Two pieces of good news today; went for a walk past the local asparagus farm and they've JUST started harvesting. So we bought a couple of bundles and left the money in the honesty box. Didn't actually have to speak to anyone. And our blue-tit's nest, in our nest box, appears to have six eggs in it.
Asparagus and freshly cooked eggs are a wonderful combination, to be sure.
Two pieces of good news today; went for a walk past the local asparagus farm and they've JUST started harvesting. So we bought a couple of bundles and left the money in the honesty box. Didn't actually have to speak to anyone. And our blue-tit's nest, in our nest box, appears to have six eggs in it.
Asparagus and freshly cooked eggs are a wonderful combination, to be sure.
Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, claims data shows infection rates halved after the Government launched a hand-washing drive and recommend people keep two metres apart on March 16.
He said ministers 'lost sight' of the evidence and rushed into a nationwide quarantine six days later after being instructed by scientific advisers who have been 'consistently wrong' during the crisis.
Intriguing. Tho this sentence makes me wonder how accurate the reporting is
"Less than 6 per cent of Sweden's workforce had filed claims for unemployment benefits - wheres a quarter of Britons (1.4 million people) have applied for universal credit. "
Doesn’t the fact that 1.4 million people clearly isn’t “a quarter of Britons” make you question this piece of fake news?
Er, that's what I was saying. The reporter appears to believe the UK has a population of 6 million, which rather throws his other assertions into doubt.
Yes indeed.
You, however, need to sort out what it is that you are recommending. Having spent a long time advocating an earlier, harsher, lockdown, in last night’s thread you appear to be advocating a looser, Swedish style approach.
You also banged on about the importance of following government advice, to all of us who are staying at home whilst you continue your - probably illegal - holiday away from home in South Wales.
Not true.
I have been consistently panicky and alarmed about coronavirus as a threat to life and business, since early Feb, as you well know. You can call me a nutter or a maniac, it doesn't really matter (surely we are a bit beyond this name calling now?)
But in terms of our best reaction, I have always been much more divided.
By about mid Feb I was speculating, on here (I can find the comment if you insist) that one arguable approach would be just to let it rip. That it was a bastard of a virus that would strike us anyway, and the economic damage of total lockdown (that we saw in Wuhan) was worse than any probable death toll.
I was not sure then, and I am still not sure now. Maybe Sweden is right, maybe they aren't.
You can accuse me of not making my mind up, but then many in government keep changing their minds, as does the best scientific advice, indeed the absolute boffins - the epidemiologists, are entirely split, some say Do a Sweden, some say Do a Wuhan.
So it is forgivable for the layman to be unsure
Actually, no.
In early Feb - contrary to what you have since repeatedly tried to claim (cf last night’s thread), you were predicting that the virus would be relatively “benign”. (your quote)
Yes, back at that time you were certainly advocating that we just endure the pain. Your advice to the elderly and vulnerable, as I recall, was that they should be give some heroin and be told to fuck off and die.
In late Feb, you certainly changed your tune, flipping to apocalyptic predictions that, so far at least, look completely ludicrous. We aren’t ever going to see your two million dead Brits even if we have to endure multiple waves of this virus.
The one thing you haven’t predicted is the mid path of dangerous but not massively deadly path that we seem to be following.
The one point on which we can agree is that people who have never managed or run anything during their career are the very last people on whom we should rely for any sort of sensible advice.
You missed the bit where Eadric predicted that between 10% and 25% of people would die of Covid-19 - a lot more than 2 million in Britain!
Eadric complains that people didn't listen to Eadric, but never wonders why Eadric was not convincing - could it be something to do with the ridiculous style and over-the-top "predictions"?
Meanwhile, this kind of attention-seeking behaviour unfortunately tends to drown out the far more realistic and convincing warnings given by others.
Sadly, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that he is simply full of s**t.
He has both claimed to have had the virus and regaled us all with the extraordinary lengths he has gone to, to avoid catching it.
He has predicted every extreme option from storm in a teacup to global Armageddon, never coming anywhere near the actual course of events, yet repeatedly claims to be some sort of Nostradamus, mostly by selecting random predictions from his stream and knocking a month or more off the date that it was posted, hoping none of us are alert enough to notice.
He regularly lambasts others for not following government advice despite being the only PB’er to admit openly that he hasn’t stayed at home.
He’s gone from advocating an earlier Chinese style lockdown to commending a Swedish style open approach, in just a couple of weeks.
He even spent yesterday morning trying to call out others for posts that might be considered offensive.
And he did kick off by suggesting we tell our old folks to just f**k off and die.
Two pieces of good news today; went for a walk past the local asparagus farm and they've JUST started harvesting. So we bought a couple of bundles and left the money in the honesty box. Didn't actually have to speak to anyone. And our blue-tit's nest, in our nest box, appears to have six eggs in it.
Asparagus and freshly cooked eggs are a wonderful combination, to be sure.
Got to chuckle at the Daily Mail top headline - "Did we jump too soon?"
Where as a couple of days ago, it was all about did we go too late....
Pah! That's nothing. The Guardian a couple of days ago ran an 'investigation' which in a single article sought to smear Boris simultaneously for having been too ill and for not having been ill enough.
Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, claims data shows infection rates halved after the Government launched a hand-washing drive and recommend people keep two metres apart on March 16.
He said ministers 'lost sight' of the evidence and rushed into a nationwide quarantine six days later after being instructed by scientific advisers who have been 'consistently wrong' during the crisis.
Intriguing. Tho this sentence makes me wonder how accurate the reporting is
"Less than 6 per cent of Sweden's workforce had filed claims for unemployment benefits - wheres a quarter of Britons (1.4 million people) have applied for universal credit. "
Doesn’t the fact that 1.4 million people clearly isn’t “a quarter of Britons” make you question this piece of fake news?
Er, that's what I was saying. The reporter appears to believe the UK has a population of 6 million, which rather throws his other assertions into doubt.
Yes indeed.
You, however, need to sort out what it is that you are recommending. Having spent a long time advocating an earlier, harsher, lockdown, in last night’s thread you appear to be advocating a looser, Swedish style approach.
You also banged on about the importance of following government advice, to all of us who are staying at home whilst you continue your - probably illegal - holiday away from home in South Wales.
Not true.
I have been consistently panicky and alarmed about coronavirus as a threat to life and business, since early Feb, as you well know. You can call me a nutter or a maniac, it doesn't really matter (surely we are a bit beyond this name calling now?)
But in terms of our best reaction, I have always been much more divided.
By about mid Feb I was speculating, on here (I can find the comment if you insist) that one arguable approach would be just to let it rip. That it was a bastard of a virus that would strike us anyway, and the economic damage of total lockdown (that we saw in Wuhan) was worse than any probable death toll.
I was not sure then, and I am still not sure now. Maybe Sweden is right, maybe they aren't.
You can accuse me of not making my mind up, but then many in government keep changing their minds, as does the best scientific advice, indeed the absolute boffins - the epidemiologists, are entirely split, some say Do a Sweden, some say Do a Wuhan.
So it is forgivable for the layman to be unsure
Actually, no.
In early Feb - contrary to what you have since repeatedly tried to claim (cf last night’s thread), you were predicting that the virus would be relatively “benign”. (your quote)
Yes, back at that time you were certainly advocating that we just endure the pain. Your advice to the elderly and vulnerable, as I recall, was that they should be give some heroin and be told to fuck off and die.
In late Feb, you certainly changed your tune, flipping to apocalyptic predictions that, so far at least, look completely ludicrous. We aren’t ever going to see your two million dead Brits even if we have to endure multiple waves of this virus.
The one thing you haven’t predicted is the mid path of dangerous but not massively deadly path that we seem to be following.
The one point on which we can agree is that people who have never managed or run anything during their career are the very last people on whom we should rely for any sort of sensible advice.
You missed the bit where Eadric predicted that between 10% and 25% of people would die of Covid-19 - a lot more than 2 million in Britain!
Eadric complains that people didn't listen to Eadric, but never wonders why Eadric was not convincing - could it be something to do with the ridiculous style and over-the-top "predictions"?
Meanwhile, this kind of attention-seeking behaviour unfortunately tends to drown out the far more realistic and convincing warnings given by others.
Sadly, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that he is simply full of s**t.
He has both claimed to have had the virus and regaled us all with the extraordinary lengths he has gone to, to avoid catching it.
He has predicted every extreme option from storm in a teacup to global Armageddon, never coming anywhere near the actual course of events, yet repeatedly claims to be some sort of Nostradamus, mostly by selecting random predictions from his stream and knocking a month or more off the date that it was posted, hoping none of us are alert enough to notice.
He regularly lambasts others for not following government advice despite being the only PB’er to admit openly that he hasn’t stayed at home.
He’s gone from advocating an earlier Chinese style lockdown to commending a Swedish style open approach, in just a couple of weeks.
He even spent yesterday morning trying to call out others for posts that might be considered offensive.
And he did kick off by suggesting we tell our old folks to just f**k off and die.
Ian. Have you ever thought of PAYING for sex, seeing as you can’t get any the normal way?
Just lame. You might as well just throw in the towel.
Nobody is going to know the answer to this for years. I think the fact that Swedes are on the whole appear to be very keen to follow rules is certainly in their favour when it comes to allowing an element of flexibility in their restrictions on normal life. My understanding is that although places like restaurants are open, there are quite clear rules, and very few are not observing it.
We tried the please be sensible, and what we got was people going on the lash as the pub is having a sneaky lock in and they didn't tell me I couldn't go on a 300 miles round trip as part of my daily exercise.
Also, things like much less high population density and I believe things like far fewer "house sharing" and multi-generational homes certainly is again to their advantage. It is really quite easy to buy your own home in Sweden, as the government schemes will put equity in it with you. The big downside is trying to sell it.
Well the isolated anecdotes you have pulled out are just that – I don't think Britons are are stupid as you make out and people taking the piss were in a tiny minority.
P.S. What does it matter if you do a 300-mile bike ride on your own?
It comes as a medicine professor at the University of Oxford has argued the peak was actually about a month ago, a week before lockdown started on March 23, and that the draconian measures people are now living with were unnecessary.
Professor Carl Heneghan claims data shows infection rates halved after the Government launched a public information campaign on March 16 urging people to wash their hands and keep two metres (6'6") away from others.
He said ministers 'lost sight' of the evidence and rushed into a nationwide quarantine six days later after being instructed by scientific advisers who he claims have been 'consistently wrong' during the crisis.
Got to chuckle at the Daily Mail top headline - "Did we jump too soon?"
Where as a couple of days ago, it was all about did we go too late....
Pah! That's nothing. The Guardian a couple of days ago ran an 'investigation' which in a single article sought to smear Boris simultaneously for having been too ill and for not having been ill enough.
I appreciate everyone likes daily figures because they give a lot more to talk about, but aside from giving some idea of the trajectory, the numbers themselves seem close to useless to me.
Yes, well put.
The lack of news is a genuine problem, I think. Fluff is having to be used by broadcasters and print media to fill time and space.
I do think the trajectory will be somewhat useful in estimating Rt. If each generation takes about a week, as seems to be the assumption in the models, then a 20% week-on-week decrease in London hospital deaths, which I vaguely remember seeing yesterday somewhere, would suggest Rt=0.8 now (well, a couple of weeks ago, and this probably excludes that part of the population which are not hospitalized for it). The boffins will be doing a more sophisticated version of this calculation.
--AS
There were 16 people killed in a shooting spree in Canada yesterday which I'm not even sure was mentioned here. It's not so much that there's no news, just that the virus has swamped everything else to the point that folk would rather have Corona fluff over actual news.
I find it very hard to read books that aren't actually about plague, or contagion, or viruses, or pandemic history, etc etc
And I'm doing a lot of reading.
The dead opposite of escapism. Is there a word for this?
Realism?
Sort of. But that is the middle ground between undue optimism and undue pessimism. So not quite the opposite of escapism.
There must be a word. Or if there isn't it needs coining.
Catastrophe wanking.
But that's two words.
Is the flaw. It seems there actually is no precise word for it. Gap in the market. Bet the Germans have one.
Got to chuckle at the Daily Mail top headline - "Did we jump too soon?"
Where as a couple of days ago, it was all about did we go too late....
As some of us have been saying on here since the 'We Must Be Locked Down Now" brigade started.
If Sweden, nor Germany, do turn out to be the "gold standard" in balancing CV deaths against tanking your economy, I imagine we won't hear the end of why didn't we follow them.
It's stone cold certain that no-one pushing either agenda will bother to compare countries in comparable situations. eg Norway with Sweden and Finland; UK with Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany. Because spread-out populations obviously have an advantage to those living on top of each other when it comes to not infecting each other.
Also very few oldies. If you look at say Nigeria, nightmare potential with regards to population density and health service, but over65s are ~3% of the population (we're about 20%).
I appreciate everyone likes daily figures because they give a lot more to talk about, but aside from giving some idea of the trajectory, the numbers themselves seem close to useless to me.
Yes, well put.
The lack of news is a genuine problem, I think. Fluff is having to be used by broadcasters and print media to fill time and space.
I do think the trajectory will be somewhat useful in estimating Rt. If each generation takes about a week, as seems to be the assumption in the models, then a 20% week-on-week decrease in London hospital deaths, which I vaguely remember seeing yesterday somewhere, would suggest Rt=0.8 now (well, a couple of weeks ago, and this probably excludes that part of the population which are not hospitalized for it). The boffins will be doing a more sophisticated version of this calculation.
--AS
There were 16 people killed in a shooting spree in Canada yesterday which I'm not even sure was mentioned here. It's not so much that there's no news, just that the virus has swamped everything else to the point that folk would rather have Corona fluff over actual news.
I find it very hard to read books that aren't actually about plague, or contagion, or viruses, or pandemic history, etc etc
And I'm doing a lot of reading.
The dead opposite of escapism. Is there a word for this?
Realism?
Sort of. But that is the middle ground between undue optimism and undue pessimism. So not quite the opposite of escapism.
There must be a word. Or if there isn't it needs coining.
Catastrophe wanking.
But that's two words.
Is the flaw. It seems there actually is no precise word for it. Gap in the market. Bet the Germans have one.
Remarkable report addresses a great many of the issues that we've been discussing, without dictating one solution but discussing the options and assessing the cost of caution or well as risk:
The Guardian a couple of days ago ran an 'investigation' which in a single article sought to smear Boris simultaneously for having been too ill and for not having been ill enough.
I have always found the most (only?) entertaining part of Polly Toynbee's articles is her ability to contradict herself several times before presenting a conclusion that has little to do with anything that preceded it.
It has occurred to me that this is a weird but subtle joke on their readers.
Professor Carl Henegan (Oxon) says the data shows that infections peaked before lockdown.
If this is right, have we just mugged off our economy for no good reason?
No, unless he is saying had peaked and were already sharply declining.
He does appear to be saying that.
OK, well maybe so, then. But it must be the case that the lockdown reduced infection rates again, beyond what the initial advice achieved. The reduction may not have been worth the cost, of course.
Remarkable report addresses a great many of the issues that we've been discussing, without dictating one solution but discussing the options and assessing the cost of caution or well as risk:
It comes as a medicine professor at the University of Oxford has argued the peak was actually about a month ago, a week before lockdown started on March 23, and that the draconian measures people are now living with were unnecessary.
Professor Carl Heneghan claims data shows infection rates halved after the Government launched a public information campaign on March 16 urging people to wash their hands and keep two metres (6'6") away from others.
He said ministers 'lost sight' of the evidence and rushed into a nationwide quarantine six days later after being instructed by scientific advisers who he claims have been 'consistently wrong' during the crisis.
Gradually the narrative is turning away from did we jump too soon to why did we jump at all, and even more so why did we extend that jump.
When the redundancies start soaring, the bills mounting and business failures rocketing, well I would not want to be the government.
If as Andrew Bailey predicts, much of the economic damage will either be beyond repair or slow to repair, the government's catastrophic policy will hang like an albatross around Boris, Sunak and the tories for decades.
Lockdown was a huge political error, but the decision to extend lockdown, as I have said I cannot think of any worse policy any British government has ever adopted.
Got to chuckle at the Daily Mail top headline - "Did we jump too soon?"
Where as a couple of days ago, it was all about did we go too late....
As some of us have been saying on here since the 'We Must Be Locked Down Now" brigade started.
If Sweden, nor Germany, do turn out to be the "gold standard" in balancing CV deaths against tanking your economy, I imagine we won't hear the end of why didn't we follow them.
Yep
Of course, it's unlikely that the UK response has been the best among all the nations. You'd have to really believe in British exceptionalism to go for that. Also, all countries had to base their decisions on quite incomplete information, if we did have the best response, it would be largely luck.
International comparisons will be made and there may be some that clearly did better or worse, but for the most part it's going to be very difficult to untangle population demographic effects (although that's at least something that can be put in a model fairly easily on a broad level), different initial exposure (how many of each country's population travelled to virus hotspots in the early stages and how much did they spread it on their return), different cultural customs/travelling patterns....
And that assumes that it's even possible to define best. Is the country with fewest deaths per million 'best' if it cripples it's economy much more badly than the 'second best'? In part that depends on whether you're one of the people who would have died/did die under different policies or one of the ones whose company will go bust under lockdown.
Was chatting to a colleague working as doctor at Exeter. They have no more than 30 COVID patients in ICU and almost no one else in the hospital. The SW area has been mostly free of COVID cases. At some point soon the patients dying from not being treated on other ailments will overtake those dying from COVID. The lock down does not just have an economic cost but a health cost as all resources are focussed on a very few patients. I would suggest even another 3 weeks is unsustainable.
We will test the Sweden solution shortly as we come out of lockdown. Sweden has tested about 50% more people than the UK so we are a little way behind them. The country is also more rural than most of the UK.
On schools there is data to show that healthy kids can kill the virus with their normal killer cells and do not need antibodies. This may result in them not being infectious ever.
Was chatting to a colleague working as doctor at Exeter. They have no more than 30 COVID patients in ICU and almost no one else in the hospital. The SW area has been mostly free of COVID cases. At some point soon the patients dying from not being treated on other ailments will overtake those dying from COVID. The lock down does not just have an economic cost but a health cost as all resources are focussed on a very few patients. I would suggest even another 3 weeks is unsustainable.
We will test the Sweden solution shortly as we come out of lockdown. Sweden has tested about 50% more people than the UK so we are a little way behind them. The country is also more rural than most of the UK.
On schools there is data to show that healthy kids can kill the virus with their normal killer cells and do not need antibodies. This may result in them not being infectious ever.
Great post, we need hospitals to start treating non Covid cases again
It's possible there may be particular features of this virus that mean most deaths take place in the first wave and that the chances of a second or third wave being worse are relatively low. I'd like to read/hear expert commentary on this.
Not an expert giving commentary, but...
Maybe it is a flat track bully, it kills a lot of the vulnerable very quickly and can’t land much of a blow on the rest. The amount on under 60s dying is about 6% of covid deaths. Yet we keep hearing how vulnerable we all are.
The Swedish prof on unherd seems to think so. He puts their high death rate compared to Norway down to the difference in size of Norwegian and Swedish care homes
That's an impressive effect. If they had the same ratios, Swedish death toll would be 311 rather than 1,540. The care home size quintuples the death toll in Sweden?
I don’t know the figures, but that’s his reasoning. He says they were far too late to protect the care homes there too
I appreciate everyone likes daily figures because they give a lot more to talk about, but aside from giving some idea of the trajectory, the numbers themselves seem close to useless to me.
Yes, well put.
The lack of news is a genuine problem, I think. Fluff is having to be used by broadcasters and print media to fill time and space.
I do think the trajectory will be somewhat useful in estimating Rt. If each generation takes about a week, as seems to be the assumption in the models, then a 20% week-on-week decrease in London hospital deaths, which I vaguely remember seeing yesterday somewhere, would suggest Rt=0.8 now (well, a couple of weeks ago, and this probably excludes that part of the population which are not hospitalized for it). The boffins will be doing a more sophisticated version of this calculation.
--AS
There were 16 people killed in a shooting spree in Canada yesterday which I'm not even sure was mentioned here. It's not so much that there's no news, just that the virus has swamped everything else to the point that folk would rather have Corona fluff over actual news.
I find it very hard to read books that aren't actually about plague, or contagion, or viruses, or pandemic history, etc etc
And I'm doing a lot of reading.
The dead opposite of escapism. Is there a word for this?
Realism?
Sort of. But that is the middle ground between undue optimism and undue pessimism. So not quite the opposite of escapism.
There must be a word. Or if there isn't it needs coining.
I can believe lockdown might not be a particularly effective way of reducing infections (ie costly compared with alternative reduction methods), but I get bit queasy when the Swedish chief epidemiologist seems to imply Sweden will get to herd immunity with a much lower case and fatality rate than everyone else.
It's possible there may be particular features of this virus that mean most deaths take place in the first wave and that the chances of a second or third wave being worse are relatively low. I'd like to read/hear expert commentary on this.
Not an expert giving commentary, but...
Maybe it is a flat track bully, it kills a lot of the vulnerable very quickly and can’t land much of a blow on the rest. The amount on under 60s dying is about 6% of covid deaths. Yet we keep hearing how vulnerable we all are.
The Swedish prof on unherd seems to think so. He puts their high death rate compared to Norway down to the difference in size of Norwegian and Swedish care homes
That's an impressive effect. If they had the same ratios, Swedish death toll would be 311 rather than 1,540. The care home size quintuples the death toll in Sweden?
I don’t know the figures, but that’s his reasoning. He says they were far too late to protect the care homes there too
There is also discussion around the mystery as to why BAME individuals seem to be disproportionally effected by this virus. Sweden has higher levels of recent immigration than the other Nordics.
Was chatting to a colleague working as doctor at Exeter. They have no more than 30 COVID patients in ICU and almost no one else in the hospital. The SW area has been mostly free of COVID cases. At some point soon the patients dying from not being treated on other ailments will overtake those dying from COVID. The lock down does not just have an economic cost but a health cost as all resources are focussed on a very few patients. I would suggest even another 3 weeks is unsustainable.
We will test the Sweden solution shortly as we come out of lockdown. Sweden has tested about 50% more people than the UK so we are a little way behind them. The country is also more rural than most of the UK.
On schools there is data to show that healthy kids can kill the virus with their normal killer cells and do not need antibodies. This may result in them not being infectious ever.
It is ridiculous than almost no one else is in hospital.
Professor Gabriel Scally, president of epidemiology and public health at the Royal Society of Medicine said the UK Government's approach to airports was difficult to understand.
"The UK is a complete outlier in terms of border controls and it simply doesn't make sense going forward for that to continue to be the situation.
"After all the hard effort that has gone into lockdown to stop transmission, it would be wrong if we are still in the situation where restrictions are lifted where people from all round the world can come into the country and potentially bring infection with them. I strongly support restrictions on travel on public health grounds and public health scrutiny of people coming into the country from elsewhere
Considering people presumably use PB for advice and guidance on political betting outcomes, taking account of data without adding in external factors (i.e. the Coronavirus pandemic and its financial ramifications) seems to be the mark of a poor punter.
Was chatting to a colleague working as doctor at Exeter. They have no more than 30 COVID patients in ICU and almost no one else in the hospital. The SW area has been mostly free of COVID cases. At some point soon the patients dying from not being treated on other ailments will overtake those dying from COVID. The lock down does not just have an economic cost but a health cost as all resources are focussed on a very few patients. I would suggest even another 3 weeks is unsustainable.
We will test the Sweden solution shortly as we come out of lockdown. Sweden has tested about 50% more people than the UK so we are a little way behind them. The country is also more rural than most of the UK.
On schools there is data to show that healthy kids can kill the virus with their normal killer cells and do not need antibodies. This may result in them not being infectious ever.
It is ridiculous than almost no one else is in hospital.
Everything else has been cancelled and people are too scared to go to A & E. I know I keep saying this but huge numbers of doctors & nurses are doing far less work in a once in a 100 year pandemic, than they normally would on a sunny Monday in April.
Wouldn’t a good proxy for the public’s level of concern about, and therefore adherence to, Covid lockdown measures be the viewing figures for the daily politician plus prof BBC afternoon pressers?
Was chatting to a colleague working as doctor at Exeter. They have no more than 30 COVID patients in ICU and almost no one else in the hospital. The SW area has been mostly free of COVID cases. At some point soon the patients dying from not being treated on other ailments will overtake those dying from COVID. The lock down does not just have an economic cost but a health cost as all resources are focussed on a very few patients. I would suggest even another 3 weeks is unsustainable.
We will test the Sweden solution shortly as we come out of lockdown. Sweden has tested about 50% more people than the UK so we are a little way behind them. The country is also more rural than most of the UK.
On schools there is data to show that healthy kids can kill the virus with their normal killer cells and do not need antibodies. This may result in them not being infectious ever.
It is ridiculous than almost no one else is in hospital.
Everything else has been cancelled and people are too scared to go to A & E. I know I keep saying this but huge numbers of doctors & nurses are doing far less work in a once in a 100 year pandemic, than they normally would on a sunny Monday in April.
Some are I agree.
How do you think we should get routine patients to attend?
Nobody is going to know the answer to this for years. I think the fact that Swedes are on the whole appear to be very keen to follow rules is certainly in their favour when it comes to allowing an element of flexibility in their restrictions on normal life. My understanding is that although places like restaurants are open, there are quite clear rules, and very few are not observing it.
We tried the please be sensible, and what we got was people going on the lash as the pub is having a sneaky lock in and they didn't tell me I couldn't go on a 300 miles round trip as part of my daily exercise.
Also, things like much less high population density and I believe things like far fewer "house sharing" and multi-generational homes certainly is again to their advantage. It is really quite easy to buy your own home in Sweden, as the government schemes will put equity in it with you. The big downside is trying to sell it.
Well the isolated anecdotes you have pulled out are just that – I don't think Britons are are stupid as you make out and people taking the piss were in a tiny minority.
P.S. What does it matter if you do a 300-mile bike ride on your own?
I was being hyperbolic. But there was a problem. See what was happening when Boris announced the pubs were to be forced to close. People had been packing into bars and restaurants for the 1-2 weeks previous as if there was no particular issue to worry about.
What did people do when Boris came on the tv and say, look this shit is real, pubs must close as soon as possible as people really aren't taking this seriously enough. If that was me, I would have been out of there in a shot. No, most people said, right well I better make this one a big one.
It does seem Swedes haven't needed the government to tell them to be bloody sensible. Or to micro-manage exactly what constitutes an reasonable amount of exercise.
Considering people presumably use PB for advice and guidance on political betting outcomes, taking account of data without adding in external factors (i.e. the Coronavirus pandemic and its financial ramifications) seems to be the mark of a poor punter.
Yes, Keir was gifted an incompetent government failing to meet the demands of a terrible crisis, and hasn't managed to even make a dent. He's as off the radar as whoever is currently leading the lib dems.
It's possible there may be particular features of this virus that mean most deaths take place in the first wave and that the chances of a second or third wave being worse are relatively low. I'd like to read/hear expert commentary on this.
Not an expert giving commentary, but...
Maybe it is a flat track bully, it kills a lot of the vulnerable very quickly and can’t land much of a blow on the rest. The amount on under 60s dying is about 6% of covid deaths. Yet we keep hearing how vulnerable we all are.
The Swedish prof on unherd seems to think so. He puts their high death rate compared to Norway down to the difference in size of Norwegian and Swedish care homes
That's an impressive effect. If they had the same ratios, Swedish death toll would be 311 rather than 1,540. The care home size quintuples the death toll in Sweden?
I don’t know the figures, but that’s his reasoning. He says they were far too late to protect the care homes there too
There is also discussion around the mystery as to why BAME individuals seem to be disproportionally effected by this virus. Sweden has higher levels of recent immigration than the other Nordics.
There were some tweets earlier that debunked this theory.
Considering people presumably use PB for advice and guidance on political betting outcomes, taking account of data without adding in external factors (i.e. the Coronavirus pandemic and its financial ramifications) seems to be the mark of a poor punter.
Yes, Keir was gifted an incompetent government failing to meet the demands of a terrible crisis, and hasn't managed to even make a dent. He's as off the radar as whoever is currently leading the lib dems.
Call me stupid, but I do not consider the government response to be failing. I am quite happy to wrap myself in the flag and support Boris until this dreadful pandemic is under control. I am greatly relieved that Boris has so far slapped down those in Cabinet who are demanding we come out of lockdown without full analysis of the relevant data.
Opposition should at this moment in time generally be supportive of the government's plan.
This is just as bad as that other case of the Labour Councillor. Assuming Guido's story is correct, she should be sacked by the NHS and thrown out of the Labour Party.
I've no idea if any of the MSM ran with this story but if so they should run very prominent retractions.
Wouldn’t a good proxy for the public’s level of concern about, and therefore adherence to, Covid lockdown measures be the viewing figures for the daily politician plus prof BBC afternoon pressers?
It's a good proxy for people who have had enough of journalists being a bunch of fuckwits. Hardly watch them now, just look at the main points.
This place is bizarre, yesterday we had screwed up badly by not locking down earlier and today we have screwed up badly by locking down too early. It's almost as though some people are invisibly guided by whatever they have just read is telling them.
Was chatting to a colleague working as doctor at Exeter. They have no more than 30 COVID patients in ICU and almost no one else in the hospital. The SW area has been mostly free of COVID cases. At some point soon the patients dying from not being treated on other ailments will overtake those dying from COVID. The lock down does not just have an economic cost but a health cost as all resources are focussed on a very few patients. I would suggest even another 3 weeks is unsustainable.
We will test the Sweden solution shortly as we come out of lockdown. Sweden has tested about 50% more people than the UK so we are a little way behind them. The country is also more rural than most of the UK.
On schools there is data to show that healthy kids can kill the virus with their normal killer cells and do not need antibodies. This may result in them not being infectious ever.
It is ridiculous than almost no one else is in hospital.
Everything else has been cancelled and people are too scared to go to A & E. I know I keep saying this but huge numbers of doctors & nurses are doing far less work in a once in a 100 year pandemic, than they normally would on a sunny Monday in April.
Some are I agree.
How do you think we should get routine patients to attend?
I cancelled my routine appointment (a few weeks back) - would not step anywhere near a hospital at the moment. Know of several people who have contracted Covid there when previously virus free. Hard to say, but hospitals are quite obviously potential death traps for anyone regardless of the safeguards they may take to isolate the non-Covid patients.
Professor Gabriel Scally, president of epidemiology and public health at the Royal Society of Medicine said the UK Government's approach to airports was difficult to understand.
"The UK is a complete outlier in terms of border controls and it simply doesn't make sense going forward for that to continue to be the situation.
"After all the hard effort that has gone into lockdown to stop transmission, it would be wrong if we are still in the situation where restrictions are lifted where people from all round the world can come into the country and potentially bring infection with them. I strongly support restrictions on travel on public health grounds and public health scrutiny of people coming into the country from elsewhere
"And today the UK has "unloaded 140,000 gowns from Myanmar"
I think we are going to need a long hard look at crucial supplies if we are now having to resort to buying from Burma and Turkey. They make China look good when it comes to things like human rights.
Professor Gabriel Scally, president of epidemiology and public health at the Royal Society of Medicine said the UK Government's approach to airports was difficult to understand.
"The UK is a complete outlier in terms of border controls and it simply doesn't make sense going forward for that to continue to be the situation.
"After all the hard effort that has gone into lockdown to stop transmission, it would be wrong if we are still in the situation where restrictions are lifted where people from all round the world can come into the country and potentially bring infection with them. I strongly support restrictions on travel on public health grounds and public health scrutiny of people coming into the country from elsewhere
There are currently a number of measures in force throughout the Netherlands in order to combat the spread of the corona virus. The government does not require you to go into quarantine if you don't have any cold symptoms.
Did you just arrive at Schiphol coming from the United States then the Dutch government urgently requests you to stay in home quarantine for fourteen days. The same holds for travellers coming back to the Netherlands with a repatriation flight from countries which are currently under a travel ban. This is the case for the mainland of China (including Hong Kong), South Korea, Italy, Spain and Austria. Even though the home quarantine is not compulsory and will not be checked, the Dutch government kindly asks all travellers to cooperate.
In Singapore if you break home quarantine you'll be fined and if you keep doing it imprisoned. But then that only applies to Singapore nationals as Singapore has banned all foreign arrivals.
"And today the UK has "unloaded 140,000 gowns from Myanmar"
I think we are going to need a long hard look at crucial supplies if we are now having to resort to buying from Burma and Turkey. They make China look good when it comes to things like human rights.
I think they are all of a kind TBH - and right now isn't the time to be picky about where supplies come from
Not wanting to comment on the substance of the article, but shouldn’t she have double checked who was PM during the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak before comparing Johnson unfavourably with Gordon Brown?
"And today the UK has "unloaded 140,000 gowns from Myanmar"
I think we are going to need a long hard look at crucial supplies if we are now having to resort to buying from Burma and Turkey. They make China look good when it comes to things like human rights.
I think they are all of a kind TBH - and right now isn't the time to be picky about where supplies come from
I meant going forward. I agree at the moment, you take what you can get.
We must ensure there is no risk of second peak says Sunak.
An alternative view is we have to take that risk to save our economy from destruction.
Maybe, just maybe, they've worked out that a second peak would be what kills most businesses off rather than spending a bit more time making sure we beat it down to a near zero r0 this time. In any evenuality we're going to have to close the borders, though.
It comes as a medicine professor at the University of Oxford has argued the peak was actually about a month ago, a week before lockdown started on March 23, and that the draconian measures people are now living with were unnecessary.
Professor Carl Heneghan claims data shows infection rates halved after the Government launched a public information campaign on March 16 urging people to wash their hands and keep two metres (6'6") away from others.
He said ministers 'lost sight' of the evidence and rushed into a nationwide quarantine six days later after being instructed by scientific advisers who he claims have been 'consistently wrong' during the crisis.
Gradually the narrative is turning away from did we jump too soon to why did we jump at all, and even more so why did we extend that jump.
When the redundancies start soaring, the bills mounting and business failures rocketing, well I would not want to be the government.
If as Andrew Bailey predicts, much of the economic damage will either be beyond repair or slow to repair, the government's catastrophic policy will hang like an albatross around Boris, Sunak and the tories for decades.
Lockdown was a huge political error, but the decision to extend lockdown, as I have said I cannot think of any worse policy any British government has ever adopted.
I think having coronavirus at all was a mistake, really.
Was chatting to a colleague working as doctor at Exeter. They have no more than 30 COVID patients in ICU and almost no one else in the hospital. The SW area has been mostly free of COVID cases. At some point soon the patients dying from not being treated on other ailments will overtake those dying from COVID. The lock down does not just have an economic cost but a health cost as all resources are focussed on a very few patients. I would suggest even another 3 weeks is unsustainable.
We will test the Sweden solution shortly as we come out of lockdown. Sweden has tested about 50% more people than the UK so we are a little way behind them. The country is also more rural than most of the UK.
On schools there is data to show that healthy kids can kill the virus with their normal killer cells and do not need antibodies. This may result in them not being infectious ever.
It is ridiculous than almost no one else is in hospital.
Everything else has been cancelled and people are too scared to go to A & E. I know I keep saying this but huge numbers of doctors & nurses are doing far less work in a once in a 100 year pandemic, than they normally would on a sunny Monday in April.
Some are I agree.
How do you think we should get routine patients to attend?
I cancelled my routine appointment (a few weeks back) - would not step anywhere near a hospital at the moment. Know of several people who have contracted Covid there when previously virus free. Hard to say, but hospitals are quite obviously potential death traps for anyone regardless of the safeguards they may take to isolate the non-Covid patients.
Absolutely agree - I have been told that COVID has and is spreading in hospitals.
"And today the UK has "unloaded 140,000 gowns from Myanmar"
I think we are going to need a long hard look at crucial supplies if we are now having to resort to buying from Burma and Turkey. They make China look good when it comes to things like human rights.
I think they are all of a kind TBH - and right now isn't the time to be picky about where supplies come from
I meant going forward. I agree at the moment, you take what you can get.
I hope PPE will now be manufactured here in the UK
"And today the UK has "unloaded 140,000 gowns from Myanmar"
I think we are going to need a long hard look at crucial supplies if we are now having to resort to buying from Burma and Turkey. They make China look good when it comes to things like human rights.
I think they are all of a kind TBH - and right now isn't the time to be picky about where supplies come from
I meant going forward. I agree at the moment, you take what you can get.
"And today the UK has "unloaded 140,000 gowns from Myanmar"
I think we are going to need a long hard look at crucial supplies if we are now having to resort to buying from Burma and Turkey. They make China look good when it comes to things like human rights.
I think they are all of a kind TBH - and right now isn't the time to be picky about where supplies come from
I meant going forward. I agree at the moment, you take what you can get.
I hope PPE will now be manufactured here in the UK
Seems like a no brainer to me. Get those factories set up in the North, where there is high unemployment. Win win.
Crude Oil is now hovering around $10 a barrel. I am no expert in this field, but this feels as if it could have some significant implications. Anyone want to advance any informed opinions on what?
The government needs to work out what would be most likely to happen with a second wave if the lockdown was no longer applying to healthy people under the age of 50. That's the key calculation I think.
Mr. Borough, another reading of that is that when the lockdown is gradually relaxed it'll be severely and swiftly re-imposed to prevent any rise becoming a full-blown second spike.
The government needs to work out what would be most likely to happen with a second wave if the lockdown was no longer applying to healthy people under the age of 50. That's the key calculation I think.
Ageist....will be the claim...and especially if you start saying people with this list of conditions (and seriously overweight people)...be skewed towards certain demographics, so it will be racist and against poor people.
Was chatting to a colleague working as doctor at Exeter. They have no more than 30 COVID patients in ICU and almost no one else in the hospital. The SW area has been mostly free of COVID cases. At some point soon the patients dying from not being treated on other ailments will overtake those dying from COVID. The lock down does not just have an economic cost but a health cost as all resources are focussed on a very few patients. I would suggest even another 3 weeks is unsustainable.
We will test the Sweden solution shortly as we come out of lockdown. Sweden has tested about 50% more people than the UK so we are a little way behind them. The country is also more rural than most of the UK.
On schools there is data to show that healthy kids can kill the virus with their normal killer cells and do not need antibodies. This may result in them not being infectious ever.
It is ridiculous than almost no one else is in hospital.
Everything else has been cancelled and people are too scared to go to A & E. I know I keep saying this but huge numbers of doctors & nurses are doing far less work in a once in a 100 year pandemic, than they normally would on a sunny Monday in April.
Some are I agree.
How do you think we should get routine patients to attend?
I cancelled my routine appointment (a few weeks back) - would not step anywhere near a hospital at the moment. Know of several people who have contracted Covid there when previously virus free. Hard to say, but hospitals are quite obviously potential death traps for anyone regardless of the safeguards they may take to isolate the non-Covid patients.
Absolutely agree - I have been told that COVID has and is spreading in hospitals.
Once all the NHS staff have had it, maybe that will stop...
"And today the UK has "unloaded 140,000 gowns from Myanmar"
I think we are going to need a long hard look at crucial supplies if we are now having to resort to buying from Burma and Turkey. They make China look good when it comes to things like human rights.
I think they are all of a kind TBH - and right now isn't the time to be picky about where supplies come from
I meant going forward. I agree at the moment, you take what you can get.
I hope PPE will now be manufactured here in the UK
I agree wholeheartedly, but don't forget the PPE will be many several times the unit cost of items that are produced in a Dhaka sweat shop.
Mr. Borough, another reading of that is that when the lockdown is gradually relaxed it'll be severely and swiftly re-imposed to prevent any rise becoming a full-blown second spike.
Do a New Zealand - 'Go early. Go hard'. We should have done it this time but that's a harsh lesson learned.
Comments
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/20/brussels-red-faced-hungary-gets-eu-coronavirus-cash-italy/
If not it supports hot weather hypothesis.
If this is right, have we just mugged off our economy for no good reason?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-52323375
P.S. What does it matter if you do a 300-mile bike ride on your own?
Professor Carl Heneghan claims data shows infection rates halved after the Government launched a public information campaign on March 16 urging people to wash their hands and keep two metres (6'6") away from others.
He said ministers 'lost sight' of the evidence and rushed into a nationwide quarantine six days later after being instructed by scientific advisers who he claims have been 'consistently wrong' during the crisis.
eg Norway with Sweden and Finland; UK with Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany.
Because spread-out populations obviously have an advantage to those living on top of each other when it comes to not infecting each other.
https://institute.global/sites/default/files/inline-files/A Sustainable Exit Strategy, Managing Uncertainty Minimising Harm.pdf
- yes I know it's the Tony Blair Institute, and some of you don't approve of Tony Blair. He didn't write it, so get over it.
It has occurred to me that this is a weird but subtle joke on their readers.
Apologies duplication. Now sorted. Vanilla seems to be playing up a bit.
https://order-order.com/2020/04/20/nurse-celebrated-boris-admitted-icu-gave-away-ppe-shortage-complaint/
Unless your post was self-chiding humour in which case well done.
https://twitter.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1252260971516747778?s=20
When the redundancies start soaring, the bills mounting and business failures rocketing, well I would not want to be the government.
If as Andrew Bailey predicts, much of the economic damage will either be beyond repair or slow to repair, the government's catastrophic policy will hang like an albatross around Boris, Sunak and the tories for decades.
Lockdown was a huge political error, but the decision to extend lockdown, as I have said I cannot think of any worse policy any British government has ever adopted.
Of course, it's unlikely that the UK response has been the best among all the nations. You'd have to really believe in British exceptionalism to go for that. Also, all countries had to base their decisions on quite incomplete information, if we did have the best response, it would be largely luck.
International comparisons will be made and there may be some that clearly did better or worse, but for the most part it's going to be very difficult to untangle population demographic effects (although that's at least something that can be put in a model fairly easily on a broad level), different initial exposure (how many of each country's population travelled to virus hotspots in the early stages and how much did they spread it on their return), different cultural customs/travelling patterns....
And that assumes that it's even possible to define best. Is the country with fewest deaths per million 'best' if it cripples it's economy much more badly than the 'second best'? In part that depends on whether you're one of the people who would have died/did die under different policies or one of the ones whose company will go bust under lockdown.
We will test the Sweden solution shortly as we come out of lockdown. Sweden has tested about 50% more people than the UK so we are a little way behind them. The country is also more rural than most of the UK.
On schools there is data to show that healthy kids can kill the virus with their normal killer cells and do not need antibodies. This may result in them not being infectious ever.
Something is not adding up.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1252260073839177728
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1252260074782887941
"The UK is a complete outlier in terms of border controls and it simply doesn't make sense going forward for that to continue to be the situation.
"After all the hard effort that has gone into lockdown to stop transmission, it would be wrong if we are still in the situation where restrictions are lifted where people from all round the world can come into the country and potentially bring infection with them. I strongly support restrictions on travel on public health grounds and public health scrutiny of people coming into the country from elsewhere
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18389704.8-000-week-still-arriving-scotland---not-one-tested-covid-19/
https://untappd.com/b/arcadia-brewing-company-loch-down-2019/3459289
Wouldn’t a good proxy for the public’s level of concern about, and therefore adherence to, Covid lockdown measures be the viewing figures for the daily politician plus prof BBC afternoon pressers?
How do you think we should get routine patients to attend?
What did people do when Boris came on the tv and say, look this shit is real, pubs must close as soon as possible as people really aren't taking this seriously enough. If that was me, I would have been out of there in a shot. No, most people said, right well I better make this one a big one.
It does seem Swedes haven't needed the government to tell them to be bloody sensible. Or to micro-manage exactly what constitutes an reasonable amount of exercise.
Opposition should at this moment in time generally be supportive of the government's plan.
I've no idea if any of the MSM ran with this story but if so they should run very prominent retractions.
This place is bizarre, yesterday we had screwed up badly by not locking down earlier and today we have screwed up badly by locking down too early. It's almost as though some people are invisibly guided by whatever they have just read is telling them.
An alternative view is we have to take that risk to save our economy from destruction.
quite obviously potential death traps for anyone regardless of the safeguards
they may take to isolate the non-Covid patients.
I think we are going to need a long hard look at crucial supplies if we are now having to resort to buying from Burma and Turkey. They make China look good when it comes to things like human rights.
There are currently a number of measures in force throughout the Netherlands in order to combat the spread of the corona virus. The government does not require you to go into quarantine if you don't have any cold symptoms.
Did you just arrive at Schiphol coming from the United States then the Dutch government urgently requests you to stay in home quarantine for fourteen days. The same holds for travellers coming back to the Netherlands with a repatriation flight from countries which are currently under a travel ban. This is the case for the mainland of China (including Hong Kong), South Korea, Italy, Spain and Austria. Even though the home quarantine is not compulsory and will not be checked, the Dutch government kindly asks all travellers to cooperate.
https://www.schiphol.nl/en/page/coronavirus-and-schiphol-frequently-asked-questions/
In Singapore if you break home quarantine you'll be fined and if you keep doing it imprisoned. But then that only applies to Singapore nationals as Singapore has banned all foreign arrivals.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/20/boris-johnson-sunday-times-prime-minister-coronavirus
Not wanting to comment on the substance of the article, but shouldn’t she have double checked who was PM during the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak before comparing Johnson unfavourably with Gordon Brown?
What a blinder of a virus Merkel has had.
France having a good virus compared to Dyson