On topic, its Oxford, now if it was Cambridge saying this that would be a different matter :-)
More seriously. Scientists are normally a pretty conservative bunch when it comes to making predictions about timelines on their work, so that has to be good news.
One thing from the article that was interesting, was the claim that with this approach, we wouldn't need to build massive new infrastructure to produce it. Existing facilities could be re-purposed.
Cambridge has produced humanity changing scientists like Darwin, Newton, and Turing, the only scientist of note Oxford has produced is Thatcher*.
*Hawking doesn't count for Oxford as he realised it was a dump and decided to do his PhD at Cambridge.
Edwin Hubble, Robert Hooke, Erwin Schrödinger, Tim Berners-Lee...mere bagatelle
None of them changed humanity, I mean Turing helped win a war.
No dog in this fight, apart from the fact that MA supervisor was based in ARU's Cambridge facility, but Berners-Lee's invention of the internet surely changed humanity!
Do you not think that without him we would still have some version of the internet?
Of course; same applies to many other things too.
Not the really big hitters.
And as I should have said earlier, he didn't invent the internet (Cerf and Kahn at Arpanet did), just the WWW aspect of it.
This weekend in the South East it’s going to be 25 degrees. On Monday and Tuesday the weather forecast is for it to be less than half that. I predict a lot of people will falsely think they’ve got Covid-19 by Tuesday evening.
My favourite word of the week has been @Foxy's coronachondria. I had a dose myself last night, high temperature, general body aches etc. Still feel sub par this morning but I don't think it was the dreaded lurgy.
There is an interesting article in the Courier this morning with doctors at Ninewells saying that they can nearly always tell now whether someone has the virus before the results come back. They are getting more attuned to identifying the signs, the most obvious marker being the loss of the sense of taste or smell. Given that they have only had a few hundred cases to deal with I would guess that this has happened elsewhere and might explain why in several countries it has ultimately thought to be a bit of a waste of time testing those who clearly have it.
The Director of Public Health, Dr Nicola Brink, has directed that additional symptoms should be added to the list for Bailiwick of Guernsey residents to be aware of.
The full list, including new symptoms, as of today April, 10th are as follows:
Muscle ache (fatigue, exhaustion)* Headache (sinus pain, pain around eyes)* Loss of smell/taste* Sore throat* Fever (high temperature, rigors, chills, can’t get warm.) Shortness of breath, chest tightness Continuous new cough
*new to symptoms added as of Friday 10th April 2020
These additional symptoms have been added as a result of continued assessment of diagnostic information available on Covid-19 from cases studied locally and from research further afield.....
....If you, or household member are showing signs of any, or a combination of these symptoms, please contact the Coronavirus Helpline or your GP to seek further advice. “
Hmm. I didn't have Covid-19 in December, but that is pretty much the list of symptoms I had back then (not really shortness of breath).
There seems to have been quite a buffet of nasty bugs around this winter. As I said earlier, this will mak it complicated when we do come out of lockdown, because so many will say "yeah, I had that Covid-19, but I got better", in the way that so many people say "I had the flu for a couple of days last week". No you bloody didn't!! Without the antibody test, these folk will continue to be a walking disaster in the making.
35% of those on ICU are BME, compared with 14% of the population. Bearing in mind that the BME population has a younger Median age, that is quite a high figure, even allowing for the population being more urban. All 10 medical fatalities too.
As a South Asian man myself, I don`t like the term BAME. The term almost means that other minorities are just an addition to black people who are the `real minority`.
People of South Asian origin are a higher proportion of the population than black people, yet they are inadequately represented in media portrayal of minorities. The NHS medical dramas hardly have any Asian characters yet if you go to any NHS hospital, you will see that there are more Asian people working there than black people. Especially amongst doctors.
A case in point is the picture that accompanies the headline today of Holby city donating ventilators to NHS Nightingale.
On a different note, Boris went up in my estimate greatly when he gave good representation to people of Asian origin in the cabinet, not the token representation.
The number of Asian doctors who have already given their lives seeking to help people with this virus in the UK is deeply troubling and suggests to me a genetic vulnerability that goes beyond a greater predisposition towards diabetes. @Foxy's report that 35% of those on ICUs are BAME may well point the same way but I agree that the definition confuses rather than helps.
Black and Asian people in Britain are said to suffer more with diabetes and Covid more than white people, and maybe that’s genetics, but the fact that they tend to live in polluted cities and are poorer in money terms too must play a part?
How are countries that are majority black, with decent air quality, getting on with covid? Caribbean countries?
I don't know but I read an article in the NYT which said that black people were disproportionately dying of this even in middle class and upper middle class areas. So while environmental factors such as those that you list play a part they are not the whole answer. As a non doctor it is interesting how often diabetes comes up. Type 2 is of course very closely linked to obesity which is another danger. My guess would be that we will find that there is a link between the infection pathways and insulin resistance.
On topic, its Oxford, now if it was Cambridge saying this that would be a different matter :-)
More seriously. Scientists are normally a pretty conservative bunch when it comes to making predictions about timelines on their work, so that has to be good news.
One thing from the article that was interesting, was the claim that with this approach, we wouldn't need to build massive new infrastructure to produce it. Existing facilities could be re-purposed.
Cambridge has produced humanity changing scientists like Darwin, Newton, and Turing, the only scientist of note Oxford has produced is Thatcher*.
*Hawking doesn't count for Oxford as he realised it was a dump and decided to do his PhD at Cambridge.
Edwin Hubble, Robert Hooke, Erwin Schrödinger, Tim Berners-Lee...mere bagatelle
None of them changed humanity, I mean Turing helped win a war.
No dog in this fight, apart from the fact that MA supervisor was based in ARU's Cambridge facility, but Berners-Lee's invention of the internet surely changed humanity!
Do you not think that without him we would still have some version of the internet?
Perhaps but you could equally say that without Watson and Crick (who heavily relied on Rosalind Franklin’s (Kings College London) data) someone else would have uncovered the structure of DNA. Anyway, the internet had been around since the 60s, Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, which uses the internet, but is not the internet itself.
On topic, its Oxford, now if it was Cambridge saying this that would be a different matter :-)
More seriously. Scientists are normally a pretty conservative bunch when it comes to making predictions about timelines on their work, so that has to be good news.
One thing from the article that was interesting, was the claim that with this approach, we wouldn't need to build massive new infrastructure to produce it. Existing facilities could be re-purposed.
Cambridge has produced humanity changing scientists like Darwin, Newton, and Turing, the only scientist of note Oxford has produced is Thatcher*.
*Hawking doesn't count for Oxford as he realised it was a dump and decided to do his PhD at Cambridge.
Edwin Hubble, Robert Hooke, Erwin Schrödinger, Tim Berners-Lee...mere bagatelle
None of them changed humanity, I mean Turing helped win a war.
No dog in this fight, apart from the fact that MA supervisor was based in ARU's Cambridge facility, but Berners-Lee's invention of the internet surely changed humanity!
Do you not think that without him we would still have some version of the internet?
Of course; same applies to many other things too.
Not the really big hitters.
And as I should have said earlier, he didn't invent the internet (Cerf and Kahn at Arpanet did), just the WWW aspect of it.
Watson and Crick wouldn’t have got anywhere without Franklin.
Two pieces of wildly off topic news to report this fine morning.
Firstly, two hedgehogs active in the garden in daylight hours. I'm not sure if their interaction was courtship or one bossing the other. Wor Lass went out to offer them some food, which sent them scuttling into the undergrowth.
Secondly, I've started a new bag of porridge today. More finely milled than the previous bag, so cooks more quickly, but I prefer the courser texture. Some prankster had written on the bag that it should be made with water and salt. I don't think so!
In Scotland they put salt rather than sugar on their porridge, I believe.
Salt cheaper than sugar? I'm sure Malc G would know
Yes it is indeed normal to salt your porridge, I am sure some put sugar on it after cooked but not the done thing. Bit of salt in as you are cooking it up enhances the flavour. I will ignore the "tight arse" insinuation PS: I prefer the full oats rather than fine milled for sure.
I ask this genuinely but has it be determined if BAME are more at risk of this deadly virus, as it does seem we are losing quite a lot of BAME medical staff
Also my wife and I were devastated when pictures were shown of the horrible mass burial of those with no relatives in some appalling location in NewYork.
Has the US descended the depths of a sewer in disrespecting each and everyone of these poor people who deserve the highest respect for the lose of their lives and not to be buried in a dark cold out of the way, out of the mind location
If one good comes out of this evil virus let us hope we revisit the value of each and everyone and raise up those with so little and provide them with hope
Big-G - it is not where I would want to be buried but Hart Island has been the location of NYC’s pauper’s grave for many many years. It is sub-optimal but not appalling. More than one million people have been buried there over the decades. Similar scene, with undertakers in hazmat suits, were seen in the early days of the AIDS epidemic
Is that right though? In the arts, yes. No Whistler, no Mother. But in science and tech, not so clear. If the person who did something massive in (say) 1952 had never been born it could well be that here in 2020 we would still be feeling the benefit, a different person having done the business in (say) 1961.
Matt Hancock describes PPE as a "precious resource."
Wrong. It is basic kit, essential for staff to stay alive. The idea that face masks should be used sparingly in a pandemic is frightening. The fact it's happening because of government failure to plan is criminal.
People are dying because of PPE failings and the fact there has been such small number of tests we dont have a clue which NHS/Carer environment is safe or not.
We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe and those in charge will be held responsible for the flawed initial strategy, the PPE failings, the late lockdown failings, the pathetic inability to ramp up testing.
"We followed the Science but ended up with the worst results" - not so much.
Maybe you can enlighten us as to which European country has sufficient PPE?
-Three weeks ago my wife's niece who works on the front line in Toulon phoned us asking if we can send her P2/P3 respirators.
-The Netherlands is struggling due to a recent delivery of P2 respirators from China being defective..
-Finland has a similar issue to the Netherlands as a recent delivery of 2 million masks from China were found to be defective.
-As per the L'Express report, orders of two million masks each for Italy & Spain from the Molnlycke plant (a Swedish company) in France was hijacked by Macron & required direct intervention from the Swedish government to release the orders.
-Then of course there is the EU tender for PPE & ventilators which apparently is about to be signed, my wife's niece has been told to expect additional ventilators (France currently has 8,000 ventilators) in July, the PPE part of the tender may be earlier.
Nice whataboutery but HMG suppressed warnings about our lack of kit as recently as 2016 (pre-Boris, so I expect it is politically safe to admit it in due course). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Cygnus
During the crisis itself, we need to ask if government efforts to secure and expand supply and manufacture have been adequate. Results are clear that so far, they have not. Could HMG do better? We do not know. It might be unknowable. I am surprised no Minister of PPE has been appointed as in both wars.
I ask this genuinely but has it be determined if BAME are more at risk of this deadly virus, as it does seem we are losing quite a lot of BAME medical staff
Also my wife and I were devastated when pictures were shown of the horrible mass burial of those with no relatives in some appalling location in NewYork.
Has the US descended the depths of a sewer in disrespecting each and everyone of these poor people who deserve the highest respect for the lose of their lives and not to be buried in a dark cold out of the way, out of the mind location
If one good comes out of this evil virus let us hope we revisit the value of each and everyone and raise up those with so little and provide them with hope
Hard to believe they could not have been taken in refrigerated lorries to other states and cremated decently so their families could have had a chance to have a proper service at a later date.
On topic, its Oxford, now if it was Cambridge saying this that would be a different matter :-)
More seriously. Scientists are normally a pretty conservative bunch when it comes to making predictions about timelines on their work, so that has to be good news.
One thing from the article that was interesting, was the claim that with this approach, we wouldn't need to build massive new infrastructure to produce it. Existing facilities could be re-purposed.
Cambridge has produced humanity changing scientists like Darwin, Newton, and Turing, the only scientist of note Oxford has produced is Thatcher*.
*Hawking doesn't count for Oxford as he realised it was a dump and decided to do his PhD at Cambridge.
Edwin Hubble, Robert Hooke, Erwin Schrödinger, Tim Berners-Lee...mere bagatelle
None of them changed humanity, I mean Turing helped win a war.
No dog in this fight, apart from the fact that MA supervisor was based in ARU's Cambridge facility, but Berners-Lee's invention of the internet surely changed humanity!
Do you not think that without him we would still have some version of the internet?
Of course; same applies to many other things too.
Not the really big hitters.
And as I should have said earlier, he didn't invent the internet (Cerf and Kahn at Arpanet did), just the WWW aspect of it.
Watson and Crick wouldn’t have got anywhere without Franklin.
Which would affect the argument if she hadn't gone to Newnham and then to the Cambridge physics lab.
On topic, its Oxford, now if it was Cambridge saying this that would be a different matter :-)
More seriously. Scientists are normally a pretty conservative bunch when it comes to making predictions about timelines on their work, so that has to be good news.
One thing from the article that was interesting, was the claim that with this approach, we wouldn't need to build massive new infrastructure to produce it. Existing facilities could be re-purposed.
Cambridge has produced humanity changing scientists like Darwin, Newton, and Turing, the only scientist of note Oxford has produced is Thatcher*.
*Hawking doesn't count for Oxford as he realised it was a dump and decided to do his PhD at Cambridge.
Edwin Hubble, Robert Hooke, Erwin Schrödinger, Tim Berners-Lee...mere bagatelle
None of them changed humanity, I mean Turing helped win a war.
No dog in this fight, apart from the fact that MA supervisor was based in ARU's Cambridge facility, but Berners-Lee's invention of the internet surely changed humanity!
Do you not think that without him we would still have some version of the internet?
Of course; same applies to many other things too.
Not the really big hitters.
And as I should have said earlier, he didn't invent the internet (Cerf and Kahn at Arpanet did), just the WWW aspect of it.
Watson and Crick wouldn’t have got anywhere without Franklin.
Which would affect the argument if she hadn't gone to Newnham and then to the Cambridge physics lab.
So, by that logic, you’re happy for Oxford to take some credit for Stephen Hawking then?
On topic, its Oxford, now if it was Cambridge saying this that would be a different matter :-)
More seriously. Scientists are normally a pretty conservative bunch when it comes to making predictions about timelines on their work, so that has to be good news.
One thing from the article that was interesting, was the claim that with this approach, we wouldn't need to build massive new infrastructure to produce it. Existing facilities could be re-purposed.
Cambridge has produced humanity changing scientists like Darwin, Newton, and Turing, the only scientist of note Oxford has produced is Thatcher*.
*Hawking doesn't count for Oxford as he realised it was a dump and decided to do his PhD at Cambridge.
Edwin Hubble, Robert Hooke, Erwin Schrödinger, Tim Berners-Lee...mere bagatelle
None of them changed humanity, I mean Turing helped win a war.
No dog in this fight, apart from the fact that MA supervisor was based in ARU's Cambridge facility, but Berners-Lee's invention of the internet surely changed humanity!
Do you not think that without him we would still have some version of the internet?
Of course; same applies to many other things too.
Not the really big hitters.
And as I should have said earlier, he didn't invent the internet (Cerf and Kahn at Arpanet did), just the WWW aspect of it.
Watson and Crick wouldn’t have got anywhere without Franklin.
Probably Linus Pauling would have scooped them to the structure of DNA if the CIA had not stopped him travelling to a European conference where he'd have learned about Franklin's results.
ETA which speaks to @kinabalu's point that scientific advances will eventually happen anyway.
Matt Hancock describes PPE as a "precious resource."
Wrong. It is basic kit, essential for staff to stay alive. The idea that face masks should be used sparingly in a pandemic is frightening. The fact it's happening because of government failure to plan is criminal.
People are dying because of PPE failings and the fact there has been such small number of tests we dont have a clue which NHS/Carer environment is safe or not.
We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe and those in charge will be held responsible for the flawed initial strategy, the PPE failings, the late lockdown failings, the pathetic inability to ramp up testing.
"We followed the Science but ended up with the worst results" - not so much.
Maybe you can enlighten us as to which European country has sufficient PPE?
-Three weeks ago my wife's niece who works on the front line in Toulon phoned us asking if we can send her P2/P3 respirators.
-The Netherlands is struggling due to a recent delivery of P2 respirators from China being defective..
-Finland has a similar issue to the Netherlands as a recent delivery of 2 million masks from China were found to be defective.
-As per the L'Express report, orders of two million masks each for Italy & Spain from the Molnlycke plant (a Swedish company) in France was hijacked by Macron & required direct intervention from the Swedish government to release the orders.
-Then of course there is the EU tender for PPE & ventilators which apparently is about to be signed, my wife's niece has been told to expect additional ventilators (France currently has 8,000 ventilators) in July, the PPE part of the tender may be earlier.
Nice whataboutery but HMG suppressed warnings about our lack of kit as recently as 2016 (pre-Boris, so I expect it is politically safe to admit it in due course). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Cygnus
During the crisis itself, we need to ask if government efforts to secure and expand supply and manufacture have been adequate. Results are clear that so far, they have not. Could HMG do better? We do not know. It might be unknowable. I am surprised no Minister of PPE has been appointed as in both wars.
People who don’t like the Tories will blame them for everything - shocker.
On topic, its Oxford, now if it was Cambridge saying this that would be a different matter :-)
More seriously. Scientists are normally a pretty conservative bunch when it comes to making predictions about timelines on their work, so that has to be good news.
One thing from the article that was interesting, was the claim that with this approach, we wouldn't need to build massive new infrastructure to produce it. Existing facilities could be re-purposed.
Cambridge has produced humanity changing scientists like Darwin, Newton, and Turing, the only scientist of note Oxford has produced is Thatcher*.
*Hawking doesn't count for Oxford as he realised it was a dump and decided to do his PhD at Cambridge.
Edwin Hubble, Robert Hooke, Erwin Schrödinger, Tim Berners-Lee...mere bagatelle
None of them changed humanity, I mean Turing helped win a war.
No dog in this fight, apart from the fact that MA supervisor was based in ARU's Cambridge facility, but Berners-Lee's invention of the internet surely changed humanity!
Do you not think that without him we would still have some version of the internet?
Perhaps but you could equally say that without Watson and Crick (who heavily relied on Rosalind Franklin’s (Kings College London) data) someone else would have uncovered the structure of DNA. Anyway, the internet had been around since the 60s, Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, which uses the internet, but is not the internet itself.
Is that right though? In the arts, yes. No Whistler, no Mother. But in science and tech, not so clear. If the person who did something massive in (say) 1952 had never been born it could well be that here in 2020 we would still be feeling the benefit, a different person having done the business in (say) 1961.
What was that about standing on the shoulders of giants?
I ask this genuinely but has it be determined if BAME are more at risk of this deadly virus, as it does seem we are losing quite a lot of BAME medical staff
Also my wife and I were devastated when pictures were shown of the horrible mass burial of those with no relatives in some appalling location in NewYork.
Has the US descended the depths of a sewer in disrespecting each and everyone of these poor people who deserve the highest respect for the lose of their lives and not to be buried in a dark cold out of the way, out of the mind location
If one good comes out of this evil virus let us hope we revisit the value of each and everyone and raise up those with so little and provide them with hope
Hard to believe they could not have been taken in refrigerated lorries to other states and cremated decently so their families could have had a chance to have a proper service at a later date.
They have documented location of each body so if anyone wants to claim it it should be possible. They are not chucked in an open pit.
Yes but you do not have to follow a hard left mantra to achieve compassion
That is true. It does help though, I find. So long as you avoid the obvious pitfalls - and since they are obvious it is quite easy to step around them.
Is that right though? In the arts, yes. No Whistler, no Mother. But in science and tech, not so clear. If the person who did something massive in (say) 1952 had never been born it could well be that here in 2020 we would still be feeling the benefit, a different person having done the business in (say) 1961.
Well - I have heard it said that if Einstein hadn't worked out Special Relativity someone else would have done within 5 years, but if it hadn't been for him we might still not have GR. I am not remotely qualified to know whether this is right.
Certainly dozens of people had worked out the gist of natural selection before Darwin published OOS (as he himself admitted in the intro to the 2nd edition).
I do not think any government would not have experienced these issues and to sit on the sidelines with hindsight is just too easy
Apparently PPE in normal times is supplied to approx 260 NHS trusts, in less than 3 months the figure has risen to 58,000 at a time when governments across the world are swamping the supplies
It is also too easy to deflect reasonable criticism by saying it's all too easy to sit on the sidelines and carp. We're almost all on the sidelines after all.
This is simply another way of saying. Crisis on. Trust in Boris. Shut up.
Much prefer your 10.17 post where you sound uncannily like the Bernie Sanders of the Welsh Valleys. Let's have loads more like that.
Yes but you do not have to follow a hard left mantra to achieve compassion
In the US you sort of do (at least if you're calling Sanders "hard left"). The politicians over there essentially function as employees of their donors, and the donor class over there has time and time again demonstrated an incredible capacity for cruelty in pursuit of profit.
Matt Hancock describes PPE as a "precious resource."
Wrong. It is basic kit, essential for staff to stay alive. The idea that face masks should be used sparingly in a pandemic is frightening. The fact it's happening because of government failure to plan is criminal.
People are dying because of PPE failings and the fact there has been such small number of tests we dont have a clue which NHS/Carer environment is safe or not.
We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe and those in charge will be held responsible for the flawed initial strategy, the PPE failings, the late lockdown failings, the pathetic inability to ramp up testing.
"We followed the Science but ended up with the worst results" - not so much.
It is all so easy BJO
Who says its easy but by definition the country that ends up with the worst outcome has clearly failed.
Which bit of We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe do you not understand BigG
I am not quick to judge and will wait to see in the months and years to come just which outcomes were successful and which were not
You are not exactly an independent authority on this
The time to judge how well we have done in the UK compared to the rest of Europe is when the worst is over not when we are in the thick of. I believe there are going to be some very tricky questions for the government to answer but let's wait and see.
Oxford’s a dump, it’s like listening to Alan Clark on fidelity and abstinence.
Oxford were also touting a few weeks ago that most of us already had Covid-19 which turned out to be balls.
Except that they weren’t. They were pointing out that on the available date the proportion of infected could equally be very low or very high, and that the level of uncertainty was significant. Ill based certainty is perhaps the mark of the other place ?
I know I have a bee in my bonnet about air-fed helmets, vs FFP3 masks but comfort is an issue as I'm sure you know. If we're spending zillions on all and everything, the money shouldn't be an issue.
If Australian ICUs can do it, why can't we? I'm sure the hospital training on correct use of RPE is comprehensive, but as they say, if you haven't got a red mark on your face afterwards, you're not using it properly. Is it a supply issue?
Edit: I'm retired now, so it's always tempting to snipe from the sidelines. Apologies.
They are good. Getting hands on them is the problem it seems.
I ask this genuinely but has it be determined if BAME are more at risk of this deadly virus, as it does seem we are losing quite a lot of BAME medical staff
Also my wife and I were devastated when pictures were shown of the horrible mass burial of those with no relatives in some appalling location in NewYork.
Has the US descended the depths of a sewer in disrespecting each and everyone of these poor people who deserve the highest respect for the lose of their lives and not to be buried in a dark cold out of the way, out of the mind location
If one good comes out of this evil virus let us hope we revisit the value of each and everyone and raise up those with so little and provide them with hope
Hard to believe they could not have been taken in refrigerated lorries to other states and cremated decently so their families could have had a chance to have a proper service at a later date.
They have documented location of each body so if anyone wants to claim it it should be possible. They are not chucked in an open pit.
Having seen them piling them high it will not be a simple task to get out any individual coffin and how long before the cheap wooden coffins rot. It will be very expensive to get a single coffin out of there and I bet they will have to pay for it themselves so many will in reality have little hope.
Matt Hancock describes PPE as a "precious resource."
Wrong. It is basic kit, essential for staff to stay alive. The idea that face masks should be used sparingly in a pandemic is frightening. The fact it's happening because of government failure to plan is criminal.
People are dying because of PPE failings and the fact there has been such small number of tests we dont have a clue which NHS/Carer environment is safe or not.
We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe and those in charge will be held responsible for the flawed initial strategy, the PPE failings, the late lockdown failings, the pathetic inability to ramp up testing.
"We followed the Science but ended up with the worst results" - not so much.
Maybe you can enlighten us as to which European country has sufficient PPE?
-Three weeks ago my wife's niece who works on the front line in Toulon phoned us asking if we can send her P2/P3 respirators.
-The Netherlands is struggling due to a recent delivery of P2 respirators from China being defective..
-Finland has a similar issue to the Netherlands as a recent delivery of 2 million masks from China were found to be defective.
-As per the L'Express report, orders of two million masks each for Italy & Spain from the Molnlycke plant (a Swedish company) in France was hijacked by Macron & required direct intervention from the Swedish government to release the orders.
-Then of course there is the EU tender for PPE & ventilators which apparently is about to be signed, my wife's niece has been told to expect additional ventilators (France currently has 8,000 ventilators) in July, the PPE part of the tender may be earlier.
Nice whataboutery but HMG suppressed warnings about our lack of kit as recently as 2016 (pre-Boris, so I expect it is politically safe to admit it in due course). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Cygnus
During the crisis itself, we need to ask if government efforts to secure and expand supply and manufacture have been adequate. Results are clear that so far, they have not. Could HMG do better? We do not know. It might be unknowable. I am surprised no Minister of PPE has been appointed as in both wars.
People who don’t like the Tories will blame them for everything - shocker.
Boris and Cummings will be the ones blaming the Tories for everything. That is how they won the last election.
Matt Hancock describes PPE as a "precious resource."
Wrong. It is basic kit, essential for staff to stay alive. The idea that face masks should be used sparingly in a pandemic is frightening. The fact it's happening because of government failure to plan is criminal.
People are dying because of PPE failings and the fact there has been such small number of tests we dont have a clue which NHS/Carer environment is safe or not.
We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe and those in charge will be held responsible for the flawed initial strategy, the PPE failings, the late lockdown failings, the pathetic inability to ramp up testing.
"We followed the Science but ended up with the worst results" - not so much.
There does seem to have been a failure in the supply chain. From Hancock's figures, I presume the supply used to be to NHS Trusts for onward supply to individual care settings, and that simply hasn't worked.
The problem is more in the nature of PPE. We have plenty of gloves, aprons and regular surgical masks. What we lack are FFP3 masks, hoods and long sleeved gowns.
This intersects with the testing issue. We don't know which patients are positive, therefore what PPE to use. Play it safe and use it on all suspects or take a chance? That is the dilemma.
"The resource is precious" though
Stay save Foxy
No problem. Busy gardening without PPE today, apart from sunhat!
Back into the maelstrom on Tuesday.
The scuttlebutt from Italy is that the biggest risks are on the non-Covid wards. Presumably also Social Care where both PPE and training in its correct use are lacking. GP land is poorly supplied too, but the medical and nursing casualties seem to be in the hospital sector.
I would just like to say Foxy your dedication to the service of others without thought to yourself, and so many like you, is very humbling for those of us on the sidelines.
We can only pray you will all receive the PPE you need and get through this so we as a nation can rise as one to praise each and everyone of you in a tangible way, including financial recognition of your dedication
And we follow all your posts with great interest and the way you comment in an apolitical way is much appreciated and so informative.
Archer? You could have done a lot better than that (Blair being the obvious one).
A 3 times general election winning PM? You have to go back to Stanley Baldwin to find the last Cambridge educated PM. We have even had a Birmingham educated PM (Chamberlain) and an Edinburgh educated PM (Brown) more recently than we have had a Cambridge educated PM
Is that right though? In the arts, yes. No Whistler, no Mother. But in science and tech, not so clear. If the person who did something massive in (say) 1952 had never been born it could well be that here in 2020 we would still be feeling the benefit, a different person having done the business in (say) 1961.
What was that about standing on the shoulders of giants?
Matt Hancock describes PPE as a "precious resource."
Wrong. It is basic kit, essential for staff to stay alive. The idea that face masks should be used sparingly in a pandemic is frightening. The fact it's happening because of government failure to plan is criminal.
People are dying because of PPE failings and the fact there has been such small number of tests we dont have a clue which NHS/Carer environment is safe or not.
We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe and those in charge will be held responsible for the flawed initial strategy, the PPE failings, the late lockdown failings, the pathetic inability to ramp up testing.
"We followed the Science but ended up with the worst results" - not so much.
It is all so easy BJO
Who says its easy but by definition the country that ends up with the worst outcome has clearly failed.
Which bit of We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe do you not understand BigG
I am not quick to judge and will wait to see in the months and years to come just which outcomes were successful and which were not
You are not exactly an independent authority on this
The time to judge how well we have done in the UK compared to the rest of Europe is when the worst is over not when we are in the thick of. I believe there are going to be some very tricky questions for the government to answer but let's wait and see.
Yes, but a 'Nuremberg style reckoning' as was posited by at least one of Team Mouth Breather on here. No chance.
We'll do better than most countries on some aspects (for example, other than China, has any other country matched our efforts on the Nightingale hospitals) and worse on others but not catastrophically so. It will likely be UK science and engineering at the forefront of some of the global solutions.
On topic, its Oxford, now if it was Cambridge saying this that would be a different matter :-)
More seriously. Scientists are normally a pretty conservative bunch when it comes to making predictions about timelines on their work, so that has to be good news.
One thing from the article that was interesting, was the claim that with this approach, we wouldn't need to build massive new infrastructure to produce it. Existing facilities could be re-purposed.
Cambridge has produced humanity changing scientists like Darwin, Newton, and Turing, the only scientist of note Oxford has produced is Thatcher*.
*Hawking doesn't count for Oxford as he realised it was a dump and decided to do his PhD at Cambridge.
Edwin Hubble, Robert Hooke, Erwin Schrödinger, Tim Berners-Lee...mere bagatelle
None of them changed humanity, I mean Turing helped win a war.
No dog in this fight, apart from the fact that MA supervisor was based in ARU's Cambridge facility, but Berners-Lee's invention of the internet surely changed humanity!
Do you not think that without him we would still have some version of the internet?
Of course; same applies to many other things too.
Not the really big hitters.
And as I should have said earlier, he didn't invent the internet (Cerf and Kahn at Arpanet did), just the WWW aspect of it.
Watson and Crick wouldn’t have got anywhere without Franklin.
Probably Linus Pauling would have scooped them to the structure of DNA if the CIA had not stopped him travelling to a European conference where he'd have learned about Franklin's results.
ETA which speaks to @kinabalu's point that scientific advances will eventually happen anyway.
I believe that scientific advances will happen eventually, but not necessarilly in the same order. That may have made a big change to society, once we have a solution we tend to develop it and drop any other alternatives. For example the ICE car vs the electric car.
Matt Hancock describes PPE as a "precious resource."
Wrong. It is basic kit, essential for staff to stay alive. The idea that face masks should be used sparingly in a pandemic is frightening. The fact it's happening because of government failure to plan is criminal.
People are dying because of PPE failings and the fact there has been such small number of tests we dont have a clue which NHS/Carer environment is safe or not.
We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe and those in charge will be held responsible for the flawed initial strategy, the PPE failings, the late lockdown failings, the pathetic inability to ramp up testing.
"We followed the Science but ended up with the worst results" - not so much.
It is all so easy BJO
Who says its easy but by definition the country that ends up with the worst outcome has clearly failed.
Which bit of We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe do you not understand BigG
I am not quick to judge and will wait to see in the months and years to come just which outcomes were successful and which were not
You are not exactly an independent authority on this
The time to judge how well we have done in the UK compared to the rest of Europe is when the worst is over not when we are in the thick of. I believe there are going to be some very tricky questions for the government to answer but let's wait and see.
I doubt there will be any governments without tricky questions to answer. In this situation a government has to take lots of decisions quickly. A good (or lucky) government will make more right decisions than wrong ones - but all governments will make mistakes. The question is how quickly do they learn from them?
Matt Hancock describes PPE as a "precious resource."
Wrong. It is basic kit, essential for staff to stay alive. The idea that face masks should be used sparingly in a pandemic is frightening. The fact it's happening because of government failure to plan is criminal.
People are dying because of PPE failings and the fact there has been such small number of tests we dont have a clue which NHS/Carer environment is safe or not.
We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe and those in charge will be held responsible for the flawed initial strategy, the PPE failings, the late lockdown failings, the pathetic inability to ramp up testing.
"We followed the Science but ended up with the worst results" - not so much.
Maybe you can enlighten us as to which European country has sufficient PPE?
-Three weeks ago my wife's niece who works on the front line in Toulon phoned us asking if we can send her P2/P3 respirators.
-The Netherlands is struggling due to a recent delivery of P2 respirators from China being defective..
-Finland has a similar issue to the Netherlands as a recent delivery of 2 million masks from China were found to be defective.
-As per the L'Express report, orders of two million masks each for Italy & Spain from the Molnlycke plant (a Swedish company) in France was hijacked by Macron & required direct intervention from the Swedish government to release the orders.
-Then of course there is the EU tender for PPE & ventilators which apparently is about to be signed, my wife's niece has been told to expect additional ventilators (France currently has 8,000 ventilators) in July, the PPE part of the tender may be earlier.
Nice whataboutery but HMG suppressed warnings about our lack of kit as recently as 2016 (pre-Boris, so I expect it is politically safe to admit it in due course). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Cygnus
During the crisis itself, we need to ask if government efforts to secure and expand supply and manufacture have been adequate. Results are clear that so far, they have not. Could HMG do better? We do not know. It might be unknowable. I am surprised no Minister of PPE has been appointed as in both wars.
If it was the UK that only had issues with PPE you would have a point, clearly the PPE issues are at least pan Europe if not global.
Matt Hancock describes PPE as a "precious resource."
Wrong. It is basic kit, essential for staff to stay alive. The idea that face masks should be used sparingly in a pandemic is frightening. The fact it's happening because of government failure to plan is criminal.
People are dying because of PPE failings and the fact there has been such small number of tests we dont have a clue which NHS/Carer environment is safe or not.
We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe and those in charge will be held responsible for the flawed initial strategy, the PPE failings, the late lockdown failings, the pathetic inability to ramp up testing.
"We followed the Science but ended up with the worst results" - not so much.
It is all so easy BJO
Who says its easy but by definition the country that ends up with the worst outcome has clearly failed.
Which bit of We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe do you not understand BigG
I am not quick to judge and will wait to see in the months and years to come just which outcomes were successful and which were not
You are not exactly an independent authority on this
The time to judge how well we have done in the UK compared to the rest of Europe is when the worst is over not when we are in the thick of. I believe there are going to be some very tricky questions for the government to answer but let's wait and see.
Yes, but a 'Nuremberg style reckoning' as was posited by at least one of Team Mouth Breather on here. No chance.
We'll do better than most countries on some aspects (for example, other than China, has any other country matched our efforts on the Nightingale hospitals) and worse on others but not catastrophically so. It will likely be UK science and engineering at the forefront of some of the global solutions.
There, that's my prediction.
They were building nightingale type hospitals in exhibition centers and hospital car parks in Spain two weeks before the UK. Valencia and Alicante hospital had 500 icu bed extensions set up as well as the largest in Madrid.
Matt Hancock describes PPE as a "precious resource."
Wrong. It is basic kit, essential for staff to stay alive. The idea that face masks should be used sparingly in a pandemic is frightening. The fact it's happening because of government failure to plan is criminal.
People are dying because of PPE failings and the fact there has been such small number of tests we dont have a clue which NHS/Carer environment is safe or not.
We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe and those in charge will be held responsible for the flawed initial strategy, the PPE failings, the late lockdown failings, the pathetic inability to ramp up testing.
"We followed the Science but ended up with the worst results" - not so much.
It is all so easy BJO
Who says its easy but by definition the country that ends up with the worst outcome has clearly failed.
Which bit of We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe do you not understand BigG
I am not quick to judge and will wait to see in the months and years to come just which outcomes were successful and which were not
You are not exactly an independent authority on this
The time to judge how well we have done in the UK compared to the rest of Europe is when the worst is over not when we are in the thick of. I believe there are going to be some very tricky questions for the government to answer but let's wait and see.
Yes, but a 'Nuremberg style reckoning' as was posited by at least one of Team Mouth Breather on here. No chance.
We'll do better than most countries on some aspects (for example, other than China, has any other country matched our efforts on the Nightingale hospitals) and worse on others but not catastrophically so. It will likely be UK science and engineering at the forefront of some of the global solutions.
There, that's my prediction.
No, we cannot wait, although doubtless there will be a final commission of some sort. But right now, in the thick of it, is precisely when we should be looking at what other countries are doing better than us, at what is working, what is not, and what can be done better.
I really good video explaining South Korea's approach. It is much much much more than just testing a lot of people. The only thing they missed was apparently, the system also automatically prioritises who should be tested when. So those most suspected or most crucial go to the front of the queue for getting a testing slot and get their result the fastest.
Both Oxford and Cambridge have been noticeably low key during the CV19 response. Would be nice if they stepped up and shared the load rather than leaving all the work to the likes of Imperial.
Watch the video. We can't do what they do, unless we are willing to radically change what we allow the government to know about us.
We didn't give in, as much as community transmission had become widespread, as due to privacy we can't have big brother automatically go in and see where everybody has been, who they met, what they bought, and spit out the next batch of those that need to be contacted.
Both Oxford and Cambridge have been noticeably low key during the CV19 response. Would be nice if they stepped up and shared the load rather than leaving all the work to the likes of Imperial.
Matt Hancock describes PPE as a "precious resource."
Wrong. It is basic kit, essential for staff to stay alive. The idea that face masks should be used sparingly in a pandemic is frightening. The fact it's happening because of government failure to plan is criminal.
People are dying because of PPE failings and the fact there has been such small number of tests we dont have a clue which NHS/Carer environment is safe or not.
We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe and those in charge will be held responsible for the flawed initial strategy, the PPE failings, the late lockdown failings, the pathetic inability to ramp up testing.
"We followed the Science but ended up with the worst results" - not so much.
It is all so easy BJO
Who says its easy but by definition the country that ends up with the worst outcome has clearly failed.
Which bit of We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe do you not understand BigG
I am not quick to judge and will wait to see in the months and years to come just which outcomes were successful and which were not
You are not exactly an independent authority on this
The time to judge how well we have done in the UK compared to the rest of Europe is when the worst is over not when we are in the thick of. I believe there are going to be some very tricky questions for the government to answer but let's wait and see.
Yes, but a 'Nuremberg style reckoning' as was posited by at least one of Team Mouth Breather on here. No chance.
We'll do better than most countries on some aspects (for example, other than China, has any other country matched our efforts on the Nightingale hospitals) and worse on others but not catastrophically so. It will likely be UK science and engineering at the forefront of some of the global solutions.
There, that's my prediction.
No, we cannot wait, although doubtless there will be a final commission of some sort. But right now, in the thick of it, is precisely when we should be looking at what other countries are doing better than us, at what is working, what is not, and what can be done better.
yes, but that point is completed unrelated to what I posted?
Further, learning and adapting is not the same as judging how well we're doing on the basis of seriously incomplete data. That's so obvious, I didn't realise it needed saying.
Is that right though? In the arts, yes. No Whistler, no Mother. But in science and tech, not so clear. If the person who did something massive in (say) 1952 had never been born it could well be that here in 2020 we would still be feeling the benefit, a different person having done the business in (say) 1961.
What was that about standing on the shoulders of giants?
A snidy stab at Robert Hooke.
Not snide at all; every human advance has been made as a consequence of the work done by others. The genius lies in the ability to understand and develop what others have started.
Matt Hancock describes PPE as a "precious resource."
Wrong. It is basic kit, essential for staff to stay alive. The idea that face masks should be used sparingly in a pandemic is frightening. The fact it's happening because of government failure to plan is criminal.
People are dying because of PPE failings and the fact there has been such small number of tests we dont have a clue which NHS/Carer environment is safe or not.
We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe and those in charge will be held responsible for the flawed initial strategy, the PPE failings, the late lockdown failings, the pathetic inability to ramp up testing.
"We followed the Science but ended up with the worst results" - not so much.
Maybe you can enlighten us as to which European country has sufficient PPE?
-Three weeks ago my wife's niece who works on the front line in Toulon phoned us asking if we can send her P2/P3 respirators.
-The Netherlands is struggling due to a recent delivery of P2 respirators from China being defective..
-Finland has a similar issue to the Netherlands as a recent delivery of 2 million masks from China were found to be defective.
-As per the L'Express report, orders of two million masks each for Italy & Spain from the Molnlycke plant (a Swedish company) in France was hijacked by Macron & required direct intervention from the Swedish government to release the orders.
-Then of course there is the EU tender for PPE & ventilators which apparently is about to be signed, my wife's niece has been told to expect additional ventilators (France currently has 8,000 ventilators) in July, the PPE part of the tender may be earlier.
Nice whataboutery but HMG suppressed warnings about our lack of kit as recently as 2016 (pre-Boris, so I expect it is politically safe to admit it in due course). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Cygnus
During the crisis itself, we need to ask if government efforts to secure and expand supply and manufacture have been adequate. Results are clear that so far, they have not. Could HMG do better? We do not know. It might be unknowable. I am surprised no Minister of PPE has been appointed as in both wars.
If it was the UK that only had issues with PPE you would have a point, clearly the PPE issues are at least pan Europe if not global.
Again, I refer you to Exercise Cygnus and its suppression.
Tbf to HMG there have been recent signs of action, judging from updates to gov.uk and the press conferences. That is where to look. After all, if everything were already done perfectly or even adequately, there'd be no need for new developments. See for instance https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-sets-out-plan-for-national-effort-on-ppe
The government is lucky it has a largely supportive media .
I can only imagine what they would have done if Labour had been in charge . The fact remains that the government had an advantage seeing what was happening elsewhere and wasted that .
Now Hancock is desperately trying to row back from his comments regarding PPE after it looked like he was blaming NHS workers for using too much .
Some in here seem to think it’s heresy to criticize the government!
Worrying news from South Korea yesterday that 91 patients who had previously had and recovered from CV have now tested positive again. Some are asymptomatic but some are now showing fever and respiratory problems again.
That could really mess up any long term immunity plans.
I thought this was known - the Chinese doctor who tried to tell the rest of the world about this disease died in when it came back.
There had been so few cases that it was not considered to be confirmed. But South Korea is now recording large numbers of cases which must be very worrying.
You'll see Owen why the government didn't do it sooner if we have to keep it up for twelve more weeks or even longer.
Jones' approach seems to amount to seeking an admission of fault in order to score political points. Hancock, by contrast, wants to focus on the need to make the right calls in future rather than harking back to the past (judging from this morning's interview.)
Both are wrong in their approach.
Hancock is right that we should be focusing on getting right the decisions being taken in the future, rather than those in the past, but an unwillingness to accept past mistakes leads to a loss of confidence that the government has learnt its lesson and has changed course appropriately. Learning from mistakes it good, failing to demonstrate that you can by failing to acknowledge mistakes is not. Yet the response to criticism for criticism's sake by the likes of Jones is just to clam up and put out banal statistics that convince no-one.
Matt Hancock describes PPE as a "precious resource."
Wrong. It is basic kit, essential for staff to stay alive. The idea that face masks should be used sparingly in a pandemic is frightening. The fact it's happening because of government failure to plan is criminal.
People are dying because of PPE failings and the fact there has been such small number of tests we dont have a clue which NHS/Carer environment is safe or not.
We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe and those in charge will be held responsible for the flawed initial strategy, the PPE failings, the late lockdown failings, the pathetic inability to ramp up testing.
"We followed the Science but ended up with the worst results" - not so much.
Maybe you can enlighten us as to which European country has sufficient PPE?
-Three weeks ago my wife's niece who works on the front line in Toulon phoned us asking if we can send her P2/P3 respirators.
-The Netherlands is struggling due to a recent delivery of P2 respirators from China being defective..
-Finland has a similar issue to the Netherlands as a recent delivery of 2 million masks from China were found to be defective.
-As per the L'Express report, orders of two million masks each for Italy & Spain from the Molnlycke plant (a Swedish company) in France was hijacked by Macron & required direct intervention from the Swedish government to release the orders.
-Then of course there is the EU tender for PPE & ventilators which apparently is about to be signed, my wife's niece has been told to expect additional ventilators (France currently has 8,000 ventilators) in July, the PPE part of the tender may be earlier.
Nice whataboutery but HMG suppressed warnings about our lack of kit as recently as 2016 (pre-Boris, so I expect it is politically safe to admit it in due course). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Cygnus
During the crisis itself, we need to ask if government efforts to secure and expand supply and manufacture have been adequate. Results are clear that so far, they have not. Could HMG do better? We do not know. It might be unknowable. I am surprised no Minister of PPE has been appointed as in both wars.
If it was all so obvious back in 2016, why did no one in Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition ever utter the words 'Exercise Cygnus' before the last couple of weeks?
Were they conspiring with the Tories to commit mass murder? I think we should be told!
Matt Hancock describes PPE as a "precious resource."
Wrong. It is basic kit, essential for staff to stay alive. The idea that face masks should be used sparingly in a pandemic is frightening. The fact it's happening because of government failure to plan is criminal.
People are dying because of PPE failings and the fact there has been such small number of tests we dont have a clue which NHS/Carer environment is safe or not.
We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe and those in charge will be held responsible for the flawed initial strategy, the PPE failings, the late lockdown failings, the pathetic inability to ramp up testing.
"We followed the Science but ended up with the worst results" - not so much.
It is all so easy BJO
Who says its easy but by definition the country that ends up with the worst outcome has clearly failed.
Which bit of We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe do you not understand BigG
I am not quick to judge and will wait to see in the months and years to come just which outcomes were successful and which were not
You are not exactly an independent authority on this
The time to judge how well we have done in the UK compared to the rest of Europe is when the worst is over not when we are in the thick of. I believe there are going to be some very tricky questions for the government to answer but let's wait and see.
Yes, but a 'Nuremberg style reckoning' as was posited by at least one of Team Mouth Breather on here. No chance.
We'll do better than most countries on some aspects (for example, other than China, has any other country matched our efforts on the Nightingale hospitals) and worse on others but not catastrophically so. It will likely be UK science and engineering at the forefront of some of the global solutions.
There, that's my prediction.
They were building nightingale type hospitals in exhibition centers and hospital car parks in Spain two weeks before the UK. Valencia and Alicante hospital had 500 icu bed extensions set up as well as the largest in Madrid.
OK, fair enough, on a smaller scale but on the same lines. Cheers.
Both Oxford and Cambridge have been noticeably low key during the CV19 response. Would be nice if they stepped up and shared the load rather than leaving all the work to the likes of Imperial.
Well - I have heard it said that if Einstein hadn't worked out Special Relativity someone else would have done within 5 years, but if it hadn't been for him we might still not have GR. I am not remotely qualified to know whether this is right.
Certainly dozens of people had worked out the gist of natural selection before Darwin published OOS (as he himself admitted in the intro to the 2nd edition).
If there is an exception to any rule that "he just got in first" Einstein has to be a prime contender. What a brain.
As it happens this is one of the many pointless questions I brood about. Not Einstein as such but the general one of do big things happen because of certain special people or do they happen because of powerful macro forces that act through certain people to realize their close to inevitable outcome. So, Belsen without Hitler? This sort of question.
Of course I have no answer. There is no answer. This is why it's perfect for brooding. FWIW, I think usually it's the play not the players. I'm not inclined to the Great Man theory of history, be it politics, arts or science.
daily repost: The government's terrible response and plans for a #ToryGenocide can be identified through the fact that all their advice and supporting data is open access. -_-
Both Oxford and Cambridge have been noticeably low key during the CV19 response. Would be nice if they stepped up and shared the load rather than leaving all the work to the likes of Imperial.
I presume I can mention this now, as there is a public website,
RAMP Steering Committee: Mike Cates (Chair) FRS, FRSE is Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge Graeme Ackland FRSE is Professor of Physics at the University of Edinburgh Mike Batty CBE, FRS, FBA is Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London Chris Bishop FRS is Lab Director at Microsoft Research Cambridge Julia Gog is Professor of Mathematical Biology at the University of Cambridge Dame Angela McLean FRS is Professor of Mathematical Biology at the University of Oxford
Interesting that Macron's approval is even below Trump's still, despite a small bounce for the French President following the crisis.
The 2022 French election could be interesting.
Lofven the only other leader under 50% but pursuing herd immunity does not yet seem fatal for the Swedish leader.
The French hate all their politicians, Macron has by a decent margin the best approvals of anyone who might run - and he had a lead even before the pandemic.
I'm not saying he's a sure-fire winner, but he's in a solid position for re-election.
He might still be re elected but if Macron is on just 40% approval it is possible Le Pen could win the first round and get over 40% in the run off
For all leaders with massive polling leaders in the current crisis - the only question is how quickly the leads will collapse afterwards.
Historical example Bush I after the First Gulf War - polled 90% approval at one point IIRC. Failed to be re-elected not especially long after....
A financial commitment from the UK government at this stage would be a huge gamble
Not really. Given the enormous cost of an extended pandemic, funding half a dozen such efforts would be a sensible investment rather than a gamble.
Though you wouldn’t need millions of doses initially. A system of contact tracing and ring vaccination, alongside vaccination of frontline health workers, would be extremely effective in suppressing the disease after a lockdown, and would provide time for production to be ramped up.
daily repost: The government's terrible response and plans for a #ToryGenocide can be identified through the fact that all their advice and supporting data is open access. -_-
But that is their cunning. By writing is down in long documents using big words, it is impossible for average Maomentum/Dirlewanger Brigade member to read it.
Matt Hancock describes PPE as a "precious resource."
Wrong. It is basic kit, essential for staff to stay alive. The idea that face masks should be used sparingly in a pandemic is frightening. The fact it's happening because of government failure to plan is criminal.
People are dying because of PPE failings and the fact there has been such small number of tests we dont have a clue which NHS/Carer environment is safe or not.
We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe and those in charge will be held responsible for the flawed initial strategy, the PPE failings, the late lockdown failings, the pathetic inability to ramp up testing.
"We followed the Science but ended up with the worst results" - not so much.
It is all so easy BJO
Who says its easy but by definition the country that ends up with the worst outcome has clearly failed.
Which bit of We could easily be on course to have the most deaths of any Country in Europe do you not understand BigG
I am not quick to judge and will wait to see in the months and years to come just which outcomes were successful and which were not
You are not exactly an independent authority on this
The time to judge how well we have done in the UK compared to the rest of Europe is when the worst is over not when we are in the thick of. I believe there are going to be some very tricky questions for the government to answer but let's wait and see.
I doubt there will be any governments without tricky questions to answer. In this situation a government has to take lots of decisions quickly. A good (or lucky) government will make more right decisions than wrong ones - but all governments will make mistakes. The question is how quickly do they learn from them?
The obsession with country vs country comparisons is very tedious.
There are so many variables as to make them worthless.
From this thread, racial mix, city rural components, air quality, poverty levels, obesity levels, population age, household numbers and diffrrences in counting and recording statistics.
Both Oxford and Cambridge have been noticeably low key during the CV19 response. Would be nice if they stepped up and shared the load rather than leaving all the work to the likes of Imperial.
I presume I can mention this now, as there is a public website,
RAMP Steering Committee: Mike Cates (Chair) FRS, FRSE is Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge Graeme Ackland FRSE is Professor of Physics at the University of Edinburgh Mike Batty CBE, FRS, FBA is Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London Chris Bishop FRS is Lab Director at Microsoft Research Cambridge Julia Gog is Professor of Mathematical Biology at the University of Cambridge Dame Angela McLean FRS is Professor of Mathematical Biology at the University of Oxford
The government is lucky it has a largely supportive media .
I can only imagine what they would have done if Labour had been in charge . The fact remains that the government had an advantage seeing what was happening elsewhere and wasted that .
Now Hancock is desperately trying to row back from his comments regarding PPE after it looked like he was blaming NHS workers for using too much .
Some in here seem to think it’s heresy to criticize the government!
Watch the video. We can't do what they do, unless we are willing to radically change what we allow the government to know about us.
We didn't give in, as much as community transmission had become widespread, as due to privacy we can't have big brother automatically go in and see where everybody has been, who they met, what they bought, and spit out the next batch of those that need to be contacted.
At some point it'll be worth having a well-informed community discussion (perhaps this might be a case where citizens' assemblies were helpful) on what kinds of privacy are important to people. Some clearly are very important (how we vote, for instance), others not really (I don't really mind that Sainsburys know what toothpaste I use). I'm not sure that if it gave a real potential health benefit, I'd really object to the authorities knowing who I'd visited (though if ir went public there would be issues with relationships where it's...complicated).
People tend to give knee-jerk responses according to what they're used to. For example, in Norway all tax returns are on the internet, so you can see what the PM has declared or indeed your neighbour, which obviously has benefits in exposing tax-dodgers but would be thought very startling in Britain even by nothing-to-hide people. So far as I know, even libertarians in Norway haven't identified this as a problem. Do South Koreans feel concerned about the tracking, or is it shrugged off as part of normal life?
What was that about standing on the shoulders of giants?
Yes. Very much so. Or sometimes - and less nobly - things like nicking other people's work, or getting credited as being the discoverer of something when in fact you led a team and all the hard yards were done by others, and what you really are is the frontman, there due to excellent PR skills or something. I bet those sort of scandalous goings on do happen in science, although of course it should be the last place where it does.
Interesting that Macron's approval is even below Trump's still, despite a small bounce for the French President following the crisis.
The 2022 French election could be interesting.
Lofven the only other leader under 50% but pursuing herd immunity does not yet seem fatal for the Swedish leader.
The French hate all their politicians, Macron has by a decent margin the best approvals of anyone who might run - and he had a lead even before the pandemic.
I'm not saying he's a sure-fire winner, but he's in a solid position for re-election.
He might still be re elected but if Macron is on just 40% approval it is possible Le Pen could win the first round and get over 40% in the run off
For all leaders with massive polling leaders in the current crisis - the only question is how quickly the leads will collapse afterwards.
Historical example Bush I after the First Gulf War - polled 90% approval at one point IIRC. Failed to be re-elected not especially long after....
True and of course Merkel has got the highest approval rating at the moment it seems and is not standing for re election anyway
Universities have asked the government for a £2 billion bailout to save their research programmes, which are threatened by the loss of high tuition fees paid by overseas students.
Leading vice-chancellors estimate that their institutions are facing a loss of up to £7 billion in overseas fees if all international students stay away.
The foreign students, who mostly come from China, often pay twice or three times the £9,250 a year paid by their UK counterparts.
A British Council survey of 10,000 Chinese students with places to study at UK universities in September revealed that only 39 per cent said they were “very likely” to commence their studies as planned.
Universities UK, the representative organisation, wants the government to double research funding from £2 billion to £4 billion in 2020-21 for research-heavy institutions such as the London School of Economics, University College London, Imperial College London and other members of the Russell Group. It also seeks help for Britain’s prestigious specialist universities such as the Royal College of Art and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
A third group for which it wants help is newer universities which have struggled to recruit enough students in recent years. They should be helped to merge, join forces with local further education colleges and overhaul their offer in line with the local labour market, UUK says in a paper.
On topic, its Oxford, now if it was Cambridge saying this that would be a different matter :-)
More seriously. Scientists are normally a pretty conservative bunch when it comes to making predictions about timelines on their work, so that has to be good news.
One thing from the article that was interesting, was the claim that with this approach, we wouldn't need to build massive new infrastructure to produce it. Existing facilities could be re-purposed.
Cambridge has produced humanity changing scientists like Darwin, Newton, and Turing, the only scientist of note Oxford has produced is Thatcher*.
*Hawking doesn't count for Oxford as he realised it was a dump and decided to do his PhD at Cambridge.
Edwin Hubble, Robert Hooke, Erwin Schrödinger, Tim Berners-Lee...mere bagatelle
None of them changed humanity, I mean Turing helped win a war.
No dog in this fight, apart from the fact that MA supervisor was based in ARU's Cambridge facility, but Berners-Lee's invention of the internet surely changed humanity!
Do you not think that without him we would still have some version of the internet?
Of course; same applies to many other things too.
Not the really big hitters.
And as I should have said earlier, he didn't invent the internet (Cerf and Kahn at Arpanet did), just the WWW aspect of it.
Watson and Crick wouldn’t have got anywhere without Franklin.
Probably Linus Pauling would have scooped them to the structure of DNA if the CIA had not stopped him travelling to a European conference where he'd have learned about Franklin's results.
ETA which speaks to @kinabalu's point that scientific advances will eventually happen anyway.
I believe that scientific advances will happen eventually, but not necessarilly in the same order. That may have made a big change to society, once we have a solution we tend to develop it and drop any other alternatives. For example the ICE car vs the electric car.
The Hull Streetlife Museum is one of my favourite places.... Got a good name doesn't it, though may disappoint 40-50 year-old Franco-German men...
Anyway, they have a few cars/buggies from circa 1900 that are battery or steam powered. Interesting how diverse vehicle power was back then while the ICE was only establishing its dominance.
Both Oxford and Cambridge have been noticeably low key during the CV19 response. Would be nice if they stepped up and shared the load rather than leaving all the work to the likes of Imperial.
From a couple of threads back - and with apologies as I was moving yesterday:-
“MattWMattW Posts: 3,011 April 10 @Cyclefree Gardening Question (10).
I am getting onto clearing away the clutter and old growth. As a general principle how much of the old growth still on plants, detritus on the ground etc should be cleared up at the start of the season? Should I spend time clearing all of these bits, for example? What should be left?
(Question 10a Never noticed before, but various furious people are fulminating about cyclists. Is there a meaning behind your user name? I always took it as a linear outlook on the world )“
Re clearing up:-
On plants it is worth cutting back old dead stems, either to the ground or down to the nearest leaf bud. This makes the plant tidier, looks nicer and avoids the possibility of disease. I generally leave old stems on during winter because they provide nesting material for birds and can look lovely when frosted or against the low autumn/winter light. But now that growth is happening there is no need.
Old twigs etc on the ground: you can leave these. Eventually these will rot down and get taken down into the earth by worms. Nature will do her stuff.
But if you want the garden to look nice I would pick it all up, rake it away and put in a compost heap if you have one or out for recycling. It helps clear away weeds and hiding places for slugs and snails and allows you to see what you have growing there ie other perennials which may be pushing through. It’s always a good idea to look closely at what is going on in your garden closely - ie at ground level and with your plants and doing a general tidy up gives you the chance to do that. You will see lots of things you might not notice otherwise and it is this sort of close observation which is the key to better gardening. Plus if you stick a garden fork into the earth and wiggle it around a bit you give the soil a bit of a boost especially if you add fresh soil/compost/mulch.
And it is so lovely to do a freshening/tidying up and see all the places where there is room to put new plants!
Re my user name: I have cycled for years, ever since university, to all my jobs, through London traffic and on various country routes (the London to Brighton bike ride, for instance). I have the scars and injuries to show for it! Love it - wind through my hair, freewheeling down a hill, etc. I learnt to ride in Ireland and just cycled all over the place for hours just for the sheer freedom of it, only coming home when it was time for tea.
Plus I am hot on freedom generally. So I chose the name because my first ever comment on Comment is Free years ago was about the pettifogging officials who had banned cycling in Regents Park, a rule now abandoned.
It has nothing to do with my mind which zigzags all over the place .....
Comments
And as I should have said earlier, he didn't invent the internet (Cerf and Kahn at Arpanet did), just the WWW aspect of it.
There seems to have been quite a buffet of nasty bugs around this winter. As I said earlier, this will mak it complicated when we do come out of lockdown, because so many will say "yeah, I had that Covid-19, but I got better", in the way that so many people say "I had the flu for a couple of days last week". No you bloody didn't!! Without the antibody test, these folk will continue to be a walking disaster in the making.
Perhaps but you could equally say that without Watson and Crick (who heavily relied on Rosalind Franklin’s (Kings College London) data) someone else would have uncovered the structure of DNA. Anyway, the internet had been around since the 60s, Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, which uses the internet, but is not the internet itself.
I will ignore the "tight arse" insinuation
PS: I prefer the full oats rather than fine milled for sure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Cygnus
During the crisis itself, we need to ask if government efforts to secure and expand supply and manufacture have been adequate. Results are clear that so far, they have not. Could HMG do better? We do not know. It might be unknowable. I am surprised no Minister of PPE has been appointed as in both wars.
ETA which speaks to @kinabalu's point that scientific advances will eventually happen anyway.
Oxford: Rachel Riley
Cambridge: Nick Griffin
'Nuff said.
Certainly dozens of people had worked out the gist of natural selection before Darwin published OOS (as he himself admitted in the intro to the 2nd edition).
Cambridge: Sir David Attenborough.
Need I go on?
They were pointing out that on the available date the proportion of infected could equally be very low or very high, and that the level of uncertainty was significant.
Ill based certainty is perhaps the mark of the other place ?
You'll see Owen why the government didn't do it sooner if we have to keep it up for twelve more weeks or even longer.
Cambridge: 1209
What kept you?
We can only pray you will all receive the PPE you need and get through this so we as a nation can rise as one to praise each and everyone of you in a tangible way, including financial recognition of your dedication
And we follow all your posts with great interest and the way you comment in an apolitical way is much appreciated and so informative.
You are our most valued poster.
Please keep safe
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/04/10/apple-google-add-contact-tracing-technology-mobile-phones-track/
We have even had a Birmingham educated PM (Chamberlain) and an Edinburgh educated PM (Brown) more recently than we have had a Cambridge educated PM
Archer’s always been a turd, anyone can spot that.
*At winning elections.
We'll do better than most countries on some aspects (for example, other than China, has any other country matched our efforts on the Nightingale hospitals) and worse on others but not catastrophically so. It will likely be UK science and engineering at the forefront of some of the global solutions.
There, that's my prediction.
For example the ICE car vs the electric car.
Cambridge: 120
Oxford: 72
And on topic in the sciences
Cambridge: 97
Oxford: 52
Ouch!
If it was the UK that only had issues with PPE you would have a point, clearly the PPE issues are at least pan Europe if not global.
Cam-Bridge
Fords are quaint and historic, bridges are proper engineering. This obviously has nothing to do with today's cities.
#noteventhebestuniversityinaplacecalledcambridge
Herd immunity is not going to be anywhere near reached after this.
Your spy ring got found.
https://youtu.be/BE-cA4UK07c
Then we gave up?
We didn't give in, as much as community transmission had become widespread, as due to privacy we can't have big brother automatically go in and see where everybody has been, who they met, what they bought, and spit out the next batch of those that need to be contacted.
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-cambridge-university-laboratory-will-handle-up-to-30-000-covid-19-tests-a-day-11970595
And
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/covid-19-genetic-network-analysis-provides-snapshot-of-pandemic-origins
Further, learning and adapting is not the same as judging how well we're doing on the basis of seriously incomplete data. That's so obvious, I didn't realise it needed saying.
Tbf to HMG there have been recent signs of action, judging from updates to gov.uk and the press conferences. That is where to look. After all, if everything were already done perfectly or even adequately, there'd be no need for new developments. See for instance
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-sets-out-plan-for-national-effort-on-ppe
I can only imagine what they would have done if Labour had been in charge . The fact remains that the government had an advantage seeing what was happening elsewhere and wasted that .
Now Hancock is desperately trying to row back from his comments regarding PPE after it looked like he was blaming NHS workers for using too much .
Some in here seem to think it’s heresy to criticize the government!
Both are wrong in their approach.
Hancock is right that we should be focusing on getting right the decisions being taken in the future, rather than those in the past, but an unwillingness to accept past mistakes leads to a loss of confidence that the government has learnt its lesson and has changed course appropriately. Learning from mistakes it good, failing to demonstrate that you can by failing to acknowledge mistakes is not. Yet the response to criticism for criticism's sake by the likes of Jones is just to clam up and put out banal statistics that convince no-one.
Were they conspiring with the Tories to commit mass murder? I think we should be told!
As it happens this is one of the many pointless questions I brood about. Not Einstein as such but the general one of do big things happen because of certain special people or do they happen because of powerful macro forces that act through certain people to realize their close to inevitable outcome. So, Belsen without Hitler? This sort of question.
Of course I have no answer. There is no answer. This is why it's perfect for brooding. FWIW, I think usually it's the play not the players. I'm not inclined to the Great Man theory of history, be it politics, arts or science.
RAMP Steering Committee:
Mike Cates (Chair) FRS, FRSE is Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge
Graeme Ackland FRSE is Professor of Physics at the University of Edinburgh
Mike Batty CBE, FRS, FBA is Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London
Chris Bishop FRS is Lab Director at Microsoft Research Cambridge
Julia Gog is Professor of Mathematical Biology at the University of Cambridge
Dame Angela McLean FRS is Professor of Mathematical Biology at the University of Oxford
https://epcced.github.io/ramp/
Historical example Bush I after the First Gulf War - polled 90% approval at one point IIRC. Failed to be re-elected not especially long after....
Not really.
Given the enormous cost of an extended pandemic, funding half a dozen such efforts would be a sensible investment rather than a gamble.
Though you wouldn’t need millions of doses initially.
A system of contact tracing and ring vaccination, alongside vaccination of frontline health workers, would be extremely effective in suppressing the disease after a lockdown, and would provide time for production to be ramped up.
https://twitter.com/benbenchia/status/1248630592800882688?s=20
Oxford: 28
Cambridge: 14
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sunday-times-rich-list-jeffrey-archer-net-worth-7jx9gz00j
There are so many variables as to make them worthless.
From this thread, racial mix, city rural components, air quality, poverty levels, obesity levels, population age, household numbers and diffrrences in counting and recording statistics.
And those are just for starters.
Plus we’re a science discussion website for the foreseeable future.
It's blasphemy
People tend to give knee-jerk responses according to what they're used to. For example, in Norway all tax returns are on the internet, so you can see what the PM has declared or indeed your neighbour, which obviously has benefits in exposing tax-dodgers but would be thought very startling in Britain even by nothing-to-hide people. So far as I know, even libertarians in Norway haven't identified this as a problem. Do South Koreans feel concerned about the tracking, or is it shrugged off as part of normal life?
Universities have asked the government for a £2 billion bailout to save their research programmes, which are threatened by the loss of high tuition fees paid by overseas students.
Leading vice-chancellors estimate that their institutions are facing a loss of up to £7 billion in overseas fees if all international students stay away.
The foreign students, who mostly come from China, often pay twice or three times the £9,250 a year paid by their UK counterparts.
A British Council survey of 10,000 Chinese students with places to study at UK universities in September revealed that only 39 per cent said they were “very likely” to commence their studies as planned.
Universities UK, the representative organisation, wants the government to double research funding from £2 billion to £4 billion in 2020-21 for research-heavy institutions such as the London School of Economics, University College London, Imperial College London and other members of the Russell Group. It also seeks help for Britain’s prestigious specialist universities such as the Royal College of Art and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
A third group for which it wants help is newer universities which have struggled to recruit enough students in recent years. They should be helped to merge, join forces with local further education colleges and overhaul their offer in line with the local labour market, UUK says in a paper.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/universities-want-2bn-bailout-as-foreign-students-stay-away-c25khqvlb
The Hull Streetlife Museum is one of my favourite places.... Got a good name doesn't it, though may disappoint 40-50 year-old Franco-German men...
Anyway, they have a few cars/buggies from circa 1900 that are battery or steam powered. Interesting how diverse vehicle power was back then while the ICE was only establishing its dominance.
https://www.research.ox.ac.uk/Area/coronavirus-research
“MattWMattW Posts: 3,011
April 10
@Cyclefree Gardening Question (10).
I am getting onto clearing away the clutter and old growth. As a general principle how much of the old growth still on plants, detritus on the ground etc should be cleared up at the start of the season? Should I spend time clearing all of these bits, for example? What should be left?
https://twitter.com/mattwardman/status/1248620224904957952
(Question 10a Never noticed before, but various furious people are fulminating about cyclists. Is there a meaning behind your user name? I always took it as a linear outlook on the world
Re clearing up:-
On plants it is worth cutting back old dead stems, either to the ground or down to the nearest leaf bud. This makes the plant tidier, looks nicer and avoids the possibility of disease. I generally leave old stems on during winter because they provide nesting material for birds and can look lovely when frosted or against the low autumn/winter light. But now that growth is happening there is no need.
Old twigs etc on the ground: you can leave these. Eventually these will rot down and get taken down into the earth by worms. Nature will do her stuff.
But if you want the garden to look nice I would pick it all up, rake it away and put in a compost heap if you have one or out for recycling. It helps clear away weeds and hiding places for slugs and snails and allows you to see what you have growing there ie other perennials which may be pushing through. It’s always a good idea to look closely at what is going on in your garden closely - ie at ground level and with your plants and doing a general tidy up gives you the chance to do that. You will see lots of things you might not notice otherwise and it is this sort of close observation which is the key to better gardening. Plus if you stick a garden fork into the earth and wiggle it around a bit you give the soil a bit of a boost especially if you add fresh soil/compost/mulch.
And it is so lovely to do a freshening/tidying up and see all the places where there is room to put new plants!
Re my user name: I have cycled for years, ever since university, to all my jobs, through London traffic and on various country routes (the London to Brighton bike ride, for instance). I have the scars and injuries to show for it! Love it - wind through my hair, freewheeling down a hill, etc. I learnt to ride in Ireland and just cycled all over the place for hours just for the sheer freedom of it, only coming home when it was time for tea.
Plus I am hot on freedom generally. So I chose the name because my first ever comment on Comment is Free years ago was about the pettifogging officials who had banned cycling in Regents Park, a rule now abandoned.
It has nothing to do with my mind which zigzags all over the place .....