Stochastic has a specific technical meaning in physical science/numerical methods.
Witless probably is the mot juste, you are right. I don't mind hacks not knowing what stochastic means but it really ought to have been obvious this was a technical or jargon word. Shades of Bernard and Sir Humphrey trying to explain meta-dioxin by parsing meta as a Latin or Greek term rather than a chemical one.
I mean if I can still enjoy listening to The Smiths despite knowing Morrissey is a cock end...
She seems also to be rather clueless. Elsewhere we expressed not giving a toss about the economy, without realising that a scorched earth economy has an impact on health and welfare etc.
Is it okay to think that Starmer might genuinely be a very good LOTO and the best one since Blair?
What made Blair so effective was that he opposed surgically, but also that he could compellingly spell out an alternative. I am very confident Starmer can do the first, much less convinced he can do the latter. But given what Labour has offered for the last decade, I’m happy to take that. I suspect it’s not enough to win a majority, though.
By 1997 Major's government was universally detested and Major himself derided as a joke. That quite possibly might be the view of Johnson and his government by 2024. I can't envision Covid-19 and its aftershock playing well for incumbent governments across the globe.
Starmer looks and sounds the part which may be all it needs. Johnson did not offer a vision save for 'get Brexit done'. Remember Jeremy had an alternative, it was just an alternative vision no one else shared.
It can't be understated also how in 2024, the Government won't be able to play the "new and fresh" card again. 13 years of Government will be eating into them, people will be ready for a change, IMHO.
If that change isn't perceived as bats**t crazy like last time its a real risk yes.
Also, it is often forgotten, but Starmer gaining a majority is almost inconceivable without some kind of revival in Scotland.
The real constitutionally-impossible situation that is quite plausible is Tories win England but a Lab minority backed by the SNP takes Westminster, though any time SNP abstains means the Tories have a majority.
Given the SNP won't vote on England-only matters it means Labour would be incapable of properly governing England . . . and it will be in the SNP's interests to ensure Westminster is gummed up.
Plus the SNP will demand an independence referendum but them winning it would hand England back to the Tories who had won in England.
If the red wall can fall, so can the soft blue underbelly.
It can, but that doesn't change an iota of what I wrote.
Its quite plausible the result ends up with a Tory majority in England, but Lab minority government with SNP support in Westminster, in which case governing England will be nigh on impossible.
Which is why IMHO, Labour would be best to try and ensure a Lib Dem revival.
Indeed, Esher and Walton and Wokingham and Cities of London and Westminster are now more likely to be lost by the Tories to the LDs than Great Grimsby or Bishop Auckland or Harlow are to be lost to Labour.
Blair never won the former unlike the latter yet the latter have bigger Tory majorities now than the former
In reality , I suspect that is unlikely. Voters who swung massively against Labour in Grimsby and Bishop Auckland over a two and a half year period might swing back in 2024 on a similar scale post-Corbyn with Brexit no longer being an issue to many.Labour is also likely to regain second place in seats such as Cities of London & Westminster and Finchley.
The latter is far more likely than the former. Many of those northern seats are switching due to values shifts and won't be going back in a hurry.
If I were the Tories I'd be most worried about 20-30 southern seats going LD.
Interesting article as always from David. For my taste, it is excessively nostalgic for the wonders of Western foreign policy in the Cold War era - I agree that the balance of terror idea worked out right (because ultimately both sides' leaderships were not actually insane), but our behaviour in the Third World was often deeply cynical and sowed the seeds for a great deal of trouble and indeed tragedy later. Our intermittent support for convenient thugs from Afghanistan to Vietnam to Cambodia to Chile was just as disreputable as Putin's support for the gangsters in Chechnya and eastern Ukraine is today.
But one can pointlessly debate the past forever. Where David is right is that we established a consensus that democracy and mutually supportive development were good things, and then, for no obvious reason, we let it fall apart. It was possible 10 years ago to think that the longest period of European peace for many centuries would continue indefinitely. Now...well, with luck...
A touch of the Admiral Nelsons in that reply, Nick.
Western foreign policy during the Cold War should first of all be compared with Soviet foreign policy, no? Not Putin’s.
And what was that foreign policy: suppression of democracy, show trials, the murder of opponents, the misuse of mental hospitals, keeping people imprisoned in their countries, even building a bloody Great Wall to keep them inside and shooting people in the back as they tried to escape, repeatedly invading countries which tried to rebel against their oppression, declarations of martial law and so, dismally, on....
There is much to criticise about some aspects of Western policy but its failings were as nothing compared to what the unfree Communist world got up to - in Europe and in the Third World.
Is it okay to think that Starmer might genuinely be a very good LOTO and the best one since Blair?
What made Blair so effective was that he opposed surgically, but also that he could compellingly spell out an alternative. I am very confident Starmer can do the first, much less convinced he can do the latter. But given what Labour has offered for the last decade, I’m happy to take that. I suspect it’s not enough to win a majority, though.
By 1997 Major's government was universally detested and Major himself derided as a joke. That quite possibly might be the view of Johnson and his government by 2024. I can't envision Covid-19 and its aftershock playing well for incumbent governments across the globe.
Starmer looks and sounds the part which may be all it needs. Johnson did not offer a vision save for 'get Brexit done'. Remember Jeremy had an alternative, it was just an alternative vision no one else shared.
It can't be understated also how in 2024, the Government won't be able to play the "new and fresh" card again. 13 years of Government will be eating into them, people will be ready for a change, IMHO.
If that change isn't perceived as bats**t crazy like last time its a real risk yes.
Also, it is often forgotten, but Starmer gaining a majority is almost inconceivable without some kind of revival in Scotland.
The real constitutionally-impossible situation that is quite plausible is Tories win England but a Lab minority backed by the SNP takes Westminster, though any time SNP abstains means the Tories have a majority.
Given the SNP won't vote on England-only matters it means Labour would be incapable of properly governing England . . . and it will be in the SNP's interests to ensure Westminster is gummed up.
Plus the SNP will demand an independence referendum but them winning it would hand England back to the Tories who had won in England.
If the red wall can fall, so can the soft blue underbelly.
It can, but that doesn't change an iota of what I wrote.
Its quite plausible the result ends up with a Tory majority in England, but Lab minority government with SNP support in Westminster, in which case governing England will be nigh on impossible.
Which is why IMHO, Labour would be best to try and ensure a Lib Dem revival.
Indeed, Esher and Walton and Wokingham and Cities of London and Westminster are now more likely to be lost by the Tories to the LDs than Great Grimsby or Bishop Auckland or Harlow are to be lost to Labour.
Blair never won the former unlike the latter yet the latter have bigger Tory majorities now than the former
In reality , I suspect that is unlikely. Voters who swung massively against Labour in Grimsby and Bishop Auckland over a two and a half year period might swing back in 2024 on a similar scale post-Corbyn with Brexit no longer being an issue to many.Labour is also likely to regain second place in seats such as Cities of London & Westminster and Finchley.
The latter is far more likely than the former. Many of those northern seats are switching due to values shifts and won't be going back in a hurry.
If I were the Tories I'd be most worried about 20-30 southern seats going LD.
30 Lib Dem seats has the potential to do quite a lot of damage, if Labour take another 40 or so, which surely any capable leader should be aiming to do, at a bare minimum.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
IF they are right, I really fear for our media class. They will have a mental breakdown in trying to come to terms with the horrible reality of the situation.
It's an awful balancing act. Everyone is going to get this sooner or later, all we can do is reach herd immunity in such a way that minimises deaths without crippling the economy.
At the moment we have gone with lockdown, which is a lowest-possible-deaths at the cost of total economic meltdown. But it won't work. Not just because it will destroy the economy, but also because lockdown cannot be maintained indefinitely. People are already breaking the rules, meeting up, etc.
Indefinite lockdown is not an option. That means herd immunity is still the only game in town. The only question is how we get there and how many lives will be lost.
An initial lockdown to build NHS capacity and prepare e.g. ramp up PPE production, hand sanitiser etc, was a good idea. But now lockdown has become a can kicking exercise. Nobody wants to face up to the truth. "Some of you will die" is not a vote winner. But it is the only option.
As I said, it is not a matter of whether it is a vote winner as such. Any Government who supports a policy which they know will result in deaths in 6 figures is going to be removed very quickly. Whoever takes over will simply have to enact a policy to reduce that number of deaths or they will meet the same fate. This is not about the preservation of any particular party in power, it is about the fact that a policy that kills 150,000 people is not one that is politically sustainable.
Stochastic has a specific technical meaning in physical science/numerical methods.
Witless probably is the mot juste, you are right. I don't mind hacks not knowing what stochastic means but it really ought to have been obvious this was a technical or jargon word. Shades of Bernard and Sir Humphrey trying to explain meta-dioxin by parsing meta as a Latin or Greek term rather than a chemical one.
that is a great example. like it.
It would help if science were bolder about naming things in some other way than finding a vaguely analogous word in ancient Greek. Gas and quark are excellent names for instance.
[though I believe "gas" is partly based on "chaos"].
Ultimately Labour needs to have a reason for people to vote Labour other than "get the Tories out". That doesn't resonate with 50% of the population, a primary campaign message needs to fish from a larger pool.
A key weakness of Labour was that actually their campaign was very negative. One left wing economist couldn’t understand why ‘people didn’t seem to grasp they can have a nicer lifestyle at others’ expense. We clearly didn’t make them understand who the enemy is.’
That’s the language of Donald Trump.
The way to win is to explain how you will deliver secure jobs, nice housing and good public services. And also, how you will pay for them using something vaguely akin to fiscal reality. Beyond that, I don’t think most people care about whether others use private alternatives or have better houses.
Did Johnson offer an alternative that matched this idea? No. But he offered to get Brexit done. That coupled with Labour’s incoherence and stupid policies was enough.
Completely agree, Labour are most dangerous when they talk about what they will do for Workington man and his family. He doesn't care that they hate the Tories 11/10, that's not going to change his vote.
Labour hasn't done that since 2005 or 2001. Every election campaign since then has been a variation on keep or get the Tories out. 2017 probably came closest to talking about what Labour would do for voters, and it showed in the result, 12.7m people voted for a campaign that was led by Jezza.
Like I said, Labour needs to give people a reason to vote Labour.
The 1997 Labour campaign was pretty vacuous - the main reason to vote Labour was 'Get the Tories out!'. The card with five campaign pledges was very bland and largely meaningless drivel.
Another glorious day here in downtown East London and definitely more people moving about than previous weekends.
The public are starting to lead the way in ending the lockdown - I now think Boris, in lieu of much else, will allow horse racing to re-start on Monday 18th to provide some entertainment if nothing else.
The question regarding the ex-Labour votes in the north and midlands who voted for Boris (note NOT the Conservative Party) is whether there will be a parallel with the Trump supporters and they will back Boris always and forever whatever he does or says.
If so, Labour may as well forget about winning them back and hope enough of them abstain to help the party regain a few seats.
The US election may well be the key - if Trump can get his 2016 vote out again he has a chance but if only a relative few have become disenchanted states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania will flip to the blue column and that's all Biden needs.
Here, 14 Conservative seats, including 8 gains in December, are held by less than 2% and overall 141 seats are held with margins of less than 10%. The journey from a solid majority to losing that majority may not be a long one but it is clear the journey to a Labour majority is a very long one.
I also note my seat, East Ham, having been the fifth safest Labour seat in the country is now only the 17th and it's only the fifth safest in London behind Bethnal Green & Bow, Hackney South & Shoreditch, Walthamstow and Tottenham, which is now Labour's safest seat in London requiring a 32.2% swing to the Conservatives though it's a marginal compared to Liverpool Walton where the Conservatives need a swing of 37.4%.
Stochastic has a specific technical meaning in physical science/numerical methods.
Witless probably is the mot juste, you are right. I don't mind hacks not knowing what stochastic means but it really ought to have been obvious this was a technical or jargon word. Shades of Bernard and Sir Humphrey trying to explain meta-dioxin by parsing meta as a Latin or Greek term rather than a chemical one.
that is a great example. like it.
It would help if science were bolder about naming things in some other way than finding a vaguely analogous word in ancient Greek. Gas and quark are excellent names for instance.
[though I believe "gas" is partly based on "chaos"].
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Be interesting to see if there's any movement from Barnier or if he goes to the wire demanding we give up our sovereign territories natural resources and sovereign right to set our own laws in which case talks may as well be abandoned.
I thought the best negotiating policy was holding to your position down to the finishing line? That's what I learned from the Brexiteers on here anyway.
Of course interventions from the car builders and prosecco makers may not have quite the impact that they once did.
Indeed it is. That's why it makes sense the deadline is June, that's the finishing line to get movement or we abandon talks.
Why do you think the EU will engage much? The UK is backtracking on what it has already signed up to and the EU has a higher priority right now. Why should 27 countries let themselves be distracted by what is now a second order problem with a negotiating partner that simultaneously wants to consume all available time in the next few months and isn't prepared even to stick to the words it signed up to last time?
As a matter of efficient time management, the EU is likely to let Britain jump off the ledge and sweep up the body parts in due course.
Good, that's what we want right now too. Time to get away.
It might be what you want. But I’d like to untie myself from your rope before you hurl yourself over the cliff.
Another glorious day here in downtown East London and definitely more people moving about than previous weekends.
The public are starting to lead the way in ending the lockdown - I now think Boris, in lieu of much else, will allow horse racing to re-start on Monday 18th to provide some entertainment if nothing else.
The question regarding the ex-Labour votes in the north and midlands who voted for Boris (note NOT the Conservative Party) is whether there will be a parallel with the Trump supporters and they will back Boris always and forever whatever he does or says.
If so, Labour may as well forget about winning them back and hope enough of them abstain to help the party regain a few seats.
The US election may well be the key - if Trump can get his 2016 vote out again he has a chance but if only a relative few have become disenchanted states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania will flip to the blue column and that's all Biden needs.
Here, 14 Conservative seats, including 8 gains in December, are held by less than 2% and overall 141 seats are held with margins of less than 10%. The journey from a solid majority to losing that majority may not be a long one but it is clear the journey to a Labour majority is a very long one.
I also note my seat, East Ham, having been the fifth safest Labour seat in the country is now only the 17th and it's only the fifth safest in London behind Bethnal Green & Bow, Hackney South & Shoreditch, Walthamstow and Tottenham, which is now Labour's safest seat in London requiring a 32.2% swing to the Conservatives though it's a marginal compared to Liverpool Walton where the Conservatives need a swing of 37.4%.
What were Labour’s safest seats before the 2015 election? How many of them were in Scotland?
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
IF they are right, I really fear for our media class. They will have a mental breakdown in trying to come to terms with the horrible reality of the situation.
It's an awful balancing act. Everyone is going to get this sooner or later, all we can do is reach herd immunity in such a way that minimises deaths without crippling the economy.
At the moment we have gone with lockdown, which is a lowest-possible-deaths at the cost of total economic meltdown. But it won't work. Not just because it will destroy the economy, but also because lockdown cannot be maintained indefinitely. People are already breaking the rules, meeting up, etc.
Indefinite lockdown is not an option. That means herd immunity is still the only game in town. The only question is how we get there and how many lives will be lost.
An initial lockdown to build NHS capacity and prepare e.g. ramp up PPE production, hand sanitiser etc, was a good idea. But now lockdown has become a can kicking exercise. Nobody wants to face up to the truth. "Some of you will die" is not a vote winner. But it is the only option.
As I said, it is not a matter of whether it is a vote winner as such. Any Government who supports a policy which they know will result in deaths in 6 figures is going to be removed very quickly. Whoever takes over will simply have to enact a policy to reduce that number of deaths or they will meet the same fate. This is not about the preservation of any particular party in power, it is about the fact that a policy that kills 150,000 people is not one that is politically sustainable.
So what do you propose as an alternative?
Either we end the lockdown, with social distancing, and allow people to contract this gradually. Net result will be around 150k deaths, as we build up herd immunity.
Or we all stay locked in our homes forever (or until a vaccine appears, if it does) and the economy dies. Everyone is broke and there is no money for the NHS either.
As I say, it is not a vote winner. But it is the only game in town.
Stochastic has a specific technical meaning in physical science/numerical methods.
Witless probably is the mot juste, you are right. I don't mind hacks not knowing what stochastic means but it really ought to have been obvious this was a technical or jargon word. Shades of Bernard and Sir Humphrey trying to explain meta-dioxin by parsing meta as a Latin or Greek term rather than a chemical one.
that is a great example. like it.
It would help if science were bolder about naming things in some other way than finding a vaguely analogous word in ancient Greek. Gas and quark are excellent names for instance.
[though I believe "gas" is partly based on "chaos"].
Charm and strangeness aren’t helping...
hadron is Greek, charm Latin or French, strangeness Latin to French to middle English.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
Their strategy requires it. If the Oxford team get it right first time then their strategy is a failure.
Is it okay to think that Starmer might genuinely be a very good LOTO and the best one since Blair?
What made Blair so effective was that he opposed surgically, but also that he could compellingly spell out an alternative. I am very confident Starmer can do the first, much less convinced he can do the latter. But given what Labour has offered for the last decade, I’m happy to take that. I suspect it’s not enough to win a majority, though.
By 1997 Major's government was universally detested and Major himself derided as a joke. That quite possibly might be the view of Johnson and his government by 2024. I can't envision Covid-19 and its aftershock playing well for incumbent governments across the globe.
Starmer looks and sounds the part which may be all it needs. Johnson did not offer a vision save for 'get Brexit done'. Remember Jeremy had an alternative, it was just an alternative vision no one else shared.
It can't be understated also how in 2024, the Government won't be able to play the "new and fresh" card again. 13 years of Government will be eating into them, people will be ready for a change, IMHO.
If that change isn't perceived as bats**t crazy like last time its a real risk yes.
Also, it is often forgotten, but Starmer gaining a majority is almost inconceivable without some kind of revival in Scotland.
The real constitutionally-impossible situation that is quite plausible is Tories win England but a Lab minority backed by the SNP takes Westminster, though any time SNP abstains means the Tories have a majority.
Given the SNP won't vote on England-only matters it means Labour would be incapable of properly governing England . . . and it will be in the SNP's interests to ensure Westminster is gummed up.
Plus the SNP will demand an independence referendum but them winning it would hand England back to the Tories who had won in England.
If the red wall can fall, so can the soft blue underbelly.
It can, but that doesn't change an iota of what I wrote.
Its quite plausible the result ends up with a Tory majority in England, but Lab minority government with SNP support in Westminster, in which case governing England will be nigh on impossible.
Which is why IMHO, Labour would be best to try and ensure a Lib Dem revival.
Indeed, Esher and Walton and Wokingham and Cities of London and Westminster are now more likely to be lost by the Tories to the LDs than Great Grimsby or Bishop Auckland or Harlow are to be lost to Labour.
Blair never won the former unlike the latter yet the latter have bigger Tory majorities now than the former
In reality , I suspect that is unlikely. Voters who swung massively against Labour in Grimsby and Bishop Auckland over a two and a half year period might swing back in 2024 on a similar scale post-Corbyn with Brexit no longer being an issue to many.Labour is also likely to regain second place in seats such as Cities of London & Westminster and Finchley.
The latter is far more likely than the former. Many of those northern seats are switching due to values shifts and won't be going back in a hurry.
If I were the Tories I'd be most worried about 20-30 southern seats going LD.
Is it okay to think that Starmer might genuinely be a very good LOTO and the best one since Blair?
What made Blair so effective was that he opposed surgically, but also that he could compellingly spell out an alternative. I am very confident Starmer can do the first, much less convinced he can do the latter. But given what Labour has offered for the last decade, I’m happy to take that. I suspect it’s not enough to win a majority, though.
By 1997 Major's government was universally detested and Major himself derided as a joke. That quite possibly might be the view of Johnson and his government by 2024. I can't envision Covid-19 and its aftershock playing well for incumbent governments across the globe.
Starmer looks and sounds the part which may be all it needs. Johnson did not offer a vision save for 'get Brexit done'. Remember Jeremy had an alternative, it was just an alternative vision no one else shared.
It can't be understated also how in 2024, the Government won't be able to play the "new and fresh" card again. 13 years of Government will be eating into them, people will be ready for a change, IMHO.
If that change isn't perceived as bats**t crazy like last time its a real risk yes.
Also, it is often forgotten, but Starmer gaining a majority is almost inconceivable without some kind of revival in Scotland.
The real constitutionally-impossible situation that is quite plausible is Tories win England but a Lab minority backed by the SNP takes Westminster, though any time SNP abstains means the Tories have a majority.
Given the SNP won't vote on England-only matters it means Labour would be incapable of properly governing England . . . and it will be in the SNP's interests to ensure Westminster is gummed up.
Plus the SNP will demand an independence referendum but them winning it would hand England back to the Tories who had won in England.
If the red wall can fall, so can the soft blue underbelly.
It can, but that doesn't change an iota of what I wrote.
Its quite plausible the result ends up with a Tory majority in England, but Lab minority government with SNP support in Westminster, in which case governing England will be nigh on impossible.
Which is why IMHO, Labour would be best to try and ensure a Lib Dem revival.
Indeed, Esher and Walton and Wokingham and Cities of London and Westminster are now more likely to be lost by the Tories to the LDs than Great Grimsby or Bishop Auckland or Harlow are to be lost to Labour.
Blair never won the former unlike the latter yet the latter have bigger Tory majorities now than the former
In reality , I suspect that is unlikely. Voters who swung massively against Labour in Grimsby and Bishop Auckland over a two and a half year period might swing back in 2024 on a similar scale post-Corbyn with Brexit no longer being an issue to many.Labour is also likely to regain second place in seats such as Cities of London & Westminster and Finchley.
The latter is far more likely than the former. Many of those northern seats are switching due to values shifts and won't be going back in a hurry.
If I were the Tories I'd be most worried about 20-30 southern seats going LD.
Values do not shift dramatically over such a short period of 2.5 years though. Why were those voters so much more prepared to vote Tory in December 2019 compared with June 2017? Demographic trends in such areas are likely to favour the Tories , but such a dramatic change would suggest that specific issues were at work - ie Corbyn and Brexit. When those issues cease to be relevant , the dramatic shift should be largely reversible notwithstanding the longterm trend.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
At 9 minits 20 seconds in he quotes 25% of the population as now immune, I has thought that was the finger for Stockholm only, but maybe its nationally.
New York City found pretty much an identical figure via antibody tests, although the rest of the state was at ~4%.
New York City has had about 20 000 deaths against Sweden's 3 000 for a similar population. Either the disease behaves completely differently in Sweden compared with everywhere else or the immunity level is nowhere near where Anders Tegnell claims it to be. I would be very wary of basing my policy on that assertion.
Somewhat sobering prog The Briefing Room on R4 this am mainly about the economic fallout of Corona. A US economist or historian was talking about how various US cities and states reacted differently to the Spanish Influenza. SF had a very strong belt and braces policy initially but lifted too early and was smashed by a third wave of the flu.
FFS, there's a third wave now?!
Yep. For spanish flu. iirc there were three waves, before it burnt out, the second was the most brutal.
Somewhat sobering prog The Briefing Room on R4 this am mainly about the economic fallout of Corona. A US economist or historian was talking about how various US cities and states reacted differently to the Spanish Influenza. SF had a very strong belt and braces policy initially but lifted too early and was smashed by a third wave of the flu.
FFS, there's a third wave now?!
Yep. For spanish flu. iirc there were three waves, before it burnt out, the second was the most brutal.
Wasn’t the trouble with the final wave (from the virus POV!) that it killed too quickly? Symptoms in the morning, dead by evening so little chance for the infected to spread it. In particular it took out the healthy young whose immune systems went into overdrive, killing the patient in the process.
Be interesting to see if there's any movement from Barnier or if he goes to the wire demanding we give up our sovereign territories natural resources and sovereign right to set our own laws in which case talks may as well be abandoned.
I thought the best negotiating policy was holding to your position down to the finishing line? That's what I learned from the Brexiteers on here anyway.
Of course interventions from the car builders and prosecco makers may not have quite the impact that they once did.
Indeed it is. That's why it makes sense the deadline is June, that's the finishing line to get movement or we abandon talks.
Why do you think the EU will engage much? The UK is backtracking on what it has already signed up to and the EU has a higher priority right now. Why should 27 countries let themselves be distracted by what is now a second order problem with a negotiating partner that simultaneously wants to consume all available time in the next few months and isn't prepared even to stick to the words it signed up to last time?
As a matter of efficient time management, the EU is likely to let Britain jump off the ledge and sweep up the body parts in due course.
Good, that's what we want right now too. Time to get away.
Another one entirely happy to play ducks and drakes with my partner's life. Charming.
I see no reason your partner's life would be at risk due to closing trade talks if the EU wish to annex our sovereign natural resources and sovereign lawmaking powers.
I do see you blinded by rage at this process and twisting everything to be a reason not to move away from the EU.
I tell you what. I'll get you in a crowded room and have thirty people cough over you. I'm sure you'll be fine.
And I'm sure you'll find that airy assurance just as comforting as I find your idiotic pronouncement made from a position of profound ignorance.
This government has ballsed-up the supply lines for combating an infection that it is invested in dealing with. The chances of it not ballsing up supply lines for a problem that it is invested in pretending doesn't exist are about nil.
This government has done a fine job of getting surge capacity supply lines for equipment the entire world is seeking to get 50x of at the same time. Maintaining supply lines for normal drugs without a surge that is needed as normal is ludicrously easy in comparison.
The country's failure to secure adequate PPE
Has got nothing to do with President Macron of France commandeering the substantial order for masks the NHS placed in February.....
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
Their strategy requires it. If the Oxford team get it right first time then their strategy is a failure.
Its one thing to think a vaccine isn't realistic for 2 years, but for working out best practice and finding repurposed drugs that help is quite another.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
IF they are right, I really fear for our media class. They will have a mental breakdown in trying to come to terms with the horrible reality of the situation.
It's an awful balancing act. Everyone is going to get this sooner or later, all we can do is reach herd immunity in such a way that minimises deaths without crippling the economy.
At the moment we have gone with lockdown, which is a lowest-possible-deaths at the cost of total economic meltdown. But it won't work. Not just because it will destroy the economy, but also because lockdown cannot be maintained indefinitely. People are already breaking the rules, meeting up, etc.
Indefinite lockdown is not an option. That means herd immunity is still the only game in town. The only question is how we get there and how many lives will be lost.
An initial lockdown to build NHS capacity and prepare e.g. ramp up PPE production, hand sanitiser etc, was a good idea. But now lockdown has become a can kicking exercise. Nobody wants to face up to the truth. "Some of you will die" is not a vote winner. But it is the only option.
As I said, it is not a matter of whether it is a vote winner as such. Any Government who supports a policy which they know will result in deaths in 6 figures is going to be removed very quickly. Whoever takes over will simply have to enact a policy to reduce that number of deaths or they will meet the same fate. This is not about the preservation of any particular party in power, it is about the fact that a policy that kills 150,000 people is not one that is politically sustainable.
So what do you propose as an alternative?
Either we end the lockdown, with social distancing, and allow people to contract this gradually. Net result will be around 150k deaths, as we build up herd immunity.
Or we all stay locked in our homes forever (or until a vaccine appears, if it does) and the economy dies. Everyone is broke and there is no money for the NHS either.
As I say, it is not a vote winner. But it is the only game in town.
I don't know. I do know that if you end the lockdown and people start dying again in large numbers then whether you think it is a good idea or not, the lockdown will come back. And after that there will probably be criminal charges brought against those who decided to ease the lockdown too early - particularly if it is against scientific advice.
No Government can survive killing large numbers of its own people if there is an alternative, no matter how bad economically you and I might think that alternative is.
Stochastic has a specific technical meaning in physical science/numerical methods.
Witless probably is the mot juste, you are right. I don't mind hacks not knowing what stochastic means but it really ought to have been obvious this was a technical or jargon word. Shades of Bernard and Sir Humphrey trying to explain meta-dioxin by parsing meta as a Latin or Greek term rather than a chemical one.
that is a great example. like it.
It would help if science were bolder about naming things in some other way than finding a vaguely analogous word in ancient Greek. Gas and quark are excellent names for instance.
[though I believe "gas" is partly based on "chaos"].
Charm and strangeness aren’t helping...
hadron is Greek, charm Latin or French, strangeness Latin to French to middle English.
The word “hadron” was taken from the Greek, yes, but charm and strangeness are perfectly well known and used words in English, used in particle Physics in a fairly different way to the normal. The problem being discussed was having words which have a particular meaning in one context (stochastic was the example) and trying to work out what the technical meaning must be from the normal one (or the derivation from Latin or Greek if appropriate). How many here who don’t have a science background would be able to explain what I mean when I say that “Strangeness is not conserved in a weak interaction”?
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
Depends. It could be that you need more than one shot and that needs to be spaced apart. Another likely outcome is that the first go kinda of works, but only x% effective, so they end up reformulating slightly and then everybody has to go around again.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
Their strategy requires it. If the Oxford team get it right first time then their strategy is a failure.
There are to my understanding at least thirty serious vaccine development programmes going on throughout the world. I would guess there is a high chance of at least one of them coming up trumps.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
IF they are right, I really fear for our media class. They will have a mental breakdown in trying to come to terms with the horrible reality of the situation.
If they are right it would unfortunately still not have been a course we could have followed. They have had death rates probably 5 times of what they would have had with lockdown and there is no way that the Government would have survived 150,000+ deaths. We would simply have ended up in lockdown much later but with many more dead.
I really really hope the Swedes are right that this was the best way for their country. But it needs a small population and the willingness to have significant 'necessary' deaths to make it work as an experiment.
https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNewsUK/status/1259042461520977920?s=20 Senior ministers have expressed fury at what one described as “weeks of insane briefing” to the media, accusing government hawks of trying to force Johnson into relaxing more measures, and claiming some newspapers were pursuing an anti-lockdown agenda because of fears about sales.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
Typically takes 18-24 months, if you're lucky.
There are viral diseases for which we have not yet developed vaccines.
I wouldn't say pessimism, I think its reasonably justifiable.
Is it okay to think that Starmer might genuinely be a very good LOTO and the best one since Blair?
What made Blair so effective was that he opposed surgically, but also that he could compellingly spell out an alternative. I am very confident Starmer can do the first, much less convinced he can do the latter. But given what Labour has offered for the last decade, I’m happy to take that. I suspect it’s not enough to win a majority, though.
By 1997 Major's government was universally detested and Major himself derided as a joke. That quite possibly might be the view of Johnson and his government by 2024. I can't envision Covid-19 and its aftershock playing well for incumbent governments across the globe.
Starmer looks and sounds the part which may be all it needs. Johnson did not offer a vision save for 'get Brexit done'. Remember Jeremy had an alternative, it was just an alternative vision no one else shared.
It can't be understated also how in 2024, the Government won't be able to play the "new and fresh" card again. 13 years of Government will be eating into them, people will be ready for a change, IMHO.
If that change isn't perceived as bats**t crazy like last time its a real risk yes.
Also, it is often forgotten, but Starmer gaining a majority is almost inconceivable without some kind of revival in Scotland.
The real constitutionally-impossible situation that is quite plausible is Tories win England but a Lab minority backed by the SNP takes Westminster, though any time SNP abstains means the Tories have a majority.
Given the SNP won't vote on England-only matters it means Labour would be incapable of properly governing England . . . and it will be in the SNP's interests to ensure Westminster is gummed up.
Plus the SNP will demand an independence referendum but them winning it would hand England back to the Tories who had won in England.
If the red wall can fall, so can the soft blue underbelly.
It can, but that doesn't change an iota of what I wrote.
Its quite plausible the result ends up with a Tory majority in England, but Lab minority government with SNP support in Westminster, in which case governing England will be nigh on impossible.
Which is why IMHO, Labour would be best to try and ensure a Lib Dem revival.
Indeed, Esher and Walton and Wokingham and Cities of London and Westminster are now more likely to be lost by the Tories to the LDs than Great Grimsby or Bishop Auckland or Harlow are to be lost to Labour.
Blair never won the former unlike the latter yet the latter have bigger Tory majorities now than the former
In reality , I suspect that is unlikely. Voters who swung massively against Labour in Grimsby and Bishop Auckland over a two and a half year period might swing back in 2024 on a similar scale post-Corbyn with Brexit no longer being an issue to many.Labour is also likely to regain second place in seats such as Cities of London & Westminster and Finchley.
Might swing back? Or...
*Mansfield waves....*
2017 Con majority - 1,057
2019 Con majority - 16,306
But can the MPs in (presumably Great) Grimsby and Bishop Auckland cut their own hair competently?
I think the lesson of Mansfield is that pavement politics can help keep the former Red Wall for the Tories.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
IF they are right, I really fear for our media class. They will have a mental breakdown in trying to come to terms with the horrible reality of the situation.
It's an awful balancing act. Everyone is going to get this sooner or later, all we can do is reach herd immunity in such a way that minimises deaths without crippling the economy.
At the moment we have gone with lockdown, which is a lowest-possible-deaths at the cost of total economic meltdown. But it won't work. Not just because it will destroy the economy, but also because lockdown cannot be maintained indefinitely. People are already breaking the rules, meeting up, etc.
Indefinite lockdown is not an option. That means herd immunity is still the only game in town. The only question is how we get there and how many lives will be lost.
An initial lockdown to build NHS capacity and prepare e.g. ramp up PPE production, hand sanitiser etc, was a good idea. But now lockdown has become a can kicking exercise. Nobody wants to face up to the truth. "Some of you will die" is not a vote winner. But it is the only option.
As I said, it is not a matter of whether it is a vote winner as such. Any Government who supports a policy which they know will result in deaths in 6 figures is going to be removed very quickly. Whoever takes over will simply have to enact a policy to reduce that number of deaths or they will meet the same fate. This is not about the preservation of any particular party in power, it is about the fact that a policy that kills 150,000 people is not one that is politically sustainable.
So what do you propose as an alternative?
Either we end the lockdown, with social distancing, and allow people to contract this gradually. Net result will be around 150k deaths, as we build up herd immunity.
Or we all stay locked in our homes forever (or until a vaccine appears, if it does) and the economy dies. Everyone is broke and there is no money for the NHS either.
As I say, it is not a vote winner. But it is the only game in town.
I don't know. I do know that if you end the lockdown and people start dying again in large numbers then whether you think it is a good idea or not, the lockdown will come back. And after that there will probably be criminal charges brought against those who decided to ease the lockdown too early - particularly if it is against scientific advice.
No Government can survive killing large numbers of its own people if there is an alternative, no matter how bad economically you and I might think that alternative is.
The government is, so far, surviving the killing of large numbers of old people in care homes as a direct consequence of its own actions and failures to act.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
Their strategy requires it. If the Oxford team get it right first time then their strategy is a failure.
Its one thing to think a vaccine isn't realistic for 2 years, but for working out best practice and finding repurposed drugs that help is quite another.
... but that fits into the Swedish approach, doesn't it?
Improve the chances of people surviving in hospital, shield the vulnerable where possible, improve personal hygiene and operate your day to day life under social distancing.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
Their strategy requires it. If the Oxford team get it right first time then their strategy is a failure.
Its one thing to think a vaccine isn't realistic for 2 years, but for working out best practice and finding repurposed drugs that help is quite another.
... but that fits into the Swedish approach, doesn't it?
Improve the chances of people surviving in hospital, shield the vulnerable where possible, improve personal hygiene and operate your day to day life under social distancing.
Yes, but i think those who prefer a total lockdown e.g. like New Zealand, would say it buys you several months to organize and find treatments, rather than firefighting and trying to work out best practice.
At this moment the figures for electricity generation are:
Solar 28.75% Gas 28.41% Nuclear 20.43% Wind 6.01%
I would be willing to bet that’s the first time solar power has officially been the largest provider of national grid power. And the true figure will be more as it doesn’t count reduced demand due to solar panels.
Of course, low demand, lots of sun and not much wind may help - although oddly wind power has been dormant for some weeks even when it’s been breezy.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
IF they are right, I really fear for our media class. They will have a mental breakdown in trying to come to terms with the horrible reality of the situation.
It's an awful balancing act. Everyone is going to get this sooner or later, all we can do is reach herd immunity in such a way that minimises deaths without crippling the economy.
At the moment we have gone with lockdown, which is a lowest-possible-deaths at the cost of total economic meltdown. But it won't work. Not just because it will destroy the economy, but also because lockdown cannot be maintained indefinitely. People are already breaking the rules, meeting up, etc.
Indefinite lockdown is not an option. That means herd immunity is still the only game in town. The only question is how we get there and how many lives will be lost.
An initial lockdown to build NHS capacity and prepare e.g. ramp up PPE production, hand sanitiser etc, was a good idea. But now lockdown has become a can kicking exercise. Nobody wants to face up to the truth. "Some of you will die" is not a vote winner. But it is the only option.
As I said, it is not a matter of whether it is a vote winner as such. Any Government who supports a policy which they know will result in deaths in 6 figures is going to be removed very quickly. Whoever takes over will simply have to enact a policy to reduce that number of deaths or they will meet the same fate. This is not about the preservation of any particular party in power, it is about the fact that a policy that kills 150,000 people is not one that is politically sustainable.
So what do you propose as an alternative?
Either we end the lockdown, with social distancing, and allow people to contract this gradually. Net result will be around 150k deaths, as we build up herd immunity.
Or we all stay locked in our homes forever (or until a vaccine appears, if it does) and the economy dies. Everyone is broke and there is no money for the NHS either.
As I say, it is not a vote winner. But it is the only game in town.
I don't know. I do know that if you end the lockdown and people start dying again in large numbers then whether you think it is a good idea or not, the lockdown will come back. And after that there will probably be criminal charges brought against those who decided to ease the lockdown too early - particularly if it is against scientific advice.
No Government can survive killing large numbers of its own people if there is an alternative, no matter how bad economically you and I might think that alternative is.
The government is, so far, surviving the killing of large numbers of old people in care homes as a direct consequence of its own actions and failures to act.
I doubt they will in the long term. Nor should they. That was an avoidable situation which they screwed up either by neglect or ignorance. Neither should be a defence.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
let's say we get to a point where we can deliver 100k a day, a tally I have chosen for a special significance. It would take almost 22 months to administer to the whole population. That is assuming working Sat and Sun. It is almost 31 months with weekends off.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
IF they are right, I really fear for our media class. They will have a mental breakdown in trying to come to terms with the horrible reality of the situation.
It's an awful balancing act. Everyone is going to get this sooner or later, all we can do is reach herd immunity in such a way that minimises deaths without crippling the economy.
At the moment we have gone with lockdown, which is a lowest-possible-deaths at the cost of total economic meltdown. But it won't work. Not just because it will destroy the economy, but also because lockdown cannot be maintained indefinitely. People are already breaking the rules, meeting up, etc.
Indefinite lockdown is not an option. That means herd immunity is still the only game in town. The only question is how we get there and how many lives will be lost.
An initial lockdown to build NHS capacity and prepare e.g. ramp up PPE production, hand sanitiser etc, was a good idea. But now lockdown has become a can kicking exercise. Nobody wants to face up to the truth. "Some of you will die" is not a vote winner. But it is the only option.
As I said, it is not a matter of whether it is a vote winner as such. Any Government who supports a policy which they know will result in deaths in 6 figures is going to be removed very quickly. Whoever takes over will simply have to enact a policy to reduce that number of deaths or they will meet the same fate. This is not about the preservation of any particular party in power, it is about the fact that a policy that kills 150,000 people is not one that is politically sustainable.
So what do you propose as an alternative?
Either we end the lockdown, with social distancing, and allow people to contract this gradually. Net result will be around 150k deaths, as we build up herd immunity.
Or we all stay locked in our homes forever (or until a vaccine appears, if it does) and the economy dies. Everyone is broke and there is no money for the NHS either.
As I say, it is not a vote winner. But it is the only game in town.
I don't know. I do know that if you end the lockdown and people start dying again in large numbers then whether you think it is a good idea or not, the lockdown will come back. And after that there will probably be criminal charges brought against those who decided to ease the lockdown too early - particularly if it is against scientific advice.
No Government can survive killing large numbers of its own people if there is an alternative, no matter how bad economically you and I might think that alternative is.
The government is, so far, surviving the killing of large numbers of old people in care homes as a direct consequence of its own actions and failures to act.
I doubt they will in the long term. Nor should they. That was an avoidable situation which they screwed up either by neglect or ignorance. Neither should be a defence.
I quite agree. But I am not at all hopeful that the government will suffer the consequences it should.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
I am usually a pessimist too on how long things take but not in this case. I think Dominic Raab will be vaccinated against Covid-19 this year. Happy to bet £20 at even money on that if any doomster on here wishes to hit me.
At this moment the figures for electricity generation are:
Solar 28.75% Gas 28.41% Nuclear 20.43% Wind 6.01%
I would be willing to bet that’s the first time solar power has officially been the largest provider of national grid power. And the true figure will be more as it doesn’t count reduced demand due to solar panels.
Of course, low demand, lots of sun and not much wind may help - although oddly wind power has been dormant for some weeks even when it’s been breezy.
I thought we'd had the transition to > 50 % power from renewable sources sometime last year?
(I do appreciate that doesn't contradict your point - just thought it might be relevent)
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
IF they are right, I really fear for our media class. They will have a mental breakdown in trying to come to terms with the horrible reality of the situation.
It's an awful balancing act. Everyone is going to get this sooner or later, all we can do is reach herd immunity in such a way that minimises deaths without crippling the economy.
At the moment we have gone with lockdown, which is a lowest-possible-deaths at the cost of total economic meltdown. But it won't work. Not just because it will destroy the economy, but also because lockdown cannot be maintained indefinitely. People are already breaking the rules, meeting up, etc.
Indefinite lockdown is not an option. That means herd immunity is still the only game in town. The only question is how we get there and how many lives will be lost.
An initial lockdown to build NHS capacity and prepare e.g. ramp up PPE production, hand sanitiser etc, was a good idea. But now lockdown has become a can kicking exercise. Nobody wants to face up to the truth. "Some of you will die" is not a vote winner. But it is the only option.
As I said, it is not a matter of whether it is a vote winner as such. Any Government who supports a policy which they know will result in deaths in 6 figures is going to be removed very quickly. Whoever takes over will simply have to enact a policy to reduce that number of deaths or they will meet the same fate. This is not about the preservation of any particular party in power, it is about the fact that a policy that kills 150,000 people is not one that is politically sustainable.
So what do you propose as an alternative?
Either we end the lockdown, with social distancing, and allow people to contract this gradually. Net result will be around 150k deaths, as we build up herd immunity.
Or we all stay locked in our homes forever (or until a vaccine appears, if it does) and the economy dies. Everyone is broke and there is no money for the NHS either.
As I say, it is not a vote winner. But it is the only game in town.
I don't know. I do know that if you end the lockdown and people start dying again in large numbers then whether you think it is a good idea or not, the lockdown will come back. And after that there will probably be criminal charges brought against those who decided to ease the lockdown too early - particularly if it is against scientific advice.
No Government can survive killing large numbers of its own people if there is an alternative, no matter how bad economically you and I might think that alternative is.
The government is, so far, surviving the killing of large numbers of old people in care homes as a direct consequence of its own actions and failures to act.
And in Scotland and in Wales (and the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey). So all are culpable? Or are there long standing systemic issues to do with how we approach care in the British Isles that this has exposed?
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
let's say we get to a point where we can deliver 100k a day, a tally I have chosen for a special significance. It would take almost 22 months to administer to the whole population. That is assuming working Sat and Sun. It is almost 31 months with weekends off.
They do something like 14 million flu shots per year in the UK.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
IF they are right, I really fear for our media class. They will have a mental breakdown in trying to come to terms with the horrible reality of the situation.
It's an awful balancing act. Everyone is going to get this sooner or later, all we can do is reach herd immunity in such a way that minimises deaths without crippling the economy.
At the moment we have gone with lockdown, which is a lowest-possible-deaths at the cost of total economic meltdown. But it won't work. Not just because it will destroy the economy, but also because lockdown cannot be maintained indefinitely. People are already breaking the rules, meeting up, etc.
Indefinite lockdown is not an option. That means herd immunity is still the only game in town. The only question is how we get there and how many lives will be lost.
An initial lockdown to build NHS capacity and prepare e.g. ramp up PPE production, hand sanitiser etc, was a good idea. But now lockdown has become a can kicking exercise. Nobody wants to face up to the truth. "Some of you will die" is not a vote winner. But it is the only option.
As I said, it is not a matter of whether it is a vote winner as such. Any Government who supports a policy which they know will result in deaths in 6 figures is going to be removed very quickly. Whoever takes over will simply have to enact a policy to reduce that number of deaths or they will meet the same fate. This is not about the preservation of any particular party in power, it is about the fact that a policy that kills 150,000 people is not one that is politically sustainable.
So what do you propose as an alternative?
Either we end the lockdown, with social distancing, and allow people to contract this gradually. Net result will be around 150k deaths, as we build up herd immunity.
Or we all stay locked in our homes forever (or until a vaccine appears, if it does) and the economy dies. Everyone is broke and there is no money for the NHS either.
As I say, it is not a vote winner. But it is the only game in town.
I don't know. I do know that if you end the lockdown and people start dying again in large numbers then whether you think it is a good idea or not, the lockdown will come back. And after that there will probably be criminal charges brought against those who decided to ease the lockdown too early - particularly if it is against scientific advice.
No Government can survive killing large numbers of its own people if there is an alternative, no matter how bad economically you and I might think that alternative is.
The government is, so far, surviving the killing of large numbers of old people in care homes as a direct consequence of its own actions and failures to act.
I doubt they will in the long term. Nor should they.
“Right you've convinced me. Later this week I shall lose my thirty pound land virginity. I remain to be convinced it will have a lasting positive effect on my mental health.”
I would be delighted to advise on what you need to buy! Could I not be taken on such visits as a buyer - like those art buyers poncey rich people have? I will wear my mask - made on my sewing machine last night and very fetching - you tell me the budget and I will blow it. It will do wonders for your garden and my mental health! 😀
Stay away from the tat though. Agapanthus, peonies, dahlias, crocosmias, geums and foxgloves will be starting to come through. One tip: never buy plants that are in full flower because the flowering will not last long once you are home, unless you are good at deadheading or it is a plant which will repeat flower. Buy plants with plenty of buds so you - rather than the garden centre - get the full benefit.
And check the roots. Many plants will likely be pot bound with the roots would tightly round and round. Ideally, you don’t want these as they take a bit longer to get established in the ground unless you pull the roots a bit to allow them to spread.
Have fun!
By the by, one shrub that has done very well this year is the dwarf lilac. Heavenly scent too. Well worth anybody considering it to fill a space.
What a wonderful view ... is it from your garden and where would that be pray? In general terms obviously.
It is a gorgeous view, south Devon, looking out towards the coast west of Dartmouth. We can glimpse the sea - was more than that, but a plantation of conifers on the horizon has pretty much done for the view.
You have to go upstairs for the view, Peter.....guest bedroom. Dwarf lilac in the foreground. Sadly, CV-19 means no guests getting the benefit:
Thanks for the further superb view from your home MM ... I think I can well understand why you seldom manage to find the time to attend NFFC's games!
It needs to be something a bit special to drag me away, for sure!
Oh, and it's about the best garden in the SW for moths. Quite a few species that don't get found anywhere else than here. No background light and very little use of pesticides will do that.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
IF they are right, I really fear for our media class. They will have a mental breakdown in trying to come to terms with the horrible reality of the situation.
It's an awful balancing act. Everyone is going to get this sooner or later, all we can do is reach herd immunity in such a way that minimises deaths without crippling the economy.
At the moment we have gone with lockdown, which is a lowest-possible-deaths at the cost of total economic meltdown. But it won't work. Not just because it will destroy the economy, but also because lockdown cannot be maintained indefinitely. People are already breaking the rules, meeting up, etc.
Indefinite lockdown is not an option. That means herd immunity is still the only game in town. The only question is how we get there and how many lives will be lost.
An initial lockdown to build NHS capacity and prepare e.g. ramp up PPE production, hand sanitiser etc, was a good idea. But now lockdown has become a can kicking exercise. Nobody wants to face up to the truth. "Some of you will die" is not a vote winner. But it is the only option.
As I said, it is not a matter of whether it is a vote winner as such. Any Government who supports a policy which they know will result in deaths in 6 figures is going to be removed very quickly. Whoever takes over will simply have to enact a policy to reduce that number of deaths or they will meet the same fate. This is not about the preservation of any particular party in power, it is about the fact that a policy that kills 150,000 people is not one that is politically sustainable.
So what do you propose as an alternative?
Either we end the lockdown, with social distancing, and allow people to contract this gradually. Net result will be around 150k deaths, as we build up herd immunity.
Or we all stay locked in our homes forever (or until a vaccine appears, if it does) and the economy dies. Everyone is broke and there is no money for the NHS either.
As I say, it is not a vote winner. But it is the only game in town.
I don't know. I do know that if you end the lockdown and people start dying again in large numbers then whether you think it is a good idea or not, the lockdown will come back. And after that there will probably be criminal charges brought against those who decided to ease the lockdown too early - particularly if it is against scientific advice.
No Government can survive killing large numbers of its own people if there is an alternative, no matter how bad economically you and I might think that alternative is.
I totally understand where you're coming from.
The difference for me is I don't regard the 150k-ish deaths as being caused by the government. They'll be caused by a virus, which I see as a kind of natural disaster. To me it is as uanvoidable as a tsunami - it is going to happen, it has happened, the genie is out of the bottle. It kills slowly, but over time it will kill that number of people, absent a vaccine.
We look to government to do something, but in fact there is little the government can do. It can ensure adequate hospital capacity to minimise deaths, but it cannot prevent the deaths that will happen on the road to herd immunity.
To blame the government for those deaths seems to me a kind of madness. Would the death toll on the road to herd immunity be significantly different under Labour, or UKIP, or the Raving Loony Party come to think of it?
Lockdown isn't economically or socially sustainable. Which leaves us with herd immunity. No change of government is going to change that.
At this moment the figures for electricity generation are:
Solar 28.75% Gas 28.41% Nuclear 20.43% Wind 6.01%
I would be willing to bet that’s the first time solar power has officially been the largest provider of national grid power. And the true figure will be more as it doesn’t count reduced demand due to solar panels.
Of course, low demand, lots of sun and not much wind may help - although oddly wind power has been dormant for some weeks even when it’s been breezy.
I thought we'd had the transition to > 50 % power from renewable sources sometime last year?
(I do appreciate that doesn't contradict your point - just thought it might be relevent)
Yes, but that was dominated by wind power. That was nudging 40% of output at times even three months ago.
Solar, having watched it closely, seems to be creeping up and up. That surprises me, as while solar panels on buildings are a good form of power, they’re not counted in the stats. Instead, they show as reduced demand. So it’s solar farms that are being measured here, and I always thought of them as a relatively low-key and unpopular form of power generation in the UK due to its climate.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
let's say we get to a point where we can deliver 100k a day, a tally I have chosen for a special significance. It would take almost 22 months to administer to the whole population. That is assuming working Sat and Sun. It is almost 31 months with weekends off.
They do something like 14 million flu shots per year in the UK.
OK, so 100k a day, 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week. 26 million a year. Comparable number, wouldn't you agree?
Another glorious day here in downtown East London and definitely more people moving about than previous weekends.
The public are starting to lead the way in ending the lockdown - I now think Boris, in lieu of much else, will allow horse racing to re-start on Monday 18th to provide some entertainment if nothing else.
I'd like racing to resume but am not getting too excited by optimistic predictions from within the most insular sport on the planet whose leaders are tin-eared to politics and the wider public perception.
Another glorious day here in downtown East London and definitely more people moving about than previous weekends.
The public are starting to lead the way in ending the lockdown - I now think Boris, in lieu of much else, will allow horse racing to re-start on Monday 18th to provide some entertainment if nothing else.
I'd like racing to resume but am not getting too excited by optimistic predictions from within the most insular sport on the planet whose leaders are tin-eared to politics and the wider public perception.
I asked my father if he’d go to the races if they resumed.
He said no, the risk of infection would be too high.
I asked if he’d go to county cricket if it restarted.
He said yes, because in 55 years of following Gloucestershire he’s usually been the only supporter there!
Stochastic has a specific technical meaning in physical science/numerical methods.
Witless probably is the mot juste, you are right. I don't mind hacks not knowing what stochastic means but it really ought to have been obvious this was a technical or jargon word. Shades of Bernard and Sir Humphrey trying to explain meta-dioxin by parsing meta as a Latin or Greek term rather than a chemical one.
that is a great example. like it.
It would help if science were bolder about naming things in some other way than finding a vaguely analogous word in ancient Greek. Gas and quark are excellent names for instance.
[though I believe "gas" is partly based on "chaos"].
Charm and strangeness aren’t helping...
hadron is Greek, charm Latin or French, strangeness Latin to French to middle English.
The word “hadron” was taken from the Greek, yes, but charm and strangeness are perfectly well known and used words in English, used in particle Physics in a fairly different way to the normal. The problem being discussed was having words which have a particular meaning in one context (stochastic was the example) and trying to work out what the technical meaning must be from the normal one (or the derivation from Latin or Greek if appropriate). How many here who don’t have a science background would be able to explain what I mean when I say that “Strangeness is not conserved in a weak interaction”?
I don't think we are disagreeing about anything, except that stochastic in its original meaning is actually a perfectly good metaphor for its meaning in statistics - as good a metaphor as monte carlo simulation, anyway - shooting an arrow at a target vs putting a stake on 17. The problem here is that Hitchens is pretending to think that just guessing is the same as having multiple guesses and testing what the consequences would be.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
let's say we get to a point where we can deliver 100k a day, a tally I have chosen for a special significance. It would take almost 22 months to administer to the whole population. That is assuming working Sat and Sun. It is almost 31 months with weekends off.
They do something like 14 million flu shots per year in the UK.
OK, so 100k a day, 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week. 26 million a year. Comparable number, wouldn't you agree?
The limiting factor will be production not administering it. The new facility being built that can make 10s millions of doses a week won't be ready for another year.
I think Oxford at talking of the plan being to have about 1 million doses ready for start of Autumn.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
let's say we get to a point where we can deliver 100k a day, a tally I have chosen for a special significance. It would take almost 22 months to administer to the whole population. That is assuming working Sat and Sun. It is almost 31 months with weekends off.
14 million are vaccinated each year for seasonal flu in three months.
And an extra few million get satisfied that they had it "back then" - so are at no risk to themselves or anybody else by acting like a twat in not social distancing....
Articles like this mean we need that antibody test all the more.
If it started in October, maybe it didn’t start in China.
Perhaps it started in a Greggs or a Weatherspoons.
It was when a vegan sausage roll came into contact with a steak bake.
A theory to be espoused by the Chinese Ambassador in 5, 4, 3.....
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
let's say we get to a point where we can deliver 100k a day, a tally I have chosen for a special significance. It would take almost 22 months to administer to the whole population. That is assuming working Sat and Sun. It is almost 31 months with weekends off.
They do something like 14 million flu shots per year in the UK.
OK, so 100k a day, 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week. 26 million a year. Comparable number, wouldn't you agree?
No, because they do those 14 million in three months.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
let's say we get to a point where we can deliver 100k a day, a tally I have chosen for a special significance. It would take almost 22 months to administer to the whole population. That is assuming working Sat and Sun. It is almost 31 months with weekends off.
They do something like 14 million flu shots per year in the UK.
OK, so 100k a day, 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week. 26 million a year. Comparable number, wouldn't you agree?
The limiting factor will be production not administering it. The new facility being built that can make 10s millions of doses a week won't be ready for another year.
I think Oxford at talking of the plan being to have about 1 million doses ready for start of Autumn.
Yep, administering it will be easy in comparison. You might even get the jab from a squaddie.
Is it okay to think that Starmer might genuinely be a very good LOTO and the best one since Blair?
What made Blair so effective was that he opposed surgically, but also that he could compellingly spell out an alternative. I am very confident Starmer can do the first, much less convinced he can do the latter. But given what Labour has offered for the last decade, I’m happy to take that. I suspect it’s not enough to win a majority, though.
By 1997 Major's government was universally detested and Major himself derided as a joke. That quite possibly might be the view of Johnson and his government by 2024. I can't envision Covid-19 and its aftershock playing well for incumbent governments across the globe.
Starmer looks and sounds the part which may be all it needs. Johnson did not offer a vision save for 'get Brexit done'. Remember Jeremy had an alternative, it was just an alternative vision no one else shared.
It can't be understated also how in 2024, the Government won't be able to play the "new and fresh" card again. 13 years of Government will be eating into them, people will be ready for a change, IMHO.
If that change isn't perceived as bats**t crazy like last time its a real risk yes.
Also, it is often forgotten, but Starmer gaining a majority is almost inconceivable without some kind of revival in Scotland.
The real constitutionally-impossible situation that is quite plausible is Tories win England but a Lab minority backed by the SNP takes Westminster, though any time SNP abstains means the Tories have a majority.
Given the SNP won't vote on England-only matters it means Labour would be incapable of properly governing England . . . and it will be in the SNP's interests to ensure Westminster is gummed up.
Plus the SNP will demand an independence referendum but them winning it would hand England back to the Tories who had won in England.
If the red wall can fall, so can the soft blue underbelly.
It can, but that doesn't change an iota of what I wrote.
Its quite plausible the result ends up with a Tory majority in England, but Lab minority government with SNP support in Westminster, in which case governing England will be nigh on impossible.
Which is why IMHO, Labour would be best to try and ensure a Lib Dem revival.
Indeed, Esher and Walton and Wokingham and Cities of London and Westminster are now more likely to be lost by the Tories to the LDs than Great Grimsby or Bishop Auckland or Harlow are to be lost to Labour.
Blair never won the former unlike the latter yet the latter have bigger Tory majorities now than the former
In reality , I suspect that is unlikely. Voters who swung massively against Labour in Grimsby and Bishop Auckland over a two and a half year period might swing back in 2024 on a similar scale post-Corbyn with Brexit no longer being an issue to many.Labour is also likely to regain second place in seats such as Cities of London & Westminster and Finchley.
The latter is far more likely than the former. Many of those northern seats are switching due to values shifts and won't be going back in a hurry.
If I were the Tories I'd be most worried about 20-30 southern seats going LD.
First, you need to be worried about the LibDems. They are going backwards.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
Typically takes 18-24 months, if you're lucky.
There are viral diseases for which we have not yet developed vaccines.
I wouldn't say pessimism, I think its reasonably justifiable.
OK - but this is a massive global effort and a relatively easy target. Corona is not a particularly enigmatic virus.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
I am usually a pessimist too on how long things take but not in this case. I think Dominic Raab will be vaccinated against Covid-19 this year. Happy to bet £20 at even money on that if any doomster on here wishes to hit me.
Having watched Gates and Prof Farzan talk, they seem much more confident of having some temporary measures like blood plasma and immune boosters ready.
I believe the UK will start doing 5000 of these blood plasma treatments very shortly.
Lockdown is over regardless of the minor tweaks Johnson announces tomorrow. The public over the last 24 hours have shown that a sufficient enough number of them will him it off as to render it meaningless. In his usual style perhaps Johnson will by Tuesday be saying what people have decided he should have said rather than what he actually said...
That's not to say that status quo ante returns - that's gone. WFH will become a significant part of the new order, the schools aren't properly reopening until September, and it sounds like we don't get a summer holiday this year.
We have to hope herd immunity is worth something. Because that's what we're going with.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
let's say we get to a point where we can deliver 100k a day, a tally I have chosen for a special significance. It would take almost 22 months to administer to the whole population. That is assuming working Sat and Sun. It is almost 31 months with weekends off.
They do something like 14 million flu shots per year in the UK.
OK, so 100k a day, 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week. 26 million a year. Comparable number, wouldn't you agree?
The limiting factor will be production not administering it. The new facility being built that can make 10s millions of doses a week won't be ready for another year.
I think Oxford at talking of the plan being to have about 1 million doses ready for start of Autumn.
Its still going to be months, regardless of a factor of 4 here or there.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
Typically takes 18-24 months, if you're lucky.
There are viral diseases for which we have not yet developed vaccines.
I wouldn't say pessimism, I think its reasonably justifiable.
OK - but this is a massive global effort and a relatively easy target. Corona is not a particularly enigmatic virus.
I think more likely is better treatments - as in the post directly above yours.
Stochastic has a specific technical meaning in physical science/numerical methods.
Witless probably is the mot juste, you are right. I don't mind hacks not knowing what stochastic means but it really ought to have been obvious this was a technical or jargon word. Shades of Bernard and Sir Humphrey trying to explain meta-dioxin by parsing meta as a Latin or Greek term rather than a chemical one.
that is a great example. like it.
It would help if science were bolder about naming things in some other way than finding a vaguely analogous word in ancient Greek. Gas and quark are excellent names for instance.
[though I believe "gas" is partly based on "chaos"].
Charm and strangeness aren’t helping...
hadron is Greek, charm Latin or French, strangeness Latin to French to middle English.
The word “hadron” was taken from the Greek, yes, but charm and strangeness are perfectly well known and used words in English, used in particle Physics in a fairly different way to the normal. The problem being discussed was having words which have a particular meaning in one context (stochastic was the example) and trying to work out what the technical meaning must be from the normal one (or the derivation from Latin or Greek if appropriate). How many here who don’t have a science background would be able to explain what I mean when I say that “Strangeness is not conserved in a weak interaction”?
I don't think we are disagreeing about anything, except that stochastic in its original meaning is actually a perfectly good metaphor for its meaning in statistics - as good a metaphor as monte carlo simulation, anyway - shooting an arrow at a target vs putting a stake on 17. The problem here is that Hitchens is pretending to think that just guessing is the same as having multiple guesses and testing what the consequences would be.
It is sometimes difficult to tell if someone is supporting one’s post or not!
Actually I thinks those on a betting website are probably better at understanding that outcomes can be expressed as probabilities rather than certainties. Physics has been doing it for a long time: statistical physics is getting on for 150 years old and uses the idea that although we don’t know exactly how each molecule moves we can work out what will happen to the gas as a whole. Which sounds remarkably like how I expect epidemiology works.
Edit: I’d still like to see a non-science person having a go at translating my sentence...
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
let's say we get to a point where we can deliver 100k a day, a tally I have chosen for a special significance. It would take almost 22 months to administer to the whole population. That is assuming working Sat and Sun. It is almost 31 months with weekends off.
They do something like 14 million flu shots per year in the UK.
OK, so 100k a day, 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week. 26 million a year. Comparable number, wouldn't you agree?
The limiting factor will be production not administering it. The new facility being built that can make 10s millions of doses a week won't be ready for another year.
I think Oxford at talking of the plan being to have about 1 million doses ready for start of Autumn.
Its still going to be months, regardless of a factor of 4 here or there.
Naturally, but you could imagine them easily doubling the rate relative to the seasonal flu, which would be 28 million in three months.
Except that what’s being proposed is not quarantine but simply a reheated version of what was proposed in February: people voluntarily staying at home. So it’s a bit of Brownian repetition of a previous announcement to make it seem new - and amounting to less than it seems.
It won’t achieve much on the health front but will kill off what’s left of our travel and tourism sector.
Its basically a factor of 2 difference between my estimate and the flu jab, not 4, isn't it? 14 million in 3 months is 200k a day, I went with 100k a day. Brilliant.
So, yeah, months to administer fully.
Now, that doesn't rule out targeted vaccinations in certain risk groups etc
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
let's say we get to a point where we can deliver 100k a day, a tally I have chosen for a special significance. It would take almost 22 months to administer to the whole population. That is assuming working Sat and Sun. It is almost 31 months with weekends off.
They do something like 14 million flu shots per year in the UK.
OK, so 100k a day, 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week. 26 million a year. Comparable number, wouldn't you agree?
The limiting factor will be production not administering it. The new facility being built that can make 10s millions of doses a week won't be ready for another year.
I think Oxford at talking of the plan being to have about 1 million doses ready for start of Autumn.
Yep, administering it will be easy in comparison. You might even get the jab from a squaddie.
Its basically a factor of 2 difference between my estimate and the flu jab, not 4, isn't it? 14 million in 3 months is 200k a day, I went with 100k a day. Brilliant.
So, yeah, months to administer fully.
Now, that doesn't rule out targeted vaccinations in certain risk groups etc
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
let's say we get to a point where we can deliver 100k a day, a tally I have chosen for a special significance. It would take almost 22 months to administer to the whole population. That is assuming working Sat and Sun. It is almost 31 months with weekends off.
They do something like 14 million flu shots per year in the UK.
OK, so 100k a day, 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week. 26 million a year. Comparable number, wouldn't you agree?
The limiting factor will be production not administering it. The new facility being built that can make 10s millions of doses a week won't be ready for another year.
I think Oxford at talking of the plan being to have about 1 million doses ready for start of Autumn.
Yep, administering it will be easy in comparison. You might even get the jab from a squaddie.
Put it in the water?
I remember getting one vaccine (polio?) on a sugar cube.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
let's say we get to a point where we can deliver 100k a day, a tally I have chosen for a special significance. It would take almost 22 months to administer to the whole population. That is assuming working Sat and Sun. It is almost 31 months with weekends off.
They do something like 14 million flu shots per year in the UK.
OK, so 100k a day, 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week. 26 million a year. Comparable number, wouldn't you agree?
The limiting factor will be production not administering it. The new facility being built that can make 10s millions of doses a week won't be ready for another year.
I think Oxford at talking of the plan being to have about 1 million doses ready for start of Autumn.
Yep, administering it will be easy in comparison. You might even get the jab from a squaddie.
Put it in the water?
The nutters on twitter would go wild at the prospect of that.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
let's say we get to a point where we can deliver 100k a day, a tally I have chosen for a special significance. It would take almost 22 months to administer to the whole population. That is assuming working Sat and Sun. It is almost 31 months with weekends off.
They do something like 14 million flu shots per year in the UK.
OK, so 100k a day, 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week. 26 million a year. Comparable number, wouldn't you agree?
The limiting factor will be production not administering it. The new facility being built that can make 10s millions of doses a week won't be ready for another year.
I think Oxford at talking of the plan being to have about 1 million doses ready for start of Autumn.
Its still going to be months, regardless of a factor of 4 here or there.
Naturally, but you could imagine them easily doubling the rate relative to the seasonal flu, which would be 28 million in three months.
Let's take the extreme case. Suppose the nation went all in on this, throwing money at the quick production of working vaccines. There are about 350k NHS nurses and 150k NHS doctors. So there are about 500k people with medical training to administer a vaccine.
So that's 140 vaccinations per medical professional, which doesn't take long. Note, I'm not saying we should do it that way, or that there aren't other factors. But getting the vaccine into people isn't ha much of a rate limiting step.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
Typically takes 18-24 months, if you're lucky.
There are viral diseases for which we have not yet developed vaccines.
I wouldn't say pessimism, I think its reasonably justifiable.
OK - but this is a massive global effort and a relatively easy target. Corona is not a particularly enigmatic virus.
I think more likely is better treatments - as in the post directly above yours.
Well so long as it's at least one of those things within a year.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
IF they are right, I really fear for our media class. They will have a mental breakdown in trying to come to terms with the horrible reality of the situation.
It's an awful balancing act. Everyone is going to get this sooner or later, all we can do is reach herd immunity in such a way that minimises deaths without crippling the economy.
At the moment we have gone with lockdown, which is a lowest-possible-deaths at the cost of total economic meltdown. But it won't work. Not just because it will destroy the economy, but also because lockdown cannot be maintained indefinitely. People are already breaking the rules, meeting up, etc.
Indefinite lockdown is not an option. That means herd immunity is still the only game in town. The only question is how we get there and how many lives will be lost.
An initial lockdown to build NHS capacity and prepare e.g. ramp up PPE production, hand sanitiser etc, was a good idea. But now lockdown has become a can kicking exercise. Nobody wants to face up to the truth. "Some of you will die" is not a vote winner. But it is the only option.
As I said, it is not a matter of whether it is a vote winner as such. Any Government who supports a policy which they know will result in deaths in 6 figures is going to be removed very quickly. Whoever takes over will simply have to enact a policy to reduce that number of deaths or they will meet the same fate. This is not about the preservation of any particular party in power, it is about the fact that a policy that kills 150,000 people is not one that is politically sustainable.
So what do you propose as an alternative?
Either we end the lockdown, with social distancing, and allow people to contract this gradually. Net result will be around 150k deaths, as we build up herd immunity.
Or we all stay locked in our homes forever (or until a vaccine appears, if it does) and the economy dies. Everyone is broke and there is no money for the NHS either.
As I say, it is not a vote winner. But it is the only game in town.
I don't know. I do know that if you end the lockdown and people start dying again in large numbers then whether you think it is a good idea or not, the lockdown will come back. And after that there will probably be criminal charges brought against those who decided to ease the lockdown too early - particularly if it is against scientific advice.
No Government can survive killing large numbers of its own people if there is an alternative, no matter how bad economically you and I might think that alternative is.
I totally understand where you're coming from.
The difference for me is I don't regard the 150k-ish deaths as being caused by the government. They'll be caused by a virus, which I see as a kind of natural disaster. To me it is as uanvoidable as a tsunami - it is going to happen, it has happened, the genie is out of the bottle. It kills slowly, but over time it will kill that number of people, absent a vaccine.
We look to government to do something, but in fact there is little the government can do. It can ensure adequate hospital capacity to minimise deaths, but it cannot prevent the deaths that will happen on the road to herd immunity.
To blame the government for those deaths seems to me a kind of madness. Would the death toll on the road to herd immunity be significantly different under Labour, or UKIP, or the Raving Loony Party come to think of it?
Lockdown isn't economically or socially sustainable. Which leaves us with herd immunity. No change of government is going to change that.
It is not madness to blame the Government if they chose a path that results in those 150,000 dying when another path was available. If I were in Sweden right now and a relative had died as a result of their policy then you can bet I would be looking to get criminal charges brought against them. The same will happen here with the care home scandal.
Stochastic has a specific technical meaning in physical science/numerical methods.
Witless probably is the mot juste, you are right. I don't mind hacks not knowing what stochastic means but it really ought to have been obvious this was a technical or jargon word. Shades of Bernard and Sir Humphrey trying to explain meta-dioxin by parsing meta as a Latin or Greek term rather than a chemical one.
that is a great example. like it.
It would help if science were bolder about naming things in some other way than finding a vaguely analogous word in ancient Greek. Gas and quark are excellent names for instance.
[though I believe "gas" is partly based on "chaos"].
Charm and strangeness aren’t helping...
hadron is Greek, charm Latin or French, strangeness Latin to French to middle English.
The word “hadron” was taken from the Greek, yes, but charm and strangeness are perfectly well known and used words in English, used in particle Physics in a fairly different way to the normal. The problem being discussed was having words which have a particular meaning in one context (stochastic was the example) and trying to work out what the technical meaning must be from the normal one (or the derivation from Latin or Greek if appropriate). How many here who don’t have a science background would be able to explain what I mean when I say that “Strangeness is not conserved in a weak interaction”?
I don't think we are disagreeing about anything, except that stochastic in its original meaning is actually a perfectly good metaphor for its meaning in statistics - as good a metaphor as monte carlo simulation, anyway - shooting an arrow at a target vs putting a stake on 17. The problem here is that Hitchens is pretending to think that just guessing is the same as having multiple guesses and testing what the consequences would be.
It is sometimes difficult to tell if someone is supporting one’s post or not!
Actually I thinks those on a betting website are probably better at understanding that outcomes can be expressed as probabilities rather than certainties. Physics has been doing it for a long time: statistical physics is getting on for 150 years old and uses the idea that although we don’t know exactly how each molecule moves we can work out what will happen to the gas as a whole. Which sounds remarkably like how I expect epidemiology works.
Edit: I’d still like to see a non-science person having a go at translating my sentence...
Not me. I believe the physicists who say that if you can't understand the maths you might as well not bother.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
IF they are right, I really fear for our media class. They will have a mental breakdown in trying to come to terms with the horrible reality of the situation.
If they are right it would unfortunately still not have been a course we could have followed. They have had death rates probably 5 times of what they would have had with lockdown and there is no way that the Government would have survived 150,000+ deaths. We would simply have ended up in lockdown much later but with many more dead.
I really really hope the Swedes are right that this was the best way for their country. But it needs a small population and the willingness to have significant 'necessary' deaths to make it work as an experiment.
That's not true because the Swedish strategy is to avoid further waves of the virus. You can't compare the number/rate of deaths at the moment when all countries are still in the first wave.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
let's say we get to a point where we can deliver 100k a day, a tally I have chosen for a special significance. It would take almost 22 months to administer to the whole population. That is assuming working Sat and Sun. It is almost 31 months with weekends off.
They do something like 14 million flu shots per year in the UK.
OK, so 100k a day, 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week. 26 million a year. Comparable number, wouldn't you agree?
The limiting factor will be production not administering it. The new facility being built that can make 10s millions of doses a week won't be ready for another year.
I think Oxford at talking of the plan being to have about 1 million doses ready for start of Autumn.
Its still going to be months, regardless of a factor of 4 here or there.
Naturally, but you could imagine them easily doubling the rate relative to the seasonal flu, which would be 28 million in three months.
Let's take the extreme case. Suppose the nation went all in on this, throwing money at the quick production of working vaccines. There are about 350k NHS nurses and 150k NHS doctors. So there are about 500k people with medical training to administer a vaccine.
So that's 140 vaccinations per medical professional, which doesn't take long. Note, I'm not saying we should do it that way, or that there aren't other factors. But getting the vaccine into people isn't ha much of a rate limiting step.
That's not including the likes of Boots. You can already go there to get a flu shot, so must have trained staff.
Making 70 or possibly 140 million doses (if it requires more than one dose) is the big hurdle to go from approved vaccine to protected population.
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
let's say we get to a point where we can deliver 100k a day, a tally I have chosen for a special significance. It would take almost 22 months to administer to the whole population. That is assuming working Sat and Sun. It is almost 31 months with weekends off.
They do something like 14 million flu shots per year in the UK.
OK, so 100k a day, 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week. 26 million a year. Comparable number, wouldn't you agree?
The limiting factor will be production not administering it. The new facility being built that can make 10s millions of doses a week won't be ready for another year.
I think Oxford at talking of the plan being to have about 1 million doses ready for start of Autumn.
Yep, administering it will be easy in comparison. You might even get the jab from a squaddie.
Put it in the water?
I remember getting one vaccine (polio?) on a sugar cube.
Sounds great. I'd choose that over a needle any day.
It won’t achieve much on the health front but will kill off what’s left of our travel and tourism sector.
Some countries that implemented it in mid-March are further ahead than the UK. Although notably in many cases the 14 day self quarantine was swiftly replaced by a ban on all non national arrivals and government quarantine. Guernsey ran the "self quarantine all arrivals" from mid-March and hasn't had a new case in a week. The Lancet has (possibly prematurely) declared New Zealand Covid free.
And with hotels, restaurants and attractions closed, how much travel and tourism is there currently?
Swedish egghead - ours is a workable long term strategy. Lockdown isn't feasible. Working vaccine for so far in the future, need a sustainable strategy to be maintained over the course of years.
Why the pessimism on a vaccine?
He doesn't say. But my guess would be the thought that all this talk of Autumn isn't realistic, and if you start talking a year before you have done full trials, safety, government green light, then still talking 6-12 months to vaccine the population. So that 2 years.
6-12 months just to administer it? If supplies weren't an issue it should/could be done much quicker than that.
let's say we get to a point where we can deliver 100k a day, a tally I have chosen for a special significance. It would take almost 22 months to administer to the whole population. That is assuming working Sat and Sun. It is almost 31 months with weekends off.
They do something like 14 million flu shots per year in the UK.
OK, so 100k a day, 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week. 26 million a year. Comparable number, wouldn't you agree?
The limiting factor will be production not administering it. The new facility being built that can make 10s millions of doses a week won't be ready for another year.
I think Oxford at talking of the plan being to have about 1 million doses ready for start of Autumn.
Yep, administering it will be easy in comparison. You might even get the jab from a squaddie.
Put it in the water?
The nutters on twitter would go wild at the prospect of that.
It won’t achieve much on the health front but will kill off what’s left of our travel and tourism sector.
Some countries that implemented it in mid-March are further ahead than the UK. Although notably in many cases the 14 day self quarantine was swiftly replaced by a ban on all non national arrivals and government quarantine. Guernsey ran the "self quarantine all arrivals" from mid-March and hasn't had a new case in a week. The Lancet has (possibly prematurely) declared New Zealand Covid free.
And with hotels, restaurants and attractions closed, how much travel and tourism is there currently?
How are the Collaboration day festivities going on in the Bailwick? I spent 2 miserable years stuck on that Island, and have never encountered such an obnoxious group of people in my life.
It won’t achieve much on the health front but will kill off what’s left of our travel and tourism sector.
Some countries that implemented it in mid-March are further ahead than the UK. Although notably in many cases the 14 day self quarantine was swiftly replaced by a ban on all non national arrivals and government quarantine. Guernsey ran the "self quarantine all arrivals" from mid-March and hasn't had a new case in a week. The Lancet has (possibly prematurely) declared New Zealand Covid free.
And with hotels, restaurants and attractions closed, how much travel and tourism is there currently?
How are the Collaboration day festivities going on in the Bailwick? I spent 2 miserable years stuck on that Island, and have never encountered such an obnoxious group of people in my life.
Comments
If I were the Tories I'd be most worried about 20-30 southern seats going LD.
Western foreign policy during the Cold War should first of all be compared with Soviet foreign policy, no? Not Putin’s.
And what was that foreign policy: suppression of democracy, show trials, the murder of opponents, the misuse of mental hospitals, keeping people imprisoned in their countries, even building a bloody Great Wall to keep them inside and shooting people in the back as they tried to escape, repeatedly invading countries which tried to rebel against their oppression, declarations of martial law and so, dismally, on....
There is much to criticise about some aspects of Western policy but its failings were as nothing compared to what the unfree Communist world got up to - in Europe and in the Third World.
Utterly mad.
[though I believe "gas" is partly based on "chaos"].
Another glorious day here in downtown East London and definitely more people moving about than previous weekends.
The public are starting to lead the way in ending the lockdown - I now think Boris, in lieu of much else, will allow horse racing to re-start on Monday 18th to provide some entertainment if nothing else.
The question regarding the ex-Labour votes in the north and midlands who voted for Boris (note NOT the Conservative Party) is whether there will be a parallel with the Trump supporters and they will back Boris always and forever whatever he does or says.
If so, Labour may as well forget about winning them back and hope enough of them abstain to help the party regain a few seats.
The US election may well be the key - if Trump can get his 2016 vote out again he has a chance but if only a relative few have become disenchanted states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania will flip to the blue column and that's all Biden needs.
Here, 14 Conservative seats, including 8 gains in December, are held by less than 2% and overall 141 seats are held with margins of less than 10%. The journey from a solid majority to losing that majority may not be a long one but it is clear the journey to a Labour majority is a very long one.
I also note my seat, East Ham, having been the fifth safest Labour seat in the country is now only the 17th and it's only the fifth safest in London behind Bethnal Green & Bow, Hackney South & Shoreditch, Walthamstow and Tottenham, which is now Labour's safest seat in London requiring a 32.2% swing to the Conservatives though it's a marginal compared to Liverpool Walton where the Conservatives need a swing of 37.4%.
Either we end the lockdown, with social distancing, and allow people to contract this gradually. Net result will be around 150k deaths, as we build up herd immunity.
Or we all stay locked in our homes forever (or until a vaccine appears, if it does) and the economy dies. Everyone is broke and there is no money for the NHS either.
As I say, it is not a vote winner. But it is the only game in town.
No Government can survive killing large numbers of its own people if there is an alternative, no matter how bad economically you and I might think that alternative is.
The problem being discussed was having words which have a particular meaning in one context (stochastic was the example) and trying to work out what the technical meaning must be from the normal one (or the derivation from Latin or Greek if appropriate).
How many here who don’t have a science background would be able to explain what I mean when I say that “Strangeness is not conserved in a weak interaction”?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahTIOzIX-K0
There are viral diseases for which we have not yet developed vaccines.
I wouldn't say pessimism, I think its reasonably justifiable.
I think the lesson of Mansfield is that pavement politics can help keep the former Red Wall for the Tories.
Improve the chances of people surviving in hospital, shield the vulnerable where possible, improve personal hygiene and operate your day to day life under social distancing.
Swedish Egghead disagrees.
At this moment the figures for electricity generation are:
Solar 28.75%
Gas 28.41%
Nuclear 20.43%
Wind 6.01%
I would be willing to bet that’s the first time solar power has officially been the largest provider of national grid power. And the true figure will be more as it doesn’t count reduced demand due to solar panels.
Of course, low demand, lots of sun and not much wind may help - although oddly wind power has been dormant for some weeks even when it’s been breezy.
(I do appreciate that doesn't contradict your point - just thought it might be relevent)
Oh, and it's about the best garden in the SW for moths. Quite a few species that don't get found anywhere else than here. No background light and very little use of pesticides will do that.
The difference for me is I don't regard the 150k-ish deaths as being caused by the government. They'll be caused by a virus, which I see as a kind of natural disaster. To me it is as uanvoidable as a tsunami - it is going to happen, it has happened, the genie is out of the bottle. It kills slowly, but over time it will kill that number of people, absent a vaccine.
We look to government to do something, but in fact there is little the government can do. It can ensure adequate hospital capacity to minimise deaths, but it cannot prevent the deaths that will happen on the road to herd immunity.
To blame the government for those deaths seems to me a kind of madness. Would the death toll on the road to herd immunity be significantly different under Labour, or UKIP, or the Raving Loony Party come to think of it?
Lockdown isn't economically or socially sustainable. Which leaves us with herd immunity. No change of government is going to change that.
Solar, having watched it closely, seems to be creeping up and up. That surprises me, as while solar panels on buildings are a good form of power, they’re not counted in the stats. Instead, they show as reduced demand. So it’s solar farms that are being measured here, and I always thought of them as a relatively low-key and unpopular form of power generation in the UK due to its climate.
He said no, the risk of infection would be too high.
I asked if he’d go to county cricket if it restarted.
He said yes, because in 55 years of following Gloucestershire he’s usually been the only supporter there!
I think Oxford at talking of the plan being to have about 1 million doses ready for start of Autumn.
I believe the UK will start doing 5000 of these blood plasma treatments very shortly.
That's not to say that status quo ante returns - that's gone. WFH will become a significant part of the new order, the schools aren't properly reopening until September, and it sounds like we don't get a summer holiday this year.
We have to hope herd immunity is worth something. Because that's what we're going with.
Guernsey, Isle of Man too.....
https://twitter.com/cricketwyvern/status/1259112640061857792?s=19
Actually I thinks those on a betting website are probably better at understanding that outcomes can be expressed as probabilities rather than certainties. Physics has been doing it for a long time: statistical physics is getting on for 150 years old and uses the idea that although we don’t know exactly how each molecule moves we can work out what will happen to the gas as a whole. Which sounds remarkably like how I expect epidemiology works.
Edit: I’d still like to see a non-science person having a go at translating my sentence...
It won’t achieve much on the health front but will kill off what’s left of our travel and tourism sector.
So, yeah, months to administer fully.
Now, that doesn't rule out targeted vaccinations in certain risk groups etc
There are about 350k NHS nurses and 150k NHS doctors. So there are about 500k people with medical training to administer a vaccine.
So that's 140 vaccinations per medical professional, which doesn't take long.
Note, I'm not saying we should do it that way, or that there aren't other factors. But getting the vaccine into people isn't ha much of a rate limiting step.
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/753-new-coronavirus-cases-in-singapore-bringing-total-to-22460
Making 70 or possibly 140 million doses (if it requires more than one dose) is the big hurdle to go from approved vaccine to protected population.
And with hotels, restaurants and attractions closed, how much travel and tourism is there currently?
Toby Young
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-09/coronvirus-georgia-s-fast-reopening-is-going-pretty-slowly
It's not going to be very meaningful until people feel confident to go out.