As I read the info, the self-employed don't need to do anything for their version of the furlough - if they appear eligible, HMRC will contact them "at the latest by June". Getting support to manage until then is clearly an issue, as is certainty as to whether you'll really get it or be tripped up by the fine print.
Help with the other issues is available online, but most of the help that people need (even "where do I start to look?" is being provided by County Councils and borough councils - as well as voluntary organisations like Age Concern.Here in Surrey it's working fairly well so far in terms of responsiveness, as far as I can tell, but the Government lists of severely vulnerable people to contact are coming through in dribs and drabs for reasons that we don't understand.
Our borough council staff are now systematically ringing everyone on the lists to ask what help they need, but it's a slow process with calls lasting half an hour on average, with 11 people doing the calls for 1200 residents. The worry is the people who don't answer the phone and are maybe sitting there wondering what to do. Our primary request is for anyone who knows anyone very vulneralbe who might be confused and uncertain, to put them in touch with the help agencies.
That's more information than I have seen in the MSM. But I would really like some actual detailed information on what is happening.
Well, this is what we've put up so far - maybe that will help? Your own council is likely to have something similar:
if you have a more detailed question I (and no doubt others) will try to respond. Obviously I can't guarantee that it will be precisely right for your situation and you will want to check, but we're all doing our best.
Well - kinabalu`s your man for this obviously - I`d say a bimbo is a person (not necessarily female) who is regarded extremely favourably sex-wise yet is not renowned for his/her intellect. So doesn`t HAVE to be blond.
I'm super keen to extract from this thread but as a last and IMO definitive word -
Vacuousness is key. Hair colour is irrelevant, so long as there is some. It's looks-wise rather than sex-wise. And it is usually a female specific term but, come to think of it, does not have to be.
How bizarre that so many leave voters don't get it. I can see no logical reason why a Brexit belief should produce such a differ
It's believed either we won't leave (which we already have, so often this really just means the next point), that any extension will be an excuse to trip us in some arrangements not to our benefit.
And for all the EU are tough negotiators, I just don't see that a delay is in their interests any more than ours, so one will only occur through genuine complexity holding it up, and of course the massive distraction that is Covid-19, so really is unlikely to affect the final outcome at all.
Journalist hall of shame today: benefitted from the absence of Peston and Rigby. Fair amount of foolishness but not the worst we’ve seen. Particular shame needs to be awarded to the guy from Channel 4 asking for a guarantee that employment wouldn’t hit 10%.
Unbelievable - since this started everyone thought hospital admissions were going up when they may not have been - because graph was misheaded!
Will any of the clever journalists spot this?
Not yet!
I think it may be more likely today's graph is mislabelled.
Here is Neil Ferguson on 30 March: "If we look at the number of new hospital admissions per day for instance, that does appear to be slowing down a little bit now. It's not yet plateaued, so the numbers can be increasing each day, but the rate of increase has slowed." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52087452
But no - I don't think 4k admissions per day in London and only 1250 in critical care makes sense.
Yeah - that makes me agree with @MikeL that it has been mislabelled previously. in particular, with that many new admissions per day how could the number of people in critical care (in London at least) be declining?
So that makes me wonder whether hospital admissions per day are still going up, or going down, or what.
Very notable relabeling of the graph today to show that what was previously shown as 'admissions' by day is actually total current patient numbers by day - suggests peak admissions happened a fair few days ago and the picture is rather brighter than the previous mislabeling suggested.
The mislabelling, and the fact that none of the journalists noticed it, is breathtaking.
But if people were being discharged, the rate of admissions isn't just equal to the slope of that graph, so I don't think we're in a position to know whether the rate of admissions has peaked.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
Oh not you as well. That is hardly the only complaint and you're not silly enough to believe it. Particularly when some suggestions have been made for other questions, which might also include ones the government woudl rather not have asked, not least the ones which are better worded.
Also since when did journalists ask the questions the public want asked? There's probably plenty of crossover, but I'm fairly confident they have always asked the questions they think the public should want asked rather than what they want asked. We might want some very silly questions asked, as the people's PMQs showed.
Unbelievable - since this started everyone thought hospital admissions were going up when they may not have been - because graph was misheaded!
Will any of the clever journalists spot this?
Not yet!
I think it may be more likely today's graph is mislabelled.
Here is Neil Ferguson on 30 March: "If we look at the number of new hospital admissions per day for instance, that does appear to be slowing down a little bit now. It's not yet plateaued, so the numbers can be increasing each day, but the rate of increase has slowed." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52087452
But no - I don't think 4k admissions per day in London and only 1250 in critical care makes sense.
Yeah - that makes me agree with @MikeL that it has been mislabelled previously. in particular, with that many new admissions per day how could the number of people in critical care (in London at least) be declining?
Unbelievable - since this started everyone thought hospital admissions were going up when they may not have been - because graph was misheaded!
Will any of the clever journalists spot this?
Not yet!
I think it may be more likely today's graph is mislabelled.
Here is Neil Ferguson on 30 March: "If we look at the number of new hospital admissions per day for instance, that does appear to be slowing down a little bit now. It's not yet plateaued, so the numbers can be increasing each day, but the rate of increase has slowed." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52087452
But no - I don't think 4k admissions per day in London and only 1250 in critical care makes sense.
Yeah - that makes me agree with @MikeL that it has been mislabelled previously. in particular, with that many new admissions per day how could the number of people in critical care (in London at least) be declining?
So that makes me wonder whether hospital admissions per day are still going up, or going down, or what.
Almost certainly admissions aren't going up as total in hospital is plateauing.
This is beyond unbelievable - on previous days they were talking about the situation plateauing when graph showed number of admissions still going up. It didn't make any sense at all.
Breathtaking that this mistake was made in the first place and that nobody spotted it.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Unbelievable - since this started everyone thought hospital admissions were going up when they may not have been - because graph was misheaded!
Will any of the clever journalists spot this?
Not yet!
I think it may be more likely today's graph is mislabelled.
Here is Neil Ferguson on 30 March: "If we look at the number of new hospital admissions per day for instance, that does appear to be slowing down a little bit now. It's not yet plateaued, so the numbers can be increasing each day, but the rate of increase has slowed." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52087452
But no - I don't think 4k admissions per day in London and only 1250 in critical care makes sense.
Yeah - that makes me agree with @MikeL that it has been mislabelled previously. in particular, with that many new admissions per day how could the number of people in critical care (in London at least) be declining?
So that makes me wonder whether hospital admissions per day are still going up, or going down, or what.
Almost certainly admissions aren't going up as total in hospital is plateauing.
This is beyond unbelievable - on previous days they were talking about the situation plateauing when graph showed number of admissions still going up. It didn't make any sense at all.
Breathtaking that this mistake was made in the first place and that nobody spotted it.
Even more pathetic (and unsurprising) that none of the journalists seemed to twig in the slightest - rather like when the numbers went absolutely down a few days back and they didn't notice. Unfortunately English grads with Bs and Cs at GCSE maths are being pushed out of their comfort zone.
And her remark was idiotic. Just as many remarks by Burgon, or Francois, or Extinction Rebellion are idiotic. But I can criticise Burgon and Francois (and very often do) without resorting to comments about their appearance.
OK. I need to explain myself. You must have noticed that a disproportionate number of the women who end up in the Trump universe have this hyper-feminized Stepford appearance. So I'm using the word "bimbo" very precisely to describe the combination of that "Trumpy" look (for a woman) plus a certain vacuousness, based on the clip. Let me off?
Hmmm.
While there may well be something in Trump’s desire for women who are (a) decorative and (b) not an intellectual threat to him, I would suggest this was a poor choice of word. Not only is it designed to be offensive, but it carries overtones of sexual promiscuity as well.
Maybe. But what would be the appropriate word for a person who was decorative but not overbright, (a) male and (b) female? The concept exists.
Himbo was introduced as a male alternative.
I think bimbo has been applied to males on occasion. I may be retrofitting but I'm sure John Moore (deservedly) had it attached to him.
There are lower numbers of deaths in warmer winters, that's a given.
Oh, look! The four lines that take a dip from Jan to March just happen to be the warmest winters of the past decade!
C.E.T (Central England Temperature for the months of Dec/Jan/Feb - Dec from the previous year, as it impacts through to March or later)
2020 – 6.17 (Black line -2% by end of March) 2019 – 5.87 (Yellow line -2% by end of March) 2018 – 4.33 2017 – 5.37 2016 – 6.67 (Green line -1.5% by end of March) 2015 – 4.53 2014 – 6.07 (Broken Yellow line -2% by the end of March) 2013 – 3.83 2012 – 5.07 2011 – 3.13 2010 – 2.43
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
I don’t think the complaint is that the questions are anti government (not largely, anyway). It’s more that they’re beyond repetitive, often ludicrous and require commitments to dates, timings and events that cannot possibly be committed to at this stage (as repeated often by the experts and the government advisors).
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
Oh not you as well. That is hardly the only complaint and you're not silly enough to believe it. Particularly when some suggestions have been made for other questions, which might also include ones the government woudl rather not have asked, not least the ones which are better worded.
Also since when did journalists ask the questions the public want asked? There's probably plenty of crossover, but I'm fairly confident they have always asked the questions they think the public should want asked rather than what they want asked. We might want some very silly questions asked, as the people's PMQs showed.
The general thrust of the complaints is that the journalists are not asking educated enough questions. Outside the readership of the New Scientist, the public aren’t going to want educated questions. They’re going to want the answers to uneducated questions like: Where is the Prime Minister and who is running the country? When can I sunbathe again? Just how screwed are we, medically and economically? Are medical professionals getting the resources they need?
So far as I can see, the journalists are asking questions much like that.
Not quite as good as yesterday's numbers, but still very encouraging. In particular, total tests exceeded 50,000 for the first time - which is an astonishing step up from about 6,000 when I started doing this. (Amazing to think that a month ago Italy did around 4,000 tests, of which half were positive.)
The overall positive rate was just 7%, a new low.
Overall, 3,836 new cases, so a drop of 20% compared to the same day last week (while number of tests rose by about 30%).
My call is for active cases to start declining by week end and for fewer than 2,500 daily new cases by Sunday.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
I don’t think the complaint is that the questions are anti government (not largely, anyway). It’s more that they’re beyond repetitive, often ludicrous and require commitments to dates, timings and events that cannot possibly be committed to at this stage (as repeated often by the experts and the government advisors).
My complaint is actually that they were mostly easy to answer questions -
- Will you speculate on the time the lockdown ends? Answer: No. - Will you speculate on the time the the schools will go back? Answer: No. - Will you speculate on the the amount the furlough scheme will cost? Answer: No.
Unbelievable - since this started everyone thought hospital admissions were going up when they may not have been - because graph was misheaded!
Will any of the clever journalists spot this?
Not yet!
I think it may be more likely today's graph is mislabelled.
Here is Neil Ferguson on 30 March: "If we look at the number of new hospital admissions per day for instance, that does appear to be slowing down a little bit now. It's not yet plateaued, so the numbers can be increasing each day, but the rate of increase has slowed." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52087452
But no - I don't think 4k admissions per day in London and only 1250 in critical care makes sense.
Yeah - that makes me agree with @MikeL that it has been mislabelled previously. in particular, with that many new admissions per day how could the number of people in critical care (in London at least) be declining?
So that makes me wonder whether hospital admissions per day are still going up, or going down, or what.
Almost certainly admissions aren't going up as total in hospital is plateauing.
This is beyond unbelievable - on previous days they were talking about the situation plateauing when graph showed number of admissions still going up. It didn't make any sense at all.
Breathtaking that this mistake was made in the first place and that nobody spotted it.
So do we think that when they said "hospital admissions went up by only 2%" they could have said that hospital admissions per day actually went down?
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
Oh not you as well. That is hardly the only complaint and you're not silly enough to believe it. Particularly when some suggestions have been made for other questions, which might also include ones the government woudl rather not have asked, not least the ones which are better worded.
Also since when did journalists ask the questions the public want asked? There's probably plenty of crossover, but I'm fairly confident they have always asked the questions they think the public should want asked rather than what they want asked. We might want some very silly questions asked, as the people's PMQs showed.
Meeks has a bout of BDS periodically - it's a very stubborn condition for which there is no cure. Sadly when triggered it affects everything he writes.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
I do not have a problem with any critical question that is not idiotic or designed as a gotcha moment
From a friend of mine on whether this was an engineered virus:
'If anyone tries to tell you that COVID-19 was, or could have been, made in a lab there's a fairly straightforward reason why this can't be true.
We can "make" viruses in a lab, including modifying their genetic code. through techniques like CRISPR. We can also determine the full genetic code for existing viruses. So we have the capacity to make a new virus.
What we can't do is model the effect of that virus without releasing it into the wild. There are too many different factors that make a successful virus; species it originates in and species to species transmission plus transmission within a species, lethality, infectiousness (the R0 factor), vectors of transmission and so on. We have very little understanding of how the genetic code relates directly to all those different aspects of behaviour. So we could make a new virus, but what it would do would be a complete mystery.
Nature solves this problem by trying thousands and millions of variants. Most variations either don't work or are effectively the same. But if you try millions eventually you'll find a new "good one".'
ukpaul: what's his agenda? I haven't got time to work it out.
He says himself he's obsessed with death rates (something to do with pensions I think). I guess that he's focused on that than the wider picture. I looked at that and thought (being weather obsessed!) that there was a massive correlation there. Maybe focus rather than agenda,
Unbelievable - since this started everyone thought hospital admissions were going up when they may not have been - because graph was misheaded!
Will any of the clever journalists spot this?
Not yet!
I think it may be more likely today's graph is mislabelled.
Here is Neil Ferguson on 30 March: "If we look at the number of new hospital admissions per day for instance, that does appear to be slowing down a little bit now. It's not yet plateaued, so the numbers can be increasing each day, but the rate of increase has slowed." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52087452
But no - I don't think 4k admissions per day in London and only 1250 in critical care makes sense.
Yeah - that makes me agree with @MikeL that it has been mislabelled previously. in particular, with that many new admissions per day how could the number of people in critical care (in London at least) be declining?
So that makes me wonder whether hospital admissions per day are still going up, or going down, or what.
Almost certainly admissions aren't going up as total in hospital is plateauing.
This is beyond unbelievable - on previous days they were talking about the situation plateauing when graph showed number of admissions still going up. It didn't make any sense at all.
Breathtaking that this mistake was made in the first place and that nobody spotted it.
So do we think that when they said "hospital admissions went up by only 2%" they could have said that hospital admissions per day actually went down?
I can easily imagine that for the civil servants running these data sets, working with them everyday, 'admissions' is an inherantly cumulative term and the more natural understanding of it did not occur them given their daily use of it in a different sense.
Very notable relabeling of the graph today to show that what was previously shown as 'admissions' by day is actually total current patient numbers by day - suggests peak admissions happened a fair few days ago and the picture is rather brighter than the previous mislabeling suggested.
The figures in my patch are: As of midnight last night 149 confirmed inpatients (and a similar number unconfirmed) 143 discharged treated, 62 dead. A week ago it was 122 inpatients, 54 discharged, 22 dead (31/3/20).
We are one of the less severely affected parts of the country.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
Oh not you as well. That is hardly the only complaint and you're not silly enough to believe it. Particularly when some suggestions have been made for other questions, which might also include ones the government woudl rather not have asked, not least the ones which are better worded.
Also since when did journalists ask the questions the public want asked? There's probably plenty of crossover, but I'm fairly confident they have always asked the questions they think the public should want asked rather than what they want asked. We might want some very silly questions asked, as the people's PMQs showed.
The general thrust of the complaints is that the journalists are not asking educated enough questions. Outside the readership of the New Scientist, the public aren’t going to want educated questions. They’re going to want the answers to uneducated questions like: Where is the Prime Minister and who is running the country? When can I sunbathe again? Just how screwed are we, medically and economically? Are medical professionals getting the resources they need?
So far as I can see, the journalists are asking questions much like that.
Better questions
1) What is constraining the number of tests? 2) What is the next constraint behind that? i.e. when you fix that one, what will be the next limit. 3) How many labs are now involved in testing? What is their capacity? 4) Is there still a reagent shortage? 5) What about the report that NHE is not cooperating with the private labs?
etc....
Ask for facts. If you ask someone to speculate they can simply say no. And did...
Unbelievable - since this started everyone thought hospital admissions were going up when they may not have been - because graph was misheaded!
Will any of the clever journalists spot this?
Not yet!
I think it may be more likely today's graph is mislabelled.
Here is Neil Ferguson on 30 March: "If we look at the number of new hospital admissions per day for instance, that does appear to be slowing down a little bit now. It's not yet plateaued, so the numbers can be increasing each day, but the rate of increase has slowed." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52087452
But no - I don't think 4k admissions per day in London and only 1250 in critical care makes sense.
Yeah - that makes me agree with @MikeL that it has been mislabelled previously. in particular, with that many new admissions per day how could the number of people in critical care (in London at least) be declining?
So that makes me wonder whether hospital admissions per day are still going up, or going down, or what.
Almost certainly admissions aren't going up as total in hospital is plateauing.
This is beyond unbelievable - on previous days they were talking about the situation plateauing when graph showed number of admissions still going up. It didn't make any sense at all.
Breathtaking that this mistake was made in the first place and that nobody spotted it.
So do we think that when they said "hospital admissions went up by only 2%" they could have said that hospital admissions per day actually went down?
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
From a friend of mine on whether this was an engineered virus:
'If anyone tries to tell you that COVID-19 was, or could have been, made in a lab there's a fairly straightforward reason why this can't be true.
We can "make" viruses in a lab, including modifying their genetic code. through techniques like CRISPR. We can also determine the full genetic code for existing viruses. So we have the capacity to make a new virus.
What we can't do is model the effect of that virus without releasing it into the wild. There are too many different factors that make a successful virus; species it originates in and species to species transmission plus transmission within a species, lethality, infectiousness (the R0 factor), vectors of transmission and so on. We have very little understanding of how the genetic code relates directly to all those different aspects of behaviour. So we could make a new virus, but what it would do would be a complete mystery.
Nature solves this problem by trying thousands and millions of variants. Most variations either don't work or are effectively the same. But if you try millions eventually you'll find a new "good one".'
Which is why in all techo-thrillers that discuss this kind of thing, there is a test release or experiment.
An interesting thought in my opinion: until about 50 years ago there were very few elderly people in the world, and very few people with conditions such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc, (which is of course heavily correlated with the fact that there weren't many elderly people). That means that if this virus had spread around the world 50 years ago or earlier, it wouldn't have had much impact on the global population. (Admittedly not a very helpful observation in present circumstances).
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
Oh not you as well. That is hardly the only complaint and you're not silly enough to believe it. Particularly when some suggestions have been made for other questions, which might also include ones the government woudl rather not have asked, not least the ones which are better worded.
Also since when did journalists ask the questions the public want asked? There's probably plenty of crossover, but I'm fairly confident they have always asked the questions they think the public should want asked rather than what they want asked. We might want some very silly questions asked, as the people's PMQs showed.
The general thrust of the complaints is that the journalists are not asking educated enough questions. Outside the readership of the New Scientist, the public aren’t going to want educated questions. They’re going to want the answers to uneducated questions like: Where is the Prime Minister and who is running the country? When can I sunbathe again? Just how screwed are we, medically and economically? Are medical professionals getting the resources they need?
So far as I can see, the journalists are asking questions much like that.
Better questions
1) What is constraining the number of tests? 2) What is the next constraint behind that? i.e. when you fix that one, what will be the next limit. 3) How many labs are now involved in testing? What is their capacity? 4) Is there still a reagent shortage? 5) What about the report that NHE is not cooperating with the private labs?
etc....
Ask for facts. If you ask someone to speculate they can simply say no. And did...
Since you have already confessed that you defended Piers Morgan’s attackers without troubling to see who they were, I don’t think you can really give lectures on attention to detail.
Unbelievable - since this started everyone thought hospital admissions were going up when they may not have been - because graph was misheaded!
Will any of the clever journalists spot this?
Not yet!
I think it may be more likely today's graph is mislabelled.
Here is Neil Ferguson on 30 March: "If we look at the number of new hospital admissions per day for instance, that does appear to be slowing down a little bit now. It's not yet plateaued, so the numbers can be increasing each day, but the rate of increase has slowed." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52087452
But no - I don't think 4k admissions per day in London and only 1250 in critical care makes sense.
Yeah - that makes me agree with @MikeL that it has been mislabelled previously. in particular, with that many new admissions per day how could the number of people in critical care (in London at least) be declining?
So that makes me wonder whether hospital admissions per day are still going up, or going down, or what.
Almost certainly admissions aren't going up as total in hospital is plateauing.
This is beyond unbelievable - on previous days they were talking about the situation plateauing when graph showed number of admissions still going up. It didn't make any sense at all.
Breathtaking that this mistake was made in the first place and that nobody spotted it.
So do we think that when they said "hospital admissions went up by only 2%" they could have said that hospital admissions per day actually went down?
I can easily imagine that for the civil servants running these data sets, working with them everyday, 'admissions' is an inherantly cumulative term and the more natural understanding of it did not occur them given their daily use of it in a different sense.
Even if so, it shouldn't have been described as admissions, but admissions minus discharges and deaths.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
Oh not you as well. That is hardly the only complaint and you're not silly enough to believe it. Particularly when some suggestions have been made for other questions, which might also include ones the government woudl rather not have asked, not least the ones which are better worded.
Also since when did journalists ask the questions the public want asked? There's probably plenty of crossover, but I'm fairly confident they have always asked the questions they think the public should want asked rather than what they want asked. We might want some very silly questions asked, as the people's PMQs showed.
The general thrust of the complaints is that the journalists are not asking educated enough questions. Outside the readership of the New Scientist, the public aren’t going to want educated questions. They’re going to want the answers to uneducated questions like: Where is the Prime Minister and who is running the country? When can I sunbathe again? Just how screwed are we, medically and economically? Are medical professionals getting the resources they need?
So far as I can see, the journalists are asking questions much like that.
Better questions
1) What is constraining the number of tests? 2) What is the next constraint behind that? i.e. when you fix that one, what will be the next limit. 3) How many labs are now involved in testing? What is their capacity? 4) Is there still a reagent shortage? 5) What about the report that NHE is not cooperating with the private labs?
etc....
Ask for facts. If you ask someone to speculate they can simply say no. And did...
Since you have already confessed that you defended Piers Morgan’s attackers without troubling to see who they were, I don’t think you can really give lectures on attention to detail.
I didn't defend Piers Morgan's attackers. I pointed out that they were not the sum of those criticising Piers Morgan. And that Twitter mobs are, by definition, garbage.
Unbelievable - since this started everyone thought hospital admissions were going up when they may not have been - because graph was misheaded!
Will any of the clever journalists spot this?
Not yet!
I think it may be more likely today's graph is mislabelled.
Here is Neil Ferguson on 30 March: "If we look at the number of new hospital admissions per day for instance, that does appear to be slowing down a little bit now. It's not yet plateaued, so the numbers can be increasing each day, but the rate of increase has slowed." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52087452
But no - I don't think 4k admissions per day in London and only 1250 in critical care makes sense.
Yeah - that makes me agree with @MikeL that it has been mislabelled previously. in particular, with that many new admissions per day how could the number of people in critical care (in London at least) be declining?
So that makes me wonder whether hospital admissions per day are still going up, or going down, or what.
Almost certainly admissions aren't going up as total in hospital is plateauing.
This is beyond unbelievable - on previous days they were talking about the situation plateauing when graph showed number of admissions still going up. It didn't make any sense at all.
Breathtaking that this mistake was made in the first place and that nobody spotted it.
So do we think that when they said "hospital admissions went up by only 2%" they could have said that hospital admissions per day actually went down?
I can easily imagine that for the civil servants running these data sets, working with them everyday, 'admissions' is an inherantly cumulative term and the more natural understanding of it did not occur them given their daily use of it in a different sense.
Even if so, it shouldn't have been described as admissions, but admissions minus discharges and deaths.
Same point, Civil servants could easily, if they use these stats everyday as standard work jargon, see the word admissions and read what anyone else would call 'currently admitted patients.
R5L inundated with texts from people who don't want endless questions asking for speculation about when the lockdown will end. Both presenters gobsmacked needless to say.
Unbelievable - since this started everyone thought hospital admissions were going up when they may not have been - because graph was misheaded!
Will any of the clever journalists spot this?
Not yet!
I think it may be more likely today's graph is mislabelled.
Here is Neil Ferguson on 30 March: "If we look at the number of new hospital admissions per day for instance, that does appear to be slowing down a little bit now. It's not yet plateaued, so the numbers can be increasing each day, but the rate of increase has slowed." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52087452
But no - I don't think 4k admissions per day in London and only 1250 in critical care makes sense.
Yeah - that makes me agree with @MikeL that it has been mislabelled previously. in particular, with that many new admissions per day how could the number of people in critical care (in London at least) be declining?
So that makes me wonder whether hospital admissions per day are still going up, or going down, or what.
Almost certainly admissions aren't going up as total in hospital is plateauing.
This is beyond unbelievable - on previous days they were talking about the situation plateauing when graph showed number of admissions still going up. It didn't make any sense at all.
Breathtaking that this mistake was made in the first place and that nobody spotted it.
So do we think that when they said "hospital admissions went up by only 2%" they could have said that hospital admissions per day actually went down?
I can easily imagine that for the civil servants running these data sets, working with them everyday, 'admissions' is an inherantly cumulative term and the more natural understanding of it did not occur them given their daily use of it in a different sense.
Even if so, it shouldn't have been described as admissions, but admissions minus discharges and deaths.
I think there is a usage "people in hospital who have been admitted". The alternative sort of patient probably being a casualty.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Ha. The simple truth is that any speculative number put out there will be converted into a promise within seconds. So "it might be another month. It might be two" would become "LOCKDOWN WILL LAST 2! MONTHS!"
Basic comms stuff.
Ask for actual numbers that exist. How many ventilators does the NHS have available for use? How many are in use?
R5L inundated with texts from people who don't want endless questions asking for speculation about when the lockdown will end. Both presenters gobsmacked needless to say.
An interesting thought in my opinion: until about 50 years ago there were very few elderly people in the world, and very few people with conditions such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc, (which is of course heavily correlated with the fact that there weren't many elderly people). That means that if this virus had spread around the world 50 years ago or earlier, it wouldn't have had much impact on the global population. (Admittedly not a very helpful observation in present circumstances).
Although the state of health of those in their 40s and 50s was probably similar to the average state of health of those in their 60s and 70s now. Not least because every bugger and their dog smoked.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
This is an absolutely crucial pillar of where we go from here. Without the government putting in place this, we can't escape lockdown without huge risks of a potential set of deadly waves of this disease.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Go have a lie down Alastair. You are losing it again. Try the dried frog pills.
An interesting thought in my opinion: until about 50 years ago there were very few elderly people in the world, and very few people with conditions such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc, (which is of course heavily correlated with the fact that there weren't many elderly people). That means that if this virus had spread around the world 50 years ago or earlier, it wouldn't have had much impact on the global population. (Admittedly not a very helpful observation in present circumstances).
Although the state of health of those in their 40s and 50s was probably similar to the average state of health of those in their 60s and 70s now. Not least because every bugger and their dog smoked.
Obesity, diabetes, heart disease have all advanced exponentially since then.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
So you don’t think it’s of interest to the public who governs Britain just now? Right...
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
Good.
Further - Was any consideration or update to the plan based on the use of technology to increase capabilities in the field - phone apps, GPS tracking, cell tower tracking, rapid response field tests (as opposed to lab based tests)?
Future - a commitment that future modelling should use tested, documented and reviewed software?
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
So you don’t think it’s of interest to the public who governs Britain just now? Right...
They don't need to ask this 27 different ways, 3 days running.
And have you seen one of them asked a similar type of question to one I have raised i.e. where somebody has done a bit of reading.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
So you don’t think it’s of interest to the public who governs Britain just now? Right...
They don't need to ask this 27 different ways, 3 days running.
More that the answer can simply be the same each time. "Boris is on the bench and being temporarily sub'd. Next".
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
So you don’t think it’s of interest to the public who governs Britain just now? Right...
They don't need to ask this 27 different ways, 3 days running.
They do when they don’t get any coherent answer.
By the way, your questions suck big hairy balls by comparison. I’m sure they are fascinating to the 5% of geeks who understand the question, never mind the non-answer they’d get, but most people are going to want to know instead when they are going back to work.
An interesting thought in my opinion: until about 50 years ago there were very few elderly people in the world, and very few people with conditions such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc, (which is of course heavily correlated with the fact that there weren't many elderly people). That means that if this virus had spread around the world 50 years ago or earlier, it wouldn't have had much impact on the global population. (Admittedly not a very helpful observation in present circumstances).
How good at (and well equipped for) intubating and ventilating were we then? How were levels of city air pollution then relative to now? What about smoking?
Unbelievable - since this started everyone thought hospital admissions were going up when they may not have been - because graph was misheaded!
Will any of the clever journalists spot this?
Not yet!
I think it may be more likely today's graph is mislabelled.
Here is Neil Ferguson on 30 March: "If we look at the number of new hospital admissions per day for instance, that does appear to be slowing down a little bit now. It's not yet plateaued, so the numbers can be increasing each day, but the rate of increase has slowed." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52087452
But no - I don't think 4k admissions per day in London and only 1250 in critical care makes sense.
Yeah - that makes me agree with @MikeL that it has been mislabelled previously. in particular, with that many new admissions per day how could the number of people in critical care (in London at least) be declining?
So that makes me wonder whether hospital admissions per day are still going up, or going down, or what.
Almost certainly admissions aren't going up as total in hospital is plateauing.
This is beyond unbelievable - on previous days they were talking about the situation plateauing when graph showed number of admissions still going up. It didn't make any sense at all.
Breathtaking that this mistake was made in the first place and that nobody spotted it.
So do we think that when they said "hospital admissions went up by only 2%" they could have said that hospital admissions per day actually went down?
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
So you don’t think it’s of interest to the public who governs Britain just now? Right...
They don't need to ask this 27 different ways, 3 days running.
They do when they don’t get any coherent answer.
By the way, your questions suck big hairy balls by comparison. I’m sure they are fascinating to the 5% of geeks who understand the question, never mind the non-answer they’d get, but most people are going to want to know instead when they are going back to work.
Which will endlessly be batted back -
"We haven't made the decision yet. We haven't reached the point of making that decision. The next review is on date X. Next"
As it is the press conferences are a stately game of pat-ball.
How bizarre that so many leave voters don't get it. I can see no logical reason why a Brexit belief should produce such a diffe
I can see "logical" reasons why there'd be a difference once you accept they see the world from different perspectives; even if you don't agree with the viewpoint I don't think it inexplicable or incomprehensible.
Brexit proponents and opponents have always differed in their expectations as to how harmful/disruptive leaving the EU would be, so it's unsurprising there's a gap about ending Transition too.
Related to that, would you rate the following beliefs as more likely among Leavers or Remainers? Bear in mind Leavers are a heterogeneous group so possibly few would subscribe to all of the following, but I suspect each individual statement is more widely held among Leavers than Remainers:
(a) A deal is not particularly necessary, WTO terms are fine, harms of leaving without a deal are overblown, (b) A deal is relatively straightforward so the chances of leaving without a deal are overblown (eg belief in UK leverage or that a "simple" deal is better); still a chance of getting that negotiated on time, no need to panic yet, (c) What matters most now is certainty, uncertainty is doing more harm than Brexit itself as it leaves firms unable to adjust - let's sort this out ASAP one way or the other to avoid ongoing Brexit uncertainty on top of all the COVID uncertainty.
There's also a big perspective issue that divides Leavers and Remainers in terms of how likely they are to trust politicians with an extension. Leavers have experienced a referendum victory that politicians of many stripes, even at one point the Lib Dem leadership, promised to respect and enact. Then for years they've had politicians about-face on this, belittle Leavers' values, beliefs and intelligence, and try to reverse the result. Politicians who did promise to deliver on Brexit have repeatedly ended up delaying it and dragged the process out long enough that it's revived hope among the more extreme Remainers that the game is still in play. There's a feeling some Leavers have that during Transition we "haven't really left yet" and there is still the odd gobby Remainer arguing that Transition should end with the UK rejoining the EU under emergency COVID provisions...
If a Leaver argues "firstly this has gone on long enough now, and secondly, every time we've had an extension it's been used as an excuse by politicians - even ones who have promised they wouldn't do this - as yet another opportunity to try to cancel Brexit or bounce us into BRINO" then I think that's both understandable and even (in a self-consistent way) rational. You could counter-argue "look, you've got it in the bag already, the UK flag no longer flies at EU HQ, it's over, you won, this is just about getting the deal and nothing else" and that's a very strong argument factually, but if they retort "no, look, we've seen what politicians have said before and what's happened after, I'd either have to be mad or far too trusting to fall for that one" then that position has a kind of "emotional rationality"?
Here's a report of what was said on 30 March: "Sir Patrick Vallance told the government’s latest covid-19 briefing today the total of hospital admissions which had tested positive for the virus had risen form 6,200 on Friday to 9,000 on Monday. He said: “I do expect that number to continue. I expect the number of people coming every day to be about that [1,000-a-day]. It may go up a little bit and then, in two or three weeks, you would expect that to stabilise and then start to go down a bit. But it’s important [to say] that’s not a rapid acceleration.”" https://www.hsj.co.uk/covid-19-admissions-predicted-to-rise-by-1000-a-day/7027272.article
It really is difficult to make sense of. Is 1000-a-day daily admissions, or daily admissions minus daily discharges and daily deaths? Has the journalist misunderstood the confusing presentation of data, and assumed Vallance meant "people coming" would be one third of the change between 6200 and 9000? Maybe Vallance had a higher figure in mind, allowing for discharges and deaths?
Wouldn't it be nice just to have a clear presentation of what the numbers and the expectations really are?
Unbelievable - since this started everyone thought hospital admissions were going up when they may not have been - because graph was misheaded!
Will any of the clever journalists spot this?
Not yet!
I think it may be more likely today's graph is mislabelled.
Here is Neil Ferguson on 30 March: "If we look at the number of new hospital admissions per day for instance, that does appear to be slowing down a little bit now. It's not yet plateaued, so the numbers can be increasing each day, but the rate of increase has slowed." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52087452
But no - I don't think 4k admissions per day in London and only 1250 in critical care makes sense.
Yeah - that makes me agree with @MikeL that it has been mislabelled previously. in particular, with that many new admissions per day how could the number of people in critical care (in London at least) be declining?
So that makes me wonder whether hospital admissions per day are still going up, or going down, or what.
Almost certainly admissions aren't going up as total in hospital is plateauing.
This is beyond unbelievable - on previous days they were talking about the situation plateauing when graph showed number of admissions still going up. It didn't make any sense at all.
Breathtaking that this mistake was made in the first place and that nobody spotted it.
You think it is breathtaking that our journalists didn't spot it.....? Really?
Here's a report of what was said on 30 March: "Sir Patrick Vallance told the government’s latest covid-19 briefing today the total of hospital admissions which had tested positive for the virus had risen form 6,200 on Friday to 9,000 on Monday. He said: “I do expect that number to continue. I expect the number of people coming every day to be about that [1,000-a-day]. It may go up a little bit and then, in two or three weeks, you would expect that to stabilise and then start to go down a bit. But it’s important [to say] that’s not a rapid acceleration.”" https://www.hsj.co.uk/covid-19-admissions-predicted-to-rise-by-1000-a-day/7027272.article
It really is difficult to make sense of. Is 1000-a-day daily admissions, or daily admissions minus daily discharges and daily deaths? Has the journalist misunderstood the confusing presentation of data, and assumed Vallance meant "people coming" would be one third of the change between 6200 and 9000? Maybe Vallance had a higher figure in mind, allowing for discharges and deaths?
Wouldn't it be nice just to have a clear presentation of what the numbers and the expectations really are?
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
So you don’t think it’s of interest to the public who governs Britain just now? Right...
They don't need to ask this 27 different ways, 3 days running.
They do when they don’t get any coherent answer.
By the way, your questions suck big hairy balls by comparison. I’m sure they are fascinating to the 5% of geeks who understand the question, never mind the non-answer they’d get, but most people are going to want to know instead when they are going back to work.
Which will endlessly be batted back -
"We haven't made the decision yet. We haven't reached the point of making that decision. The next review is on date X. Next"
As it is the press conferences are a stately game of pat-ball.
So instead you ask questions best suited for the Inquiry that will inevitably follow this and that have no real world significance for 99% of the public? Barking.
A large part of the public wants an answer to this question. That part will only grow with every week that the economy and people’s lives are shut down.
Not sure if this curious incident has been discussed on PB, but note that that Trumpsky has yet another new Acting Secretary of the Navy.
Because the previous Actor just went splat.
First, in concert with his Fearless Leader, he removed commander of USS Theodore Roosevelt for his comments (in a letter leaked to press) regarding the Covid-19 threat to his crew. Trumpsky backed him to the hilt, including typical crude abuse of the fired commanding officer.
The crew of the TR reacted differently - by cheering their former captain as he left the ship.
Next, the Actor flew all the way to Guam so he could lambast the crew and further insult the captain - who by this time had been diagnosed as having contracted the Crud.
However, by this time, the White House was clearly getting a LOT of negative feedback. Not just from the usual suspects (congressional Democrats) or even congressional Republican, but most importantly from US Navy officers, sailors and veterans, including many many hittherto pro-Trumpers.
So Trumpsky began to hedge his bets - and the Actor was forced to walk the plank.
Yet another great moment in the annals of Putinism!
An interesting thought in my opinion: until about 50 years ago there were very few elderly people in the world, and very few people with conditions such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc, (which is of course heavily correlated with the fact that there weren't many elderly people). That means that if this virus had spread around the world 50 years ago or earlier, it wouldn't have had much impact on the global population. (Admittedly not a very helpful observation in present circumstances).
How good at (and well equipped for) intubating and ventilating were we then? How were levels of city air pollution then relative to now? What about smoking?
Let's go fly a kite Up to the highest height Let's go fly a kite and send it soaring Up through the atmosphere Up where the air is clear
Mary Poppins was very much the Greta Thunberg of her day!
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
So you don’t think it’s of interest to the public who governs Britain just now? Right...
They don't need to ask this 27 different ways, 3 days running.
They do when they don’t get any coherent answer.
By the way, your questions suck big hairy balls by comparison. I’m sure they are fascinating to the 5% of geeks who understand the question, never mind the non-answer they’d get, but most people are going to want to know instead when they are going back to work.
Which will endlessly be batted back -
"We haven't made the decision yet. We haven't reached the point of making that decision. The next review is on date X. Next"
As it is the press conferences are a stately game of pat-ball.
So instead you ask questions best suited for the Inquiry that will inevitably follow this and that have no real world significance for 99% of the public? Barking.
A large part of the public wants an answer to this question. That part will only grow with every week that the economy and people’s lives are shut down.
So you can ask the same question every day. And get the same answer. Until they announce.....
Would asking how many people are on the furlough scheme, and how much has been spent so far be such a terrible thing?
Note that the FT guy who asked about the scheme put it in terms of asking about forecasts and projections - which turned it into a question about speculation. Which got turned into an answer of "I'm not speculating".
Here's a report of what was said on 30 March: "Sir Patrick Vallance told the government’s latest covid-19 briefing today the total of hospital admissions which had tested positive for the virus had risen form 6,200 on Friday to 9,000 on Monday. He said: “I do expect that number to continue. I expect the number of people coming every day to be about that [1,000-a-day]. It may go up a little bit and then, in two or three weeks, you would expect that to stabilise and then start to go down a bit. But it’s important [to say] that’s not a rapid acceleration.”" https://www.hsj.co.uk/covid-19-admissions-predicted-to-rise-by-1000-a-day/7027272.article
It really is difficult to make sense of. Is 1000-a-day daily admissions, or daily admissions minus daily discharges and daily deaths? Has the journalist misunderstood the confusing presentation of data, and assumed Vallance meant "people coming" would be one third of the change between 6200 and 9000? Maybe Vallance had a higher figure in mind, allowing for discharges and deaths?
Wouldn't it be nice just to have a clear presentation of what the numbers and the expectations really are?
Unbelievable - since this started everyone thought hospital admissions were going up when they may not have been - because graph was misheaded!
Will any of the clever journalists spot this?
Not yet!
I think it may be more likely today's graph is mislabelled.
Here is Neil Ferguson on 30 March: "If we look at the number of new hospital admissions per day for instance, that does appear to be slowing down a little bit now. It's not yet plateaued, so the numbers can be increasing each day, but the rate of increase has slowed." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52087452
But no - I don't think 4k admissions per day in London and only 1250 in critical care makes sense.
Yeah - that makes me agree with @MikeL that it has been mislabelled previously. in particular, with that many new admissions per day how could the number of people in critical care (in London at least) be declining?
So that makes me wonder whether hospital admissions per day are still going up, or going down, or what.
Almost certainly admissions aren't going up as total in hospital is plateauing.
This is beyond unbelievable - on previous days they were talking about the situation plateauing when graph showed number of admissions still going up. It didn't make any sense at all.
Breathtaking that this mistake was made in the first place and that nobody spotted it.
You think it is breathtaking that our journalists didn't spot it.....? Really?
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
So you don’t think it’s of interest to the public who governs Britain just now? Right...
They don't need to ask this 27 different ways, 3 days running.
They do when they don’t get any coherent answer.
By the way, your questions suck big hairy balls by comparison. I’m sure they are fascinating to the 5% of geeks who understand the question, never mind the non-answer they’d get, but most people are going to want to know instead when they are going back to work.
Which will endlessly be batted back -
"We haven't made the decision yet. We haven't reached the point of making that decision. The next review is on date X. Next"
As it is the press conferences are a stately game of pat-ball.
So instead you ask questions best suited for the Inquiry that will inevitably follow this and that have no real world significance for 99% of the public? Barking.
A large part of the public wants an answer to this question. That part will only grow with every week that the economy and people’s lives are shut down.
So you can ask the same question every day. And get the same answer. Until they announce.....
Would asking how many people are on the furlough scheme, and how much has been spent so far be such a terrible thing?
“Minister, what message do you want to get to the British people?” is, like the government’s approach to Prime Ministerial illness, 70 years out of date.
If the government is going to refuse to answer the most basic questions about governance and accountability and about its expectations of the duration of this crisis, of course it should be continually pressed on these matters.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
So you don’t think it’s of interest to the public who governs Britain just now? Right...
They don't need to ask this 27 different ways, 3 days running.
And have you seen one of them asked a similar type of question to one I have raised i.e. where somebody has done a bit of reading.
Maybe they could be asked to make sure that each question had a different subject, to make sure that more answers were given. I presume they get to see each other's questions so can't they check (actually, now I've said that, I'm not sure)?
Take education and the stupid question of the day. A much better question is about now, such as 'what is the government doing to ensure that each child in the country has access to education until schools return?' That deserves, and would probably get, an answer, as opposed to the 'we can't say' that accompanies pretty much all the questions at the moment.
Not sure if this curious incident has been discussed on PB, but note that that Trumpsky has yet another new Acting Secretary of the Navy.
Because the previous Actor just went splat.
First, in concert with his Fearless Leader, he removed commander of USS Theodore Roosevelt for his comments (in a letter leaked to press) regarding the Covid-19 threat to his crew. Trumpsky backed him to the hilt, including typical crude abuse of the fired commanding officer.
The crew of the TR reacted differently - by cheering their former captain as he left the ship.
Next, the Actor flew all the way to Guam so he could lambast the crew and further insult the captain - who by this time had been diagnosed as having contracted the Crud.
However, by this time, the White House was clearly getting a LOT of negative feedback. Not just from the usual suspects (congressional Democrats) or even congressional Republican, but most importantly from US Navy officers, sailors and veterans, including many many hittherto pro-Trumpers.
So Trumpsky began to hedge his bets - and the Actor was forced to walk the plank.
Yet another great moment in the annals of Putinism!
From a friend of mine on whether this was an engineered virus:
'If anyone tries to tell you that COVID-19 was, or could have been, made in a lab there's a fairly straightforward reason why this can't be true.
We can "make" viruses in a lab, including modifying their genetic code. through techniques like CRISPR. We can also determine the full genetic code for existing viruses. So we have the capacity to make a new virus.
What we can't do is model the effect of that virus without releasing it into the wild. There are too many different factors that make a successful virus; species it originates in and species to species transmission plus transmission within a species, lethality, infectiousness (the R0 factor), vectors of transmission and so on. We have very little understanding of how the genetic code relates directly to all those different aspects of behaviour. So we could make a new virus, but what it would do would be a complete mystery.
Nature solves this problem by trying thousands and millions of variants. Most variations either don't work or are effectively the same. But if you try millions eventually you'll find a new "good one".'
Fair enough but could something have been accidentally released?
Here's a report of what was said on 30 March: "Sir Patrick Vallance told the government’s latest covid-19 briefing today the total of hospital admissions which had tested positive for the virus had risen form 6,200 on Friday to 9,000 on Monday. He said: “I do expect that number to continue. I expect the number of people coming every day to be about that [1,000-a-day]. It may go up a little bit and then, in two or three weeks, you would expect that to stabilise and then start to go down a bit. But it’s important [to say] that’s not a rapid acceleration.”" https://www.hsj.co.uk/covid-19-admissions-predicted-to-rise-by-1000-a-day/7027272.article
It really is difficult to make sense of. Is 1000-a-day daily admissions, or daily admissions minus daily discharges and daily deaths? Has the journalist misunderstood the confusing presentation of data, and assumed Vallance meant "people coming" would be one third of the change between 6200 and 9000? Maybe Vallance had a higher figure in mind, allowing for discharges and deaths?
Wouldn't it be nice just to have a clear presentation of what the numbers and the expectations really are?
To be fair, going to the graph, I think around 30th March there probably were 1000 admissions per day (looks like about 500 between 30 and 31st March in London alone). Hence, I do think the graphs shows total number of people in hospital with Covid infection. Which is much more encouraging news!
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
So you don’t think it’s of interest to the public who governs Britain just now? Right...
They don't need to ask this 27 different ways, 3 days running.
They do when they don’t get any coherent answer.
By the way, your questions suck big hairy balls by comparison. I’m sure they are fascinating to the 5% of geeks who understand the question, never mind the non-answer they’d get, but most people are going to want to know instead when they are going back to work.
Which will endlessly be batted back -
"We haven't made the decision yet. We haven't reached the point of making that decision. The next review is on date X. Next"
As it is the press conferences are a stately game of pat-ball.
So instead you ask questions best suited for the Inquiry that will inevitably follow this and that have no real world significance for 99% of the public? Barking.
A large part of the public wants an answer to this question. That part will only grow with every week that the economy and people’s lives are shut down.
So you can ask the same question every day. And get the same answer. Until they announce.....
Would asking how many people are on the furlough scheme, and how much has been spent so far be such a terrible thing?
“Minister, what message do you want to get to the British people?” is, like the government’s approach to Prime Ministerial illness, 70 years out of date.
If the government is going to refuse to answer the most basic questions about governance and accountability and about its expectations of the duration of this crisis, of course it should be continually pressed on these matters.
Bowling medium pace with no spin (ha!) will not make any dent. Try some variation and cunning in the attack.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
So you don’t think it’s of interest to the public who governs Britain just now? Right...
They don't need to ask this 27 different ways, 3 days running.
And have you seen one of them asked a similar type of question to one I have raised i.e. where somebody has done a bit of reading.
Maybe they could be asked to make sure that each question had a different subject, to make sure that more answers were given. I presume they get to see each other's questions so can't they check (actually, now I've said that, I'm not sure)?
Take education and the stupid question of the day. A much better question is about now, such as 'what is the government doing to ensure that each child in the country has access to education until schools return?' That deserves, and would probably get, an answer, as opposed to the 'we can't say' that accompanies pretty much all the questions at the moment.
What about - "If the schools can't restart physically for the next term, what work been done on setting up remote learning?
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
So you don’t think it’s of interest to the public who governs Britain just now? Right...
They don't need to ask this 27 different ways, 3 days running.
They do when they don’t get any coherent answer.
By the way, your questions suck big hairy balls by comparison. I’m sure they are fascinating to the 5% of geeks who understand the question, never mind the non-answer they’d get, but most people are going to want to know instead when they are going back to work.
Which will endlessly be batted back -
"We haven't made the decision yet. We haven't reached the point of making that decision. The next review is on date X. Next"
As it is the press conferences are a stately game of pat-ball.
So instead you ask questions best suited for the Inquiry that will inevitably follow this and that have no real world significance for 99% of the public? Barking.
A large part of the public wants an answer to this question. That part will only grow with every week that the economy and people’s lives are shut down.
So you can ask the same question every day. And get the same answer. Until they announce.....
Would asking how many people are on the furlough scheme, and how much has been spent so far be such a terrible thing?
Note that the FT guy who asked about the scheme put it in terms of asking about forecasts and projections - which turned it into a question about speculation. Which got turned into an answer of "I'm not speculating".
Until the scheme is up and running, a question about how many people are on the furlough scheme will be very easy.
It is currently zero.
Lots of people have been furloughed by their employers, but the government hasn't been informed of a single one of them yet, and any attempt to say how many there will be would certainly be speculation.
Here's a report of what was said on 30 March: "Sir Patrick Vallance told the government’s latest covid-19 briefing today the total of hospital admissions which had tested positive for the virus had risen form 6,200 on Friday to 9,000 on Monday. He said: “I do expect that number to continue. I expect the number of people coming every day to be about that [1,000-a-day]. It may go up a little bit and then, in two or three weeks, you would expect that to stabilise and then start to go down a bit. But it’s important [to say] that’s not a rapid acceleration.”" https://www.hsj.co.uk/covid-19-admissions-predicted-to-rise-by-1000-a-day/7027272.article
It really is difficult to make sense of. Is 1000-a-day daily admissions, or daily admissions minus daily discharges and daily deaths? Has the journalist misunderstood the confusing presentation of data, and assumed Vallance meant "people coming" would be one third of the change between 6200 and 9000? Maybe Vallance had a higher figure in mind, allowing for discharges and deaths?
Wouldn't it be nice just to have a clear presentation of what the numbers and the expectations really are?
To be fair, going to the graph, I think around 30th March there probably were 1000 admissions per day (looks like about 500 between 30 and 31st March in London alone). Hence, I do think the graphs shows total number of people in hospital with Covid infection. Which is much more encouraging news!
Also, would suggest ~3000 patients in intensive care across the country, which is less than I would have suspected (especially if, as that figure suggests, we are close to the peak demand).
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
So you don’t think it’s of interest to the public who governs Britain just now? Right...
They don't need to ask this 27 different ways, 3 days running.
And have you seen one of them asked a similar type of question to one I have raised i.e. where somebody has done a bit of reading.
Maybe they could be asked to make sure that each question had a different subject, to make sure that more answers were given. I presume they get to see each other's questions so can't they check (actually, now I've said that, I'm not sure)?
Take education and the stupid question of the day. A much better question is about now, such as 'what is the government doing to ensure that each child in the country has access to education until schools return?' That deserves, and would probably get, an answer, as opposed to the 'we can't say' that accompanies pretty much all the questions at the moment.
What about - "If the schools can't restart physically for the next term, what work been done on setting up remote learning?
Yes, another good one. All these ‘when will’ questions are lazy, simplistic and of no use to the people watching.
Here's a report of what was said on 30 March: "Sir Patrick Vallance told the government’s latest covid-19 briefing today the total of hospital admissions which had tested positive for the virus had risen form 6,200 on Friday to 9,000 on Monday. He said: “I do expect that number to continue. I expect the number of people coming every day to be about that [1,000-a-day]. It may go up a little bit and then, in two or three weeks, you would expect that to stabilise and then start to go down a bit. But it’s important [to say] that’s not a rapid acceleration.”" https://www.hsj.co.uk/covid-19-admissions-predicted-to-rise-by-1000-a-day/7027272.article
It really is difficult to make sense of. Is 1000-a-day daily admissions, or daily admissions minus daily discharges and daily deaths? Has the journalist misunderstood the confusing presentation of data, and assumed Vallance meant "people coming" would be one third of the change between 6200 and 9000? Maybe Vallance had a higher figure in mind, allowing for discharges and deaths?
Wouldn't it be nice just to have a clear presentation of what the numbers and the expectations really are?
To be fair, going to the graph, I think around 30th March there probably were 1000 admissions per day (looks like about 500 between 30 and 31st March in London alone). Hence, I do think the graphs shows total number of people in hospital with Covid infection. Which is much more encouraging news!
I think it's difficult to interpret. Perhaps deaths are more important than discharges. Maybe the decrease in "admissions" in early April, which initially looked like good news and an effect of the lockdown, was really because the number of deaths increased? Maybe the plateau effect could be a kind of balance between still-increasing admissions and increasing deaths. "Total number in hospital" doesn't seem like a particularly informative number in itself.
This from a consultant cardiologist in Glasgow. (Might be bollocks, but no reason to suspect so): apparently, many of the people who are being admitted to hospital with V-19 have their phone, but not a phone charger. Just a thought, but if people wanted to donate a few phone chargers to their local CV-19 hospital, it might be a huge comfort to somebody who otherwise can't contact their family at a very difficult time.
It seems evident for all the reassuring words about "plateauing" admissions and the like, the current regime of restrictions is going to remain in place for at least another fortnight. It might be easier to put us all out of our misery by confirming current restrictions until say Friday 24th.
To follow up on Nick P's comment earlier, a lot of local authority time and effort has gone in to finding sites for field hospitals.
Former MoD buildings such as Headley Court near Epsom are often ideal - Headley Court had a long and distinguished history as a specialist hospital until it closed in 2018 with the opening of the new Defence and National Rehabilitation Centre at Stamford Hill.
Though now privately owned, the public sector has worked with the new owners to restore the building as a medical facility - I believe the aim is to house non-Covid patients transferred from other hospitals. It's been rapid and a fine example of inter-agency and public-private collaboration and co-operation.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
So you don’t think it’s of interest to the public who governs Britain just now? Right...
They don't need to ask this 27 different ways, 3 days running.
They do when they don’t get any coherent answer.
By the way, your questions suck big hairy balls by comparison. I’m sure they are fascinating to the 5% of geeks who understand the question, never mind the non-answer they’d get, but most people are going to want to know instead when they are going back to work.
Which will endlessly be batted back -
"We haven't made the decision yet. We haven't reached the point of making that decision. The next review is on date X. Next"
As it is the press conferences are a stately game of pat-ball.
So instead you ask questions best suited for the Inquiry that will inevitably follow this and that have no real world significance for 99% of the public? Barking.
A large part of the public wants an answer to this question. That part will only grow with every week that the economy and people’s lives are shut down.
So you can ask the same question every day. And get the same answer. Until they announce.....
Would asking how many people are on the furlough scheme, and how much has been spent so far be such a terrible thing?
Note that the FT guy who asked about the scheme put it in terms of asking about forecasts and projections - which turned it into a question about speculation. Which got turned into an answer of "I'm not speculating".
Until the scheme is up and running, a question about how many people are on the furlough scheme will be very easy.
It is currently zero.
Lots of people have been furloughed by their employers, but the government hasn't been informed of a single one of them yet, and any attempt to say how many there will be would certainly be speculation.
Employers have furloughed employees - are you saying that they have done so without any contact with the Government?
I started the move to my new home today. Came back to the place we’re leaving to find my daughter in tears. She had taken the dog for a walk along a footpath heading to Thwaites Fell. No-one around. An old woman came out of a house at the start of the footpath and started abusing my daughter, saying that she had no right to be there, she was breaking the law, she would call the police and have her arrested, that she did not have a local accent and should go back to London etc.
When my daughter protested that she has been living here three years and runs the local pub/restaurant, there was more muttering and abuse. Daughter fled, really upset.
Those who think that a sort of low-level abusive vigilantism based on ignorance of the laws, ignorance of peoples’ circumstances and an “I’m all right Jack/F**k off back to London” approach is somehow acceptable because “it is for our own good/for the NHS etc” might reflect on what this actually means in practice for those on the receiving end of ignorant abuse.
Daughter is not the first person living around here to receive such abuse.
There is a very nasty Facebook group making horrible comments about a local man, a well-known pianist, who is here looking after his elderly parents, one of whom has dementia. A message has been sent to the owner of the group to point out that he has his facts wrong about this man and that he should not assume that because someone is on a bicycle they are somehow some sort of ghastly outsider breaking the law.
For all the self-congratulations about clapathons there is a nasty curtain twitching denunciation-side of the British people which is also coming out, which is, frankly, nasty and which needs calling out.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
So you don’t think it’s of interest to the public who governs Britain just now? Right...
They don't need to ask this 27 different ways, 3 days running.
They do when they don’t get any coherent answer.
By the way, your questions suck big hairy balls by comparison. I’m sure they are fascinating to the 5% of geeks who understand the question, never mind the non-answer they’d get, but most people are going to want to know instead when they are going back to work.
Which will endlessly be batted back -
"We haven't made the decision yet. We haven't reached the point of making that decision. The next review is on date X. Next"
As it is the press conferences are a stately game of pat-ball.
So instead you ask questions best suited for the Inquiry that will inevitably follow this and that have no real world significance for 99% of the public? Barking.
A large part of the public wants an answer to this question. That part will only grow with every week that the economy and people’s lives are shut down.
So you can ask the same question every day. And get the same answer. Until they announce.....
Would asking how many people are on the furlough scheme, and how much has been spent so far be such a terrible thing?
Note that the FT guy who asked about the scheme put it in terms of asking about forecasts and projections - which turned it into a question about speculation. Which got turned into an answer of "I'm not speculating".
Until the scheme is up and running, a question about how many people are on the furlough scheme will be very easy.
It is currently zero.
Lots of people have been furloughed by their employers, but the government hasn't been informed of a single one of them yet, and any attempt to say how many there will be would certainly be speculation.
Employers have furloughed employees - are you saying that they have done so without any contact with the Government?
There is no way to contact the government about it. The infrastructure isn't there yet.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Although some of the journalists questions are dumb there are some on PB to seem to think that anyone questioning the government on our apparent inability to increase the number of tests, provide adequate PPE etc is being downright unpatriotic.
How dare journalists ask questions that the government might not want asked but which the public might!
If that was true I would agree but the questions were crass
You’re not the best judge. You were complaining last week because a former health minister was raising questions about the government’s preparedness for pandemics.
Many on here and elsewhere are attacking the quality of questions from political journalists
Yes. They fall into two broad categories: Deranged Leavers and Conservative Remainers with Stockholm Syndrome.
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Bullshit...I can give you a huge list of perfectly good (and challenging) questions of the government, if the press pack got their heads out of their arses worrying about the mechanisms of Tory party leadership elections and who will press the red button and read up on this.
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
So you don’t think it’s of interest to the public who governs Britain just now? Right...
They don't need to ask this 27 different ways, 3 days running.
By the way, your questions suck big hairy balls by comparison. I’m sure they are fascinating to the 5% of geeks who understand the question, never mind the non-answer they’d get, but most people are going to want to know instead when they are going back to work.
Oh silly me, I thought we dragged out the top egg-heads every day to answer serious questions. If nobody is going to ask them anything useful, there is bugger all point them wasting their time being there, and instead focus on the response.
And it is a crucial question. Nobody is going anywhere, until the government has a coherent plan for the next phase. If they screw it up, it will be worse than the lack of testing.
And it is the job of the journalists to take those answers and convert them into something that the public will understand.
And as for "geeky" questions. 95% of the public don't give a shit about the minute details of Westminster obsessions about who decides in the situation of the 4th in line is taken ill and there is a stalemate in cabinet.
Here's a report of what was said on 30 March: "Sir Patrick Vallance told the government’s latest covid-19 briefing today the total of hospital admissions which had tested positive for the virus had risen form 6,200 on Friday to 9,000 on Monday. He said: “I do expect that number to continue. I expect the number of people coming every day to be about that [1,000-a-day]. It may go up a little bit and then, in two or three weeks, you would expect that to stabilise and then start to go down a bit. But it’s important [to say] that’s not a rapid acceleration.”" https://www.hsj.co.uk/covid-19-admissions-predicted-to-rise-by-1000-a-day/7027272.article
It really is difficult to make sense of. Is 1000-a-day daily admissions, or daily admissions minus daily discharges and daily deaths? Has the journalist misunderstood the confusing presentation of data, and assumed Vallance meant "people coming" would be one third of the change between 6200 and 9000? Maybe Vallance had a higher figure in mind, allowing for discharges and deaths?
Wouldn't it be nice just to have a clear presentation of what the numbers and the expectations really are?
To be fair, going to the graph, I think around 30th March there probably were 1000 admissions per day (looks like about 500 between 30 and 31st March in London alone). Hence, I do think the graphs shows total number of people in hospital with Covid infection. Which is much more encouraging news!
I think it's difficult to interpret. Perhaps deaths are more important than discharges. Maybe the decrease in "admissions" in early April, which initially looked like good news and an effect of the lockdown, was really because the number of deaths increased? Maybe the plateau effect could be a kind of balance between still-increasing admissions and increasing deaths. "Total number in hospital" doesn't seem like a particularly informative number in itself.
Agreed that the number of deaths clearly plays into the numbers here confusing interpretation (I wish we released data like Italy, which is so much cleaner!). Nevertheless, it does tell us about strain on the NHS, since number of beds has a clear upper bound and hopefully might not be breached.
From a friend of mine on whether this was an engineered virus:
'If anyone tries to tell you that COVID-19 was, or could have been, made in a lab there's a fairly straightforward reason why this can't be true.
We can "make" viruses in a lab, including modifying their genetic code. through techniques like CRISPR. We can also determine the full genetic code for existing viruses. So we have the capacity to make a new virus.
What we can't do is model the effect of that virus without releasing it into the wild. There are too many different factors that make a successful virus; species it originates in and species to species transmission plus transmission within a species, lethality, infectiousness (the R0 factor), vectors of transmission and so on. We have very little understanding of how the genetic code relates directly to all those different aspects of behaviour. So we could make a new virus, but what it would do would be a complete mystery.
Nature solves this problem by trying thousands and millions of variants. Most variations either don't work or are effectively the same. But if you try millions eventually you'll find a new "good one".'
The species specificity is a bugger; it would be easier if you could churn out your viruses and run them by a lot of white mice.
The accidental escape theory remains a runner. Note that this is not a conspiracy theory, it's a cock-up theory. Note also that it isn't susceptible to attack by cartoon versions of Occam's razor because one theory is no more complicated than the other. We have two groups of people who aggregate potentially virus-ridden animals in Wuhan. The virus either escapes from the wet market, or the lab. "Yebbut the lab had level 4 security" can be countered by "yebbut the lab *needed* level 4 security because unlike the market it was consciously and deliberately selecting animals from all over the China/the world for virus potential, whereas the market was selecting locally-available animals for edibility." The market theory is slightly more likely but both are perfectly possible.
He won't get through a first year without the 25th being invoked.
That is ridiculous.
The guy is already incoherent.
Trump’s never been coherent and nobody’s invoked the 25th on him. The nearest we came was that spectacularly misguided attempt at impeachment, but Biden might not be anxious to refer to that.
I started the move to my new home today. Came back to the place we’re leaving to find my daughter in tears. She had taken the dog for a walk along a footpath heading to Thwaites Fell. No-one around. An old woman came out of a house at the start of the footpath and started abusing my daughter, saying that she had no right to be there, she was breaking the law, she would call the police and have her arrested, that she did not have a local accent and should go back to London etc.
When my daughter protested that she has been living here three years and runs the local pub/restaurant, there was more muttering and abuse. Daughter fled, really upset.
Those who think that a sort of low-level abusive vigilantism based on ignorance of the laws, ignorance of peoples’ circumstances and an “I’m all right Jack/F**k off back to London” approach is somehow acceptable because “it is for our own good/for the NHS etc” might reflect on what this actually means in practice for those on the receiving end of ignorant abuse.
Daughter is not the first person living around here to receive such abuse.
There is a very nasty Facebook group making horrible comments about a local man, a well-known pianist, who is here looking after his elderly parents, one of whom has dementia. A message has been sent to the owner of the group to point out that he has his facts wrong about this man and that he should not assume that because someone is on a bicycle they are somehow some sort of ghastly outsider breaking the law.
For all the self-congratulations about clapathons there is a nasty curtain twitching denunciation-side of the British people which is also coming out, which is, frankly, nasty and which needs calling out.
From a friend of mine on whether this was an engineered virus:
'If anyone tries to tell you that COVID-19 was, or could have been, made in a lab there's a fairly straightforward reason why this can't be true.
We can "make" viruses in a lab, including modifying their genetic code. through techniques like CRISPR. We can also determine the full genetic code for existing viruses. So we have the capacity to make a new virus.
What we can't do is model the effect of that virus without releasing it into the wild. There are too many different factors that make a successful virus; species it originates in and species to species transmission plus transmission within a species, lethality, infectiousness (the R0 factor), vectors of transmission and so on. We have very little understanding of how the genetic code relates directly to all those different aspects of behaviour. So we could make a new virus, but what it would do would be a complete mystery.
Nature solves this problem by trying thousands and millions of variants. Most variations either don't work or are effectively the same. But if you try millions eventually you'll find a new "good one".'
I thought the "conspiracy theory" was not that it was made in a lab, but it escaped from the lab, as it is known the Chinese have collected bats who are known carriers of different coronaviruses to study. And SARS has previously escaped from Chinese labs where it was being researched.
I started the move to my new home today. Came back to the place we’re leaving to find my daughter in tears. She had taken the dog for a walk along a footpath heading to Thwaites Fell. No-one around. An old woman came out of a house at the start of the footpath and started abusing my daughter, saying that she had no right to be there, she was breaking the law, she would call the police and have her arrested, that she did not have a local accent and should go back to London etc.
When my daughter protested that she has been living here three years and runs the local pub/restaurant, there was more muttering and abuse. Daughter fled, really upset.
Those who think that a sort of low-level abusive vigilantism based on ignorance of the laws, ignorance of peoples’ circumstances and an “I’m all right Jack/F**k off back to London” approach is somehow acceptable because “it is for our own good/for the NHS etc” might reflect on what this actually means in practice for those on the receiving end of ignorant abuse.
Daughter is not the first person living around here to receive such abuse.
There is a very nasty Facebook group making horrible comments about a local man, a well-known pianist, who is here looking after his elderly parents, one of whom has dementia. A message has been sent to the owner of the group to point out that he has his facts wrong about this man and that he should not assume that because someone is on a bicycle they are somehow some sort of ghastly outsider breaking the law.
For all the self-congratulations about clapathons there is a nasty curtain twitching denunciation-side of the British people which is also coming out, which is, frankly, nasty and which needs calling out.
"...there is a nasty curtain twitching denunciation-side of the British people which is also coming out, which is, frankly, nasty and which needs calling out."
Massively. It seems common to become submissive to, then an agent of, authority
Unbelievable - since this started everyone thought hospital admissions were going up when they may not have been - because graph was misheaded!
Will any of the clever journalists spot this?
Not yet!
I think it may be more likely today's graph is mislabelled.
Here is Neil Ferguson on 30 March: "If we look at the number of new hospital admissions per day for instance, that does appear to be slowing down a little bit now. It's not yet plateaued, so the numbers can be increasing each day, but the rate of increase has slowed." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52087452
But no - I don't think 4k admissions per day in London and only 1250 in critical care makes sense.
Yeah - that makes me agree with @MikeL that it has been mislabelled previously. in particular, with that many new admissions per day how could the number of people in critical care (in London at least) be declining?
So that makes me wonder whether hospital admissions per day are still going up, or going down, or what.
Almost certainly admissions aren't going up as total in hospital is plateauing.
This is beyond unbelievable - on previous days they were talking about the situation plateauing when graph showed number of admissions still going up. It didn't make any sense at all.
Breathtaking that this mistake was made in the first place and that nobody spotted it.
So do we think that when they said "hospital admissions went up by only 2%" they could have said that hospital admissions per day actually went down?
Yes, absolutely.
Certainly seems that way.
The Leicester figure for confirmed Covid inpatients is down from 154 to 145 over the last three days.
Comments
https://www.waverley.gov.uk/coronavirus
if you have a more detailed question I (and no doubt others) will try to respond. Obviously I can't guarantee that it will be precisely right for your situation and you will want to check, but we're all doing our best.
Vacuousness is key. Hair colour is irrelevant, so long as there is some. It's looks-wise rather than sex-wise. And it is usually a female specific term but, come to think of it, does not have to be.
Now we move on.
And for all the EU are tough negotiators, I just don't see that a delay is in their interests any more than ours, so one will only occur through genuine complexity holding it up, and of course the massive distraction that is Covid-19, so really is unlikely to affect the final outcome at all.
But if people were being discharged, the rate of admissions isn't just equal to the slope of that graph, so I don't think we're in a position to know whether the rate of admissions has peaked.
Also since when did journalists ask the questions the public want asked? There's probably plenty of crossover, but I'm fairly confident they have always asked the questions they think the public should want asked rather than what they want asked. We might want some very silly questions asked, as the people's PMQs showed.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/slides-and-datasets-to-accompany-coronavirus-press-conference-8-april-2020
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/slides-and-datasets-to-accompany-coronavirus-press-conference-7-april-2020
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/slides-and-datasets-to-accompany-coronavirus-press-conference-6-april-2020
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/slides-and-datasets-to-accompany-coronavirus-press-conference-4-april-2020
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/slides-and-datasets-to-accompany-coronavirus-press-conference-3-april-2020
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/slides-and-datasets-to-accompany-coronavirus-press-conference-2-april-2020
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/slides-and-datasets-to-accompany-coronavirus-press-conference-1-april-2020
This is beyond unbelievable - on previous days they were talking about the situation plateauing when graph showed number of admissions still going up. It didn't make any sense at all.
Breathtaking that this mistake was made in the first place and that nobody spotted it.
Oh, look! The four lines that take a dip from Jan to March just happen to be the warmest winters of the past decade!
C.E.T (Central England Temperature for the months of Dec/Jan/Feb - Dec from the previous year, as it impacts through to March or later)
2020 – 6.17 (Black line -2% by end of March)
2019 – 5.87 (Yellow line -2% by end of March)
2018 – 4.33
2017 – 5.37
2016 – 6.67 (Green line -1.5% by end of March)
2015 – 4.53
2014 – 6.07 (Broken Yellow line -2% by the end of March)
2013 – 3.83
2012 – 5.07
2011 – 3.13
2010 – 2.43
What is this voodoo magic?
The sub-headline of "hospitalisations" was arguably OK!
So far as I can see, the journalists are asking questions much like that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/world/europe/coronavirus-conspiracy-theories.html
Not quite as good as yesterday's numbers, but still very encouraging. In particular, total tests exceeded 50,000 for the first time - which is an astonishing step up from about 6,000 when I started doing this. (Amazing to think that a month ago Italy did around 4,000 tests, of which half were positive.)
The overall positive rate was just 7%, a new low.
Overall, 3,836 new cases, so a drop of 20% compared to the same day last week (while number of tests rose by about 30%).
My call is for active cases to start declining by week end and for fewer than 2,500 daily new cases by Sunday.
I haven't seen the ICU numbers yet.
- Will you speculate on the time the lockdown ends? Answer: No.
- Will you speculate on the time the the schools will go back? Answer: No.
- Will you speculate on the the amount the furlough scheme will cost? Answer: No.
etc...
I do not have a problem with any critical question that is not idiotic or designed as a gotcha moment
'If anyone tries to tell you that COVID-19 was, or could have been, made in a lab there's a fairly straightforward reason why this can't be true.
We can "make" viruses in a lab, including modifying their genetic code. through techniques like CRISPR. We can also determine the full genetic code for existing viruses. So we have the capacity to make a new virus.
What we can't do is model the effect of that virus without releasing it into the wild. There are too many different factors that make a successful virus; species it originates in and species to species transmission plus transmission within a species, lethality, infectiousness (the R0 factor), vectors of transmission and so on. We have very little understanding of how the genetic code relates directly to all those different aspects of behaviour. So we could make a new virus, but what it would do would be a complete mystery.
Nature solves this problem by trying thousands and millions of variants. Most variations either don't work or are effectively the same. But if you try millions eventually you'll find a new "good one".'
We are one of the less severely affected parts of the country.
1) What is constraining the number of tests?
2) What is the next constraint behind that? i.e. when you fix that one, what will be the next limit.
3) How many labs are now involved in testing? What is their capacity?
4) Is there still a reagent shortage?
5) What about the report that NHE is not cooperating with the private labs?
etc....
Ask for facts. If you ask someone to speculate they can simply say no. And did...
The journalists are doing just fine, within their usual limitations.
Not 100% certain but I think it was a question from a listener, so not initiated by Mair. But he did read it out.
https://twitter.com/douglascarswell/status/1247923857077477377?s=21
Basic comms stuff.
Ask for actual numbers that exist. How many ventilators does the NHS have available for use? How many are in use?
Starter for 10....
Until we have a vaccine or effective treatments, the Imperial paper modelling hypothesised that there was no alternative to a series of differing social distancing measures.
The Imperial modelling is based on work done over 13 years ago. Given science and especially computer science and machine learning / AI has evolved rapidly since then, what steps are the government taking to work with academia and industry to the create models exploring the strategies around the timing and severity of the required social distancing.
This is an absolutely crucial pillar of where we go from here. Without the government putting in place this, we can't escape lockdown without huge risks of a potential set of deadly waves of this disease.
Further - Was any consideration or update to the plan based on the use of technology to increase capabilities in the field - phone apps, GPS tracking, cell tower tracking, rapid response field tests (as opposed to lab based tests)?
Future - a commitment that future modelling should use tested, documented and reviewed software?
And have you seen one of them asked a similar type of question to one I have raised i.e. where somebody has done a bit of reading.
By the way, your questions suck big hairy balls by comparison. I’m sure they are fascinating to the 5% of geeks who understand the question, never mind the non-answer they’d get, but most people are going to want to know instead when they are going back to work.
"We haven't made the decision yet. We haven't reached the point of making that decision. The next review is on date X. Next"
As it is the press conferences are a stately game of pat-ball.
Brexit proponents and opponents have always differed in their expectations as to how harmful/disruptive leaving the EU would be, so it's unsurprising there's a gap about ending Transition too.
Related to that, would you rate the following beliefs as more likely among Leavers or Remainers? Bear in mind Leavers are a heterogeneous group so possibly few would subscribe to all of the following, but I suspect each individual statement is more widely held among Leavers than Remainers:
(a) A deal is not particularly necessary, WTO terms are fine, harms of leaving without a deal are overblown,
(b) A deal is relatively straightforward so the chances of leaving without a deal are overblown (eg belief in UK leverage or that a "simple" deal is better); still a chance of getting that negotiated on time, no need to panic yet,
(c) What matters most now is certainty, uncertainty is doing more harm than Brexit itself as it leaves firms unable to adjust - let's sort this out ASAP one way or the other to avoid ongoing Brexit uncertainty on top of all the COVID uncertainty.
There's also a big perspective issue that divides Leavers and Remainers in terms of how likely they are to trust politicians with an extension. Leavers have experienced a referendum victory that politicians of many stripes, even at one point the Lib Dem leadership, promised to respect and enact. Then for years they've had politicians about-face on this, belittle Leavers' values, beliefs and intelligence, and try to reverse the result. Politicians who did promise to deliver on Brexit have repeatedly ended up delaying it and dragged the process out long enough that it's revived hope among the more extreme Remainers that the game is still in play. There's a feeling some Leavers have that during Transition we "haven't really left yet" and there is still the odd gobby Remainer arguing that Transition should end with the UK rejoining the EU under emergency COVID provisions...
If a Leaver argues "firstly this has gone on long enough now, and secondly, every time we've had an extension it's been used as an excuse by politicians - even ones who have promised they wouldn't do this - as yet another opportunity to try to cancel Brexit or bounce us into BRINO" then I think that's both understandable and even (in a self-consistent way) rational. You could counter-argue "look, you've got it in the bag already, the UK flag no longer flies at EU HQ, it's over, you won, this is just about getting the deal and nothing else" and that's a very strong argument factually, but if they retort "no, look, we've seen what politicians have said before and what's happened after, I'd either have to be mad or far too trusting to fall for that one" then that position has a kind of "emotional rationality"?
"Sir Patrick Vallance told the government’s latest covid-19 briefing today the total of hospital admissions which had tested positive for the virus had risen form 6,200 on Friday to 9,000 on Monday.
He said: “I do expect that number to continue. I expect the number of people coming every day to be about that [1,000-a-day]. It may go up a little bit and then, in two or three weeks, you would expect that to stabilise and then start to go down a bit. But it’s important [to say] that’s not a rapid acceleration.”"
https://www.hsj.co.uk/covid-19-admissions-predicted-to-rise-by-1000-a-day/7027272.article
It really is difficult to make sense of. Is 1000-a-day daily admissions, or daily admissions minus daily discharges and daily deaths? Has the journalist misunderstood the confusing presentation of data, and assumed Vallance meant "people coming" would be one third of the change between 6200 and 9000? Maybe Vallance had a higher figure in mind, allowing for discharges and deaths?
Wouldn't it be nice just to have a clear presentation of what the numbers and the expectations really are?
A large part of the public wants an answer to this question. That part will only grow with every week that the economy and people’s lives are shut down.
Because the previous Actor just went splat.
First, in concert with his Fearless Leader, he removed commander of USS Theodore Roosevelt for his comments (in a letter leaked to press) regarding the Covid-19 threat to his crew. Trumpsky backed him to the hilt, including typical crude abuse of the fired commanding officer.
The crew of the TR reacted differently - by cheering their former captain as he left the ship.
Next, the Actor flew all the way to Guam so he could lambast the crew and further insult the captain - who by this time had been diagnosed as having contracted the Crud.
However, by this time, the White House was clearly getting a LOT of negative feedback. Not just from the usual suspects (congressional Democrats) or even congressional Republican, but most importantly from US Navy officers, sailors and veterans, including many many hittherto pro-Trumpers.
So Trumpsky began to hedge his bets - and the Actor was forced to walk the plank.
Yet another great moment in the annals of Putinism!
Up to the highest height
Let's go fly a kite and send it soaring
Up through the atmosphere
Up where the air is clear
Mary Poppins was very much the Greta Thunberg of her day!
Would asking how many people are on the furlough scheme, and how much has been spent so far be such a terrible thing?
Note that the FT guy who asked about the scheme put it in terms of asking about forecasts and projections - which turned it into a question about speculation. Which got turned into an answer of "I'm not speculating".
https://ncov.dxy.cn/ncovh5/view/pneumonia
They were asking the important questions instead.
If the government is going to refuse to answer the most basic questions about governance and accountability and about its expectations of the duration of this crisis, of course it should be continually pressed on these matters.
Take education and the stupid question of the day. A much better question is about now, such as 'what is the government doing to ensure that each child in the country has access to education until schools return?' That deserves, and would probably get, an answer, as opposed to the 'we can't say' that accompanies pretty much all the questions at the moment.
Good riddance to Trumpian Rubbish...
It is currently zero.
Lots of people have been furloughed by their employers, but the government hasn't been informed of a single one of them yet, and any attempt to say how many there will be would certainly be speculation.
It seems evident for all the reassuring words about "plateauing" admissions and the like, the current regime of restrictions is going to remain in place for at least another fortnight. It might be easier to put us all out of our misery by confirming current restrictions until say Friday 24th.
To follow up on Nick P's comment earlier, a lot of local authority time and effort has gone in to finding sites for field hospitals.
Former MoD buildings such as Headley Court near Epsom are often ideal - Headley Court had a long and distinguished history as a specialist hospital until it closed in 2018 with the opening of the new Defence and National Rehabilitation Centre at Stamford Hill.
Though now privately owned, the public sector has worked with the new owners to restore the building as a medical facility - I believe the aim is to house non-Covid patients transferred from other hospitals. It's been rapid and a fine example of inter-agency and public-private collaboration and co-operation.
When my daughter protested that she has been living here three years and runs the local pub/restaurant, there was more muttering and abuse. Daughter fled, really upset.
Those who think that a sort of low-level abusive vigilantism based on ignorance of the laws, ignorance of peoples’ circumstances and an “I’m all right Jack/F**k off back to London” approach is somehow acceptable because “it is for our own good/for the NHS etc” might reflect on what this actually means in practice for those on the receiving end of ignorant abuse.
Daughter is not the first person living around here to receive such abuse.
There is a very nasty Facebook group making horrible comments about a local man, a well-known pianist, who is here looking after his elderly parents, one of whom has dementia. A message has been sent to the owner of the group to point out that he has his facts wrong about this man and that he should not assume that because someone is on a bicycle they are somehow some sort of ghastly outsider breaking the law.
For all the self-congratulations about clapathons there is a nasty curtain twitching denunciation-side of the British people which is also coming out, which is, frankly, nasty and which needs calling out.
And it is a crucial question. Nobody is going anywhere, until the government has a coherent plan for the next phase. If they screw it up, it will be worse than the lack of testing.
And it is the job of the journalists to take those answers and convert them into something that the public will understand.
And as for "geeky" questions. 95% of the public don't give a shit about the minute details of Westminster obsessions about who decides in the situation of the 4th in line is taken ill and there is a stalemate in cabinet.
The accidental escape theory remains a runner. Note that this is not a conspiracy theory, it's a cock-up theory. Note also that it isn't susceptible to attack by cartoon versions of Occam's razor because one theory is no more complicated than the other. We have two groups of people who aggregate potentially virus-ridden animals in Wuhan. The virus either escapes from the wet market, or the lab. "Yebbut the lab had level 4 security" can be countered by "yebbut the lab *needed* level 4 security because unlike the market it was consciously and deliberately selecting animals from all over the China/the world for virus potential, whereas the market was selecting locally-available animals for edibility." The market theory is slightly more likely but both are perfectly possible.
Massively. It seems common to become submissive to, then an agent of, authority
Equal number of unconfirmed though.