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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The vibes are that the lockdown could be set to be eased

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    FF43FF43 Posts: 15,843

    Andy_JS said:

    eadric said:

    kinabalu said:

    eadric said:

    Yes, Sweden is over its peak almost certainly. Both daily deaths and new cases trending gently down.

    https://twitter.com/paul_imanuelsen/status/1255106367276355584?s=21

    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.
    But in practice only R0 matters for herd immunity, unless I'm missing something? Firstly because you are likely to remove mitigation as cases drop and so the infection rate picks up again. The second issue is on definitions. On a Rt basis we can say countries like Korea, Hong Kong and China have achieved herd immunity due to an absence of cases. But I don't think that's what we mean by herd immunity - the epidemic could kick off again at any time.
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,302
    An NHS app that alerts users to recent contacts who are infected with coronavirus will be ready for deployment within three weeks, according to the chief executive of NHSX, the digital arm of the health service.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/28/nhs-coronavirus-contact-tracing-app-ready-for-use-in-three-weeks-mps-told
  • Options
    TGOHF666TGOHF666 Posts: 2,052
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,059
    My favourite goalkeeper, and one of my favourite ever footballers, was a lockdown sceptic, got Covid-19 it, beat it, said it was not as bad as the flu, and is now provoking anger with his idea for re opening football stadiums

    https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/jens-lehmann-centre-coronavirus-storm-21938984
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,302
    The head of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases has called on Germans to stay at home as much as possible after new figures showed the coronavirus infection rate had increased.

    Now if the UK loosen lockdown, then tells the public this isn't going so well, please go back to staying at home as much as possible.

    UUUUUUUUUU------TURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRN

    CONFUSION

    CHAOS

    SHAMBLES
  • Options
    Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 49,618
    rcs1000 said:

    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?

    Does Ebola spread via respiratory droplets?
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,059
    edited April 2020
    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they had just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,028
    TGOHF666 said:
    What are your thoughts on it Harry ?
  • Options
    Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,028
    edited April 2020
    Mr. Eadric, the voluntary lockdown and more dispersed (less dense) population of Sweden makes a comparison with the UK of minimal value because there's a large degree of uncertainty coupled with wildly divergent demography.

    Edited extra bit: that's not to say we can't learn anything of value, it's just that you can't do a direct read across.

    Even with seemingly very similar countries it's difficult (France has about the same population but is far less densely populated).
  • Options
    glwglw Posts: 9,556

    eadric said:


    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.
    Yes that's more or less what he said. Basically banning/quarantining all flights at say the end of January might well have been a good idea — and undoubtably would have been called a massive over-reaction by the same people now asking why we don't stop flights — but doing so in say mid March would have made little to no difference as by then there were already thousands of people spreading the virus in the UK.

    IF the number of infected in the UK plummets it probably will be worth introducing quarantines later in the year, but right now it would be like worrying about a leaky tap when the dam is about to collapse.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,808
    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    .

    OllyT said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.

    I think the links are pretty tenuous.
    I would have thought you would
    The main parallel between Trump and Brexit was that both edged it by appealing to one of people's basest instincts: hatred of the foreigner. The other (ironically) is that both fundamentally nationalistic campaigns were endorsed and most likely helped (knowingly or unknowingly, no-one knows!) by Vladimir Putin and an army of internet bots.
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,302
    edited April 2020
    eadric said:

    The head of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases has called on Germans to stay at home as much as possible after new figures showed the coronavirus infection rate had increased.

    Now if the UK loosen lockdown, then tells the public this isn't going so well, please go back to staying at home as much as possible.

    UUUUUUUUUU------TURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRN

    CONFUSION

    CHAOS

    SHAMBLES

    A shambles across Europe, to be fair.

    How can France open up as Germany locks down harder?!

    Inter alia, this is the death of Schengen for the foreseeable
    The reality is I think we will find lots of "suck it and see" and false starts. It is the nature of the beast. China are doing the same, I believe gyms and swimming pools have been closed down again.

    Given nobody even really knows for certain what are the high risk activities for transmission, it is a lot of scrambling in the dark.
  • Options
    AlastairMeeksAlastairMeeks Posts: 30,340
    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
  • Options
    AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 20,221
    isam said:

    eadric said:

    Alistair said:

    Sweden being right would be tremendous news.

    But extremely unlikely
    Wrong. Right this moment it looks quite likely
    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.
    Agreed. That's one of the most annoying elements of the debate. I've also noticed that among my friends – it's not just a PB/TV/online thing.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,473
    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    MattW said:

    kinabalu said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.
    @kinabalu

    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.

    https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/in-highsight-do-you-think-britain-was-right-or-wrong-to-vote-to-leave-the-eu/

    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?
    Trump is most popular in the North and Midlands, least popular in London and Scotland. He also has more support from C2DEs than ABC1s.

    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
    Really doubt that a third of Leavers back Trump now. Very worrying if so.
  • Options
    dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 28,046

    dixiedean said:

    eek said:

    TGOHF666 said:


    "All French shops except cafes and restaurants will open from May 11; but social distancing rules must be followed"

    Interesting that Germany wont even entertain this for several months, even though less hard hit.
    Germany is blessed with a decisive and numerate leader who has nothing left to prove, as well as a well-funded health system.
    And a leader who has explained things in a way anyone can follow.
    If you want to go science led, it does help to have an actual scientist at the top.
    How would Chemist Maggie have handled it?
    Dunno. But she would have been able to listen, comprehend, ask sensible questions, and explain the reasoning. As she did on global warming.
    Merkel sounds like she knows. Which is half the battle.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,778

    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
    Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.

    The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.

    So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,059

    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    .

    OllyT said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.

    I think the links are pretty tenuous.
    I would have thought you would
    The main parallel between Trump and Brexit was that both edged it by appealing to one of people's basest instincts: hatred of the foreigner. The other (ironically) is that both fundamentally nationalistic campaigns were endorsed and most likely helped (knowingly or unknowingly, no-one knows!) by Vladimir Putin and an army of internet bots.
    Spot on!
  • Options
    TGOHF666TGOHF666 Posts: 2,052
    Pulpstar said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    What are your thoughts on it Harry ?
    Its wild - if accurate.

  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,808
    eadric said:

    The head of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases has called on Germans to stay at home as much as possible after new figures showed the coronavirus infection rate had increased.

    Now if the UK loosen lockdown, then tells the public this isn't going so well, please go back to staying at home as much as possible.

    UUUUUUUUUU------TURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRN

    CONFUSION

    CHAOS

    SHAMBLES

    A shambles across Europe, to be fair.

    How can France open up as Germany locks down harder?!

    Inter alia, this is the death of Schengen for the foreseeable
    Are we laughing at those silly foreigners from our position of organisational superiority? No? Thought not! Our Brexit Party-Lite Government is making a much bigger mess of it than almost all countries, including the much derided Italy, even though we knew it was coming and they didn't.
  • Options
    Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820
    RobD said:

    geoffw said:

    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."

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/brexit-if-used-properly-can-speed-Britains-post-Corona-recovery

    Hm, I am not 100% convinced that opting out of that one piece of legislation is a magic bullet for recovery.
    Especially not GPDR, which - although it is very badly designed - is at least a single Europe-wide framework, which even US companies have had to adopt. The very last thing emerging companies want is to be excluded from processing of EU data. The brute fact is that the UK will have to comply with it, whether it likes it or not, but even that won't be enough unless we do a deal with the EU which codifies the fact that we are complying with it.
  • Options
    AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    .

    OllyT said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.

    I think the links are pretty tenuous.
    I would have thought you would
    What's the evidence that Trump voters are a unique coalition of left behind, economically anxious people as opposed to people who have voted Republican at every election for the last 20 years?
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,302
    JetBlue Airways will become the first US airline to require passengers to wear face coverings while on flights.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,473
    edited April 2020
    MattW said:

    kinabalu said:

    MattW said:

    kinabalu said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.
    @kinabalu

    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.

    https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/in-highsight-do-you-think-britain-was-right-or-wrong-to-vote-to-leave-the-eu/

    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."

    And I was commenting on that.
    No, what I said was that although this - lots of Brexiteers liking Trump - may have been true in 2016, I doubt it's true now.
  • Options
    AlastairMeeksAlastairMeeks Posts: 30,340

    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
    Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.

    The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.

    So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
    We're not disagreeing.
  • Options
    TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 40,384
    edited April 2020
    dixiedean said:

    dixiedean said:

    eek said:

    TGOHF666 said:


    "All French shops except cafes and restaurants will open from May 11; but social distancing rules must be followed"

    Interesting that Germany wont even entertain this for several months, even though less hard hit.
    Germany is blessed with a decisive and numerate leader who has nothing left to prove, as well as a well-funded health system.
    And a leader who has explained things in a way anyone can follow.
    If you want to go science led, it does help to have an actual scientist at the top.
    How would Chemist Maggie have handled it?
    Dunno. But she would have been able to listen, comprehend, ask sensible questions, and explain the reasoning. As she did on global warming.
    Merkel sounds like she knows. Which is half the battle.
    1988 Maggie would have been well chuffed to have access to the single market to aid with economic recovery (or hacked off at having said access terminated).

  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,059
    edited April 2020

    isam said:

    eadric said:

    Alistair said:

    Sweden being right would be tremendous news.

    But extremely unlikely
    Wrong. Right this moment it looks quite likely
    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.
    Agreed. That's one of the most annoying elements of the debate. I've also noticed that among my friends – it's not just a PB/TV/online thing.
    I actually think it happens in every low quality debate - people argue against a crude exaggeration of their opponents point.

    Control on immigration = hate foreigners is one I have heard a few times, I guess standing up for minorities = extreme loony left Political Correctness is its counter
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,808

    RobD said:

    geoffw said:

    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."

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/brexit-if-used-properly-can-speed-Britains-post-Corona-recovery

    Hm, I am not 100% convinced that opting out of that one piece of legislation is a magic bullet for recovery.
    Especially not GPDR, which - although it is very badly designed - is at least a single Europe-wide framework, which even US companies have had to adopt. The very last thing emerging companies want is to be excluded from processing of EU data. The brute fact is that the UK will have to comply with it, whether it likes it or not, but even that won't be enough unless we do a deal with the EU which codifies the fact that we are complying with it.
    Indeed, along with many many other regulations. The reality of Brexit is that most companies will have to comply with most EU regs, unless ours are completely in alignment and respected as such. It is yet another con trick from camp Brexit. We (at least companies and organisations that employ most of us) will still need to abide by EU rules. We just won't have any say in them now.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,778

    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
    Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.

    The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.

    So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
    We're not disagreeing.
    It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
  • Options
    TGOHF666 said:
    Unfortunately it appears to be accurate, though with the caveat that the the last point on the curve is for week 16, which ended on Sunday 19 April. So we are probably past the peak by now.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,473
    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    eadric said:

    kinabalu said:

    eadric said:

    Yes, Sweden is over its peak almost certainly. Both daily deaths and new cases trending gently down.

    https://twitter.com/paul_imanuelsen/status/1255106367276355584?s=21

    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.
    That's what I think too. No mass immunity. And a damaged economy. So the main benefit accruing from their approach is they avoided nanny state. Is this such a big win? Not sure.
  • Options
    OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 32,128
    Pulpstar said:

    eadric said:

    Alistair said:

    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.
    There's a song about that.....
  • Options
    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 27,139
    edited April 2020

    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    .

    OllyT said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.

    I think the links are pretty tenuous.
    I would have thought you would
    The main parallel between Trump and Brexit was that both edged it by appealing to one of people's basest instincts: hatred of the foreigner. The other (ironically) is that both fundamentally nationalistic campaigns were endorsed and most likely helped (knowingly or unknowingly, no-one knows!) by Vladimir Putin and an army of internet bots.
    I'd like to recommend this interview with John Gray in which he talks about subjects like populism and Russia.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hC5nXXJrV8
  • Options
    TGOHF666TGOHF666 Posts: 2,052
    kinabalu said:

    MattW said:

    kinabalu said:

    MattW said:

    kinabalu said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.
    @kinabalu

    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.

    https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/in-highsight-do-you-think-britain-was-right-or-wrong-to-vote-to-leave-the-eu/

    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."

    And I was commenting on that.
    No, what I said was that although this - lots of Brexiteers liking Trump - may have been true in 2016, I doubt it's true now.
    Enjoying seeing some of the worst people being triggered by Trump is very different from wanting him anywhere near being say PM of the Uk..
  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,028

    The head of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases has called on Germans to stay at home as much as possible after new figures showed the coronavirus infection rate had increased.

    Now if the UK loosen lockdown, then tells the public this isn't going so well, please go back to staying at home as much as possible.

    UUUUUUUUUU------TURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRN

    CONFUSION

    CHAOS

    SHAMBLES

    I don't think the virus needs much leeway to push its head over 1. Eastern nations are more experienced at mask wearing, not touching their face and (particularly in Japan) talking quietly to each other. I've seen people chatting with their friends here (At the yard) far too close, even outdoors they'd definitely pass it on if they had it.
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,302
    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    eadric said:

    kinabalu said:

    eadric said:

    Yes, Sweden is over its peak almost certainly. Both daily deaths and new cases trending gently down.

    https://twitter.com/paul_imanuelsen/status/1255106367276355584?s=21

    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.
    That's what I think too. No mass immunity. And a damaged economy. So the main benefit accruing from their approach is they avoided nanny state. Is this such a big win? Not sure.
    Well also depends, have they carried on other normal healthcare provision? We know in Italy the health system crashed so couldn't do anything in regards to usual life saving work, here it looks like lots of people have stayed away from getting treatment for conditions that can be effectively dealt with and causing issues.
  • Options
    TGOHF666TGOHF666 Posts: 2,052

    TGOHF666 said:
    Unfortunately it appears to be accurate, though with the caveat that the the last point on the curve is for week 16, which ended on Sunday 19 April. So we are probably past the peak by now.
    May well be - but the messenger - Ed Conway who once spent an exclusive pre-Budget interview with GO repeatedly focussing on whether he travelled first or second class on the train carries a lot of warning signals.
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,059
    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    .

    OllyT said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.

    I think the links are pretty tenuous.
    I would have thought you would
    What's the evidence that Trump voters are a unique coalition of left behind, economically anxious people as opposed to people who have voted Republican at every election for the last 20 years?
    It doesn't really matter. When a politician that someone has strong feelings against is succesful, the reason for that success is always a deficiency on the side of their defeated opponent/campaign.

    Clinton, Corbyn, Remain...
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,778
    edited April 2020
    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    Unfortunately it appears to be accurate, though with the caveat that the the last point on the curve is for week 16, which ended on Sunday 19 April. So we are probably past the peak by now.
    May well be - but the messenger - Ed Conway who once spent an exclusive pre-Budget interview with GO repeatedly focussing on whether he travelled first or second class on the train carries a lot of warning signals.
    My first question - what does the Y axis actually mean?

    hmmm

    "the y-axis is a z-score, so measures standard deviation from the mean, not absolute numbers. this could just as easily signify that UK has a lower volatility in excess deaths and/or a lower 'normal' excess deaths.. kind of a misleading graph if not put into full context"
  • Options
    Breaking

    France says no professional sport including football before September and have cancelled this season
  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,028

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    eadric said:

    kinabalu said:

    eadric said:

    Yes, Sweden is over its peak almost certainly. Both daily deaths and new cases trending gently down.

    https://twitter.com/paul_imanuelsen/status/1255106367276355584?s=21

    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.
    That's what I think too. No mass immunity. And a damaged economy. So the main benefit accruing from their approach is they avoided nanny state. Is this such a big win? Not sure.
    Well also depends, have they carried on other normal healthcare provision? We know in Italy the health system crashed so couldn't do anything in regards to usual life saving work, here it looks like lots of people have stayed away from getting treatment for conditions that can be effectively dealt with and causing issues.
    If people die at home, the NHS is protected...
  • Options
    AlastairMeeksAlastairMeeks Posts: 30,340

    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
    Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.

    The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.

    So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
    We're not disagreeing.
    It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
    Now we are disagreeing. I regard it as far more unlikely that a dramatic and almost unprecedented rise in care home deaths is due to anything other than the spread of a pandemic that is being widely discussed than that either doctors may not have noticed the signs of an infection with a wide range of symptoms or that even mild cases are polishing off our frailest senior citizens.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,808
    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    .

    OllyT said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.

    I think the links are pretty tenuous.
    I would have thought you would
    What's the evidence that Trump voters are a unique coalition of left behind, economically anxious people as opposed to people who have voted Republican at every election for the last 20 years?
    isam said:

    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    .

    OllyT said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.

    I think the links are pretty tenuous.
    I would have thought you would
    The main parallel between Trump and Brexit was that both edged it by appealing to one of people's basest instincts: hatred of the foreigner. The other (ironically) is that both fundamentally nationalistic campaigns were endorsed and most likely helped (knowingly or unknowingly, no-one knows!) by Vladimir Putin and an army of internet bots.
    Spot on!
    I suppose it is oddly refreshing that you admit to the former and consider the latter a possibility, which shows a repulsiveness that is uncharacteristically dressed in the virtue of honesty. Perhaps in your Trumpian way you will later claim you are being sarcastic?
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,302

    Breaking

    France says no professional sport including football before September and have cancelled this season

    They have said, even behind closed doors...but bars / restaurants to open...scratches head.
  • Options
    Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,028
    As an aside, graphs can be fun. I remember learning at university that other animals (elephant, I think was the example) had bigger brains than humans. So to put us top they changed the line to brain mass as a proportion of body mass.

    Unfortunately this put dolphins ahead of us.

    So they changed it to encephalisation (wrinkliness, if memory serves). And then we were the smartest species.
  • Options
    TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 40,384
    TGOHF666 said:

    kinabalu said:

    MattW said:

    kinabalu said:

    MattW said:

    kinabalu said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.
    @kinabalu

    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.

    https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/in-highsight-do-you-think-britain-was-right-or-wrong-to-vote-to-leave-the-eu/

    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."

    And I was commenting on that.
    No, what I said was that although this - lots of Brexiteers liking Trump - may have been true in 2016, I doubt it's true now.
    Enjoying seeing some of the worst people being triggered by Trump is very different from wanting him anywhere near being say PM of the Uk..
    Who mentioned the half witted idea that Trump should be PM of the UK?

    Apart from you that is.
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,059
    edited April 2020

    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    .

    OllyT said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.

    I think the links are pretty tenuous.
    I would have thought you would
    What's the evidence that Trump voters are a unique coalition of left behind, economically anxious people as opposed to people who have voted Republican at every election for the last 20 years?
    isam said:

    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    .

    OllyT said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.

    I think the links are pretty tenuous.
    I would have thought you would
    The main parallel between Trump and Brexit was that both edged it by appealing to one of people's basest instincts: hatred of the foreigner. The other (ironically) is that both fundamentally nationalistic campaigns were endorsed and most likely helped (knowingly or unknowingly, no-one knows!) by Vladimir Putin and an army of internet bots.
    Spot on!
    I suppose it is oddly refreshing that you admit to the former and consider the latter a possibility, which shows a repulsiveness that is uncharacteristically dressed in the virtue of honesty. Perhaps in your Trumpian way you will later claim you are being sarcastic?
    Not at all, I just think you're really wise and worth listening to.
  • Options
    BurgessianBurgessian Posts: 2,469
    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    .

    OllyT said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.

    I think the links are pretty tenuous.
    The charitable view of the Trump supporter in '16 is that they felt they were essentially getting a candidate who, however wacky, would revert to type once in the White House (despite warnings from Romney etc). A bit like how becoming Pope transforms people, apparently. And, anyway, anyone had to be better than Hillary.

    There could be no such charitable view taken of someone who votes Trump in '20.
  • Options
    CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,855
    eadric said:

    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 DCMO said that while the virus is widespread in the community the infected population arriving on an aircraft likely has lower prevalence of the virus than the general population (hello? NYC>LON is one of the most frequently flying routes still in operation - there are currently four 777 in the air) - but once prevalence in the population falls then that will change and other methods may be used.

    It's logical but stupid.

    If Americans can bring COVID to the UK (but Brits can't take it to the USA as non-Americans are barred from entry) that helps undermine the government's other messages on social distancing and so forth.

    Guernsey appears to have Covid under control - instead of ten flights a day from the UK there are now 5 a week and all arrivals go into self quarantine for 14 days upon arrival. And that will likely be the last thing lifted.
  • Options
    TGOHF666TGOHF666 Posts: 2,052

    TGOHF666 said:

    kinabalu said:

    MattW said:

    kinabalu said:

    MattW said:

    kinabalu said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.
    @kinabalu

    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.

    https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/in-highsight-do-you-think-britain-was-right-or-wrong-to-vote-to-leave-the-eu/

    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."

    And I was commenting on that.
    No, what I said was that although this - lots of Brexiteers liking Trump - may have been true in 2016, I doubt it's true now.
    Enjoying seeing some of the worst people being triggered by Trump is very different from wanting him anywhere near being say PM of the Uk..
    Who mentioned the half witted idea that Trump should be PM of the UK?

    Apart from you that is.
    The topic was do Brexiteers support Trump - answer is maybe to a point.

    A bit like SNP voters supporting Gerry Adams - they might love it when he bashes the brits but they wouldn't let him babysit their kids at his family home.
  • Options

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    Unfortunately it appears to be accurate, though with the caveat that the the last point on the curve is for week 16, which ended on Sunday 19 April. So we are probably past the peak by now.
    May well be - but the messenger - Ed Conway who once spent an exclusive pre-Budget interview with GO repeatedly focussing on whether he travelled first or second class on the train carries a lot of warning signals.
    My first question - what does the Y axis actually mean?

    hmmm

    "the y-axis is a z-score, so measures standard deviation from the mean, not absolute numbers. this could just as easily signify that UK has a lower volatility in excess deaths and/or a lower 'normal' excess deaths.. kind of a misleading graph if not put into full context"
    Yes, I suppose there is a good reason for doing this, given that it seems to be a standard statistical technique, but it would be a bit more transparent to use, say, deaths per capita.
  • Options
    Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 33,275
    Johnson has now decided the virus is a “mugger”. On Monday, he explained that “this is the moment we have begun together to wrestle it to the floor”. Which is one way of drawing a veil over the fact he effectively took the mugger to the rugby at Twickenham on 7 March. People say the other parties are soft on crime, but at least they don’t throw 250,000-strong race meetings for it. At least they don’t watch it mug Italy and Spain then leave everyone’s valuables unattended while they bin off some Cobra meetings to finalise a divorce or keep the pubs open or do whatever the Johnson government preferred to do for those lost weeks as we watched the virus coming towards us via the seemingly uninstructive experiences of other countries.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/28/boris-johnson-coronavirus-mug-britain-pm-cabinet
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,778

    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
    Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.

    The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.

    So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
    We're not disagreeing.
    It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
    Now we are disagreeing. I regard it as far more unlikely that a dramatic and almost unprecedented rise in care home deaths is due to anything other than the spread of a pandemic that is being widely discussed than that either doctors may not have noticed the signs of an infection with a wide range of symptoms or that even mild cases are polishing off our frailest senior citizens.
    So you are suggesting that mild cases are killing the elderly? Mild as in barely medically noticeable?

  • Options

    Breaking

    France says no professional sport including football before September and have cancelled this season

    They have said, even behind closed doors...but bars / restaurants to open...scratches head.
    Yes and that must end all european football and makes it near impossible for the UK not to follow
  • Options
    CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,855

    JetBlue Airways will become the first US airline to require passengers to wear face coverings while on flights.

    PPE for cabin crew:

    https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/airasia-unveils-red-ppe-suits-for-cabin-crew?cx_testId=20&cx_testVariant=cx_5&cx_artPos=0#cxrecs_s
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,059
    Scott_xP said:

    Johnson has now decided the virus is a “mugger”. On Monday, he explained that “this is the moment we have begun together to wrestle it to the floor”. Which is one way of drawing a veil over the fact he effectively took the mugger to the rugby at Twickenham on 7 March. People say the other parties are soft on crime, but at least they don’t throw 250,000-strong race meetings for it. At least they don’t watch it mug Italy and Spain then leave everyone’s valuables unattended while they bin off some Cobra meetings to finalise a divorce or keep the pubs open or do whatever the Johnson government preferred to do for those lost weeks as we watched the virus coming towards us via the seemingly uninstructive experiences of other countries.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/28/boris-johnson-coronavirus-mug-britain-pm-cabinet

    First the New Statesman, now he's got the Guardian laying into him
  • Options
    ABZABZ Posts: 441

    TGOHF666 said:
    Unfortunately it appears to be accurate, though with the caveat that the the last point on the curve is for week 16, which ended on Sunday 19 April. So we are probably past the peak by now.
    It depends a bit on how the data are processed though. Is the standard deviation country specific? If the UK showed less variability historically it could lead to a bigger Z-score during the current crisis. Alternatively, if the UK data were (historically) more variable than other countries and the standard deviation was computed across all countries it could also inflate the statistic. The plot may of course be right but without digging much more into the data it's hard to be definitive on the basis of this single tweet!
  • Options
    glwglw Posts: 9,556

    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    Unfortunately it appears to be accurate, though with the caveat that the the last point on the curve is for week 16, which ended on Sunday 19 April. So we are probably past the peak by now.
    May well be - but the messenger - Ed Conway who once spent an exclusive pre-Budget interview with GO repeatedly focussing on whether he travelled first or second class on the train carries a lot of warning signals.
    My first question - what does the Y axis actually mean?

    hmmm

    "the y-axis is a z-score, so measures standard deviation from the mean, not absolute numbers. this could just as easily signify that UK has a lower volatility in excess deaths and/or a lower 'normal' excess deaths.. kind of a misleading graph if not put into full context"
    So hypothetically you would score better this year if only you had had some really bad flu seasons over the last few years. In fact if they were sufficiently deadly enough you might even "win" on this strange chart.
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,976

    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
    Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.

    The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.

    So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
    We're not disagreeing.
    It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
    Nearly all of the unaccounted for excess deaths are in the same areas with community covid deaths. The areas with few covid deaths are not seeing a spike of non covid ones.

    I think it highly likely that nearly all the excess deaths are covid related, whether that is on the Death Certificate or not.
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 40,083
    edited April 2020
    TGOHF666 said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    kinabalu said:

    MattW said:

    kinabalu said:

    MattW said:

    kinabalu said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.
    @kinabalu

    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.

    https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/in-highsight-do-you-think-britain-was-right-or-wrong-to-vote-to-leave-the-eu/

    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."

    And I was commenting on that.
    No, what I said was that although this - lots of Brexiteers liking Trump - may have been true in 2016, I doubt it's true now.
    Enjoying seeing some of the worst people being triggered by Trump is very different from wanting him anywhere near being say PM of the Uk..
    Who mentioned the half witted idea that Trump should be PM of the UK?

    Apart from you that is.
    The topic was do Brexiteers support Trump - answer is maybe to a point.

    A bit like SNP voters supporting Gerry Adams - they might love it when he bashes the brits but they wouldn't let him babysit their kids at his family home.
    Evidence for the latter, please? N. B. The reverse linkage (Tory/Ulster Unionist) is not evidence for it.
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,808
    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    .

    OllyT said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.

    I think the links are pretty tenuous.
    I would have thought you would
    What's the evidence that Trump voters are a unique coalition of left behind, economically anxious people as opposed to people who have voted Republican at every election for the last 20 years?
    It doesn't really matter. When a politician that someone has strong feelings against is succesful, the reason for that success is always a deficiency on the side of their defeated opponent/campaign.

    Clinton, Corbyn, Remain...
    Nor does it remove the possibility that they, or the values that they espouse, are repulsive and will be judged (hopefully) by history as an aberration from the generally accepted norms of decency that representative democracy normally upholds. Populism is having its day in the sun. Like the coronavirus it will eventually be killed by exposure to the forces of light.
  • Options
    TheWhiteRabbitTheWhiteRabbit Posts: 12,388

    Breaking

    France says no professional sport including football before September and have cancelled this season

    I must admit, as a Norwich fan, I would actually think it more unfair for Liverpool not to get the title than for Norwich to avoid relegation.
  • Options
    tysontyson Posts: 6,052

    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.

    All Sweden has shown is that voluntary social distancing rules before the disease becomes endemic can mitigate the spread....

    Sweden is not going for herd...it is simply relying on it's population to be responsible and to hope the infection spreads at a lowish rate
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,576
    This made me laugh. From Toby's Lockdown sceptic site:

    "If you think you’ve got it bad wherever you’re locked down, spare a thought for those trapped at the Tribal Gathering Festival in Panama. Midway through the festival, which was supposed to be an opportunity for Westerners to learn from local indigenous people how to “rebalance” their lives, Panama went into lockdown, making it virtually impossible to leave. As one reader writes: “Imagine being locked down indefinitely with this bunch of self-indulgent, woke, middle class, ‘right on’ wasters – hell on earth!” There are still 40 people trapped on the site."
  • Options
    CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,855

    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
    Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.

    The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.

    So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
    We're not disagreeing.
    It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
    Now we are disagreeing. I regard it as far more unlikely that a dramatic and almost unprecedented rise in care home deaths is due to anything other than the spread of a pandemic that is being widely discussed than that either doctors may not have noticed the signs of an infection with a wide range of symptoms or that even mild cases are polishing off our frailest senior citizens.
    So you are suggesting that mild cases are killing the elderly? Mild as in barely medically noticeable?
    Guernsey CMO observed that COVID-19 can present very differently among the very elderly (and Guernsey is doing lots of testing) - many of whom may have limited comprehension and difficulty in communicating.
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,302
    edited April 2020
    tyson said:

    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.

    All Sweden has shown is that voluntary social distancing rules before the disease becomes endemic can mitigate the spread....

    Sweden is not going for herd...it is simply relying on it's population to be responsible and to hope the infection spreads at a lowish rate
    I didn't say they were. I was wondering why it is the case that their healthcare system appears not to have crashed, despite starting from an even lower capacity than the UK.

    I genuinely have no idea. Have they also continued with routine medical cover? Again, no idea? Because all these things factor in to the pro / cons of their approach.
  • Options
    TimTTimT Posts: 6,328
    rcs1000 said:

    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?

    Initial viral dose is probably very important in COVID.

    Ironically, given the Clancy book, it is thought that even a single Ebola virus can be sufficient to cause infection. Here's an Osterholm paper from 2015 that reports it as <10. https://mbio.asm.org/content/6/2/e00137-15
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,808
    isam said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Johnson has now decided the virus is a “mugger”. On Monday, he explained that “this is the moment we have begun together to wrestle it to the floor”. Which is one way of drawing a veil over the fact he effectively took the mugger to the rugby at Twickenham on 7 March. People say the other parties are soft on crime, but at least they don’t throw 250,000-strong race meetings for it. At least they don’t watch it mug Italy and Spain then leave everyone’s valuables unattended while they bin off some Cobra meetings to finalise a divorce or keep the pubs open or do whatever the Johnson government preferred to do for those lost weeks as we watched the virus coming towards us via the seemingly uninstructive experiences of other countries.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/28/boris-johnson-coronavirus-mug-britain-pm-cabinet

    First the New Statesman, now he's got the Guardian laying into him
    ..but not the Express (aka Diana Daily), Daily Brexitograph or Russia Today!
  • Options
    AlastairMeeksAlastairMeeks Posts: 30,340

    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
    Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.

    The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.

    So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
    We're not disagreeing.
    It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
    Now we are disagreeing. I regard it as far more unlikely that a dramatic and almost unprecedented rise in care home deaths is due to anything other than the spread of a pandemic that is being widely discussed than that either doctors may not have noticed the signs of an infection with a wide range of symptoms or that even mild cases are polishing off our frailest senior citizens.
    So you are suggesting that mild cases are killing the elderly? Mild as in barely medically noticeable?

    I proceed from the following assertions and assumptions. Feel free to tell me where you disagree:

    1) The almost unprecedented and sharp rise in deaths in care homes will probably have a single main explanation.

    2) The obvious explanation for that is the pandemic that has been bursting forth here there and everywhere.

    3) Old people in care homes are weak.

    4) Covid-19 presents in a variety of ways that are not fully understood by doctors, and may not be for some time.

    5) Doctors in the UK are averagely competent.

    Taking all those together, I take the view that the cause is Covid-19, that doctors are failing to spot all the cases in care homes and the reason is likely to be connected with the initial weakness of the patients concerned, resulting in the disease polishing them off more quickly, making it harder for doctors to spot.

    I'm open to other explanations and very definitely keen to see more hard evidence, but I'll take some shifting from assumption 2 in the present circumstances.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,473

    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    .

    OllyT said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.

    I think the links are pretty tenuous.
    I would have thought you would
    What's the evidence that Trump voters are a unique coalition of left behind, economically anxious people as opposed to people who have voted Republican at every election for the last 20 years?
    It doesn't really matter. When a politician that someone has strong feelings against is succesful, the reason for that success is always a deficiency on the side of their defeated opponent/campaign.

    Clinton, Corbyn, Remain...
    Nor does it remove the possibility that they, or the values that they espouse, are repulsive and will be judged (hopefully) by history as an aberration from the generally accepted norms of decency that representative democracy normally upholds. Populism is having its day in the sun. Like the coronavirus it will eventually be killed by exposure to the forces of light.
    Yep. Certainly of the Trump kind. I have to believe it's an aberration. I do believe it's an aberration.
  • Options
    ABZ said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    Unfortunately it appears to be accurate, though with the caveat that the the last point on the curve is for week 16, which ended on Sunday 19 April. So we are probably past the peak by now.
    It depends a bit on how the data are processed though. Is the standard deviation country specific? If the UK showed less variability historically it could lead to a bigger Z-score during the current crisis. Alternatively, if the UK data were (historically) more variable than other countries and the standard deviation was computed across all countries it could also inflate the statistic. The plot may of course be right but without digging much more into the data it's hard to be definitive on the basis of this single tweet!
    Yes, fair comment. I've been digging around on the Euromomo site, but must admit to being very little the wiser.
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,059
    edited April 2020

    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    Alistair said:

    isam said:

    .

    OllyT said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.

    I think the links are pretty tenuous.
    I would have thought you would
    What's the evidence that Trump voters are a unique coalition of left behind, economically anxious people as opposed to people who have voted Republican at every election for the last 20 years?
    It doesn't really matter. When a politician that someone has strong feelings against is succesful, the reason for that success is always a deficiency on the side of their defeated opponent/campaign.

    Clinton, Corbyn, Remain...
    Nor does it remove the possibility that they, or the values that they espouse, are repulsive and will be judged (hopefully) by history as an aberration from the generally accepted norms of decency that representative democracy normally upholds. Populism is having its day in the sun. Like the coronavirus it will eventually be killed by exposure to the forces of light.
    Not really the point. It happens when those you consider repulsive lose too. Very few people are gracious in defeat, or acknowledge they were beaten by the better candidate, they are too self-important. They think it must be something wrong with them, their campaign, or failing that, skullduggery
  • Options
    Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,808
    The days when a proper leader was in charge.
  • Options
    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 27,139
    tyson said:

    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.

    All Sweden has shown is that voluntary social distancing rules before the disease becomes endemic can mitigate the spread....

    Sweden is not going for herd...it is simply relying on it's population to be responsible and to hope the infection spreads at a lowish rate
    Why can't that be done in other countries? Unless population density is the main issue.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 63,105
    .

    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
    Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.

    The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.

    So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
    We're not disagreeing.
    It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
    Now we are disagreeing. I regard it as far more unlikely that a dramatic and almost unprecedented rise in care home deaths is due to anything other than the spread of a pandemic that is being widely discussed than that either doctors may not have noticed the signs of an infection with a wide range of symptoms or that even mild cases are polishing off our frailest senior citizens.
    So you are suggesting that mild cases are killing the elderly? Mild as in barely medically noticeable?

    No - it's more likely that if a resident had a fever and died of heart failure, a proportion of doctors will simply put heart failure down as cause of death.

    Remember that up until very recently, there was minimal testing for Covid accessible by care homes.
  • Options
    TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 40,384
    https://twitter.com/LOS_Fisher/status/1255119734858801153?s=20

    Tr: we've fcuked up, we need more fleg to distract the punters.
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,302

    This made me laugh. From Toby's Lockdown sceptic site:

    "If you think you’ve got it bad wherever you’re locked down, spare a thought for those trapped at the Tribal Gathering Festival in Panama. Midway through the festival, which was supposed to be an opportunity for Westerners to learn from local indigenous people how to “rebalance” their lives, Panama went into lockdown, making it virtually impossible to leave. As one reader writes: “Imagine being locked down indefinitely with this bunch of self-indulgent, woke, middle class, ‘right on’ wasters – hell on earth!” There are still 40 people trapped on the site."

    I have actually been where that is being held, it is incredibly beautiful. But Christ alive, just been on the website for this Woke-Fest....I am not even sure Titania Mcgrath is right-on enough to attend.
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,059
    South West (ft Cheltenham) still bringing up the rear
  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,028

    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
    Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.

    The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.

    So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
    We're not disagreeing.
    It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
    Now we are disagreeing. I regard it as far more unlikely that a dramatic and almost unprecedented rise in care home deaths is due to anything other than the spread of a pandemic that is being widely discussed than that either doctors may not have noticed the signs of an infection with a wide range of symptoms or that even mild cases are polishing off our frailest senior citizens.
    So you are suggesting that mild cases are killing the elderly? Mild as in barely medically noticeable?
    "Mild" in the case of this virus has always meant way more severe than most people would understand the natural meaning of 'mild' to convey.

    https://www.caymancompass.com/2020/04/24/divers-face-long-term-health-impact-from-covid-19/

    Long term lung damage from 'mild' cases in divers. Probably enough to kill a frail elder person.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,778
    edited April 2020
    Foxy said:

    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
    Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.

    The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.

    So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
    We're not disagreeing.
    It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
    Nearly all of the unaccounted for excess deaths are in the same areas with community covid deaths. The areas with few covid deaths are not seeing a spike of non covid ones.

    I think it highly likely that nearly all the excess deaths are covid related, whether that is on the Death Certificate or not.
    The question is what does "related" mean? Some people seem to think undiagnosed COVID, others hospital avoidance etc?

    We need data from the ONS, on all causes of death, I think.
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,976

    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
    Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.

    The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.

    So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
    We're not disagreeing.
    It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
    Now we are disagreeing. I regard it as far more unlikely that a dramatic and almost unprecedented rise in care home deaths is due to anything other than the spread of a pandemic that is being widely discussed than that either doctors may not have noticed the signs of an infection with a wide range of symptoms or that even mild cases are polishing off our frailest senior citizens.
    So you are suggesting that mild cases are killing the elderly? Mild as in barely medically noticeable?

    Yes, that is what GPs are reporting on various medical sites. Old folk often don't spike much of a temperature etc, just go off their legs and deteriorate quickly. It is only when contacts start with symptoms that the penny drops.
  • Options
    tysontyson Posts: 6,052

    tyson said:

    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.

    All Sweden has shown is that voluntary social distancing rules before the disease becomes endemic can mitigate the spread....

    Sweden is not going for herd...it is simply relying on it's population to be responsible and to hope the infection spreads at a lowish rate
    I didn't say they were. I was wondering why it is the case that their healthcare system appears not to have crashed, despite starting from an even lower capacity than the UK.

    I genuinely have no idea. Have they also continued with routine medical cover? Again, no idea? Because all these things factor in to the pro / cons of their approach.
    Because voluntary social distancing works in a responsible country....and the virus was not endemic. Also, like the UK, the elderly are dying in large numbers in care homes....

    So, the health system is still able to treat Covid patients, even with a low number of ICU beds....

    What is interesting too is how some 3rd world countries have managed to control the spread
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,059

    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
    Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.

    The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.

    So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
    We're not disagreeing.
    It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
    Now we are disagreeing. I regard it as far more unlikely that a dramatic and almost unprecedented rise in care home deaths is due to anything other than the spread of a pandemic that is being widely discussed than that either doctors may not have noticed the signs of an infection with a wide range of symptoms or that even mild cases are polishing off our frailest senior citizens.
    So you are suggesting that mild cases are killing the elderly? Mild as in barely medically noticeable?

    I proceed from the following assertions and assumptions. Feel free to tell me where you disagree:

    1) The almost unprecedented and sharp rise in deaths in care homes will probably have a single main explanation.

    2) The obvious explanation for that is the pandemic that has been bursting forth here there and everywhere.

    3) Old people in care homes are weak.

    4) Covid-19 presents in a variety of ways that are not fully understood by doctors, and may not be for some time.

    5) Doctors in the UK are averagely competent.

    Taking all those together, I take the view that the cause is Covid-19, that doctors are failing to spot all the cases in care homes and the reason is likely to be connected with the initial weakness of the patients concerned, resulting in the disease polishing them off more quickly, making it harder for doctors to spot.

    I'm open to other explanations and very definitely keen to see more hard evidence, but I'll take some shifting from assumption 2 in the present circumstances.
    Yes, Without wanting to be cruel or insensitive, sorry if it seems so, I cant imagine those in care homes with dementia or the like, who are unable to remember what they did 5 minutes ago, are dying of a broken heart because their family hasn't visited for a fortnight because of lockdown.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,473

    kinabalu said:

    Foxy said:

    kinabalu said:

    eadric said:

    kinabalu said:

    eadric said:

    Yes, Sweden is over its peak almost certainly. Both daily deaths and new cases trending gently down.

    https://twitter.com/paul_imanuelsen/status/1255106367276355584?s=21

    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.
    That's what I think too. No mass immunity. And a damaged economy. So the main benefit accruing from their approach is they avoided nanny state. Is this such a big win? Not sure.
    Well also depends, have they carried on other normal healthcare provision? We know in Italy the health system crashed so couldn't do anything in regards to usual life saving work, here it looks like lots of people have stayed away from getting treatment for conditions that can be effectively dealt with and causing issues.
    Good point. I gather we have 4,000 empty hospital beds that would otherwise be occupied by patients. What is happening to these people now? What will the consequences be down the line?
  • Options
    Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 4,819
    Comparing countries is fraught - different social aspects, different distribution of population, diferent habits, different demographics, the works. But there are a few countries where direct comparisons can be drawn.

    One such was East vs West Germany - a single country split in two and subject to differing economic systems. Comparing East German and West German economic outcomes was valid.

    Comparing Sweden with Belgium (or San Marino, or South Korea, or Austria, or Italy, or Ireland) is equally dodgy. But it is easily comparable with its immediate neighbours. Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have long been entangled together with shared histories - similar societies, similar distribution of people, similar languages, similar social habits. Sweden and Norway last separated in 1905.

    Denmark has a border with the rest of the European masses, and is very close and entangled with Germany and the Netherlands. It also has a significantly denser population than the other two.

    Swedish population is 1.906 times the population of Norway. Scaling up cumulative deaths in Norway (locked down) and Sweden (restrictions but not fully locked down), with Norwegian deaths scaled up by 1.906 times gives a useful comparison of the effects of a lockdown, with as many other confounding effects avoided.

  • Options
    Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,028
    Mr. Tyson, having younger populations may have helped such countries significantly.

    Of course, Korea and Japan have shown that even nations with elderly populations can still take effective action (though I believe it's rising now in the latter). I wonder if nations more affected by SARS/swine flu benefited from having greater plans and provisions following those diseases.

    Also worth remembering that this disease could be the 'lesser' evil before a worse pestilence emerges. This is a serious matter, but it could be a lot worse. And it might be, next time.
  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,028

    Comparing countries is fraught - different social aspects, different distribution of population, diferent habits, different demographics, the works. But there are a few countries where direct comparisons can be drawn.

    One such was East vs West Germany - a single country split in two and subject to differing economic systems. Comparing East German and West German economic outcomes was valid.

    Comparing Sweden with Belgium (or San Marino, or South Korea, or Austria, or Italy, or Ireland) is equally dodgy. But it is easily comparable with its immediate neighbours. Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have long been entangled together with shared histories - similar societies, similar distribution of people, similar languages, similar social habits. Sweden and Norway last separated in 1905.

    Denmark has a border with the rest of the European masses, and is very close and entangled with Germany and the Netherlands. It also has a significantly denser population than the other two.

    Swedish population is 1.906 times the population of Norway. Scaling up cumulative deaths in Norway (locked down) and Sweden (restrictions but not fully locked down), with Norwegian deaths scaled up by 1.906 times gives a useful comparison of the effects of a lockdown, with as many other confounding effects avoided.

    Sweden should, ceteris paribus, be somewhere between Norway and Denmark's curve.
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    Nigelb said:

    .

    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
    Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.

    The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.

    So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
    We're not disagreeing.
    It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
    Now we are disagreeing. I regard it as far more unlikely that a dramatic and almost unprecedented rise in care home deaths is due to anything other than the spread of a pandemic that is being widely discussed than that either doctors may not have noticed the signs of an infection with a wide range of symptoms or that even mild cases are polishing off our frailest senior citizens.
    So you are suggesting that mild cases are killing the elderly? Mild as in barely medically noticeable?

    No - it's more likely that if a resident had a fever and died of heart failure, a proportion of doctors will simply put heart failure down as cause of death.

    Remember that up until very recently, there was minimal testing for Covid accessible by care homes.
    I have mentioned my son in law's father on here a few times and he is now in crisis needing care and only one nursing home in the whole of Conwy CC is available, and it is reported they have had a covid death

    The social services and GP practice are carrying out an urgent assessment following multiple falls at home, often more than once a day, and increasing confusion and it is simply unsafe for him to be in his home. I expect that either he will be hospitalised or a care home will have to be found for him, but what a position to be in that he cannot be provided with a safe envirionment, even when his children can and will pay his care home services privately
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    tysontyson Posts: 6,052
    Andy_JS said:

    tyson said:

    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.

    All Sweden has shown is that voluntary social distancing rules before the disease becomes endemic can mitigate the spread....

    Sweden is not going for herd...it is simply relying on it's population to be responsible and to hope the infection spreads at a lowish rate
    Why can't that be done in other countries? Unless population density is the main issue.
    Large parts of the UK- the shires, Devon, Dorset and the like...I think all these areas could have managed on the Swedish approach....

    it's our big conurbations where many people rely on public transport that would have been reduced to carnage with this approach, and where the infection rate was already endemic pre-lockdown....
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    SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,546

    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
    Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.

    The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.

    So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
    We're not disagreeing.
    It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
    Now we are disagreeing. I regard it as far more unlikely that a dramatic and almost unprecedented rise in care home deaths is due to anything other than the spread of a pandemic that is being widely discussed than that either doctors may not have noticed the signs of an infection with a wide range of symptoms or that even mild cases are polishing off our frailest senior citizens.
    So you are suggesting that mild cases are killing the elderly? Mild as in barely medically noticeable?

    I've previously had the (dis)pleasure of trying to use death records (ONS, records from death certificates) to look at cause of death. This was in a population where we also had HES (hospital) records, so we knew what underlying conditions people had been hospitalised for. The cause of death data were pretty poor at recording the underlying cause of death (as opposed to the immediate cause). 30-40% were missing any mention even of underlying conditions that were inevitably going to lead to death. You'd think that recording should get better for coronavirus as it should be on everyone's mind, but I wouldn't bet on it. It may be that those completing the certificates are reluctant to put it on without a confirmed test.
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    hamiltonacehamiltonace Posts: 642
    isam said:

    South West (ft Cheltenham) still bringing up the rear
    There are 3 factors that impact the death rate. The number who are infected, the health of the people infected and the quality of the healthcare support.
    Our lockdown was a little late and had some leakage especially with no checks on incoming flights. Lack of testing meant that no-one knew who was infected until they were in the ICU.
    We are obese and unhealthy.
    Our NHS tried hard but worried too much about overload so sent care home patients back untested and stopped many coming in when they needed to.

    Few positives so far. Lets hope we do better in next few months.




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    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,576
    “a clear picture is elusive, as the virus acts like no pathogen humanity has ever seen.”

    https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/we-still-dont-know-how-the-coronavirus-is-killing-us.html
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    rcs1000 said:

    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?

    Does Ebola spread via respiratory droplets?
    The version in the book had been aerosolized by iran.
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    Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,028
    Mr. Tyson, a geographically distinct approach might well be wise. I do wonder if people would wear it.
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    FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,976

    Foxy said:

    isam said:

    TGOHF666 said:
    The statistic showing only 30% of care home deaths were from Covid in the last week of data must be wrong in my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't just put the numbers in the wrong way round!
    30% of care home deaths where Covid-19 has been given as a contributory cause. It may well be that there was insufficient evidence in relation to the other 70%.
    Where COVID19 was on the death certificate as (of the) contributory causes of death. Or in the coroners report.

    The criteria for being on the death certificate is the clinical judgement of the doctor signing it. A test is not necessary.

    So if a doctor thought it was COVID19, it goes down as a COVID19 related.
    We're not disagreeing.
    It seems unlikely to me that given the above, a vast number of COVID19 deaths are being missed/miss-assigned. That would require doctors spread across the country to be ignoring symptoms in front of them.
    Nearly all of the unaccounted for excess deaths are in the same areas with community covid deaths. The areas with few covid deaths are not seeing a spike of non covid ones.

    I think it highly likely that nearly all the excess deaths are covid related, whether that is on the Death Certificate or not.
    The question is what does "related" mean? Some people seem to think undiagnosed COVID, others hospital avoidance etc?

    We need data from the ONS, on all causes of death, I think.
    If it was hospital avoidance then I would expect that everywhere affected by lockdown, rather than localities with confirmed Covid-19 deaths.

    https://www.rgptoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/COVID-19-Presentations-in-Frail-Older-Adults-U-of-C-and-U-fo-T.pdf

    This Canadian guide to diagnosis in the elderly confirms that even with severe infections that temperature and cough may well be absent.
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    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,028
    Friend (On her way back from shopping I assume) confirms they're testing in Macclesfield. Long lines, military there.
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    eristdooferistdoof Posts: 4,916
    eadric said:

    The head of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases has called on Germans to stay at home as much as possible after new figures showed the coronavirus infection rate had increased.

    Now if the UK loosen lockdown, then tells the public this isn't going so well, please go back to staying at home as much as possible.

    UUUUUUUUUU------TURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRN

    CONFUSION

    CHAOS

    SHAMBLES

    A shambles across Europe, to be fair.

    How can France open up as Germany locks down harder?!

    Inter alia, this is the death of Schengen for the foreseeable
    France had much more stringent rules. Eg. to go out you needed to have a prefilled form, maximum 1 hour, not more than 1KM from home.

    Germany is not locking down harder, actually the opposite, but the request today was that we should keep to the rules.
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    OllyTOllyT Posts: 4,925
    kinabalu said:

    MattW said:

    kinabalu said:

    MattW said:

    kinabalu said:

    OllyT said:

    kamski said:

    TGOHF666 said:

    eristdoof said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    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.
    @kinabalu

    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.

    https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/in-highsight-do-you-think-britain-was-right-or-wrong-to-vote-to-leave-the-eu/

    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."

    And I was commenting on that.
    No, what I said was that although this - lots of Brexiteers liking Trump - may have been true in 2016, I doubt it's true now.
    I think that is true - let's just hope their judgement of Brexit doesn't prove to be as bad as their judgement of Trump.
This discussion has been closed.