on any debt.
Under no circumstances should we seek to lose that record.
Well, not as the UK.
However, Edward III of England defaulted on 1.5 million florins' worth of debt in 1345;
And so did several Scottish kings, including David II in 1363.
Admittedly, those were a fair time ago.
The 14th century sure was a fair time ago. Since the Enlightenment began most other nations including America have defaulted on at least some debts, it is a rare strength that the UK has not.
People are already irate with the lockdown, especially younger people. The novelty is beginning to wear out.
Well, the young people are going to have to learn that the freedoms they take for granted have been hard won in the past - and will need to be hard won again. God knows how their tiny attention spans would have coped with the five year lockdown of WW2 that several of my nearest neighbours endured. The same neighbours that would most likely have fifty, sixty year marriages destroyed as one or other of them was taken if the virus ran riot.
The Govt. does need to be able to dangle a carrot though. A back on form Boris saying if you are all good boys and girls, social distance, stop being dickheads with your buffets and BBQs, then by 1st June, x y and z will be permitted again.
But only if.
And if things are really well ahead of the curve, the Govt. can make itself hugley popular by bringing x or y or z out of the deep freeze a week or two earlier.
WW2 was many things but it was not a five year lockdown. Very few of the freedoms that we are currently without were lost. After the end of the Blitz and the start of the Nazi invasion of the USSR life returned to something approaching normal on the Home Front albeit with a lot less food. Serious consideration was given to restarting league football at one point, and there was nothing to stop you playing it or nearly any other sport, regional competitions proliferated. In June 1940 40,000 saw West Ham win the Football League War Cup at Wembley the very day the 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions crossed the Seine. By 1943 the South League Cup Final between Arsenal and Charlton saw 75,000 people there. Pubs, churches, cinemas, theatres, concert halls also remained open. You could go out on dates, get pissed, and most young people did and enjoyed it. This is a completely different challenge, WW2 comparisons are bollocks, moaning about “young people” does them a disservice.
Er - this isn't much more than a 5 day lockdown so far either. Get a grip.
MM was impliedly suggesting there had been a five year lockdown. That’s the point.
It was a five year lockdown on travel. Fuel was very hard to come by - not much chance of going for a walk in thr Lake District then. And your foreign travel destinations were rather limited (unless you had a uniform).
Food hoarding wasn't an option as you had the state decide how much you could buy. And on the day it was introduced, nobody had a clue how long those retrictions would last. Or even if your current Government would be the one ending them.
The young are not being expected to go off and give their lives to win this conflict. If they were being asked to, then yes, you'd expect them too to go out on dates, get pissed and enjoy it. They are however being asked to stay safe by staying home a few weeks with an inadequate supply of bog rolls and an unlimited supply of box sets.
And not a German bomb or doodlebug in sight.
You are moving the goalposts. It was not a five year lockdown in the sense you implied. Your post demonising the “young” is patently unfair particularly given that your generation, and that of no one on this forum, had any part of their youth blanket restricted in this way, and there is no evidence of any widespread dissatisfaction on their part anyway.
Interesting thread header. I wonder if Mike posted today to have plausible April Fools' deniability!
Now that we have a lockdown, it makes sense to wait 3 weeks to see the effect it has. If the effect is minimal on transmission, then there's not much point.
However the evidence from other countries so far is that it has a very significant impact. Indeed, a lockdown for a few months may be enough to beat the virus.
On the economic impact - I think that we should see a very rapid recovery once the lockdown ends. The counterfactual is pretty bad for the economy in any case.
I definitely think it's unwise for the govt to box itself in with a timescale now. They should wait and see the impact of current measures and be guided by the science.
This is a guest slot not written by me and does not contain my views
One counterfactual is that if you let it get to the Italian levels, then the economy collapses in a mess anyway.
What we are conducting is an interesting experiment in *deliberately suppressing a large part of the economy*.
Coffee shops have been closed, not by underlying economic conditions, but by fiat.
The next economic question is how to help unwind the economic constriction....
Looking at New cases (p7d) vs Confirmed cases (usual caveat, both a function of testing level) then it does look like Italy is starting to turn the corner:
Interesting thread header. I wonder if Mike posted today to have plausible April Fools' deniability!
Now that we have a lockdown, it makes sense to wait 3 weeks to see the effect it has. If the effect is minimal on transmission, then there's not much point.
However the evidence from other countries so far is that it has a very significant impact. Indeed, a lockdown for a few months may be enough to beat the virus.
On the economic impact - I think that we should see a very rapid recovery once the lockdown ends. The counterfactual is pretty bad for the economy in any case.
I definitely think it's unwise for the govt to box itself in with a timescale now. They should wait and see the impact of current measures and be guided by the science.
This is a guest slot not written by me and does not contain my views
OGH - can we have a PB reporter in the Press Pool asking questions?
I would rather have tyson than half the numpties there at the moment....
The Mail and other usually friendly media for the tories are getting very agitated about small business owners not being able to access loans easily, and the security of their own property needed for them. The Government is going to have to review the situation.
"Nearly a FIFTH of UK firms could shut within four weeks: Up to a million small to medium companies face ruin because banks are 'refusing to give them government-backed loans'
Many bosses said they had been declined an emergency coronavirus loan for not meeting the criteria while others could not get through on the phone or were told the money would take weeks to arrive. 'The loan is under normal business conditions, which is fine but then don't suggest otherwise,' one told MailOnline. 'I have already been told by the government and Barclays that the only way to receive a loan is by cutting my staff.'
Research published today by the BBC suggests that between 800,000 and a million businesses could be forced to shut their doors because they can no longer cover rent, salaries or payments to suppliers.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced last month that 'any good business in financial difficulty' would be able to take out a Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan. The loans of up to £5million are available for any business with a turnover of up to £45m and include a year's interest paid by the government and flexible repayments for up to six years.
However, businesses can only get the money if they cannot borrow in a normal way, such as guaranteeing the loans against the value of a property.
If bosses require more than £250,000 they have to sign a personal guarantee, meaning their property is on the line if the shutdown continues for months and they cannot repay the money. "
There is a lot of emotion. Threats to loved ones, pictures of rows of coffins, young people dying - these are real and vivid.
But government should not be emotional and should resist pressure from understandably emotional people in order to come to the best conclusions for the common good.
Government should, as best they can, objectively assess the costs and benefits of various courses of action (and yes this involves putting a £ value on a human life) informed by experts in epidemiology, behavioural science and economics. By and large that is what the government is doing. Fair play to them.
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
China did not have tens of thousands of deaths.....my wife works on medical journals which includes a number of contributors from China..the level of transparency (since the mishaps at the start) from China, and from the health sector in particular has been one of the positive things about Covid 19....
How is your wife getting on with work, considering the PPE equipment you listed the other day.....??
How is your company doing...considering it's employees are using this crisis to skive...
Stocky....has a liberal view that I find grossly irresponsible in this time.....
You on the other hand are something quite sinister...and you are deliberately spreading misinformation and falsehoods which I find very worrying...
There should be a significant reduction in deaths say 250 to 300 just because there are few cars on the road. Crime.... Who knows but i guess a lot less due to everyone being at home. There will be other crimes inc violence mainly against women and a large spike in divorces is likely.
A great thread header, Stocky - with the added bonus that these days it is virtually impossible to go off-thread....
Thanks MarqueeMark - now I can`t resist the temptation to go off-topic.
You a mother? (I mean a moth enthusist obviously.) You mentioned moth traps - I`m assuming you are catching them, not zapping them.
I`d like to do a survey of our village`s moths - do you know whether moth traps can be hired? If not, which model would you recommend? I attended a short naturalist course a few years ago and the moth expert and author, Paul Waring, got me interested.
Gloriously off-topic: a reply I gave to another on this site.
There are two main types of moth traps (really, lures - the moths get let go afterwards) - the big bright mercury vapour traps, and the lower power actinic traps. Actinics are better in winter and early spring it seems, and are ideal if you have neighbours who are going to object to a bloody bright light in your back garden. However, the MV lamps get much better results on warmer nights (and perversely, if you have drizzle or fog it seems). There are a number of types of trap, and then the decision is mains (fine for trapping a garden) or battery (if you really get the bug and want to start trapping further afield) - and how much you want to spend. I run a couple of the big Robinson traps, but the bulk of the moths actually come to a sheet I fix behind the trap.
That said, the big mercury vapour lamps are being phased out and replaced with LEDs. So far these have variable success, but are likely to become the norm in the next 10 years.
I came to moths via birds, having pretty much run out of new birds to see in the UK. We rented a cottage in Devon and I was curious about the drab moths flying around the woodshed. Turns out they were nationally rare - and I had found the largest number in the UK.
After that, I got hooked. 10 years later, I have got to the point where I submit the largest number of records of anyone in Devon.... (I tend not to do anything by halves!) Incredibly rewarding, but with 2,600 different UK species (versus about 60 butterflies), there is a lot to learn. That said, the field guides are excellent and the internet is a fabulous resource for checking what you have. There are local sites such as Hants Moths Flying Tonight which shows, week by week, the moths you can expect to see:
Then there are various facebook groups, several of which I am on the admin group. There are still a few po-faced scientist types who look down on those of us who have fun along the way. Mostly though people are very happy to share knowledge and learn as we go. The macro moths are generally more straight forward to get to grips with - the micro moths much less so. Many of these require dissection to get to species level. Again, there are people who can help with that. Your county moth recorder will probably do it if you get something that is a bit strokey-beard in its uncertainty.
As well as the species that will breed locally, you will through the summer and autumn have a chance of scarce migrants from Europe, sometimes from north Africa.
Feel free to private mail me with any questions. It is a great hobby for insomniacs - otherwise, prepare for your sleep patterns to get trashed! But you won't believe the range of critters that party while you are abed....
Interesting thread header. I wonder if Mike posted today to have plausible April Fools' deniability!
Now that we have a lockdown, it makes sense to wait 3 weeks to see the effect it has. If the effect is minimal on transmission, then there's not much point.
However the evidence from other countries so far is that it has a very significant impact. Indeed, a lockdown for a few months may be enough to beat the virus.
On the economic impact - I think that we should see a very rapid recovery once the lockdown ends. The counterfactual is pretty bad for the economy in any case.
I definitely think it's unwise for the govt to box itself in with a timescale now. They should wait and see the impact of current measures and be guided by the science.
This is a guest slot not written by me and does not contain my views
While you are around Mike...what can you do about posters who use this site to deliberately spread misinformation and lies...
"“They are no longer singing or dancing on the balconies,” said Salvatore Melluso, a priest at Caritas Diocesana di Napoli, a church-run charity in Naples. “Now people are more afraid – not so much of the virus, but of poverty. Many are out of work and hungry. There are now long queues at food banks.”"
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
China did not have tens of thousands of deaths.....my wife works on medical journals which includes a number of contributors from China..the level of transparency (since the mishaps at the start) from China, and from the health sector in particular has been one of the positive things about Covid 19....
How is your wife getting on with work, considering the PPE equipment you listed the other day.....??
How is your company doing...considering it's employees are using this crisis to skive...
Stocky....has a liberal view that I find grossly irresponsible in this time.....
You on the other hand are something quite sinister...and you are deliberately spreading misinformation and falsehoods which I find very worrying...
There should be a significant reduction in deaths say 250 to 300 just because there are few cars on the road. Crime.... Who knows but i guess a lot less due to everyone being at home. There will be other crimes inc violence mainly against women and a large spike in divorces is likely.
The difference is made up mostly of private health insurance, I would agree that an expansion of this in the UK would be for the better.
The one thing guaranteed not to work, is throwing ever more public money at an unreformed NHS.
I think you're misreading that chart.
We spend slightly more than Germany on private healthcare (2% of GDP vs. 1.7% of GDP), but much less on public healthcare (7.9% of GDP vs 9.3% of GDP).
Excellent piece, even if one doesn't agree with it. Would that our newspapers contained such clear and insightful opinion pieces.
And yes there should be a PB representative at Press briefings. We might then be told why it is we are still receiving regular flights from the USA, which is now the world's number one hotspot. What's the point of all this lockdown nonsense if anyone can just fly in from New York?
It is simple. We enforce the lock down and social distancing until it is medically appropriate and if people try and violate beforehand shoot them or imprison them.
The difference is made up mostly of private health insurance, I would agree that an expansion of this in the UK would be for the better.
The one thing guaranteed not to work, is throwing ever more public money at an unreformed NHS.
I think you're misreading that chart.
We spend slightly more than Germany on private healthcare (2% of GDP vs. 1.7% of GDP), but much less on public healthcare (7.9% of GDP vs 9.3% of GDP).
The Germans fund health through public insurance paid for by employer and employee not through income tax
Excellent post. This point of view really needs putting.
I tend to agree. And as for 0.5% of the population inevitably getting it? Not so (Diamond Princess).
Although NHS capacity is of course an issue.
NHS capacity is not an issue it is the issue. The whole anti-lockdown argument falls down on the point that without it our entire healthcare system would have collapsed in weeks if not days.
People are latching on to the "greater good" as a justification but in many cases it is just rationalising the fact that they don't like the personal inconvenience and sacrifice involved. (None of us do)
I also think there are now some serious questions needing to be asked of the government in respect of our seeming failings to increase testing sufficiently and provide sufficient PPE.
Me weeks ago on PB:
Yes I think a testing kit for everyone would be a very wise investment for the govt. Of course logistically impossible I'm sure.
At the moment everyone is in: "will I get it/do I have it/did I have it" mode.
Data are king. Once we know who, where and when the govt can act.
Opticians and Bakers should be free from shutdown already.
The eyes have it, the pies have it. Unlock!
I would add garden centres (not cafe's), DIY shops and construction sites where contractors can arrive in their own vehicles, and socially distance on site.
Other businesses too, apart from those where social distancing is impossible.
The difference is made up mostly of private health insurance, I would agree that an expansion of this in the UK would be for the better.
The one thing guaranteed not to work, is throwing ever more public money at an unreformed NHS.
I think you're misreading that chart.
We spend slightly more than Germany on private healthcare (2% of GDP vs. 1.7% of GDP), but much less on public healthcare (7.9% of GDP vs 9.3% of GDP).
Those figures could be quite interesting in six months time!
There is a lot of emotion. Threats to loved ones, pictures of rows of coffins, young people dying - these are real and vivid.
But government should not be emotional and should resist pressure from understandably emotional people in order to come to the best conclusions for the common good.
Government should, as best they can, objectively assess the costs and benefits of various courses of action (and yes this involves putting a £ value on a human life) informed by experts in epidemiology, behavioural science and economics. By and large that is what the government is doing. Fair play to them.
But...we had the herd theory at the start...we had Boris Johnson bringing up the Oxford study (50%) have had it....we have people saying look at Sweden when it does not compare in any way to the UK...all misinformation and irresponsible....
The Govt is now on the right trajectory...in terms of policy....
It's ability to strategically organise and plan reminds me of the keystone cops...
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
China did not have tens of thousands of deaths.....my wife works on medical journals which includes a number of contributors from China..the level of transparency (since the mishaps at the start) from China, and from the health sector in particular has been one of the positive things about Covid 19....
How is your wife getting on with work, considering the PPE equipment you listed the other day.....??
How is your company doing...considering it's employees are using this crisis to skive...
Stocky....has a liberal view that I find grossly irresponsible in this time.....
You on the other hand are something quite sinister...and you are deliberately spreading misinformation and falsehoods which I find very worrying...
All our employees are on Furlough, it is likely that if this situation continues for 3 months the company will close.
Interestingly we have received this press release from the Government this morning. Clearly they did not want for the Construction Industry to shut down like it has.
At Winchester Hospital there is no shortage of PPE, as mentioned yesterday 4 wards are shut due to lack of patients. The hospital is as quiet as it has ever been.
On Monday at Bournemouth Hospital there were 136 empty beds.
The difference is made up mostly of private health insurance, I would agree that an expansion of this in the UK would be for the better.
The one thing guaranteed not to work, is throwing ever more public money at an unreformed NHS.
I think you're misreading that chart.
We spend slightly more than Germany on private healthcare (2% of GDP vs. 1.7% of GDP), but much less on public healthcare (7.9% of GDP vs 9.3% of GDP).
The Germans fund health through public insurance paid for by employer and employee not through income tax
The difference is made up mostly of private health insurance, I would agree that an expansion of this in the UK would be for the better.
The one thing guaranteed not to work, is throwing ever more public money at an unreformed NHS.
I think you're misreading that chart.
We spend slightly more than Germany on private healthcare (2% of GDP vs. 1.7% of GDP), but much less on public healthcare (7.9% of GDP vs 9.3% of GDP).
Yes you're right. I did indeed read it wrong!
The 'Public' spending is based on compulsory insurance though, rather than being funded from general taxation.
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
I completely agree that the lockdown is necessary at the moment. It is for the greater good. We do not want to live in a society with a collapsed healthcare system and mass deaths.
What is difficult in all this (and where things start to become trickier) is that once cases start to reduce when do you end the lockdown. It then becomes a very tricky cost/benefit balancing act. Staying home for months and months, being unable to see your family and friends and to enjoy yourself, is not much of a life. At what point does the societal benefits to allowing people to actually live their lives outweigh the needs relating to the virus.
In an ideal world we would all stay at home until the disease has been completely irradicated and transmission is not even a problem anymore. That could push us into the autumn or even further by which time the economy will be completely destroyed. In addition I genuinely think that peoples mental health cannot cope with 6+ months of isolation.
So the other option is to relax restrictions when transmission rates have decreased to an acceptable level, probably in May/early June. The problem then is that you risk not having fixed the problem and the virus transmission becoming more widespread again, resulting in us all going back into lockdown (something I think would be a very difficult sell).
The only way that we can possibly balance the equation is through a mixture of testing and contact tracing, which other countries seem to be leading the way on but that will require people to be very careful about their movement for a while. That might be the solution but two thoughts here: 1. It relies on people enforcing enhanced social distancing for a while, is the government up to the task of enforcing that and 2. Does the government have the ability in this country to put in place such a stringent testing and contact tracing regime? Early indicators suggest not.
It’s to be hoped that they really are able to get a vaccine next year because I can’t see us being able to fully put this behind us until that point.
It is simple. We enforce the lock down and social distancing until it is medically appropriate and if people try and violate beforehand shoot them or imprison them.
Or exile them to the Pitcairn Islands.
I am having flashbacks to Piers Fletcher-Dervish shrieking "Make them drink Tap Water!" as a threat on The New Statesman...
The personal experience of people will vary a lot, but many will struggle with not going out beyond medicine/food, and seeing savings whittled away.
This would be a lot easier to deal with if we didn't have a disease to which no-one is immune and the severity of which varies from no symptoms at all to death. But we don't get to pick our pandemics.
Absolutely. That's why we have lockdown. We have no alternative in practice. If we don't impose it now we will have to do it later, deeper, longer, with more death and economic cost. We're already doing a more onerous and costly lockdown than we need to because we have made that mistake once already. Why make the same mistake a second time?
You say "If we don't impose it now we will have to do it later, deeper, longer, with more death and economic cost."
I disagree. Many will be immune.
I was trying to run the numbers the other night. Herd immunity (end of epidemic) is estimated at 60% to 70% . Infectiousness is about the same as flu and less than SARS. Mortality (IFR) rate isn't known but it is greater than flu at about 0.04% and less than SARS, approx 10%. We're looking at something between 75 000 and 500 000 deaths in the UK to get to that immunity naturally.
The UK had so far had 1700 COVID19 deaths and hospitals are beginning to feel the strain in some places. We're talking here about a death rate that is orders of magnitude higher.
I’d have to go dig out the figures, but I believe the infection rate for Covid-19 is significantly greater than the flu. Flu is usually around 1.4-1.6 new infections per person infected. Covid-19 is believed to be more like 2-3. It’s a lot more infectious than flu.
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 .
The
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....l
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
China did not have tens of thousands of deaths.....my wife works on medical journals which includes a number of contributors from China..the level of transparency (since the mishaps at the start) from China, and from the health sector in particular has been one of the positive things about Covid 19....
How is your wife getting on with work, considering the PPE equipment you listed the other day.....??
How is your company doing...considering it's employees are using this crisis to skive...
Stocky....has a liberal view that I find grossly irresponsible in this time.....
You on the other hand are something quite sinister...and you are deliberately spreading misinformation and falsehoods which I find very worrying...
All our employees are on Furlough, it is likely that if this situation continues for 3 months the company will close.
Interestingly we have received this press release from the Government this morning. Clearly they did not want for the Construction Industry to shut down like it has.
At Winchester Hospital there is no shortage of PPE, as mentioned yesterday 4 wards are shut due to lack of patients. The hospital is as quiet as it has ever been.
On Monday at Bournemouth Hospital there were 136 empty beds.
What hospital does your nephew work at?
It is quite patchy. Portsmouth is amongst the worst affected areas.
The US Medical establishment really shouldn’t be throwing stones....
Isn't that a function of how expensive and inefficient the US system is compared to ours which is built around efficiency?
US system is out of reach for many people and ludicrously expensive but as a result has a lot of redundancy in it which ours doesn't.
Yes, an almost totally public system (as in the UK) will work out cheaper in general, and is easier to organise centrally in a time of crisis - but has little in the way of excess capacity to cope with a pandemic.
A mostly private system (as in the US) will be the opposite, having excess capacity but being more difficult to organise centrally and more expensive in normal times.
Both of these systems are sub-optimal, in normal times and in crisis times.
The 'ideal' system lies somewhere in between the two. Germany seems to be doing well at the moment, as was Singapore earlier.
Germany spend massive amounts more on their health care per head than us.
Maybe we could spend as much as the Germans?
Such levels of expenditure are the rewards of a highly productive and efficient economy that pays its way in the world and then some. You cannot wish the result without having the means and we don't have them.
Germany spends more %-of-GDP per head. It spends more as a ratio not just in absolute terms.
This ludicrous conversation of "adopt the healthcare system of country X" without discussing how much they spend has to stop.
So what are you willing to reduce spending on so that you can increase spending on healthcare ?
News that a friend of mine, retired nurse in mid seventies, previously well is breathing her last in my hospital. Ordinarily she would have had 10 more years with her grandchildren.
The lockdown isn't so bad once you get used to it. It is like a long summer holiday. The government is paying for it with borrowed money, much of it from China. Could Sunak please announce how this money is going to be paid back? This question based on the premise that the lockdown is not completely lifted so that the economy does not return to normal soon. When will the government start repaying the money?
Perhaps they could cancel debt owned by China ?
Call it a deposit on future reparations.
A debt default? An interesting way to get the economy going...
Not a default if we are due the money..
I couldn't disagree more.
One of the UK's rarely mentioned economic strengths and reason we are a head of world commerce is we are one of the only major nations in the world to have never defaulted on any debt.
Under no circumstances should we seek to lose that record.
Well, not as the UK.
However, Edward III of England defaulted on 1.5 million florins' worth of debt in 1345;
And so did several Scottish kings, including David II in 1363.
Admittedly, those were a fair time ago.
People get plenty mad about things 300+ years ago, why not 650+?
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Agree. For now the lockdown is right and almost nobody questions it today or for the next couple of weeks probably. The thread header raises the entirely valid question of at what point and under which changed circumstances would it no longer be the best policy, or at least whether it could be eased.
This is not straightforward or obvious and Stocky does not claim to have the perfect answer, he raises the question and this is entirely valid on a site where people just express their views.
But tyson as a lefty is comfortable with sneering and being superior, with shutting down others' views which don't fit with the "right" world view, and with unquestioned state control of our lives.
But this is surely a valid debate to have which will become more relevant in 2-3 weeks.
"Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, said if existing NHS pathology labs had unlimited swabs and reagent, there would be enough test machine capacity to process around 100,000 tests a day.
But Mr Hopson said a "reagent and swab shortage is currently limiting this to [around] 13,000 a day".
The government hopes to be able to process 15,000 tests for NHS staff in the coming days, according to Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick.
The Chemical Industries Association acknowledged demand was "escalating" it said reagents - used to find out if a reaction occurs - were being manufactured and delivered to the NHS.
"Every business here in the UK and globally is looking at what they can do to help meet the demand as a matter of urgency," it said, adding companies were continuing to work with government."
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
I completely agree that the lockdown is necessary at the moment. It is for the greater good. We do not want to live in a society with a collapsed healthcare system and mass deaths.
What is difficult in all this (and where things start to become trickier) is that once cases start to reduce when do you end the lockdown. It then becomes a very tricky cost/benefit balancing act. Staying home for months and months, being unable to see your family and friends and to enjoy yourself, is not much of a life. At what point does the societal benefits to allowing people to actually live their lives outweigh the needs relating to the virus.
In an ideal world we would all stay at home until the disease has been completely irradicated and transmission is not even a problem anymore. That could push us into the autumn or even further by which time the economy will be completely destroyed. In addition I genuinely think that peoples mental health cannot cope with 6+ months of isolation.
So the other option is to relax restrictions when transmission rates have decreased to an acceptable level, probably in May/early June. The problem then is that you risk not having fixed the problem and the virus transmission becoming more widespread again, resulting in us all going back into lockdown (something I think would be a very difficult sell).
The only way that we can possibly balance the equation is through a mixture of testing and contact tracing, which other countries seem to be leading the way on but that will require people to be very careful about their movement for a while. That might be the solution but two thoughts here: 1. It relies on people enforcing enhanced social distancing for a while, is the government up to the task of enforcing that and 2. Does the government have the ability in this country to put in place such a stringent testing and contact tracing regime? Early indicators suggest not.
It’s to be hoped that they really are able to get a vaccine next year because I can’t see us being able to fully put this behind us until that point.
That is my view, sadly.....we are in this terrible predicament until a vaccine arrives, or until an anti-viral treatment is found that reduces the excesses of this disease....
The personal experience of people will vary a lot, but many will struggle with not going out beyond medicine/food, and seeing savings whittled away.
This would be a lot easier to deal with if we didn't have a disease to which no-one is immune and the severity of which varies from no symptoms at all to death. But we don't get to pick our pandemics.
Absolutely. That's why we have lockdown. We have no alternative in practice. If we don't impose it now we will have to do it later, deeper, longer, with more death and economic cost. We're already doing a more onerous and costly lockdown than we need to because we have made that mistake once already. Why make the same mistake a second time?
You say "If we don't impose it now we will have to do it later, deeper, longer, with more death and economic cost."
I disagree. Many will be immune.
I was trying to run the numbers the other night. Herd immunity (end of epidemic) is estimated at 60% to 70% . Infectiousness is about the same as flu and less than SARS. Mortality (IFR) rate isn't known but it is greater than flu at about 0.04% and less than SARS, approx 10%. We're looking at something between 75 000 and 500 000 deaths in the UK to get to that immunity naturally.
The UK had so far had 1700 COVID19 deaths and hospitals are beginning to feel the strain in some places. We're talking here about a death rate that is orders of magnitude higher.
I’d have to go dig out the figures, but I believe the infection rate for Covid-19 is significantly greater than the flu. Flu is usually around 1.4-1.6 new infections per person infected. Covid-19 is believed to be more like 2-3. It’s a lot more infectious than flu.
Thanks for the correction. COVID19 is also a lot more lethal than flu (and more unpleasant too). COVID19 is a different order of nastiness from flu.
Mr. Alistair, you don't spend on tax cuts. Tax cuts means taking less.
Whose taxes are you going to increase, and by how much? And what will you do if that leads to a smaller tax take? (We have lower rates and higher takes now than in the past).
The difference is made up mostly of private health insurance, I would agree that an expansion of this in the UK would be for the better.
The one thing guaranteed not to work, is throwing ever more public money at an unreformed NHS.
I think you're misreading that chart.
We spend slightly more than Germany on private healthcare (2% of GDP vs. 1.7% of GDP), but much less on public healthcare (7.9% of GDP vs 9.3% of GDP).
The Germans fund health through public insurance paid for by employer and employee not through income tax
What difference does it make? A tax is a tax.
General taxation is more efficient administratively than creating a new tax and a new bureaucracy to manage it. Alas that argument doesn't seem to cut through the way you might expect with conservatives.
I wonder if it's because they really dislike income tax (you can see how it's conflated with general taxation above).
News that a friend of mine, retired nurse in mid seventies, previously well is breathing her last in my hospital. Ordinarily she would have had 10 more years with her grandchildren.
That's sad to hear. The situation hits home far more, when people one knows become part of the statistics.
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 .
The
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....l
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
China did not have tens of thousands of deaths.....my wife works on medical journals which includes a number of contributors from China..the level of transparency (since the mishaps at the start) from China, and from the health sector in particular has been one of the positive things about Covid 19....
How is your wife getting on with work, considering the PPE equipment you listed the other day.....??
How is your company doing...considering it's employees are using this crisis to skive...
Stocky....has a liberal view that I find grossly irresponsible in this time.....
You on the other hand are something quite sinister...and you are deliberately spreading misinformation and falsehoods which I find very worrying...
All our employees are on Furlough, it is likely that if this situation continues for 3 months the company will close.
Interestingly we have received this press release from the Government this morning. Clearly they did not want for the Construction Industry to shut down like it has.
At Winchester Hospital there is no shortage of PPE, as mentioned yesterday 4 wards are shut due to lack of patients. The hospital is as quiet as it has ever been.
On Monday at Bournemouth Hospital there were 136 empty beds.
What hospital does your nephew work at?
It is quite patchy. Portsmouth is amongst the worst affected areas.
Portsmouth is the highest pop density city in the UK iirc.
The US Medical establishment really shouldn’t be throwing stones....
Isn't that a function of how expensive and inefficient the US system is compared to ours which is built around efficiency?
US system is out of reach for many people and ludicrously expensive but as a result has a lot of redundancy in it which ours doesn't.
Yes, an almost totally public system (as in the UK) will work out cheaper in general, and is easier to organise centrally in a time of crisis - but has little in the way of excess capacity to cope with a pandemic.
A mostly private system (as in the US) will be the opposite, having excess capacity but being more difficult to organise centrally and more expensive in normal times.
Both of these systems are sub-optimal, in normal times and in crisis times.
The 'ideal' system lies somewhere in between the two. Germany seems to be doing well at the moment, as was Singapore earlier.
Germany spend massive amounts more on their health care per head than us.
Maybe we could spend as much as the Germans?
Such levels of expenditure are the rewards of a highly productive and efficient economy that pays its way in the world and then some. You cannot wish the result without having the means and we don't have them.
Germany spends more %-of-GDP per head. It spends more as a ratio not just in absolute terms.
This ludicrous conversation of "adopt the healthcare system of country X" without discussing how much they spend has to stop.
So what are you willing to reduce spending on so that you can increase spending on healthcare ?
Tac cuts. I'm willing to reduce tax cuts.
And there it is. No spending reductions at all elsewhere. You can't even dare to say what you mean - increase taxes - which means people have less income. I don't even necessarily disagree with you but lets be honest about what it means.
The personal experience of people will vary a lot, but many will struggle with not going out beyond medicine/food, and seeing savings whittled away.
This would be a lot easier to deal with if we didn't have a disease to which no-one is immune and the severity of which varies from no symptoms at all to death. But we don't get to pick our pandemics.
Absolutely. That's why we have lockdown. We have no alternative in practice. If we don't impose it now we will have to do it later, deeper, longer, with more death and economic cost. We're already doing a more onerous and costly lockdown than we need to because we have made that mistake once already. Why make the same mistake a second time?
You say "If we don't impose it now we will have to do it later, deeper, longer, with more death and economic cost."
I disagree. Many will be immune.
I was trying to run the numbers the other night. Herd immunity (end of epidemic) is estimated at 60% to 70% . Infectiousness is about the same as flu and less than SARS. Mortality (IFR) rate isn't known but it is greater than flu at about 0.04% and less than SARS, approx 10%. We're looking at something between 75 000 and 500 000 deaths in the UK to get to that immunity naturally.
The UK had so far had 1700 COVID19 deaths and hospitals are beginning to feel the strain in some places. We're talking here about a death rate that is orders of magnitude higher.
I’d have to go dig out the figures, but I believe the infection rate for Covid-19 is significantly greater than the flu. Flu is usually around 1.4-1.6 new infections per person infected. Covid-19 is believed to be more like 2-3. It’s a lot more infectious than flu.
The problem is that an R0 of 1.3 (x10) leads to 14 people being infected, whereas and R0 of 3 (x 10) leads to 59,000 people becoming infected.
Another suggestion worth considering is scheduled lockdowns for the autumn and winter. Have one Oct 1-20 and a Xmas one Dec 17-Jan5 but have few restrictions beyond that.
People and businesses can then easily plan for those.
Given the NHS is apparently in crisis every winter I'm surprised lockdown then has never been suggested before
The NHS is in crisis most winters but rather than address this problem, HMG's response is to have its astroturfers accuse Labour of crying wolf and the BMA of shroud-waving. If capacity had been expanded to handle winter peaks then we'd not be in the state we are now.
Wrong - since virtually all the other countries used as sticks with which to beat the UK governments are now overrun or worse - it simply demonstrates that this sort of pandemic is not preparable for in the way you suggest. look at Itlay, Spain , Belgium, Netherlands, France.... and many more.
Yeah and Germany is probably lying about having more ICU beds and ventilators than you can shake a mask at.
No - not at all - Germany is doing well ..so far but they too are by no means sanguine about what is going to happe. They seem to be the only example you can quote in Europe and yet many other countries spend way more on health than the UK. Of course if your only obect is to wail and whinge because you don't like the government be my guest.
The US Medical establishment really shouldn’t be throwing stones....
Isn't that a function of how expensive and inefficient the US system is compared to ours which is built around efficiency?
US system is out of reach for many people and ludicrously expensive but as a result has a lot of redundancy in it which ours doesn't.
Yes, an almost totally public system (as in the UK) will work out cheaper in general, and is easier to organise centrally in a time of crisis - but has little in the way of excess capacity to cope with a pandemic.
A mostly private system (as in the US) will be the opposite, having excess capacity but being more difficult to organise centrally and more expensive in normal times.
Both of these systems are sub-optimal, in normal times and in crisis times.
The 'ideal' system lies somewhere in between the two. Germany seems to be doing well at the moment, as was Singapore earlier.
Germany spend massive amounts more on their health care per head than us.
Maybe we could spend as much as the Germans?
Such levels of expenditure are the rewards of a highly productive and efficient economy that pays its way in the world and then some. You cannot wish the result without having the means and we don't have them.
Germany spends more %-of-GDP per head. It spends more as a ratio not just in absolute terms.
This ludicrous conversation of "adopt the healthcare system of country X" without discussing how much they spend has to stop.
So what are you willing to reduce spending on so that you can increase spending on healthcare ?
Tac cuts. I'm willing to reduce tax cuts.
Easy.
Just go down to your local HMRC office and pay over the extra amount you wish to.
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
China did not have tens of thousands of deaths.....my wife works on medical journals which includes a number of contributors from China..the level of transparency (since the mishaps at the start) from China, and from the health sector in particular has been one of the positive things about Covid 19....
How is your wife getting on with work, considering the PPE equipment you listed the other day.....??
How is your company doing...considering it's employees are using this crisis to skive...
Stocky....has a liberal view that I find grossly irresponsible in this time.....
You on the other hand are something quite sinister...and you are deliberately spreading misinformation and falsehoods which I find very worrying...
All our employees are on Furlough, it is likely that if this situation continues for 3 months the company will close.
Interestingly we have received this press release from the Government this morning. Clearly they did not want for the Construction Industry to shut down like it has.
At Winchester Hospital there is no shortage of PPE, as mentioned yesterday 4 wards are shut due to lack of patients. The hospital is as quiet as it has ever been.
On Monday at Bournemouth Hospital there were 136 empty beds.
What hospital does your nephew work at?
Hospitals are quiet places because people are not going to A and E in the previous numbers..and operations have been suspended, and out patient appts curtailed.....
The health service is mobilising against the pandemic....
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
China did not have tens of thousands of deaths.....my wife works on medical journals which includes a number of contributors from China..the level of transparency (since the mishaps at the start) from China, and from the health sector in particular has been one of the positive things about Covid 19....
How is your wife getting on with work, considering the PPE equipment you listed the other day.....??
How is your company doing...considering it's employees are using this crisis to skive...
Stocky....has a liberal view that I find grossly irresponsible in this time.....
You on the other hand are something quite sinister...and you are deliberately spreading misinformation and falsehoods which I find very worrying...
All our employees are on Furlough, it is likely that if this situation continues for 3 months the company will close.
Interestingly we have received this press release from the Government this morning. Clearly they did not want for the Construction Industry to shut down like it has.
At Winchester Hospital there is no shortage of PPE, as mentioned yesterday 4 wards are shut due to lack of patients. The hospital is as quiet as it has ever been.
On Monday at Bournemouth Hospital there were 136 empty beds.
What hospital does your nephew work at?
What are the sources you have for the hospital anecdotes you are providing? You may well be right, or you may just be making mischief for some inexplicable reason.
This should be the procedure for Heathrow arrivals, and I'm not even kidding.
The FCO are launching a rescue operation to pick up thousands of Brits stranded abroad as countries have refused entry or commercial flights have been cancelled or refused clearance.
14 days' quarantine has to be compulsory on return, as it was for the original rescue flights from China.
Have them land on a military base, not at Heathrow.
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
No lockdown in Shanghai or Schenzen - factories up and running.
Excellent post. This point of view really needs putting.
I tend to agree. And as for 0.5% of the population inevitably getting it? Not so (Diamond Princess).
Although NHS capacity is of course an issue.
You mean uncontrolled less than 0.5% will be infected?. The infection rate on the Diamond Princess was a lot higher than that and the ship did eventually have lockdown in place.
If you are talking about mortality from infection, these people imply a 1.3% IFR on an aged demographic (half a million deaths in the UK at herd immunity)
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
China did not have tens of thousands of deaths.....my wife works on medical journals which includes a number of contributors from China..the level of transparency (since the mishaps at the start) from China, and from the health sector in particular has been one of the positive things about Covid 19....
How is your wife getting on with work, considering the PPE equipment you listed the other day.....??
How is your company doing...considering it's employees are using this crisis to skive...
Stocky....has a liberal view that I find grossly irresponsible in this time.....
You on the other hand are something quite sinister...and you are deliberately spreading misinformation and falsehoods which I find very worrying...
All our employees are on Furlough, it is likely that if this situation continues for 3 months the company will close.
Interestingly we have received this press release from the Government this morning. Clearly they did not want for the Construction Industry to shut down like it has.
At Winchester Hospital there is no shortage of PPE, as mentioned yesterday 4 wards are shut due to lack of patients. The hospital is as quiet as it has ever been.
On Monday at Bournemouth Hospital there were 136 empty beds.
What hospital does your nephew work at?
Hospitals are quiet places because people are not going to A and E in the previous numbers..and operations have been suspended, and out patient appts curtailed.....
The health service is mobilising against the pandemic....
The reason that some hospitals are already under strain and some are waiting, waiting, is presumably because the disease is spreading unevenly.
Another suggestion worth considering is scheduled lockdowns for the autumn and winter. Have one Oct 1-20 and a Xmas one Dec 17-Jan5 but have few restrictions beyond that.
People and businesses can then easily plan for those.
Given the NHS is apparently in crisis every winter I'm surprised lockdown then has never been suggested before
The NHS is in crisis most winters but rather than address this problem, HMG's response is to have its astroturfers accuse Labour of crying wolf and the BMA of shroud-waving. If capacity had been expanded to handle winter peaks then we'd not be in the state we are now.
Wrong - since virtually all the other countries used as sticks with which to beat the UK governments are now overrun or worse - it simply demonstrates that this sort of pandemic is not preparable for in the way you suggest. look at Itlay, Spain , Belgium, Netherlands, France.... and many more.
Yeah and Germany is probably lying about having more ICU beds and ventilators than you can shake a mask at.
No - not at all - Germany is doing well ..so far but they too are by no means sanguine about what is going to happe. They seem to be the only example you can quote in Europe and yet many other countries spend way more on health than the UK. Of course if your only obect is to wail and whinge because you don't like the government be my guest.
The US Medical establishment really shouldn’t be throwing stones....
Isn't that a function of how expensive and inefficient the US system is compared to ours which is built around efficiency?
US system is out of reach for many people and ludicrously expensive but as a result has a lot of redundancy in it which ours doesn't.
Yes, an almost totally public system (as in the UK) will work out cheaper in general, and is easier to organise centrally in a time of crisis - but has little in the way of excess capacity to cope with a pandemic.
A mostly private system (as in the US) will be the opposite, having excess capacity but being more difficult to organise centrally and more expensive in normal times.
Both of these systems are sub-optimal, in normal times and in crisis times.
The 'ideal' system lies somewhere in between the two. Germany seems to be doing well at the moment, as was Singapore earlier.
Germany spend massive amounts more on their health care per head than us.
Maybe we could spend as much as the Germans?
Such levels of expenditure are the rewards of a highly productive and efficient economy that pays its way in the world and then some. You cannot wish the result without having the means and we don't have them.
Germany spends more %-of-GDP per head. It spends more as a ratio not just in absolute terms.
This ludicrous conversation of "adopt the healthcare system of country X" without discussing how much they spend has to stop.
So what are you willing to reduce spending on so that you can increase spending on healthcare ?
We are all going to be paying a lot more tax. And those individuals and businesses that currently avoid tax by going offshore are going to find it a whole lot tougher to do. We are also going to be running a higher deficit for the forseeable future. This will be the case just about everywhere, not just the UK.
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
No lockdown in Shanghai or Schenzen - factories up and running.
Why would the Uk need a 3 month total lockdown ?
Have you seen Chinese border control right now ?
No lockdown, but according to my OH's colleagues, those in Shanghai being incredibly careful. Temperature checks administrated at doors to buildings, shoes etc sprayed with anti-virals.
No doubt anyone with symptoms is immediately packed off to 'hospital' to fight it off safety away from the rest of the population.
I reckon this is the model other countries will have to adapt (along with widespread testing, tracing, etc), the alternative is herd immunity along with isolating the vulnerable. Not a fun choice to make.
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
No lockdown in Shanghai or Schenzen - factories up and running.
Why would the Uk need a 3 month total lockdown ?
Have you seen Chinese border control right now ?
You think that proves that the Chinese figures are true?
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
China did not have tens of thousands of deaths.....my wife works on medical journals which includes a number of contributors from China..the level of transparency (since the mishaps at the start) from China, and from the health sector in particular has been one of the positive things about Covid 19....
How is your wife getting on with work, considering the PPE equipment you listed the other day.....??
How is your company doing...considering it's employees are using this crisis to skive...
Stocky....has a liberal view that I find grossly irresponsible in this time.....
You on the other hand are something quite sinister...and you are deliberately spreading misinformation and falsehoods which I find very worrying...
All our employees are on Furlough, it is likely that if this situation continues for 3 months the company will close.
Interestingly we have received this press release from the Government this morning. Clearly they did not want for the Construction Industry to shut down like it has.
At Winchester Hospital there is no shortage of PPE, as mentioned yesterday 4 wards are shut due to lack of patients. The hospital is as quiet as it has ever been.
On Monday at Bournemouth Hospital there were 136 empty beds.
What hospital does your nephew work at?
What are the sources you have for the hospital anecdotes you are providing? You may well be right, or you may just be making mischief for some inexplicable reason.
With routine operations cancelled, so you'd expect empty beds and thumb-twiddling surgeons. Likewise outpatients cancelled, and the lockdown probably means A&E is less busy too.
The difference is made up mostly of private health insurance, I would agree that an expansion of this in the UK would be for the better.
The one thing guaranteed not to work, is throwing ever more public money at an unreformed NHS.
I think you're misreading that chart.
We spend slightly more than Germany on private healthcare (2% of GDP vs. 1.7% of GDP), but much less on public healthcare (7.9% of GDP vs 9.3% of GDP).
The Germans fund health through public insurance paid for by employer and employee not through income tax
What difference does it make? A tax is a tax.
Health insurance is not a tax but provides a specific purpose
The US Medical establishment really shouldn’t be throwing stones....
Isn't that a function of how expensive and inefficient the US system is compared to ours which is built around efficiency?
US system is out of reach for many people and ludicrously expensive but as a result has a lot of redundancy in it which ours doesn't.
Yes, an almost totally public system (as in the UK) will work out cheaper in general, and is easier to organise centrally in a time of crisis - but has little in the way of excess capacity to cope with a pandemic.
A mostly private system (as in the US) will be the opposite, having excess capacity but being more difficult to organise centrally and more expensive in normal times.
Both of these systems are sub-optimal, in normal times and in crisis times.
The 'ideal' system lies somewhere in between the two. Germany seems to be doing well at the moment, as was Singapore earlier.
Germany spend massive amounts more on their health care per head than us.
Maybe we could spend as much as the Germans?
Such levels of expenditure are the rewards of a highly productive and efficient economy that pays its way in the world and then some. You cannot wish the result without having the means and we don't have them.
Germany spends more %-of-GDP per head. It spends more as a ratio not just in absolute terms.
This ludicrous conversation of "adopt the healthcare system of country X" without discussing how much they spend has to stop.
So what are you willing to reduce spending on so that you can increase spending on healthcare ?
We are all going to be paying a lot more tax. And those individuals and businesses that currently avoid tax by going offshore are going to find it a whole lot tougher to do. We are also going to be running a higher deficit for the forseeable future. This will be the case just about everywhere, not just the UK.
Just to make sure - are you aware that the "Tax Gap" number totted by some is mostly pensions and savings (ISAs and the like)
A PFA of my acquaintance thought it amusing that a certain Labour figure went on TV to demand that the "Tax Gap" be dealt with. Said personage had, while in government, advocated and implemented rules that meant he *has* to tell people to put money in their company pension and invest in ISAs. Or loose his license.
The difference is made up mostly of private health insurance, I would agree that an expansion of this in the UK would be for the better.
The one thing guaranteed not to work, is throwing ever more public money at an unreformed NHS.
I think you're misreading that chart.
We spend slightly more than Germany on private healthcare (2% of GDP vs. 1.7% of GDP), but much less on public healthcare (7.9% of GDP vs 9.3% of GDP).
The Germans fund health through public insurance paid for by employer and employee not through income tax
What difference does it make? A tax is a tax.
Health insurance is not a tax but provides a specific purpose
Only if Health Insurance is paid based on someone's risk (like car insurance) and not income (like tax).
Today's figures in Spain continue a slowly improving trend I think.
Seems like numbers of new cases have stabilised, as have daily deaths. There will likely be some variation around this number over the next few days, but the number of cases should start to fall around the weekend if Spain maps onto Italy. Sadly, deaths will continue ticking along at this rate for another couple of weeks. But perhaps the best news is that the ICU capacity is not being further stretched, meaning that hopefully the health system will not break further...
The difference is made up mostly of private health insurance, I would agree that an expansion of this in the UK would be for the better.
The one thing guaranteed not to work, is throwing ever more public money at an unreformed NHS.
I think you're misreading that chart.
We spend slightly more than Germany on private healthcare (2% of GDP vs. 1.7% of GDP), but much less on public healthcare (7.9% of GDP vs 9.3% of GDP).
The Germans fund health through public insurance paid for by employer and employee not through income tax
What difference does it make? A tax is a tax.
I kind of agree with that, but I think it makes 2 differences: 1 a different way of calculating how much money is needed to provide, and therefore the level of the "tax" 2 greater acceptance by people of increases in this "tax"
There are big problems with the German system. The option for high earners to opt out of the public system and get private insurance is stupid, unfair, and causes big problems as people get older and realise their premiums are messively rising. It's supposed to be difficult for people to opt back into the public system to avoid young healthy people (and their private insurers) freeloading, but people either find a way, or if they can't I suspect many will end up not being able to afford monthly premiums.
Personally I think it's a rubbish system, which allows the rich to opt out of subsidising the poor.
For most people, who are publicly insured, the big difference with the UK is how you access health care. You can make an appointment with any specialist, rather than having to go through your GP as is usually the case in the UK.
BTW, if you are privately insured, you are generally getting the same treatment in the same hospitals and practices as the publicly insured, but with certain benefits. It's not like there's a system of private hospitals for the privately insured.
The US Medical establishment really shouldn’t be throwing stones....
Isn't that a function of how expensive and inefficient the US system is compared to ours which is built around efficiency?
US system is out of reach for many people and ludicrously expensive but as a result has a lot of redundancy in it which ours doesn't.
Yes, an almost totally public system (as in the UK) will work out cheaper in general, and is easier to organise centrally in a time of crisis - but has little in the way of excess capacity to cope with a pandemic.
A mostly private system (as in the US) will be the opposite, having excess capacity but being more difficult to organise centrally and more expensive in normal times.
Both of these systems are sub-optimal, in normal times and in crisis times.
The 'ideal' system lies somewhere in between the two. Germany seems to be doing well at the moment, as was Singapore earlier.
Germany spend massive amounts more on their health care per head than us.
Maybe we could spend as much as the Germans?
Such levels of expenditure are the rewards of a highly productive and efficient economy that pays its way in the world and then some. You cannot wish the result without having the means and we don't have them.
Germany spends more %-of-GDP per head. It spends more as a ratio not just in absolute terms.
This ludicrous conversation of "adopt the healthcare system of country X" without discussing how much they spend has to stop.
So what are you willing to reduce spending on so that you can increase spending on healthcare ?
We are all going to be paying a lot more tax. And those individuals and businesses that currently avoid tax by going offshore are going to find it a whole lot tougher to do. We are also going to be running a higher deficit for the forseeable future. This will be the case just about everywhere, not just the UK.
Absolutely right - and it will be even more difficult to allocate what is likely to be a reduced take on more health and social care spending. I think we may be about to discover what austerity is really like.
It is simple. We enforce the lock down and social distancing until it is medically appropriate and if people try and violate beforehand shoot them or imprison them.
Or exile them to the Pitcairn Islands.
Or worse make them listen to Radiohead live at Glastonbury on loop for 14 days...that'll learn em.
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
China did not have tens of thousands of deaths.....my wife works on medical journals which includes a number of contributors from China..the level of transparency (since the mishaps at the start) from China, and from the health sector in particular has been one of the positive things about Covid 19....
How is your wife getting on with work, considering the PPE equipment you listed the other day.....??
How is your company doing...considering it's employees are using this crisis to skive...
Stocky....has a liberal view that I find grossly irresponsible in this time.....
You on the other hand are something quite sinister...and you are deliberately spreading misinformation and falsehoods which I find very worrying...
All our employees are on Furlough, it is likely that if this situation continues for 3 months the company will close.
Interestingly we have received this press release from the Government this morning. Clearly they did not want for the Construction Industry to shut down like it has.
At Winchester Hospital there is no shortage of PPE, as mentioned yesterday 4 wards are shut due to lack of patients. The hospital is as quiet as it has ever been.
On Monday at Bournemouth Hospital there were 136 empty beds.
What hospital does your nephew work at?
What are the sources you have for the hospital anecdotes you are providing? You may well be right, or you may just be making mischief for some inexplicable reason.
What would I lie? What gain is there for me? My wife is a nurse at Winchester Hospital and my daughter is a nurse at Bourmemouth hospital. As you imagine a load of their friends are nurses so I do have information on other hospitals as well.
I have been a contributer to this site for 12 years, but due to Vanilla issues have had to change my username (previously called Currystar). I work at an M & E company in Southampton and used to provide updates on the Construction Industry in Hampshire. I have no axe to grind. I have my owm opinion on stuff. Just because people disagree with it should not mean that I am lying.
Ban on arrivals from certain countries (China, then Italy), then added Arrivals from certain other countries (UK among others) have to self isolate for 14 days (this is Singapore, they check), to ALL arrivals (including nationals and residents) have to self isolate for 14 days to BAN on ALL non National arrivals or transit through Changi - Nationals have to self isolate for 14 days, foreign resident permit holders only admitted if they work in vital industry.
UK: "Come one, come all"
The ending of transit is a right b*gger for BA who transit Singapore to get to Sydney - Singapore granted them an exception where transit pax stay on the plane - not a favour extended to Qantas whose Sydney to London flights now have to refuel at Darwin on the way.
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
China did not have tens of thousands of deaths.....my wife works on medical journals which includes a number of contributors from China..the level of transparency (since the mishaps at the start) from China, and from the health sector in particular has been one of the positive things about Covid 19....
How is your wife getting on with work, considering the PPE equipment you listed the other day.....??
How is your company doing...considering it's employees are using this crisis to skive...
Stocky....has a liberal view that I find grossly irresponsible in this time.....
You on the other hand are something quite sinister...and you are deliberately spreading misinformation and falsehoods which I find very worrying...
All our employees are on Furlough, it is likely that if this situation continues for 3 months the company will close.
Interestingly we have received this press release from the Government this morning. Clearly they did not want for the Construction Industry to shut down like it has.
At Winchester Hospital there is no shortage of PPE, as mentioned yesterday 4 wards are shut due to lack of patients. The hospital is as quiet as it has ever been.
On Monday at Bournemouth Hospital there were 136 empty beds.
What hospital does your nephew work at?
Hospitals are quiet places because people are not going to A and E in the previous numbers..and operations have been suspended, and out patient appts curtailed.....
The health service is mobilising against the pandemic....
Different parts of the country will have different realities than described above
My local hospital is very busy - some wards have been moved into other buildings to free up space for Covid patients.
They would also not recognise "no shortage of PPE"
Although I believe they had another delivery of same yesterday, they were scheduled to anyway.
Another suggestion worth considering is scheduled lockdowns for the autumn and winter. Have one Oct 1-20 and a Xmas one Dec 17-Jan5 but have few restrictions beyond that.
People and businesses can then easily plan for those.
Given the NHS is apparently in crisis every winter I'm surprised lockdown then has never been suggested before
The NHS is in crisis most winters but rather than address this problem, HMG's response is to have its astroturfers accuse Labour of crying wolf and the BMA of shroud-waving. If capacity had been expanded to handle winter peaks then we'd not be in the state we are now.
Wrong - since virtually all the other countries used as sticks with which to beat the UK governments are now overrun or worse - it simply demonstrates that this sort of pandemic is not preparable for in the way you suggest. look at Itlay, Spain , Belgium, Netherlands, France.... and many more.
Yeah and Germany is probably lying about having more ICU beds and ventilators than you can shake a mask at.
No - not at all - Germany is doing well ..so far but they too are by no means sanguine about what is going to happe. They seem to be the only example you can quote in Europe and yet many other countries spend way more on health than the UK. Of course if your only obect is to wail and whinge because you don't like the government be my guest.
The argument is that for the past decade, the government has ignored annual capacity crises in the NHS. The argument is that the findings of an exercise into handling a pandemic were suppressed rather than acted upon.
We are still short of some supplies yet even this week the government is bandying words with academia and the chemicals industry about what is already available but unused in this country.
Opticians and Bakers should be free from shutdown already.
The eyes have it, the pies have it. Unlock!
I would add garden centres (not cafe's), DIY shops and construction sites where contractors can arrive in their own vehicles, and socially distance on site.
Other businesses too, apart from those where social distancing is impossible.
I'd quite like hairdressers to be able to reopen. hard with social distancing tho!
and a lot of small businesses wont be able to reopen if the schools remain shut, and any short-term change there doesnt seem to be even considered.
The lockdown isn't so bad once you get used to it. It is like a long summer holiday. The government is paying for it with borrowed money, much of it from China. Could Sunak please announce how this money is going to be paid back? This question based on the premise that the lockdown is not completely lifted so that the economy does not return to normal soon. When will the government start repaying the money?
It will have to be taxation. Personally I'd like it to be clear and obvious.
"We are raising the basic rate of tax from 20% to 25%, and the higher rate from 40% to 45%....." and so on and so forth.
But I'm betting they'll try and do it via stealth taxes. VAT to 22.5%. Insurance Premium tax to 20%. Oxygen breathing tax to 10%.
Stocky....the fact that you have posted here (with some others) against the lockdown speaks volumes...
I'll give you a number 66 doctors so far have died in Italy.....
If we haven't lockdown the economic cost would have been much worse....that is discounting the terrible human cost...
I cannot understand how anyone is still posting this view...just makes me realise that people really are quite ignorant....
I bet if you had children working in the front line you wouldn't be quite so frivolous with your opinions....
The lockdown (which I support) is killing people. Different people than would have died from not having a lockdown. Suicides have already occurred.
At the moment the effect seems to have been a *dip* in overall deaths in the UK - part of why I support the lockdown.
It is a legitimate question to ask as to what the excess deaths from continuing a lock down past a certain point vs stopping it.
Honestly...I cannot believe that people are projecting this view the the lockdown is killing people....
The cost of not doing it are so much higher.....and until we have a vaccine, or a gamechanger (anti virals, monitoring technology) that enables people to return safely to normal life...we will remain in lockdown, or under some level of serious containment....
If China did have tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases how are they now opening up just 3 months after the first case was indentified?
China did not have tens of thousands of deaths.....my wife works on medical journals which includes a number of contributors from China..the level of transparency (since the mishaps at the start) from China, and from the health sector in particular has been one of the positive things about Covid 19....
How is your wife getting on with work, considering the PPE equipment you listed the other day.....??
How is your company doing...considering it's employees are using this crisis to skive...
Stocky....has a liberal view that I find grossly irresponsible in this time.....
You on the other hand are something quite sinister...and you are deliberately spreading misinformation and falsehoods which I find very worrying...
All our employees are on Furlough, it is likely that if this situation continues for 3 months the company will close.
Interestingly we have received this press release from the Government this morning. Clearly they did not want for the Construction Industry to shut down like it has.
At Winchester Hospital there is no shortage of PPE, as mentioned yesterday 4 wards are shut due to lack of patients. The hospital is as quiet as it has ever been.
On Monday at Bournemouth Hospital there were 136 empty beds.
What hospital does your nephew work at?
What are the sources you have for the hospital anecdotes you are providing? You may well be right, or you may just be making mischief for some inexplicable reason.
With routine operations cancelled, so you'd expect empty beds and thumb-twiddling surgeons. Likewise outpatients cancelled, and the lockdown probably means A&E is less busy too.
That is indeed what is happening. The junior surgeons are moved to medical inpatients and the orthopaedic consultants running a skeleton (sic) service for trauma.
If it reaches the point of needing my orthopedic consultant colleagues to run ventilators, we are in a bad way. First we will need to teach them not to unplug the machine while they charge their phones...
A big fallacy in this argument is that the choice is between lockdown (maybe saving lives) and avoiding economic damage by not having it. In fact earlier effective control of the disease means LESS economic damage overall.
Stocky's daughter is correct. This is a Trolley problem: take action now to avoid a worse outcome later. Stocky is incorrect: it isn't a trade-off between alternative evils (nor is his posited choice a manifestation of the Trolley Problem, as set out in his header)
I think Stocky is quite right to make the points in his thread and it has obviously concentrated minds this morning
My take on this is that easing of the lockdown will not be a definitive date but a process that will be dictated by events both here and abroad.
Many of the governments critics cite Germany and South Korea but apart from those two virtually every other country has been, or will be, overwhelmed by the crisis and I do not think we have seen events unfold yet in Russia, US, South Africa, India and Indonesia
For lockdown to be eased we will have to see flatlining of the curve but also events across the world and how they are impacting public opinion. If the US sees 250,000 deaths and other big numbers elsewhere and lockdown and social distancing continues, then the UK will have to have some very good medical and scientifuc advice to lift the lockdown, even gradually
I simply think it is too early to predict how, or when, lockdown will commence but frankly I cannot see much lifting of lockdown before mid summer and I do think Jenny Harries recent referral to six months was not flippant but a planned statement to dampen expectations that all of a sudden we will be back to playing cricket, tennis, golf and football and the crisis declared over
The US Medical establishment really shouldn’t be throwing stones....
Isn't that a function of how expensive and inefficient the US system is compared to ours which is built around efficiency?
US system is out of reach for many people and ludicrously expensive but as a result has a lot of redundancy in it which ours doesn't.
Yes, an almost totally public system (as in the UK) will work out cheaper in general, and is easier to organise centrally in a time of crisis - but has little in the way of excess capacity to cope with a pandemic.
A mostly private system (as in the US) will be the opposite, having excess capacity but being more difficult to organise centrally and more expensive in normal times.
Both of these systems are sub-optimal, in normal times and in crisis times.
The 'ideal' system lies somewhere in between the two. Germany seems to be doing well at the moment, as was Singapore earlier.
Germany spend massive amounts more on their health care per head than us.
Maybe we could spend as much as the Germans?
Such levels of expenditure are the rewards of a highly productive and efficient economy that pays its way in the world and then some. You cannot wish the result without having the means and we don't have them.
Germany spends more %-of-GDP per head. It spends more as a ratio not just in absolute terms.
This ludicrous conversation of "adopt the healthcare system of country X" without discussing how much they spend has to stop.
So what are you willing to reduce spending on so that you can increase spending on healthcare ?
We are all going to be paying a lot more tax. And those individuals and businesses that currently avoid tax by going offshore are going to find it a whole lot tougher to do. We are also going to be running a higher deficit for the forseeable future. This will be the case just about everywhere, not just the UK.
Just to make sure - are you aware that the "Tax Gap" number totted by some is mostly pensions and savings (ISAs and the like)
A PFA of my acquaintance thought it amusing that a certain Labour figure went on TV to demand that the "Tax Gap" be dealt with. Said personage had, while in government, advocated and implemented rules that meant he *has* to tell people to put money in their company pension and invest in ISAs. Or loose his license.
I just think we all - business and individuals - need to ready ourselves for paying a lot more tax. This is also going to be an institutional issue for countries such as Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands that have done well out of being low corporate tax centres.
Comments
Here's NICE's take on the issue.
https://nice.org.uk/Media/Default/guidance/LGB10-Briefing-20150126.pdf
Why would the Uk need a 3 month total lockdown ?
Food hoarding wasn't an option as you had the state decide how much you could buy. And on the day it was introduced, nobody had a clue how long those retrictions would last. Or even if your current Government would be the one ending them.
The young are not being expected to go off and give their lives to win this conflict. If they were being asked to, then yes, you'd expect them too to go out on dates, get pissed and enjoy it. They are however being asked to stay safe by staying home a few weeks with an inadequate supply of bog rolls and an unlimited supply of box sets.
And not a German bomb or doodlebug in sight.
Now that we have a lockdown, it makes sense to wait 3 weeks to see the effect it has. If the effect is minimal on transmission, then there's not much point.
However the evidence from other countries so far is that it has a very significant impact. Indeed, a lockdown for a few months may be enough to beat the virus.
On the economic impact - I think that we should see a very rapid recovery once the lockdown ends. The counterfactual is pretty bad for the economy in any case.
I definitely think it's unwise for the govt to box itself in with a timescale now. They should wait and see the impact of current measures and be guided by the science.
These groups cannot get all of what they want, unless the government starts to treat them differently. Those who want to keep locked down should be able to do so, without penalty regarding their jobs. Those who want greater freedom and risk the outcome can so, without sanction. What is left is how interaction between the two groups can be kept at an absolute minimum.
I can't see any other way of catering to both groups than having this temporary divide.
The UK had so far had 1700 COVID19 deaths and hospitals are beginning to feel the strain in some places. We're talking here about a death rate that is orders of magnitude higher.
People are latching on to the "greater good" as a justification but in many cases it is just rationalising the fact that they don't like the personal inconvenience and sacrifice involved. (None of us do)
I also think there are now some serious questions needing to be asked of the government in respect of our seeming failings to increase testing sufficiently and provide sufficient PPE.
How is your wife getting on with work, considering the PPE equipment you listed the other day.....??
How is your company doing...considering it's employees are using this crisis to skive...
Stocky....has a liberal view that I find grossly irresponsible in this time.....
You on the other hand are something quite sinister...and you are deliberately spreading misinformation and falsehoods which I find very worrying...
What we are conducting is an interesting experiment in *deliberately suppressing a large part of the economy*.
Coffee shops have been closed, not by underlying economic conditions, but by fiat.
The next economic question is how to help unwind the economic constriction....
https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/
But there's no point in us locking down if we're still importing cases.
OGH - can we have a PB reporter in the Press Pool asking questions?
I would rather have tyson than half the numpties there at the moment....
"Nearly a FIFTH of UK firms could shut within four weeks: Up to a million small to medium companies face ruin because banks are 'refusing to give them government-backed loans'
Many bosses said they had been declined an emergency coronavirus loan for not meeting the criteria while others could not get through on the phone or were told the money would take weeks to arrive.
'The loan is under normal business conditions, which is fine but then don't suggest otherwise,' one told MailOnline. 'I have already been told by the government and Barclays that the only way to receive a loan is by cutting my staff.'
Research published today by the BBC suggests that between 800,000 and a million businesses could be forced to shut their doors because they can no longer cover rent, salaries or payments to suppliers.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced last month that 'any good business in financial difficulty' would be able to take out a Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan. The loans of up to £5million are available for any business with a turnover of up to £45m and include a year's interest paid by the government and flexible repayments for up to six years.
However, businesses can only get the money if they cannot borrow in a normal way, such as guaranteeing the loans against the value of a property.
If bosses require more than £250,000 they have to sign a personal guarantee, meaning their property is on the line if the shutdown continues for months and they cannot repay the money. "
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8174967/Nearly-FIFTH-UK-firms-shut-four-weeks.html#comments
But government should not be emotional and should resist pressure from understandably emotional people in order to come to the best conclusions for the common good.
Government should, as best they can, objectively assess the costs and benefits of various courses of action (and yes this involves putting a £ value on a human life) informed by experts in epidemiology, behavioural science and economics. By and large that is what the government is doing. Fair play to them.
There are two main types of moth traps (really, lures - the moths get let go afterwards) - the big bright mercury vapour traps, and the lower power actinic traps. Actinics are better in winter and early spring it seems, and are ideal if you have neighbours who are going to object to a bloody bright light in your back garden. However, the MV lamps get much better results on warmer nights (and perversely, if you have drizzle or fog it seems). There are a number of types of trap, and then the decision is mains (fine for trapping a garden) or battery (if you really get the bug and want to start trapping further afield) - and how much you want to spend. I run a couple of the big Robinson traps, but the bulk of the moths actually come to a sheet I fix behind the trap.
That said, the big mercury vapour lamps are being phased out and replaced with LEDs. So far these have variable success, but are likely to become the norm in the next 10 years.
The people I buy my kit from are ALS:
https://www.angleps.com/mothtraps.php
I came to moths via birds, having pretty much run out of new birds to see in the UK. We rented a cottage in Devon and I was curious about the drab moths flying around the woodshed. Turns out they were nationally rare - and I had found the largest number in the UK.
After that, I got hooked. 10 years later, I have got to the point where I submit the largest number of records of anyone in Devon.... (I tend not to do anything by halves!) Incredibly rewarding, but with 2,600 different UK species (versus about 60 butterflies), there is a lot to learn. That said, the field guides are excellent and the internet is a fabulous resource for checking what you have. There are local sites such as Hants Moths Flying Tonight which shows, week by week, the moths you can expect to see:
https://www.hantsmoths.org.uk/flying_tonight.php
Then there are various facebook groups, several of which I am on the admin group. There are still a few po-faced scientist types who look down on those of us who have fun along the way. Mostly though people are very happy to share knowledge and learn as we go. The macro moths are generally more straight forward to get to grips with - the micro moths much less so. Many of these require dissection to get to species level. Again, there are people who can help with that. Your county moth recorder will probably do it if you get something that is a bit strokey-beard in its uncertainty.
As well as the species that will breed locally, you will through the summer and autumn have a chance of scarce migrants from Europe, sometimes from north Africa.
Feel free to private mail me with any questions. It is a great hobby for insomniacs - otherwise, prepare for your sleep patterns to get trashed! But you won't believe the range of critters that party while you are abed....
One has definitely reared up this morning....
The eyes have it, the pies have it. Unlock!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/01/singing-stops-italy-fear-social-unrest-mount-coronavirus-lockdown
"“They are no longer singing or dancing on the balconies,” said Salvatore Melluso, a priest at Caritas Diocesana di Napoli, a church-run charity in Naples. “Now people are more afraid – not so much of the virus, but of poverty. Many are out of work and hungry. There are now long queues at food banks.”"
We spend slightly more than Germany on private healthcare (2% of GDP vs. 1.7% of GDP), but much less on public healthcare (7.9% of GDP vs 9.3% of GDP).
And yes there should be a PB representative at Press briefings. We might then be told why it is we are still receiving regular flights from the USA, which is now the world's number one hotspot. What's the point of all this lockdown nonsense if anyone can just fly in from New York?
It is a dangerous argument that would lead to much death and greater economic damage. So it needs to be rejected on the facts.
Or exile them to the Pitcairn Islands.
At the moment everyone is in: "will I get it/do I have it/did I have it" mode.
Data are king. Once we know who, where and when the govt can act.
Other businesses too, apart from those where social distancing is impossible.
But...we had the herd theory at the start...we had Boris Johnson bringing up the Oxford study (50%) have had it....we have people saying look at Sweden when it does not compare in any way to the UK...all misinformation and irresponsible....
The Govt is now on the right trajectory...in terms of policy....
It's ability to strategically organise and plan reminds me of the keystone cops...
Interestingly we have received this press release from the Government this morning. Clearly they did not want for the Construction Industry to shut down like it has.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/877074/secretary-of-state-letter-construction-industry.pdf
At Winchester Hospital there is no shortage of PPE, as mentioned yesterday 4 wards are shut due to lack of patients. The hospital is as quiet as it has ever been.
On Monday at Bournemouth Hospital there were 136 empty beds.
What hospital does your nephew work at?
The 'Public' spending is based on compulsory insurance though, rather than being funded from general taxation.
What is difficult in all this (and where things start to become trickier) is that once cases start to reduce when do you end the lockdown. It then becomes a very tricky cost/benefit balancing act. Staying home for months and months, being unable to see your family and friends and to enjoy yourself, is not much of a life. At what point does the societal benefits to allowing people to actually live their lives outweigh the needs relating to the virus.
In an ideal world we would all stay at home until the disease has been completely irradicated and transmission is not even a problem anymore. That could push us into the autumn or even further by which time the economy will be completely destroyed. In addition I genuinely think that peoples mental health cannot cope with 6+ months of isolation.
So the other option is to relax restrictions when transmission rates have decreased to an acceptable level, probably in May/early June. The problem then is that you risk not having fixed the problem and the virus transmission becoming more widespread again, resulting in us all going back into lockdown (something I think would be a very difficult sell).
The only way that we can possibly balance the equation is through a mixture of testing and contact tracing, which other countries seem to be leading the way on but that will require people to be very careful about their movement for a while. That might be the solution but two thoughts here: 1. It relies on people enforcing enhanced social distancing for a while, is the government up to the task of enforcing that and 2. Does the government have the ability in this country to put in place such a stringent testing and contact tracing regime? Early indicators suggest not.
It’s to be hoped that they really are able to get a vaccine next year because I can’t see us being able to fully put this behind us until that point.
This is not straightforward or obvious and Stocky does not claim to have the perfect answer, he raises the question and this is entirely valid on a site where people just express their views.
But tyson as a lefty is comfortable with sneering and being superior, with shutting down others' views which don't fit with the "right" world view, and with unquestioned state control of our lives.
But this is surely a valid debate to have which will become more relevant in 2-3 weeks.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52114719
Some facts at last, it appears
"Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, said if existing NHS pathology labs had unlimited swabs and reagent, there would be enough test machine capacity to process around 100,000 tests a day.
But Mr Hopson said a "reagent and swab shortage is currently limiting this to [around] 13,000 a day".
The government hopes to be able to process 15,000 tests for NHS staff in the coming days, according to Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick.
The Chemical Industries Association acknowledged demand was "escalating" it said reagents - used to find out if a reaction occurs - were being manufactured and delivered to the NHS.
"Every business here in the UK and globally is looking at what they can do to help meet the demand as a matter of urgency," it said, adding companies were continuing to work with government."
This should be the procedure for Heathrow arrivals, and I'm not even kidding.
Whose taxes are you going to increase, and by how much? And what will you do if that leads to a smaller tax take? (We have lower rates and higher takes now than in the past).
I wonder if it's because they really dislike income tax (you can see how it's conflated with general taxation above).
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/exclusive-ministers-warned-nhs-could-not-cope-pandemic-three/
Just go down to your local HMRC office and pay over the extra amount you wish to.
The health service is mobilising against the pandemic....
It will be
14 days' quarantine has to be compulsory on return, as it was for the original rescue flights from China.
Have them land on a military base, not at Heathrow.
The next question was if I lived with anyone with these symptoms during the past seven days.
If you are talking about mortality from infection, these people imply a 1.3% IFR on an aged demographic (half a million deaths in the UK at herd immunity)
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.12.2000256
No doubt anyone with symptoms is immediately packed off to 'hospital' to fight it off safety away from the rest of the population.
I reckon this is the model other countries will have to adapt (along with widespread testing, tracing, etc), the alternative is herd immunity along with isolating the vulnerable. Not a fun choice to make.
A PFA of my acquaintance thought it amusing that a certain Labour figure went on TV to demand that the "Tax Gap" be dealt with. Said personage had, while in government, advocated and implemented rules that meant he *has* to tell people to put money in their company pension and invest in ISAs. Or loose his license.
National Insurance etc are taxes not insurances.
1 a different way of calculating how much money is needed to provide, and therefore the level of the "tax"
2 greater acceptance by people of increases in this "tax"
There are big problems with the German system. The option for high earners to opt out of the public system and get private insurance is stupid, unfair, and causes big problems as people get older and realise their premiums are messively rising. It's supposed to be difficult for people to opt back into the public system to avoid young healthy people (and their private insurers) freeloading, but people either find a way, or if they can't I suspect many will end up not being able to afford monthly premiums.
Personally I think it's a rubbish system, which allows the rich to opt out of subsidising the poor.
For most people, who are publicly insured, the big difference with the UK is how you access health care. You can make an appointment with any specialist, rather than having to go through your GP as is usually the case in the UK.
BTW, if you are privately insured, you are generally getting the same treatment in the same hospitals and practices as the publicly insured, but with certain benefits. It's not like there's a system of private hospitals for the privately insured.
Are Italy’s Coronavirus deaths merely adjustments for the mild flu season? Mortality rate is still below average
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-31/italy-s-mild-flu-season-may-solve-mystery-of-coronavirus-deaths
My wife is a nurse at Winchester Hospital and my daughter is a nurse at Bourmemouth hospital. As you imagine a load of their friends are nurses so I do have information on other hospitals as well.
I have been a contributer to this site for 12 years, but due to Vanilla issues have had to change my username (previously called Currystar). I work at an M & E company in Southampton and used to provide updates on the Construction Industry in Hampshire. I have no axe to grind. I have my owm opinion on stuff. Just because people disagree with it should not mean that I am lying.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/world/asia/coronavirus-china-hong-kong-singapore-south-korea.html
Singapore went from:
Ban on arrivals from certain countries (China, then Italy), then added
Arrivals from certain other countries (UK among others) have to self isolate for 14 days (this is Singapore, they check), to
ALL arrivals (including nationals and residents) have to self isolate for 14 days to
BAN on ALL non National arrivals or transit through Changi - Nationals have to self isolate for 14 days, foreign resident permit holders only admitted if they work in vital industry.
UK: "Come one, come all"
The ending of transit is a right b*gger for BA who transit Singapore to get to Sydney - Singapore granted them an exception where transit pax stay on the plane - not a favour extended to Qantas whose Sydney to London flights now have to refuel at Darwin on the way.
https://twitter.com/alistairhaimes/status/1245249942899351553?s=21
My local hospital is very busy - some wards have been moved into other buildings to free up space for Covid patients.
They would also not recognise "no shortage of PPE"
Although I believe they had another delivery of same yesterday, they were scheduled to anyway.
We are still short of some supplies yet even this week the government is bandying words with academia and the chemicals industry about what is already available but unused in this country.
and a lot of small businesses wont be able to reopen if the schools remain shut, and any short-term change there doesnt seem to be even considered.
"We are raising the basic rate of tax from 20% to 25%, and the higher rate from 40% to 45%....." and so on and so forth.
But I'm betting they'll try and do it via stealth taxes. VAT to 22.5%. Insurance Premium tax to 20%. Oxygen breathing tax to 10%.
If it reaches the point of needing my orthopedic consultant colleagues to run ventilators, we are in a bad way. First we will need to teach them not to unplug the machine while they charge their phones...
Stocky's daughter is correct. This is a Trolley problem: take action now to avoid a worse outcome later. Stocky is incorrect: it isn't a trade-off between alternative evils (nor is his posited choice a manifestation of the Trolley Problem, as set out in his header)
I think Stocky is quite right to make the points in his thread and it has obviously concentrated minds this morning
My take on this is that easing of the lockdown will not be a definitive date but a process that will be dictated by events both here and abroad.
Many of the governments critics cite Germany and South Korea but apart from those two virtually every other country has been, or will be, overwhelmed by the crisis and I do not think we have seen events unfold yet in Russia, US, South Africa, India and Indonesia
For lockdown to be eased we will have to see flatlining of the curve but also events across the world and how they are impacting public opinion. If the US sees 250,000 deaths and other big numbers elsewhere and lockdown and social distancing continues, then the UK will have to have some very good medical and scientifuc advice to lift the lockdown, even gradually
I simply think it is too early to predict how, or when, lockdown will commence but frankly I cannot see much lifting of lockdown before mid summer and I do think Jenny Harries recent referral to six months was not flippant but a planned statement to dampen expectations that all of a sudden we will be back to playing cricket, tennis, golf and football and the crisis declared over