Germany aren't entertaining the idea of opening pubs, clubs, cinema, etc u til the end of August.
Opening Spoons in 4-5 weeks seems bonkers idea.
However in Italy they are reopening bars in June. And possibly in France and Spain too? And definitely Czech Republic 8 June.
22 June is plausible albeit optimistic for UK
Pubs aren't just pubs though. A quiet country pub with large garfen and generally quiet. Yep. City centre Spoons with packed rooms. Nope.
Agreed it may take a while for the City pub/bar scene on a Thursday to return to what is was in February!
If you're talking about the Square Mile then it probably never will.
Half the office space in central London will be surplus to requirements at the end of all of this - and so will many of the businesses that supported those who used to occupy it. Working from home should disperse a decent slice of London's economic activity out into the Home Counties (and, in the fullness of time, the remainder of the country.) It should do more for rebalancing than any number of Government initiatives.
I am sure that is right. This will apply to our other City Centres. The night economy of Newcastle based around stag and hen parties is not coming back soon.
Depends on availability/effectiveness of vaccines, treatment regimes, contact tracing. Eventually, people will want to socialise again as soon as they feel it is safe to do so.
Yes. Announcing the death of big cities is over dramatic. New York City boomed in the 1920s, after Spanish flu
Young people will Still want to meet young people. Restaurants and bars will thrive again, in time, because humans like socialising. The allures of working from home will fade, and for many they won’t exist. But yes there will be a large short-medium term hit to big cities across the world, especially the West
Unless we get a vaccine quick.
It's notable that the 1968 flu epidemic killed 80,000 people in the UK and yet it didn't seem to change things very much. The 1969 hippy festivals for example went ahead as far as I know.
I guess a major factor is that this is novel and in some senses weird (in that medics are still finding horrible ways it kills your organs etc)
So the updated evidence contradicts the claim Raab made at today's 5pm briefing, namely that a very recent increase in cases in Germany supported our Government's case for not easing measures.
Germany aren't entertaining the idea of opening pubs, clubs, cinema, etc u til the end of August.
Opening Spoons in 4-5 weeks seems bonkers idea.
However in Italy they are reopening bars in June. And possibly in France and Spain too? And definitely Czech Republic 8 June.
22 June is plausible albeit optimistic for UK
Pubs aren't just pubs though. A quiet country pub with large garfen and generally quiet. Yep. City centre Spoons with packed rooms. Nope.
Agreed it may take a while for the City pub/bar scene on a Thursday to return to what is was in February!
If you're talking about the Square Mile then it probably never will.
Half the office space in central London will be surplus to requirements at the end of all of this - and so will many of the businesses that supported those who used to occupy it. Working from home should disperse a decent slice of London's economic activity out into the Home Counties (and, in the fullness of time, the remainder of the country.) It should do more for rebalancing than any number of Government initiatives.
I am sure that is right. This will apply to our other City Centres. The night economy of Newcastle based around stag and hen parties is not coming back soon.
Depends on availability/effectiveness of vaccines, treatment regimes, contact tracing. Eventually, people will want to socialise again as soon as they feel it is safe to do so.
Yes. Announcing the death of big cities is over dramatic. New York City boomed in the 1920s, after Spanish flu
Young people will Still want to meet young people. Restaurants and bars will thrive again, in time, because humans like socialising. The allures of working from home will fade, and for many they won’t exist. But yes there will be a large short-medium term hit to big cities across the world, especially the West
Unless we get a vaccine quick.
Indeed. We may see the equivalent of an hedonistic new Jazz Age down the line. 60s 90s 20s. It's about time anyways. But there'll be a few years of relative monasticism and retrenchment to bear first.
Germany aren't entertaining the idea of opening pubs, clubs, cinema, etc u til the end of August.
Opening Spoons in 4-5 weeks seems bonkers idea.
However in Italy they are reopening bars in June. And possibly in France and Spain too? And definitely Czech Republic 8 June.
22 June is plausible albeit optimistic for UK
Pubs aren't just pubs though. A quiet country pub with large garfen and generally quiet. Yep. City centre Spoons with packed rooms. Nope.
Agreed it may take a while for the City pub/bar scene on a Thursday to return to what is was in February!
If you're talking about the Square Mile then it probably never will.
Half the office space in central London will be surplus to requirements at the end of all of this - and so will many of the businesses that supported those who used to occupy it. Working from home should disperse a decent slice of London's economic activity out into the Home Counties (and, in the fullness of time, the remainder of the country.) It should do more for rebalancing than any number of Government initiatives.
I am sure that is right. This will apply to our other City Centres. The night economy of Newcastle based around stag and hen parties is not coming back soon.
Depends on availability/effectiveness of vaccines, treatment regimes, contact tracing. Eventually, people will want to socialise again as soon as they feel it is safe to do so.
Yes. Announcing the death of big cities is over dramatic. New York City boomed in the 1920s, after Spanish flu
Young people will Still want to meet young people. Restaurants and bars will thrive again, in time, because humans like socialising. The allures of working from home will fade, and for many they won’t exist. But yes there will be a large short-medium term hit to big cities across the world, especially the West
Unless we get a vaccine quick.
Of course the cities aren't going to just keel over. Nor will all of that office space be simply vacated overnight - much of it will still be needed. But nor will the working from home phenomenon be transitory.
For a great many businesses and employees alike, working from home for all or at least some of the week represents an enormous potential saving - in terms of office costs for the businesses, and of both commuting costs and wasted time and emotional stress for the employees. It also gives a lot of people a big chance to redress their work-life balance. In future, companies which offer flexible working will also have an advantage when it comes to attracting and retaining those staff who have scarce and sought-after skills.
In the long run, urban cores will still have their cultural pull - the size and the variety of nightlife venues, theatres, museums, universities and so on - as well as those knowledge economy businesses that continue to bother to maintain office space in them. But some economic activity is bound to shift permanently out into the suburbs and beyond.
So the updated evidence contradicts the claim Raab made at today's 5pm briefing, namely that a very recent increase in cases in Germany supported our Government's case for not easing measures.
Well from 6pm yesterday,
Germans urged to stay at home amid fears Covid-19 infection rate is rising again
And as you can see from the chart, the rate had been increasing over the past few days as they had relaxed measures. So not exactly telling massive porkies is he.
Now that number has been updated today (and it is only an estimate). We will have to see if it stays there for the next few days.
Germany aren't entertaining the idea of opening pubs, clubs, cinema, etc u til the end of August.
Opening Spoons in 4-5 weeks seems bonkers idea.
However in Italy they are reopening bars in June. And possibly in France and Spain too? And definitely Czech Republic 8 June.
22 June is plausible albeit optimistic for UK
Pubs aren't just pubs though. A quiet country pub with large garfen and generally quiet. Yep. City centre Spoons with packed rooms. Nope.
Agreed it may take a while for the City pub/bar scene on a Thursday to return to what is was in February!
If you're talking about the Square Mile then it probably never will.
Half the office space in central London will be surplus to requirements at the end of all of this - and so will many of the businesses that supported those who used to occupy it. Working from home should disperse a decent slice of London's economic activity out into the Home Counties (and, in the fullness of time, the remainder of the country.) It should do more for rebalancing than any number of Government initiatives.
Large companies are starting to get misty eyed at the thought of cutting huge amounts off their fixed costs, and employees are similarly enticed by being able to ditch their commute, a chunk of their annual clothing expenses (not to mention dispensing with personal grooming), and - as you say - potentially live somewhere a whole lot cheaper into the bargain, at least some of the time.
Many of my colleagues in their 20s went back to their parents' as soon as we went to homeworking. If they stayed there after lockdown, they could be able to afford house purchases years earlier than would otherwise be possible.
Anecdotally, most companies seem to be coping far better than they would've thought last year. However, it's unclear how resilient we are to long term culture effects, like how you manage a business where customer service is paramount, if you can't tell get all your employees together and drill that into them. Over time, you just end up with a collection of individuals, rather than a functioning and coherent team.
Also, we've effectively frozen our summer internship program, because we can't see how we can onboard and train a bunch of students who need a lot of individual attention, remotely. Recruitment of experienced hires is also frozen until the lockdown ends. And we're not really sure how we'd manage our new graduates come September, either. So I think jury still out until those problems are a bit closer to resolved - it works in the short run, but some of the longer term stuff is still untested.
There will still be offices, but they just won’t accommodate all the staff. Lots of people will go to a hybrid model I think 2-3 days in, 2-3 days at home.
if it was not form the WHO then it would have more credibility, but that sead, it seems that closing schools (under 10s at least) was pointless. Sweden still does not have a signal death in anybody under 20 from COVID and there schools are open
I've had a root around for UK stats on this issue and found a page for provisional death totals from Covid-19 as of 17 April, published by the ONS for England and Wales. Unfortunately the information provided isn't very fine-grained; the breakdown given by age is as follows:
0-14 years - 2 15-44 years - 227 45-64 years - 2,193 65-74 years - 3,294 75-84 years - 6,497 85+ years - 6,899
87% of all fatalities were therefore amongst patients aged 65 or over, which seems broadly comparable with recent statistics I accessed for Italy (broken down into slightly different age cohorts, which showed that 96% of deaths there were amongst the over-60s.)
The figure for the under 15s is 0.01%.
Thanks for going to the truble of finding those numbers, I had looked quickly but could not find then for the UK, but they also match broadly the numbers for Sweden.
I much as must be sounding like a broken record, please, please, Please, can we open up the schools, not force anybody to send there kids there but let those who wish to send there kids to school to do so.
If we're keeping social distancing for adults but not for children how do you maintain safeguarding and ensure social distancing at the school gates for primary school children?
At pick up time in the school yard for my daughter it is crowded with adults waiting for their children to be released - and at least at my daughter's age the teachers won't let the child leave the building until they see an authorised parent there to pick up the child.
Germany aren't entertaining the idea of opening pubs, clubs, cinema, etc u til the end of August.
Opening Spoons in 4-5 weeks seems bonkers idea.
However in Italy they are reopening bars in June. And possibly in France and Spain too? And definitely Czech Republic 8 June.
22 June is plausible albeit optimistic for UK
Pubs aren't just pubs though. A quiet country pub with large garfen and generally quiet. Yep. City centre Spoons with packed rooms. Nope.
Agreed it may take a while for the City pub/bar scene on a Thursday to return to what is was in February!
If you're talking about the Square Mile then it probably never will.
Half the office space in central London will be surplus to requirements at the end of all of this - and so will many of the businesses that supported those who used to occupy it. Working from home should disperse a decent slice of London's economic activity out into the Home Counties (and, in the fullness of time, the remainder of the country.) It should do more for rebalancing than any number of Government initiatives.
Large companies are starting to get misty eyed at the thought of cutting huge amounts off their fixed costs, and employees are similarly enticed by being able to ditch their commute, a chunk of their annual clothing expenses (not to mention dispensing with personal grooming), and - as you say - potentially live somewhere a whole lot cheaper into the bargain, at least some of the time.
Many of my colleagues in their 20s went back to their parents' as soon as we went to homeworking. If they stayed there after lockdown, they could be able to afford house purchases years earlier than would otherwise be possible.
Anecdotally, most companies seem to be coping far better than they would've thought last year. However, it's unclear how resilient we are to long term culture effects, like how you manage a business where customer service is paramount, if you can't tell get all your employees together and drill that into them. Over time, you just end up with a collection of individuals, rather than a functioning and coherent team.
Also, we've effectively frozen our summer internship program, because we can't see how we can onboard and train a bunch of students who need a lot of individual attention, remotely. Recruitment of experienced hires is also frozen until the lockdown ends. And we're not really sure how we'd manage our new graduates come September, either. So I think jury still out until those problems are a bit closer to resolved - it works in the short run, but some of the longer term stuff is still untested.
As I suggested in the previous thread, I think that home working patterns going forward will vary considerably between office-based businesses in London and other urban cores. Some employers will still want to have their people coming into the office full-time, but I reckon they'll be in the minority. Ditto those who ditch their central offices more-or-less entirely and perhaps just maintain a small central IT function and/or a nominal registered office.
Inbetween will be those that have people working part-time in the office and part-time at home, and those that have employees working most of the time at home but maintain meeting rooms for occasional get-togethers. One would suspect that those two groups of businesses will be the most numerous going forward.
We will be in the latter category. We’ve found we just don’t need an office; the plan is to look into meeting spaces near our ‘virtual office’ address.
Germany aren't entertaining the idea of opening pubs, clubs, cinema, etc u til the end of August.
Opening Spoons in 4-5 weeks seems bonkers idea.
However in Italy they are reopening bars in June. And possibly in France and Spain too? And definitely Czech Republic 8 June.
22 June is plausible albeit optimistic for UK
Pubs aren't just pubs though. A quiet country pub with large garfen and generally quiet. Yep. City centre Spoons with packed rooms. Nope.
Agreed it may take a while for the City pub/bar scene on a Thursday to return to what is was in February!
If you're talking about the Square Mile then it probably never will.
Half the office space in central London will be surplus to requirements at the end of all of this - and so will many of the businesses that supported those who used to occupy it. Working from home should disperse a decent slice of London's economic activity out into the Home Counties (and, in the fullness of time, the remainder of the country.) It should do more for rebalancing than any number of Government initiatives.
Large companies are starting to get misty eyed at the thought of cutting huge amounts off their fixed costs, and employees are similarly enticed by being able to ditch their commute, a chunk of their annual clothing expenses (not to mention dispensing with personal grooming), and - as you say - potentially live somewhere a whole lot cheaper into the bargain, at least some of the time.
Many of my colleagues in their 20s went back to their parents' as soon as we went to homeworking. If they stayed there after lockdown, they could be able to afford house purchases years earlier than would otherwise be possible.
Anecdotally, most companies seem to be coping far better than they would've thought last year. However, it's unclear how resilient we are to long term culture effects, like how you manage a business where customer service is paramount, if you can't tell get all your employees together and drill that into them. Over time, you just end up with a collection of individuals, rather than a functioning and coherent team.
Also, we've effectively frozen our summer internship program, because we can't see how we can onboard and train a bunch of students who need a lot of individual attention, remotely. Recruitment of experienced hires is also frozen until the lockdown ends. And we're not really sure how we'd manage our new graduates come September, either. So I think jury still out until those problems are a bit closer to resolved - it works in the short run, but some of the longer term stuff is still untested.
There will still be offices, but they just won’t accommodate all the staff. Lots of people will go to a hybrid model I think 2-3 days in, 2-3 days at home.
You're clearly biased towards your own preference, but to be fair it does make a certain amount of sense as a best-of-both-worlds compromise.
Flexible working trends were on the rise anyway, and this can only accelerate that. One comment we had from a company director was how much easier this makes it for people returning from maternity leave.
It poses an interesting problem. If you had this, didn't know or weren't tested, then you pick up say a nasty cold and think oh crap I might have CV, so you go to get tested, does this mean you may well come back positive and self isolation etc that goes with that.
Germany aren't entertaining the idea of opening pubs, clubs, cinema, etc u til the end of August.
Opening Spoons in 4-5 weeks seems bonkers idea.
However in Italy they are reopening bars in June. And possibly in France and Spain too? And definitely Czech Republic 8 June.
22 June is plausible albeit optimistic for UK
Pubs aren't just pubs though. A quiet country pub with large garfen and generally quiet. Yep. City centre Spoons with packed rooms. Nope.
Agreed it may take a while for the City pub/bar scene on a Thursday to return to what is was in February!
If you're talking about the Square Mile then it probably never will.
Half the office space in central London will be surplus to requirements at the end of all of this - and so will many of the businesses that supported those who used to occupy it. Working from home should disperse a decent slice of London's economic activity out into the Home Counties (and, in the fullness of time, the remainder of the country.) It should do more for rebalancing than any number of Government initiatives.
Large companies are starting to get misty eyed at the thought of cutting huge amounts off their fixed costs, and employees are similarly enticed by being able to ditch their commute, a chunk of their annual clothing expenses (not to mention dispensing with personal grooming), and - as you say - potentially live somewhere a whole lot cheaper into the bargain, at least some of the time.
Many of my colleagues in their 20s went back to their parents' as soon as we went to homeworking. If they stayed there after lockdown, they could be able to afford house purchases years earlier than would otherwise be possible.
Anecdotally, most companies seem to be coping far better than they would've thought last year. However, it's unclear how resilient we are to long term culture effects, like how you manage a business where customer service is paramount, if you can't tell get all your employees together and drill that into them. Over time, you just end up with a collection of individuals, rather than a functioning and coherent team.
Also, we've effectively frozen our summer internship program, because we can't see how we can onboard and train a bunch of students who need a lot of individual attention, remotely. Recruitment of experienced hires is also frozen until the lockdown ends. And we're not really sure how we'd manage our new graduates come September, either. So I think jury still out until those problems are a bit closer to resolved - it works in the short run, but some of the longer term stuff is still untested.
There will still be offices, but they just won’t accommodate all the staff. Lots of people will go to a hybrid model I think 2-3 days in, 2-3 days at home.
You're clearly biased towards your own preference, but to be fair it does make a certain amount of sense as a best-of-both-worlds compromise.
Flexible working trends were on the rise anyway, and this can only accelerate that. One comment we had from a company director was how much easier this makes it for people returning from maternity leave.
I’ll probably end up five days at home most weeks, as clients have discovered they can squeeze more out of me! But yes, in a free choice I’d probably head in a couple of days a week. I like weekday London, a Tuesday night pint in a Bloomsbury pub is one of life’s great pleasures.
And gyms...there is absolutely no chance i am going to a gym. Sweaty people everywhere, touching all the equipment in an air conditioned room. Something like a spin class has to tick all the boxes for ideal coronavirus transmission!
I’m setting up a home gym. I need a few more bits and pieces but I doubt I’ll be going back to a commercial gym now.
Go for a run or a bike ride instead?
Weight bearing resistance work is just as if not more important than the likes if running, especially as you get older.
If we're keeping social distancing for adults but not for children how do you maintain safeguarding and ensure social distancing at the school gates for primary school children?
At pick up time in the school yard for my daughter it is crowded with adults waiting for their children to be released - and at least at my daughter's age the teachers won't let the child leave the building until they see an authorised parent there to pick up the child.
Thais an interesting question, but I don't think an insumatable problem. standing outside a building for 10 or 15 mins waiting with strangers is not the same risk as sitting in an office all day with lots of people or a couple of hours in a pub. Perhaps pressie time slots could be allocated?
That's what happens when you build your model on Chinese data.
The US is too big to be seen as single entity just as say China is so you are dealing with different stages of he now infamous 'curve' at notably different times. The US has also been playing catch up things like testing and so on so as it improves you'd expect the case rate to increase. Even here you can suggest that London was going through its infection rate progression a few days ahead than other regions.
If the under 10s don't spread it, at what age do the little disease carrying Kevin's and Perry's of this world become spreaders?
Good question, perhaps it is graded, with 11 year olds very very unlikely 12 your old very unlikely and so on up to the 18 year olds? but if anybody has delved in to the full report I would love to have a laymans summary.
That's what happens when you build your model on Chinese data.
Do you think they’ve just abandoned it, in embarrassment?
Right now it is predicting total first wave deaths of 73,000 for the USA. Given that America is already over 60,000, and they haven’t yet peaked, the total could reach twice their estimation
No idea what they are doing. If we think our modelling lot have been a bit rubbish and haven't used Dennis from Deepminds enough, what the bloody hell have the American's been doing?
The likes of Google have more compute power than god and 1000s of the top minds in the world. The top tech companies have been hoovering up so much talent of the past 10 years, real concerns about how much academia have been hollowed out. There have been a massive arms race for machine learning experts, with the companies willing to pay big bucks for them.
That's what happens when you build your model on Chinese data.
The US is too big to be seen as single entity just as say China is so you are dealing with different stages of he now infamous 'curve' at notably different times. The US has also been playing catch up things like testing and so on so as it improves you'd expect the case rate to increase. Even here you can suggest that London was going through its infection rate progression a few days ahead than other regions.
To be fair, the UW does look at different areas in the US. The problem a fundamental part of their model is a novel empirical formula they devised from the Chinese data. So they can crank the handle as many different ways as they like, but inside the black block they have the equivalent of E=MC^0.5
So the updated evidence contradicts the claim Raab made at today's 5pm briefing, namely that a very recent increase in cases in Germany supported our Government's case for not easing measures.
Well from 6pm yesterday,
Germans urged to stay at home amid fears Covid-19 infection rate is rising again
And as you can see from the chart, the rate had been increasing over the past few days as they had relaxed measures. So not exactly telling massive porkies is he.
Now that number has been updated today (and it is only an estimate). We will have to see if it stays there for the next few days.
Indeed, we agree that what he said was contradicted by new evidence published almost as soon as he made the claim.
I don't expect that there will be any reference to this updated evidence from Germany in Thursday's briefing. Facts are only quoted selectively, that is when it helps the case the Government is trying to make in defence of its policies or to try and defend its manifest past failings in the face of criticism. Other facts will be ignored.
The problem is that by acting as such, they risk losing the crucial element of public trust that is paramount if the public are to consent to acting in the way they are told to.
Just regarding computing models and using AI I'd have thought that where these are most successful is when you have lots of data to pump in.
We don't really have lots of data, this thing isn't called 'novel' for nothing
No, not true. If you want to employ something like deep learning, yes you need as much labelled data as possible. However, as previously there are machine learning techniques such as Gaussian Processes, who big advantage over say a neural net, is that you don't need tonnes of data.
That's what happens when you build your model on Chinese data.
Do you think they’ve just abandoned it, in embarrassment?
Right now it is predicting total first wave deaths of 73,000 for the USA. Given that America is already over 60,000, and they haven’t yet peaked, the total could reach twice their estimation
No idea what they are doing. If we think our modelling lot have been a bit rubbish and haven't used Dennis from Deepminds enough, what the bloody hell have the American's been doing?
The likes of Google have more compute power than god and 1000s of the top minds in the world. The top tech companies have been hoovering up so much talent of the past 10 years, real concerns about how much academia have been hollowed out. There have been a massive arms race for machine learning experts, with the companies willing to pay big bucks for them.
Yes, a better president than Trump would surely have gone to Silicon Valley in March and said, either I tax you $1 for every web page visited, or you rally to the nation and put your best boys and girls on this task. Model this Disease. Ignore the Chinese data, look at Italy and Spain.
America had the resources... but didn’t use them
The question I’d like the answers to is this: how much modelling did China do?
The incredible Chinese reaction to this obscure disease, through January, is what made me think - by early Feb - that something big and nasty was coming. China is a ruthless and pragmatic country. They would not shut down entire provinces for a sniffle.
So China - to my mind - must have given the early Wuhan data to some boffins, and then the boffins said Fuck it’s bad, and that’s why China went mad and reacted relatively quick and very very hard. Unlike the West.
I would be surprised if they developed any sophisticated models, as they weren't testing properly at the time (in fact I don't think they ever did), it was just panic. And remember they have had the likes of SARs before.
I think it was more likely that they started getting all the messages of just how much the strain the system was under and their reactions was about as unsophisticated as possible. Ring of steel, close the place off to the outside world.
That's what happens when you build your model on Chinese data.
Do you think they’ve just abandoned it, in embarrassment?
Right now it is predicting total first wave deaths of 73,000 for the USA. Given that America is already over 60,000, and they haven’t yet peaked, the total could reach twice their estimation
No idea what they are doing. If we think our modelling lot have been a bit rubbish and haven't used Dennis from Deepminds enough, what the bloody hell have the American's been doing?
The likes of Google have more compute power than god and 1000s of the top minds in the world. The top tech companies have been hoovering up so much talent of the past 10 years, real concerns about how much academia have been hollowed out. There have been a massive arms race for machine learning experts, with the companies willing to pay big bucks for them.
Yes, a better president than Trump would surely have gone to Silicon Valley in March and said, either I tax you $1 for every web page visited, or you rally to the nation and put your best boys and girls on this task. Model this Disease. Ignore the Chinese data, look at Italy and Spain.
America had the resources... but didn’t use them
The question I’d like the answers to is this: how much modelling did China do?
The incredible Chinese reaction to this obscure disease, through January, is what made me think - by early Feb - that something big and nasty was coming. China is a ruthless and pragmatic country. They would not shut down entire provinces for a sniffle.
So China - to my mind - must have given the early Wuhan data to some boffins, and then the boffins said Fuck it’s bad, and that’s why China went mad and reacted relatively quick and very very hard. Unlike the West.
I would be surprised if they developed any sophisticated models, as they weren't testing properly at the time (in fact I don't think they ever did), it was just panic. And remember they have had the likes of SARs before.
I think it was more likely that they started getting all the messages of just how much the strain the system was under and their reactions was about as unsophisticated as possible. Ring of steel, close the place off to the outside world.
Unless, of course, the virus came from that lab, where they were studying bat coronaviruses.
Then they would maybe have known its potentialities. Hence their massive reaction. After the initial local cover up failed.
This seems fairly plausible to me, though I tend to think the virus leaked by accident rather than design. Even the Chinese aren’t that strategic. Probably
I can believe it is possible that it leaked from the lab and that because of the way china is, everybody at ever level tried to cover it up.
But, if they really had a good understanding of it, they surely would have had a better idea of how to treat it. Instead they went full on ventaliate as much as possible, which we now know is the wrong move.
Just regarding computing models and using AI I'd have thought that where these are most successful is when you have lots of data to pump in.
We don't really have lots of data, this thing isn't called 'novel' for nothing
No, not true. If you want to employ something like deep learning, yes you need as much labelled data as possible. However, as previously there are machine learning techniques such as Gaussian Processes, who big advantage over say a neural net, is that you don't need tonnes of data.
Still garbage in garbage out, China has never given out accurate data, its lied and obfuscated its way through this.
Just regarding computing models and using AI I'd have thought that where these are most successful is when you have lots of data to pump in.
We don't really have lots of data, this thing isn't called 'novel' for nothing
No, not true. If you want to employ something like deep learning, yes you need as much labelled data as possible. However, as previously there are machine learning techniques such as Gaussian Processes, who big advantage over say a neural net, is that you don't need tonnes of data.
Still garbage in garbage out, China has never given out accurate data, its lied and obfuscated its way through this.
Right. Not saying that. The UW model is hard coded based on Chinese data alone. Something like a Gaussian Process adjusts to new data, so you can update your model based on data from western Europe to better model the situation. You don't need 100,000s of cases to make it work.
Just regarding computing models and using AI I'd have thought that where these are most successful is when you have lots of data to pump in.
We don't really have lots of data, this thing isn't called 'novel' for nothing
No, not true. If you want to employ something like deep learning, yes you need as much labelled data as possible. However, as previously there are machine learning techniques such as Gaussian Processes, who big advantage over say a neural net, is that you don't need tonnes of data.
Still garbage in garbage out, China has never given out accurate data, its lied and obfuscated its way through this.
Right. Not saying that. The UW model is hard coded based on Chinese data alone. Something like a Gaussian Process adjusts to new data, so you can update your model based on data from western Europe to better model the situation. You don't need 100,000s of cases to make it work.
I get that there are processes and algorithms that can be used but the fundamental issue with this is its high level of unpredictability. Something somewhere will strike right in its forecasting model but others won't. At this time I think the Mark 1 eyeball and Version 1 experience is just as valuable because someone has got to filter all the modelling into action.
I see the BBC are still using terms like "deaths surging" at news at 10....but we know they aren't and repeat this despite being corrected at the press conference.
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
Life really doesn't stop because you are 3 metres apart
Germany aren't entertaining the idea of opening pubs, clubs, cinema, etc u til the end of August.
Opening Spoons in 4-5 weeks seems bonkers idea.
However in Italy they are reopening bars in June. And possibly in France and Spain too? And definitely Czech Republic 8 June.
22 June is plausible albeit optimistic for UK
Pubs aren't just pubs though. A quiet country pub with large garfen and generally quiet. Yep. City centre Spoons with packed rooms. Nope.
Agreed it may take a while for the City pub/bar scene on a Thursday to return to what is was in February!
If you're talking about the Square Mile then it probably never will.
Half the office space in central London will be surplus to requirements at the end of all of this - and so will many of the businesses that supported those who used to occupy it. Working from home should disperse a decent slice of London's economic activity out into the Home Counties (and, in the fullness of time, the remainder of the country.) It should do more for rebalancing than any number of Government initiatives.
Large companies are starting to get misty eyed at the thought of cutting huge amounts off their fixed costs, and employees are similarly enticed by being able to ditch their commute, a chunk of their annual clothing expenses (not to mention dispensing with personal grooming), and - as you say - potentially live somewhere a whole lot cheaper into the bargain, at least some of the time.
Many of my colleagues in their 20s went back to their parents' as soon as we went to homeworking. If they stayed there after lockdown, they could be able to afford house purchases years earlier than would otherwise be possible.
Anecdotally, most companies seem to be coping far better than they would've thought last year. However, it's unclear how resilient we are to long term culture effects, like how you manage a business where customer service is paramount, if you can't tell get all your employees together and drill that into them. Over time, you just end up with a collection of individuals, rather than a functioning and coherent team.
Also, we've effectively frozen our summer internship program, because we can't see how we can onboard and train a bunch of students who need a lot of individual attention, remotely. Recruitment of experienced hires is also frozen until the lockdown ends. And we're not really sure how we'd manage our new graduates come September, either. So I think jury still out until those problems are a bit closer to resolved - it works in the short run, but some of the longer term stuff is still untested.
As I suggested in the previous thread, I think that home working patterns going forward will vary considerably between office-based businesses in London and other urban cores. Some employers will still want to have their people coming into the office full-time, but I reckon they'll be in the minority. Ditto those who ditch their central offices more-or-less entirely and perhaps just maintain a small central IT function and/or a nominal registered office.
Inbetween will be those that have people working part-time in the office and part-time at home, and those that have employees working most of the time at home but maintain meeting rooms for occasional get-togethers. One would suspect that those two groups of businesses will be the most numerous going forward.
We will be in the latter category. We’ve found we just don’t need an office; the plan is to look into meeting spaces near our ‘virtual office’ address.
Good luck but a warning based on anecdata. I've been WFH for the last half decade or more and it definitely reduces team cohesion and efficacy because you lose informal communication: watercooler and corridor conversations, and just idle chit chat.
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
Life really doesn't stop because you are 3 metres apart
Really? No hugs, no kissing. No intimacy. No quiet conversations or simply being close to someone. No choirs, no theatres, no concerts or gigs, no dancing, no visits to the cinema. No walks with friends, no group or communal activities of any kind. No meals or drinks out, no inviting friends, old and new, round, no parties - whether planned or impromptu, no family gatherings or celebrations. No holding my best friend’s newborn child, no christenings or weddings or even proper funeral services. No religious services - and if you have faith these do provide comfort. No sport, no trips out to museums, galleries, historic or architectural sites. No exploration of this country - or others. No public lectures or talks or debates. No evening classes or learning with others. No chance of meeting someone new. No personal beauty or therapy services. No learning a musical instrument with a teacher present. No more dramas or films being made - not with real life human actors. No getting on a train for a long cross or inter-country journey, staring out the window and wondering who’ll you meet. No getting on a boat sailing somewhere and seeing where it takes you. No possibility of serendipity.
Just confinement in front of a screen. And when we’ve watched every cat video on YouTube what then? Life at a distance mediated by a screen or telephone is not real. It may be your sort of life. It’s not mine and I don’t think it’s my children’s either.
If I wanted to live like Sister Wendy Beckett by myself in a caravan in the woods seeing no-one (and even she got out occasionally) or a Hannah Hauxwell on a remote cold Yorkshire farm, I’d have bloody chosen to do so.
But I didn’t and don’t and I miss all these things. Above all I miss the possibility of deciding for myself what I want to do. I feel my horizons shrinking but my mind is not. I feel the gap between the possibilities which opened up and which now have closed.
And if these are not going to be possible again - and they won’t be if social distancing is to be a real thing - then I do ask myself whether I want to live like this.
This is a rather depressing article about the situation in Venice.
"Fear and longing for life after lockdown This beautiful city has never felt so ugly, with spies everywhere Lisa Hilton
The singing has long since stopped. In the first days of the Italian lockdown, Venice’s abandoned streets were full of music. Masked shoppers paused beneath open windows to catch a snatch of Mozart or Queen or Adriano Celentano. In the evenings, residents sang from their balconies across the calle, sharing a moment of hope and support. Rainbow banners were unfurled across the house fronts: “Everything is going to be all right” painted in colourful, childish letters. Most have now been folded away. The city is sullen, mistrustful. People no longer greet one another, passing by with lowered eyes. The only sound is the engines of the carabinieri boats, constantly patrolling the still canals."
No hugs, no kissing. No intimacy. No quiet conversations or simply being close to someone. No choirs, no theatres, no concerts or gigs, no dancing, no visits to the cinema. No walks with friends, no group or communal activities of any kind. No meals or drinks out, no inviting friends, old and new, round, no parties - whether planned or impromptu, no family gatherings or celebrations. No holding my best friend’s newborn child, no christenings or weddings or even proper funeral services. No religious services - and if you have faith these do provide comfort. No sport, no trips out to museums, galleries, historic or architectural sites. No exploration of this country - or others. No public lectures or talks or debates. No evening classes or learning with others. No chance of meeting someone new. No personal beauty or therapy services. No learning a musical instrument with a teacher present. No more dramas or films being made - not with real life human actors. No getting on a train for a long cross or inter-country journey, staring out the window and wondering who’ll you meet. No getting on a boat sailing somewhere and seeing where it takes you. No possibility of serendipity.
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
We are a social species. That is how we evolved. That is what our brain physics and chemistry demands. At some point for many people, the cost of this loss will exceed the risk of COVID.
I am not advocating that, just stating it as a conclusion.
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
We are a social species. That is how we evolved. That is what our brain physics and chemistry demands. At some point for many people, the cost of this loss will exceed the risk of COVID.
I am not advocating that, just stating it as a conclusion.
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
We are a social species. That is how we evolved. That is what our brain physics and chemistry demands. At some point for many people, the cost of this loss will exceed the risk of COVID.
I am not advocating that, just stating it as a conclusion.
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
We are a social species. That is how we evolved. That is what our brain physics and chemistry demands. At some point for many people, the cost of this loss will exceed the risk of COVID.
I am not advocating that, just stating it as a conclusion.
We evolved in relatively small bands, with an instinctive wariness of other bands. Which would be a good approach for resisting infectious diseases.
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
Life really doesn't stop because you are 3 metres apart
Really? No hugs, no kissing. No intimacy. No quiet conversations or simply being close to someone. No choirs, no theatres, no concerts or gigs, no dancing, no visits to the cinema. No walks with friends, no group or communal activities of any kind. No meals or drinks out, no inviting friends, old and new, round, no parties - whether planned or impromptu, no family gatherings or celebrations. No holding my best friend’s newborn child, no christenings or weddings or even proper funeral services. No religious services - and if you have faith these do provide comfort. No sport, no trips out to museums, galleries, historic or architectural sites. No exploration of this country - or others. No public lectures or talks or debates. No evening classes or learning with others. No chance of meeting someone new. No personal beauty or therapy services. No learning a musical instrument with a teacher present. No more dramas or films being made - not with real life human actors. No getting on a train for a long cross or inter-country journey, staring out the window and wondering who’ll you meet. No getting on a boat sailing somewhere and seeing where it takes you. No possibility of serendipity.
Just confinement in front of a screen. And when we’ve watched every cat video on YouTube what then? Life at a distance mediated by a screen or telephone is not real. It may be your sort of life. It’s not mine and I don’t think it’s my children’s either.
If I wanted to live like Sister Wendy Beckett by myself in a caravan in the woods seeing no-one (and even she got out occasionally) or a Hannah Hauxwell on a remote cold Yorkshire farm, I’d have bloody chosen to do so.
But I didn’t and don’t and I miss all these things. Above all I miss the possibility of deciding for myself what I want to do. I feel my horizons shrinking but my mind is not. I feel the gap between the possibilities which opened up and which now have closed.
And if these are not going to be possible again - and they won’t be if social distancing is to be a real thing - then I do ask myself whether I want to live like this.
That is all.
As throughout most of history, all of those things will be on offer. You simply live with the chance of becoming ill, and your life expectancy takes a bit of a knock. On average.
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
Life really doesn't stop because you are 3 metres apart
Really? No hugs, no kissing. No intimacy. No quiet conversations or simply being close to someone. No choirs, no theatres, no concerts or gigs, no dancing, no visits to the cinema. No walks with friends, no group or communal activities of any kind. No meals or drinks out, no inviting friends, old and new, round, no parties - whether planned or impromptu, no family gatherings or celebrations. No holding my best friend’s newborn child, no christenings or weddings or even proper funeral services. No religious services - and if you have faith these do provide comfort. No sport, no trips out to museums, galleries, historic or architectural sites. No exploration of this country - or others. No public lectures or talks or debates. No evening classes or learning with others. No chance of meeting someone new. No personal beauty or therapy services. No learning a musical instrument with a teacher present. No more dramas or films being made - not with real life human actors. No getting on a train for a long cross or inter-country journey, staring out the window and wondering who’ll you meet. No getting on a boat sailing somewhere and seeing where it takes you. No possibility of serendipity.
Just confinement in front of a screen. And when we’ve watched every cat video on YouTube what then? Life at a distance mediated by a screen or telephone is not real. It may be your sort of life. It’s not mine and I don’t think it’s my children’s either.
If I wanted to live like Sister Wendy Beckett by myself in a caravan in the woods seeing no-one (and even she got out occasionally) or a Hannah Hauxwell on a remote cold Yorkshire farm, I’d have bloody chosen to do so.
But I didn’t and don’t and I miss all these things. Above all I miss the possibility of deciding for myself what I want to do. I feel my horizons shrinking but my mind is not. I feel the gap between the possibilities which opened up and which now have closed.
And if these are not going to be possible again - and they won’t be if social distancing is to be a real thing - then I do ask myself whether I want to live like this.
That is all.
I don't think life will be like that, at least not for long. I suspect bars and clubs will be pretty much back to normal by the autumn, and while the activities you mention will be approached rather tentatively, they will all be back to normal in 18 months.
I think there will be more WFH, and a rekindled enjoyment of simple domestic pleasures of cooking and gardening. I think many will consider rabid consumurism a blight on the planet and society and live more greenly, others will go hedonistic.
In terms of cities they will continue to draw in the youngsters, on whom the domestic pleasures are lost. The peak times of city growth in the UK were times when moving to the city reduced lifespan. I read that moving to London in the 19th Century took 8 years off life expectancy, Liverpool 17 years, yet both boomed.
I am looking forward to the new footy season in the autumn, and planning to venture to mainland Europe too.
In Spain a lot of debate about the need to 'relax' lockdown regionally - practical for such a big country - may not be so easy in the UK. As I live in a virtual 'zero' zone I am a strong supporter!
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
Life really doesn't stop because you are 3 metres apart
Really? No hugs, no kissing. No intimacy. No quiet conversations or simply being close to someone. No choirs, no theatres, no concerts or gigs, no dancing, no visits to the cinema. No walks with friends, no group or communal activities of any kind. No meals or drinks out, no inviting friends, old and new, round, no parties - whether planned or impromptu, no family gatherings or celebrations. No holding my best friend’s newborn child, no christenings or weddings or even proper funeral services. No religious services - and if you have faith these do provide comfort. No sport, no trips out to museums, galleries, historic or architectural sites. No exploration of this country - or others. No public lectures or talks or debates. No evening classes or learning with others. No chance of meeting someone new. No personal beauty or therapy services. No learning a musical instrument with a teacher present. No more dramas or films being made - not with real life human actors. No getting on a train for a long cross or inter-country journey, staring out the window and wondering who’ll you meet. No getting on a boat sailing somewhere and seeing where it takes you. No possibility of serendipity.
Just confinement in front of a screen. And when we’ve watched every cat video on YouTube what then? Life at a distance mediated by a screen or telephone is not real. It may be your sort of life. It’s not mine and I don’t think it’s my children’s either.
If I wanted to live like Sister Wendy Beckett by myself in a caravan in the woods seeing no-one (and even she got out occasionally) or a Hannah Hauxwell on a remote cold Yorkshire farm, I’d have bloody chosen to do so.
But I didn’t and don’t and I miss all these things. Above all I miss the possibility of deciding for myself what I want to do. I feel my horizons shrinking but my mind is not. I feel the gap between the possibilities which opened up and which now have closed.
And if these are not going to be possible again - and they won’t be if social distancing is to be a real thing - then I do ask myself whether I want to live like this.
That is all.
I don't think life will be like that, at least not for long. I suspect bars and clubs will be pretty much back to normal by the autumn, and while the activities you mention will be approached rather tentatively, they will all be back to normal in 18 months.
I think there will be more WFH, and a rekindled enjoyment of simple domestic pleasures of cooking and gardening. I think many will consider rabid consumurism a blight on the planet and society and live more greenly, others will go hedonistic.
In terms of cities they will continue to draw in the youngsters, on whom the domestic pleasures are lost. The peak times of city growth in the UK were times when moving to the city reduced lifespan. I read that moving to London in the 19th Century took 8 years off life expectancy, Liverpool 17 years, yet both boomed.
I am looking forward to the new footy season in the autumn, and planning to venture to mainland Europe too.
BiB - unfortunately I don't think we'll be seeing football any time soon. And someone needs to tell UEFA that their competitions are dead until further notice.
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
Life really doesn't stop because you are 3 metres apart
Really? No hugs, no kissing. No intimacy. No quiet conversations or simply being close to someone. No choirs, no theatres, no concerts or gigs, no dancing, no visits to the cinema. No walks with friends, no group or communal activities of any kind. No meals or drinks out, no inviting friends, old and new, round, no parties - whether planned or impromptu, no family gatherings or celebrations. No holding my best friend’s newborn child, no christenings or weddings or even proper funeral services. No religious services - and if you have faith these do provide comfort. No sport, no trips out to museums, galleries, historic or architectural sites. No exploration of this country - or others. No public lectures or talks or debates. No evening classes or learning with others. No chance of meeting someone new. No personal beauty or therapy services. No learning a musical instrument with a teacher present. No more dramas or films being made - not with real life human actors. No getting on a train for a long cross or inter-country journey, staring out the window and wondering who’ll you meet. No getting on a boat sailing somewhere and seeing where it takes you. No possibility of serendipity.
Just confinement in front of a screen. And when we’ve watched every cat video on YouTube what then? Life at a distance mediated by a screen or telephone is not real. It may be your sort of life. It’s not mine and I don’t think it’s my children’s either.
If I wanted to live like Sister Wendy Beckett by myself in a caravan in the woods seeing no-one (and even she got out occasionally) or a Hannah Hauxwell on a remote cold Yorkshire farm, I’d have bloody chosen to do so.
But I didn’t and don’t and I miss all these things. Above all I miss the possibility of deciding for myself what I want to do. I feel my horizons shrinking but my mind is not. I feel the gap between the possibilities which opened up and which now have closed.
And if these are not going to be possible again - and they won’t be if social distancing is to be a real thing - then I do ask myself whether I want to live like this.
That is all.
As throughout most of history, all of those things will be on offer. You simply live with the chance of becoming ill, and your life expectancy takes a bit of a knock. On average.
If you disregard the risk to those with underlying conditions the effect of the virus is the reduction of life expectancy to nearer three score years and ten.
I'm sure that figure appears as life expectancy in a book somewhere....
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
Life really doesn't stop because you are 3 metres apart
Really? No hugs, no kissing. No intimacy. No quiet conversations or simply being close to someone. No choirs, no theatres, no concerts or gigs, no dancing, no visits to the cinema. No walks with friends, no group or communal activities of any kind. No meals or drinks out, no inviting friends, old and new, round, no parties - whether planned or impromptu, no family gatherings or celebrations. No holding my best friend’s newborn child, no christenings or weddings or even proper funeral services. No religious services - and if you have faith these do provide comfort. No sport, no trips out to museums, galleries, historic or architectural sites. No exploration of this country - or others. No public lectures or talks or debates. No evening classes or learning with others. No chance of meeting someone new. No personal beauty or therapy services. No learning a musical instrument with a teacher present. No more dramas or films being made - not with real life human actors. No getting on a train for a long cross or inter-country journey, staring out the window and wondering who’ll you meet. No getting on a boat sailing somewhere and seeing where it takes you. No possibility of serendipity.
Just confinement in front of a screen. And when we’ve watched every cat video on YouTube what then? Life at a distance mediated by a screen or telephone is not real. It may be your sort of life. It’s not mine and I don’t think it’s my children’s either.
If I wanted to live like Sister Wendy Beckett by myself in a caravan in the woods seeing no-one (and even she got out occasionally) or a Hannah Hauxwell on a remote cold Yorkshire farm, I’d have bloody chosen to do so.
But I didn’t and don’t and I miss all these things. Above all I miss the possibility of deciding for myself what I want to do. I feel my horizons shrinking but my mind is not. I feel the gap between the possibilities which opened up and which now have closed.
And if these are not going to be possible again - and they won’t be if social distancing is to be a real thing - then I do ask myself whether I want to live like this.
That is all.
I don't think life will be like that, at least not for long. I suspect bars and clubs will be pretty much back to normal by the autumn, and while the activities you mention will be approached rather tentatively, they will all be back to normal in 18 months.
I think there will be more WFH, and a rekindled enjoyment of simple domestic pleasures of cooking and gardening. I think many will consider rabid consumurism a blight on the planet and society and live more greenly, others will go hedonistic.
In terms of cities they will continue to draw in the youngsters, on whom the domestic pleasures are lost. The peak times of city growth in the UK were times when moving to the city reduced lifespan. I read that moving to London in the 19th Century took 8 years off life expectancy, Liverpool 17 years, yet both boomed.
I am looking forward to the new footy season in the autumn, and planning to venture to mainland Europe too.
BiB - unfortunately I don't think we'll be seeing football any time soon. And someone needs to tell UEFA that their competitions are dead until further notice.
Nor, I fear, allowable travel. Even when individual countries are opening up, there is going to be a lasting reluctance to welcome foreign travellers.
That's what happens when you build your model on Chinese data.
Do you think they’ve just abandoned it, in embarrassment?
Right now it is predicting total first wave deaths of 73,000 for the USA. Given that America is already over 60,000, and they haven’t yet peaked, the total could reach twice their estimation
No idea what they are doing. If we think our modelling lot have been a bit rubbish and haven't used Dennis from Deepminds enough, what the bloody hell have the American's been doing?
The likes of Google have more compute power than god and 1000s of the top minds in the world. The top tech companies have been hoovering up so much talent of the past 10 years, real concerns about how much academia have been hollowed out. There have been a massive arms race for machine learning experts, with the companies willing to pay big bucks for them.
Yes, a better president than Trump would surely have gone to Silicon Valley in March and said, either I tax you $1 for every web page visited, or you rally to the nation and put your best boys and girls on this task. Model this Disease. Ignore the Chinese data, look at Italy and Spain.
America had the resources... but didn’t use them
The question I’d like the answers to is this: how much modelling did China do?
The incredible Chinese reaction to this obscure disease, through January, is what made me think - by early Feb - that something big and nasty was coming. China is a ruthless and pragmatic country. They would not shut down entire provinces for a sniffle.
So China - to my mind - must have given the early Wuhan data to some boffins, and then the boffins said Fuck it’s bad, and that’s why China went mad and reacted relatively quick and very very hard. Unlike the West.
I would be surprised if they developed any sophisticated models, as they weren't testing properly at the time (in fact I don't think they ever did), it was just panic. And remember they have had the likes of SARs before.
I think it was more likely that they started getting all the messages of just how much the strain the system was under and their reactions was about as unsophisticated as possible. Ring of steel, close the place off to the outside world.
Unless, of course, the virus came from that lab, where they were studying bat coronaviruses.
Then they would maybe have known its potentialities. Hence their massive reaction. After the initial local cover up failed.
This seems fairly plausible to me, though I tend to think the virus leaked by accident rather than design. Even the Chinese aren’t that strategic. Probably
I can believe it is possible that it leaked from the lab and that because of the way china is, everybody at ever level tried to cover it up.
But, if they really had a good understanding of it, they surely would have had a better idea of how to treat it. Instead they went full on ventaliate as much as possible, which we now know is the wrong move.
The conspiracy theories around this assume a level of scientific capability that China simply doesn’t have - and which would be in advance of anything that exists in the rest of the world.
In Spain a lot of debate about the need to 'relax' lockdown regionally - practical for such a big country - may not be so easy in the UK. As I live in a virtual 'zero' zone I am a strong supporter!
Funnily enough I've just been reading a piece on the gargantuan challenges facing London, which is more dependent on public transport than anywhere else in the country and where the capacity of the tube and buses will be reduced to around 15% of normal if social distancing measures are enforced.
I can see a version of the new normal coming to more suburban and rural parts of the country, where fewer people are reliant on public transport for getting about simply because cars are essential for more people and bus services are often skeletal, so one can imagine that getting back up and running would potentially be easier in those sorts of places. The economy in urban cores, on the other hand, may be in the deep freeze for a long time.
In any event, the great working from home experiment will be the last thing to go because of its huge effect in cutting down social interactions, whilst allowing people to continue economic activity. That means almost no commuting, as I've seen for myself living in a commuter belt town where the trains are now arriving and leaving empty. There aren't many other reasons left for people not already resident in the cities to visit them, either, given that non-food shopping - even if and when it is allowed to get up - will be an ordeal rather than a pleasure, and it looks like theatres and other places of mass entertainment may be closed for years.
In short, going forward regional disparities may arise simply because of the practicalities of living, without formal intervention from Government.
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
Life really doesn't stop because you are 3 metres apart
Really? No hugs, no kissing. No intimacy. No quiet conversations or simply being close to someone. No choirs, no theatres, no concerts or gigs, no dancing, no visits to the cinema. No walks with friends, no group or communal activities of any kind. No meals or drinks out, no inviting friends, old and new, round, no parties - whether planned or impromptu, no family gatherings or celebrations. No holding my best friend’s newborn child, no christenings or weddings or even proper funeral services. No religious services - and if you have faith these do provide comfort. No sport, no trips out to museums, galleries, historic or architectural sites. No exploration of this country - or others. No public lectures or talks or debates. No evening classes or learning with others. No chance of meeting someone new. No personal beauty or therapy services. No learning a musical instrument with a teacher present. No more dramas or films being made - not with real life human actors. No getting on a train for a long cross or inter-country journey, staring out the window and wondering who’ll you meet. No getting on a boat sailing somewhere and seeing where it takes you. No possibility of serendipity.
Just confinement in front of a screen. And when we’ve watched every cat video on YouTube what then? Life at a distance mediated by a screen or telephone is not real. It may be your sort of life. It’s not mine and I don’t think it’s my children’s either.
If I wanted to live like Sister Wendy Beckett by myself in a caravan in the woods seeing no-one (and even she got out occasionally) or a Hannah Hauxwell on a remote cold Yorkshire farm, I’d have bloody chosen to do so.
But I didn’t and don’t and I miss all these things. Above all I miss the possibility of deciding for myself what I want to do. I feel my horizons shrinking but my mind is not. I feel the gap between the possibilities which opened up and which now have closed.
And if these are not going to be possible again - and they won’t be if social distancing is to be a real thing - then I do ask myself whether I want to live like this.
That is all.
I don't think life will be like that, at least not for long. I suspect bars and clubs will be pretty much back to normal by the autumn, and while the activities you mention will be approached rather tentatively, they will all be back to normal in 18 months.
I think there will be more WFH, and a rekindled enjoyment of simple domestic pleasures of cooking and gardening. I think many will consider rabid consumurism a blight on the planet and society and live more greenly, others will go hedonistic.
In terms of cities they will continue to draw in the youngsters, on whom the domestic pleasures are lost. The peak times of city growth in the UK were times when moving to the city reduced lifespan. I read that moving to London in the 19th Century took 8 years off life expectancy, Liverpool 17 years, yet both boomed.
I am looking forward to the new footy season in the autumn, and planning to venture to mainland Europe too.
Agreed. While I share Cyclefree’s feelings on this, there will be a end to it. Not entirely convinced by thone predictions for societal change, though.
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
Life really doesn't stop because you are 3 metres apart
Really? No hugs, no kissing. No intimacy. No quiet conversations or simply being close to someone. No choirs, no theatres, no concerts or gigs, no dancing, no visits to the cinema. No walks with friends, no group or communal activities of any kind. No meals or drinks out, no inviting friends, old and new, round, no parties - whether planned or impromptu, no family gatherings or celebrations. No holding my best friend’s newborn child, no christenings or weddings or even proper funeral services. No religious services - and if you have faith these do provide comfort. No sport, no trips out to museums, galleries, historic or architectural sites. No exploration of this country - or others. No public lectures or talks or debates. No evening classes or learning with others. No chance of meeting someone new. No personal beauty or therapy services. No learning a musical instrument with a teacher present. No more dramas or films being made - not with real life human actors. No getting on a train for a long cross or inter-country journey, staring out the window and wondering who’ll you meet. No getting on a boat sailing somewhere and seeing where it takes you. No possibility of serendipity.
Just confinement in front of a screen. And when we’ve watched every cat video on YouTube what then? Life at a distance mediated by a screen or telephone is not real. It may be your sort of life. It’s not mine and I don’t think it’s my children’s either.
If I wanted to live like Sister Wendy Beckett by myself in a caravan in the woods seeing no-one (and even she got out occasionally) or a Hannah Hauxwell on a remote cold Yorkshire farm, I’d have bloody chosen to do so.
But I didn’t and don’t and I miss all these things. Above all I miss the possibility of deciding for myself what I want to do. I feel my horizons shrinking but my mind is not. I feel the gap between the possibilities which opened up and which now have closed.
And if these are not going to be possible again - and they won’t be if social distancing is to be a real thing - then I do ask myself whether I want to live like this.
That is all.
As throughout most of history, all of those things will be on offer. You simply live with the chance of becoming ill, and your life expectancy takes a bit of a knock. On average.
If we can simply exercise a few more weeks of patience we can eliminate the virus from the community and use quarantine and contact tracing to keep it out of the community, and then we don't have to live with that risk - which would be much higher for some than others.
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
Life really doesn't stop because you are 3 metres apart
Really? No hugs, no kissing. No intimacy. No quiet conversations or simply being close to someone. No choirs, no theatres, no concerts or gigs, no dancing, no visits to the cinema. No walks with friends, no group or communal activities of any kind. No meals or drinks out, no inviting friends, old and new, round, no parties - whether planned or impromptu, no family gatherings or celebrations. No holding my best friend’s newborn child, no christenings or weddings or even proper funeral services. No religious services - and if you have faith these do provide comfort. No sport, no trips out to museums, galleries, historic or architectural sites. No exploration of this country - or others. No public lectures or talks or debates. No evening classes or learning with others. No chance of meeting someone new. No personal beauty or therapy services. No learning a musical instrument with a teacher present. No more dramas or films being made - not with real life human actors. No getting on a train for a long cross or inter-country journey, staring out the window and wondering who’ll you meet. No getting on a boat sailing somewhere and seeing where it takes you. No possibility of serendipity.
Just confinement in front of a screen. And when we’ve watched every cat video on YouTube what then? Life at a distance mediated by a screen or telephone is not real. It may be your sort of life. It’s not mine and I don’t think it’s my children’s either.
If I wanted to live like Sister Wendy Beckett by myself in a caravan in the woods seeing no-one (and even she got out occasionally) or a Hannah Hauxwell on a remote cold Yorkshire farm, I’d have bloody chosen to do so.
But I didn’t and don’t and I miss all these things. Above all I miss the possibility of deciding for myself what I want to do. I feel my horizons shrinking but my mind is not. I feel the gap between the possibilities which opened up and which now have closed.
And if these are not going to be possible again - and they won’t be if social distancing is to be a real thing - then I do ask myself whether I want to live like this.
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
Life really doesn't stop because you are 3 metres apart
Really? No hugs, no kissing. No intimacy. No quiet conversations or simply being close to someone. No choirs, no theatres, no concerts or gigs, no dancing, no visits to the cinema. No walks with friends, no group or communal activities of any kind. No meals or drinks out, no inviting friends, old and new, round, no parties - whether planned or impromptu, no family gatherings or celebrations. No holding my best friend’s newborn child, no christenings or weddings or even proper funeral services. No religious services - and if you have faith these do provide comfort. No sport, no trips out to museums, galleries, historic or architectural sites. No exploration of this country - or others. No public lectures or talks or debates. No evening classes or learning with others. No chance of meeting someone new. No personal beauty or therapy services. No learning a musical instrument with a teacher present. No more dramas or films being made - not with real life human actors. No getting on a train for a long cross or inter-country journey, staring out the window and wondering who’ll you meet. No getting on a boat sailing somewhere and seeing where it takes you. No possibility of serendipity.
Just confinement in front of a screen. And when we’ve watched every cat video on YouTube what then? Life at a distance mediated by a screen or telephone is not real. It may be your sort of life. It’s not mine and I don’t think it’s my children’s either.
If I wanted to live like Sister Wendy Beckett by myself in a caravan in the woods seeing no-one (and even she got out occasionally) or a Hannah Hauxwell on a remote cold Yorkshire farm, I’d have bloody chosen to do so.
But I didn’t and don’t and I miss all these things. Above all I miss the possibility of deciding for myself what I want to do. I feel my horizons shrinking but my mind is not. I feel the gap between the possibilities which opened up and which now have closed.
And if these are not going to be possible again - and they won’t be if social distancing is to be a real thing - then I do ask myself whether I want to live like this.
That is all.
As throughout most of history, all of those things will be on offer. You simply live with the chance of becoming ill, and your life expectancy takes a bit of a knock. On average.
That's where we'll end up with no vaccine.
People will simply take their chances, be a bit more careful, and price the risk in to their everyday lives as the new normal.
I have to say that there are times when I share @DougSeal’s pessimism. Life 2 metres apart from everyone is no way to live. Everything that makes life worth living is forbidden by such a rule.
We are a social species. That is how we evolved. That is what our brain physics and chemistry demands. At some point for many people, the cost of this loss will exceed the risk of COVID.
I am not advocating that, just stating it as a conclusion.
Hell is other people.
This site is pretty unrepresentative though.
It's stuffed with regular posters (many a bit aspergey) whose idea of fun is to log-on to an online blog day after day posting detailed analytical comments from behind a screen.
Given that many like that in 'real life' it's not surprising so many don't really mind the lockdown (disclaimer: I do).
This is a rather depressing article about the situation in Venice.
"Fear and longing for life after lockdown This beautiful city has never felt so ugly, with spies everywhere Lisa Hilton
The singing has long since stopped. In the first days of the Italian lockdown, Venice’s abandoned streets were full of music. Masked shoppers paused beneath open windows to catch a snatch of Mozart or Queen or Adriano Celentano. In the evenings, residents sang from their balconies across the calle, sharing a moment of hope and support. Rainbow banners were unfurled across the house fronts: “Everything is going to be all right” painted in colourful, childish letters. Most have now been folded away. The city is sullen, mistrustful. People no longer greet one another, passing by with lowered eyes. The only sound is the engines of the carabinieri boats, constantly patrolling the still canals."
Human are social animals, though. There are occasional 'sports', as Ms Cyclefree points out, but we need physical contact. And, as 'once upon a time', we'll start to balance the risk. According to the ZOE programmes contact tracing app, there's about a 1% chance of contacting anyone with it where I live; slightly more in some districts, slightly less in others. At some point people are going to say 'sod it, we'll give it a go!'. Especially the young.
if it was not form the WHO then it would have more credibility, but that sead, it seems that closing schools (under 10s at least) was pointless. Sweden still does not have a signal death in anybody under 20 from COVID and there schools are open
If we're keeping social distancing for adults but not for children how do you maintain safeguarding and ensure social distancing at the school gates for primary school children?
At pick up time in the school yard for my daughter it is crowded with adults waiting for their children to be released - and at least at my daughter's age the teachers won't let the child leave the building until they see an authorised parent there to pick up the child.
And a large number of people doing the pickup are grandparents.
Living with this disease in the medium term depends on everyone maintaining the highest standards of hygiene and not allowing this to stop us doing what we want to do, beyond what is necessary.
Like having a chronic disease, it's not something anyone wants, but once you adjust you can in fact live with it.
Comments
Flu kills people every year, to varying degrees.
But there'll be a few years of relative monasticism and retrenchment to bear first.
For a great many businesses and employees alike, working from home for all or at least some of the week represents an enormous potential saving - in terms of office costs for the businesses, and of both commuting costs and wasted time and emotional stress for the employees. It also gives a lot of people a big chance to redress their work-life balance. In future, companies which offer flexible working will also have an advantage when it comes to attracting and retaining those staff who have scarce and sought-after skills.
In the long run, urban cores will still have their cultural pull - the size and the variety of nightlife venues, theatres, museums, universities and so on - as well as those knowledge economy businesses that continue to bother to maintain office space in them. But some economic activity is bound to shift permanently out into the suburbs and beyond.
Germans urged to stay at home amid fears Covid-19 infection rate is rising again
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/germans-urged-to-stay-home-amid-covid-19-infection-rate-fears
And as you can see from the chart, the rate had been increasing over the past few days as they had relaxed measures. So not exactly telling massive porkies is he.
Now that number has been updated today (and it is only an estimate). We will have to see if it stays there for the next few days.
I much as must be sounding like a broken record, please, please, Please, can we open up the schools, not force anybody to send there kids there but let those who wish to send there kids to school to do so.
At pick up time in the school yard for my daughter it is crowded with adults waiting for their children to be released - and at least at my daughter's age the teachers won't let the child leave the building until they see an authorised parent there to pick up the child.
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1255550542295764996
Flexible working trends were on the rise anyway, and this can only accelerate that. One comment we had from a company director was how much easier this makes it for people returning from maternity leave.
The likes of Google have more compute power than god and 1000s of the top minds in the world. The top tech companies have been hoovering up so much talent of the past 10 years, real concerns about how much academia have been hollowed out. There have been a massive arms race for machine learning experts, with the companies willing to pay big bucks for them.
We don't really have lots of data, this thing isn't called 'novel' for nothing
I don't expect that there will be any reference to this updated evidence from Germany in Thursday's briefing. Facts are only quoted selectively, that is when it helps the case the Government is trying to make in defence of its policies or to try and defend its manifest past failings in the face of criticism. Other facts will be ignored.
The problem is that by acting as such, they risk losing the crucial element of public trust that is paramount if the public are to consent to acting in the way they are told to.
I think it was more likely that they started getting all the messages of just how much the strain the system was under and their reactions was about as unsophisticated as possible. Ring of steel, close the place off to the outside world.
But, if they really had a good understanding of it, they surely would have had a better idea of how to treat it. Instead they went full on ventaliate as much as possible, which we now know is the wrong move.
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1255624340806217730?s=20
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1255625752969646085?s=20
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1255626791248629761?s=20
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1255627742147641345?s=20
https://twitter.com/PeteButtigieg/status/1255519707802882051?s=19
No hugs, no kissing. No intimacy.
No quiet conversations or simply being close to someone.
No choirs, no theatres, no concerts or gigs, no dancing, no visits to the cinema.
No walks with friends, no group or communal activities of any kind.
No meals or drinks out, no inviting friends, old and new, round, no parties - whether planned or impromptu, no family gatherings or celebrations.
No holding my best friend’s newborn child, no christenings or weddings or even proper funeral services.
No religious services - and if you have faith these do provide comfort.
No sport, no trips out to museums, galleries, historic or architectural sites.
No exploration of this country - or others.
No public lectures or talks or debates.
No evening classes or learning with others.
No chance of meeting someone new.
No personal beauty or therapy services.
No learning a musical instrument with a teacher present.
No more dramas or films being made - not with real life human actors.
No getting on a train for a long cross or inter-country journey, staring out the window and wondering who’ll you meet. No getting on a boat sailing somewhere and seeing where it takes you.
No possibility of serendipity.
Just confinement in front of a screen. And when we’ve watched every cat video on YouTube what then? Life at a distance mediated by a screen or telephone is not real. It may be your sort of life. It’s not mine and I don’t think it’s my children’s either.
If I wanted to live like Sister Wendy Beckett by myself in a caravan in the woods seeing no-one (and even she got out occasionally) or a Hannah Hauxwell on a remote cold Yorkshire farm, I’d have bloody chosen to do so.
But I didn’t and don’t and I miss all these things. Above all I miss the possibility of deciding for myself what I want to do. I feel my horizons shrinking but my mind is not. I feel the gap between the possibilities which opened up and which now have closed.
And if these are not going to be possible again - and they won’t be if social distancing is to be a real thing - then I do ask myself whether I want to live like this.
That is all.
"Fear and longing for life after lockdown
This beautiful city has never felt so ugly, with spies everywhere
Lisa Hilton
The singing has long since stopped. In the first days of the Italian lockdown, Venice’s abandoned streets were full of music. Masked shoppers paused beneath open windows to catch a snatch of Mozart or Queen or Adriano Celentano. In the evenings, residents sang from their balconies across the calle, sharing a moment of hope and support. Rainbow banners were unfurled across the house fronts: “Everything is going to be all right” painted in colourful, childish letters. Most have now been folded away. The city is sullen, mistrustful. People no longer greet one another, passing by with lowered eyes. The only sound is the engines of the carabinieri boats, constantly patrolling the still canals."
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/may-2020/fear-and-longing-for-life-after-lockdown/
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200429000724
Yeah the mo~~on is mine
I am not advocating that, just stating it as a conclusion.
I think there will be more WFH, and a rekindled enjoyment of simple domestic pleasures of cooking and gardening. I think many will consider rabid consumurism a blight on the planet and society and live more greenly, others will go hedonistic.
In terms of cities they will continue to draw in the youngsters, on whom the domestic pleasures are lost. The peak times of city growth in the UK were times when moving to the city reduced lifespan. I read that moving to London in the 19th Century took 8 years off life expectancy, Liverpool 17 years, yet both boomed.
I am looking forward to the new footy season in the autumn, and planning to venture to mainland Europe too.
I'm sure that figure appears as life expectancy in a book somewhere....
I can see a version of the new normal coming to more suburban and rural parts of the country, where fewer people are reliant on public transport for getting about simply because cars are essential for more people and bus services are often skeletal, so one can imagine that getting back up and running would potentially be easier in those sorts of places. The economy in urban cores, on the other hand, may be in the deep freeze for a long time.
In any event, the great working from home experiment will be the last thing to go because of its huge effect in cutting down social interactions, whilst allowing people to continue economic activity. That means almost no commuting, as I've seen for myself living in a commuter belt town where the trains are now arriving and leaving empty. There aren't many other reasons left for people not already resident in the cities to visit them, either, given that non-food shopping - even if and when it is allowed to get up - will be an ordeal rather than a pleasure, and it looks like theatres and other places of mass entertainment may be closed for years.
In short, going forward regional disparities may arise simply because of the practicalities of living, without formal intervention from Government.
While I share Cyclefree’s feelings on this, there will be a end to it.
Not entirely convinced by thone predictions for societal change, though.
People will simply take their chances, be a bit more careful, and price the risk in to their everyday lives as the new normal.
It's stuffed with regular posters (many a bit aspergey) whose idea of fun is to log-on to an online blog day after day posting detailed analytical comments from behind a screen.
Given that many like that in 'real life' it's not surprising so many don't really mind the lockdown (disclaimer: I do).
And, as 'once upon a time', we'll start to balance the risk. According to the ZOE programmes contact tracing app, there's about a 1% chance of contacting anyone with it where I live; slightly more in some districts, slightly less in others.
At some point people are going to say 'sod it, we'll give it a go!'. Especially the young.
Like having a chronic disease, it's not something anyone wants, but once you adjust you can in fact live with it.