Categories
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Next month it’ll be the 50th anniversary of GE1970 – the ONLY
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Next month it’ll be the 50th anniversary of GE1970 – the ONLY election in modern times when a party with a working majority lost to another with a working majority
Next month we will see the 50th anniversary of the most extraordinary general election of modern times – 1970 when Edward Heath led the Tories to victory. His party came to power with a working majority beating Harold Wilson Labour which also had a working majority.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Or it could be moderately infectious and moderately dangerous.
Enoch was right... about hypothetical questions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7eqTm2YZhY
Kwality work, ladies.
The Roche antibody test seems accurate enough for community testing in terms of sensitivity and specificity.
I would suggest testing NHS and Care home staff, and a population random sample as the first priority.
Poorer? you will be
We will either be using a comparison slide or its no longer relevant to have a comparison slide because you cant sensibly compare even though we have been for 7 weeks
That much is clear
I support the approach of Sweden, because it seems to be a level headed approach that will minimise total suffering in the long term, and is not contingent on 'and then we discover a vaccine and its all over' in the next couple of months. it maintains basic civil liberty/freedoms, and of less importance but not irreverent will not totally 'trash' the economy.
As for long term damage to survivors, yes that is also a concern, but does not change my conclusion. I would be very intested in numbers affected, and how badly.
From what I can see, in Sweden roughly 3,000 dead, 1,500 have been in ICU 500, now dead, 500, recovered and 500, still in ICU.
I would have thought that the 500 recovered from ICU are the most lickly to be badly affected, 500 is a 1/6th of the 3,000 dead, therefor my big concern is with the 3,000 dead. There will be some others as well, but hard to estimate how many.
Sources inside Downing Street have told CNN that Johnson himself thought the message was confusing. "Filming was a total nightmare. He was stopping and starting, asking to change bits, complaining about the length, saying it was all too complex," said one government source who was not permitted to speak on the record.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/COVID-19-daily-announced-deaths-14-May-2020.xlsx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden
But about a week ago, whoever was updating them seems to have stooped doing so. I can find the numbers on a Swedish government site, most of witch is also available in English. but suspect that many people, including a lot of journalists.
how easy/difficult is it to update a Wikipedia page? can anybody volatier, or do i need to be varifide first? being able to spell would be helpful but if its just copying numbers form one table to anther is there any reason I don't start doing it?
It is presumed that children spread the virus. Outside of school, three year old children and older are expected to wear masks when outside the family bubble. The logical position would be to demand that this is followed in schools as well. Instead the plan appears to be based on a presumption that a school building has magical shielding properties (shades of too much Harry Potter).
If they had demanded face coverings and such in schools I suspect that more would have been okay with it, they didn't and that lack of consistency has led to a widespread belief that government are planning to use schools as the chosen place to spread the virus for the next wave. Given their previous advice that environments are safe when they are not, it is foolhardy to follow this current government advice at the present time, as it is likely to endanger students, staff and parents.
Two or three months will allow all to understand what the risk is and to plan to mitigate it. That's the logical position. Logical, that is, unless your plan is not to mitigate that risk.
I know the UK government got burned by the dodgy Chinese kits and those companies demanding money upfront, but Roche are legit well known and respected outfit. Also, you would have thought they could have placed ordered, conditional on what Roche said being true.
Set against that it's very unlikely that if one of the parties has a seat lead of only 42, as Heath in 1970, that they will have a working majority, because there are so many MPs for other parties.
https://twitter.com/DHSCgovuk/status/1260919297288933376?s=20
Without a significant chunk of Scottish MPs he has zero chance.
Hence he has zero chance on current trajectory - his only shot is a rainbow coalition (from hell).
Just 2,500 in Scotland.
We don't hear about test volumes so much these days.
So not only did we take a week longer to approve the test than did others, we haven't bothered to order any in advance.
In the broadest sense, this government does not seem to value timely intelligence.
Which is enormously unintelligent of them.
Nissan to reduce capacity by 20% and close a European plant:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/Nissan-to-reduce-capacity-by-20-and-close-a-European-plant
...Nissan will take on production of Renault vehicles in the U.K. The British facilities, which can make more than 500,000 vehicles a year, turned out around 320,000 last fiscal year.
Similar efforts are in the works in South America and Southeast Asia. There are plans to make Renault vehicles at Nissan facilities in Brazil, an export hub for the Japanese automaker. In Southeast Asia, Nissan and Mitsubishi will ramp up their collaboration. Mitsubishi will take on production of Nissan vehicles in Indonesia and elsewhere....
Just because some other European countries or US have said OK, the US for instance also said OK to some rapid tests that don't do what they claim and a number of other European countries have got burned by not properly checking despite giving them the green light.
In terms of validation, I think the UK approach has been very sensible. Without proper checks and balances on those antibody tests they bought initially, we probably would now be talking about a massive scandal of false test results.
Not doing a deal in the meantime, now that seems dumb.
Sweden has kept its schools open throughout, without masks, and has not had problems, with kids or parents.
Finland and Denmark, who probably pay more attention to Sweden than most of the rest of the would are now following Sweden and reopening Schools.
Its very hard to reopen the economy and have parents go back to work if kids are still at home.
That sead, no parent should ever be forced to sent there kids to a school, pandemic or not.
Cases %
under 10 133 0.48
10-19 310 1.11
20-29 2361 8.46
30-39 3110 11.15
40-49 3861 13.84
50-59 4929 17.66
60-69 3464 12.41
70-79 3327 11.92
80-89 4146 14.86
90+ 2262 8.11
Norway
Cases %
under 10 136 1.66
10-19 443 5.42
20-29 1280 15.66
30-39 1356 16.59
40-49 1460 17.86
50-59 1559 19.07
60-69 874 10.69
70-79 583 7.13
80-89 367 4.49
90+ 117 1.43
And I attended my first election hustings in the old Southgate constituency, a Tory stronghold where the MP was Anthony Berry of the Daily Telegraph family who was later murdered by the IRA.
The Labour candidate said that one day Southgate would return a Labour MP. Everyone laughed at the impossible prospect. I thought of that on Portillo night, and now it is a Labour held marginal (now Enfield Southgate).
I don't believe this is antibody tests...
https://twitter.com/ONS/status/1260922088552005632?s=20
Cases %
under 10 227 2.13
10-19 454 4.26
20-29 1443 13.53
30-39 1495 14.02
40-49 1918 17.98
50-59 1976 18.52
60-69 1257 11.78
70-79 927 8.69
80-89 743 6.97
90+ 227 2.13
Hardly worth the shutdown is it ?
*depends a lot on access to testing between the two countries how accurate the percentages are.
It is also possible that more very young Swedes have had it but had very minor symptoms or non at all and therefor where not tested.
Time is at a premium now. It's worth risking some money for.
The 30,000 swabs, taken since mid-April, are still being processed in a “data exchange” between the UK Government and Scottish Government.
It means Scotland’s confirmed figure of 13,929 is likely to be significantly higher and also casts doubt on recent regional figures.
Out of the 10,705 participants’ swab tests included in this analysis, 33 individuals in 30 households tested positive for COVID-19. The figures do not include people in hospital or care homes where rates of COVID-19 infection are likely to be higher.
-----
There is no way we are talking say 20% of people have had this. All those fill in your own symptoms surveying are just nonsense.
https://twitter.com/cricketwyvern/status/1260926453962563584?s=20
how long is a person infected for? if its 5 days then just 32,000 a day infected. does that sound right?
It's evidence the shutdown worked you monumental eejit.
1 - Sweden's economy will be/is almost as much in the shitter from all of this as its neighbouring countries. It's probably dampened - slightly - the fall, but at the cost of ensuring the return back will be dampened as well. It's the virus and its effects that do the vast majority of the economic damage.
2 - The Swedish option is not on the cards for the UK - or England, anyway. Population densities and connectivity are far, far higher, so the same strategy would cause a big increase in deaths here. Looking at Sweden compared to its neighbouring countries (with similar population densities, connectivity, economic structure, and social and cultural traits) looks like it gives 4x to 8x as many deaths as a straightforward lockdown.
3 - There are indications (from the coronaviruses found in the common cold) that illness-recovery-fuelled immunity degrades quite quickly. If they do get immunity (which isn't proven, but I personally believe that indications are that you do get at least limited immunity from recovering), it might be effectively gone in 3-6 months.
It is a massive mountain to climb.
It looks like on UNS they need to take Glasgow NW (maj 8,359) to get a majority of 1 but that include 17 seats in Scotland. If you take those out then it gets you to Derbyshire NE (maj 12,876). It would also include gaining seats like Macclesfield, Bromley and Hexham that they didn't take in the Blair years.
There is a lot of focus on Labour's Scotland problem but they also have a massive issue with the Midlands. Look at seats like Staffordshire Moorlands which had a 10,000 Labour majority in 1997 and now has a 16,000 Conservative majority or North Warks which has gone from 15,000 Lab maj to 18,000 Con maj
The percentage is very similar to that of the pilot study a few days ago.
I think what is new is the finding that there was no statistically significant variation with age of the percentage infected. Obviously with subsamples the confidence interval is large, but the data give no hint of an increase with age:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/england14may2020
47.3% of Covid cases in Sweden were 60+
23.7% in Norway
29.57 in Denmark
If we make it 70+, it's
34.89% Sweden
13.05% Denmark
17.78% Norway
'On 13 May there were:
4,009 tests carried out by NHS Scotland in hospitals, care homes or the community, making a total of 111,261 COVID-19 tests through NHS labs to date.
In addition, there were 1,820 drive through and mobile tests carried out by the Regional Testing Centres in Scotland bringing the total to 32,528 tests to date.'
https://tinyurl.com/yagk44uc
It's a right old pickle isn't it ?
I'm sure there's some way to look at the halving time in number of deaths and make some assumptions to work out a death rate from the estimate on number of cases from the ONS... but on the face of it would be hard to make that death rate much less than 1%, if at all.
Deaths %
under 10 1 0.03
20-29 9 0.26
30-39 13 0.37
40-49 33 0.94
50-59 110 3.12
60-69 253 7.17
70-79 783 22.19
80-89 1453 41.18
90+ 873 24.74
The day of approval of the Elecsys tests was May 4th in Germany, The same day saw German SoH Jens Spahn attend the opening of the only production line in Penzberg/Bavaria.
https://www.roche.de/medien/meldungen/bundesgesundheitsminister-spahn-und-bayerischer-ministerpraesident-soeder-besuchen-roche-5138.html
I posted a comment pointing out this fact on the following day. The worldwide demand for this test (and the COBA machines required to evaluate the samples) outstrips the supply by some measure.
Fervent PC.com Brexiteers will probably still defend UKG's decision for some reasons.
Unlike the timrous cowering beasties up there.
A. Eradicate the virus China style.
B. Sweden.
Spain have done antibody survey and they say 5% nationally, 11% Madrid.
We should brace that we are going to be similar.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/boris-johnson-sided-doves-over-hawks-lockdown
But probably better to wait for the official figures.
Doesn't sound like they are going to go with the EU vision of all EU citizens being able to go anywhere for their holibobs.
As can they do multiple tests on people then the 4009 tests is on the 2525 people they tested.
Neither suppressed it and keep death down, or as thought in Sweden a large number of people have now had this with a strategy that can continue indefinitely.
If we take the central date of 3rd May and a halving time of 14 days, then we'd be down to ~37,000 cases by the end of May - assuming that garden centres and rounds of golf aren't increasing R.
It doesn't look good.
Edit: 37,000 cases equates to about 70 per Westminster Constituency, to provide a bit of context.
Many genuinely think they will just walk back into their jobs like nothing happened. The truth is they face either long term redundancy and penury, lower real wages or much higher taxation.
Sunak thinks he's being moral, but I think there's many a despot would admire his deeply cynical tactics.
I also notice the subtle change in the language regarding shielded people. The government now talking about they must be shielded until AT LEAST the end of June. I am starting to presume they aren't going to be fully released for a significant time after that.
0. To me civil liberty and freedom are important and in this case Sweden has come top of the class.
1. Sweden's economy will be badly effected, not least my the disruption to supply canes and markets overseas, but this would happen anyway, but there approach Vs Lock-down will I think of led to less government borrowing and less unemployment, how much will be hard to calculate even when all the numbers are known in a year or two, and even harder now, but that does not mean it will be trivial.
2. Population density will have an effect, especially on the speed of the transmition, but probably not as big effect on total deaths over a long period of time. Stockholm is also a big city of 2 million, so fairly comparable to other big city's. the rest of Scandinavian locked down very early in there outbreaks and that may be why there are so few deaths there at the moment compared to the rest of europ, but a lock-down may not be sustainable ......
3. We by definition do not know the long-term immunity that this virus will have, we can say with confidants that it does give very good short term immunity, which is not a guarantee but an indication that it will give at least some long term immunity. but agreed this is not known, but am perhaps more optimistic that you.
Anyway, relay hoping we get a good quality, large scale antibody test from Sweden soon.