Well of course. A 20-year-old unemployed former bartender with practically zero chance of dying of the disease, who's also desperate to earn money to pay the rent and have something resembling a normal social (and sex) life, is liable to have a different attitude to all of this to a 78-year-old with COPD, living in their own (mortgage-free) home off a fat pension, whose life presently revolves around the all-consuming terror of catching the wretched thing and who never leaves the house as a consequence.
The British public has been remarkably disciplined in sticking to tight lockdown regulations up until now, but anyone who thinks this unity of purpose can be maintained indefinitely is delusional.
Which is why those screaming for early lockdown were wrong imho. No doubt I am old person killer or some such. But my anecdata experience is the 65+ age group had made their own decisions in early March.
On the other hand Germany went into lockdown a couple of weeks before the UK (relative to the epidemic), the lockdown was always less strict, and started relaxing weeks ago. Which suggests maybe earlier action would have better for the UK.
I believe the scientific view in the UK was that they were a couple of weeks behind Germany on the infection scale.
If so they were either wrong or the UK caught up very quickly.
Was that the view of scientists? It wasn't the view of scientists here in Germany. The number of deaths along with lack of testing in the UK were very clear in indicating the UK was ahead of Germany.
I can't say for definite but the impression I formed in February was that the 'experts' thought that the UK was behind France and Germany and way behind Italy and Spain.
And the rail journeys in particular will consist disproportionately of people moving around in London, and commuters transiting in and out of the capital and other urban cores.
Social distancing will make life substantially more difficult for people getting around within cities, but out in the suburbs and especially the countryside, where the vast bulk of journeys aren't made on public transport, we should be OK.
However bad the contraction in the economy and the expansion in unemployment turns out to be, the longer term socio-economic trend coming out of all this looks like it will be one of deep and lasting recession in the cities and a much faster recovery outside of them. We'll be able to get back to something resembling normality more rapidly outside the cities, most of the economic activity generated by the commuters will move here because of WFH and, when physical retail and hospitality do eventually stir back into life, a greater proportion of total expenditure will be made nearer to where all those well-off former commuters live.
The big cities could end up consisting predominantly of lots of empty and half-empty office blocks, shuttered bars and restaurants that have gone to the wall through lack of custom, and housing estates for the poor.
Or cities thrive as the old move out, freeing up property, making it easier for young people to move into more central parts of London, New York, Paris. Etc. Young people like big cities, and they wont be scared of a virus which barely affects them.
This could actually be a wonderful thing for cities, which were turning into Property banks for the elderly. Cities are made for the young, let the young return. And let the oldies disperse to Cornwall
Interesting take! Central London with cheaper rents, younger people and fewer empty properties is an extremely exciting prospect.
We've given the French an exemption from being forced to quarantine?
Did we lose a war or something?
If we are only allowed to go to one foreign country (without quarantine) for the next year, France is a rather excellent result, and we can drop Ireland instead.
The Germans can have Poland. As it were.
France has got pretty much everything, as countries go. There is a reason it’s the most visited nation on Earth.
There was a wartime proposal for true politician union between France and Britain. It would have been an amazing country. Greater than the sum of its parts and a mighty post war power
The mutual exceptionalisms might have cancelled each other out, or it might have resulted in one of the most insecurely self-regarding countries in the world (rather than just 2 of them).
Might have coordinated the Suez raid better...
Nasser might not have nationalised the canal in the first place.
It was a flip comment, but it’s an interesting counter factual. Would we have made an even larger mess of trying to hold on to empire (France in Vietnam writ large), or might we have managed things better ?
We've given the French an exemption from being forced to quarantine?
Did we lose a war or something?
If we are only allowed to go to one foreign country (without quarantine) for the next year, France is a rather excellent result, and we can drop Ireland instead.
The Germans can have Poland. As it were.
France has got pretty much everything, as countries go. There is a reason it’s the most visited nation on Earth.
There was a wartime proposal for true politician union between France and Britain. It would have been an amazing country. Greater than the sum of its parts and a mighty post war power
The mutual exceptionalisms might have cancelled each other out, or it might have resulted in one of the most insecurely self-regarding countries in the world (rather than just 2 of them).
You are a happy, contended soul at peace with yourself, aren't you?
Shocked all these tweets are from very vocal remainers...
When either of you has a comment on the substance, rather than tickling your worryingly over-tickled prejudices based purely on dislike of the person expressing it, do let us know.
Isn't that what those tweeting were doing?
Well no.
You might disagree with Gavin Esler but he is quite clearly making an assessment of the communication.
You, on the other hand, had nothing to add except to signal that he is someone who you will not listen to because... well because you are evidently far too closed-minded to consider whether he has a point.
A very unbiased assessment of the communication, no doubt.
There you go again. Instead of playing the man, try engaging with his argument. If you’re capable of anything other than snide sniping without substance.
My point was that the criticism would be more powerful if it came from someone without a background like his. I don't think that's a controversial opinion at all.
You don’t have a point. Either the criticism has substance or it doesn’t. You’re trying to avoid any consideration of it by attacking the person who gave it. Small minds discuss people. Try lifting yourself above that, if you can.
I think I have a point. If the criticism is justified, surely people from all backgrounds will be saying it. Those are the ones that would be more helpful for ScottP to post if that's the line he's pushing, which is exactly what I said.
You do not need to justify yourself to anyone
I probably shouldn't have been so flippant, but I genuinely think that if that was the message ScottP wanted to get across, finding examples from people without such a history of Boris hatred would probably make it far more convincing.
I doubt he’s trying to convince small-minded posters who think that personal attacks are an answer to substantive criticism.
That Esler referred Brexit where he must have meant to refer to COVID-19 both makes it appear Rob has a point and Esler's criticism is not as substantive as you seem to think.
We've given the French an exemption from being forced to quarantine?
Did we lose a war or something?
If we are only allowed to go to one foreign country (without quarantine) for the next year, France is a rather excellent result, and we can drop Ireland instead.
The Germans can have Poland. As it were.
France has got pretty much everything, as countries go. There is a reason it’s the most visited nation on Earth.
There was a wartime proposal for true politician union between France and Britain. It would have been an amazing country. Greater than the sum of its parts and a mighty post war power
The mutual exceptionalisms might have cancelled each other out, or it might have resulted in one of the most insecurely self-regarding countries in the world (rather than just 2 of them).
Might have coordinated the Suez raid better...
Nasser might not have nationalised the canal in the first place.
It was a flip comment, but it’s an interesting counter factual. Would we have made an even larger mess of trying to hold on to empire (France in Vietnam writ large), or might we have managed things better ?
Probably the former.
We'd both have had double the domestic market, pre-empting the development of the European Union, so maybe a managed 'scuttle' would have been more palatable.
Indoor mass gatherings are just a no no with this virus. Time after time we find "mass spreader" events are via this route.
That seems right but we really have to be careful with "in progress" conclusions although I do acknowledge that we have to work with current data, but correlated data. Not sure if there's any data on this.
Any idea what if anything tonight's speech or aftermath means for Project Restart?
Does professional sport fall within the category of try to get back to work?
After those three Brighton players testing positive there's no chance of it happening.
What about non-contact sports like snooker?
The delayed Tour Championship and World Championship are currently pencilled in for the back end of July, running into August.
Snooker is an ideal candidate for resumption under current conditions. It's not significantly reliant on gate receipts, is an individual sport where the competitors can easily be kept separate, and the bulk of the top players reside in one country i.e. this one.
The main potential stumbling block is how much of an audience they will be allowed to have in the auditorium. It's bound to be reduced, but if it is not deemed safe to have any spectators then the governing body might have second thoughts about the wisdom of proceeding.
That said, if the virus doesn't spin out of control between now and then, I'd say that the likelihood of those events going ahead is greater than 50:50.
The biggest mistake in my view is that we seemed to understand we needed to lock down but yet we waited another week to do it, when we could already see what was happening in Italy.
No, it was allowing flights to land in the UK and passengers to disembark without any checks, quarantine or tests. Lockdown would have slowed the infection rate down, but the major source of infection early on was incoming travellers and returning citizens. As I've said many times I came back to the UK on the 17th of March, waltzed directly through Heathrow, got on the tube, changed at Green Park, then Euston and got off at Hampstead without a single intervention from the government other than scanning my passport out at Heathrow through the automated gates.
I should have been halted had a swab taken and been told to either stay home until my results or provided 2 nights at one of the many surrounding empty hotels while my test was being processed. If it was negative, go home, if not don't pass go.
I've commented before that I thought treatment of arrivals by region far too reactive (places where the epidemic was clearly breaking out were slow to be added to their self-quarantine list) and guidance given to returnees was poorly communicated (onus apparently on them to look up what they were required to do rather than health officials or airline staff coming to tell them!) and there may have been merit quarantining people from the most high-risk regions in government-run facilities as was done with Wuhan returnees.
I won't condemn the HMG's approach as totally irrational. Existing research showed shutting off inbound flights only buys a few days time on the epidemic curve (and only if enacted infeasibly early), fresh LSHTM modelling was the basis of the decision not to temperature-screen returnees (also pretty ineffective, more pandemic security theatre than anything else) and as for why there aren't more restrictions at the moment, there's some logic that when you already have the disease in the community, new arrivals barely add to that (net zero effect if people still fly both in and out, and the rest of the world has similar infection rates - obviously not 100% true, but not miles away from it). However, when you want to suppress the thing, those new arrivals become more costly. So the sequencing of the government's decision isn't crazy.
The criticism I made before is that earlier this year, the government was making efforts to do all the contact tracing and so on necessary to stamp out outbreaks, something only possible with the resources then available if it didn't all blow up. At that stage they could have taken greater strides to keep a lid on it, eg bringing in social distancing measures like WFH if possible, and taking advantage of our island status to quarantine arrivals: going whole hog back then was still feasible, but by going half-cocked they didn't give a full chance for it to work.
I wonder whether telling air arrivals to quarantine at home was in fact effective (did people obey, how much transmission to family members was there?) and whether block-booking hotel beds might have been better for getting people to obey (if you're going to end up subsidising the hotel industry anyway you might as well get them to do some work for you!). Of course that ran the risk hotels could have become a major transmission site from infected returnees to uninfected so it isn't totally clear that beats letting them stay in their own homes.
One unrealistic idea is everyone being swabbed. I reckon in Feb and March there would have been in the ball-park of 100k arrivals per day at UK airports? (Based on 300 million passengers/year then trying to lowball things from there.) Even if they were given only one swab (and letting people out of quarantine you ideally want them to test negative on at least two swabs a couple of days apart) that's clearly well beyond any realistic testing capacity at that stage.
Well of course. A 20-year-old unemployed former bartender with practically zero chance of dying of the disease, who's also desperate to earn money to pay the rent and have something resembling a normal social (and sex) life, is liable to have a different attitude to all of this to a 78-year-old with COPD, living in their own (mortgage-free) home off a fat pension, whose life presently revolves around the all-consuming terror of catching the wretched thing and who never leaves the house as a consequence.
The British public has been remarkably disciplined in sticking to tight lockdown regulations up until now, but anyone who thinks this unity of purpose can be maintained indefinitely is delusional.
Which is why those screaming for early lockdown were wrong imho. No doubt I am old person killer or some such. But my anecdata experience is the 65+ age group had made their own decisions in early March.
On the other hand Germany went into lockdown a couple of weeks before the UK (relative to the epidemic), the lockdown was always less strict, and started relaxing weeks ago. Which suggests maybe earlier action would have better for the UK.
I believe the scientific view in the UK was that they were a couple of weeks behind Germany on the infection scale.
If so they were either wrong or the UK caught up very quickly.
Was that the view of scientists? It wasn't the view of scientists here in Germany. The number of deaths along with lack of testing in the UK were very clear in indicating the UK was ahead of Germany.
I can't say for definite but the impression I formed in February was that the 'experts' thought that the UK was behind France and Germany and way behind Italy and Spain.
Maybe, but by the time lockdowns started in Germany in the middle of March they probably should have changed their minds.
Anyway, by now it should be clear that the UK was by the beginning of March at least a week ahead of Germany, but started the lockdown about a week later. It seems like an earlier lockdown would have been better.
Well of course. A 20-year-old unemployed former bartender with practically zero chance of dying of the disease, who's also desperate to earn money to pay the rent and have something resembling a normal social (and sex) life, is liable to have a different attitude to all of this to a 78-year-old with COPD, living in their own (mortgage-free) home off a fat pension, whose life presently revolves around the all-consuming terror of catching the wretched thing and who never leaves the house as a consequence.
The British public has been remarkably disciplined in sticking to tight lockdown regulations up until now, but anyone who thinks this unity of purpose can be maintained indefinitely is delusional.
Which is why those screaming for early lockdown were wrong imho. No doubt I am old person killer or some such. But my anecdata experience is the 65+ age group had made their own decisions in early March.
On the other hand Germany went into lockdown a couple of weeks before the UK (relative to the epidemic), the lockdown was always less strict, and started relaxing weeks ago. Which suggests maybe earlier action would have better for the UK.
I believe the scientific view in the UK was that they were a couple of weeks behind Germany on the infection scale.
If so they were either wrong or the UK caught up very quickly.
Was that the view of scientists? It wasn't the view of scientists here in Germany. The number of deaths along with lack of testing in the UK were very clear in indicating the UK was ahead of Germany.
I can't say for definite but the impression I formed in February was that the 'experts' thought that the UK was behind France and Germany and way behind Italy and Spain.
Maybe, but by the time lockdowns started in Germany in the middle of March they probably should have changed their minds.
Anyway, by now it should be clear that the UK was by the beginning of March at least a week ahead of Germany, but started the lockdown about a week later. It seems like an earlier lockdown would have been better.
According to wiki both lockdowns started the same day - is that wrong?
Well of course. A 20-year-old unemployed former bartender with practically zero chance of dying of the disease, who's also desperate to earn money to pay the rent and have something resembling a normal social (and sex) life, is liable to have a different attitude to all of this to a 78-year-old with COPD, living in their own (mortgage-free) home off a fat pension, whose life presently revolves around the all-consuming terror of catching the wretched thing and who never leaves the house as a consequence.
The British public has been remarkably disciplined in sticking to tight lockdown regulations up until now, but anyone who thinks this unity of purpose can be maintained indefinitely is delusional.
Which is why those screaming for early lockdown were wrong imho. No doubt I am old person killer or some such. But my anecdata experience is the 65+ age group had made their own decisions in early March.
On the other hand Germany went into lockdown a couple of weeks before the UK (relative to the epidemic), the lockdown was always less strict, and started relaxing weeks ago. Which suggests maybe earlier action would have better for the UK.
I believe the scientific view in the UK was that they were a couple of weeks behind Germany on the infection scale.
If so they were either wrong or the UK caught up very quickly.
Was that the view of scientists? It wasn't the view of scientists here in Germany. The number of deaths along with lack of testing in the UK were very clear in indicating the UK was ahead of Germany.
I can't say for definite but the impression I formed in February was that the 'experts' thought that the UK was behind France and Germany and way behind Italy and Spain.
Maybe, but by the time lockdowns started in Germany in the middle of March they probably should have changed their minds.
Anyway, by now it should be clear that the UK was by the beginning of March at least a week ahead of Germany, but started the lockdown about a week later. It seems like an earlier lockdown would have been better.
According to wiki both lockdowns started the same day - is that wrong?
Schools closed here a week earlier, I guess for me that's the biggest measure. Haven't looked at wiki
Comments
Would we have made an even larger mess of trying to hold on to empire (France in Vietnam writ large), or might we have managed things better ?
Probably the former.
Snooker is an ideal candidate for resumption under current conditions. It's not significantly reliant on gate receipts, is an individual sport where the competitors can easily be kept separate, and the bulk of the top players reside in one country i.e. this one.
The main potential stumbling block is how much of an audience they will be allowed to have in the auditorium. It's bound to be reduced, but if it is not deemed safe to have any spectators then the governing body might have second thoughts about the wisdom of proceeding.
That said, if the virus doesn't spin out of control between now and then, I'd say that the likelihood of those events going ahead is greater than 50:50.
I won't condemn the HMG's approach as totally irrational. Existing research showed shutting off inbound flights only buys a few days time on the epidemic curve (and only if enacted infeasibly early), fresh LSHTM modelling was the basis of the decision not to temperature-screen returnees (also pretty ineffective, more pandemic security theatre than anything else) and as for why there aren't more restrictions at the moment, there's some logic that when you already have the disease in the community, new arrivals barely add to that (net zero effect if people still fly both in and out, and the rest of the world has similar infection rates - obviously not 100% true, but not miles away from it). However, when you want to suppress the thing, those new arrivals become more costly. So the sequencing of the government's decision isn't crazy.
The criticism I made before is that earlier this year, the government was making efforts to do all the contact tracing and so on necessary to stamp out outbreaks, something only possible with the resources then available if it didn't all blow up. At that stage they could have taken greater strides to keep a lid on it, eg bringing in social distancing measures like WFH if possible, and taking advantage of our island status to quarantine arrivals: going whole hog back then was still feasible, but by going half-cocked they didn't give a full chance for it to work.
I wonder whether telling air arrivals to quarantine at home was in fact effective (did people obey, how much transmission to family members was there?) and whether block-booking hotel beds might have been better for getting people to obey (if you're going to end up subsidising the hotel industry anyway you might as well get them to do some work for you!). Of course that ran the risk hotels could have become a major transmission site from infected returnees to uninfected so it isn't totally clear that beats letting them stay in their own homes.
One unrealistic idea is everyone being swabbed. I reckon in Feb and March there would have been in the ball-park of 100k arrivals per day at UK airports? (Based on 300 million passengers/year then trying to lowball things from there.) Even if they were given only one swab (and letting people out of quarantine you ideally want them to test negative on at least two swabs a couple of days apart) that's clearly well beyond any realistic testing capacity at that stage.
Anyway, by now it should be clear that the UK was by the beginning of March at least a week ahead of Germany, but started the lockdown about a week later. It seems like an earlier lockdown would have been better.
alterego's immigration policy would be to welcome anyone who thinks the British government is more competent than their own.
The crossover between people who became overnight experts in epidemiology but who can't understand what 'Stay alert' means is quite impressive.