I did my clap but unless you live in a very Tory area I doubt it will get the support the NHS clap did, most people hope he gets better but unless they are Tories are not going to clap for him
Well seeing the BBC report from a London ICU, one thing that really struck me, nowhere near the chaos we have seen in the likes of Italy or NY.
It was clearly very busy, clearly very stressful, but no signs of 100s of patients rammed absolutely into every corner of the corridors etc.
And now there is a lot of rumblings that the Excel centre may never really be needed and certainly unlikely to need the full 4,000 bed capacity.
Hopefully the rumblings are correct. Nobody in Government should get criticised for providing over capacity if thats the way it turns out.
I am still concerned we will have insufficient
Vallance stated at the press conference today that he didn't think it would be now be an issue. Individual hospitals might end up at max capacity, but that the system should have enough.
The scientists are normally very conservative with making claims like that, unlike politicians.
That is fantastic news if it turns out to be correct.
Not so fantastic news. Porton Down have "ground truth" data for 700+ individuals, and when evaluating all these antibody kits that every manufacturer claims are 98-99% accurate, they are all crap.
It seems like they have a test, but not one that is able to be scaled to mass market.
Yes I heard that.
No quick way out of this for me and Mrs BJ by the looks of it.
But they are working hard to scale up. I think that will be a few weeks away though, but not many months. The problem with the previous statements was that they did not (I think) assume the purchased antibody tests would be so poor.
This is clearly where the issue has arisen. The government and scientists clearly thought that these antibody tests would be fine and so ramping up massively the anti-gen test wouldn't be necessary. Then they got caught in no man's land, when it was found that the two Chinese companies who they bought samples from are bullshitters...and that 99% accuracy is only for people who have very severe symptoms i.e. no real different from the 14 UK companies who have offered ones with similar huge limitations.
I did my clap but unless you livein a very Tory area I doubt it will get the support the NHS clap did, most people hope he gets better but unless they are Tories are not going to clap for him
Not clapping for Boris doesn't of course imply or infer anyone wishes him anything other than a full and speedy recovery.
He's only the Prime Minister after all - primus inter pares.
My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.
I think she’s on to something.
Jeremy Cliffe wrote an article saying the same thing a couple of weeks ago.
I think people across the country will be willing to do this. And it can be cleverly put together in a way that does not compromise privacy. Fortunately, our NHS is very trusted, so if it's released as an NHS app I think it will probably have substantial uptake. Harder in countries with less centralised health systems perhaps.
My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.
I think she’s on to something.
Jeremy Cliffe wrote an article saying the same thing a couple of weeks ago.
I think people across the country will be willing to do this. And it can be cleverly put together in a way that does not compromise privacy. Fortunately, our NHS is very trusted, so if it's released as an NHS app I think it will probably have substantial uptake. Harder in countries with less centralised health systems perhaps.
Very concerned that the news of the app being developed will only be voluntary. It is a bit like saying the lockdown is voluntary, it won't work unless you ruthlessly pursue this with basically everybody partaking.
UK number today was 20 odd out of 786 that didn't.
So that is less than 5%
At least a third of the population has an underlying condition recognised as a significamt co-morbidity. That’s a lot of people that are potentially at that level of heightened risk.
So keep them indoors until we find a vaccine or treatments improved and outside the peak everyone else ie at least 2/3 of the population, can get back to normal
I’d be very surprised if Boris isn’t in that 1/3, maybe he’s lucky but his weight and shape give cause for concern (and his age and gender, more obviously). Why has been he trying to carry on when it’s not just the 5% who are at the severest end of and who need to be shielded in some way? It’s people like him as well, as the figures coming out of who is in ICUs attest.
For what it's worth (very little as I haven't read their detailed argument) I'm not sure the actuaries have got this right, because I'm dubious about how granular their risk categories are. You might be able to say statistically that a 65 year-old male smoker who is obese with diabetes is expected live for another X years, but you can't say that COVID-19 robbed him of X years if he had a buggered immune system and was already in hospital receiving respiratory care for bacterial double pneumonia before he caught COVID-19 from the patient next-door. I don't think their "worst-case scenario" is necessarily "worst-case" enough.
It would be interesting to look at victims' medical records and consider how their health status compares to other people in the same actuarial risk group that was used to calculate their remaining life expectancy. I have a strong suspicion a disproportionate number of COVID-19 deaths will come from the poorlier end of their risk group. While it's true older people have a high rate of multimorbidity and that despite the challenges this poses to their care, plenty can live for many years with these conditions, it seems likely to me that COVID-related deaths will be especially common among those with the most serious conditions. Which is why blanket descriptions like "Y percent of victims had a pre-existing condition" are not especially helpful, something I suspect I would find myself in strong agreement with your esteemed colleagues on.
Similarly, I don't buy the argument that "COVID is killing people who would have died off in the flu season anyway". How do you know they'd even have caught the flu this year (not everyone does, even asymptomatically), or that whatever strain they caught wasn't one they had a sufficiently protective degree of immunity to due to previous exposure? But I can see that someone dying from COVID-19 due to a particularly weak immune system may not have great odds of getting through, say, the next three flu seasons unscathed.
I get the feeling that "how many COVID deaths were there, really?" is one of those questions that's only going to be answered by a careful regression analysis after the event, as happens with flu figures.
That makes sense to me. I suspect this thinking may well be driving the 50% load they've applied to the first year mortality load of their "85 year old obese male diabetic smoker" (p3). My direct experience of annuity/assurance pricing is fairly limited (and nearly ten years out of date, albeit the field probably hasn't changed much) but from what I do know, impaired life annuity pricing is pretty solid and the language they're using indicates they have high confidence in it. I'd be inclined to trust they know what they're doing on that score..
The context for that (which is important to explain, I think) is a Twitter storm over Adams depicting Miliband as having an aquiline nose, which some are construing as antisemitic because this is a stereotypical characteristic of Jewish people, and could be seen as "code" for Jewish.
Adams argues that Miliband does indeed have an aquiline nose. I understand Miliband has Jewish parents but is himself an atheist.
It's a potentially interesting debate. Caricaturists choose which features to highlight and he didn't need to emphasise that one. On the other hand, he is right that Miliband's nose is part of what makes him recognisable to the reader. As ever, however, Twitter has turned a potentially interesting debate into an unedifying pile-on.
I don't think there's really a debate to be had. What was he supposed to do, give him a different nose? That really would be racist.
Yeah, if the lad who painted that mural in the east end hadn't given Rothschild and Warburg big noses, that really would have been racist.
I have no idea what you are talking about. All I know is that in the cartoon shown, Milliband has a cartoon version of his nose - the cartoonist hasn't made a feature of it (unlike his dentistry) because it isn't a big feature of his face. What should the cartoonist do in your opinion? Give Milliband a snub nose? Stop featuring anyone Jewish in his cartoons? Or just what he's done.
On the theory (much discussed here) that many or most of the Covid-19 victims would have died this year or shortly afterwards from other or natural causes, the Covid-19 Actuaries Response Group has just published a four page note that may be of interest:
In short, they do not agree with the implied hypothesis in the title: We disagree. We think that the majority of COVID-19 deaths are deaths of people who would not have died anytime soon. We put forward our rationale in this bulletin. The data-driven argument is essentially:
(a) The COVID-19 deaths are concentrated at high ages, where existing conditions are common; (b) Life expectancy of such people, even with ‘worst case’ profiles (eg obese smokers), are of the order of five years or more – these people would probably not have died (without COVID-19) anytime soon.
Finally, assuming these deaths are not really due to COVID-19 sends the wrong message – that the social distancing measures to protect our elderly are not important, or that their lives are unimportant.
Nice find! Is there a direct link to the paper somewhere?
Interestingly, @rcs posted up a counterpiece to the Impedial Model by Nassim "Black Swan" Taleb and friends a while back which I really dissed as I didn't think the critique had any force at all. I was reassured to see the actuaries agree with me!! ("We also considered criticisms raised by Chen, Taleb, et al, and do not consider any of these to be material"...)
I can't find a direct link, but I guess keep watching Actuarial Post? If I see a link I'll PM it to you (if I remember).
I know a few people on the group, and may get involved myself if the day job clears up a bit (albeit it's not really my primary field). In the meantime, happy to continue to post links to stuff they publish if it looks to be of interest.
The summary I can see says:
There has been a great deal of comment and doubt, but little real debate, as to whether many of the COVID-19 deaths are really caused by COVID-19. Were they already ‘on death row’? Did they die ‘with’ but not ‘from’ COVID-19? The argument has been that many of the COVID-19 deaths are people of high age with existing medical conditions, and they would have died soon anyway.
We disagree. We think that the majority of COVID-19 deaths are deaths of people who would not have died anytime soon. We put forward our rationale in this bulletin. The data-driven argument is essentially:
(a) The COVID-19 deaths are concentrated at high ages, where existing conditions are common; (b) Life expectancy of such people, even with ‘worst case’ profiles (eg obese smokers), are of the order of five years or more – these people would probably not have died (without COVID-19) anytime soon.
Finally, assuming these deaths are not really due to COVID-19 sends the wrong message – that the social distancing measures to protect our elderly are not important, or that their lives are unimportant.
So you should be able to read it on screen but I can't figure out how to get it into a usable file format.
Thanks. It was blurred out for me, but then when I clicked on the individual pages and waited a bit I could get them to unblur!
Turns out the worst-case scenarios they investigated were indeed pretty bad, not just "obese smoker" but people in pretty bad nick with more like 1-3 years rather than 5 years remaining. Also interesting that only 12% of COVID deaths in the British ICU context were for patients with "severe" comorbidity. (Though the actuaries do note that people on death's door already may not have gone to ICU.)
They do also suggest the EuroMOMO analysis will be interesting (the people who do the fancy mortality surveillance with regression analysis etc, and look at date of death and age at death to detect unusual patterns, rather than rely on whatever it says on the final death certificate)
All authorities (except the WHO) are now reversing their previous instructions not to wear masks. How much damage has been done, how many lives have been lost, from their utter ineptitude and stupidity?
If every country had had a stockpile of several billion N95 masks sat in a warehouse then I have no doubt we would all have been wearing them for at least a month by now, but we didn't. Instead we've had all sorts of half-baked reasons given for why we shouldn't wear masks, when what goverments have really meant is "don't use up our limited supply that needs to go to the nurses and doctors first".
My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.
I think she’s on to something.
Jeremy Cliffe wrote an article saying the same thing a couple of weeks ago.
I think people across the country will be willing to do this. And it can be cleverly put together in a way that does not compromise privacy. Fortunately, our NHS is very trusted, so if it's released as an NHS app I think it will probably have substantial uptake. Harder in countries with less centralised health systems perhaps.
Very concerned that the news of the app being developed will only be voluntary. It is a bit like saying the lockdown is voluntary, it won't work unless you ruthlessly pursue this with basically everybody partaking.
This will depend critically on people participating. The advantage is that the government will know this and I'd imagine push very hard on getting everyone to download it...
Well seeing the BBC report from a London ICU, one thing that really struck me, nowhere near the chaos we have seen in the likes of Italy or NY.
It was clearly very busy, clearly very stressful, but no signs of 100s of patients rammed absolutely into every corner of the corridors etc.
And now there is a lot of rumblings that the Excel centre may never really be needed and certainly unlikely to need the full 4,000 bed capacity.
Hopefully the rumblings are correct. Nobody in Government should get criticised for providing over capacity if thats the way it turns out.
I am still concerned we will have insufficient
Vallance stated at the press conference today that he didn't think it would be now be an issue. Individual hospitals might end up at max capacity, but that the system should have enough.
The scientists are normally very conservative with making claims like that, unlike politicians.
That is fantastic news if it turns out to be correct.
Not so fantastic news. Porton Down have "ground truth" data for 700+ individuals, and when evaluating all these antibody kits that every manufacturer claims are 98-99% accurate, they are all crap.
It seems like they have a test, but not one that is able to be scaled to mass market.
Getting results from the "Opinion Poll" antibody tests is very important. Will give us real evidence of how many have had it and the hospitalization and death rates.
My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.
I think she’s on to something.
Jeremy Cliffe wrote an article saying the same thing a couple of weeks ago.
I think people across the country will be willing to do this. And it can be cleverly put together in a way that does not compromise privacy. Fortunately, our NHS is very trusted, so if it's released as an NHS app I think it will probably have substantial uptake. Harder in countries with less centralised health systems perhaps.
Aren't you concerned about sleepwalking into a surveillance society? I am.
My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.
I think she’s on to something.
An accurate real time test would probably enable us not to have to do that.
That kind of "real time test" would have to be a device like a thermometer. Something that everybody can carry around and apply an infinite number of times, whenever deemed appropriate. That's not technically feasible for the foreseeable future. We'll have to rely on data collecting and processing.
The context for that (which is important to explain, I think) is a Twitter storm over Adams depicting Miliband as having an aquiline nose, which some are construing as antisemitic because this is a stereotypical characteristic of Jewish people, and could be seen as "code" for Jewish.
Adams argues that Miliband does indeed have an aquiline nose. I understand Miliband has Jewish parents but is himself an atheist.
It's a potentially interesting debate. Caricaturists choose which features to highlight and he didn't need to emphasise that one. On the other hand, he is right that Miliband's nose is part of what makes him recognisable to the reader. As ever, however, Twitter has turned a potentially interesting debate into an unedifying pile-on.
I don't think there's really a debate to be had. What was he supposed to do, give him a different nose? That really would be racist.
I think that slightly misses how caricature works. The caricaturist does, in fact, pick which attributes to grotesquely exaggerate for comic effect.
Peter Brookes always picked out Miliband's prominent front teeth to create a version which was both recognisably Miliband and recognisably Wallace from Wallace and Gromit. The nose was simply Wallace's honker. Steve Bell created "death ray panda" due to his rather distinctive eyes.
So Adams certainly didn't HAVE to pick out Miliband's nose, and arguably it emphasises his Jewishness in a way which is a little uncomfortable.
That said, the "antisemitism" Twitter pile-on is ridiculous. At worst, it's a poor artistic choice. There's nothing in the content which picks up on the various racist tropes about Jewish people - the particular cartoon just notes that Starmer has kicked out Corbynite election losers and brought in an earlier election loser, which is a legitimate satirical point (even if a bit unfair to Miliband... but what satire isn't a BIT unfair?)
Looking after bulbs - I am just getting my first lot of container daffodils in flower.
Two questions if I may.
1 - What do I need to do to keep these healthy for this year and next year? (I am familiar with the basics - do not remove the leaves too soon after flowering, water when a finger depth is dry etc.)
2 - What is the best time to put in new bulbs (I want some snowdrops and crocuses and extra daffodils) for next year or 2022?
The photo is my daffs and my cousin's first tulips (he has a camera not an iPad :-) ).
Thanks for any comments. I will repost if I get new-thread-clobbered.
Apologies for the delay In replying. I had a lovely walk up to Thwaites Fell today. Simply glorious.
Re bulbs:-
1. There are summer bulbs it is worth planting now: lilies and gladioli for instance. 2. For next spring, bulbs will start becoming available from late August/September so autumn is the time to start planting.
I buy my bulbs from JParkers: they have a fantastic selection and deliver.
I tend to plant later but that’s usually because there is still so much blooming in autumn that there is no space for the bulbs.
The general rule is to put daffodils and narcissi in during September/October and leave tulips until November to avoid “tulip fire” which they can get if put in too early. All other bulbs - allium, crocuses, iris, all the early spring bulbs etc - can go in during the autumn.
Whether in pots or the ground don’t forget to layer them ie put the bigger ones at the bottom and smaller ones on top in layers and then you get a succession of flowers from January through to May. Or you can go for all tulips in one pot or flowers of the same colour etc. Endless wonderful permutations.
Re preserving bulbs: if in pots once the flowers are spent and the leaves have died down, take them out, cut all the leaves off, brush the earth off and store them in a paper bag somewhere cool and dark and away from squirrels or mice. Throw away the old earth or put on a compost heap.
In the ground you can leave lots of bulbs and they will generally return. But not all do - some tulips are better than others. Snowdrops do; ditto bluebells. Daffodils can be temperamental.
But, honestly, I wouldn’t really bother: daffs often go blind and won’t reflower and some tulips are not so good at this. Plus the replacement cost is tiny.
Lilies do survive year after year in pots, though you do need to keep topping up the compost or replacing. For snowdrops try buying them now when they are in the green and planting now. More reliable than planting bulbs.
Some of my favourite bulbs are iris reticulata for early spring and the “Ballerina” tulip combined with purple allium. A magical combination.
Sky News fixated on political minutiae tonight. NOT IMPORTANT
Thousands are dying and they wibble about the intricacies of our constitution.
They've whined all day about "why don't we have a deputy PM" when Raab is in place.
Honestly who cares?
They clearly missed the announcement that the Chancellor is next in line after Raab so we have a clear line of 'succession' for now - sloppy work (as ever) from Sky
Surely that's more because we've never needed one?
I believe they were well on their way to getting a vaccine together for SARS but when it burned itself out at the end of 2003 authorities foolisly decided to pull the the plug on funding it.
Imagine if we'd already got a vaccine for SARS (which is 95% similar to COVID-19) to work from.
The most common coronavirus is called the common cold. We spent 50 years trying to find a cure for it before giving up.
Not exactly. There are about 200 viruses under the header “the common cold”. Most are rhinoviruses. I believe, from memory, about 10-20% of them are coronaviruses. The key problem is finding a vaccine against 200 viruses simultaneously, when quite a few of them (I believe primarily the rhinoviruses?) mutate frequently.
It’s not comparable to finding a vaccine against one coronavirus.
The context for that (which is important to explain, I think) is a Twitter storm over Adams depicting Miliband as having an aquiline nose, which some are construing as antisemitic because this is a stereotypical characteristic of Jewish people, and could be seen as "code" for Jewish.
Adams argues that Miliband does indeed have an aquiline nose. I understand Miliband has Jewish parents but is himself an atheist.
It's a potentially interesting debate. Caricaturists choose which features to highlight and he didn't need to emphasise that one. On the other hand, he is right that Miliband's nose is part of what makes him recognisable to the reader. As ever, however, Twitter has turned a potentially interesting debate into an unedifying pile-on.
I don't think there's really a debate to be had. What was he supposed to do, give him a different nose? That really would be racist.
I think that slightly misses how caricature works. The caricaturist does, in fact, pick which attributes to grotesquely exaggerate for comic effect.
Peter Brookes always picked out Miliband's prominent front teeth to create a version which was both recognisably Miliband and recognisably Wallace from Wallace and Gromit. The nose was simply Wallace's honker. Steve Bell created "death ray panda" due to his rather distinctive eyes.
So Adams certainly didn't HAVE to pick out Miliband's nose, and arguably it emphasises his Jewishness in a way which is a little uncomfortable.
That said, the "antisemitism" Twitter pile-on is ridiculous. At worst, it's a poor artistic choice. There's nothing in the content which picks up on the various racist tropes about Jewish people - the particular cartoon just notes that Starmer has kicked out Corbynite election losers and brought in an earlier election loser, which is a legitimate satirical point (even if a bit unfair to Miliband... but what satire isn't a BIT unfair?)
I'm super confused, because some people are saying he did caricature his nose but it's ok, and some are saying he just drew it how it really looks.
The former seems potentially very problematic but worthy of debate. The latter seems like a complete non-issue. My understanding is that his defence is the latter. What am I missing?
All authorities (except the WHO) are now reversing their previous instructions not to wear masks. How much damage has been done, how many lives have been lost, from their utter ineptitude and stupidity?
If every country had had a stockpile of several billion N95 masks sat in a warehouse then I have no doubt we would all have been wearing them for at least a month by now, but we didn't. Instead we've had all sorts of half-baked reasons given for why we shouldn't wear masks, when what goverments have really meant is "don't use up our limited supply that needs to go to the nurses and doctors first".
Absolutely. Simple honesty would have been better. ‘Yes masks limit the spread but we’d prefer it if you saved the n95s and ffp2s for health workers, instead wear a bandana, sew your own, anything’
Or HMG could have been smarter and ordered a billion masks for all in early feb, when it was obvious this pandemic was coming out way.
Would you (or anyone) have done better?
I think you're phasing what you say with some degree of acknowledgement of this, but you really ought to say so.
"The UK is approaching its peak in coronavirus deaths, with the highest number of expected daily deaths expected within a week, according to analysis by The Telegraph.
The peak in deaths is expected to come between the 11 and 14 April, although between now and then, the number of deaths on any one day will stay relatively static between 700 and 900.
After this point, while the number of deaths in any one day will still be in their hundreds, the number will begin to decrease as the lockdown-enforced social distancing begins to slow the virus’ spread."
My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.
I think she’s on to something.
Jeremy Cliffe wrote an article saying the same thing a couple of weeks ago.
I think people across the country will be willing to do this. And it can be cleverly put together in a way that does not compromise privacy. Fortunately, our NHS is very trusted, so if it's released as an NHS app I think it will probably have substantial uptake. Harder in countries with less centralised health systems perhaps.
Aren't you concerned about sleepwalking into a surveillance society? I am.
Not really, no. Anyway if someone really doesn't want to be surveyed I'm guessing you can just leave your phone at home - that's unthinkable for 99% of the population though so it should have the desired effect.
The context for that (which is important to explain, I think) is a Twitter storm over Adams depicting Miliband as having an aquiline nose, which some are construing as antisemitic because this is a stereotypical characteristic of Jewish people, and could be seen as "code" for Jewish.
Adams argues that Miliband does indeed have an aquiline nose. I understand Miliband has Jewish parents but is himself an atheist.
It's a potentially interesting debate. Caricaturists choose which features to highlight and he didn't need to emphasise that one. On the other hand, he is right that Miliband's nose is part of what makes him recognisable to the reader. As ever, however, Twitter has turned a potentially interesting debate into an unedifying pile-on.
I don't think there's really a debate to be had. What was he supposed to do, give him a different nose? That really would be racist.
I think that slightly misses how caricature works. The caricaturist does, in fact, pick which attributes to grotesquely exaggerate for comic effect.
Peter Brookes always picked out Miliband's prominent front teeth to create a version which was both recognisably Miliband and recognisably Wallace from Wallace and Gromit. The nose was simply Wallace's honker. Steve Bell created "death ray panda" due to his rather distinctive eyes.
So Adams certainly didn't HAVE to pick out Miliband's nose, and arguably it emphasises his Jewishness in a way which is a little uncomfortable.
That said, the "antisemitism" Twitter pile-on is ridiculous. At worst, it's a poor artistic choice. There's nothing in the content which picks up on the various racist tropes about Jewish people - the particular cartoon just notes that Starmer has kicked out Corbynite election losers and brought in an earlier election loser, which is a legitimate satirical point (even if a bit unfair to Miliband... but what satire isn't a BIT unfair?)
Thanks for a very considered and interesting response. This appears to be from Steve Bell: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cartoon/2011/sep/27/edmiliband-labour-conference-2011 Ed Milliband has a nose with a slight hook. In a cartoon it will be a bigger hook. The alternatives to allowing cartoonists to exaggerate any subject's physical features do not bear considering.
My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.
“Last week, Canada’s top doctor said that if we’re not sick, or haven’t been around someone with a confirmed case of COVID-19, we shouldn’t wear a mask. “Putting a mask on an asymptomatic person is not beneficial, obviously if you’re not infected,” she said.
This week, Dr. Theresa Tam did a complete about-face: actually, the use of non-medical masks can help to control the spread of COVID-19, she said. “Wearing a non-medical mask, even if you have no symptoms, is an additional measure that you can take to protect others around you in situations where physical distancing is difficult to maintain, such as in public transit or maybe in the grocery store.””
All authorities (except the WHO) are now reversing their previous instructions not to wear masks. How much damage has been done, how many lives have been lost, from their utter ineptitude and stupidity?
Obviously she was wrong, she is a 'Government Official' and like government officials is across the world, they have made this so much worse than it would over wise have been,
Where there has been success, (in testing) South Korea, Taiwan, German, Iceland, its largely been because the prived sectur have been most able to get involved in the testing, where its been worse the USA and UK its been because Public Health England and (PHE) and Center for Disise Control (CDC) band anybody except themselves from doing testing.
In the early days Politicians everywhere seemed to think it was there 'duty' to calm everybody down, Trump was the worst, but they all did it.. where as what would have been best was for people to be a bit scared and to start to voluntary 'Soshall distance' in the very early days.
For those that disagree, (which may be almost everybody), don't worry, at the end of this the state will grow, more powers taken more liberty lost, more calls and power to the WHO or other global institutions, it does not matter how much they ballsed up they sill only benefit.
My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.
I think she’s on to something.
Jeremy Cliffe wrote an article saying the same thing a couple of weeks ago.
I think people across the country will be willing to do this. And it can be cleverly put together in a way that does not compromise privacy. Fortunately, our NHS is very trusted, so if it's released as an NHS app I think it will probably have substantial uptake. Harder in countries with less centralised health systems perhaps.
Aren't you concerned about sleepwalking into a surveillance society? I am.
That boat has sailed. We've been sleepwalking in to a surveillance society for 20 years.
My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.
I think she’s on to something.
Jeremy Cliffe wrote an article saying the same thing a couple of weeks ago.
I think people across the country will be willing to do this. And it can be cleverly put together in a way that does not compromise privacy. Fortunately, our NHS is very trusted, so if it's released as an NHS app I think it will probably have substantial uptake. Harder in countries with less centralised health systems perhaps.
Aren't you concerned about sleepwalking into a surveillance society? I am.
Nobody likes the idea of living in a surveillance society, but it's somewhat endearing that people believe that they do not yet live in one. Remember the aftermath of the 'Skripal incident'. It took HMG two weeks to present 'conclusive evidence' of the pattern of movement of the alleged perpetrators. They may have had that evidence even earlier but hesitated to disclose the full scale of the surveillance state's capabilities. The state is already able to deploy that amount of surveillance on anyone, just not on everyone at the same time. In the current crisis we will have to trust our betters to do it for our own good.
Recovered patients data Previous updates of the dashboard included a number of patients recovered. This figure was the number of people discharged from NHS clinical services in England following a positive test result for COVID-19 and was provided by NHS services. This statistic has proved difficult to assemble and a replacement indicator is being developed.
So the "Recovered" figure is wrong which means that the "Active" figure is also wrong. Finally, the "Confirmed" figures mean completely different things for different countries because they perform the testing on different groups of people (some with more focus on healthcare staff, some more on strongly suspected patients, some more on contacts etc) and indeed these criteria for testing are changing over time in each country too.
On that basis, three out of the four numbers you're comparing are utterly unsuitable for comparison. And even deaths data from different countries has to be interpreted cautiously due to issues with eg which deaths are included, and what stage of the epidemic curve the country is at.
To manage the looming shortage, lab operators have called for an even stricter decision-making process for who gets tested and who doesn't. Only people who are at risk or showing symptoms should be tested, they argue. "At the moment, we're still testing way too many healthy people," says Borucki. Well over 90 percent of the tests evaluated by Bioscientia come back negative. "We're wasting valuable reagents."
The Robert Koch Institute now feels the same way. "We don't have enough tests to be able to use them senselessly," the institute's director, Lothar Wieler, warned last week. At the same time, though, the institute has loosened the recommendation that has thus far been in place - namely that patients with symptoms should only be tested if they had contact with an infected person or had been in a region with a high number of confirmed cases. Given that the pathogen is now essentially everywhere, the focus on at-risk regions no longer makes sense, an institute spokeswoman said.
According to the Spiegel piece at least, there's plenty of German experts who think the right model to follow is South Korea (not just number of tests per head, but how those tests are used and on whom) and that the German testing system needs a really significant rethink.
As far as I understand the sightly different testing regimes that exist in different parts of the country are constantly under review. Our authorities have also taken up efforts to get a better picture of transmission patterns by random testing schemes. This has been done in Gangelt, a subsection of the Kreis Heinsberg, our second recognised cluster: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/31/virologists-to-turn-germany-worst-hit-district-into-coronavirus-laboratory Results and conclusions are yet to be released.
Similar programs are in preparation in Baden-Württemberg (north of Feiburg im Breisgau), in Hesse (between Frankfurt and Hanau) and here in Hamburg.
Hopefully these will provide some additional insight.
Thanks. For avoidance of doubt, I'm mostly narked at the way the UK media is reporting the German testing programme as if it were as simple as "more tests is better". It's about how you use them, too, and whether the situation is sustainable - even very large-scale testing will struggle to cope once enough people want a test. I don't doubt that the German public health people have worked hard and got a lot right.
Funny how the media also love to go on about how great South Korea have done (and they have), but less keen to inform everybody that means giving the government the power to spy on any individual citizen.
Realistically, this is the only way to effectively contact trace at any sort of scale and pace that enables one to keep the virus from spreading.
And if the UK had proposed doing this, they would be screaming what about my civil liberties.
Dont agree. Peter Hitchens might, but the rest of us are prepared for anything short term to avoid the plague
Are you still working on this or have you finished?
The only way to avoid it completely is to stay locked inside your residence for the next 18 months.
And how does that work for people who are living with others going out and about as normal?
"The UK is approaching its peak in coronavirus deaths, with the highest number of expected daily deaths expected within a week, according to analysis by The Telegraph.
The peak in deaths is expected to come between the 11 and 14 April, although between now and then, the number of deaths on any one day will stay relatively static between 700 and 900.
After this point, while the number of deaths in any one day will still be in their hundreds, the number will begin to decrease as the lockdown-enforced social distancing begins to slow the virus’ spread."
And then we'll get even more idiot journalists demanding of Raab "When do we end the lockdown? When do we end the lockdown?" As if the Government is just doing it as a wind up.
I am wondering how this will play out in Wisconsin (narrowly won by Trump in 2016) in November.
The Democrat Governor, Tony Evers, sought to postpone it, but the Republican state legislature challenged it and was backed by the conservative majority on the state supreme court.
It feels like a really bad move by the Republicans there - easily characterised as putting voters at mortal risk in knee-jerk opposition to a Governor with whom they have terrible relations. Interesting to see whether it hurts Trump in the state.
I suspect you are right. This is a tremendous and moronic own goal.
Republicans are smart, they know that more than the Presidency matters. And that it is easier to hold the presidency if they hold the levers of power at the state level, especially the courts.
At state level politics Wisconsin is so gerrymandered that the Dems would need to be 14 points ahead of the GOP to get a majority in the state legislator.
So while this seems like a massive own goal it will probably get them the Judgeship they crave.
Re watching The Sweeney. It's on ITV4. Bloody brilliant. Guv'nor.
I'm watching Shoestring on DVD. One of the songs played on the radio in a background scene was Dennis Waterman singing the Minder theme. Minder would then (1980) have been a current show on a (or the) rival channel.
Nobody likes the idea of living in a surveillance society, but it's somewhat endearing that people believe that they do not yet live in one. Remember the aftermath of the 'Skripal incident'. It took HMG two weeks to present 'conclusive evidence' of the pattern of movement of the alleged perpetrators. They may have had that evidence even earlier but hesitated to disclose the full scale of the surveillance state's capabilities. The state is already able to deploy that amount of surveillance on anyone, just not on everyone at the same time. In the current crisis we will have to trust our betters to do it for our own good.
Britain has a "Surveillance Commissioner" (apparently) whose job is to check on CCTV installations and ensure they are being operated properly.
It's all about fear - make people frightened enough and they'll agree to anything.
Fear allows us to acquiesce to the security state whether it's fear of terrorism or fear of a virus.
I suspect if we got frightened enough we'd vote away our democratic rights as well.
Nobody likes the idea of living in a surveillance society, but it's somewhat endearing that people believe that they do not yet live in one. Remember the aftermath of the 'Skripal incident'. It took HMG two weeks to present 'conclusive evidence' of the pattern of movement of the alleged perpetrators. They may have had that evidence even earlier but hesitated to disclose the full scale of the surveillance state's capabilities. The state is already able to deploy that amount of surveillance on anyone, just not on everyone at the same time. In the current crisis we will have to trust our betters to do it for our own good.
There's nothing unusual about that sort of mass surveillance, scooping up call records, and networked ANPR and CCTV, are common throughout the western world, and widely used for reasons of fighting crime and national security. Obviously governments don't like to publicise it, and tend not to use it for minor crimes, and use parallel construction where possible for building criminal cases, but there really aren't many countries who eschew such systems.
In other news, we received a dozen eggs in today's food delivery.
I am, naturally, eggstatic.
I had a double yolk on my poached egg this morning. I think I've only ever seen two before, and never before in supermarket eggs. (True thing)
I'd have shelled out more if I'd have known! (Less true thing)
The problem isn’t the tins of prunes, or biscuits, or even soap, it’s the fresh stuff, eggs, milk, salad, cabbage, fresh meat if you have small freezer.
My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.
I think she’s on to something.
She is.
And we will quite likely be in the midst of a depression
My wife expressed the fear today that the end result of this virus would be hi-tech surveillance states, with the authorities monitoring everything we do and everyone we meet. Countries that don’t do this will be crippled by the bug.
I think she’s on to something.
Jeremy Cliffe wrote an article saying the same thing a couple of weeks ago.
I think people across the country will be willing to do this. And it can be cleverly put together in a way that does not compromise privacy. Fortunately, our NHS is very trusted, so if it's released as an NHS app I think it will probably have substantial uptake. Harder in countries with less centralised health systems perhaps.
Aren't you concerned about sleepwalking into a surveillance society? I am.
Nobody likes the idea of living in a surveillance society, but it's somewhat endearing that people believe that they do not yet live in one. Remember the aftermath of the 'Skripal incident'. It took HMG two weeks to present 'conclusive evidence' of the pattern of movement of the alleged perpetrators. They may have had that evidence even earlier but hesitated to disclose the full scale of the surveillance state's capabilities. The state is already able to deploy that amount of surveillance on anyone, just not on everyone at the same time. In the current crisis we will have to trust our betters to do it for our own good.
I had to read this three times before I realised that two weeks of half the Secret Service investigating was meant as a short time, not a long time. That seems like, if anything, too long, given the resources thrown at that problem. As you imply, we're all just lost in the noise unless you or someone close to you does something worth surveilling (is that a word?), and even then it's often only retrospective.
Re watching The Sweeney. It's on ITV4. Bloody brilliant. Guv'nor.
I'm watching Shoestring on DVD. One of the songs played on the radio in a background scene was Dennis Waterman singing the Minder theme. Minder would then (1980) have been a current show on a (or the) rival channel.
And then we'll get even more idiot journalists demanding of Raab "When do we end the lockdown? When do we end the lockdown?" As if the Government is just doing it as a wind up.
Might take a while, looking at Italy. Their peak was 18 days ago, and they only dropped below 50% of that today (and that's still 3k new cases).
Might be a psychological barrier when we drop below 1000? That's going to be a month maybe.
"The UK is approaching its peak in coronavirus deaths, with the highest number of expected daily deaths expected within a week, according to analysis by The Telegraph.
The peak in deaths is expected to come between the 11 and 14 April, although between now and then, the number of deaths on any one day will stay relatively static between 700 and 900.
After this point, while the number of deaths in any one day will still be in their hundreds, the number will begin to decrease as the lockdown-enforced social distancing begins to slow the virus’ spread."
Lots of caveats, the number on any day will not be a smooth representation of the curve, but its possible that we have already reached/passed the peek (i'm saying possible not defiant)
But the projection for Easter weekend to be the peek was largely based on the date of the 'lock down' and the calculation of average infection to death. but I would suggest that a lot of 'socall distancing' was being done voluntarily before that the lock down started. especially in the week before when the politicians stopped prioritizing reassuring the public and instead admitted this was serose.
In other news, we received a dozen eggs in today's food delivery.
I am, naturally, eggstatic.
UHT milk (expensive!) arrived at the weekend. Still, after 6 days without milk, I'm over the moo-n...
I've got two crates of San Miguel....was due on the 1st April....but if everyone claps at 10.00 for Tyson to get his beer tomorrow ..perhaps that will push it over the line....
In other news, we received a dozen eggs in today's food delivery.
I am, naturally, eggstatic.
I had a double yolk on my poached egg this morning. I think I've only ever seen two before, and never before in supermarket eggs. (True thing)
I'd have shelled out more if I'd have known! (Less true thing)
The problem isn’t the tins of prunes, or biscuits, or even soap, it’s the fresh stuff, eggs, milk, salad, cabbage, fresh meat if you have small freezer.
UK number today was 20 odd out of 786 that didn't.
So that is less than 5%
As so often, the question is causation or correlation. People die "with coronavirus" and people die "with pre-existing medical conditions". Determining what they "died of" requires procedures which can be applied to a single individual but not to the large numbers of cases.
I wonder whether that last sentence is almost the wrong way round.
"X caused Y" is a problematic statement if there's multicausality at play. For example, if any one (or even more confusingly, any two out of four in combination) of U, V, W and X can cause Y... then what can you say if all of U, V, W and X are true, and Y happens? You can't say X "caused" Y in a sine qua non sense, because if X hadn't happened then Y would still have happened... but you could apply the same logic to any of U, V and W too!
If one considers a hypothetical very poorly victim of COVID-19 (and heed the good actuaries' warning that this is not representative of all such deaths!) and performed an extremely thorough post mortem, identified all the bacteria and fungi and viruses that were infecting the lungs, identified all the medical conditions that had cumulatively weakened the immune system, identified the cancer(s) or degenerative condition(s) that would likely have finished the victim off in a matter of months anyway.... well in that sense, what would it even mean to say "COVID caused this death", at an individual level?
Whereas on the population level, a highly competent statistician with a sufficiently high-quality data set might crunch the numbers and conclude "the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in P people (95% confidence interval from Q to R) dying who would not otherwise have died" and even be able to break that figure down, up to a certain level of granularity, in terms of sex, age, ethnic group etc. Even if they can't pin down which individuals those actually were (after all, who knows whether the fit 40-year-old whose doctor would say he sadly died of COVID-19, would have - in the absence of the pandemic and accompanying lockdown - been run over by a bus on the way to work, and therefore shouldn't count as an "excess death" in the statistical sense?) there's an argument for this aggregate figure being more meaningful, in the everyday sense of the word "caused", as "deaths caused by COVID-19" than the figure you'd get from tallying the death certificates where COVID-19 is listed as the main cause.
I am getting the point about the media questions at the daily briefing. Whether it’s BBC, Sky, ITV, The Sun, The Guardian, they all obsessed with the same things
1. Themselves. Their own self importance. 2. Making a meal out of politics where there is nothing to eat. 3. Trying to get experts to say something that makes politicians look like liars.
It could be they don’t vary the people they send. They send political reporters, but the health reporter, consumer journalist, etc may ask questions much more relevant to the public.
But it could be the old media days have passed. The new media can do better. Raab should say tomorrow “Peston your 6 questions masquerading as 1 question and 20 minutes you took to ask them now over. Next, Eagles - PB” and the nation will get a proper question. We could build it together, we could vote on which subject.
“Do you feel the lies out of China caused your government to be wrong footed at start of the campaign?”
“Care home staff have been left feeling like second class, can you detail your plans for the coming weeks that will relieve the pressures and difficulty on care homes?”
“When you sit down to watch die hard next Christmas, will you have Pineapple on your pizza? It’s a yes or no answer Foreign Secretary.”
"The UK is approaching its peak in coronavirus deaths, with the highest number of expected daily deaths expected within a week, according to analysis by The Telegraph.
The peak in deaths is expected to come between the 11 and 14 April, although between now and then, the number of deaths on any one day will stay relatively static between 700 and 900.
After this point, while the number of deaths in any one day will still be in their hundreds, the number will begin to decrease as the lockdown-enforced social distancing begins to slow the virus’ spread."
And then we'll get even more idiot journalists demanding of Raab "When do we end the lockdown? When do we end the lockdown?" As if the Government is just doing it as a wind up.
A free Press asking questions of when, a degree of individual freedom will be reternd, and replaced by individual responsibility is not idiotic, its what I want them to be asking.
UK number today was 20 odd out of 786 that didn't.
So that is less than 5%
As so often, the question is causation or correlation. People die "with coronavirus" and people die "with pre-existing medical conditions". Determining what they "died of" requires procedures which can be applied to a single individual but not to the large numbers of cases.
I wonder whether that last sentence is almost the wrong way round.
"X caused Y" is a problematic statement if there's multicausality at play. For example, if any one (or even more confusingly, any two out of four in combination) of U, V, W and X can cause Y... then what can you say if all of U, V, W and X are true, and Y happens? You can't say X "caused" Y in a sine qua non sense, because if X hadn't happened then Y would still have happened... but you could apply the same logic to any of U, V and W too!
If one considers a hypothetical very poorly victim of COVID-19 (and heed the good actuaries' warning that this is not representative of all such deaths!) and performed an extremely thorough post mortem, identified all the bacteria and fungi and viruses that were infecting the lungs, identified all the medical conditions that had cumulatively weakened the immune system, identified the cancer(s) or degenerative condition(s) that would likely have finished the victim off in a matter of months anyway.... well in that sense, what would it even mean to say "COVID caused this death", at an individual level?
Whereas on the population level, a highly competent statistician with a sufficiently high-quality data set might crunch the numbers and conclude "the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in P people (95% confidence interval from Q to R) dying who would not otherwise have died" and even be able to break that figure down, up to a certain level of granularity, in terms of sex, age, ethnic group etc. Even if they can't pin down which individuals those actually were (after all, who knows whether the fit 40-year-old whose doctor would say he sadly died of COVID-19, would have - in the absence of the pandemic and accompanying lockdown - been run over by a bus on the way to work, and therefore shouldn't count as an "excess death" in the statistical sense?) there's an argument for this aggregate figure being more meaningful, in the everyday sense of the word "caused", as "deaths caused by COVID-19" than the figure you'd get from tallying the death certificates where COVID-19 is listed as the main cause.
I did my clap but unless you live in a very Tory area I doubt it will get the support the NHS clap did, most people hope he gets better but unless they are Tories are not going to clap for him
Hadn't heard about it to be honest, but as others have said we all wish him well.
And we will quite likely be in the midst of a depression
So what is the way out? Allow the virus to run loose through the population and accept the deaths as a necessary evil? Not sure that would be popular.
Austria and some other European countries are talking about a slow and phased re-emergence from lock down - Kurz talked about re-opening non-essential stores of less than 4,300 square feet from next Tuesday with all other stores to re-open from May 1st.
However, social distancing remains in place along with the mandatory wearing of face masks so presumably they have 9 million or so available.
I'm trying to imagine how we could do that in terms of businesses operating and social distancing on public transport.
In other news, we received a dozen eggs in today's food delivery.
I am, naturally, eggstatic.
I had a double yolk on my poached egg this morning. I think I've only ever seen two before, and never before in supermarket eggs. (True thing)
I'd have shelled out more if I'd have known! (Less true thing)
The problem isn’t the tins of prunes, or biscuits, or even soap, it’s the fresh stuff, eggs, milk, salad, cabbage, fresh meat if you have small freezer.
Fresh Farm Deliveries, a local supplier from Calderdale, came up trumps for us with the eggs and a veg box - just signed up with them a week ago.
We also get weekly fresh produce from Riverford and Abel & Cole although I don't think either are accepting new customers.
The media are disgracefully asking politicians questions that politicians and their supporters would rather not answer.
Feel free to pretend that's the only issue at play if it makes you feel better.
Yes it is true politicians don't like being asked any questions, and certainly not difficult ones. It doesn't follow that any question which provokes ire does so because the politician or their supporter does not want it asked, there are other possibilities.
It does depend on the question, every single time, if it is reasonable.
And we will quite likely be in the midst of a depression
So what is the way out? Allow the virus to run loose through the population and accept the deaths as a necessary evil? Not sure that would be popular.
Austria and some other European countries are talking about a slow and phased re-emergence from lock down - Kurz talked about re-opening non-essential stores of less than 4,300 square feet from next Tuesday with all other stores to re-open from May 1st.
However, social distancing remains in place along with the mandatory wearing of face masks so presumably they have 9 million or so available.
I'm trying to imagine how we could do that in terms of businesses operating and social distancing on public transport.
I'm not convinced.
If I knew the way out, someone cleverer and more important would have already done it. I wasn’t being critical of anyone, when a killer virus is threatening to wipe out half the world there’s not much anyone can do. I just think we will be in a financial mess bigger than I’ve ever known
Nobody likes the idea of living in a surveillance society, but it's somewhat endearing that people believe that they do not yet live in one. Remember the aftermath of the 'Skripal incident'. It took HMG two weeks to present 'conclusive evidence' of the pattern of movement of the alleged perpetrators. They may have had that evidence even earlier but hesitated to disclose the full scale of the surveillance state's capabilities. The state is already able to deploy that amount of surveillance on anyone, just not on everyone at the same time. In the current crisis we will have to trust our betters to do it for our own good.
There's nothing unusual about that sort of mass surveillance, scooping up call records, and networked ANPR and CCTV, are common throughout the western world, and widely used for reasons of fighting crime and national security. Obviously governments don't like to publicise it, and tend not to use it for minor crimes, and use parallel construction where possible for building criminal cases, but there really aren't many countries who eschew such systems.
Exactly. We're already living in a world where it looks like a confused overreation to reject the proposed secure and anonymised schemes.
I did my clap but unless you live in a very Tory area I doubt it will get the support the NHS clap did, most people hope he gets better but unless they are Tories are not going to clap for him
Hadn't heard about it to be honest, but as others have said we all wish him well.
Of course we wish him well....in the same way I do not want anyone, I mean anyone to suffer with this disease...
....but it is particularly unseemly and in bad taste to wish one person well when so many countless thousands of others are dying, and going to die..
Hyfud...really needs to sort out his priorities.....seriously....
On the theory (much discussed here) that many or most of the Covid-19 victims would have died this year or shortly afterwards from other or natural causes, the Covid-19 Actuaries Response Group has just published a four page note that may be of interest:
In short, they do not agree with the implied hypothesis in the title: We disagree. We think that the majority of COVID-19 deaths are deaths of people who would not have died anytime soon. We put forward our rationale in this bulletin. The data-driven argument is essentially:
(a) The COVID-19 deaths are concentrated at high ages, where existing conditions are common; (b) Life expectancy of such people, even with ‘worst case’ profiles (eg obese smokers), are of the order of five years or more – these people would probably not have died (without COVID-19) anytime soon.
Finally, assuming these deaths are not really due to COVID-19 sends the wrong message – that the social distancing measures to protect our elderly are not important, or that their lives are unimportant.
Nice find! Is there a direct link to the paper somewhere?
Interestingly, @rcs posted up a counterpiece to the Impedial Model by Nassim "Black Swan" Taleb and friends a while back which I really dissed as I didn't think the critique had any force at all. I was reassured to see the actuaries agree with me!! ("We also considered criticisms raised by Chen, Taleb, et al, and do not consider any of these to be material"...)
I can't find a direct link, but I guess keep watching Actuarial Post? If I see a link I'll PM it to you (if I remember).
I know a few people on the group, and may get involved myself if the day job clears up a bit (albeit it's not really my primary field). In the meantime, happy to continue to post links to stuff they publish if it looks to be of interest.
The summary I can see says:
There has been a great deal of comment and doubt, but little real debate, as to whether many of the COVID-19 deaths are really caused by COVID-19. Were they already ‘on death row’? Did they die ‘with’ but not ‘from’ COVID-19? The argument has been that many of the COVID-19 deaths are people of high age with existing medical conditions, and they would have died soon anyway.
We disagree. We think that the majority of COVID-19 deaths are deaths of people who would not have died anytime soon. We put forward our rationale in this bulletin. The data-driven argument is essentially:
(a) The COVID-19 deaths are concentrated at high ages, where existing conditions are common; (b) Life expectancy of such people, even with ‘worst case’ profiles (eg obese smokers), are of the order of five years or more – these people would probably not have died (without COVID-19) anytime soon.
Finally, assuming these deaths are not really due to COVID-19 sends the wrong message – that the social distancing measures to protect our elderly are not important, or that their lives are unimportant.
Daughter’s business got her grant today. Applied on Friday so impressively quick.
The wholesale price of green vegetables has gone up dramatically. She’s been selling a small box for £1.00 to those having deliveries and unable to get out. The cost has now gone up so much that she would now have to sell it for £5.30 on which she would make 20p. She’s only going to offer this to those who can’t get to Tesco’s etc and price it on the day.
Milk prices have shot up too. And eggs.
These sort of price increases are going to put pressure on people with no or little income.
Disgracefully, Asda and Sainsbury’s are selling meat from Poland instead of using the meat from local farmers.
Oh - and 41 sheep have gone missing from a farmer near Broughton.
UK number today was 20 odd out of 786 that didn't.
So that is less than 5%
At least a third of the population has an underlying condition recognised as a significamt co-morbidity. That’s a lot of people that are potentially at that level of heightened risk.
So keep them indoors until we find a vaccine or treatments improved and outside the peak everyone else ie at least 2/3 of the population, can get back to normal
So what do the family of those people do?
1 parent with a highly elevated risk, does their child go to school? Does their partner go to work. In practices it doesn't mean locking away a third of the population but most of it
Daughter’s business got her grant today. Applied on Friday so impressively quick.
The wholesale price of green vegetables has gone up dramatically. She’s been selling a small box for £1.00 to those having deliveries and unable to get out. The cost has now gone up so much that she would now have to sell it for £5.30 on which she would make 20p. She’s only going to offer this to those who can’t get to Tesco’s etc and price it on the day.
Milk prices have shot up too. And eggs.
These sort of price increases are going to put pressure on people with no or little income.
Disgracefully, Asda and Sainsbury’s are selling meat from Poland instead of using the meat from local farmers.
Oh - and 41 sheep have gone missing from a farmer near Broughton.
Daughter’s business got her grant today. Applied on Friday so impressively quick.
The wholesale price of green vegetables has gone up dramatically. She’s been selling a small box for £1.00 to those having deliveries and unable to get out. The cost has now gone up so much that she would now have to sell it for £5.30 on which she would make 20p. She’s only going to offer this to those who can’t get to Tesco’s etc and price it on the day.
Milk prices have shot up too. And eggs.
These sort of price increases are going to put pressure on people with no or little income.
Disgracefully, Asda and Sainsbury’s are selling meat from Poland instead of using the meat from local farmers.
Oh - and 41 sheep have gone missing from a farmer near Broughton.
And we will quite likely be in the midst of a depression
So what is the way out? Allow the virus to run loose through the population and accept the deaths as a necessary evil? Not sure that would be popular.
Austria and some other European countries are talking about a slow and phased re-emergence from lock down - Kurz talked about re-opening non-essential stores of less than 4,300 square feet from next Tuesday with all other stores to re-open from May 1st.
However, social distancing remains in place along with the mandatory wearing of face masks so presumably they have 9 million or so available.
I'm trying to imagine how we could do that in terms of businesses operating and social distancing on public transport.
I'm not convinced.
Somehow I dob't this will convince anyone, worshiping more power to the state seems to be the big things at the moment. but in Sweden, where there is no lock down seems to be platowing.
Average deaths over the last 3 days: 42 Average deaths over previous 3 days: 48
You may love/like the 'Lock down' to me Sweden indicates it has made little extra differences, people (especially those most at risk), will voluntary 'soshall distance' in sufficient numbers to have a simmiler effect without taking liberty way. We don't need a low to say you must where a coat in winter so you don't get hypothermia and overwhelm the heath system. people where coats to keep warm anyway.
UK number today was 20 odd out of 786 that didn't.
So that is less than 5%
At least a third of the population has an underlying condition recognised as a significamt co-morbidity. That’s a lot of people that are potentially at that level of heightened risk.
So keep them indoors until we find a vaccine or treatments improved and outside the peak everyone else ie at least 2/3 of the population, can get back to normal
So what do the family of those people do?
1 parent with a highly elevated risk, does their child go to school? Does their partner go to work. In practices it doesn't mean locking away a third of the population but most of it
Up to them but that scenario will only be a small minority, only once you get over 70 does the death rate even get over 5% and they will be retired with no school age children.
Daughter’s business got her grant today. Applied on Friday so impressively quick.
The wholesale price of green vegetables has gone up dramatically. She’s been selling a small box for £1.00 to those having deliveries and unable to get out. The cost has now gone up so much that she would now have to sell it for £5.30 on which she would make 20p. She’s only going to offer this to those who can’t get to Tesco’s etc and price it on the day.
Milk prices have shot up too. And eggs.
These sort of price increases are going to put pressure on people with no or little income.
Disgracefully, Asda and Sainsbury’s are selling meat from Poland instead of using the meat from local farmers.
Oh - and 41 sheep have gone missing from a farmer near Broughton.
I don't think sex work is particularly compatible with social distancing....so...just a theory on what's happened to the 41 sheep....
Unfortunately if whoever made that chart thinks there is only going to be one wave of the actual virus I would suspect they are in for a very nasty shock.
Daughter’s business got her grant today. Applied on Friday so impressively quick.
The wholesale price of green vegetables has gone up dramatically. She’s been selling a small box for £1.00 to those having deliveries and unable to get out. The cost has now gone up so much that she would now have to sell it for £5.30 on which she would make 20p. She’s only going to offer this to those who can’t get to Tesco’s etc and price it on the day.
Milk prices have shot up too. And eggs.
These sort of price increases are going to put pressure on people with no or little income.
Disgracefully, Asda and Sainsbury’s are selling meat from Poland instead of using the meat from local farmers.
Oh - and 41 sheep have gone missing from a farmer near Broughton.
Interesting - and congratulations for your daughter!
I wonder if that's the first straw in a hyperinflationary wind?
Comments
He's only the Prime Minister after all - primus inter pares.
The Tesco, Sainsbury, Waitrose, etc staff.
I'd like to chip in if there is.
Turns out the worst-case scenarios they investigated were indeed pretty bad, not just "obese smoker" but people in pretty bad nick with more like 1-3 years rather than 5 years remaining. Also interesting that only 12% of COVID deaths in the British ICU context were for patients with "severe" comorbidity. (Though the actuaries do note that people on death's door already may not have gone to ICU.)
They do also suggest the EuroMOMO analysis will be interesting (the people who do the fancy mortality surveillance with regression analysis etc, and look at date of death and age at death to detect unusual patterns, rather than rely on whatever it says on the final death certificate)
NOT IMPORTANT
Thousands are dying and they wibble about the intricacies of our constitution.
Peter Brookes always picked out Miliband's prominent front teeth to create a version which was both recognisably Miliband and recognisably Wallace from Wallace and Gromit. The nose was simply Wallace's honker. Steve Bell created "death ray panda" due to his rather distinctive eyes.
So Adams certainly didn't HAVE to pick out Miliband's nose, and arguably it emphasises his Jewishness in a way which is a little uncomfortable.
That said, the "antisemitism" Twitter pile-on is ridiculous. At worst, it's a poor artistic choice. There's nothing in the content which picks up on the various racist tropes about Jewish people - the particular cartoon just notes that Starmer has kicked out Corbynite election losers and brought in an earlier election loser, which is a legitimate satirical point (even if a bit unfair to Miliband... but what satire isn't a BIT unfair?)
Re bulbs:-
1. There are summer bulbs it is worth planting now: lilies and gladioli for instance.
2. For next spring, bulbs will start becoming available from late August/September so autumn is the time to start planting.
I buy my bulbs from JParkers: they have a fantastic selection and deliver.
I tend to plant later but that’s usually because there is still so much blooming in autumn that there is no space for the bulbs.
The general rule is to put daffodils and narcissi in during September/October and leave tulips until November to avoid “tulip fire” which they can get if put in too early. All other bulbs - allium, crocuses, iris, all the early spring bulbs etc - can go in during the autumn.
Whether in pots or the ground don’t forget to layer them ie put the bigger ones at the bottom and smaller ones on top in layers and then you get a succession of flowers from January through to May. Or you can go for all tulips in one pot or flowers of the same colour etc. Endless wonderful permutations.
Re preserving bulbs: if in pots once the flowers are spent and the leaves have died down, take them out, cut all the leaves off, brush the earth off and store them in a paper bag somewhere cool and dark and away from squirrels or mice. Throw away the old earth or put on a compost heap.
In the ground you can leave lots of bulbs and they will generally return. But not all do - some tulips are better than others. Snowdrops do; ditto bluebells. Daffodils can be temperamental.
But, honestly, I wouldn’t really bother: daffs often go blind and won’t reflower and some tulips are not so good at this. Plus the replacement cost is tiny.
Lilies do survive year after year in pots, though you do need to keep topping up the compost or replacing. For snowdrops try buying them now when they are in the green and planting now. More reliable than planting bulbs.
Some of my favourite bulbs are iris reticulata for early spring and the “Ballerina” tulip combined with purple allium. A magical combination.
Honestly who cares?
There are about 200 viruses under the header “the common cold”.
Most are rhinoviruses. I believe, from memory, about 10-20% of them are coronaviruses.
The key problem is finding a vaccine against 200 viruses simultaneously, when quite a few of them (I believe primarily the rhinoviruses?) mutate frequently.
It’s not comparable to finding a vaccine against one coronavirus.
The former seems potentially very problematic but worthy of debate. The latter seems like a complete non-issue. My understanding is that his defence is the latter. What am I missing?
I think you're phasing what you say with some degree of acknowledgement of this, but you really ought to say so.
The peak in deaths is expected to come between the 11 and 14 April, although between now and then, the number of deaths on any one day will stay relatively static between 700 and 900.
After this point, while the number of deaths in any one day will still be in their hundreds, the number will begin to decrease as the lockdown-enforced social distancing begins to slow the virus’ spread."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/07/uk-peak-coronavirus-deaths-expected-within-week-according-latest/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cartoon/2011/sep/27/edmiliband-labour-conference-2011
Ed Milliband has a nose with a slight hook. In a cartoon it will be a bigger hook. The alternatives to allowing cartoonists to exaggerate any subject's physical features do not bear considering.
Where there has been success, (in testing) South Korea, Taiwan, German, Iceland, its largely been because the prived sectur have been most able to get involved in the testing, where its been worse the USA and UK its been because Public Health England and (PHE) and Center for Disise Control (CDC) band anybody except themselves from doing testing.
In the early days Politicians everywhere seemed to think it was there 'duty' to calm everybody down, Trump was the worst, but they all did it.. where as what would have been best was for people to be a bit scared and to start to voluntary 'Soshall distance' in the very early days.
For those that disagree, (which may be almost everybody), don't worry, at the end of this the state will grow, more powers taken more liberty lost, more calls and power to the WHO or other global institutions, it does not matter how much they ballsed up they sill only benefit.
I am, naturally, eggstatic.
Remember the aftermath of the 'Skripal incident'. It took HMG two weeks to present 'conclusive evidence' of the pattern of movement of the alleged perpetrators. They may have had that evidence even earlier but hesitated to disclose the full scale of the surveillance state's capabilities. The state is already able to deploy that amount of surveillance on anyone, just not on everyone at the same time. In the current crisis we will have to trust our betters to do it for our own good.
I'd have shelled out more if I'd have known! (Less true thing)
At state level politics Wisconsin is so gerrymandered that the Dems would need to be 14 points ahead of the GOP to get a majority in the state legislator.
So while this seems like a massive own goal it will probably get them the Judgeship they crave.
It's all about fear - make people frightened enough and they'll agree to anything.
Fear allows us to acquiesce to the security state whether it's fear of terrorism or fear of a virus.
I suspect if we got frightened enough we'd vote away our democratic rights as well.
Professionals
Sweeney
One after the other on ITV4.
Edit: I see @another_richard has said this
Except on the motors.
Might be a psychological barrier when we drop below 1000? That's going to be a month maybe.
You can mix a spoon of natural yoghurt with a litre of UHT, and in the morning you have a litre of delicious natural yoghurt. Top tip.
Last 3 days:
615.3
3 days before that:
653.7
Thats a drop of 5.86% or about 2% a day.
Lots of caveats, the number on any day will not be a smooth representation of the curve, but its possible that we have already reached/passed the peek (i'm saying possible not defiant)
But the projection for Easter weekend to be the peek was largely based on the date of the 'lock down' and the calculation of average infection to death. but I would suggest that a lot of 'socall distancing' was being done voluntarily before that the lock down started. especially in the week before when the politicians stopped prioritizing reassuring the public and instead admitted this was serose.
"X caused Y" is a problematic statement if there's multicausality at play. For example, if any one (or even more confusingly, any two out of four in combination) of U, V, W and X can cause Y... then what can you say if all of U, V, W and X are true, and Y happens? You can't say X "caused" Y in a sine qua non sense, because if X hadn't happened then Y would still have happened... but you could apply the same logic to any of U, V and W too!
If one considers a hypothetical very poorly victim of COVID-19 (and heed the good actuaries' warning that this is not representative of all such deaths!) and performed an extremely thorough post mortem, identified all the bacteria and fungi and viruses that were infecting the lungs, identified all the medical conditions that had cumulatively weakened the immune system, identified the cancer(s) or degenerative condition(s) that would likely have finished the victim off in a matter of months anyway.... well in that sense, what would it even mean to say "COVID caused this death", at an individual level?
Whereas on the population level, a highly competent statistician with a sufficiently high-quality data set might crunch the numbers and conclude "the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in P people (95% confidence interval from Q to R) dying who would not otherwise have died" and even be able to break that figure down, up to a certain level of granularity, in terms of sex, age, ethnic group etc. Even if they can't pin down which individuals those actually were (after all, who knows whether the fit 40-year-old whose doctor would say he sadly died of COVID-19, would have - in the absence of the pandemic and accompanying lockdown - been run over by a bus on the way to work, and therefore shouldn't count as an "excess death" in the statistical sense?) there's an argument for this aggregate figure being more meaningful, in the everyday sense of the word "caused", as "deaths caused by COVID-19" than the figure you'd get from tallying the death certificates where COVID-19 is listed as the main cause.
1. Themselves. Their own self importance.
2. Making a meal out of politics where there is nothing to eat.
3. Trying to get experts to say something that makes politicians look like liars.
It could be they don’t vary the people they send. They send political reporters, but the health reporter, consumer journalist, etc may ask questions much more relevant to the public.
But it could be the old media days have passed. The new media can do better. Raab should say tomorrow “Peston your 6 questions masquerading as 1 question and 20 minutes you took to ask them now over. Next, Eagles - PB” and the nation will get a proper question. We could build it together, we could vote on which subject.
“Do you feel the lies out of China caused your government to be wrong footed at start of the campaign?”
“Care home staff have been left feeling like second class, can you detail your plans for the coming weeks that will relieve the pressures and difficulty on care homes?”
“When you sit down to watch die hard next Christmas, will you have Pineapple on your pizza? It’s a yes or no answer Foreign Secretary.”
Austria and some other European countries are talking about a slow and phased re-emergence from lock down - Kurz talked about re-opening non-essential stores of less than 4,300 square feet from next Tuesday with all other stores to re-open from May 1st.
However, social distancing remains in place along with the mandatory wearing of face masks so presumably they have 9 million or so available.
I'm trying to imagine how we could do that in terms of businesses operating and social distancing on public transport.
I'm not convinced.
https://twitter.com/RobDunsmore/status/1247585854626967553?s=20
We also get weekly fresh produce from Riverford and Abel & Cole although I don't think either are accepting new customers.
Yes it is true politicians don't like being asked any questions, and certainly not difficult ones. It doesn't follow that any question which provokes ire does so because the politician or their supporter does not want it asked, there are other possibilities.
It does depend on the question, every single time, if it is reasonable.
https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/1247600583894278145?s=20
....but it is particularly unseemly and in bad taste to wish one person well when so many countless thousands of others are dying, and going to die..
Hyfud...really needs to sort out his priorities.....seriously....
She is in a high risk category, and the current PM is in ICU, so I think on balance she’s glad she isn’t in that job now
The wholesale price of green vegetables has gone up dramatically. She’s been selling a small box for £1.00 to those having deliveries and unable to get out. The cost has now gone up so much that she would now have to sell it for £5.30 on which she would make 20p. She’s only going to offer this to those who can’t get to Tesco’s etc and price it on the day.
Milk prices have shot up too. And eggs.
These sort of price increases are going to put pressure on people with no or little income.
Disgracefully, Asda and Sainsbury’s are selling meat from Poland instead of using the meat from local farmers.
Oh - and 41 sheep have gone missing from a farmer near Broughton.
1 parent with a highly elevated risk, does their child go to school? Does their partner go to work. In practices it doesn't mean locking away a third of the population but most of it
Average deaths over the last 3 days: 42
Average deaths over previous 3 days: 48
You may love/like the 'Lock down' to me Sweden indicates it has made little extra differences, people (especially those most at risk), will voluntary 'soshall distance' in sufficient numbers to have a simmiler effect without taking liberty way. We don't need a low to say you must where a coat in winter so you don't get hypothermia and overwhelm the heath system. people where coats to keep warm anyway.
Everyone will want a round of applause for anything, and it will become politicised and divisive.
I wonder if that's the first straw in a hyperinflationary wind?
Apologies for the off topic flag btw