It is perhaps worth reminding ourselves that today would have been General Election day if Theresa May had not gone early in 2017. When she took over as leader and Prime Minister after the referendum she made it very clear that she had no intentions of rushing into an early general election.
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Anyway, we all debated the first Starmer vs Johnson PMQs yesterday. Forensic takedown vs populist bluster.
Politically I'd say the triumph of Starmer was to force Johnson to make it up on the spot. "200k tests a day" and "big announcement Sunday" will not age well...
Over 65s voted even more Tory in 2017 than 2019, it was under 65s who swung to Boris
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52556421
What are they going to use it for? An aeroplane parking lot.
https://twitter.com/cricketwyvern/status/1258386894049730561?s=19
Looks like they're going to overtake France in terms of deaths/capita this month, then the UK sometime after that.
But, I really don't think we have the luxury now, to stand in the way of any privet sector investment project. especially big ones that would create a lot of jobs just in the construction phase.
2. Glad to see that Bozza has grown a lockdown mad haircut like so many people have
https://twitter.com/hancocktom/status/1257881201794113538?s=20
What a fucking shambles.
https://twitter.com/cricketwyvern/status/1258369407967014913?s=20
Good joke, that will keep me smiling for a bit.
At the moment I can think of Corbyn, EdM, TM the exPM, IDS & Caroline Lucas. Is that a lot?
Answer: anyone who knows that the IoW is the most poverty-stricken bit of the English countryside bar parts of Cornwall, where splashing out on the latest Samsung or iphone is not a priority. Brilliant place to test the app.
1) The government are stupid, evil, nasty liars
2) The media can only write stories if they are spoon fed information by the government.
3) The media are not responsible for what is published in the media.
4) The government is always responsible for what the media publishes.
A week old number would expect to see a 20% increase after another week.
Sounds more like a guess at the moment.
Or worse...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/05/why-unreliable-tests-are-flooding-the-coronavirus-conversation-cvd/
...Recently, she notes, Swedish scientists retracted a study claiming that 11 percent of the Stockholm population had been exposed to COVID-19. That team tested samples at a blood bank for antibodies—and then discovered that their sample contained blood from donors who knew they’d been infected and were hoping their antibodies could be therapeutic....
Easy to forget I know.
Apparently it only works on the island although anyone can install it. (Something to watch when the media starts reporting the number of downloads)
Last night I posted on here that Nate Silver from the '538 Blog' had tweeted a report from the Swedish Gov saying that they estimated 30% of Stockholm have had the virus at some point.
After chasing that up with a friend living in Stockholm, I have been tolled that its 26% which is still very good in my opinion for a death rate of 620 per million in the city.
If (big IF) we can extrapolate on to 3 times that 78% immunity for 0.18% of population dying.
78% with infection induced immunity is probably sufficient to keep the virus at bay.
0.18% Might sound like a lot, but its a lot less than many of the early predictions, (it would be about, 20,000 in Sweden and 100,000 people in UK terms).
How have they achieved this?
As everywhere, most of the deaths in Sweden are in the old, 80-89 year olds account for 40% of those who have died, and 90+ make up another 24%. But by keeping the Schools open, workplaces open, bars and restraints open, while strongly advising the old and ill to stay Indoors and keep safe, the virus is mostly travelling though the healthy parts of the population, with proportionately little harm
If anybody has seen any meaningful estimates for how may people in the UK/London have had the virus I would love to see them, but I don't think they exist, instead what are people estimates for the % infected here?
If people cared about the other thing in the other way they could have voted to give the yellow peril seats in 2017 or the reds and yellows in 2019. As it happens they voted quite clearly in 2019 to Get Brexit Done.
Android 8 dates from 2017, so anyone with a phone older than that will be unable to run it. Some high-end 2016 devices (Samsung, Sony etc may be upgradable).
IOS11 also dates from 2017, but with backward upgradeability to a 2013 iPhone 5S.
Average age of a Swedish ICU patient is 60 and the majority are between 50 and 69.
Don't have Hypertension is my top tip from looking at the Swedish data.
Everything about this is looking like a May grade clusterfuck.
Apparently the alert will come through within four hours of someone you have had “significant contact with” testing positive, or having sufficient symptoms to be treated as likely positive. The contact model is described as complex and evolving with the prototype having been signed off by Professor Whitty, but it doesn’t answer the question of how “significant contact” is defined. Clearly this will be a big part of the trial.
Really was excellent. They, and John Foxx in particular, really were ahead of their time.
https://twitter.com/Psythor/status/1258327399391006720
He shows how people can simply present the actual data, comparatively, and without any agenda attached.
The Labour-LD relationship in 1992 would have been a marriage of inconvenience at best. I doubt Paddy would have served in a Kinnock Cabinet and it's not unreasonable to suppose Brown might have made less of a disaster of ERM exit than Lamont and in any case he could and would have blamed the Conservatives.
The App doesn’t record where you are (says the leaflet), anyone can download it, and the postcode you give is based on honesty only.
The one thing that is obvious is that there are going to be tons of downloads from north island, many giving incorrect postcodes, and this evening’s claim of substantial success in getting islanders to download the App (already started by the MP) will be impossible to verify and most unlikely to be true.
Must admit I groaned when I heard they were separating from the google/apple effort. Government IT projects .....
Quick search suggests 50% of currently used Android devices in Europe are older than version8. That includes tablets (maybe not replaced so regularly?) so it's not fully representative, but clearly if they can't fix that it's going to be useless.
It could completely skew results, as well as obviously resulting in a whole bunch more social interactions than would usually be the case - or that should be the case under current circumstances.
If I were running the test I would get some dummy positive devices (ideally recovered people who can’t possibly transmit) wandering around the island, doing everything from casually passing people to standing next to them, to see how effectively it works. Whether they would actually take such a risk during the virus crisis seems unlikely.
Miraculous.
But in reality, some people are much more prone to catch the virus and to spread it on, e.g. bar tenders, or bus Drivers. while other people are much less so, eg. light house keepers.
Because of this disparity the % of people who need to be infected to bring R to below 1 is lower than the % the modules predict.
Also the R0 number is based on life styles before the virus, is some things have changed from before, e.g. the habit of shaking hands, or not washing hands, the that will bring it down also, but hard to say haw much.
the big caveats is that an infection rate below 1 does not mean that the dying stops, just it will attenuate down, probably with sporadic outbreaks. and if it is more seasonally affected than we think could come back in the winter if the reinfection comes above 1 again.
https://twitter.com/ChrisMusson/status/1258338608018227200?s=20
Is anyone doing similar graphs for Scotland & Wales?