But, we will have to revisit this in a year or two. Prof Ferguson thinks Swedish deaths will just keep on rising, relentlessly, because their R0 will stay stubbornly over 1
What might be happening there is that they're already below the Rt needed to see infections drop. The ICL model has them at Rt 1.14 [0.94-1.35] as of yesterday, and if they're at say 20% already infected and immune, anything below Rt of 1.25 is golden (it's apparently more complicated than that, but just as a rule of thumb).
Then Ferguson is wrong and the Swedish epidemiologist, Giesecke, is right.
Which is quite a big thing
The government are a bunch of cowards. They wanted to use ''follow the science'' as a shield to keep Morgan and Co. quiet
Turns out the journos shrieked anyway, the science may be wrong and the government is now out half a trillion pounds, millions of jobs and a shattered economy.
How many more dead and sick do you think we would have had without the lockdown ?
Belgium and Sweden show us the link between lockdown severity and disease spread is, shall we call it complex? debatable? tenuous?
What is certain is that penury, economic depression, debt, poor public services do cause illness and death.
On the subject of locking down hard and fast the Simplistic Spreadsheet model gives you what might be surprisingly different number depending on your initial population.
a two fold increase in your numbe rof initial cases gives a two fold increase in deaths after time t.
So whilst a difference of 40 or 400 initial cases might seem a small number when you are talking about over half a million infected after 4 months it is a x10 difference in number of deaths.
All the speculating about the UK maybe topping the Coronavirus deaths league table. I wonder why..... What do they all have in common?...
Britain has the perfect storm - high number of old people, centres of savage population density with crammed public transport, obesity, busy transport links to the epicentre in China, poor air quality, daft religions that congregate together.
...people not able to take on board the situation and take voluntary action....nah I'm going down the boozer mate, I ain't giving up tickets to a gig, etc.
...halfwits spreading and believing "Shanghai Sniffle" and "its-just-the-flu-innit" bollox...
“I’m off to Cheltenham”
I didn't have tickets to the nags, but I did have them for two events in the 2-3 weeks proceeding shit hitting the fan...and there was absolutely bugger all chance I was going to stand in a room crammed together with a several 1000 sweaty people.
Seeing a band live just isn't that important.
When was the "Cheltenham spike"? Can we separate it out from the "tube spike"?
was up there with the Liverpool vs Athletico Madrid spike.
Unsurprising figure but I'm surprised as many as 7% went for Gove too - as someone who likes Gove. Shows the unreliability of polling respondents to answer the question actually asked.
Gove and Patel simply haven't done that much that's obvious compared to the others during Boris's absence. Their departments are not as key frontline as the others.
Nation likes person who gives them free stuff shock.
Nation likes person who took the risk to react quickly in what was a constructive manner. Given the usual speed of the Treasury when it comes to handing back money, it was a bloody miracle.
Compare and contrast with everyone else in government.
Note he's never once said "we're following the advice of our economists"...
Because that would be an absurd and meaningless phrase that most especially anyone who knows anything about economics would laugh at.
Why would anyone say anything so silly? There are economists for and against almost any action.
Of course, the same goes for science. As Prof Brian Cox said to Andrew Marr on Sunday:
"There’s no such thing as ‘the science’, which is a key lesson. If you hear a politician say ‘we’re following the science’, then what that means is they don’t really understand what science is. There isn’t such a thing as ‘the science’. Science is a mindset."
I wonder if that applies to campaigners on Global Warming, where 'follow the science' is also a mantra.
Just a musing on that...
Not accepting that increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to the warmng of average global temperatures is not just outsider the "cloud of science" it is a hundred miles away.
Arguing that tiny trace volumes of CO2 are the only controlling factor and what the sun is up to is a disctraction seems thousands of miles away.
Increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere 285 ppm to 410 ppm since 1850. That's a 44% increase. Saying the words "tiny trace" just makes you sound like an idiot.
"How can a tiny trace amount of botulinum toxin kill someone?"
Globally over decades the world is certainly outputting a lot of CO2.
The global atmospheric difference in CO2 between the UK going to net zero at a timescale like the government are proposing and the UK going at a timescale XR propose is a tiny trace difference.
Brexiteer= Climate change denier. What a surprise. Had enough of experts? Support Brexit and any other idiots charter that is in vogue with the pseudoscience Trumpian populist right wing.
A venn diagram of Trump fans/ Brexiteers/ climate change deniers/ end-lockdown-now advocates would show a great deal of overlap.
I've got no overlap.
Despise Trump and hopes he loses, want climate change tackling sensibly, think the lockdown needs to be ended when the time is right but not yet and Brexiteer. So one of your 4.
I have noted a persistent theme - that all Brexiters must be Trump supporters. Despite polling that indicates virtually no-one in the UK has any time for him.
I think this is largely true now. Didn't used to be, but as the awful reality of him as POTUS has dawned on anybody with a brain or a moral compass it has left him with few genuine supporters here in the UK other than the bona fide racist hard right. One does still hear the "awful but better than Hillary" sentiment around, though. Certainly I hear that more than I would like - which is never - from ostensibly OKish individuals.
That looks like a large and over-imaginative claim. Polling suggests that the numbers have not changed ie Split down the middle, with about 10% don't knows.
But, we will have to revisit this in a year or two. Prof Ferguson thinks Swedish deaths will just keep on rising, relentlessly, because their R0 will stay stubbornly over 1
What might be happening there is that they're already below the Rt needed to see infections drop. The ICL model has them at Rt 1.14 [0.94-1.35] as of yesterday, and if they're at say 20% already infected and immune, anything below Rt of 1.25 is golden (it's apparently more complicated than that, but just as a rule of thumb).
Then Ferguson is wrong and the Swedish epidemiologist, Giesecke, is right.
Which is quite a big thing
The government are a bunch of cowards. They wanted to use ''follow the science'' as a shield to keep Morgan and Co. quiet
Turns out the journos shrieked anyway, the science may be wrong and the government is now out half a trillion pounds, millions of jobs and a shattered economy.
How many more dead and sick do you think we would have had without the lockdown ?
The interesting thing about the Labour figure is that it's only 3 points less than the party polled the last time they won an election in 2005 (with a 66 seat majority).
The main movement since the general election seems to be LD and Brexit Party to Tory, Labour largely unchanged
In the very unlikely event of another election in coming months, I suspect we would end up with a Tory lead similar to 2010 and 2015.
Unlikely? Impossible.
We aren't even having our local elections this year, there certainly won't be national elections in the coming months. Any election will be years from now which will be a different era long after the virus epidemic ended (hopefully) and long after the Brexit transition ended (definitely).
I don't disagree at all. May 2nd 2024 is quite a good bet for the next election. It does mean though that a month from now we will be as close to Polling Day as to the 2016 Referendum!
But, we will have to revisit this in a year or two. Prof Ferguson thinks Swedish deaths will just keep on rising, relentlessly, because their R0 will stay stubbornly over 1
What might be happening there is that they're already below the Rt needed to see infections drop. The ICL model has them at Rt 1.14 [0.94-1.35] as of yesterday, and if they're at say 20% already infected and immune, anything below Rt of 1.25 is golden (it's apparently more complicated than that, but just as a rule of thumb).
Then Ferguson is wrong and the Swedish epidemiologist, Giesecke, is right.
Which is quite a big thing
The government are a bunch of cowards. They wanted to use ''follow the science'' as a shield to keep Morgan and Co. quiet
Turns out the journos shrieked anyway, the science may be wrong and the government is now out half a trillion pounds, millions of jobs and a shattered economy.
How many more dead and sick do you think we would have had without the lockdown ?
Belgium and Sweden show us the link between lockdown severity and disease spread is, shall we call it complex? debatable? tenuous?
What is certain is that penury, economic depression, debt, poor public services do cause illness and death.
The science there is well established.
So how many more thousands dead would you have been willing to accept ?
There are lots of interesting counterfactuals even within the UK. Cumbria being hard hit, despite low population density, compared to Bristol / Bath area, where definitely tick the box for lots of regular travel to London, skiing in Europe and further afield, and especially Bristol pretty densely populated, multigenerational households with large immigrant communities, several unis for importing and spreading the bastard.
But, we will have to revisit this in a year or two. Prof Ferguson thinks Swedish deaths will just keep on rising, relentlessly, because their R0 will stay stubbornly over 1
What might be happening there is that they're already below the Rt needed to see infections drop. The ICL model has them at Rt 1.14 [0.94-1.35] as of yesterday, and if they're at say 20% already infected and immune, anything below Rt of 1.25 is golden (it's apparently more complicated than that, but just as a rule of thumb).
Then Ferguson is wrong and the Swedish epidemiologist, Giesecke, is right.
Which is quite a big thing
The government are a bunch of cowards. They wanted to use ''follow the science'' as a shield to keep Morgan and Co. quiet
Turns out the journos shrieked anyway, the science may be wrong and the government is now out half a trillion pounds, millions of jobs and a shattered economy.
How many more dead and sick do you think we would have had without the lockdown ?
Belgium and Sweden show us the link between lockdown severity and disease spread is, shall we call it complex? debatable? tenuous?
What is certain is that penury, economic depression, debt, poor public services do cause illness and death.
The science there is well established.
So how many more thousands dead would you have been willing to accept ?
Is this a test for membership of the PB Tory club or something?
I'm not sure that population size should be factored in, unless and until you get to the point where basically everyone has had the disease.
We are trying to stop the disease from spreading. So absolute number of deaths seems the right metric.
If we had reacted as well as countries like South Korea, Germany, Australia and New Zealand we could have prevented far more deaths.
It’s a bit like viral load.
Big countries with big economies will have more exposure to more infected citizens from China early on. So the virus was probably circulating in Milan, Paris, New York, London, Madrid, for many weeks before anyone realised. Seeding lots of clusters.
Smaller cities in smaller countries with fewer links to China will have had a lower viral load, and the fewer cases were therefore easier to trace, track and isolate.
It is advantageous to be a small country in this pandemic. Poorer is also quite useful, perhaps.
I don't think that's right. South Korea surely has more connections to China than Italy. Similarly, NZ and I think Aus have significant Chinese populations. Japan is a large country which has also been spared significant deaths.
The difference seems to be decisive leadership frankly.
The interesting thing about the Labour figure is that it's only 3 points less than the party polled the last time they won an election in 2005 (with a 66 seat majority).
The main movement since the general election seems to be LD and Brexit Party to Tory, Labour largely unchanged
In the very unlikely event of another election in coming months, I suspect we would end up with a Tory lead similar to 2010 and 2015.
Unlikely? Impossible.
We aren't even having our local elections this year, there certainly won't be national elections in the coming months. Any election will be years from now which will be a different era long after the virus epidemic ended (hopefully) and long after the Brexit transition ended (definitely).
Yes.
And it isn't only the logistics of it. Johnson has a very comfortable working majority, and a compliant Parliamentary party having purged the most likely troublemakers. What possible credible reason could he offer for dragging people to the polls beyond wanting a bigger one? How would they react to that? And what on earth is the point of running even a small risk of losing in order to possibly pad out a majority which allows him to do pretty much whatever he wants anyway?
The whole idea is for the birds. I'd not bet a single penny on a General Election in 2020, 2021, or 2022.
But, we will have to revisit this in a year or two. Prof Ferguson thinks Swedish deaths will just keep on rising, relentlessly, because their R0 will stay stubbornly over 1
What might be happening there is that they're already below the Rt needed to see infections drop. The ICL model has them at Rt 1.14 [0.94-1.35] as of yesterday, and if they're at say 20% already infected and immune, anything below Rt of 1.25 is golden (it's apparently more complicated than that, but just as a rule of thumb).
Then Ferguson is wrong and the Swedish epidemiologist, Giesecke, is right.
Which is quite a big thing
The government are a bunch of cowards. They wanted to use ''follow the science'' as a shield to keep Morgan and Co. quiet
Turns out the journos shrieked anyway, the science may be wrong and the government is now out half a trillion pounds, millions of jobs and a shattered economy.
How many more dead and sick do you think we would have had without the lockdown ?
Belgium and Sweden show us the link between lockdown severity and disease spread is, shall we call it complex? debatable? tenuous?
What is certain is that penury, economic depression, debt, poor public services do cause illness and death.
The science there is well established.
So how many more thousands dead would you have been willing to accept ?
I think there is a case that a late lockdown is pretty ineffective at disease control. Either lockdown early or not at all.
Epidemics burn themselves out fairly quickly, and I think that we saw that in China and Iran, in how the number of deaths levels off. The peak is about 6 weeks post lift off, and the tail perhaps 3 months.
Unsurprising figure but I'm surprised as many as 7% went for Gove too - as someone who likes Gove. Shows the unreliability of polling respondents to answer the question actually asked.
Gove and Patel simply haven't done that much that's obvious compared to the others during Boris's absence. Their departments are not as key frontline as the others.
Nation likes person who gives them free stuff shock.
Nation likes person who took the risk to react quickly in what was a constructive manner. Given the usual speed of the Treasury when it comes to handing back money, it was a bloody miracle.
Compare and contrast with everyone else in government.
Note he's never once said "we're following the advice of our economists"...
Because that would be an absurd and meaningless phrase that most especially anyone who knows anything about economics would laugh at.
Why would anyone say anything so silly? There are economists for and against almost any action.
Of course, the same goes for science. As Prof Brian Cox said to Andrew Marr on Sunday:
"There’s no such thing as ‘the science’, which is a key lesson. If you hear a politician say ‘we’re following the science’, then what that means is they don’t really understand what science is. There isn’t such a thing as ‘the science’. Science is a mindset."
I wonder if that applies to campaigners on Global Warming, where 'follow the science' is also a mantra.
Just a musing on that...
Not accepting that increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to the warmng of average global temperatures is not just outsider the "cloud of science" it is a hundred miles away.
Arguing that tiny trace volumes of CO2 are the only controlling factor and what the sun is up to is a disctraction seems thousands of miles away.
Increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere 285 ppm to 410 ppm since 1850. That's a 44% increase. Saying the words "tiny trace" just makes you sound like an idiot.
"How can a tiny trace amount of botulinum toxin kill someone?"
Globally over decades the world is certainly outputting a lot of CO2.
The global atmospheric difference in CO2 between the UK going to net zero at a timescale like the government are proposing and the UK going at a timescale XR propose is a tiny trace difference.
Brexiteer= Climate change denier. What a surprise. Had enough of experts? Support Brexit and any other idiots charter that is in vogue with the pseudoscience Trumpian populist right wing.
A venn diagram of Trump fans/ Brexiteers/ climate change deniers/ end-lockdown-now advocates would show a great deal of overlap.
I've got no overlap.
Despise Trump and hopes he loses, want climate change tackling sensibly, think the lockdown needs to be ended when the time is right but not yet and Brexiteer. So one of your 4.
I have noted a persistent theme - that all Brexiters must be Trump supporters. Despite polling that indicates virtually no-one in the UK has any time for him.
I think this is largely true now. Didn't used to be, but as the awful reality of him as POTUS has dawned on anybody with a brain or a moral compass it has left him with few genuine supporters here in the UK other than the bona fide racist hard right. One does still hear the "awful but better than Hillary" sentiment around, though. Certainly I hear that more than I would like - which is never - from ostensibly OKish individuals.
That looks like a large and over-imaginative claim. Polling suggests that the numbers have not changed ie Split down the middle, with about 10% don't knows.
Unless you can provide some evidence that half of the UK population are:
a) Trump Supporters? b) The "bona fide racist hard right"?
I'm listening...
I think we may have a misunderstanding. I'm asserting the following -
There are few people over here other than the racist hard right who remain enthusiastic supporters of Donald Trump.
Are you disputing this?
Did I misread something?
You agreed with "I have noted a persistent theme - that all Brexiters must be Trump supporters. Despite polling that indicates virtually no-one in the UK has any time for him."
Not often I feel sorry for her but this situation must be very difficult for her.
What's he done now ?
It's more the facts are coming out about past episodes of behaviour, some we knew about, some we did not.
He has had a number of episodes of poor mental health (which may have been caused by or exacerbated by drugs use) which also involved attacking people and threatening his mother.
This is NOT what Doctor Ferguson predicted. It maybe tallies with the mad Israeli professor’s opinion that this disease has a natural ebb and flow, lockdowns are less important than we think
If Sweden does turn out to have had a strategy that has blended freedom, not trashing their economy and protection of their people, the pivoting of some is going to be incredible.
Personally, I think that it will probably turn out that different countries have a differing range of options available to them based on factors like population density, ability to isolate from neighbours, level of travel into a country from elsewhere.
The "personal choice over nanny state" argument, yes, but my understanding is that their economy is likely just as damaged as ours.
Yes, their GDP is expected to shrink by 10%. It is export-oriented
However, what they have avoided is the mental and physical health impact of stricter lockdown. Much less isolation.
And perhaps a morale boost from going contra consensus and getting away with it.
"Swedes are doing it for themselves" as it were.
But as far as I can see it is not a massive tangible win unless they uniquely achieve mass immunity and avoid a second wave which hits the rest of Europe.
Unsurprising figure but I'm surprised as many as 7% went for Gove too - as someone who likes Gove. Shows the unreliability of polling respondents to answer the question actually asked.
Gove and Patel simply haven't done that much that's obvious compared to the others during Boris's absence. Their departments are not as key frontline as the others.
Nation likes person who gives them free stuff shock.
Nation likes person who took the risk to react quickly in what was a constructive manner. Given the usual speed of the Treasury when it comes to handing back money, it was a bloody miracle.
Compare and contrast with everyone else in government.
Note he's never once said "we're following the advice of our economists"...
Because that would be an absurd and meaningless phrase that most especially anyone who knows anything about economics would laugh at.
Why would anyone say anything so silly? There are economists for and against almost any action.
Of course, the same goes for science. As Prof Brian Cox said to Andrew Marr on Sunday:
"There’s no such thing as ‘the science’, which is a key lesson. If you hear a politician say ‘we’re following the science’, then what that means is they don’t really understand what science is. There isn’t such a thing as ‘the science’. Science is a mindset."
I wonder if that applies to campaigners on Global Warming, where 'follow the science' is also a mantra.
Just a musing on that...
Not accepting that increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to the warmng of average global temperatures is not just outsider the "cloud of science" it is a hundred miles away.
Arguing that tiny trace volumes of CO2 are the only controlling factor and what the sun is up to is a disctraction seems thousands of miles away.
Increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere 285 ppm to 410 ppm since 1850. That's a 44% increase. Saying the words "tiny trace" just makes you sound like an idiot.
"How can a tiny trace amount of botulinum toxin kill someone?"
Globally over decades the world is certainly outputting a lot of CO2.
The global atmospheric difference in CO2 between the UK going to net zero at a timescale like the government are proposing and the UK going at a timescale XR propose is a tiny trace difference.
Brexiteer= Climate change denier. What a surprise. Had enough of experts? Support Brexit and any other idiots charter that is in vogue with the pseudoscience Trumpian populist right wing.
A venn diagram of Trump fans/ Brexiteers/ climate change deniers/ end-lockdown-now advocates would show a great deal of overlap.
I've got no overlap.
Despise Trump and hopes he loses, want climate change tackling sensibly, think the lockdown needs to be ended when the time is right but not yet and Brexiteer. So one of your 4.
Fair enough, I said there would be significant overlap not that it would be a perfect Venn, Your views are hardly typical, Philip. I'm sure even you would concede that.
My views are hardly typical but I think that my combination would represent a significant portion of Brexiteers.
I do certainly think there is a small minority that is all 4 but it would be a small minority.
What ballpark percentage range would you guess at Philip? I obviously don't know either but I wouldn't go for a small minority. I would guess at 20 - 50% of Brexiteers are all 4 (I know big range)
I also don't think you are typical either, although I accept there are many people like you who have thought through the arguments logically and come to the conclusions you have come to but I think you are in a small minority. My guess 5 - 20% of Brexiteers are with you in being only Brexiteers and none of the other catagories.
But what do I know? (That bit is rhetorical so doesn't need an answer!).
The biggest problem if Sweden got it right is that many people think Sweden just carried on as normal, and will think it means that's what we should do.
The interesting thing about the Labour figure is that it's only 3 points less than the party polled the last time they won an election in 2005 (with a 66 seat majority).
The main movement since the general election seems to be LD and Brexit Party to Tory, Labour largely unchanged
In the very unlikely event of another election in coming months, I suspect we would end up with a Tory lead similar to 2010 and 2015.
Unlikely? Impossible.
We aren't even having our local elections this year, there certainly won't be national elections in the coming months. Any election will be years from now which will be a different era long after the virus epidemic ended (hopefully) and long after the Brexit transition ended (definitely).
Yes.
And it isn't only the logistics of it. Johnson has a very comfortable working majority, and a compliant Parliamentary party having purged the most likely troublemakers. What possible credible reason could he offer for dragging people to the polls beyond wanting a bigger one? How would they react to that? And what on earth is the point of running even a small risk of losing in order to possibly pad out a majority which allows him to do pretty much whatever he wants anyway?
The whole idea is for the birds. I'd not bet a single penny on a General Election in 2020, 2021, or 2022.
If Johnson's health forced him to stand aside eventually, a new PM might wish to seek a new mandate - though there would be no constitutional requirement to do so.
This is NOT what Doctor Ferguson predicted. It maybe tallies with the mad Israeli professor’s opinion that this disease has a natural ebb and flow, lockdowns are less important than we think
If Sweden does turn out to have had a strategy that has blended freedom, not trashing their economy and protection of their people, the pivoting of some is going to be incredible.
Personally, I think that it will probably turn out that different countries have a differing range of options available to them based on factors like population density, ability to isolate from neighbours, level of travel into a country from elsewhere.
The "personal choice over nanny state" argument, yes, but my understanding is that their economy is likely just as damaged as ours.
Yes, their GDP is expected to shrink by 10%. It is export-oriented
However, what they have avoided is the mental and physical health impact of stricter lockdown. Much less isolation.
And perhaps a morale boost from going contra consensus and getting away with it.
"Swedes are doing it for themselves" as it were.
But as far as I can see it is not a massive tangible win unless they uniquely achieve mass immunity and avoid a second wave which hits the rest of Europe.
The prevalence of infection is too low in Sweden for herd immunity.
Unsurprising figure but I'm surprised as many as 7% went for Gove too - as someone who likes Gove. Shows the unreliability of polling respondents to answer the question actually asked.
Gove and Patel simply haven't done that much that's obvious compared to the others during Boris's absence. Their departments are not as key frontline as the others.
Nation likes person who gives them free stuff shock.
Nation likes person who took the risk to react quickly in what was a constructive manner. Given the usual speed of the Treasury when it comes to handing back money, it was a bloody miracle.
Compare and contrast with everyone else in government.
Note he's never once said "we're following the advice of our economists"...
Because that would be an absurd and meaningless phrase that most especially anyone who knows anything about economics would laugh at.
Why would anyone say anything so silly? There are economists for and against almost any action.
Of course, the same goes for science. As Prof Brian Cox said to Andrew Marr on Sunday:
"There’s no such thing as ‘the science’, which is a key lesson. If you hear a politician say ‘we’re following the science’, then what that means is they don’t really understand what science is. There isn’t such a thing as ‘the science’. Science is a mindset."
I wonder if that applies to campaigners on Global Warming, where 'follow the science' is also a mantra.
Just a musing on that...
Not accepting that increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to the warmng of average global temperatures is not just outsider the "cloud of science" it is a hundred miles away.
Arguing that tiny trace volumes of CO2 are the only controlling factor and what the sun is up to is a disctraction seems thousands of miles away.
Increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere 285 ppm to 410 ppm since 1850. That's a 44% increase. Saying the words "tiny trace" just makes you sound like an idiot.
"How can a tiny trace amount of botulinum toxin kill someone?"
Globally over decades the world is certainly outputting a lot of CO2.
The global atmospheric difference in CO2 between the UK going to net zero at a timescale like the government are proposing and the UK going at a timescale XR propose is a tiny trace difference.
Brexiteer= Climate change denier. What a surprise. Had enough of experts? Support Brexit and any other idiots charter that is in vogue with the pseudoscience Trumpian populist right wing.
A venn diagram of Trump fans/ Brexiteers/ climate change deniers/ end-lockdown-now advocates would show a great deal of overlap.
I've got no overlap.
Despise Trump and hopes he loses, want climate change tackling sensibly, think the lockdown needs to be ended when the time is right but not yet and Brexiteer. So one of your 4.
I have noted a persistent theme - that all Brexiters must be Trump supporters. Despite polling that indicates virtually no-one in the UK has any time for him.
The theme is that any British Trumptons were very very likely to be Brexiteers. Lots of people pretending they never had any time for him now he has become such an embarrassment but that was not what they were saying at the time he was elected. The UK Trump-rampers that come to mind are all UKIP types - who can forget all those photos of good old Nigel fawning over him. Remind me of any prominent remainers that were Trump fans - I'm sure there must be an odd one but I can't think of any..
There are massive parallels between the reasons Brexit and Trump won, as there are Remain and Clinton lost, so its not surprising that, on a site for arguing about politics, the posters who were pro Brexit were more sympathetic to Trump and vice versa. One broadly represented the "liberal elite establishment" and the other the "left behind poor". I dont think its a startingly original comparison to make - no more than saying there was a crossover between Thatcher and Reagan fans and those who preferred Kinnock and the Democratic candiate
The biggest problem if Sweden got it right is that many people think Sweden just carried on as normal, and will think it means that's what we should do.
That's true.
Right from the start of the Covid debate, there has been a tendency to think that any argument for loosening our lockdown was an argument to do nothing at all to fight it.
This is NOT what Doctor Ferguson predicted. It maybe tallies with the mad Israeli professor’s opinion that this disease has a natural ebb and flow, lockdowns are less important than we think
If Sweden does turn out to have had a strategy that has blended freedom, not trashing their economy and protection of their people, the pivoting of some is going to be incredible.
Personally, I think that it will probably turn out that different countries have a differing range of options available to them based on factors like population density, ability to isolate from neighbours, level of travel into a country from elsewhere.
The "personal choice over nanny state" argument, yes, but my understanding is that their economy is likely just as damaged as ours.
If it is just as bad, it near enough, then hopefully the arguments about strategy will be less riotous.
And when that debate comes there will have to be zero tolerance for conflating the two strands - (i) economy and (ii) personal freedoms. Because, believe me, it will get messy otherwise.
Are you sure that everyone else has measured in exactly the same way?
Double Italy's count and add another half to Spain's to get a rough comparison.
Excess mortality per capita looks like all of western Europe will be very similar, with Italy the unfortunate ambushed vanguard taking the heaviest hit - to be fair to them, being first inevitably means least prepared.
The biggest problem if Sweden got it right is that many people think Sweden just carried on as normal, and will think it means that's what we should do.
It would be impossible for anyone to expect the British economy not to take a big hit from Corona, every economy in the world will, including Sweden's.
Just not, as one Bank of England official put it, the biggest hit in several centuries.
I am utterly shocked that they are more interested in sensationalist headlines rather than reporting the facts.
That's why the media is held in such low esteem. I would rather not listen any more. They twist and try to deceive with their lines of questioning. Either that or they are so fecking thick they just do not understand/do not want to understand .
Are you sure that everyone else has measured in exactly the same way?
Double Italy's count and add another half to Spain's to get a rough comparison.
Excess mortality per capita looks like all of western Europe will be very similar, with Italy the unfortunate ambushed vanguard taking the heaviest hit - to be fair to them, being first inevitably means least prepared.
Unsurprising figure but I'm surprised as many as 7% went for Gove too - as someone who likes Gove. Shows the unreliability of polling respondents to answer the question actually asked.
Gove and Patel simply haven't done that much that's obvious compared to the others during Boris's absence. Their departments are not as key frontline as the others.
Nation likes person who gives them free stuff shock.
Nation likes person who took the risk to react quickly in what was a constructive manner. Given the usual speed of the Treasury when it comes to handing back money, it was a bloody miracle.
Compare and contrast with everyone else in government.
Note he's never once said "we're following the advice of our economists"...
Because that would be an absurd and meaningless phrase that most especially anyone who knows anything about economics would laugh at.
Why would anyone say anything so silly? There are economists for and against almost any action.
Of course, the same goes for science. As Prof Brian Cox said to Andrew Marr on Sunday:
"There’s no such thing as ‘the science’, which is a key lesson. If you hear a politician say ‘we’re following the science’, then what that means is they don’t really understand what science is. There isn’t such a thing as ‘the science’. Science is a mindset."
I wonder if that applies to campaigners on Global Warming, where 'follow the science' is also a mantra.
Just a musing on that...
Not accepting that increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to the warmng of average global temperatures is not just outsider the "cloud of science" it is a hundred miles away.
Arguing that tiny trace volumes of CO2 are the only controlling factor and what the sun is up to is a disctraction seems thousands of miles away.
Increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere 285 ppm to 410 ppm since 1850. That's a 44% increase. Saying the words "tiny trace" just makes you sound like an idiot.
"How can a tiny trace amount of botulinum toxin kill someone?"
Globally over decades the world is certainly outputting a lot of CO2.
The global atmospheric difference in CO2 between the UK going to net zero at a timescale like the government are proposing and the UK going at a timescale XR propose is a tiny trace difference.
Brexiteer= Climate change denier. What a surprise. Had enough of experts? Support Brexit and any other idiots charter that is in vogue with the pseudoscience Trumpian populist right wing.
A venn diagram of Trump fans/ Brexiteers/ climate change deniers/ end-lockdown-now advocates would show a great deal of overlap.
I've got no overlap.
Despise Trump and hopes he loses, want climate change tackling sensibly, think the lockdown needs to be ended when the time is right but not yet and Brexiteer. So one of your 4.
I have noted a persistent theme - that all Brexiters must be Trump supporters. Despite polling that indicates virtually no-one in the UK has any time for him.
I think this is largely true now. Didn't used to be, but as the awful reality of him as POTUS has dawned on anybody with a brain or a moral compass it has left him with few genuine supporters here in the UK other than the bona fide racist hard right. One does still hear the "terrible but better than Hillary" sentiment around, though. Certainly I hear that more than I would like - which is never - from ostensibly OKish individuals.
There were a few subsets: pwn the libs, he'll pivot to reasonableness, we need all the friends we can get, and as you say, better than Hils. The posts on the weekend after the Tessy and Donald hold hands incident trying to polish that turd are a hoot. I'd like to think some may feel a little queasy now, but I fear for certain folk it's still about the the only thing they liked about Theresa May.
That was such a squirmy moment. I was mortified for my country, my PM - and even for myself.
There are lots of interesting counterfactuals even within the UK. Cumbria being hard hit, despite low population density, compared to Bristol / Bath area, where definitely tick the box for lots of regular travel to London, skiing in Europe and further afield, and especially Bristol pretty densely populated, multigenerational households with large immigrant communities, several unis for importing and spreading the bastard.
According to the Covid19 app from the ZOE group, Copeland is significantly harder hit than elsewhere in Cumbria.
Things to consider in, could we have done a sweden
Swedish popular ion density is a tenth of the UKs. Rounded to the nearest hundred people per square kilometer their population density is zero.
Sweden also shut down flights in a way we still haven't done.
When this is all over I think the decision to keep letting flights into LHR will go down as the most utterly brain dead hands in head moments of the UK response.
I am utterly shocked that they are more interested in sensationalist headlines rather than reporting the facts.
That's why the media is held in such low esteem. I would rather not listen any more. They twist and try to deceive with their lines of questioning. Either that or they are so fecking thick they just do not understand/do not want to understand .
If you can't scrutinise and criticise a government for thousands needlessly dying because of its catastrophic errors, we might as well shut this whole democracy thing down and call it a day.
Things to consider in, could we have done a sweden
Swedish popular ion density is a tenth of the UKs. Rounded to the nearest hundred people per square kilometer their population density is zero.
Sweden also shut down flights in a way we still haven't done.
When this is all over I think the decision to keep letting flights into LHR will go down as the most utterly brain dead hands in head moments of the UK response.
I am utterly shocked that they are more interested in sensationalist headlines rather than reporting the facts.
That's why the media is held in such low esteem. I would rather not listen any more. They twist and try to deceive with their lines of questioning. Either that or they are so fecking thick they just do not understand/do not want to understand .
If you can't scrutinise and criticise a government for thousands needlessly dying because of its catastrophic errors, we might as well shut this whole democracy thing down and call it a day.
If you are using misleading information from which to launch your comments you are not scrutinising you are mischief-making, and very much part of the problem.
The biggest problem if Sweden got it right is that many people think Sweden just carried on as normal, and will think it means that's what we should do.
It would be impossible for anyone to expect the British economy not to take a big hit from Corona, every economy in the world will, including Sweden's.
Just not, as one Bank of England official put it, the biggest hit in several centuries.
Even in the very best case scenario, the effect on the economy from all the over 70s restricting their activities would have a huge impact on consumer spending.
So for Wiltshire 394 confirmed Covid cases and a population of 498,000 to date. So less then 1 person per 10,000. Which for my small town is about 1 or 2 people. Makes me laugh a bit when we all desperately try to social distance on our outside time. Obviously the true number of infections will be higher (but do we really know how much higher?). So could Wiltshire not emerge from lockdown earlier than other places? Or is that just too complicated?
But, we will have to revisit this in a year or two. Prof Ferguson thinks Swedish deaths will just keep on rising, relentlessly, because their R0 will stay stubbornly over 1
What might be happening there is that they're already below the Rt needed to see infections drop. The ICL model has them at Rt 1.14 [0.94-1.35] as of yesterday, and if they're at say 20% already infected and immune, anything below Rt of 1.25 is golden (it's apparently more complicated than that, but just as a rule of thumb).
Then Ferguson is wrong and the Swedish epidemiologist, Giesecke, is right.
Which is quite a big thing
The government are a bunch of cowards. They wanted to use ''follow the science'' as a shield to keep Morgan and Co. quiet
Turns out the journos shrieked anyway, the science may be wrong and the government is now out half a trillion pounds, millions of jobs and a shattered economy.
How many more dead and sick do you think we would have had without the lockdown ?
Belgium and Sweden show us the link between lockdown severity and disease spread is, shall we call it complex? debatable? tenuous?
What is certain is that penury, economic depression, debt, poor public services do cause illness and death.
The science there is well established.
So how many more thousands dead would you have been willing to accept ?
I think there is a case that a late lockdown is pretty ineffective at disease control. Either lockdown early or not at all.
Epidemics burn themselves out fairly quickly, and I think that we saw that in China and Iran, in how the number of deaths levels off. The peak is about 6 weeks post lift off, and the tail perhaps 3 months.
You’ve been saying that from the start and you’ve been proven right.
What do you think of the Israeli dude’s argument that lockdowns are almost irrelevant and the virus burns and fades in its own good time?
I think lockdowns affect the amplitude of a peak, probably at the cost of slightly prolonging it.
Epidemics of disease affect behaviour, independent of government instruction, and that affects duration. Football had cancelled itself for example.
If schools had stayed open, they would not have functioned normally, with teachers and other staff off on the sick, grandparents unwilling to provide childcare, or sickening if they do.
I think the SAGE documents suggested that control measures would reduce deaths by about 25%. Important if you are one of them, but not a massive effect.
The problem is that the R number has great heterogeneity between individuals and situations. A retired person living alone probably has an R near zero. A care worker in a nursing home maybe R = 10+
I am utterly shocked that they are more interested in sensationalist headlines rather than reporting the facts.
That's why the media is held in such low esteem. I would rather not listen any more. They twist and try to deceive with their lines of questioning. Either that or they are so fecking thick they just do not understand/do not want to understand .
If you can't scrutinise and criticise a government for thousands needlessly dying because of its catastrophic errors, we might as well shut this whole democracy thing down and call it a day.
Things to consider in, could we have done a sweden
Swedish popular ion density is a tenth of the UKs. Rounded to the nearest hundred people per square kilometer their population density is zero.
Sweden also shut down flights in a way we still haven't done.
When this is all over I think the decision to keep letting flights into LHR will go down as the most utterly brain dead hands in head moments of the UK response.
Here's that Gov't decision process regarding Heathrow in full
Things to consider in, could we have done a sweden
Swedish popular ion density is a tenth of the UKs. Rounded to the nearest hundred people per square kilometer their population density is zero.
Sweden also shut down flights in a way we still haven't done.
When this is all over I think the decision to keep letting flights into LHR will go down as the most utterly brain dead hands in head moments of the UK response.
Has HMG ever given us a rationale for allowing flights? I’d like to hear it, because, like you, I find it an insane policy at first glance. But maybe they have some fiendishly brilliant explanation.
Because putting restrictions on travel would inconvenience our politicians, Sir Humphreys and other fatcats.
They also want to maintain a 'Britain is open for business' vibe.
Has HMG ever given us a rationale for allowing flights? I’d like to hear it, because, like you, I find it an insane policy at first glance. But maybe they have some fiendishly brilliant explanation.
IIRC Matt Hancock was asked this and said that the modelling showed it made little difference. I think that is probably reasonable, provided we have lockdown in place; someone arriving from abroad with the infection who then goes into lockdown doesn't contribute much extra risk when we have a lot of cases here already. It will though be a bigger issue once we start relaxing things.
This is NOT what Doctor Ferguson predicted. It maybe tallies with the mad Israeli professor’s opinion that this disease has a natural ebb and flow, lockdowns are less important than we think
If Sweden does turn out to have had a strategy that has blended freedom, not trashing their economy and protection of their people, the pivoting of some is going to be incredible.
Personally, I think that it will probably turn out that different countries have a differing range of options available to them based on factors like population density, ability to isolate from neighbours, level of travel into a country from elsewhere.
The "personal choice over nanny state" argument, yes, but my understanding is that their economy is likely just as damaged as ours.
Yes, their GDP is expected to shrink by 10%. It is export-oriented
However, what they have avoided is the mental and physical health impact of stricter lockdown. Much less isolation.
And perhaps a morale boost from going contra consensus and getting away with it.
"Swedes are doing it for themselves" as it were.
But as far as I can see it is not a massive tangible win unless they uniquely achieve mass immunity and avoid a second wave which hits the rest of Europe.
The prevalence of infection is too low in Sweden for herd immunity.
More immunity is better than less though - correct?
I think I`m right in saying that immunity from coronaviruses lasts perhaps 2 years (at best). If we drag lockdown out too long those that have immunity from the start of the pandemic (inc many NHS staff) will lose this immunity by the time a lot of others gain it.
Things to consider in, could we have done a sweden
Swedish popular ion density is a tenth of the UKs. Rounded to the nearest hundred people per square kilometer their population density is zero.
Sweden also shut down flights in a way we still haven't done.
When this is all over I think the decision to keep letting flights into LHR will go down as the most utterly brain dead hands in head moments of the UK response.
Yebbut Belgium.
Belgium has 15 times the population density of Sweden and is a nexus for international travel.
Things to consider in, could we have done a sweden
Swedish popular ion density is a tenth of the UKs. Rounded to the nearest hundred people per square kilometer their population density is zero.
Sweden also shut down flights in a way we still haven't done.
When this is all over I think the decision to keep letting flights into LHR will go down as the most utterly brain dead hands in head moments of the UK response.
When there's a deafening silence from the BJ boosters over unrestricted flights, you know the dropped bollock is mahoosive.
Things to consider in, could we have done a sweden
Swedish popular ion density is a tenth of the UKs. Rounded to the nearest hundred people per square kilometer their population density is zero.
Sweden also shut down flights in a way we still haven't done.
When this is all over I think the decision to keep letting flights into LHR will go down as the most utterly brain dead hands in head moments of the UK response.
Has HMG ever given us a rationale for allowing flights? I’d like to hear it, because, like you, I find it an insane policy at first glance. But maybe they have some fiendishly brilliant explanation.
Because putting restrictions on travel would inconvenience our politicians, Sir Humphreys and other fatcats.
They also want to maintain a 'Britain is open for business' vibe.
Don't be daft, no business flights are happening and politicians would certainly not 'inconvenienced' by a restriction - they are not exactly jetting off to Tuscany for their hols at the moment. You are working backwards from your prejudices.
Things to consider in, could we have done a sweden
Swedish popular ion density is a tenth of the UKs. Rounded to the nearest hundred people per square kilometer their population density is zero.
Sweden also shut down flights in a way we still haven't done.
When this is all over I think the decision to keep letting flights into LHR will go down as the most utterly brain dead hands in head moments of the UK response.
Has HMG ever given us a rationale for allowing flights? I’d like to hear it, because, like you, I find it an insane policy at first glance. But maybe they have some fiendishly brilliant explanation.
Because putting restrictions on travel would inconvenience our politicians, Sir Humphreys and other fatcats.
They also want to maintain a 'Britain is open for business' vibe.
Don't be daft, no business flights are happening and politicians would certainly not 'inconvenienced' by a rfestriction - they are not exactly jetting off to Tuscany for their hols at the moment. You are working backwards from your prejudices.
But but those Uncles and their nieces told us they definitely flew to France to close a huge business deal ;-)
This is NOT what Doctor Ferguson predicted. It maybe tallies with the mad Israeli professor’s opinion that this disease has a natural ebb and flow, lockdowns are less important than we think
If Sweden does turn out to have had a strategy that has blended freedom, not trashing their economy and protection of their people, the pivoting of some is going to be incredible.
Personally, I think that it will probably turn out that different countries have a differing range of options available to them based on factors like population density, ability to isolate from neighbours, level of travel into a country from elsewhere.
The "personal choice over nanny state" argument, yes, but my understanding is that their economy is likely just as damaged as ours.
Yes, their GDP is expected to shrink by 10%. It is export-oriented
However, what they have avoided is the mental and physical health impact of stricter lockdown. Much less isolation.
And perhaps a morale boost from going contra consensus and getting away with it.
"Swedes are doing it for themselves" as it were.
But as far as I can see it is not a massive tangible win unless they uniquely achieve mass immunity and avoid a second wave which hits the rest of Europe.
The prevalence of infection is too low in Sweden for herd immunity.
More immunity is better than less though - correct?
I think I`m right in saying that immunity from coronaviruses lasts perhaps 2 years (at best). If we drag lockdown out too long those that have immunity from the start of the pandemic (inc many NHS staff) will lose this immunity by the time a lot of others gain it.
Well, Sweden might have more immunity than Finland, but no more than us, and probably less than us outside Stockholm. If they wanted herd immunity, they look to be failing.
So for Wiltshire 394 confirmed Covid cases and a population of 498,000 to date. So less then 1 person per 10,000. Which for my small town is about 1 or 2 people. Makes me laugh a bit when we all desperately try to social distance on our outside time. Obviously the true number of infections will be higher (but do we really know how much higher?). So could Wiltshire not emerge from lockdown earlier than other places? Or is that just too complicated?
Sure, lets head to Salisbury for a pub lunch or two shall we?
That's the problem with regional lockdowns. If stuff was open, people would flock there, I'm in Surrey myself, so it's only an hours drive. Worth it for a afternoon/evening out.
Unsurprising figure but I'm surprised as many as 7% went for Gove too - as someone who likes Gove. Shows the unreliability of polling respondents to answer the question actually asked.
Gove and Patel simply haven't done that much that's obvious compared to the others during Boris's absence. Their departments are not as key frontline as the others.
Nation likes person who gives them free stuff shock.
Nation likes person who took the risk to react quickly in what was a constructive manner. Given the usual speed of the Treasury when it comes to handing back money, it was a bloody miracle.
Compare and contrast with everyone else in government.
Note he's never once said "we're following the advice of our economists"...
Because that would be an absurd and meaningless phrase that most especially anyone who knows anything about economics would laugh at.
Why would anyone say anything so silly? There are economists for and against almost any action.
Of course, the same goes for science. As Prof Brian Cox said to Andrew Marr on Sunday:
"There’s no such thing as ‘the science’, which is a key lesson. If you hear a politician say ‘we’re following the science’, then what that means is they don’t really understand what science is. There isn’t such a thing as ‘the science’. Science is a mindset."
I wonder if that applies to campaigners on Global Warming, where 'follow the science' is also a mantra.
Just a musing on that...
Not accepting that increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to the warmng of average global temperatures is not just outsider the "cloud of science" it is a hundred miles away.
Arguing that tiny trace volumes of CO2 are the only controlling factor and what the sun is up to is a disctraction seems thousands of miles away.
Increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere 285 ppm to 410 ppm since 1850. That's a 44% increase. Saying the words "tiny trace" just makes you sound like an idiot.
"How can a tiny trace amount of botulinum toxin kill someone?"
Globally over decades the world is certainly outputting a lot of CO2.
The global atmospheric difference in CO2 between the UK going to net zero at a timescale like the government are proposing and the UK going at a timescale XR propose is a tiny trace difference.
Brexiteer= Climate change denier. What a surprise. Had enough of experts? Support Brexit and any other idiots charter that is in vogue with the pseudoscience Trumpian populist right wing.
A venn diagram of Trump fans/ Brexiteers/ climate change deniers/ end-lockdown-now advocates would show a great deal of overlap.
I've got no overlap.
Despise Trump and hopes he loses, want climate change tackling sensibly, think the lockdown needs to be ended when the time is right but not yet and Brexiteer. So one of your 4.
I have noted a persistent theme - that all Brexiters must be Trump supporters. Despite polling that indicates virtually no-one in the UK has any time for him.
The theme is that any British Trumptons were very very likely to be Brexiteers. Lots of people pretending they never had any time for him now he has become such an embarrassment but that was not what they were saying at the time he was elected. The UK Trump-rampers that come to mind are all UKIP types - who can forget all those photos of good old Nigel fawning over him. Remind me of any prominent remainers that were Trump fans - I'm sure there must be an odd one but I can't think of any..
There are massive parallels between the reasons Brexit and Trump won, as there are Remain and Clinton lost, so its not surprising that, on a site for arguing about politics, the posters who were pro Brexit were more sympathetic to Trump and vice versa. One broadly represented the "liberal elite establishment" and the other the "left behind poor". I dont think its a startingly original comparison to make - no more than saying there was a crossover between Thatcher and Reagan fans and those who preferred Kinnock and the Democratic candiate
I think claims by the leaders of Brexit that it was about helping the "left behind" are fraudulent. But you can at least argue this with a straight face. Different with Trump. You have to seriously question the faculties of people who even in 2016 bought the idea that Trump was about anything but himself. It was screamingly obvious.
Things to consider in, could we have done a sweden
Swedish popular ion density is a tenth of the UKs. Rounded to the nearest hundred people per square kilometer their population density is zero.
Sweden also shut down flights in a way we still haven't done.
When this is all over I think the decision to keep letting flights into LHR will go down as the most utterly brain dead hands in head moments of the UK response.
Has HMG ever given us a rationale for allowing flights? I’d like to hear it, because, like you, I find it an insane policy at first glance. But maybe they have some fiendishly brilliant explanation.
The only explication that I heard was that it was too late now to shut them down now so we may as well just let anyone in.
I'm not sure that population size should be factored in, unless and until you get to the point where basically everyone has had the disease.
We are trying to stop the disease from spreading. So absolute number of deaths seems the right metric.
If we had reacted as well as countries like South Korea, Germany, Australia and New Zealand we could have prevented far more deaths.
It’s a bit like viral load.
Big countries with big economies will have more exposure to more infected citizens from China early on. So the virus was probably circulating in Milan, Paris, New York, London, Madrid, for many weeks before anyone realised. Seeding lots of clusters.
Smaller cities in smaller countries with fewer links to China will have had a lower viral load, and the fewer cases were therefore easier to trace, track and isolate.
It is advantageous to be a small country in this pandemic. Poorer is also quite useful, perhaps.
I don't think that's right. South Korea surely has more connections to China than Italy. Similarly, NZ and I think Aus have significant Chinese populations. Japan is a large country which has also been spared significant deaths.
The difference seems to be decisive leadership frankly.
Oz and NZ are both quite tiny countries, population wise, so they are irrelevant to your point, and prove mine. Japan has restrained Coronavirus but it is not in control, so it is too soon to tell.
The outlier is South Korea which is indeed large, has big cities, major Chinese connections, and a crushed curve. The difference with them is that they were superbly set up for a pandemic after SARS, and they are a very hi tech nation (arguably the most advanced in the world) with the ability to track, trace and advise every citizen via apps.
I am pretty sure my argument is right. Big rich countries with big connected cities take a bigger viral load of incoming infectious
It works if you ignore the counter examples. Japan has had 385 deaths despite having its first case long before the UK. They have clearly controlled the virus better than the UK. Germany is also a large wealthy country that has had far fewer deaths. Australia is a wealth country half the size of the UK, but has had less than 100 deaths.
French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has cancelled all major sporting events until September. The Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 seasons will not resume after France banned all sporting events, including behind closed doors, until September.
Liverpool fans must be sweating like a hooker on a private plane landing in France during lockdown that is being greeted by the police.
Has HMG ever given us a rationale for allowing flights? I’d like to hear it, because, like you, I find it an insane policy at first glance. But maybe they have some fiendishly brilliant explanation.
IIRC Matt Hancock was asked this and said that the modelling showed it made little difference. I think that is probably reasonable, provided we have lockdown in place; someone arriving from abroad with the infection who then goes into lockdown doesn't contribute much extra risk when we have a lot of cases here already. It will though be a bigger issue once we start relaxing things.
That arriving from abroad scenario in full.
'I'm just back from China.'
'We trust you to self isolate for 14 days, taxi rank's over there, see ya!'
Things to consider in, could we have done a sweden
Swedish popular ion density is a tenth of the UKs. Rounded to the nearest hundred people per square kilometer their population density is zero.
Sweden also shut down flights in a way we still haven't done.
When this is all over I think the decision to keep letting flights into LHR will go down as the most utterly brain dead hands in head moments of the UK response.
Has HMG ever given us a rationale for allowing flights? I’d like to hear it, because, like you, I find it an insane policy at first glance. But maybe they have some fiendishly brilliant explanation.
Because putting restrictions on travel would inconvenience our politicians, Sir Humphreys and other fatcats.
They also want to maintain a 'Britain is open for business' vibe.
Don't be daft, no business flights are happening and politicians would certainly not 'inconvenienced' by a restriction - they are not exactly jetting off to Tuscany for their hols at the moment. You are working backwards from your prejudices.
So what's your explanation as to the government's lack of restriction on international travel with its resulting cost of lives.
BTW I'm correct in my prejudices - the people who use international travel the most will inevitably want fewer restrictions on it and restrictions, for example 14 days quarantine on return to the UK, might be hard to remove once applied.
I'm not sure that population size should be factored in, unless and until you get to the point where basically everyone has had the disease.
We are trying to stop the disease from spreading. So absolute number of deaths seems the right metric.
If we had reacted as well as countries like South Korea, Germany, Australia and New Zealand we could have prevented far more deaths.
It’s a bit like viral load.
Big countries with big economies will have more exposure to more infected citizens from China early on. So the virus was probably circulating in Milan, Paris, New York, London, Madrid, for many weeks before anyone realised. Seeding lots of clusters.
Smaller cities in smaller countries with fewer links to China will have had a lower viral load, and the fewer cases were therefore easier to trace, track and isolate.
It is advantageous to be a small country in this pandemic. Poorer is also quite useful, perhaps.
I don't think that's right. South Korea surely has more connections to China than Italy. Similarly, NZ and I think Aus have significant Chinese populations. Japan is a large country which has also been spared significant deaths.
The difference seems to be decisive leadership frankly.
Oz and NZ are both quite tiny countries, population wise, so they are irrelevant to your point, and prove mine. Japan has restrained Coronavirus but it is not in control, so it is too soon to tell.
The outlier is South Korea which is indeed large, has big cities, major Chinese connections, and a crushed curve. The difference with them is that they were superbly set up for a pandemic after SARS, and they are a very hi tech nation (arguably the most advanced in the world) with the ability to track, trace and advise every citizen via apps.
I am pretty sure my argument is right. Big rich countries with big connected cities take a bigger viral load of incoming infectious
It works if you ignore the counter examples. Japan has had 385 deaths despite having its first case long before the UK. They have clearly controlled the virus better than the UK. Germany is also a large wealthy country that has had far fewer deaths. Australia is a wealth country half the size of the UK, but has had less than 100 deaths.
Oz is also very very spread out. It's effectively a series of cities remotely linked. all these things matter.
French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has cancelled all major sporting events until September. The Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 seasons will not resume after France banned all sporting events, including behind closed doors, until September.
Liverpool fans must be sweating like a hooker on a private plane landing in France during lockdown that is being greeted by the police.
I think that you have misspelt "confidential secretary"
Things to consider in, could we have done a sweden
Swedish popular ion density is a tenth of the UKs. Rounded to the nearest hundred people per square kilometer their population density is zero.
Sweden also shut down flights in a way we still haven't done.
When this is all over I think the decision to keep letting flights into LHR will go down as the most utterly brain dead hands in head moments of the UK response.
Has HMG ever given us a rationale for allowing flights? I’d like to hear it, because, like you, I find it an insane policy at first glance. But maybe they have some fiendishly brilliant explanation.
Because putting restrictions on travel would inconvenience our politicians, Sir Humphreys and other fatcats.
They also want to maintain a 'Britain is open for business' vibe.
Don't be daft, no business flights are happening and politicians would certainly not 'inconvenienced' by a restriction - they are not exactly jetting off to Tuscany for their hols at the moment. You are working backwards from your prejudices.
So what's your explanation as to the government's lack of restriction on international travel with its resulting cost of lives.
BTW I'm correct in my prejudices - the people who use international travel the most will inevitably want fewer restrictions on it and restrictions, for example 14 days quarantine on return to the UK, might be hard to remove once applied.
Sometimes we have essential business travel, we'll be able to work round the 14 day quarantine period if needed.
One of the worst parts about this virus is it's been brought in by the rich and well traveled yet has hit the working class (Bus drivers are particularly awfully affected) the hardest.
Unsurprising figure but I'm surprised as many as 7% went for Gove too - as someone who likes Gove. Shows the unreliability of polling respondents to answer the question actually asked.
Gove and Patel simply haven't done that much that's obvious compared to the others during Boris's absence. Their departments are not as key frontline as the others.
Nation likes person who gives them free stuff shock.
Nation likes person who took the risk to react quickly in what was a constructive manner. Given the usual speed of the Treasury when it comes to handing back money, it was a bloody miracle.
Compare and contrast with everyone else in government.
Note he's never once said "we're following the advice of our economists"...
Because that would be an absurd and meaningless phrase that most especially anyone who knows anything about economics would laugh at.
Why would anyone say anything so silly? There are economists for and against almost any action.
Of course, the same goes for science. As Prof Brian Cox said to Andrew Marr on Sunday:
"There’s no such thing as ‘the science’, which is a key lesson. If you hear a politician say ‘we’re following the science’, then what that means is they don’t really understand what science is. There isn’t such a thing as ‘the science’. Science is a mindset."
I wonder if that applies to campaigners on Global Warming, where 'follow the science' is also a mantra.
Just a musing on that...
Not accepting that increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to the warmng of average global temperatures is not just outsider the "cloud of science" it is a hundred miles away.
Arguing that tiny trace volumes of CO2 are the only controlling factor and what the sun is up to is a disctraction seems thousands of miles away.
Increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere 285 ppm to 410 ppm since 1850. That's a 44% increase. Saying the words "tiny trace" just makes you sound like an idiot.
"How can a tiny trace amount of botulinum toxin kill someone?"
Globally over decades the world is certainly outputting a lot of CO2.
The global atmospheric difference in CO2 between the UK going to net zero at a timescale like the government are proposing and the UK going at a timescale XR propose is a tiny trace difference.
Brexiteer= Climate change denier. What a surprise. Had enough of experts? Support Brexit and any other idiots charter that is in vogue with the pseudoscience Trumpian populist right wing.
A venn diagram of Trump fans/ Brexiteers/ climate change deniers/ end-lockdown-now advocates would show a great deal of overlap.
I've got no overlap.
Despise Trump and hopes he loses, want climate change tackling sensibly, think the lockdown needs to be ended when the time is right but not yet and Brexiteer. So one of your 4.
I have noted a persistent theme - that all Brexiters must be Trump supporters. Despite polling that indicates virtually no-one in the UK has any time for him.
The theme is that any British Trumptons were very very likely to be Brexiteers. Lots of people pretending they never had any time for him now he has become such an embarrassment but that was not what they were saying at the time he was elected. The UK Trump-rampers that come to mind are all UKIP types - who can forget all those photos of good old Nigel fawning over him. Remind me of any prominent remainers that were Trump fans - I'm sure there must be an odd one but I can't think of any..
There are massive parallels between the reasons Brexit and Trump won,
Really? Trump got mostly the same voters as Bush, McCain and Romney. He lost the popular vote and won only because Clinton was a uniquely unpopular candidate with a terrible campaign staff who set out to prove that the Obama campaign won 'wrong'.
Brexit had a quarter of a century campaign by the highest selling newspapers in the country covering every demographic.
This is NOT what Doctor Ferguson predicted. It maybe tallies with the mad Israeli professor’s opinion that this disease has a natural ebb and flow, lockdowns are less important than we think
If Sweden does turn out to have had a strategy that has blended freedom, not trashing their economy and protection of their people, the pivoting of some is going to be incredible.
Personally, I think that it will probably turn out that different countries have a differing range of options available to them based on factors like population density, ability to isolate from neighbours, level of travel into a country from elsewhere.
The "personal choice over nanny state" argument, yes, but my understanding is that their economy is likely just as damaged as ours.
Yes, their GDP is expected to shrink by 10%. It is export-oriented
However, what they have avoided is the mental and physical health impact of stricter lockdown. Much less isolation.
Though there is the mental health impact of losing loved ones through excess and avoidable Covid deaths, and the physical health impact of being, well, dead.
They may avoid many deaths by not having further waves due to herd immunity.
NB that herd immunity levels while restrictions are in place are very different to herd immunity levels without restrictions.
eg at an Rt=1.27, herd immunity kicks in at 21% of the population At an R0 of 3.0, it's 67% required.
So for Wiltshire 394 confirmed Covid cases and a population of 498,000 to date. So less then 1 person per 10,000. Which for my small town is about 1 or 2 people. Makes me laugh a bit when we all desperately try to social distance on our outside time. Obviously the true number of infections will be higher (but do we really know how much higher?). So could Wiltshire not emerge from lockdown earlier than other places? Or is that just too complicated?
Sure, lets head to Salisbury for a pub lunch or two shall we?
That's the problem with regional lockdowns. If stuff was open, people would flock there, I'm in Surrey myself, so it's only an hours drive. Worth it for a afternoon/evening out.
Fine by me - I'm not in Salisbury... I take your point, but it has always been odd round here. I don't know anyone who has died of covid, I don't know anyone confirmed to have had it. At some point we need to try opening up...
Unsurprising figure but I'm surprised as many as 7% went for Gove too - as someone who likes Gove. Shows the unreliability of polling respondents to answer the question actually asked.
Gove and Patel simply haven't done that much that's obvious compared to the others during Boris's absence. Their departments are not as key frontline as the others.
Nation likes person who gives them free stuff shock.
Nation likes person who took the risk to react quickly in what was a constructive manner. Given the usual speed of the Treasury when it comes to handing back money, it was a bloody miracle.
Compare and contrast with everyone else in government.
Note he's never once said "we're following the advice of our economists"...
Because that would be an absurd and meaningless phrase that most especially anyone who knows anything about economics would laugh at.
Why would anyone say anything so silly? There are economists for and against almost any action.
Of course, the same goes for science. As Prof Brian Cox said to Andrew Marr on Sunday:
"There’s no such thing as ‘the science’, which is a key lesson. If you hear a politician say ‘we’re following the science’, then what that means is they don’t really understand what science is. There isn’t such a thing as ‘the science’. Science is a mindset."
I wonder if that applies to campaigners on Global Warming, where 'follow the science' is also a mantra.
Just a musing on that...
Not accepting that increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to the warmng of average global temperatures is not just outsider the "cloud of science" it is a hundred miles away.
Arguing that tiny trace volumes of CO2 are the only controlling factor and what the sun is up to is a disctraction seems thousands of miles away.
Increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere 285 ppm to 410 ppm since 1850. That's a 44% increase. Saying the words "tiny trace" just makes you sound like an idiot.
"How can a tiny trace amount of botulinum toxin kill someone?"
Globally over decades the world is certainly outputting a lot of CO2.
The global atmospheric difference in CO2 between the UK going to net zero at a timescale like the government are proposing and the UK going at a timescale XR propose is a tiny trace difference.
Brexiteer= Climate change denier. What a surprise. Had enough of experts? Support Brexit and any other idiots charter that is in vogue with the pseudoscience Trumpian populist right wing.
A venn diagram of Trump fans/ Brexiteers/ climate change deniers/ end-lockdown-now advocates would show a great deal of overlap.
I've got no overlap.
Despise Trump and hopes he loses, want climate change tackling sensibly, think the lockdown needs to be ended when the time is right but not yet and Brexiteer. So one of your 4.
I have noted a persistent theme - that all Brexiters must be Trump supporters. Despite polling that indicates virtually no-one in the UK has any time for him.
The theme is that any British Trumptons were very very likely to be Brexiteers. Lots of people pretending they never had any time for him now he has become such an embarrassment but that was not what they were saying at the time he was elected. The UK Trump-rampers that come to mind are all UKIP types - who can forget all those photos of good old Nigel fawning over him. Remind me of any prominent remainers that were Trump fans - I'm sure there must be an odd one but I can't think of any..
There are massive parallels between the reasons Brexit and Trump won, as there are Remain and Clinton lost, so its not surprising that, on a site for arguing about politics, the posters who were pro Brexit were more sympathetic to Trump and vice versa. One broadly represented the "liberal elite establishment" and the other the "left behind poor". I dont think its a startingly original comparison to make - no more than saying there was a crossover between Thatcher and Reagan fans and those who preferred Kinnock and the Democratic candiate
I think claims by the leaders of Brexit that it was about helping the "left behind" are fraudulent. But you can at least argue this with a straight face. Different with Trump. You have to seriously question the faculties of people who even in 2016 bought the idea that Trump was about anything but himself. It was screamingly obvious.
Well you could say the Trump voters sent an email to Trump and Clinton complaining about their lot, and Trump replied while Clinton didn't, and that was enough
Jones completely undermines himself there because using the word 'needlessly' he has pre-decided the news already. Like many journalists
His job is to show the public the deaths were needless with evidence. And if he can;t dont call them needless because there is no evidence they were.
I'm not full square with Owen on this but he has in various links, blogs, articles argued a solid evidenced case that many lives have been lost due to (i) late lockdown and (ii) poor performance on PPE and testing. More evidence than you have tended to bring to the table, tbf. Which I believe is approximately none. Think you're pristine on this. Although don't take that as a massive slight. We don't want everyone on here getting completely bogged down in "evidence" all of the time. You can lose something valuable that way.
Things to consider in, could we have done a sweden
Swedish popular ion density is a tenth of the UKs. Rounded to the nearest hundred people per square kilometer their population density is zero.
Sweden also shut down flights in a way we still haven't done.
When this is all over I think the decision to keep letting flights into LHR will go down as the most utterly brain dead hands in head moments of the UK response.
Has HMG ever given us a rationale for allowing flights? I’d like to hear it, because, like you, I find it an insane policy at first glance. But maybe they have some fiendishly brilliant explanation.
Because putting restrictions on travel would inconvenience our politicians, Sir Humphreys and other fatcats.
They also want to maintain a 'Britain is open for business' vibe.
Don't be daft, no business flights are happening and politicians would certainly not 'inconvenienced' by a restriction - they are not exactly jetting off to Tuscany for their hols at the moment. You are working backwards from your prejudices.
So what's your explanation as to the government's lack of restriction on international travel with its resulting cost of lives.
BTW I'm correct in my prejudices - the people who use international travel the most will inevitably want fewer restrictions on it and restrictions, for example 14 days quarantine on return to the UK, might be hard to remove once applied.
Sometimes we have essential business travel, we'll be able to work round the 14 day quarantine period if needed.
One of the worst parts about this virus is it's been brought in by the rich and well traveled yet has hit the working class (Bus drivers are particularly awfully affected) the hardest.
I wonder if the bus drivers are another case of BAME variation.
Burglars wearing Covid-19 hazmat suits struck four houses in leafy Surrey village just days before 88-year-old man was 'killed during break in at his bungalow' as police launch murder hunt
But, we will have to revisit this in a year or two. Prof Ferguson thinks Swedish deaths will just keep on rising, relentlessly, because their R0 will stay stubbornly over 1
What might be happening there is that they're already below the Rt needed to see infections drop. The ICL model has them at Rt 1.14 [0.94-1.35] as of yesterday, and if they're at say 20% already infected and immune, anything below Rt of 1.25 is golden (it's apparently more complicated than that, but just as a rule of thumb).
Then Ferguson is wrong and the Swedish epidemiologist, Giesecke, is right.
Which is quite a big thing
The government are a bunch of cowards. They wanted to use ''follow the science'' as a shield to keep Morgan and Co. quiet
Turns out the journos shrieked anyway, the science may be wrong and the government is now out half a trillion pounds, millions of jobs and a shattered economy.
How many more dead and sick do you think we would have had without the lockdown ?
Belgium and Sweden show us the link between lockdown severity and disease spread is, shall we call it complex? debatable? tenuous?
What is certain is that penury, economic depression, debt, poor public services do cause illness and death.
The science there is well established.
So how many more thousands dead would you have been willing to accept ?
I think there is a case that a late lockdown is pretty ineffective at disease control. Either lockdown early or not at all.
Epidemics burn themselves out fairly quickly, and I think that we saw that in China and Iran, in how the number of deaths levels off. The peak is about 6 weeks post lift off, and the tail perhaps 3 months.
You’ve been saying that from the start and you’ve been proven right.
What do you think of the Israeli dude’s argument that lockdowns are almost irrelevant and the virus burns and fades in its own good time?
Can't think of a mechanism for that happening. R0 going above 1 creates an exponential rise in cases and deaths, which with this virus would overwhelm any health system. So a lockdown by that or some other name seems inevitable. Why would the virus 'burn or fade'? It doesn't seem temperature dependent.
Things to consider in, could we have done a sweden
Swedish popular ion density is a tenth of the UKs. Rounded to the nearest hundred people per square kilometer their population density is zero.
Sweden also shut down flights in a way we still haven't done.
When this is all over I think the decision to keep letting flights into LHR will go down as the most utterly brain dead hands in head moments of the UK response.
Has HMG ever given us a rationale for allowing flights? I’d like to hear it, because, like you, I find it an insane policy at first glance. But maybe they have some fiendishly brilliant explanation.
Because putting restrictions on travel would inconvenience our politicians, Sir Humphreys and other fatcats.
They also want to maintain a 'Britain is open for business' vibe.
Don't be daft, no business flights are happening and politicians would certainly not 'inconvenienced' by a restriction - they are not exactly jetting off to Tuscany for their hols at the moment. You are working backwards from your prejudices.
So what's your explanation as to the government's lack of restriction on international travel with its resulting cost of lives.
BTW I'm correct in my prejudices - the people who use international travel the most will inevitably want fewer restrictions on it and restrictions, for example 14 days quarantine on return to the UK, might be hard to remove once applied.
Sometimes we have essential business travel, we'll be able to work round the 14 day quarantine period if needed.
One of the worst parts about this virus is it's been brought in by the rich and well traveled yet has hit the working class (Bus drivers are particularly awfully affected) the hardest.
I wonder if the bus drivers are another case of BAME variation.
Not sure - I'd guess more likely to be male and middle aged than average. Also you're right in the firing line as a bus driver, if changes in air temperature (The bus will be warmer than outside) perhaps triggers an inadvertent cough from your passengers, a few different mutagens brew up in your system...
This is NOT what Doctor Ferguson predicted. It maybe tallies with the mad Israeli professor’s opinion that this disease has a natural ebb and flow, lockdowns are less important than we think
If Sweden does turn out to have had a strategy that has blended freedom, not trashing their economy and protection of their people, the pivoting of some is going to be incredible.
Personally, I think that it will probably turn out that different countries have a differing range of options available to them based on factors like population density, ability to isolate from neighbours, level of travel into a country from elsewhere.
The "personal choice over nanny state" argument, yes, but my understanding is that their economy is likely just as damaged as ours.
Yes, their GDP is expected to shrink by 10%. It is export-oriented
However, what they have avoided is the mental and physical health impact of stricter lockdown. Much less isolation.
Though there is the mental health impact of losing loved ones through excess and avoidable Covid deaths, and the physical health impact of being, well, dead.
They may avoid many deaths by not having further waves due to herd immunity.
NB that herd immunity levels while restrictions are in place are very different to herd immunity levels without restrictions.
eg at an Rt=1.27, herd immunity kicks in at 21% of the population At an R0 of 3.0, it's 67% required.
That's a point I was struggling to compose. But I guess we can only infer R_t, while need an antibody test to better guage the % of population who have had it. If the latter is higher than, say, 21%, that sets the 'target' R_t and, in turn, the range of measures necessary.
Unsurprising figure but I'm surprised as many as 7% went for Gove too - as someone who likes Gove. Shows the unreliability of polling respondents to answer the question actually asked.
Gove and Patel simply haven't done that much that's obvious compared to the others during Boris's absence. Their departments are not as key frontline as the others.
Nation likes person who gives them free stuff shock.
Nation likes person who took the risk to react quickly in what was a constructive manner. Given the usual speed of the Treasury when it comes to handing back money, it was a bloody miracle.
Compare and contrast with everyone else in government.
Note he's never once said "we're following the advice of our economists"...
Because that would be an absurd and meaningless phrase that most especially anyone who knows anything about economics would laugh at.
Why would anyone say anything so silly? There are economists for and against almost any action.
Of course, the same goes for science. As Prof Brian Cox said to Andrew Marr on Sunday:
"There’s no such thing as ‘the science’, which is a key lesson. If you hear a politician say ‘we’re following the science’, then what that means is they don’t really understand what science is. There isn’t such a thing as ‘the science’. Science is a mindset."
I wonder if that applies to campaigners on Global Warming, where 'follow the science' is also a mantra.
Just a musing on that...
Not accepting that increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to the warmng of average global temperatures is not just outsider the "cloud of science" it is a hundred miles away.
Arguing that tiny trace volumes of CO2 are the only controlling factor and what the sun is up to is a disctraction seems thousands of miles away.
Increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere 285 ppm to 410 ppm since 1850. That's a 44% increase. Saying the words "tiny trace" just makes you sound like an idiot.
"How can a tiny trace amount of botulinum toxin kill someone?"
Globally over decades the world is certainly outputting a lot of CO2.
The global atmospheric difference in CO2 between the UK going to net zero at a timescale like the government are proposing and the UK going at a timescale XR propose is a tiny trace difference.
Brexiteer= Climate change denier. What a surprise. Had enough of experts? Support Brexit and any other idiots charter that is in vogue with the pseudoscience Trumpian populist right wing.
A venn diagram of Trump fans/ Brexiteers/ climate change deniers/ end-lockdown-now advocates would show a great deal of overlap.
I've got no overlap.
Despise Trump and hopes he loses, want climate change tackling sensibly, think the lockdown needs to be ended when the time is right but not yet and Brexiteer. So one of your 4.
I have noted a persistent theme - that all Brexiters must be Trump supporters. Despite polling that indicates virtually no-one in the UK has any time for him.
The theme is that any British Trumptons were very very likely to be Brexiteers. Lots of people pretending they never had any time for him now he has become such an embarrassment but that was not what they were saying at the time he was elected. The UK Trump-rampers that come to mind are all UKIP types - who can forget all those photos of good old Nigel fawning over him. Remind me of any prominent remainers that were Trump fans - I'm sure there must be an odd one but I can't think of any..
There are massive parallels between the reasons Brexit and Trump won,
Really? Trump got mostly the same voters as Bush, McCain and Romney. He lost the popular vote and won only because Clinton was a uniquely unpopular candidate with a terrible campaign staff who set out to prove that the Obama campaign won 'wrong'.
Brexit had a quarter of a century campaign by the highest selling newspapers in the country covering every demographic.
Contrary to the Header my vibes are not that lockdown is set to be eased. I am fortunate enough to have a Sir Cliff Richard calendar on the kitchen wall and I have marked the end of UK lockdown on there. 28th May. The balance of political risk steers to keeping it until then.
In his May picture, Cliff is in concert and is wearing head to toe denim. Shirt is well open, hair long, big sideburns. Quite raunchy. It catches him in what many feel to be his best period, the mid seventies. Very possible, therefore, that the song he is singing is Devil Woman (1976) - I like to think so anyway.
Miss You Nights, surely?
I watched the video to "Daddy's Home" on Youtube last week.. and sang along! (to the title bit, I don't know the words)
The hidden toll of lockdown on people's lives. Real people. Real lives.
Haha
I watched a few Roger Waters interviews to redress the balance!
- yes I can imagine you liking him.
HIM, I mean, not necessarily his music. He has a trad WC 1950s vibe. Salt of the earth blended with a touch of the spiritual
Looks uncannily like Richard Gere? Well, yes, there's that too. But Waters came first so any charge of copycat would be ridiculous.
I like both him and his music. I used to obsessively love the early Pink Floyd of which he had little writing involvement, and I can barely listen to now (although played The Gnome to our 6 month old son the other day) , and now prefer the albums he more or less wrote on his own, Dark Side to The Final Cut. The Wall is a masterpiece.
He is a massive lefty politically, I think.
Looks wise he has matured like a fine wine... from actually ugly in his twenties and thirties, to genuinely handsome in his seventies.
Roger Water's politics are summed up in the vicious but brilliant track Pigs (Three Different Ones)" from Animals released in 1977 where Mary Whitehouse among others was targeted.
Big man, pig man Ha ha, charade you are
A certain D Trump would be in his sights today one suspects
Yes I love that song.It seems he incorporates anti-Trump message into it now. The second verse is about Thatcher apparently.
I didnt know it was the song they were playing when Waters spat at a fan, just read that on wiki. The incident that led to "The Wall"
Watching that, he actually makes it ALL about Trump - and the last verse, originally about Mary, is perfect for criticising his presidency... "Hey you Whitehouse!"
If you are using misleading information from which to launch your comments you are not scrutinising you are mischief-making, and very much part of the problem.
You are. But democracy does need tough media scrutiny of those in power. I don't recall quite this level of exasperation about journalists asking questions before. Not sure how healthy it is.
I am just reading Executive Orders by Tom Clancy for the first time in twenty odd years, and (I must confess) rather enjoying it.
For those that don't remember / haven't read it, the plot concerns a biological attack on the US via ebola.
In it, the outbreak kills far fewer than expected, because once people start wearing masks and acting a bit more careful, then the viral loads people receive come down. One of the characters, a doctor, remarks about how people think a single strand of the virus will kill you, when dosage is key.
And I was wondering how appropriate / accurate this is here. If we're all careful, and wear masks, and disinfect everything, etc., then will CV-19 cases become (on average) less severe?
I found this article by Wolfgang Münchau on the economic prospects in the aftermath rather uplifting.
"The EU is mostly concerned with saving existing jobs, propping up existing industries, stopping companies from going bust. This can slow economic rejuvenation at a time when it’s badly needed. There is no real focus on start-ups, or emerging industries such as artificial intelligence." ... and ... "Opting out of GDPR can be Britain’s great escape, a chance to come up with a new data protection regime designed to encourage new companies — and economic repair in general."
But, we will have to revisit this in a year or two. Prof Ferguson thinks Swedish deaths will just keep on rising, relentlessly, because their R0 will stay stubbornly over 1
What might be happening there is that they're already below the Rt needed to see infections drop. The ICL model has them at Rt 1.14 [0.94-1.35] as of yesterday, and if they're at say 20% already infected and immune, anything below Rt of 1.25 is golden (it's apparently more complicated than that, but just as a rule of thumb).
Then Ferguson is wrong and the Swedish epidemiologist, Giesecke, is right.
Which is quite a big thing
The government are a bunch of cowards. They wanted to use ''follow the science'' as a shield to keep Morgan and Co. quiet
Turns out the journos shrieked anyway, the science may be wrong and the government is now out half a trillion pounds, millions of jobs and a shattered economy.
How many more dead and sick do you think we would have had without the lockdown ?
Belgium and Sweden show us the link between lockdown severity and disease spread is, shall we call it complex? debatable? tenuous?
What is certain is that penury, economic depression, debt, poor public services do cause illness and death.
The science there is well established.
WHICH IS WHY WE LOCKED DOWN!
Jesus Christ, it was clearly pointed out to you (and you acknowledged) that the actual economists were all but unanimous in saying that not locking down or prematurely leaving lockdown would be the worst option for the economy.
Because, in pandemics, the collapse in demand and supply can bounce straight back up if you avoid deaths; the permanent damage/erosion to the economy is minimised if you minimise deaths.
Cities, states, nations that decide to just blast straight through end up killing far more of their population, and, in a shocking economic discovery, it turns out that dead people don't produce as much, neither do they go around buying stuff.
And the lockdown in Belgium happened because the disease was spreading a lot. And may have something to do with the population density - do you agree that it's barely possible that having lots of people crammed in to a small area might help an infectious disease, well, infect?
You've been banging on against the lockdown for days, blithely ignoring any explanations of your self-believed zingers. And spouting the biggest pile of economic claptrap ever going.
And yes, we're having a big economic impact. No-one's denying it. Your alternative would make it even worse.
Things to consider in, could we have done a sweden
Swedish popular ion density is a tenth of the UKs. Rounded to the nearest hundred people per square kilometer their population density is zero.
Sweden also shut down flights in a way we still haven't done.
When this is all over I think the decision to keep letting flights into LHR will go down as the most utterly brain dead hands in head moments of the UK response.
Has HMG ever given us a rationale for allowing flights? I’d like to hear it, because, like you, I find it an insane policy at first glance. But maybe they have some fiendishly brilliant explanation.
Because putting restrictions on travel would inconvenience our politicians, Sir Humphreys and other fatcats.
They also want to maintain a 'Britain is open for business' vibe.
Don't be daft, no business flights are happening and politicians would certainly not 'inconvenienced' by a restriction - they are not exactly jetting off to Tuscany for their hols at the moment. You are working backwards from your prejudices.
Plenty of private aircraft flying around on flightradar24.com
I found this article by Wolfgang Münchau on the economic prospects in the aftermath rather uplifting.
"The EU is mostly concerned with saving existing jobs, propping up existing industries, stopping companies from going bust. This can slow economic rejuvenation at a time when it’s badly needed. There is no real focus on start-ups, or emerging industries such as artificial intelligence." ... and ... "Opting out of GDPR can be Britain’s great escape, a chance to come up with a new data protection regime designed to encourage new companies — and economic repair in general."
One thing about Swedish approach. If I remember correctly, they have less ICU bed capacity than even the UK, certainly not up there with the likes of Germany.
Now, all the modelling said that for instance in the UK, we needed to lockdown in order to "flatten the curve" and ensure the NHS capacity wasn't exceeded. Obviously extra capacity was found and it hasn't blown up. I believe Ferguson said that a couple of hospitals in London maxed out at the peak, but that was it. And the Daily Mail is of course moaning about the Nightingale ones not really been used.
However, in Sweden, it doesn't appear they have had their healthcare system meltdown, even if they are recording more deaths than their neighbour Denmark.
I am just reading Executive Orders by Tom Clancy for the first time in twenty odd years, and (I must confess) rather enjoying it.
For those that don't remember / haven't read it, the plot concerns a biological attack on the US via ebola.
In it, the outbreak kills far fewer than expected, because once people start wearing masks and acting a bit more careful, then the viral loads people receive come down. One of the characters, a doctor, remarks about how people think a single strand of the virus will kill you, when dosage is key.
And I was wondering how appropriate / accurate this is here. If we're all careful, and wear masks, and disinfect everything, etc., then will CV-19 cases become (on average) less severe?
I think that's likely but we have to know how to do such things properly.
The government was very good on the hand washing instructions.
I found this article by Wolfgang Münchau on the economic prospects in the aftermath rather uplifting.
"The EU is mostly concerned with saving existing jobs, propping up existing industries, stopping companies from going bust. This can slow economic rejuvenation at a time when it’s badly needed. There is no real focus on start-ups, or emerging industries such as artificial intelligence." ... and ... "Opting out of GDPR can be Britain’s great escape, a chance to come up with a new data protection regime designed to encourage new companies — and economic repair in general."
Hm, I am not 100% convinced that opting out of that one piece of legislation is a magic bullet for recovery.
GDPR is an excellent protection for individuals against exploitative wideboy companies and incompetent local authorities that want to hold your personal data. Only a complete fuckwit would want to get rid of it without an even more robust replacement.
I am utterly shocked that they are more interested in sensationalist headlines rather than reporting the facts.
That's why the media is held in such low esteem. I would rather not listen any more. They twist and try to deceive with their lines of questioning. Either that or they are so fecking thick they just do not understand/do not want to understand .
If you can't scrutinise and criticise a government for thousands needlessly dying because of its catastrophic errors, we might as well shut this whole democracy thing down and call it a day.
If you are using misleading information from which to launch your comments you are not scrutinising you are mischief-making, and very much part of the problem.
You are. But democracy does need tough media scrutiny of those in power. I don't recall quite this level of exasperation about journalists asking questions before. Not sure how healthy it is.
Part of the exasperation, on my part at least, comes from them asking the wrong questions. Repeatedly. They should be all over the PPE and testing problems. Incessantly until they get an answer. Instead it is when do you think the lockdown will end? A: We don't know and wouldn't say if we did. Several times a day. When there is no great public wave of demand for the answer anyway.
But, we will have to revisit this in a year or two. Prof Ferguson thinks Swedish deaths will just keep on rising, relentlessly, because their R0 will stay stubbornly over 1
What might be happening there is that they're already below the Rt needed to see infections drop. The ICL model has them at Rt 1.14 [0.94-1.35] as of yesterday, and if they're at say 20% already infected and immune, anything below Rt of 1.25 is golden (it's apparently more complicated than that, but just as a rule of thumb).
Then Ferguson is wrong and the Swedish epidemiologist, Giesecke, is right.
Which is quite a big thing
The government are a bunch of cowards. They wanted to use ''follow the science'' as a shield to keep Morgan and Co. quiet
Turns out the journos shrieked anyway, the science may be wrong and the government is now out half a trillion pounds, millions of jobs and a shattered economy.
How many more dead and sick do you think we would have had without the lockdown ?
Belgium and Sweden show us the link between lockdown severity and disease spread is, shall we call it complex? debatable? tenuous?
What is certain is that penury, economic depression, debt, poor public services do cause illness and death.
The science there is well established.
So how many more thousands dead would you have been willing to accept ?
I think there is a case that a late lockdown is pretty ineffective at disease control. Either lockdown early or not at all.
Epidemics burn themselves out fairly quickly, and I think that we saw that in China and Iran, in how the number of deaths levels off. The peak is about 6 weeks post lift off, and the tail perhaps 3 months.
You’ve been saying that from the start and you’ve been proven right.
What do you think of the Israeli dude’s argument that lockdowns are almost irrelevant and the virus burns and fades in its own good time?
Can't think of a mechanism for that happening. R0 going above 1 creates an exponential rise in cases and deaths, which with this virus would overwhelm any health system. So a lockdown by that or some other name seems inevitable. Why would the virus 'burn or fade'? It doesn't seem temperature dependent.
The Israeli professor: "Further research must be performed in order to understand the underlying reason behind this observation."
Comments
What is certain is that penury, economic depression, debt, poor public services do cause illness and death.
The science there is well established.
a two fold increase in your numbe rof initial cases gives a two fold increase in deaths after time t.
So whilst a difference of 40 or 400 initial cases might seem a small number when you are talking about over half a million infected after 4 months it is a x10 difference in number of deaths.
Not often I feel sorry for her but this situation must be very difficult for her.
"All French shops except cafes and restaurants will open from May 11; but social distancing rules must be followed"
Almost a third of Leavers back Trump
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/02/06/plurality-britons-once-again-support-trump-state-v
Not even
@eadric@FrancisUrquhart@Chris@me4343 care home deaths from 10/4/20 to 24/4/20
1043 care home deaths up to 10/4/20
21092 Hospital deaths up to 5pm on 26/4/20
Total 26,478
So including todays deaths we are over 27,000. Next bit is not necessarily fact (highest in Europe??)
The difference seems to be decisive leadership frankly.
And it isn't only the logistics of it. Johnson has a very comfortable working majority, and a compliant Parliamentary party having purged the most likely troublemakers. What possible credible reason could he offer for dragging people to the polls beyond wanting a bigger one? How would they react to that? And what on earth is the point of running even a small risk of losing in order to possibly pad out a majority which allows him to do pretty much whatever he wants anyway?
The whole idea is for the birds. I'd not bet a single penny on a General Election in 2020, 2021, or 2022.
Epidemics burn themselves out fairly quickly, and I think that we saw that in China and Iran, in how the number of deaths levels off. The peak is about 6 weeks post lift off, and the tail perhaps 3 months.
You agreed with "I have noted a persistent theme - that all Brexiters must be Trump supporters. Despite polling that indicates virtually no-one in the UK has any time for him."
And I was commenting on that.
He has had a number of episodes of poor mental health (which may have been caused by or exacerbated by drugs use) which also involved attacking people and threatening his mother.
All in all very sad for any mother to deal with
"Swedes are doing it for themselves" as it were.
But as far as I can see it is not a massive tangible win unless they uniquely achieve mass immunity and avoid a second wave which hits the rest of Europe.
I also don't think you are typical either, although I accept there are many people like you who have thought through the arguments logically and come to the conclusions you have come to but I think you are in a small minority. My guess 5 - 20% of Brexiteers are with you in being only Brexiteers and none of the other catagories.
But what do I know? (That bit is rhetorical so doesn't need an answer!).
Right from the start of the Covid debate, there has been a tendency to think that any argument for loosening our lockdown was an argument to do nothing at all to fight it.
Excess mortality per capita looks like all of western Europe will be very similar, with Italy the unfortunate ambushed vanguard taking the heaviest hit - to be fair to them, being first inevitably means least prepared.
Just not, as one Bank of England official put it, the biggest hit in several centuries.
Swedish popular ion density is a tenth of the UKs. Rounded to the nearest hundred people per square kilometer their population density is zero.
Sweden also shut down flights in a way we still haven't done.
When this is all over I think the decision to keep letting flights into LHR will go down as the most utterly brain dead hands in head moments of the UK response.
Epidemics of disease affect behaviour, independent of government instruction, and that affects duration. Football had cancelled itself for example.
If schools had stayed open, they would not have functioned normally, with teachers and other staff off on the sick, grandparents unwilling to provide childcare, or sickening if they do.
I think the SAGE documents suggested that control measures would reduce deaths by about 25%. Important if you are one of them, but not a massive effect.
The problem is that the R number has great heterogeneity between individuals and situations. A retired person living alone probably has an R near zero. A care worker in a nursing home maybe R = 10+
His job is to show the public the deaths were needless with evidence. And if he can;t dont call them needless because there is no evidence they were.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak
They also want to maintain a 'Britain is open for business' vibe.
I think I`m right in saying that immunity from coronaviruses lasts perhaps 2 years (at best). If we drag lockdown out too long those that have immunity from the start of the pandemic (inc many NHS staff) will lose this immunity by the time a lot of others gain it.
It was primed for death.
That's the problem with regional lockdowns. If stuff was open, people would flock there, I'm in Surrey myself, so it's only an hours drive. Worth it for a afternoon/evening out.
Liverpool fans must be sweating like a hooker on a private plane landing in France during lockdown that is being greeted by the police.
'I'm just back from China.'
'We trust you to self isolate for 14 days, taxi rank's over there, see ya!'
BTW I'm correct in my prejudices - the people who use international travel the most will inevitably want fewer restrictions on it and restrictions, for example 14 days quarantine on return to the UK, might be hard to remove once applied.
One of the worst parts about this virus is it's been brought in by the rich and well traveled yet has hit the working class (Bus drivers are particularly awfully affected) the hardest.
Brexit had a quarter of a century campaign by the highest selling newspapers in the country covering every demographic.
I think the links are pretty tenuous.
eg at an Rt=1.27, herd immunity kicks in at 21% of the population
At an R0 of 3.0, it's 67% required.
I take your point, but it has always been odd round here. I don't know anyone who has died of covid, I don't know anyone confirmed to have had it. At some point we need to try opening up...
Burglars wearing Covid-19 hazmat suits struck four houses in leafy Surrey village just days before 88-year-old man was 'killed during break in at his bungalow' as police launch murder hunt
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8264073/Police-launch-murder-investigation-body-88-year-old-man-discovered.html
R0 going above 1 creates an exponential rise in cases and deaths, which with this virus would overwhelm any health system.
So a lockdown by that or some other name seems inevitable.
Why would the virus 'burn or fade'? It doesn't seem temperature dependent.
Lewis Carroll's Pillow Problem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2Kp3toDJ9c
For those that don't remember / haven't read it, the plot concerns a biological attack on the US via ebola.
In it, the outbreak kills far fewer than expected, because once people start wearing masks and acting a bit more careful, then the viral loads people receive come down. One of the characters, a doctor, remarks about how people think a single strand of the virus will kill you, when dosage is key.
And I was wondering how appropriate / accurate this is here. If we're all careful, and wear masks, and disinfect everything, etc., then will CV-19 cases become (on average) less severe?
"The EU is mostly concerned with saving existing jobs, propping up existing industries, stopping companies from going bust. This can slow economic rejuvenation at a time when it’s badly needed. There is no real focus on start-ups, or emerging industries such as artificial intelligence."
... and ...
"Opting out of GDPR can be Britain’s great escape, a chance to come up with a new data protection regime designed to encourage new companies — and economic repair in general."
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/brexit-if-used-properly-can-speed-Britains-post-Corona-recovery
Jesus Christ, it was clearly pointed out to you (and you acknowledged) that the actual economists were all but unanimous in saying that not locking down or prematurely leaving lockdown would be the worst option for the economy.
Because, in pandemics, the collapse in demand and supply can bounce straight back up if you avoid deaths; the permanent damage/erosion to the economy is minimised if you minimise deaths.
Cities, states, nations that decide to just blast straight through end up killing far more of their population, and, in a shocking economic discovery, it turns out that dead people don't produce as much, neither do they go around buying stuff.
And the lockdown in Belgium happened because the disease was spreading a lot. And may have something to do with the population density - do you agree that it's barely possible that having lots of people crammed in to a small area might help an infectious disease, well, infect?
You've been banging on against the lockdown for days, blithely ignoring any explanations of your self-believed zingers. And spouting the biggest pile of economic claptrap ever going.
And yes, we're having a big economic impact. No-one's denying it. Your alternative would make it even worse.
Now, all the modelling said that for instance in the UK, we needed to lockdown in order to "flatten the curve" and ensure the NHS capacity wasn't exceeded. Obviously extra capacity was found and it hasn't blown up. I believe Ferguson said that a couple of hospitals in London maxed out at the peak, but that was it. And the Daily Mail is of course moaning about the Nightingale ones not really been used.
However, in Sweden, it doesn't appear they have had their healthcare system meltdown, even if they are recording more deaths than their neighbour Denmark.
The government was very good on the hand washing instructions.
Instead it is when do you think the lockdown will end?
A: We don't know and wouldn't say if we did.
Several times a day.
When there is no great public wave of demand for the answer anyway.