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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Kamala Harris still clear betting favourite to be Biden’s running mate

If it hadn’t been for CO-19 we would be just three weeks away from the local elections including the big one for Mayor or London. Those, of course, got postponed and there will be an even bigger range of elections taking place in May 2021.

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rottenborough

First. Like Harris

TGOHF666

Second - like Biden.

IanB2

Third, like after first and second.

IanB2

Whitmer has been my tip from way back.

ABZ

For interpreting the number of tests, I found the following (from https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/about) quite interesting:

"Data were previously shown by reporting date. The reporting date is the date that PHE published the data, which would normally be one day after the laboratory submitted the data to PHE. In many cases labs submit data in batches, so there may be no cases for a week and then a large number on one day. This is not helpful for analysing the incidence of COVID-19 over time.

The data are now shown by the date the specimen was taken from the person being tested. This gives a much more useful analysis of the progression of cases over time. It does mean that the latest days’ figures are always incomplete, and only data from five days or more ago can be considered complete."

This is indeed much more useful so that graph is perhaps what we should keep our eye on for interpreting trends - the raw figures themselves are not so helpful.

AlastairMeeks

Joe Biden has said that he will pick a woman and preferably a woman of colour.

RobD

AlastairMeeks said:

Joe Biden has said that he will pick a woman and preferably a woman of colour.

He should have simply done it without saying it. Now it just looks like tokenism.

rcs1000

Are people really betting on Michelle Obama to be the VP nominee?

OK... given the Democrats' Presidential nominee is old and incoherent, it will be important to get someone not too old, and ideally compos mentis. It also means that it will be extremely important that the VP pick has their own accomplishments, as they will need to be seen as Presidential enough.

I think this means that the VP pick has to be either a Senator or Governor. This counts out Michelle Obama and Stacey Abrams, neither of whom have held high political office.

I can see good arguments for Kamala Harris, for Amy Klobuchar and for Gretchen Whitmer. It's also worth adding Nevada's Catherine Cortez Masto to the list. I think the Democrats will make the call based on percieved electability, and that means that Ms Warren is probably out (they'll want someone more moderate).

Ultimately, though, the value for the bettor here is laying. Sell 'em all.

MarqueeMark

Curse of the new thread.

Manu Dibango's Afrijazzy is an essential album.

As is Bibi Den's Tchibayi "The Best Ambience".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6F5farRJ_4&list=RDW6F5farRJ_4&start_radio=1&t=62

"Sawambe" is the killer track.... It has a brass section that kicks in like being hit by a train.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZzkPKpW9YA

But don't forget William Onyeabor - early African electronic. "You look so good, Fantastic Man" one of my all time favourite tracks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyL4c_LDCl0

AlastairMeeks

https://twitter.com/janemerrick23/status/1251092579925594112?s=20

MaxPB

AlastairMeeks said:

Joe Biden has said that he will pick a woman and preferably a woman of colour.

I don't understand why he would pre-announce that. Surely he has lost the all of the woke points he would have got with a normal announcement. This just looks like he's trying to fit a candidate into a given profile rather than saying "I picked this woman because she's the best for the role, that she's black makes her achievement even greater given racism etc..."

Now he just looks like an old racist saying that these women would have been out in the cold were it not for his specific aim.

Charles

Why is she the favourite? A genuine question.

Sure there's Biden's pledge to pick a woman, preferably of colour which means she is qualified to be VP

But she didn't shine, at all, during the Presidential campaign and quickly ran out of steam
She's a thoroughly uninspiring speaker
She is crap at fundraising and has a controversial past as DA
She brings the Dems California. Um. Yes, let's chalk that one up as a big net gain

It genuinely seems to me that she brings nothing apart from her gender and colour. It will be deeply depressing if that is deemed sufficient. I don't know the US political landscape well, but there are certainly better female candidates, and I suspect there may be better female & minority candidates.

geoffw

for @kinabalu

geoffw said:

kinabalu said:

geoffw said:

@kinabalu, how can I make sense of this exchange when you remove all the earlier posts relating to it?

I always just leave the one I'm replying to. Do most people leave all of them? I'll do that too from now on if it's the norm. But anyway, not missing much in this case. @BannedInParis has some insight into what Spanish flu 2nd wave outcomes specifically tell us about how the Nightingale(s) will be used for Covid. Sounds interesting so I was hoping to squeeze it out of him.

Thanks.
Most people do indeed leave the earlier exchanges to view under "show previous quotes".
I fairly often find I need to open up an exchange to understand how the discussion has gone.
When we had that phase of Vanilla not collapsing the threads it was useful to cut out intermediate stuff for simple legibility, but thankfully that glitch didn't last more than a few weeks. There is no need now to hide the intermediate stuff.

Charles

rcs1000 said:

Are people really betting on Michelle Obama to be the VP nominee?

OK... given the Democrats' Presidential nominee is old and incoherent, it will be important to get someone not too old, and ideally compos mentis. It also means that it will be extremely important that the VP pick has their own accomplishments, as they will need to be seen as Presidential enough.

I think this means that the VP pick has to be either a Senator or Governor. This counts out Michelle Obama and Stacey Abrams, neither of whom have held high political office.

I can see good arguments for Kamala Harris, for Amy Klobuchar and for Gretchen Whitmer. It's also worth adding Nevada's Catherine Cortez Masto to the list. I think the Democrats will make the call based on percieved electability, and that means that Ms Warren is probably out (they'll want someone more moderate).

Ultimately, though, the value for the bettor here is laying. Sell 'em all.

In the context of African Americans saying "sell 'em all" might be deemed controversial

Enda

FPT:

MarqueeMark said:

Interesting snippet: wife was speaking to Marianne Faithfull yesterday, who is making slow but steady recovery after having the virus. But everybody else in the hospital (one of the larger London ones) who was admitted on the day she was has died.

She is the sole survivor.

That's so good to hear. When it was disclosed she had been admitted I feared for her especially with her being hep C and in her 70s. Marianne must have one of the most diverse army of fans having been making music for over 50 years that includes a repertoire of songs as diverse as 'North Country Maid', 'Lady Madeleine', 'Working Class Hero', 'The Ballad of Lucy Jordan', "Kissin Time" (with Damon Albarn) and 'The Memory Remains' (with Metallica).

Theuniondivvie

AlastairMeeks said:

https://twitter.com/janemerrick23/status/1251092579925594112?s=20

It is a bit fishy.

MaxPB

AlastairMeeks said:

https://twitter.com/janemerrick23/status/1251092579925594112?s=20

Can I put that on a bagel?

Scott_xP

https://twitter.com/George_Osborne/status/1251155687683420160

RochdalePioneers

AlastairMeeks said:

Joe Biden has said that he will pick a woman and preferably a woman of colour.

So: Michelle Obama becomes Veep. The stresses of his Inauguration Ball becomes Too Much for the 109 year old President Biden, and President M Obama names Former President B Obama as her Veep.

NerysHughes

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

rottenborough

"Neurological symptoms of COVID-19 infection are common, diverse, and often severe. In a retrospective study of 214 patients in Wuhan, China 36% had CNS symptoms or disorders and the subgroup of 88 patients with severe respiratory disease had significantly increased frequency of CNS problems (45%). The problems reported include dizziness, headache, loss of smell (anosmia), loss of taste (ageusia), muscle pain and weakness, impaired consciousness, and cerebrovascular complications. Similar reports have begun to emerge from Italy."

"In the longer term, it is possible that SARS-CoV-2 will have persistent direct neurotoxic effects and immune-mediated neurotoxic effects on the brain. The Spanish flu epidemic of 1918–19 was linked to a spike in incidence of post-encephalitic Parkinsonism. Currently, it is not known if SARS-CoV-2 infection could cause mental health or neurodegenerative disorders immediately or years after the acute respiratory phase of COVID-19 has passed, but action is needed now to build the research capacity to test these potentially important biological causes of COVID-19-related mental illness."

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30168-1/fulltext

rpjs

FPT:

FF43 said:

rottenborough said:

" a new paper by Mikko Paunio, a Finnish epidemiologist and key scientific advisor to the Finish Government, estimates that the IFR is 0.13%, making the virus roughly as dangerous as seasonal flu. Paunio submitted an earlier version of this paper to a MedRxiv prepublication site, as well as PLOS Medicine, but both rejected it. Consequently, I’ve decided to publish it on this site. If any epidemiologists want to challenge Paunio’s conclusions, feel free to do so in the comments."

https://lockdownsceptics.org/

https://lockdownsceptics.org/mikko-paunio-paper/

Truth is no-one knows what the Infection Fatality Rate is for Covid-19, which increases anyway as more people die over the course of the epidemic. Best estimates are that it is less than 1% and more than ten times more virulent than influenza.

Neil Ferguson at Imperial estimated IFR in China of 0.6% based on testing of international passengers from that country. This IFR figure would increase if it turns out China has been underreporting deaths.

0.6% has also been estimated for Korea based on an extensive testing programme.

I would say Mr Paunio's sample is ridiculously small, leaving aside any methodological issues. He also has an agenda, which is a warning sign for any empirical study.

Let's not forget that the fatality rate is not the only reason why we should attempt to mitigate the virus. It's very infectious, and very debilitating for several weeks to at least 50% of those who contract it. If we'd done nothing, we could have had multiple tens of percentage of the workforce all off sick simultaneously. "So what?", you might say, "The lockdown has effectively done that anyway." But we've been able to choose to a large degree which workers get taken out of the economy temporarily.

We as a society can cope with a large percentage of say bar and restaurant staff off work, painful as it is for us and them, but could we cope with 50-60% of power, sewerage, supply, emergency workers each being off for 2-3 weeks over just a couple of months?

RobD

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

We don't have the counterfactual Spain and Italy where they didn't do the lockdown though, do we?

SandyRentool

Positive story: Wor Lass called the GP surgery a couple of days ago to get a repeat prescription. Called the pharmacy this morning to check that it was ready and asked if they could deliver it as we are shielding.

It was here within the hour.

rottenborough

Theuniondivvie said:

AlastairMeeks said:

https://twitter.com/janemerrick23/status/1251092579925594112?s=20

It is a bit fishy.

Seems Loxit is a manufacturer of screen mounts and computer housing.

isam

American politics you say?

https://twitter.com/heckyessica/status/1251000807517978624?s=21

turbotubbs

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

Except we don't have the counterfactual evidence of what would have happened without the lockdown do we? I strongly suspect that very many of the ongoing new cases are in the NHS and care sector, not amongst the locked-down general public.

MarqueeMark

Enda said:

FPT:

MarqueeMark said:

Interesting snippet: wife was speaking to Marianne Faithfull yesterday, who is making slow but steady recovery after having the virus. But everybody else in the hospital (one of the larger London ones) who was admitted on the day she was has died.

She is the sole survivor.

That's so good to hear. When it was disclosed she had been admitted I feared for her especially with her being hep C and in her 70s. Marianne must have one of the most diverse army of fans having been making music for over 50 years that includes a repertoire of songs as diverse as 'North Country Maid', 'Lady Madeleine', 'Working Class Hero', 'The Ballad of Lucy Jordan', "Kissin Time" (with Damon Albarn) and 'The Memory Remains' (with Metallica).

You weren't alone in fearing for her. But living on a wall in Soho for several years will either kill or cure you! She's tough... And hanging in there, her last album was lauded as one of her best. She's still a big star, in France especially.

The film with Lucy Boynton playing her should be worth a watch (when the Good Lady Wifi can get a crew out of lockdown!)

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/lucy-boynton-marianne-faithfull-biopic-947385/

NerysHughes

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

We don't have the counterfactual Spain and Italy where they didn't do the lockdown though, do we?

Absolutely not, so thats why is so hard to judge if the lockdowns are working. Two weeks ago there was talk of Italys figures dropping off a cliff by now, but that has not happened. I thought they would of, and I can't find a reason as why they have not. I realise that this is a very odd virus but it surely must need human to human contact to infect. If it does how on earth are the Italian and Spainish new infections so high?

isam

@AlastairMeeks have you seen Floyd - Live in Pompeii? Many a teenage evening spent almost comatose with that on!

Might watch it tonight now I’ve mentioned it. ‘One of the days’ is great as is ‘Echoes’

Theuniondivvie

Prolly are too many people getting on their hind legs and opining, but I like the Silvio Dante style of this.

https://twitter.com/StevieVanZandt/status/1250862469293264896?s=20

MarqueeMark

RochdalePioneers said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Joe Biden has said that he will pick a woman and preferably a woman of colour.

So: Michelle Obama becomes Veep. The stresses of his Inauguration Ball becomes Too Much for the 109 year old President Biden, and President M Obama names Former President B Obama as her Veep.

Great. She already knows where the White House coffee machine is....

And the bodies.

RobD

NerysHughes said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

We don't have the counterfactual Spain and Italy where they didn't do the lockdown though, do we?

Absolutely not, so thats why is so hard to judge if the lockdowns are working. Two weeks ago there was talk of Italys figures dropping off a cliff by now, but that has not happened. I thought they would of, and I can't find a reason as why they have not. I realise that this is a very odd virus but it surely must need human to human contact to infect. If it does how on earth are the Italian and Spainish new infections so high?

I was countering your claim that the evidence from Spain and Italy is showing that lockdowns don't work. The current evidence doesn't let us say that, because we don't know what it would have been like without it.

kle4

Seriously?

Possibility that Israel could have 4th General Election in a about 18 months. Surely that will not happen?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-52322379

isam

isam said:

@AlastairMeeks have you seen Floyd - Live in Pompeii? Many a teenage evening spent almost comatose with that on!

Might watch it tonight now I’ve mentioned it. ‘One of the days’ is great as is ‘Echoes’

https://youtu.be/ikMAH7k3pz4

TheWhiteRabbit

MarqueeMark said:

RochdalePioneers said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Joe Biden has said that he will pick a woman and preferably a woman of colour.

So: Michelle Obama becomes Veep. The stresses of his Inauguration Ball becomes Too Much for the 109 year old President Biden, and President M Obama names Former President B Obama as her Veep.

Great. She already knows where the White House coffee machine is....

And the bodies.

Didn't we conclude that the VP has to eligible for the role of President?

rcs1000

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

I think there are a couple of elements here.

Firstly, Italy's percentage of positive tests peaked at 56%. Given that (approximately) 25% of people who have the disease test negative, this suggests that perhaps three quarters of the people who were tested on that day had CV-19. The vast majority of people who have CV-19, of course, never get tested. The true number of new cases that day, we can reasonably assume, is going to have been at least 10x (and possibly much more) the number reported.

Italy is now doing 60,000+ tests a day. That's 20x the number it was doing when it was getting 56% positives. It's now seeing a positive rate (and I'm sorry, I haven't been keeping up with my spreadsheet so I don't know for sure) of less than 7%. (And it may now be down to sub-5%.)

The reality is that Italy's real new test load has collapsed, it's just that we dramatically miscounted the number it started off from.

Secondly, the lockdown in Italy and Spain is not as total as in China. By this, I mean that in China, if you have CV-19 (or the symptoms of CV-19) you get pulled out of your home and put in a holding place to avoid you infecting your family/housemates. That doesn't happen in Italy/Spain/anywhere in the Western world. This means the path to R equals zero is much longer, because you have whole households the virus has to spread through.

There are also other possibilities that are slight, but exist. Could domestic pets be carriers, for example?

felix

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

You ignore responses explaining it to you. Spain/France/Italy have many similarities and all have been in strict lockdown for several weeks. However, much of the public sector remain necessarily at work as do some of the private sector. In all countries food shops and chemists at least are open. The pattern in Spain and italy is the the cases have plateaued as have deaths, infections and admissions. Most of the new infections are occurring in areas of high population density where it takes time to get things under control - as it did in China where the lockdown was the most severe. Why you expect things to slow down more quickly is down to completely unrealistic expectations on your part.

rpjs

RochdalePioneers said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Joe Biden has said that he will pick a woman and preferably a woman of colour.

So: Michelle Obama becomes Veep. The stresses of his Inauguration Ball becomes Too Much for the 109 year old President Biden, and President M Obama names Former President B Obama as her Veep.

Nope, Veep has the same qualifications as President, and Obama, B. is disqualified having served two terms.

NerysHughes

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

We don't have the counterfactual Spain and Italy where they didn't do the lockdown though, do we?

Absolutely not, so thats why is so hard to judge if the lockdowns are working. Two weeks ago there was talk of Italys figures dropping off a cliff by now, but that has not happened. I thought they would of, and I can't find a reason as why they have not. I realise that this is a very odd virus but it surely must need human to human contact to infect. If it does how on earth are the Italian and Spainish new infections so high?

I was countering your claim that the evidence from Spain and Italy is showing that lockdowns don't work. The current evidence doesn't let us say that, because we don't know what it would have been like without it.

I have not claimed they dont work, they may well be working and without them the infection rate could be 100x times higher. However I dont't expect that anyone thought five weeks ago that 35 days into a severe and very policed lockdown in Spain where children have not been allowed out, that there would still be 5000+ daily new cases of infection.

RobD

NerysHughes said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

We don't have the counterfactual Spain and Italy where they didn't do the lockdown though, do we?

Absolutely not, so thats why is so hard to judge if the lockdowns are working. Two weeks ago there was talk of Italys figures dropping off a cliff by now, but that has not happened. I thought they would of, and I can't find a reason as why they have not. I realise that this is a very odd virus but it surely must need human to human contact to infect. If it does how on earth are the Italian and Spainish new infections so high?

I was countering your claim that the evidence from Spain and Italy is showing that lockdowns don't work. The current evidence doesn't let us say that, because we don't know what it would have been like without it.

I have not claimed they dont work, they may well be working and without them the infection rate could be 100x times higher. However I dont't expect that anyone thought five weeks ago that 35 days into a severe and very policed lockdown in Spain where children have not been allowed out, that there would still be 5000+ daily new cases of infection.

You said "people keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that."

They could be supremely successful, because the case rate could be a hundred times higher without it. My point is we don't have any evidence one way or another, because we don't have the counterfactual case.

Pagan2

@DavidL dropped you a pm

ukpaul

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

As I said on the last thread, my deduction is that the virus is airborne and able to travel at greater distances than expected. Another possibility is that it can remain airborne for longer, this contradicts previous assumptions but recent, yet to be peer reviewed, studies have shown that it can for up to three hours.

In areas with housing close to each other or where people are walking/running around in and out of other people's breathed air, this has considerable consequences.

felix

NerysHughes said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

We don't have the counterfactual Spain and Italy where they didn't do the lockdown though, do we?

Absolutely not, so thats why is so hard to judge if the lockdowns are working. Two weeks ago there was talk of Italys figures dropping off a cliff by now, but that has not happened. I thought they would of, and I can't find a reason as why they have not. I realise that this is a very odd virus but it surely must need human to human contact to infect. If it does how on earth are the Italian and Spainish new infections so high?

All the scientists predicted peak - plateau - and slow decline in cases and deaths. You clearly missed the memo.

MarqueeMark

ukpaul said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

As I said on the last thread, my deduction is that the virus is airborne and able to travel at greater distances than expected. Another possibility is that it can remain airborne for longer, this contradicts previous assumptions but recent, yet to be peer reviewed, studies have shown that it can for up to three hours.

In areas with housing close to each other or where people are walking/running around in and out of other people's breathed air, this has considerable consequences.

And for aircon.

NerysHughes

felix said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

You ignore responses explaining it to you. Spain/France/Italy have many similarities and all have been in strict lockdown for several weeks. However, much of the public sector remain necessarily at work as do some of the private sector. In all countries food shops and chemists at least are open. The pattern in Spain and italy is the the cases have plateaued as have deaths, infections and admissions. Most of the new infections are occurring in areas of high population density where it takes time to get things under control - as it did in China where the lockdown was the most severe. Why you expect things to slow down more quickly is down to completely unrealistic expectations on your part.

I don't think I am alone in having these expectations. Look at the discssions on here two weeks ago when I bought up the Italian figures. I was told that there would be a big change over the following two weeks. That has not happened.
People in Italy and Spain must be behaving massively differently now to the way they were in February with social distancing etc. Are people still getting close to each other to justify these high infection figures?

ukpaul

MarqueeMark said:

Enda said:

FPT:

MarqueeMark said:

Interesting snippet: wife was speaking to Marianne Faithfull yesterday, who is making slow but steady recovery after having the virus. But everybody else in the hospital (one of the larger London ones) who was admitted on the day she was has died.

She is the sole survivor.

That's so good to hear. When it was disclosed she had been admitted I feared for her especially with her being hep C and in her 70s. Marianne must have one of the most diverse army of fans having been making music for over 50 years that includes a repertoire of songs as diverse as 'North Country Maid', 'Lady Madeleine', 'Working Class Hero', 'The Ballad of Lucy Jordan', "Kissin Time" (with Damon Albarn) and 'The Memory Remains' (with Metallica).

You weren't alone in fearing for her. But living on a wall in Soho for several years will either kill or cure you! She's tough... And hanging in there, her last album was lauded as one of her best. She's still a big star, in France especially.

The film with Lucy Boynton playing her should be worth a watch (when the Good Lady Wifi can get a crew out of lockdown!)

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/lucy-boynton-marianne-faithfull-biopic-947385/

I saw her in the very strange Tom Waits musical 'The Black Rider' at the Barbican sometime last decade. Weird but very compelling.

MarqueeMark

RochdalePioneers said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Joe Biden has said that he will pick a woman and preferably a woman of colour.

So: Michelle Obama becomes Veep. The stresses of his Inauguration Ball becomes Too Much for the 109 year old President Biden, and President M Obama names Former President B Obama as her Veep.

She could name Obama Secretary of State?

ClippP

Theuniondivvie said:

AlastairMeeks said:

https://twitter.com/janemerrick23/status/1251092579925594112?s=20

It is a bit fishy.

Could be Lixit. That might be popular?

malcolmg

MaxPB said:

AlastairMeeks said:

https://twitter.com/janemerrick23/status/1251092579925594112?s=20

Can I put that on a bagel?

You are a true Tory so no issue and can add SNP as well, hot cross buns also acceptable

felix

NerysHughes said:

felix said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

You ignore responses explaining it to you. Spain/France/Italy have many similarities and all have been in strict lockdown for several weeks. However, much of the public sector remain necessarily at work as do some of the private sector. In all countries food shops and chemists at least are open. The pattern in Spain and italy is the the cases have plateaued as have deaths, infections and admissions. Most of the new infections are occurring in areas of high population density where it takes time to get things under control - as it did in China where the lockdown was the most severe. Why you expect things to slow down more quickly is down to completely unrealistic expectations on your part.

I don't think I am alone in having these expectations. Look at the discssions on here two weeks ago when I bought up the Italian figures. I was told that there would be a big change over the following two weeks. That has not happened.
People in Italy and Spain must be behaving massively differently now to the way they were in February with social distancing etc. Are people still getting close to each other to justify these high infection figures?

You keep ignoring the detail of the explanations people give you - as no doubt do others. That is why you keep making the same inane and uninformed points. Several people have posted detailed info and explanations for you. I suggest you read it more carefully and stop wasting everyone's time.

kinabalu

geoffw said:

for @kinabalu

geoffw said:

kinabalu said:

geoffw said:

@kinabalu, how can I make sense of this exchange when you remove all the earlier posts relating to it?

I always just leave the one I'm replying to. Do most people leave all of them? I'll do that too from now on if it's the norm. But anyway, not missing much in this case. @BannedInParis has some insight into what Spanish flu 2nd wave outcomes specifically tell us about how the Nightingale(s) will be used for Covid. Sounds interesting so I was hoping to squeeze it out of him.

Thanks.
Most people do indeed leave the earlier exchanges to view under "show previous quotes".
I fairly often find I need to open up an exchange to understand how the discussion has gone.
When we had that phase of Vanilla not collapsing the threads it was useful to cut out intermediate stuff for simple legibility, but thankfully that glitch didn't last more than a few weeks. There is no need now to hide the intermediate stuff.

Yes. I think my habit came from that glitch period. Please see PT where I thank you most fulsomely. The time I will now save from no longer deleting the chain bar the last entry will probably be enough for me to double the number of posts I do. All will celebrate.

felix

ukpaul said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

As I said on the last thread, my deduction is that the virus is airborne and able to travel at greater distances than expected. Another possibility is that it can remain airborne for longer, this contradicts previous assumptions but recent, yet to be peer reviewed, studies have shown that it can for up to three hours.

In areas with housing close to each other or where people are walking/running around in and out of other people's breathed air, this has considerable consequences.

Indeed - in central and northern cities the majority of people live in large, communal blocks of flats many with central air for heating and cooling.

rottenborough

eadric said:

rottenborough said:

"Neurological symptoms of COVID-19 infection are common, diverse, and often severe. In a retrospective study of 214 patients in Wuhan, China 36% had CNS symptoms or disorders and the subgroup of 88 patients with severe respiratory disease had significantly increased frequency of CNS problems (45%). The problems reported include dizziness, headache, loss of smell (anosmia), loss of taste (ageusia), muscle pain and weakness, impaired consciousness, and cerebrovascular complications. Similar reports have begun to emerge from Italy."

"In the longer term, it is possible that SARS-CoV-2 will have persistent direct neurotoxic effects and immune-mediated neurotoxic effects on the brain. The Spanish flu epidemic of 1918–19 was linked to a spike in incidence of post-encephalitic Parkinsonism. Currently, it is not known if SARS-CoV-2 infection could cause mental health or neurodegenerative disorders immediately or years after the acute respiratory phase of COVID-19 has passed, but action is needed now to build the research capacity to test these potentially important biological causes of COVID-19-related mental illness."

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30168-1/fulltext

I've been reading about he Spanish flu. It is spookily like our Coronavirus.

As now, there was a neurological aspect to the 1919 flu. Hallucinations were common. People imagined whole armies of dead (ie zombies). T S Eliot was one of them (he feared his brain was damaged for ever) hence his visions of the dead walking over London Bridge, in The Waste Land.

V interesting. Thanks.

TheWhiteRabbit

FPT - do we know how many people have been furloughed? Aren't we all guessing - the government's estimate of 9 million is big enough!

NerysHughes

felix said:

NerysHughes said:

felix said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

You ignore responses explaining it to you. Spain/France/Italy have many similarities and all have been in strict lockdown for several weeks. However, much of the public sector remain necessarily at work as do some of the private sector. In all countries food shops and chemists at least are open. The pattern in Spain and italy is the the cases have plateaued as have deaths, infections and admissions. Most of the new infections are occurring in areas of high population density where it takes time to get things under control - as it did in China where the lockdown was the most severe. Why you expect things to slow down more quickly is down to completely unrealistic expectations on your part.

I don't think I am alone in having these expectations. Look at the discssions on here two weeks ago when I bought up the Italian figures. I was told that there would be a big change over the following two weeks. That has not happened.
People in Italy and Spain must be behaving massively differently now to the way they were in February with social distancing etc. Are people still getting close to each other to justify these high infection figures?

You keep ignoring the detail of the explanations people give you - as no doubt do others. That is why you keep making the same inane and uninformed points. Several people have posted detailed info and explanations for you. I suggest you read it more carefully and stop wasting everyone's time.

I have not seen any explanations based on evidence, just on what peoples latest guesses are. Perhaps you could point me to one evidence based fact as to why infection rates remain so high despite a strict lockdown?

kinabalu

isam said:

American politics you say?

https://twitter.com/heckyessica/status/1251000807517978624?s=21

I'd have liked him too if he'd stuck to this.

rottenborough

For popcorn lovers, @AaronBastani is still banging on about that leaked 'report'.

Andy_JS

What are the alternatives to Kamala Harris given Biden's statement earlier?

kle4

MarqueeMark said:

RochdalePioneers said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Joe Biden has said that he will pick a woman and preferably a woman of colour.

So: Michelle Obama becomes Veep. The stresses of his Inauguration Ball becomes Too Much for the 109 year old President Biden, and President M Obama names Former President B Obama as her Veep.

She could name Obama Secretary of State?

Or Supreme Court perhaps?

Nigelb

MarqueeMark said:

Curse of the new thread.

Manu Dibango's Afrijazzy is an essential album.

As is Bibi Den's Tchibayi "The Best Ambience".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6F5farRJ_4&list=RDW6F5farRJ_4&start_radio=1&t=62

"Sawambe" is the killer track.... It has a brass section that kicks in like being hit by a train.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZzkPKpW9YA

But don't forget William Onyeabor - early African electronic. "You look so good, Fantastic Man" one of my all time favourite tracks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyL4c_LDCl0

Thanks for those, MM.

TheWhiteRabbit

Andy_JS said:

What are the alternatives to Kamala Harris given Biden's statement earlier?

The obvious pick is Mitt Romney (84/1)

Alistair

eadric said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

We don't have the counterfactual Spain and Italy where they didn't do the lockdown though, do we?

Absolutely not, so thats why is so hard to judge if the lockdowns are working. Two weeks ago there was talk of Italys figures dropping off a cliff by now, but that has not happened. I thought they would of, and I can't find a reason as why they have not. I realise that this is a very odd virus but it surely must need human to human contact to infect. If it does how on earth are the Italian and Spainish new infections so high?

I was countering your claim that the evidence from Spain and Italy is showing that lockdowns don't work. The current evidence doesn't let us say that, because we don't know what it would have been like without it.

We have Sweden as a control

Sweden has approx 10 million people. Finlad, Norway and Denamrk have bout 5 million each,

If you add up the dead from the 3 other Nordic Countries they don't get up to even half the number of Swedish deaths.

Stocky

TheWhiteRabbit said:

FPT - do we know how many people have been furloughed? Aren't we all guessing - the government's estimate of 9 million is big enough!

More than 9 million employees according to BBC (below).

Plus many S/E, of course.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52209790

FF43

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

Imperial College did research into this at the end of march and estimated the mitigation in Italy had reduced the death toll by three quarters at that point. When you realise the health system was at breaking point anyway, four times the death toll doesn't bear thinking about.

Also look at the curves. In the Spanish Flu epidemic, we got sharp exponential spikes of death followed by rapid falls. In the case of lockdown countries we see the same exponential start to the death rate followed by a plateau as lockdown kicks in, then a gradual fall. China, Italy and Spain have all followed this pattern. There's evidence that the UK is now in the plateau stage.

Nigelb

MaxPB said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Joe Biden has said that he will pick a woman and preferably a woman of colour.

I don't understand why he would pre-announce that...

Because he had not locked down the nomination and that point.

isam

eadric said:

felix said:

ukpaul said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

As I said on the last thread, my deduction is that the virus is airborne and able to travel at greater distances than expected. Another possibility is that it can remain airborne for longer, this contradicts previous assumptions but recent, yet to be peer reviewed, studies have shown that it can for up to three hours.

In areas with housing close to each other or where people are walking/running around in and out of other people's breathed air, this has considerable consequences.

Indeed - in central and northern cities the majority of people live in large, communal blocks of flats many with central air for heating and cooling.

Aircon must be a reservoir for this virus.

If I caught it in Bangkok that is where I caught it, sitting in big crowded steamy restaurants and bars, full of Chinese tourists, with the aircon fighting the Siamese heat.

All the things that can cause me to go a bit skew-whiff if I’m going to - confined spaces, crowds, air con, people in my face, (planes, tubes, high rises) seem to be things to avoid now.

Same as it ever was!

Theuniondivvie

kinabalu said:

isam said:

American politics you say?

https://twitter.com/heckyessica/status/1251000807517978624?s=21

I'd have liked him too if he'd stuck to this.

I don't think there's much doubt that old Jessie liked him a great deal already.

FrancisUrquhart

You know i posted that video earlier of the public and police all crammed together clapping...

The head of the bloody MET was involved.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8229185/NHS-clap-draw-crowds-covidiots-ignoring-social-distancing-rules-Westminster-Bridge.html

rcs1000

rpjs said:

RochdalePioneers said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Joe Biden has said that he will pick a woman and preferably a woman of colour.

So: Michelle Obama becomes Veep. The stresses of his Inauguration Ball becomes Too Much for the 109 year old President Biden, and President M Obama names Former President B Obama as her Veep.

Nope, Veep has the same qualifications as President, and Obama, B. is disqualified having served two terms.

Ummm.

The first words of the 22nd amendment are: "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice"

First: that doesn't seem to prohibit becoming President another way.
Second: it doesn't prohibit one becoming President via the VP-route

The full text is:

Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

Section 2. This Article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.

Slackbladder

kinabalu said:

isam said:

American politics you say?

https://twitter.com/heckyessica/status/1251000807517978624?s=21

I'd have liked him too if he'd stuck to this.

That was from 2004. The frankly stark mental decline in him in that time is clear to see.

felix

NerysHughes said:

felix said:

NerysHughes said:

felix said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

You ignore responses explaining it to you. Spain/France/Italy have many similarities and all have been in strict lockdown for several weeks. However, much of the public sector remain necessarily at work as do some of the private sector. In all countries food shops and chemists at least are open. The pattern in Spain and italy is the the cases have plateaued as have deaths, infections and admissions. Most of the new infections are occurring in areas of high population density where it takes time to get things under control - as it did in China where the lockdown was the most severe. Why you expect things to slow down more quickly is down to completely unrealistic expectations on your part.

I don't think I am alone in having these expectations. Look at the discssions on here two weeks ago when I bought up the Italian figures. I was told that there would be a big change over the following two weeks. That has not happened.
People in Italy and Spain must be behaving massively differently now to the way they were in February with social distancing etc. Are people still getting close to each other to justify these high infection figures?

You keep ignoring the detail of the explanations people give you - as no doubt do others. That is why you keep making the same inane and uninformed points. Several people have posted detailed info and explanations for you. I suggest you read it more carefully and stop wasting everyone's time.

I have not seen any explanations based on evidence, just on what peoples latest guesses are. Perhaps you could point me to one evidence based fact as to why infection rates remain so high despite a strict lockdown?

There are numerous sites where the statistics can be seen and the graphs show clearly what is happening.
At this stage anyone seriously interested in doing anything other than confirm their own preferences would have found and studied them. DYOR.

Andy_JS

eadric said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

We don't have the counterfactual Spain and Italy where they didn't do the lockdown though, do we?

Absolutely not, so thats why is so hard to judge if the lockdowns are working. Two weeks ago there was talk of Italys figures dropping off a cliff by now, but that has not happened. I thought they would of, and I can't find a reason as why they have not. I realise that this is a very odd virus but it surely must need human to human contact to infect. If it does how on earth are the Italian and Spainish new infections so high?

I was countering your claim that the evidence from Spain and Italy is showing that lockdowns don't work. The current evidence doesn't let us say that, because we don't know what it would have been like without it.

We have Sweden as a control

The situation in Sweden isn't noticeably worse than places like Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, France, etc, that have instituted a lockdown.

Stereotomy

eadric said:

rcs1000 said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

I think there are a couple of elements here.

Firstly, Italy's percentage of positive tests peaked at 56%. Given that (approximately) 25% of people who have the disease test negative, this suggests that perhaps three quarters of the people who were tested on that day had CV-19. The vast majority of people who have CV-19, of course, never get tested. The true number of new cases that day, we can reasonably assume, is going to have been at least 10x (and possibly much more) the number reported.

Italy is now doing 60,000+ tests a day. That's 20x the number it was doing when it was getting 56% positives. It's now seeing a positive rate (and I'm sorry, I haven't been keeping up with my spreadsheet so I don't know for sure) of less than 7%. (And it may now be down to sub-5%.)

The reality is that Italy's real new test load has collapsed, it's just that we dramatically miscounted the number it started off from.

Secondly, the lockdown in Italy and Spain is not as total as in China. By this, I mean that in China, if you have CV-19 (or the symptoms of CV-19) you get pulled out of your home and put in a holding place to avoid you infecting your family/housemates. That doesn't happen in Italy/Spain/anywhere in the Western world. This means the path to R equals zero is much longer, because you have whole households the virus has to spread through.

There are also other possibilities that are slight, but exist. Could domestic pets be carriers, for example?

Interesting and thoughtful, and my point remains good: just ask the new cases where they've been for the last few weeks. That will give us a rough and ready idea where new infections are happening. Which would be useful.

If the bulk are household transmission, then we either have to accept Corona will burn through families, or we have to get even more draconian and send people within families to quarantine centres.

Re your comment about pets. I just did a quick Twitter search on the words "Wuhan" and "dog" looking for that famous video of someone walking the dog by lowering it from an apartment window on a rope.

Instead, I found a video of a Chinese chef (at a wet market, I think) cheerfully cooking a dog alive.

It is one of the worst videos I have ever seen. It is branded on my brain.

China must pay for the barbaric cruelties of its wet markets, which are now being visited on the rest of us.

It's a shame that the rest of us have to suffer for the barbarism of meat-eaters and their insatiable hunger for flesh.

TheWhiteRabbit

rcs1000 said:

rpjs said:

RochdalePioneers said:

AlastairMeeks said:

Joe Biden has said that he will pick a woman and preferably a woman of colour.

So: Michelle Obama becomes Veep. The stresses of his Inauguration Ball becomes Too Much for the 109 year old President Biden, and President M Obama names Former President B Obama as her Veep.

Nope, Veep has the same qualifications as President, and Obama, B. is disqualified having served two terms.

Ummm.

The first words of the 22nd amendment are: "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice"

First: that doesn't seem to prohibit becoming President another way.
Second: it doesn't prohibit one becoming President via the VP-route

The full text is:

Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

Section 2. This Article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.

It's int eh 12th amendment, viz. " But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States"

isam

https://twitter.com/timharford/status/1251147904502226948?s=21

Stocky

Stocky said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

FPT - do we know how many people have been furloughed? Aren't we all guessing - the government's estimate of 9 million is big enough!

More than 9 million employees according to BBC (below).

Plus many S/E, of course.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52209790

Just to clarify the S/E position - according to Moneysaving expert: "Unlike the employee scheme, here you CAN keep working. You also do not need to prove coronavirus impact – all who qualify get it."

Carnyx

NerysHughes said:

felix said:

NerysHughes said:

felix said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

You ignore responses explaining it to you. Spain/France/Italy have many similarities and all have been in strict lockdown for several weeks. However, much of the public sector remain necessarily at work as do some of the private sector. In all countries food shops and chemists at least are open. The pattern in Spain and italy is the the cases have plateaued as have deaths, infections and admissions. Most of the new infections are occurring in areas of high population density where it takes time to get things under control - as it did in China where the lockdown was the most severe. Why you expect things to slow down more quickly is down to completely unrealistic expectations on your part.

I don't think I am alone in having these expectations. Look at the discssions on here two weeks ago when I bought up the Italian figures. I was told that there would be a big change over the following two weeks. That has not happened.
People in Italy and Spain must be behaving massively differently now to the way they were in February with social distancing etc. Are people still getting close to each other to justify these high infection figures?

You keep ignoring the detail of the explanations people give you - as no doubt do others. That is why you keep making the same inane and uninformed points. Several people have posted detailed info and explanations for you. I suggest you read it more carefully and stop wasting everyone's time.

I have not seen any explanations based on evidence, just on what peoples latest guesses are. Perhaps you could point me to one evidence based fact as to why infection rates remain so high despite a strict lockdown?

We have known t/days from infection to symptoms of about 2-14, so add a whisker more for infectiousness beforehand, and the existence of asymptomatic or near-asymptomatic carriers, the lack of testing, and the time taken for the virus to work its way through favourable micropopulations such as hospitals and their workers' families. I'd say that 28 days so far is not nearly enough to decide anything one way or another.

kinabalu

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

We don't have the counterfactual Spain and Italy where they didn't do the lockdown though, do we?

Absolutely not, so thats why is so hard to judge if the lockdowns are working. Two weeks ago there was talk of Italys figures dropping off a cliff by now, but that has not happened. I thought they would of, and I can't find a reason as why they have not. I realise that this is a very odd virus but it surely must need human to human contact to infect. If it does how on earth are the Italian and Spainish new infections so high?

I was countering your claim that the evidence from Spain and Italy is showing that lockdowns don't work. The current evidence doesn't let us say that, because we don't know what it would have been like without it.

I have not claimed they dont work, they may well be working and without them the infection rate could be 100x times higher. However I dont't expect that anyone thought five weeks ago that 35 days into a severe and very policed lockdown in Spain where children have not been allowed out, that there would still be 5000+ daily new cases of infection.

You said "people keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that."

They could be supremely successful, because the case rate could be a hundred times higher without it. My point is we don't have any evidence one way or another, because we don't have the counterfactual case.

New York was LATE locking down. Their death rate is triple that of London.

So if New York had NOT locked down? ...

FrancisUrquhart

rottenborough said:

For popcorn lovers, @AaronBastani is still banging on about that leaked 'report'.

Like McDonnell spending 15 minutes of an interview banging on about it, these people aren't going to go quietly and will attempt to cement the narrative of betrayal.

DavidL

Stocky said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

FPT - do we know how many people have been furloughed? Aren't we all guessing - the government's estimate of 9 million is big enough!

More than 9 million employees according to BBC (below).

Plus many S/E, of course.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52209790

I have furloughed my wife (who does admin for me). We are still working through the full implications of that....

Alistair

Unionism rots the brain.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-tories-make-bbc-complaint-21881408

RochdalePioneers

B Obama as Veep. 22nd Amendment prevents him being *elected* President. The 12th Amendment states that no-one ineligible to the office of President be Vice-President. He isn't ineligible to hold the office as he has held the office thus proving his eligibility to satisfy the 12th. He just can't be *elected* to it.

I'm certain the GOP would challenge such an appointment. Which will get us into a letter of the law argument. If they can argue that the letter applies to the 2nd its hard to argue the letter doesn't apply and its the meaning that matters for the 12th...

kinabalu

eadric said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

We don't have the counterfactual Spain and Italy where they didn't do the lockdown though, do we?

Absolutely not, so thats why is so hard to judge if the lockdowns are working. Two weeks ago there was talk of Italys figures dropping off a cliff by now, but that has not happened. I thought they would of, and I can't find a reason as why they have not. I realise that this is a very odd virus but it surely must need human to human contact to infect. If it does how on earth are the Italian and Spainish new infections so high?

I was countering your claim that the evidence from Spain and Italy is showing that lockdowns don't work. The current evidence doesn't let us say that, because we don't know what it would have been like without it.

We have Sweden as a control

But an imperfect one. My understanding is that Sweden are closer to voluntary lockdown than they are to business as usual.

TheScreamingEagles

AlastairMeeks said:

https://twitter.com/janemerrick23/status/1251092579925594112?s=20

I’m calling it Coxit.

FeersumEnjineeya

Andy_JS said:

eadric said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

We don't have the counterfactual Spain and Italy where they didn't do the lockdown though, do we?

Absolutely not, so thats why is so hard to judge if the lockdowns are working. Two weeks ago there was talk of Italys figures dropping off a cliff by now, but that has not happened. I thought they would of, and I can't find a reason as why they have not. I realise that this is a very odd virus but it surely must need human to human contact to infect. If it does how on earth are the Italian and Spainish new infections so high?

I was countering your claim that the evidence from Spain and Italy is showing that lockdowns don't work. The current evidence doesn't let us say that, because we don't know what it would have been like without it.

We have Sweden as a control

The situation in Sweden isn't noticeably worse than places like Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, France, etc, that have instituted a lockdown.

But it is significantly worse than in its fellow Scandinavian countries which instituted a lockdown.

Andrew

Andy_JS said:

The situation in Sweden isn't noticeably worse than places like Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, France, etc, that have instituted a lockdown.

But drastically worse than the other Baltic nations, almost 10x the deaths/capita of Finland for example, and 50x that of Latvia.

Nigelb

Regarding Mike's comment about Warren...
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/bernie-left-divided-on-warren-for-vp-187113

And in any event, she'd likely be more use to Biden (and perhaps less problematic to him) in the Senate.

I'm still pleased with my 1000/1 on Harris as next President (and a similar side bet on Abrams).

FrancisUrquhart

Ecuador's official coronavirus death toll is 403, but new figures from just one province suggest many thousands have died in the country.

The government said 6,700 people had died in the Guayas province alone in the first two weeks of April, far more than the usual 1,000 deaths there in the same period.

kinabalu

TheWhiteRabbit said:

FPT - do we know how many people have been furloughed? Aren't we all guessing - the government's estimate of 9 million is big enough!

Could large sections of the country be getting used to dossing around on a kind of super dole?

TheScreamingEagles

Personally I’d tattoo them with ‘I broke the lockdown, I do not deserve medical treatment if I get Covid-19’

https://twitter.com/lfrayer/status/1251167275442290689?s=21

OllyT

NerysHughes said:

felix said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

You ignore responses explaining it to you. Spain/France/Italy have many similarities and all have been in strict lockdown for several weeks. However, much of the public sector remain necessarily at work as do some of the private sector. In all countries food shops and chemists at least are open. The pattern in Spain and italy is the the cases have plateaued as have deaths, infections and admissions. Most of the new infections are occurring in areas of high population density where it takes time to get things under control - as it did in China where the lockdown was the most severe. Why you expect things to slow down more quickly is down to completely unrealistic expectations on your part.

I don't think I am alone in having these expectations. Look at the discssions on here two weeks ago when I bought up the Italian figures. I was told that there would be a big change over the following two weeks. That has not happened.
People in Italy and Spain must be behaving massively differently now to the way they were in February with social distancing etc. Are people still getting close to each other to justify these high infection figures?

Everyone keeps explaining it to you but you simply won't listen.

RobD

I see the Chinese government have upped the death toll in Wuhan by 50% in a single day. Death certificates got lost in the post, perhaps?

FrancisUrquhart

Germany are going to make 50 million masks a week by August. I fear we will be having discussions by then why in the UK nobody can get a mask.

Nigelb

RochdalePioneers said:

B Obama as Veep. 22nd Amendment prevents him being *elected* President. The 12th Amendment states that no-one ineligible to the office of President be Vice-President. He isn't ineligible to hold the office as he has held the office thus proving his eligibility to satisfy the 12th. He just can't be *elected* to it.

I'm certain the GOP would challenge such an appointment. Which will get us into a letter of the law argument. If they can argue that the letter applies to the 2nd its hard to argue the letter doesn't apply and its the meaning that matters for the 12th...

That is an excellent quibble, and it's almost sad that we'll never find out for real.

IanB2

FPT:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw2LNhwnquk

FF43

eadric said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

We don't have the counterfactual Spain and Italy where they didn't do the lockdown though, do we?

Absolutely not, so thats why is so hard to judge if the lockdowns are working. Two weeks ago there was talk of Italys figures dropping off a cliff by now, but that has not happened. I thought they would of, and I can't find a reason as why they have not. I realise that this is a very odd virus but it surely must need human to human contact to infect. If it does how on earth are the Italian and Spainish new infections so high?

I was countering your claim that the evidence from Spain and Italy is showing that lockdowns don't work. The current evidence doesn't let us say that, because we don't know what it would have been like without it.

We have Sweden as a control

It's misleading because Sweden has instituted social distancing on a partially voluntary personal responsibility basis, rather than forcing people to do it. Turns out the hybrid solution has middling results. Social distancing has been somewhat successful, but they could have got more of they had made all of it compulsory.

Stereotomy

NerysHughes said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

RobD said:

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

The discussion pre thread on Spain's shedload of new cases is very timely.

The same could be said - I said it two weeks ago - of Italy's new cases.

These countries are many weeks into lockdown. Where and how are they getting infected? Are they key workers, is it happening in households, care homes, hospitals?

It shouldn't be hard to find out: ask them what they've been doing the last 2-3 weeks.

Armed with that info we could start relaxing the lockdown with the right precautions, or giving PPE to those key workers, maybe even divide households. Or just abandon lockdowns a la Suedois

Oh, and, of course, we should all be wearing masks FFS, as even the British government is now slowly admitting.

People keep saying lockdowns work, but the evidence of Spain and Italy is not really showing that. It remains a mystery to me how so many people are getting infected so far into a lockdown.

We don't have the counterfactual Spain and Italy where they didn't do the lockdown though, do we?

Absolutely not, so thats why is so hard to judge if the lockdowns are working. Two weeks ago there was talk of Italys figures dropping off a cliff by now, but that has not happened. I thought they would of, and I can't find a reason as why they have not. I realise that this is a very odd virus but it surely must need human to human contact to infect. If it does how on earth are the Italian and Spainish new infections so high?

I was countering your claim that the evidence from Spain and Italy is showing that lockdowns don't work. The current evidence doesn't let us say that, because we don't know what it would have been like without it.

I have not claimed they dont work, they may well be working and without them the infection rate could be 100x times higher. However I dont't expect that anyone thought five weeks ago that 35 days into a severe and very policed lockdown in Spain where children have not been allowed out, that there would still be 5000+ daily new cases of infection.

According to worldometers there are 90,000 active cases. I imagine the real number is much higher because active cases aren't always known. But assuming it's 90k, a and assuming that they're equally likely to infect somebody else on each of those days, 5000 new cases means one person with the virus is on average infecting 5000/90000 = 0.056 other people a day. I don't see why that's so shocking to you.

Nigelb

kinabalu said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

FPT - do we know how many people have been furloughed? Aren't we all guessing - the government's estimate of 9 million is big enough!

Could large sections of the country be getting used to dossing around on a kind of super dole?

They could, but in any event, isn't it limited to a maximum of three months for now ?

Carnyx

rottenborough said:

eadric said:

rottenborough said:

"Neurological symptoms of COVID-19 infection are common, diverse, and often severe. In a retrospective study of 214 patients in Wuhan, China 36% had CNS symptoms or disorders and the subgroup of 88 patients with severe respiratory disease had significantly increased frequency of CNS problems (45%). The problems reported include dizziness, headache, loss of smell (anosmia), loss of taste (ageusia), muscle pain and weakness, impaired consciousness, and cerebrovascular complications. Similar reports have begun to emerge from Italy."

"In the longer term, it is possible that SARS-CoV-2 will have persistent direct neurotoxic effects and immune-mediated neurotoxic effects on the brain. The Spanish flu epidemic of 1918–19 was linked to a spike in incidence of post-encephalitic Parkinsonism. Currently, it is not known if SARS-CoV-2 infection could cause mental health or neurodegenerative disorders immediately or years after the acute respiratory phase of COVID-19 has passed, but action is needed now to build the research capacity to test these potentially important biological causes of COVID-19-related mental illness."

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30168-1/fulltext

I've been reading about he Spanish flu. It is spookily like our Coronavirus.

As now, there was a neurological aspect to the 1919 flu. Hallucinations were common. People imagined whole armies of dead (ie zombies). T S Eliot was one of them (he feared his brain was damaged for ever) hence his visions of the dead walking over London Bridge, in The Waste Land.

V interesting. Thanks.

On the neurological theme, BTW, the flu seems to have worsened the ongoing pandemic of encephalitis lethargica by greatly potentiating whatever caused it. The EL symdrome is what Oliver Sacks wroter about in Awakenings - mainly from the point of view of a modern psychiatrist trying modern drugs on people incapacitated since the 1910s.