Yes, this is interesting. If previous human coronavirus exposure gives partial resistance that could be very good news indeed, and might explain why only some in a household get it, despite massive viral exposure from a case.
Possible live vaccine too.
Silly question...as not a medical person. What's the probability that a 40-50 years old over their lifetimes has had exposure to a cornavirus based cold? Surely it is very high? Wouldn't we then expect to lower number of people in that age range actually catching it (I can understand old people, who immune systems have become severely weakened).
The immune system has two components - the innate immune system which is non-specific to the pathogen/antigen, and the adaptive, which produces various T cells and antibodies specific to the immune challenge, and which carries with it a memory.
The innate system deteriorates with age (the numbers of cells is reduced, their function is impaired, and the speed with which they are activated is reduced).
The adaptive immune system provides a strong response after a few days of exposure. This response fades with time if there is no subsequent exposure to the antigen. A second exposure often strengthens both the level of the response and the duration of the 'memory'. But it will fade with time. So if an old person was exposed to all 4 common cold coronaviruses early on in life, and they are no longer endemic because of herd immunity, their immune memory to these virus my have been lost and hence they would not have cross-reactivity. Younger people who were exposed more recently may not yet have lost their immune memory.
The adaptive immune system also deteriorates with age.
That's really informative. Thank you.
Is it possible that those with a strong innate immune system, if lightly infected, will dispose of the virus without the adaptive immune system coming into play and therefore not displaying antibodies in serology tests?
If that is the case, then they may form a large component of "herd immunity" at least to light viral loads but not show up in the tests.
They could explain why the epidemic seems to fizzle out at apparent low levels of overall infection.
It "fizzles out"?
Can you explain where you think it "fizzled out" - I mean somewhere where extreme measures weren't adopted to stop it from spreading?
The denialist loonies seem to be adopting this idea of "it never infects a very high proportion of the population" as a kind of magical riposte to the basic laws of epidemiology. It somehow magically stops of its own accord. But is there actually any evidence to suggest it stops of its own accord, rather than being stopped by extreme counter-measures?
Look at the death and infection rate in London dropping dramatically compared with other parts of the country even though the lock down measures are much the same. The apparent infection rate isn't high enough to explain the differential reduction. An "iceberg effect" is.
Look at the effect in China as it comes out of lockdown. The reported overall infection rate is low. The virus is still there. It is not growing exponentially. Perhaps there is a large number of people with strong immune systems.
I'm just asking questions. I'm not denying anything. I'm very open minded on this. Just probing conventional wisdom in a situation of a lot of unknowns.
A German professor of virology thinks that it's only moderately deadly
It doesn't seem to justify locking up the innocent, er sorry 'the healthy'.
He thinks the fatality rate is 0.24-0.26%.
But as usual, he doesn't explain how, in that case, 0.25% of the entire population of New York City could already have been killed by the virus.
Maybe because the rate will be considerably higher in a densely-populated area with a highly-transient population like New York City compared to the overall rate.
What rate?
The IFR could be higher if you live in a city. More likely to be BAME, more likely to get a higher viral load, poorer health, effects of pollution,
No matter how much special pleading you invoke, this estimate of 0.24-0.26% is simply incredible.
Its probably on the slightly low side but this virus does not kill more than 1% at most . 1% of people die each year anyway (slightly more) - we have to get back to living otherwise longer term problems will dwarf covid 19
Yes, this is interesting. If previous human coronavirus exposure gives partial resistance that could be very good news indeed, and might explain why only some in a household get it, despite massive viral exposure from a case.
Possible live vaccine too.
Silly question...as not a medical person. What's the probability that a 40-50 years old over their lifetimes has had exposure to a cornavirus based cold? Surely it is very high? Wouldn't we then expect to lower number of people in that age range actually catching it (I can understand old people, who immune systems have become severely weakened).
The immune system has two components - the innate immune system which is non-specific to the pathogen/antigen, and the adaptive, which produces various T cells and antibodies specific to the immune challenge, and which carries with it a memory.
The innate system deteriorates with age (the numbers of cells is reduced, their function is impaired, and the speed with which they are activated is reduced).
The adaptive immune system provides a strong response after a few days of exposure. This response fades with time if there is no subsequent exposure to the antigen. A second exposure often strengthens both the level of the response and the duration of the 'memory'. But it will fade with time. So if an old person was exposed to all 4 common cold coronaviruses early on in life, and they are no longer endemic because of herd immunity, their immune memory to these virus my have been lost and hence they would not have cross-reactivity. Younger people who were exposed more recently may not yet have lost their immune memory.
The adaptive immune system also deteriorates with age.
That's really informative. Thank you.
Is it possible that those with a strong innate immune system, if lightly infected, will dispose of the virus without the adaptive immune system coming into play and therefore not displaying antibodies in serology tests?
If that is the case, then they may form a large component of "herd immunity" at least to light viral loads but not show up in the tests.
They could explain why the epidemic seems to fizzle out at apparent low levels of overall infection.
It "fizzles out"?
Can you explain where you think it "fizzled out" - I mean somewhere where extreme measures weren't adopted to stop it from spreading?
The denialist loonies seem to be adopting this idea of "it never infects a very high proportion of the population" as a kind of magical riposte to the basic laws of epidemiology. It somehow magically stops of its own accord. But is there actually any evidence to suggest it stops of its own accord, rather than being stopped by extreme counter-measures?
Look at the death and infection rate in London dropping dramatically compared with other parts of the country even though the lock down measures are much the same. The apparent infection rate isn't high enough to explain the differential reduction. An "iceberg effect" is.
Look at the effect in China as it comes out of lockdown. The reported overall infection rate is low. The virus is still there. It is not growing exponentially. Perhaps there is a large number of people with strong immune systems.
I'm just asking questions. I'm not denying anything. I'm very open minded on this. Just probing conventional wisdom in a situation of a lot of unknowns.
A German professor of virology thinks that it's only moderately deadly
It doesn't seem to justify locking up the innocent, er sorry 'the healthy'.
Interesting that one of the effects of social distancing could be to allow the virus to spread but at a low viral load, meaning that people get it less severely
The importance of viral load is something we don't talk about enough. It's why apartment complexes with lifts and packed public transport and beer pong, etc can be so deadly. Simply, in those environments you're not just getting a small quantity of the virus.
It's also why we need to remove restrictions gradually. Face coverings on public transport, for example, really doesn't seem like such an outrageous requirement.
From a 2017 Guardian review of Laura Spinner's Pale Rider, a history of the Spanish flu:
"Spinney’s important book does not attempt to offer light reading. No less than four pandemics are predicted in the 21st century. At least one will take the form of flu. Vaccination is not cheap, because the flu virus is constantly mutating. Annual vaccines currently offer the best protection. Britain does still possess a National Health Service. "
"The enduring message of Spinney’s magisterial work is to underline just how crucial that remarkable service is to the future security of an unusually privileged nation. Let’s hope the author’s book is read with care by Theresa May."
Flu vaccine uptake in the UK is high, but not sufficiently higher than other countries to conclude that it is all due to the blessed church of the Holy NHS
It looks like she would be a good candidate in 2024 but does she help with African American turnout? On the other hand should you bet against a junior Senator from Illinois?
She might not need to help with African American turnout. Biden is well placed there. Would Kamal Harris, the favourite, help with African Amerian turnout? Is it simply colour?
He needs to flip white rural voters from Trump in sufficient numbers to turn the states that just tipped Trump.
Hopefully, Biden will take Bill Clinton's advice on reaching out there rather than HRC's team of data jockeys who didn't even have her visit Wisconsin once.
Clinton was a voter repellent. Maybe she'd have lost by more if she'd visited Wisconsin.
I bet family gatherings of the Corbyn's is a right old hoot...
Both brothers come across as totally humourless
A few years ago Jeremy went on the Daily Politics dressed as Father Christmas.
An elderly figure with a white beard bearing a load of presents that the buyer couldn’t really afford but were greedily swallowed by people of insufficient cognitive development to realise the whole thing was a myth, leading to later sickening disillusionment as they grow up?
I was just wondering why he would need to dress up to play that role...
I reckon the more the public see of the troop of lightweights that Johnson has packed his cabinet with at these press events, the more unpopular his government will become.
It really is low quality- Williamson, Patel, Sharma, Shapps, Jendrick... the Tories have much more quality wasted in their back benches.
I'm sure that there's some, but I've got a horrible feeling that a lot more quality gave up and walked away from Parliament at the 2019 General Election.
From a 2017 Guardian review of Laura Spinner's Pale Rider, a history of the Spanish flu:
"Spinney’s important book does not attempt to offer light reading. No less than four pandemics are predicted in the 21st century. At least one will take the form of flu. Vaccination is not cheap, because the flu virus is constantly mutating. Annual vaccines currently offer the best protection. Britain does still possess a National Health Service. "
"The enduring message of Spinney’s magisterial work is to underline just how crucial that remarkable service is to the future security of an unusually privileged nation. Let’s hope the author’s book is read with care by Theresa May."
Flu vaccine uptake in the UK is high, but not sufficiently higher than other countries to conclude that it is all due to the blessed church of the Holy NHS
It's not really pushed if you're not in a vulnerable category.
Though the international comparisons are only being made (on that page) between how countries vaccinate the 65+.
The elderly and vulnerable can also be protected to some extent by vaccinating fit and younger people, but there are issues over how cost-effective this is. It's one of the things that John Edmunds has worked on a lot over the years, e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4604076/
Making use of surveillance data from over a decade in conjunction with a dynamic model, we find that vaccination of children in the UK is likely to be highly cost-effective, not only for their own benefit but also to reduce the disease burden in the rest of the community. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has recently decided to extend the influenza immunisation programme in the UK to all children aged 2–17 years [10]. The work presented here has helped shape this decision. This suggests that, in countries where children are similarly a main source for the transmission of influenza, childhood vaccination against seasonal influenza may present an opportunity to prevent a higher burden of disease at similar cost to vaccination of the elderly.
Children do now get a form of flu vaccine (nasal spray except for high-risk kids who get an injection which offers them more protection - the other kids are largely being vaccinated with the nasal spray to stop them spreading flu rather than because of the risk it poses them):
In the autumn/winter of 2019-20, the vaccine will be available free on the NHS for eligible children, including:
* children aged 2 and 3 on 31 August 2019 – that is, children born between 1 September 2015 and 31 August 2017 * all primary school children * children aged 2 to 17 with long-term health conditions
Year 6 is a key transition year. Not in Northumberland. That would be years 4 and 8. Have sought information about this from Council and DFE. No response.
I'm sure that there's some, but I've got a horrible feeling that a lot more quality gave up and walked away from Parliament at the 2019 General Election.
Everyone is in favour of *safely* reopening the schools but Adonis begs the question.
People keep saying re-open schools, but they've never been closed, my niece is a teacher and she is there working with the key worker's kids and some of those classed as vulnerable.
I do wonder if this goes on too long that the fireman's the postman's and the shopworker's kids will all be at Oxford and Cambridge whilst those belonging to the stockbroker, the lawyer and the business executive will all be on the scrapheap.
Regarding the issues that are behind this, which I referred to on the previous thread. Schools want to be treated the same as other venues where people congregate. If the rule is weaker in schools then schools will not return. The government deliberately singled out schools as needing weaker protection, yet they have produced no evidence that this is science based. If they do, and if schools are treated equally, they will likely return in a greater way before September. If they aren’t, they won’t. This is not radical, it is not anything that reactionaries in the press are claiming. It is a public health issue, as backed up by the British Medical Association.
That is all.
"Schools want to be treated the same as other venues where people congregate."
I think this is a sticking point that eventually is going to have to get bulldozed through.Different venues will end up getting treated differently not because of differences in their risks, but differences in the benefits of reopening them (or more bluntly, the costs of them being closed).
-----
But with only a few thousand people likely to be moving around, compared to millions of family reunions, the "weight" (contribution to R) is minimal and the "value" of getting the property market somewhat unstuck is deemed sufficient high (we do want people to be able to move for work, especially key workers, and moves to enable family caring solutions outside care homes may also be desirable).
You can try to reopen things in a way that reduces their "weight" while only reducing their social value as little as possible, but that only works up to an extent. Face-to-face teaching is something sufficiently valuable that it's an obvious priority to go back in the knapsack and even with a lot of thought going into preventative measures it's going to be a heavy one.
-----
Protection for teachers, particularly teachers in higher-risk groups, is a valid issue and something unions are right to flag up.
If you bulldoze something you end up with wreckage strewn about the place. An apt metaphor!
Regarding R, a major factor affecting it is the transport to and from places, the 'school run' is given a term for a very good reason, it overwhelms many transport networks. Then school buses, parents/grandparents mixing and so on and you can see the problem.
This press conference is going off the rails now, by the way, it bears so little relation to reality. Embarrassing to watch.
From a 2017 Guardian review of Laura Spinner's Pale Rider, a history of the Spanish flu:
"Spinney’s important book does not attempt to offer light reading. No less than four pandemics are predicted in the 21st century. At least one will take the form of flu. Vaccination is not cheap, because the flu virus is constantly mutating. Annual vaccines currently offer the best protection. Britain does still possess a National Health Service. "
"The enduring message of Spinney’s magisterial work is to underline just how crucial that remarkable service is to the future security of an unusually privileged nation. Let’s hope the author’s book is read with care by Theresa May."
Flu vaccine uptake in the UK is high, but not sufficiently higher than other countries to conclude that it is all due to the blessed church of the Holy NHS
It's not really pushed if you're not in a vulnerable category.
This is presumably because it's considered that the cost of vaccinating the entire population isn't worth it - even though a small number of people will die as a result.
This sense of perspective has been lost with Covid-19. I'm afraid we're going to be stuck with the misery of social distancing until the disease is eradicated, regardless of the fact that we'll end up annihilating whole sectors of the economy and having 25% unemployment as a result.
There is a huge difference to what the two models think R was pre-lockdown.
Be interesting to know if Cambridge model is wrong on R, how that affects their predictions on how many people have had it.
For real fun and games, Imperial have another version of that graph (for the whole UK). Which looks completely different again and starts off at a far higher R!
The other graph on that webpage of their predictions shown in blue against reported actual infections in brown is, erm, lets just say interesting.
You have to squint to actually see the brown, dwarfed as it is by a blue wave of 100,000s of predicted casualties.
To be fair most of those infections would be expected to be mild and probably to go unreported. Interesting that the brown and blue are now rather closer together, which makes sense as we should now be detecting a greater proportion of infections, but in a way it's bad news for the Imperial model if the two get too close (since we probably don't expect to detect an especially high proportion - people with very mild symptoms are unlikely to go for testing for example).
I'm sure that there's some, but I've got a horrible feeling that a lot more quality gave up and walked away from Parliament at the 2019 General Election.
They were actively expunged by BoZo
That's also true for many, though I was thinking a bit more of those who saw the writing on the wall and sensibly decided that they'd had enough.
Either way, the careless burning up of talent and experience is very populist, but potentially disastrous when you need it. Like now.
From a 2017 Guardian review of Laura Spinner's Pale Rider, a history of the Spanish flu:
"Spinney’s important book does not attempt to offer light reading. No less than four pandemics are predicted in the 21st century. At least one will take the form of flu. Vaccination is not cheap, because the flu virus is constantly mutating. Annual vaccines currently offer the best protection. Britain does still possess a National Health Service. "
"The enduring message of Spinney’s magisterial work is to underline just how crucial that remarkable service is to the future security of an unusually privileged nation. Let’s hope the author’s book is read with care by Theresa May."
Flu vaccine uptake in the UK is high, but not sufficiently higher than other countries to conclude that it is all due to the blessed church of the Holy NHS
It's not really pushed if you're not in a vulnerable category.
This is presumably because it's considered that the cost of vaccinating the entire population isn't worth it - even though a small number of people will die as a result.
This sense of perspective has been lost with Covid-19. I'm afraid we're going to be stuck with the misery of social distancing until the disease is eradicated, regardless of the fact that we'll end up annihilating whole sectors of the economy and having 25% unemployment as a result.
It’s all about that cost/benefit ratio. The flu vaccine isn’t particularly effective, so it’s only really worth taking if you’re in a high risk group. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t cost very much - about £15 a dose I believe - but across the whole population that’s still a fair whack that could be spent on other things.
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
Everyone is in favour of *safely* reopening the schools but Adonis begs the question.
People keep saying re-open schools, but they've never been closed, my niece is a teacher and she is there working with the key worker's kids and some of those classed as vulnerable.
I do wonder if this goes on too long that the fireman's the postman's and the shopworker's kids will all be at Oxford and Cambridge whilst those belonging to the stockbroker, the lawyer and the business executive will all be on the scrapheap.
Regarding the issues that are behind this, which I referred to on the previous thread. Schools want to be treated the same as other venues where people congregate. If the rule is weaker in schools then schools will not return. The government deliberately singled out schools as needing weaker protection, yet they have produced no evidence that this is science based. If they do, and if schools are treated equally, they will likely return in a greater way before September. If they aren’t, they won’t. This is not radical, it is not anything that reactionaries in the press are claiming. It is a public health issue, as backed up by the British Medical Association.
That is all.
"Schools want to be treated the same as other venues where people congregate."
I think this is a sticking point that eventually is going to have to get bulldozed through.Different venues will end up getting treated differently not because of differences in their risks, but differences in the benefits of reopening them (or more bluntly, the costs of them being closed).
-----
But with only a few thousand people likely to be moving around, compared to millions of family reunions, the "weight" (contribution to R) is minimal and the "value" of getting the property market somewhat unstuck is deemed sufficient high (we do want people to be able to move for work, especially key workers, and moves to enable family caring solutions outside care homes may also be desirable).
You can try to reopen things in a way that reduces their "weight" while only reducing their social value as little as possible, but that only works up to an extent. Face-to-face teaching is something sufficiently valuable that it's an obvious priority to go back in the knapsack and even with a lot of thought going into preventative measures it's going to be a heavy one.
-----
Protection for teachers, particularly teachers in higher-risk groups, is a valid issue and something unions are right to flag up.
If you bulldoze something you end up with wreckage strewn about the place. An apt metaphor!
Regarding R, a major factor affecting it is the transport to and from places, the 'school run' is given a term for a very good reason, it overwhelms many transport networks. Then school buses, parents/grandparents mixing and so on and you can see the problem.
This press conference is going off the rails now, by the way, it bears so little relation to reality. Embarrassing to watch.
They are increasingly embarrassing; the Soviet style repetition of statistics, the adulation for 'heroic' workers who have been forced to keep going throughout this, this increasing oiliness of the Governments speakers.
Major problem with press conference on BBC News Channel.
Framing of slides was far too tight - such that stats at edge of slide could not be seen - data for the last four days on one slide could not be seen at all.
So number of tests appeared to be flat / creeping down when in fact last three days were all record highs.
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
Quite. And when they don't, the questioner is not offered a come-back. Supportive newspapers though seem to be given supplementaries
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
Everyone is in favour of *safely* reopening the schools but Adonis begs the question.
People keep saying re-open schools, but they've never been closed, my niece is a teacher and she is there working with the key worker's kids and some of those classed as vulnerable.
I do wonder if this goes on too long that the fireman's the postman's and the shopworker's kids will all be at Oxford and Cambridge whilst those belonging to the stockbroker, the lawyer and the business executive will all be on the scrapheap.
Regarding the issues that are behind this, which I referred to on the previous thread. Schools want to be treated the same as other venues where people congregate. If the rule is weaker in schools then schools will not return. The government deliberately singled out schools as needing weaker protection, yet they have produced no evidence that this is science based. If they do, and if schools are treated equally, they will likely return in a greater way before September. If they aren’t, they won’t. This is not radical, it is not anything that reactionaries in the press are claiming. It is a public health issue, as backed up by the British Medical Association.
That is all.
"Schools want to be treated the same as other venues where people congregate."
I think this is a sticking point that eventually is going to have to get bulldozed through.Different venues will end up getting treated differently not because of differences in their risks, but differences in the benefits of reopening them (or more bluntly, the costs of them being closed).
-----
But with only a few thousand people likely to be moving around, compared to millions of family reunions, the "weight" (contribution to R) is minimal and the "value" of getting the property market somewhat unstuck is deemed sufficient high (we do want people to be able to move for work, especially key workers, and moves to enable family caring solutions outside care homes may also be desirable).
You can try to reopen things in a way that reduces their "weight" while only reducing their social value as little as possible, but that only works up to an extent. Face-to-face teaching is something sufficiently valuable that it's an obvious priority to go back in the knapsack and even with a lot of thought going into preventative measures it's going to be a heavy one.
-----
Protection for teachers, particularly teachers in higher-risk groups, is a valid issue and something unions are right to flag up.
If you bulldoze something you end up with wreckage strewn about the place. An apt metaphor!
Regarding R, a major factor affecting it is the transport to and from places, the 'school run' is given a term for a very good reason, it overwhelms many transport networks. Then school buses, parents/grandparents mixing and so on and you can see the problem.
This press conference is going off the rails now, by the way, it bears so little relation to reality. Embarrassing to watch.
I didn't just mean it for schools, I mean it for every setting where people are complaining "we demand to be treated in a logically consistent way with sector X". That kind of objection is one that's not going to be tenable - different settings and sectors are going to end up treated differently. That's just how it has to be.
Some countries (not just for the COVID pandemic, I mean in general) use the same school building for both a "morning school" and an "afternoon school" so two schools can share the same facilities. I did wonder if we might end up trying something like that, or for non-priority yeargroups running classes only on alternating days.
The transport issue is an important one for workplaces and other venues too, though it's perhaps most marked for schools. Staggering start-times (one of the government suggestions) e.g. by year-group is only a partial solution as quite frequently two siblings will be in different year groups at the same school. Using grandparents as child transport is also inadvisable at the moment. However, being realistic about the transport issue also suggests there are limits on how overboard you want to go "making schools safe". Can't fit the required number of kids in a room with the seats two metres apart? Well it probably isn't the end of the world, in risk management terms, if you end up with them 1.5 metres apart. Because what's going to happen when they get on the bus and have a chat there?
I bet family gatherings of the Corbyn's is a right old hoot...
Both brothers come across as totally humourless
A few years ago Jeremy went on the Daily Politics dressed as Father Christmas.
An elderly figure with a white beard bearing a load of presents that the buyer couldn’t really afford but were greedily swallowed by people of insufficient cognitive development to realise the whole thing was a myth, leading to later sickening disillusionment as they grow up?
I was just wondering why he would need to dress up to play that role...
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
I've never been more aware of the BBC as a State Broadcaster than now. It's mobile front page is essentially a cut and paste from the Ministry of Information.
Even to the point of getting it presumably intentionally wrong over the new exercise rules. It says you can now exercise outside with someone from outside your household for the first time. Which is wrong. You always could.
No you couldn't unless you reckon you can freely stand shoulder to shoulder with strangers and that there's no such thing as a 2 metre rule.
"Restrictions on gatherings
7. During the emergency period, no person may participate in a gathering in a public place of more than two people except—
(a)where all the persons in the gathering are members of the same household, (b)where the gathering is essential for work purposes, (c)to attend a funeral, etc..."
And the two metre rule is advice not the law.
Not all rules are laws.
The two metre rule is a rule. The only exercising once per day was a rule.
That was my point. You could always under the law go outside with two people. The BBC is making out that it is a recent thing.
It is if you are following the rules and not just the law.
If the government announced they were lifting the two metre rule and the BBC reported that would you say "why are they reporting that it was never the law?"
You are becoming a bit HYUFD-like.
You could always exercise outdoors with someone not in your household. As per the law.
Nothing has changed in this respect yet the BBC is reporting as though it is a new development.
So what?
You are the one being HYUFD like but where HYUFD worships opinion polls you are doing the same with the law as if only the law is relevant. There's more to life than opinion polls or the law. The media doesn't just report the law. If only law changes were reported there wouldn't be very much at all for the media to report on would there?
Being able to exercise multiple times per day IS NEW within the coronavirus guidance. The media reports a whole lot more on coronavirus as a whole than it does changes in the law so the guidance changing is newsworthy.
The BBC says this today:
"Individuals in England are now allowed to meet with one other person from outside their household if they stay outdoors"
That is simply inaccurate.
It's entirely accurate. That's what is allowed within the guidance now.
Where does it reference law? You are the one trying to make it about law ... that quote doesn't mention the law.
It is inaccurate because you could always do that.
I would have expected the BBC to put the new guidance into context.
No you couldn't always within the guidance rules. The new guidance should be put into context by being compared with the old guidance. That is like for like context.
If the quote says from "it is now legal ..." then that would be inaccurate but it doesn't say that. You are the one reading law into it where law isn't even mentioned.
If you want to discuss context then provide the link to the full article and we can discuss that.
Not to interfere in this exchange but from PT on the subject of whether "Boris" really was 17.5 stone before he got the virus -
You say you can well believe it because he is "athletic" and "all muscle".
I would like you to reflect on that comment. I know it was late, but still.
No that's not what I said. I said I can well believe it because he is both fat and muscular and muscle is denser than fat. Pure numbers don't mean much alone.
A 17.5 stone all muscle individual would look like a weightlifter not Boris. A 17.5 muscular and fat individual could well look like Boris. While a 17.5 pure fat weakling who never exercised would look much bigger while being no heavier.
We can all go back and read the post in question. You were essentially saying there was little difference to the casual eye between Boris Johnson and Vin Diesel.
I only highlight this because I thought that on reflection you would realize you'd got carried away on the 'pro Boris' front and would wish to retract.
No that's not what I was saying at all. You completely misunderstood it if you thought I was saying that - it's totally ridiculous and not at all what I was saying!
I bet family gatherings of the Corbyn's is a right old hoot...
Both brothers come across as totally humourless
A few years ago Jeremy went on the Daily Politics dressed as Father Christmas.
An elderly figure with a white beard bearing a load of presents that the buyer couldn’t really afford but were greedily swallowed by people of insufficient cognitive development to realise the whole thing was a myth, leading to later sickening disillusionment as they grow up?
I was just wondering why he would need to dress up to play that role...
You had to work for that one.
I was trying to be a good boy to get a present of free broadband.
Election 1964 now being repeated on BBC Parliament, a very close general election which Wilson's Labour won with a majority of just 4 seats over Douglas Home's Tories
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
Everyone is in favour of *safely* reopening the schools but Adonis begs the question.
People keep saying re-open schools, but they've never been closed, my niece is a teacher and she is there working with the key worker's kids and some of those classed as vulnerable.
I do wonder if this goes on too long that the fireman's the postman's and the shopworker's kids will all be at Oxford and Cambridge whilst those belonging to the stockbroker, the lawyer and the business executive will all be on the scrapheap.
Regarding the issues that are behind this, which I referred to on the previous thread. Schools want to be treated the same as other venues where people congregate. If the rule is weaker in schools then schools will not return. The government deliberately singled out schools as needing weaker protection, yet they have produced no evidence that this is science based. If they do, and if schools are treated equally, they will likely return in a greater way before September. If they aren’t, they won’t. This is not radical, it is not anything that reactionaries in the press are claiming. It is a public health issue, as backed up by the British Medical Association.
That is all.
"Schools want to be treated the same as other venues where people congregate."
I think this is a sticking point that eventually is going to have to get bulldozed through.Different venues will end up getting treated differently not because of differences in their risks, but differences in the benefits of reopening them (or more bluntly, the costs of them being closed).
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But with only a few thousand people likely to be moving around, compared to millions of family reunions, the "weight" (contribution to R) is minimal and the "value" of getting the property market somewhat unstuck is deemed sufficient high (we do want people to be able to move for work, especially key workers, and moves to enable family caring solutions outside care homes may also be desirable).
You can try to reopen things in a way that reduces their "weight" while only reducing their social value as little as possible, but that only works up to an extent. Face-to-face teaching is something sufficiently valuable that it's an obvious priority to go back in the knapsack and even with a lot of thought going into preventative measures it's going to be a heavy one.
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Protection for teachers, particularly teachers in higher-risk groups, is a valid issue and something unions are right to flag up.
If you bulldoze something you end up with wreckage strewn about the place. An apt metaphor!
Regarding R, a major factor affecting it is the transport to and from places, the 'school run' is given a term for a very good reason, it overwhelms many transport networks. Then school buses, parents/grandparents mixing and so on and you can see the problem.
This press conference is going off the rails now, by the way, it bears so little relation to reality. Embarrassing to watch.
I didn't just mean it for schools, I mean it for every setting where people are complaining "we demand to be treated in a logically consistent way with sector X". That kind of objection is one that's not going to be tenable - different settings and sectors are going to end up treated differently. That's just how it has to be.
Some countries (not just for the COVID pandemic, I mean in general) use the same school building for both a "morning school" and an "afternoon school" so two schools can share the same facilities. I did wonder if we might end up trying something like that, or for non-priority yeargroups running classes only on alternating days.
The transport issue is an important one for workplaces and other venues too, though it's perhaps most marked for schools. Staggering start-times (one of the government suggestions) e.g. by year-group is only a partial solution as quite frequently two siblings will be in different year groups at the same school. Using grandparents as child transport is also inadvisable at the moment. However, being realistic about the transport issue also suggests there are limits on how overboard you want to go "making schools safe". Can't fit the required number of kids in a room with the seats two metres apart? Well it probably isn't the end of the world, in risk management terms, if you end up with them 1.5 metres apart. Because what's going to happen when they get on the bus and have a chat there?
It all comes down to how much children of different ages spread the virus. Until that is better understood everything is a guess.
For adults consenting for themselves that may be okay but we are talking about young people who don't have that agency, so who look to those who care for them (parents at home, teachers at school) to look out for their interests. That is what is happening and it's going to be different for schools because isn't really a factor in most other workplaces.
When we know the risk we can mitigate the risk. If we don't, then we can't. All of the above is moot until we get to that point.
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
He is doing fine as far as I am concerned, schools are still improving and he is easing pupils back to education
From a 2017 Guardian review of Laura Spinner's Pale Rider, a history of the Spanish flu:
"Spinney’s important book does not attempt to offer light reading. No less than four pandemics are predicted in the 21st century. At least one will take the form of flu. Vaccination is not cheap, because the flu virus is constantly mutating. Annual vaccines currently offer the best protection. Britain does still possess a National Health Service. "
"The enduring message of Spinney’s magisterial work is to underline just how crucial that remarkable service is to the future security of an unusually privileged nation. Let’s hope the author’s book is read with care by Theresa May."
Flu vaccine uptake in the UK is high, but not sufficiently higher than other countries to conclude that it is all due to the blessed church of the Holy NHS
It's not really pushed if you're not in a vulnerable category.
This is presumably because it's considered that the cost of vaccinating the entire population isn't worth it - even though a small number of people will die as a result.
This sense of perspective has been lost with Covid-19. I'm afraid we're going to be stuck with the misery of social distancing until the disease is eradicated, regardless of the fact that we'll end up annihilating whole sectors of the economy and having 25% unemployment as a result.
It’s all about that cost/benefit ratio. The flu vaccine isn’t particularly effective, so it’s only really worth taking if you’re in a high risk group. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t cost very much - about £15 a dose I believe - but across the whole population that’s still a fair whack that could be spent on other things.
Aside from the at-risk groups, it also makes sense to vaccinate kids because of the role they play spreading the disease - the extension of vaccination to fit under-16s was estimated to benefit the elderly by about a third of QALD (quality-adjusted life-day, like a QALY but a bit shorter...) primarily due to reduced risk of death. The young'uns to whom the vaccination was extended to gained about a fifth of a QALD, primarily due to reduced risk of a non-fatal but still unpleasant bout of flu.
For the curious, the NICE threshold of £20-30,000 per QALY comes out roughly to £55-£80 per QALD.
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
He is doing fine as far as I am concerned, schools are still improving and he is easing pupils back to education
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
He is on a par with Pritti
I dont like her but it is clear who her audience is and why they like her. She is more often than not at least coherent unlike Williamson who sounds like an intern nervously standing in for someone far more senior.
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
He is doing fine as far as I am concerned, schools are still improving and he is easing pupils back to education
Hyufd, out of curiosity, is there anything the Tories could do that would put you off them?
Yes, this is interesting. If previous human coronavirus exposure gives partial resistance that could be very good news indeed, and might explain why only some in a household get it, despite massive viral exposure from a case.
Possible live vaccine too.
Silly question...as not a medical person. What's the probability that a 40-50 years old over their lifetimes has had exposure to a cornavirus based cold? Surely it is very high? Wouldn't we then expect to lower number of people in that age range actually catching it (I can understand old people, who immune systems have become severely weakened).
The immune system has two components - the innate immune system which is non-specific to the pathogen/antigen, and the adaptive, which produces various T cells and antibodies specific to the immune challenge, and which carries with it a memory.
The innate system deteriorates with age (the numbers of cells is reduced, their function is impaired, and the speed with which they are activated is reduced).
The adaptive immune system provides a strong response after a few days of exposure. This response fades with time if there is no subsequent exposure to the antigen. A second exposure often strengthens both the level of the response and the duration of the 'memory'. But it will fade with time. So if an old person was exposed to all 4 common cold coronaviruses early on in life, and they are no longer endemic because of herd immunity, their immune memory to these virus my have been lost and hence they would not have cross-reactivity. Younger people who were exposed more recently may not yet have lost their immune memory.
The adaptive immune system also deteriorates with age.
That's really informative. Thank you.
Is it possible that those with a strong innate immune system, if lightly infected, will dispose of the virus without the adaptive immune system coming into play and therefore not displaying antibodies in serology tests?
If that is the case, then they may form a large component of "herd immunity" at least to light viral loads but not show up in the tests.
They could explain why the epidemic seems to fizzle out at apparent low levels of overall infection.
It "fizzles out"?
Can you explain where you think it "fizzled out" - I mean somewhere where extreme measures weren't adopted to stop it from spreading?
The denialist loonies seem to be adopting this idea of "it never infects a very high proportion of the population" as a kind of magical riposte to the basic laws of epidemiology. It somehow magically stops of its own accord. But is there actually any evidence to suggest it stops of its own accord, rather than being stopped by extreme counter-measures?
Look at the death and infection rate in London dropping dramatically compared with other parts of the country even though the lock down measures are much the same. The apparent infection rate isn't high enough to explain the differential reduction. An "iceberg effect" is.
Look at the effect in China as it comes out of lockdown. The reported overall infection rate is low. The virus is still there. It is not growing exponentially. Perhaps there is a large number of people with strong immune systems.
I'm just asking questions. I'm not denying anything. I'm very open minded on this. Just probing conventional wisdom in a situation of a lot of unknowns.
A German professor of virology thinks that it's only moderately deadly
It doesn't seem to justify locking up the innocent, er sorry 'the healthy'.
Interesting that one of the effects of social distancing could be to allow the virus to spread but at a low viral load, meaning that people get it less severely
The importance of viral load is something we don't talk about enough. It's why apartment complexes with lifts and packed public transport and beer pong, etc can be so deadly. Simply, in those environments you're not just getting a small quantity of the virus.
It's also why we need to remove restrictions gradually. Face coverings on public transport, for example, really doesn't seem like such an outrageous requirement.
On that basis should we be encouraging scenarios where you do get a small quantity of virus? Should we be encouraged to be much closer than 2m to each other when outside perhaps?
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
I was surprised he was given Education. His qualities are not suited to it. Neither were they suited to his previous job at Defence. It begs the question - what are his qualities suited to? He was an effective Chief Whip, by most accounts, and he ran Johnson's leadership campaign with a certain ruthless precision. Perhaps he is one of those types who flourish in the kitchen rather than front of house.
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
He is doing fine as far as I am concerned, schools are still improving and he is easing pupils back to education
It is very unlikely he has been in situ long enough to be the person responsible for improving schools (if they are improving) and the process of getting pupils back to school seems particularly chaotic and poorly managed - I agree it should happen but he deserves zero credit for his implementation of that decision.
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
He is doing fine as far as I am concerned, schools are still improving and he is easing pupils back to education
Hyufd, out of curiosity, is there anything the Tories could do that would put you off them?
From a 2017 Guardian review of Laura Spinner's Pale Rider, a history of the Spanish flu:
"Spinney’s important book does not attempt to offer light reading. No less than four pandemics are predicted in the 21st century. At least one will take the form of flu. Vaccination is not cheap, because the flu virus is constantly mutating. Annual vaccines currently offer the best protection. Britain does still possess a National Health Service. "
"The enduring message of Spinney’s magisterial work is to underline just how crucial that remarkable service is to the future security of an unusually privileged nation. Let’s hope the author’s book is read with care by Theresa May."
Flu vaccine uptake in the UK is high, but not sufficiently higher than other countries to conclude that it is all due to the blessed church of the Holy NHS
Yes, this is interesting. If previous human coronavirus exposure gives partial resistance that could be very good news indeed, and might explain why only some in a household get it, despite massive viral exposure from a case.
Possible live vaccine too.
Silly question...as not a medical person. What's the probability that a 40-50 years old over their lifetimes has had exposure to a cornavirus based cold? Surely it is very high? Wouldn't we then expect to lower number of people in that age range actually catching it (I can understand old people, who immune systems have become severely weakened).
The immune system has two components - the innate immune system which is non-specific to the pathogen/antigen, and the adaptive, which produces various T cells and antibodies specific to the immune challenge, and which carries with it a memory.
The innate system deteriorates with age (the numbers of cells is reduced, their function is impaired, and the speed with which they are activated is reduced).
The adaptive immune system provides a strong response after a few days of exposure. This response fades with time if there is no subsequent exposure to the antigen. A second exposure often strengthens both the level of the response and the duration of the 'memory'. But it will fade with time. So if an old person was exposed to all 4 common cold coronaviruses early on in life, and they are no longer endemic because of herd immunity, their immune memory to these virus my have been lost and hence they would not have cross-reactivity. Younger people who were exposed more recently may not yet have lost their immune memory.
The adaptive immune system also deteriorates with age.
That's really informative. Thank you.
Is it possible that those with a strong innate immune system, if lightly infected, will dispose of the virus without the adaptive immune system coming into play and therefore not displaying antibodies in serology tests?
If that is the case, then they may form a large component of "herd immunity" at least to light viral loads but not show up in the tests.
They could explain why the epidemic seems to fizzle out at apparent low levels of overall infection.
It "fizzles out"?
Can you explain where you think it "fizzled out" - I mean somewhere where extreme measures weren't adopted to stop it from spreading?
The denialist loonies seem to be adopting this idea of "it never infects a very high proportion of the population" as a kind of magical riposte to the basic laws of epidemiology. It somehow magically stops of its own accord. But is there actually any evidence to suggest it stops of its own accord, rather than being stopped by extreme counter-measures?
Look at the death and infection rate in London dropping dramatically compared with other parts of the country even though the lock down measures are much the same. The apparent infection rate isn't high enough to explain the differential reduction. An "iceberg effect" is.
Look at the effect in China as it comes out of lockdown. The reported overall infection rate is low. The virus is still there. It is not growing exponentially. Perhaps there is a large number of people with strong immune systems.
I'm just asking questions. I'm not denying anything. I'm very open minded on this. Just probing conventional wisdom in a situation of a lot of unknowns.
A German professor of virology thinks that it's only moderately deadly
As a Conservative supporter (and a pragmatic, non-ideological one) I am absolutely appalled by this performance by Williamson.
In a lifetime of following politics I have never seen a worse example of someone completely failing to answer questions - literally making lengthy monologues bearing no relation whatsoever to questions asked.
And just about everything he did say consisted entirely of cringeworthy platitudes.
Quite simply a complete embarrassment and totally unacceptable.
Keith Burge @carryonkeith · 2m To be fair to him, Gavin Williamson does a more than passable impersonation of Les Dennis doing an impression of Mavis Riley.
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
He is doing fine as far as I am concerned, schools are still improving and he is easing pupils back to education
Hyufd, out of curiosity, is there anything the Tories could do that would put you off them?
Giving in to the SNP
OK, fair enough, that’s an answer.
When, er, if, Johnson concedes IndyRef2 I will remind you of this...
That last graphic is really nice, although inclding every date on the x-axis and labelling the day for every curve just distracts from the overall message.
It's from an Excel spreadsheet I generate using a Java application I wrote. Not sure that I can fine tune the charts it builds that much - could just leave out the series labels....
As a Conservative supporter (and a pragmatic, non-ideological one) I am absolutely appalled by this performance by Williamson.
In a lifetime of following politics I have never seen a worse example of someone completely failing to answer questions - literally making lengthy monologues bearing no relation whatsoever to questions asked.
And just about everything he did say consisted entirely of cringeworthy platitudes.
Quite simply a complete embarrassment and totally unacceptable.
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
He is doing fine as far as I am concerned, schools are still improving and he is easing pupils back to education
Hyufd, out of curiosity, is there anything the Tories could do that would put you off them?
Giving in to the SNP
OK, fair enough, that’s an answer.
When, er, if, Johnson concedes IndyRef2 I will remind you of this...
If Boris concedes indyref2 to the SNP in breach of the Tory manifesto I will help lead the Tory revolt to get rid of him
I do not want to be personal but why do you seem to delight in bad news
Are you so poisoned by Brexit you want this country to fail to satisfy your despair
It is tragic if so
Er, I think this is just a joke about people foolish enough to gather in large numbers and failing to practice social distancing in protests against lockdown measures who may subsequently become infected as a result (as indeed has happened in the US, the heart bleeds etc etc).
It looks like she would be a good candidate in 2024 but does she help with African American turnout? On the other hand should you bet against a junior Senator from Illinois?
She might not need to help with African American turnout. Biden is well placed there. Would Kamal Harris, the favourite, help with African Amerian turnout? Is it simply colour?
He needs to flip white rural voters from Trump in sufficient numbers to turn the states that just tipped Trump.
Hopefully, Biden will take Bill Clinton's advice on reaching out there rather than HRC's team of data jockeys who didn't even have her visit Wisconsin once.
Clinton was a voter repellent. Maybe she'd have lost by more if she'd visited Wisconsin.
The bit that startled me was that the West Wing gave a better explanation of how too win the US Presidency. Than the actual candidacy of the HRC.
If your Dem candidate takes a break - In *the Hamptons* - for a couple of weeks... WTF?
A Dem candidate who blows off meeting teachers unions - to meet Goldman Sachs?
A Dem candidate who doesn't seem to understand swing states, and hasn't got the electoral college number per state tattooed on the inside of her eyelids?
Some time ago Ash Sarkar, who heaven knows is hardly the Brain of Britain, became exasperated with Morgan not understanding her very simple position on Donald Trump and yelled at him, ‘I’m a Communist, you idiot!’
In a career characterised by a total lack of insight, a fanatical devotion to dogma and a profound ignorance of politics and society, she nevertheless nailed Morgan’s character in a way few have done in their waking moments.
And yet even Piers Morgan can sometimes be correct.
I've never been more aware of the BBC as a State Broadcaster than now. It's mobile front page is essentially a cut and paste from the Ministry of Information.
Even to the point of getting it presumably intentionally wrong over the new exercise rules. It says you can now exercise outside with someone from outside your household for the first time. Which is wrong. You always could.
No you couldn't unless you reckon you can freely stand shoulder to shoulder with strangers and that there's no such thing as a 2 metre rule.
"Restrictions on gatherings
7. During the emergency period, no person may participate in a gathering in a public place of more than two people except—
(a)where all the persons in the gathering are members of the same household, (b)where the gathering is essential for work purposes, (c)to attend a funeral, etc..."
And the two metre rule is advice not the law.
Not all rules are laws.
The two metre rule is a rule. The only exercising once per day was a rule.
That was my point. You could always under the law go outside with two people. The BBC is making out that it is a recent thing.
It is if you are following the rules and not just the law.
If the government announced they were lifting the two metre rule and the BBC reported that would you say "why are they reporting that it was never the law?"
You are becoming a bit HYUFD-like.
You could always exercise outdoors with someone not in your household. As per the law.
Nothing has changed in this respect yet the BBC is reporting as though it is a new development.
So what?
You are the one being HYUFD like but where HYUFD worships opinion polls you are doing the same with the law as if only the law is relevant. There's more to life than opinion polls or the law. The media doesn't just report the law. If only law changes were reported there wouldn't be very much at all for the media to report on would there?
Being able to exercise multiple times per day IS NEW within the coronavirus guidance. The media reports a whole lot more on coronavirus as a whole than it does changes in the law so the guidance changing is newsworthy.
The BBC says this today:
"Individuals in England are now allowed to meet with one other person from outside their household if they stay outdoors"
That is simply inaccurate.
It's entirely accurate. That's what is allowed within the guidance now.
Where does it reference law? You are the one trying to make it about law ... that quote doesn't mention the law.
It is inaccurate because you could always do that.
I would have expected the BBC to put the new guidance into context.
No you couldn't always within the guidance rules. The new guidance should be put into context by being compared with the old guidance. That is like for like context.
If the quote says from "it is now legal ..." then that would be inaccurate but it doesn't say that. You are the one reading law into it where law isn't even mentioned.
If you want to discuss context then provide the link to the full article and we can discuss that.
Not to interfere in this exchange but from PT on the subject of whether "Boris" really was 17.5 stone before he got the virus -
You say you can well believe it because he is "athletic" and "all muscle".
I would like you to reflect on that comment. I know it was late, but still.
No that's not what I said. I said I can well believe it because he is both fat and muscular and muscle is denser than fat. Pure numbers don't mean much alone.
A 17.5 stone all muscle individual would look like a weightlifter not Boris. A 17.5 muscular and fat individual could well look like Boris. While a 17.5 pure fat weakling who never exercised would look much bigger while being no heavier.
We can all go back and read the post in question. You were essentially saying there was little difference to the casual eye between Boris Johnson and Vin Diesel.
I only highlight this because I thought that on reflection you would realize you'd got carried away on the 'pro Boris' front and would wish to retract.
No that's not what I was saying at all. You completely misunderstood it if you thought I was saying that - it's totally ridiculous and not at all what I was saying!
I did not misunderstand. You described the pre-virus Boris Johnson (without a trace of satire) as an athletic 17 stone hunk who was "mainly muscle".
I'm quite happy for you to copy over the post in question so that all can see and judge for themselves.
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
He is doing fine as far as I am concerned, schools are still improving and he is easing pupils back to education
Hyufd, out of curiosity, is there anything the Tories could do that would put you off them?
Giving in to the SNP
OK, fair enough, that’s an answer.
When, er, if, Johnson concedes IndyRef2 I will remind you of this...
If Boris concedes indyref2 to the SNP in breach of the Tory manifesto I will help lead the Tory revolt to get rid of him
Don’t worry, I’ll be there helping you along. At least, I will if non-Tories are allowed along for the ride.
Gavin would make an ideal candidate for a public information AD for children, hovering around a school in a mack and asking little children if they want to play with his puppies
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
He is doing fine as far as I am concerned, schools are still improving and he is easing pupils back to education
Hyufd, out of curiosity, is there anything the Tories could do that would put you off them?
I've never been more aware of the BBC as a State Broadcaster than now. It's mobile front page is essentially a cut and paste from the Ministry of Information.
Even to the point of getting it presumably intentionally wrong over the new exercise rules. It says you can now exercise outside with someone from outside your household for the first time. Which is wrong. You always could.
No you couldn't unless you reckon you can freely stand shoulder to shoulder with strangers and that there's no such thing as a 2 metre rule.
"Restrictions on gatherings
7. During the emergency period, no person may participate in a gathering in a public place of more than two people except—
(a)where all the persons in the gathering are members of the same household, (b)where the gathering is essential for work purposes, (c)to attend a funeral, etc..."
And the two metre rule is advice not the law.
Not all rules are laws.
The two metre rule is a rule. The only exercising once per day was a rule.
That was my point. You could always under the law go outside with two people. The BBC is making out that it is a recent thing.
It is if you are following the rules and not just the law.
If the government announced they were lifting the two metre rule and the BBC reported that would you say "why are they reporting that it was never the law?"
You are becoming a bit HYUFD-like.
You could always exercise outdoors with someone not in your household. As per the law.
Nothing has changed in this respect yet the BBC is reporting as though it is a new development.
So what?
You are the one being HYUFD like but where HYUFD worships opinion polls you are doing the same with the law as if only the law is relevant. There's more to life than opinion polls or the law. The media doesn't just report the law. If only law changes were reported there wouldn't be very much at all for the media to report on would there?
Being able to exercise multiple times per day IS NEW within the coronavirus guidance. The media reports a whole lot more on coronavirus as a whole than it does changes in the law so the guidance changing is newsworthy.
The BBC says this today:
"Individuals in England are now allowed to meet with one other person from outside their household if they stay outdoors"
That is simply inaccurate.
It's entirely accurate. That's what is allowed within the guidance now.
Where does it reference law? You are the one trying to make it about law ... that quote doesn't mention the law.
It is inaccurate because you could always do that.
I would have expected the BBC to put the new guidance into context.
No you couldn't always within the guidance rules. The new guidance should be put into context by being compared with the old guidance. That is like for like context.
If the quote says from "it is now legal ..." then that would be inaccurate but it doesn't say that. You are the one reading law into it where law isn't even mentioned.
If you want to discuss context then provide the link to the full article and we can discuss that.
Not to interfere in this exchange but from PT on the subject of whether "Boris" really was 17.5 stone before he got the virus -
You say you can well believe it because he is "athletic" and "all muscle".
I would like you to reflect on that comment. I know it was late, but still.
No that's not what I said. I said I can well believe it because he is both fat and muscular and muscle is denser than fat. Pure numbers don't mean much alone.
A 17.5 stone all muscle individual would look like a weightlifter not Boris. A 17.5 muscular and fat individual could well look like Boris. While a 17.5 pure fat weakling who never exercised would look much bigger while being no heavier.
We can all go back and read the post in question. You were essentially saying there was little difference to the casual eye between Boris Johnson and Vin Diesel.
I only highlight this because I thought that on reflection you would realize you'd got carried away on the 'pro Boris' front and would wish to retract.
No that's not what I was saying at all. You completely misunderstood it if you thought I was saying that - it's totally ridiculous and not at all what I was saying!
I did not misunderstand. You described the pre-virus Boris Johnson (without a trace of satire) as an athletic 17 stone hunk who was "mainly muscle".
I'm quite happy for you to copy over the post in question so that all can see and judge for themselves.
If Boris concedes indyref2 to the SNP in breach of the Tory manifesto I will help lead the Tory revolt to get rid of him
What if polls in early 2023 are showing a Boris-led Conservative Party trailing Starmer's Labour Party by 15 points while a Sunak-led Conservative Party is on level terms?
Everyone is in favour of *safely* reopening the schools but Adonis begs the question.
People keep saying re-open schools, but they've never been closed, my niece is a teacher and she is there working with the key worker's kids and some of those classed as vulnerable.
I do wonder if this goes on too long that the fireman's the postman's and the shopworker's kids will all be at Oxford and Cambridge whilst those belonging to the stockbroker, the lawyer and the business executive will all be on the scrapheap.
Regarding the issues that are behind this, which I referred to on the previous thread. Schools want to be treated the same as other venues where people congregate. If the rule is weaker in schools then schools will not return. The government deliberately singled out schools as needing weaker protection, yet they have produced no evidence that this is science based. If they do, and if schools are treated equally, they will likely return in a greater way before September. If they aren’t, they won’t. This is not radical, it is not anything that reactionaries in the press are claiming. It is a public health issue, as backed up by the British Medical Association.
That is all.
"Schools want to be treated the same as other venues where people congregate."
I think this is a sticking point that eventually is going to have to get bulldozed through.Different venues will end up getting treated differently not because of differences in their risks, but differences in the benefits of reopening them (or more bluntly, the costs of them being closed).
-----
But with only a few thousand people likely to be moving around, compared to millions of family reunions, the "weight" (contribution to R) is minimal and the "value" of getting the property market somewhat unstuck is deemed sufficient high (we do want people to be able to move for work, especially key workers, and moves to enable family caring solutions outside care homes may also be desirable).
You can try to reopen things in a way that reduces their "weight" while only reducing their social value as little as possible, but that only works up to an extent. Face-to-face teaching is something sufficiently valuable that it's an obvious priority to go back in the knapsack and even with a lot of thought going into preventative measures it's going to be a heavy one.
-----
Protection for teachers, particularly teachers in higher-risk groups, is a valid issue and something unions are right to flag up.
If you bulldoze something you end up with wreckage strewn about the place. An apt metaphor!
Regarding R, a major factor affecting it is the transport to and from places, the 'school run' is given a term for a very good reason, it overwhelms many transport networks. Then school buses, parents/grandparents mixing and so on and you can see the problem.
This press conference is going off the rails now, by the way, it bears so little relation to reality. Embarrassing to watch.
I didn't just mean it for schools, I mean it for every setting where people are complaining "we demand to be treated in a logically consistent way with sector X". That kind of objection is one that's not going to be tenable - different settings and sectors are going to end up treated differently. That's just how it has to be.
Some countries (not just for the COVID pandemic, I mean in general) use the same school building for both a "morning school" and an "afternoon school" so two schools can share the same facilities. I did wonder if we might end up trying something like that, or for non-priority yeargroups running classes only on alternating days.
The transport issue is an important one for workplaces and other venues too, though it's perhaps most marked for schools. Staggering start-times (one of the government suggestions) e.g. by year-group is only a partial solution as quite frequently two siblings will be in different year groups at the same school. Using grandparents as child transport is also inadvisable at the moment. However, being realistic about the transport issue also suggests there are limits on how overboard you want to go "making schools safe". Can't fit the required number of kids in a room with the seats two metres apart? Well it probably isn't the end of the world, in risk management terms, if you end up with them 1.5 metres apart. Because what's going to happen when they get on the bus and have a chat there?
It all comes down to how much children of different ages spread the virus. Until that is better understood everything is a guess.
For adults consenting for themselves that may be okay but we are talking about young people who don't have that agency, so who look to those who care for them (parents at home, teachers at school) to look out for their interests. That is what is happening and it's going to be different for schools because isn't really a factor in most other workplaces.
When we know the risk we can mitigate the risk. If we don't, then we can't. All of the above is moot until we get to that point.
I can sympathise with the uncertainty but there's a problem with a perspective of "When we know the risk we can mitigate the risk. If we don't, then we can't. All of the above is moot until we get to that point."
Uncertainty is part of risk management. The presence of uncertainty does not render risk management impossible. Plenty of risk management professionals would tend to argue that the precautionary principle, despite being many well-meaning people's natural reaction to uncertainty, is not risk management.
From what we do know, we can be reasonably confident the vast majority of the risk from greater school attendance lies with the more vulnerable people kids could transmit COVID to due to increased between-household transmission, rather than with the children themselves (particularly if medically vulnerable children are told to do schoolwork from home). We can also be reasonably confident, based on existing knowledge about the effect of gaps in education, that children are suffering genuine harm from the current school closures, which means "we don't know what to do so let's do nothing" isn't a morally clear winner.
I don't think the attitude of leaving society frozen as it is and waiting for THE SCIENCE to come along and inform us of everything we need to do to started again is a goer. Partly because the research isn't going to work like that -if we wait another fortnight or four months we're not going to get a bunch of journal articles come through saying "kids are fine provided they sit 1.53 metres apart" or "teachers are 13% less likely to contract COVID if school lunch breaks are staggered". We will have the advantage of watching other countries open schools first, which will help judge to a degree what the likely effect on R will be here. But only to a degree because different countries are different in many ways (eg size of classrooms, whether kids stay in the same classes all day, how kids get to school) and the R estimates are a tricky business.
I'm afraid there is going to have to be a lot of learning-by-doing to unwind the lockdown, which is why the approach of bringing in only a few changes at a time and then waiting for a while to see how transmission changes is the only sensible approach.
Yes, this is interesting. If previous human coronavirus exposure gives partial resistance that could be very good news indeed, and might explain why only some in a household get it, despite massive viral exposure from a case.
Possible live vaccine too.
Silly question...as not a medical person. What's the probability that a 40-50 years old over their lifetimes has had exposure to a cornavirus based cold? Surely it is very high? Wouldn't we then expect to lower number of people in that age range actually catching it (I can understand old people, who immune systems have become severely weakened).
The immune system has two components - the innate immune system which is non-specific to the pathogen/antigen, and the adaptive, which produces various T cells and antibodies specific to the immune challenge, and which carries with it a memory.
The innate system deteriorates with age (the numbers of cells is reduced, their function is impaired, and the speed with which they are activated is reduced).
The adaptive immune system provides a strong response after a few days of exposure. This response fades with time if there is no subsequent exposure to the antigen. A second exposure often strengthens both the level of the response and the duration of the 'memory'. But it will fade with time. So if an old person was exposed to all 4 common cold coronaviruses early on in life, and they are no longer endemic because of herd immunity, their immune memory to these virus my have been lost and hence they would not have cross-reactivity. Younger people who were exposed more recently may not yet have lost their immune memory.
The adaptive immune system also deteriorates with age.
That's really informative. Thank you.
Is it possible that those with a strong innate immune system, if lightly infected, will dispose of the virus without the adaptive immune system coming into play and therefore not displaying antibodies in serology tests?
If that is the case, then they may form a large component of "herd immunity" at least to light viral loads but not show up in the tests.
They could explain why the epidemic seems to fizzle out at apparent low levels of overall infection.
It "fizzles out"?
Can you explain where you think it "fizzled out" - I mean somewhere where extreme measures weren't adopted to stop it from spreading?
The denialist loonies seem to be adopting this idea of "it never infects a very high proportion of the population" as a kind of magical riposte to the basic laws of epidemiology. It somehow magically stops of its own accord. But is there actually any evidence to suggest it stops of its own accord, rather than being stopped by extreme counter-measures?
Look at the death and infection rate in London dropping dramatically compared with other parts of the country even though the lock down measures are much the same. The apparent infection rate isn't high enough to explain the differential reduction. An "iceberg effect" is.
Look at the effect in China as it comes out of lockdown. The reported overall infection rate is low. The virus is still there. It is not growing exponentially. Perhaps there is a large number of people with strong immune systems.
I'm just asking questions. I'm not denying anything. I'm very open minded on this. Just probing conventional wisdom in a situation of a lot of unknowns.
London has a higher percentage of people working from home, I would imagine, given the high share of professional workers here. The collapse in commuting travel here has been greater than elsewhere which points to a big modification in behaviour (people taking the lockdown very seriously in general in our corner of SE London, perhaps because the outbreak here was more serious initially than in the provinces). China locked down so comprehensively and quickly that the virus barely spread outside of Wuhan/Hubei. Almost nobody in China will have had this illness. We know from contained environments like cruise ships that the fatality rate of this illness is somewhere in the region of 1% (yes a relatively old population on cruise ships, but also relatively wealthy and likely in better health than their age cohort in general).
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
He is doing fine as far as I am concerned, schools are still improving and he is easing pupils back to education
Hyufd, out of curiosity, is there anything the Tories could do that would put you off them?
Giving in to the SNP
What about Priti? Do you rate her?
I live in Witham constituency. I don't think, TBH that she's a bad constituency MP. She'd probably be OK as Under Secretary of State for DEFRA. But that's about it.
Everyone is in favour of *safely* reopening the schools but Adonis begs the question.
People keep saying re-open schools, but they've never been closed, my niece is a teacher and she is there working with the key worker's kids and some of those classed as vulnerable.
I do wonder if this goes on too long that the fireman's the postman's and the shopworker's kids will all be at Oxford and Cambridge whilst those belonging to the stockbroker, the lawyer and the business executive will all be on the scrapheap.
Regarding the issues that are behind this, which I referred to on the previous thread. Schools want to be treated the same as other venues where people congregate. If the rule is weaker in schools then schools will not return. The government deliberately singled out schools as needing weaker protection, yet they have produced no evidence that this is science based. If they do, and if schools are treated equally, they will likely return in a greater way before September. If they aren’t, they won’t. This is not radical, it is not anything that reactionaries in the press are claiming. It is a public health issue, as backed up by the British Medical Association.
That is all.
"Schools want to be treated the same as other venues where people congregate."
I think this is a sticking point that eventually is going to have to get bulldozed through.Different venues will end up getting treated differently not because of differences in their risks, but differences in the benefits of reopening them (or more bluntly, the costs of them being closed).
-----
But with only a few thousand people likely to be moving around, compared to millions of family reunions, the "weight" (contribution to R) is minimal and the "value" of getting the property market somewhat unstuck is deemed sufficient high (we do want people to be able to move for work, especially key workers, and moves to enable family caring solutions outside care homes may also be desirable).
You can try to reopen things in a way that reduces their "weight" while only reducing their social value as little as possible, but that only works up to an extent. Face-to-face teaching is something sufficiently valuable that it's an obvious priority to go back in the knapsack and even with a lot of thought going into preventative measures it's going to be a heavy one.
-----
Protection for teachers, particularly teachers in higher-risk groups, is a valid issue and something unions are right to flag up.
If you bulldoze something you end up with wreckage strewn about the place. An apt metaphor!
Regarding R, a major factor affecting it is the transport to and from places, the 'school run' is given a term for a very good reason, it overwhelms many transport networks. Then school buses, parents/grandparents mixing and so on and you can see the problem.
This press conference is going off the rails now, by the way, it bears so little relation to reality. Embarrassing to watch.
I didn't just mean it for schools, I mean it for every setting where people are complaining "we demand to be treated in a logically consistent way with sector X". That kind of objection is one that's not going to be tenable - different settings and sectors are going to end up treated differently. That's just how it has to be.
Some countries (not just for the COVID pandemic, I mean in general) use the same school building for both a "morning school" and an "afternoon school" so two schools can share the same facilities. I did wonder if we might end up trying something like that, or for non-priority yeargroups running classes only on alternating days.
The transport issue is an important one for workplaces and other venues too, though it's perhaps most marked for schools. Staggering start-times (one of the government suggestions) e.g. by year-group is only a partial solution as quite frequently two siblings will be in different year groups at the same school. Using grandparents as child transport is also inadvisable at the moment. However, being realistic about the transport issue also suggests there are limits on how overboard you want to go "making schools safe". Can't fit the required number of kids in a room with the seats two metres apart? Well it probably isn't the end of the world, in risk management terms, if you end up with them 1.5 metres apart. Because what's going to happen when they get on the bus and have a chat there?
It all comes down to how much children of different ages spread the virus. Until that is better understood everything is a guess.
For adults consenting for themselves that may be okay but we are talking about young people who don't have that agency, so who look to those who care for them (parents at home, teachers at school) to look out for their interests. That is what is happening and it's going to be different for schools because isn't really a factor in most other workplaces.
When we know the risk we can mitigate the risk. If we don't, then we can't. All of the above is moot until we get to that point.
I can sympathise with the uncertainty but there's a problem with a perspective of "When we know the risk we can mitigate the risk. If we don't, then we can't. All of the above is moot until we get to that point."
Uncertainty is part of risk management. The presence of uncertainty does not render risk management impossible. Plenty of risk management professionals would tend to argue that the precautionary principle, despite being many well-meaning people's natural reaction to uncertainty, is not risk management.
From what we do know, we can be reasonably confident the vast majority of the risk from greater school attendance lies with the more vulnerable people kids could transmit COVID to due to increased between-household transmission, rather than with the children themselves (particularly if medically vulnerable children are told to do schoolwork from home). We can also be reasonably confident, based on existing knowledge about the effect of gaps in education, that children are suffering genuine harm from the current school closures, which means "we don't know what to do so let's do nothing" isn't a morally clear winner.
I don't think the attitude of leaving society frozen as it is and waiting for THE SCIENCE to come along and inform us of everything we need to do to started again is a goer. Partly because the research isn't going to work like that -if we wait another fortnight or four months we're not going to get a bunch of journal articles come through saying "kids are fine provided they sit 1.53 metres apart" or "teachers are 13% less likely to contract COVID if school lunch breaks are staggered". We will have the advantage of watching other countries open schools first, which will help judge to a degree what the likely effect on R will be here. But only to a degree because different countries are different in many ways (eg size of classrooms, whether kids stay in the same classes all day, how kids get to school) and the R estimates are a tricky business.
I'm afraid there is going to have to be a lot of learning-by-doing to unwind the lockdown, which is why the approach of bringing in only a few changes at a time and then waiting for a while to see how transmission changes is the only sensible approach.
Or, to put it more succinctly, if we wait for all parties to be completely happy then we will end up with the kids being cut off from the world for X-number of years and home schooled (probably rather badly) by an army of untrained and unpaid teaching assistants. These being former working parents who are now having to juggle tutoring the kids in various subjects (which they themselves may or may not know very much about,) and trying to work out how to house, clothe and feed them off one or no income.
If Boris concedes indyref2 to the SNP in breach of the Tory manifesto I will help lead the Tory revolt to get rid of him
What if polls in early 2023 are showing a Boris-led Conservative Party trailing Starmer's Labour Party by 15 points while a Sunak-led Conservative Party is on level terms?
Possibly but not certainly however that is unlikely as Sunak will have been responsible for government economic policy and if he proposed abandoning Boris' WTO terms Brexit he would lose lots of older Leave voters back to the Brexit Party again.
It will take a generation for a pro single market Tory leader to emerge again
"Coding that led to lockdown was 'totally unreliable' and a 'buggy mess', say experts The code, written by Professor Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London, was impossible to read, scientists claim
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
He is doing fine as far as I am concerned, schools are still improving and he is easing pupils back to education
Hyufd, out of curiosity, is there anything the Tories could do that would put you off them?
Giving in to the SNP
What about Priti? Do you rate her?
She is feisty albeit not the brightest in the Cabinet
China locked down so comprehensively and quickly that the virus barely spread outside of Wuhan/Hubei. Almost nobody in China will have had this illness.
Well, that’s the case if you believe China’s figures.
Just perusing the slides from this afternoon's briefing. It's interesting to note despite all the video evidence from North Acton public transport use remains very low with no real pickup in tube and train passenger numbers.
Car usage has recovered to about 50% of normal while LGV use is about two thirds of normal and HGV about 75% of normal so "baby steps" but no more and you'd think the easing of restrictions isn't going to have an immediate economic impact.
We are a long way from knowing whether the recent easing will have any impact on cases and deaths and the R number. My ball park numbers suggest 5 million cases based on a ratio of 20 unreported cases for each reported case and a fatality rate of 1% (4% in older people but 0.33% for those under 60).
As a Conservative supporter (and a pragmatic, non-ideological one) I am absolutely appalled by this performance by Williamson.
In a lifetime of following politics I have never seen a worse example of someone completely failing to answer questions - literally making lengthy monologues bearing no relation whatsoever to questions asked.
And just about everything he did say consisted entirely of cringeworthy platitudes.
Quite simply a complete embarrassment and totally unacceptable.
Didn't watch more than a couple of minutes, but doesn't surprise me.
Why don't journalists push harder? It's pathetic. Just interrupt him and say, you are not answering my question.
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
He is doing fine as far as I am concerned, schools are still improving and he is easing pupils back to education
Hyufd, out of curiosity, is there anything the Tories could do that would put you off them?
Giving in to the SNP
OK, fair enough, that’s an answer.
When, er, if, Johnson concedes IndyRef2 I will remind you of this...
If Boris concedes indyref2 to the SNP in breach of the Tory manifesto I will help lead the Tory revolt to get rid of him
Don’t worry, I’ll be there helping you along. At least, I will if non-Tories are allowed along for the ride.
Absolutely, the more the merrier, 2014 was a once in a generation referendum
I've never been more aware of the BBC as a State Broadcaster than now. It's mobile front page is essentially a cut and paste from the Ministry of Information.
Even to the point of getting it presumably intentionally wrong over the new exercise rules. It says you can now exercise outside with someone from outside your household for the first time. Which is wrong. You always could.
No you couldn't unless you reckon you can freely stand shoulder to shoulder with strangers and that there's no such thing as a 2 metre rule.
"Restrictions on gatherings
7. During the emergency period, no person may participate in a gathering in a public place of more than two people except—
(a)where all the persons in the gathering are members of the same household, (b)where the gathering is essential for work purposes, (c)to attend a funeral, etc..."
And the two metre rule is advice not the law.
Not all rules are laws.
The two metre rule is a rule. The only exercising once per day was a rule.
That was my point. You could always under the law go outside with two people. The BBC is making out that it is a recent thing.
It is if you are following the rules and not just the law.
If the government announced they were lifting the two metre rule and the BBC reported that would you say "why are they reporting that it was never the law?"
You are becoming a bit HYUFD-like.
You could always exercise outdoors with someone not in your household. As per the law.
Nothing has changed in this respect yet the BBC is reporting as though it is a new development.
So what?
You are the one being HYUFD like but where HYUFD worships opinion polls you are doing the same with the law as if only the law is relevant. There's more to life than opinion polls or the law. The media doesn't just report the law. If only law changes were reported there wouldn't be very much at all for the media to report on would there?
Being able to exercise multiple times per day IS NEW within the coronavirus guidance. The media reports a whole lot more on coronavirus as a whole than it does changes in the law so the guidance changing is newsworthy.
The BBC says this today:
"Individuals in England are now allowed to meet with one other person from outside their household if they stay outdoors"
That is simply inaccurate.
It's entirely accurate. That's what is allowed within the guidance now.
Where does it reference law? You are the one trying to make it about law ... that quote doesn't mention the law.
It is inaccurate because you could always do that.
I would have expected the BBC to put the new guidance into context.
No you couldn't always within the guidance rules. The new guidance should be put into context by being compared with the old guidance. That is like for like context.
If the quote says from "it is now legal ..." then that would be inaccurate but it doesn't say that. You are the one reading law into it where law isn't even mentioned.
If you want to discuss context then provide the link to the full article and we can discuss that.
Not to interfere in this exchange but from PT on the subject of whether "Boris" really was 17.5 stone before he got the virus -
You say you can well believe it because he is "athletic" and "all muscle".
I would like you to reflect on that comment. I know it was late, but still.
No that's not what I said. I said I can well believe it because he is both fat and muscular and muscle is denser than fat. Pure numbers don't mean much alone.
A 17.5 stone all muscle individual would look like a weightlifter not Boris. A 17.5 muscular and fat individual could well look like Boris. While a 17.5 pure fat weakling who never exercised would look much bigger while being no heavier.
We can all go back and read the post in question. You were essentially saying there was little difference to the casual eye between Boris Johnson and Vin Diesel.
I only highlight this because I thought that on reflection you would realize you'd got carried away on the 'pro Boris' front and would wish to retract.
No that's not what I was saying at all. You completely misunderstood it if you thought I was saying that - it's totally ridiculous and not at all what I was saying!
I did not misunderstand. You described the pre-virus Boris Johnson (without a trace of satire) as an athletic 17 stone hunk who was "mainly muscle".
I'm quite happy for you to copy over the post in question so that all can see and judge for themselves.
Please find that post K...I want to see it
Yes. I've got it now. Copied and ready to roll. But I think it's only fair to give Philip a chance to respond first. There may be an innocent explanation.
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
He is doing fine as far as I am concerned, schools are still improving and he is easing pupils back to education
Hyufd, out of curiosity, is there anything the Tories could do that would put you off them?
Giving in to the SNP
What about Priti? Do you rate her?
She is feisty albeit not the brightest in the Cabinet
In many ways, the scary thing about Patel is that she is arguably somewhat above average for the current cabinet.
"Coding that led to lockdown was 'totally unreliable' and a 'buggy mess', say experts The code, written by Professor Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London, was impossible to read, scientists claim
Ferguson's code may indeed be a complete mess but that is less important than whether his model is accurate and reliable. His track record says no; the consensus of other models says yes.
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
He is doing fine as far as I am concerned, schools are still improving and he is easing pupils back to education
Hyufd, out of curiosity, is there anything the Tories could do that would put you off them?
Giving in to the SNP
What about Priti? Do you rate her?
She is feisty albeit not the brightest in the Cabinet
In many ways, the scary thing about Patel is that she is arguably somewhat above average for the current cabinet.
Perhaps not cabinet. Possibly smarter than the average wardrobe...
Everyone is in favour of *safely* reopening the schools but Adonis begs the question.
People keep saying re-open schools, but they've never been closed, my niece is a teacher and she is there working with the key worker's kids and some of those classed as vulnerable.
I do wonder if this goes on too long that the fireman's the postman's and the shopworker's kids will all be at Oxford and Cambridge whilst those belonging to the stockbroker, the lawyer and the business executive will all be on the scrapheap.
Regarding the issues that are behind this, which I referred to on the previous thread. Schools want to be treated the same as other venues where people congregate. If the rule is weaker in schools then schools will not return. The government deliberately singled out schools as needing weaker protection, yet they have produced no evidence that this is science based. If they do, and if schools are treated equally, they will likely return in a greater way before September. If they aren’t, they won’t. This is not radical, it is not anything that reactionaries in the press are claiming. It is a public health issue, as backed up by the British Medical Association.
That is all.
"Schools want to be treated the same as other venues where people congregate."
I think this is a sticking point that eventually is going to have to get bulldozed through.Different venues will end up getting treated differently not because of differences in their risks, but differences in the benefits of reopening them (or more bluntly, the costs of them being closed).
-----
But with only a few thousand people likely to be moving around, compared to millions of family reunions, the "weight" (contribution to R) is minimal and the "value" of getting the property market somewhat unstuck is deemed sufficient high (we do want people to be able to move for work, especially key workers, and moves to enable family caring solutions outside care homes may also be desirable).
You can try to reopen things in a way that reduces their "weight" while only reducing their social value as little as possible, but that only works up to an extent. Face-to-face teaching is something sufficiently valuable that it's an obvious priority to go back in the knapsack and even with a lot of thought going into preventative measures it's going to be a heavy one.
-----
Protection for teachers, particularly teachers in higher-risk groups, is a valid issue and something unions are right to flag up.
If you bulldoze something you end up with wreckage strewn about the place. An apt metaphor!
Regarding R, a major factor affecting it is the transport to and from places, the 'school run' is given a term for a very good reason, it overwhelms many transport networks. Then school buses, parents/grandparents mixing and so on and you can see the problem.
This press conference is going off the rails now, by the way, it bears so little relation to reality. Embarrassing to watch.
I didn't just mean it for schools, I mean it for every setting where people are complaining "we demand to be treated in a logically consistent way with sector X". That kind of objection is one that's not going to be tenable - different settings and sectors are going to end up treated differently. That's just how it has to be.
Some countries (not just for the COVID pandemic, I mean in general) use the same school building for both a "morning school" and an "afternoon school" so two schools can share the same facilities. I did wonder if we might end up trying something like that, or for non-priority yeargroups running classes only on alternating days.
The transport issue is an important one for workplaces and other venues too, though it's perhaps most marked for schools. Staggering start-times (one of the government suggestions) e.g. by year-group is only a partial solution as quite frequently two siblings will be in different year groups at the same school. Using grandparents as child transport is also inadvisable at the moment. However, being realistic about the transport issue also suggests there are limits on how overboard you want to go "making schools safe". Can't fit the required number of kids in a room with the seats two metres apart? Well it probably isn't the end of the world, in risk management terms, if you end up with them 1.5 metres apart. Because what's going to happen when they get on the bus and have a chat there?
It all comes down to how much children of different ages spread the virus. Until that is better understood everything is a guess.
For adults consenting for themselves that may be okay but we are talking about young people who don't have that agency, so who look to those who care for them (parents at home, teachers at school) to look out for their interests. That is what is happening and it's going to be different for schools because isn't really a factor in most other workplaces.
When we know the risk we can mitigate the risk. If we don't, then we can't. All of the above is moot until we get to that point.
I can sympathise with the uncertainty but there's a problem with a perspective of "When we know the risk we can mitigate the risk. If we don't, then we can't. All of the above is moot until we get to that point."
Uncertainty is part of risk management. The presence of uncertainty does not render risk management impossible. Plenty of risk management professionals would tend to argue that the precautionary principle, despite being many well-meaning people's natural reaction to uncertainty, is not risk management.
From what we do know, we can be reasonably confident the vast majority of the risk from greater school attendance lies with the more vulnerable people kids could transmit COVID to due to increased between-household transmission, rather than with the children themselves (particularly if medically vulnerable children are told to do schoolwork from home). We can also be reasonably confident, based on existing knowledge about the effect of gaps in education, that children are suffering genuine harm from the current school closures, which means "we don't know what to do so let's do nothing" isn't a morally clear winner.
I don't think the attitude of leaving society frozen as it is and waiting for THE SCIENCE to come along and inform us of everything we need to do to started again is a goer. Partly because the research isn't going to work like that -if we wait another fortnight or four months we're not going to get a bunch of journal articles come through saying "kids are fine provided they sit 1.53 metres apart" or "teachers are 13% less likely to contract COVID if school lunch breaks are staggered". We will have the advantage of watching other countries open schools first, which will help judge to a degree what the likely effect on R will be here. But only to a degree because different countries are different in many ways (eg size of classrooms, whether kids stay in the same classes all day, how kids get to school) and the R estimates are a tricky business.
I'm afraid there is going to have to be a lot of learning-by-doing to unwind the lockdown, which is why the approach of bringing in only a few changes at a time and then waiting for a while to see how transmission changes is the only sensible approach.
Classic risk management measures a risk by multiplying the chance of it crystallizing by the extent of the negative outcome if it does. And the hardest ones to assess - therefore typically not assessed - are where those two elements are MINISCULE / MASSIVE. Being black swans.
"Coding that led to lockdown was 'totally unreliable' and a 'buggy mess', say experts The code, written by Professor Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London, was impossible to read, scientists claim
Ferguson's code may indeed be a complete mess but that is less important than whether his model is accurate and reliable. His track record says no; the consensus of other models says yes.
There's also always been a fundamental difference in approach between people developing code for scientific computing and those doing commercial software engineering, so there's a bit of "when two worlds collide, one looks ridiculous to the other" going on here. Not specifically about Ferguson, almost a decade old in fact, but a good read:
There’s a major divide between the way scientists and programmers view the software they write.
Scientists see their software as a kind of exoskeleton, an extension of themselves. Think Dr. Octopus. The software may do heavy lifting, but the scientists remain actively involved in its use. The software is a tool, not a self-contained product.
Programmers see their software as something they will hand over to someone else, more like building a robot than an exoskeleton. Programmers believe it’s their job to encapsulate intelligence in software. If users have to depend on programmers after the software is written, the programmers didn’t finish their job.
I work with scientists and programmers, often bridging the gaps between the two cultures. One point of tension is defining when a project is done. To a scientist, the software is done when they get what they want out of it, such as a table of numbers for a paper. Professional programmers give more thought to reproducibility, maintainability, and correctness. Scientists think programmers are anal retentive. Programmers think scientists are cowboys.
Programmers need to understand that sometimes a program really only needs to run once, on one set of input, with expert supervision. Scientists need to understand that prototype code may need a complete rewrite before it can be used in production.
The real tension comes when a piece of research software is suddenly expected to be ready for production. The scientist will say “the code has already been written” and can’t imagine it would take much work, if any, to prepare the software for its new responsibilities. They don’t understand how hard it is for an engineer to turn an exoskeleton into a self-sufficient robot.
Whatever you think, there are definitely issues about whether a multi-billion pound decision should be based so much (albeit not exclusively, other modelling results fed in to the decision-making process) on code that had had such little QA. But also without the model itself (a different thing to its code implementation) being completely specified and reviewable.
Possibly but not certainly however that is unlikely as Sunak will have been responsible for government economic policy and if he proposed abandoning Boris' WTO terms Brexit he would lose lots of older Leave voters back to the Brexit Party again.
It will take a generation for a pro single market Tory leader to emerge again
It's not always an issue of policy.
Thatcher wasn't toppled because the Party stopped believing in her policies. It was because she stopped being a winner and, crucially, because first Heseltine and then Major looked as thought they could stop Kinnock and Labour.
If we see an anti-Boris vote emerge it will be because people are either tired or bored with him rather than because they don't support his policies. The signs will be in by-elections and the annual round of local contests.
If that dichotomy is evident in polls, would you support the replacement of Johnson by a candidate more likely to preserve the Conservative Party in Govenrment?
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
I think he may be the worst government secretary of state this century. He seemed very popular with parts of the Tory party last year, not sure if he still is, any fans on here?
He is doing fine as far as I am concerned, schools are still improving and he is easing pupils back to education
Hyufd, out of curiosity, is there anything the Tories could do that would put you off them?
Giving in to the SNP
What about Priti? Do you rate her?
She is feisty albeit not the brightest in the Cabinet
In many ways, the scary thing about Patel is that she is arguably somewhat above average for the current cabinet.
Perhaps not cabinet. Possibly smarter than the average wardrobe...
Everyone is in favour of *safely* reopening the schools but Adonis begs the question.
People keep saying re-open schools, but they've never been closed, my niece is a teacher and she is there working with the key worker's kids and some of those classed as vulnerable.
I do wonder if this goes on too long that the fireman's the postman's and the shopworker's kids will all be at Oxford and Cambridge whilst those belonging to the stockbroker, the lawyer and the business executive will all be on the scrapheap.
Regarding the issues that are behind this, which I referred to on the previous thread. Schools want to be treated the same as other venues where people congregate. If the rule is weaker in schools then schools will not return. The government deliberately singled out schools as needing weaker protection, yet they have produced no evidence that this is science based. If they do, and if schools are treated equally, they will likely return in a greater way before September. If they aren’t, they won’t. This is not radical, it is not anything that reactionaries in the press are claiming. It is a public health issue, as backed up by the British Medical Association.
That is all.
"Schools want to be treated the same as other venues where people congregate."
I think this is a sticking point that eventually is going to have to get bulldozed through.Different venues will end up getting treated differently not because of differences in their risks, but differences in the benefits of reopening them (or more bluntly, the costs of them being closed).
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But with only a few thousand people likely to be moving around, compared to millions of family reunions, the "weight" (contribution to R) is minimal and the "value" of getting the property market somewhat unstuck is deemed sufficient high (we do want people to be able to move for work, especially key workers, and moves to enable family caring solutions outside care homes may also be desirable).
You can try to reopen things in a way that reduces their "weight" while only reducing their social value as little as possible, but that only works up to an extent. Face-to-face teaching is something sufficiently valuable that it's an obvious priority to go back in the knapsack and even with a lot of thought going into preventative measures it's going to be a heavy one.
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Protection for teachers, particularly teachers in higher-risk groups, is a valid issue and something unions are right to flag up.
If you bulldoze something you end up with wreckage strewn about the place. An apt metaphor!
Regarding R, a major factor affecting it is the transport to and from places, the 'school run' is given a term for a very good reason, it overwhelms many transport networks. Then school buses, parents/grandparents mixing and so on and you can see the problem.
This press conference is going off the rails now, by the way, it bears so little relation to reality. Embarrassing to watch.
I didn't just mean it for schools, I mean it for every setting where people are complaining "we demand to be treated in a logically consistent way with sector X". That kind of objection is one that's not going to be tenable - different settings and sectors are going to end up treated differently. That's just how it has to be.
Some countries (not just for the COVID pandemic, I mean in general) use the same school building for both a "morning school" and an "afternoon school" so two schools can share the same facilities. I did wonder if we might end up trying something like that, or for non-priority yeargroups running classes only on alternating days.
The transport issue is an important one for workplaces and other venues too, though it's perhaps most marked for schools. Staggering start-times (one of the government suggestions) e.g. by year-group is only a partial solution as quite frequently two siblings will be in different year groups at the same school. Using grandparents as child transport is also inadvisable at the moment. However, being realistic about the transport issue also suggests there are limits on how overboard you want to go "making schools safe". Can't fit the required number of kids in a room with the seats two metres apart? Well it probably isn't the end of the world, in risk management terms, if you end up with them 1.5 metres apart. Because what's going to happen when they get on the bus and have a chat there?
It all comes down to how much children of different ages spread the virus. Until that is better understood everything is a guess.
For adults consenting for themselves that may be okay but we are talking about young people who don't have that agency, so who look to those who care for them (parents at home, teachers at school) to look out for their interests. That is what is happening and it's going to be different for schools because isn't really a factor in most other workplaces.
When we know the risk we can mitigate the risk. If we don't, then we can't. All of the above is moot until we get to that point.
I can sympathise with the uncertainty but there's a problem with a perspective of "When we know the risk we can mitigate the risk. If we don't, then we can't. All of the above is moot until we get to that point."
Uncertainty is part of risk management. The presence of uncertainty does not render risk management impossible. Plenty of risk management professionals would tend to argue that the precautionary principle, despite being many well-meaning people's natural reaction to uncertainty, is not risk management.
From what we do know, we can be reasonably confident the vast majority of the risk from greater school attendance lies with the more vulnerable people kids could transmit COVID to due to increased between-household transmission, rather than with the children themselves (particularly if medically vulnerable children are told to do schoolwork from home). We can also be reasonably confident, based on existing knowledge about the effect of gaps in education, that children are suffering genuine harm from the current school closures, which means "we don't know what to do so let's do nothing" isn't a morally clear winner.
I don't think the attitude of leaving society frozen as it is and waiting for THE SCIENCE to come along and inform us of everything we need to do to started again is a goer. Partly because the research isn't going to work like that -if we wait another fortnight or four months we're not going to get a bunch of journal articles come through saying "kids are fine provided they sit 1.53 metres apart" or "teachers are 13% less likely to contract COVID if school lunch breaks are staggered". We will have the advantage of watching other countries open schools first, which will help judge to a degree what the likely effect on R will be here. But only to a degree because different countries are different in many ways (eg size of classrooms, whether kids stay in the same classes all day, how kids get to school) and the R estimates are a tricky business.
I'm afraid there is going to have to be a lot of learning-by-doing to unwind the lockdown, which is why the approach of bringing in only a few changes at a time and then waiting for a while to see how transmission changes is the only sensible approach.
You are basically asking teachers to go against everything they have ever been told about their role and (especially since the nineties) about the role of teachers in keeping students safe within the school environment. To try and move from a culture where every risk is avoided to protect children and a system whereby nothing happens until it is safe to do so to one where that goes out of the window is not going to happen overnight. If we are being asked to ditch duty of care and our role in loco parentis, then that needs to be made clear before anything can progress. This does not yet get us to the question of staff safety but it's probably best to iron out the concerns about student's safety first.
"Coding that led to lockdown was 'totally unreliable' and a 'buggy mess', say experts The code, written by Professor Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London, was impossible to read, scientists claim
Ferguson's code may indeed be a complete mess but that is less important than whether his model is accurate and reliable. His track record says no; the consensus of other models says yes.
This is the critical point, and I am not surprised it was omitted from this piece. His predictions are not out of whack, despite how crap his coding style might be.
Yes, this is interesting. If previous human coronavirus exposure gives partial resistance that could be very good news indeed, and might explain why only some in a household get it, despite massive viral exposure from a case.
Possible live vaccine too.
Silly question...as not a medical person. What's the probability that a 40-50 years old over their lifetimes has had exposure to a cornavirus based cold? Surely it is very high? Wouldn't we then expect to lower number of people in that age range actually catching it (I can understand old people, who immune systems have become severely weakened).
The immune system has two components - the innate immune system which is non-specific to the pathogen/antigen, and the adaptive, which produces various T cells and antibodies specific to the immune challenge, and which carries with it a memory.
The innate system deteriorates with age (the numbers of cells is reduced, their function is impaired, and the speed with which they are activated is reduced).
The adaptive immune system provides a strong response after a few days of exposure. This response fades with time if there is no subsequent exposure to the antigen. A second exposure often strengthens both the level of the response and the duration of the 'memory'. But it will fade with time. So if an old person was exposed to all 4 common cold coronaviruses early on in life, and they are no longer endemic because of herd immunity, their immune memory to these virus my have been lost and hence they would not have cross-reactivity. Younger people who were exposed more recently may not yet have lost their immune memory.
The adaptive immune system also deteriorates with age.
That's really informative. Thank you.
Is it possible that those with a strong innate immune system, if lightly infected, will dispose of the virus without the adaptive immune system coming into play and therefore not displaying antibodies in serology tests?
If that is the case, then they may form a large component of "herd immunity" at least to light viral loads but not show up in the tests.
They could explain why the epidemic seems to fizzle out at apparent low levels of overall infection.
It "fizzles out"?
Can you explain where you think it "fizzled out" - I mean somewhere where extreme measures weren't adopted to stop it from spreading?
The denialist loonies seem to be adopting this idea of "it never infects a very high proportion of the population" as a kind of magical riposte to the basic laws of epidemiology. It somehow magically stops of its own accord. But is there actually any evidence to suggest it stops of its own accord, rather than being stopped by extreme counter-measures?
Look at the death and infection rate in London dropping dramatically compared with other parts of the country even though the lock down measures are much the same. The apparent infection rate isn't high enough to explain the differential reduction. An "iceberg effect" is.
Look at the effect in China as it comes out of lockdown. The reported overall infection rate is low. The virus is still there. It is not growing exponentially. Perhaps there is a large number of people with strong immune systems.
I'm just asking questions. I'm not denying anything. I'm very open minded on this. Just probing conventional wisdom in a situation of a lot of unknowns.
London has a higher percentage of people working from home, I would imagine, given the high share of professional workers here. The collapse in commuting travel here has been greater than elsewhere which points to a big modification in behaviour (people taking the lockdown very seriously in general in our corner of SE London, perhaps because the outbreak here was more serious initially than in the provinces). China locked down so comprehensively and quickly that the virus barely spread outside of Wuhan/Hubei. Almost nobody in China will have had this illness. We know from contained environments like cruise ships that the fatality rate of this illness is somewhere in the region of 1% (yes a relatively old population on cruise ships, but also relatively wealthy and likely in better health than their age cohort in general).
On London - yes. It would be interesting to see what the stats are for WFH in London. Hmmmm. Using the YouGov data from the survey the other day, we have -
China locked down so comprehensively and quickly that the virus barely spread outside of Wuhan/Hubei. Almost nobody in China will have had this illness.
Well, that’s the case if you believe China’s figures.
If you do, may I interest you in this bridge?
It's unlikely the data are inaccurate enough to substantially change the picture. China had a devastating outbreak in Wuhan but swift and Draconian action prevented it spreading in the way it has here, or in Italy or the US. If there had been a Wuhan like outbreak in the rest of China then the death toll would have been 100x greater than reported and it is simply incredible that that could have happened without anyone noticing.
Comments
It's also why we need to remove restrictions gradually. Face coverings on public transport, for example, really doesn't seem like such an outrageous requirement.
I was just wondering why he would need to dress up to play that role...
The elderly and vulnerable can also be protected to some extent by vaccinating fit and younger people, but there are issues over how cost-effective this is. It's one of the things that John Edmunds has worked on a lot over the years, e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4604076/
Making use of surveillance data from over a decade in conjunction with a dynamic model, we find that vaccination of children in the UK is likely to be highly cost-effective, not only for their own benefit but also to reduce the disease burden in the rest of the community. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has recently decided to extend the influenza immunisation programme in the UK to all children aged 2–17 years [10]. The work presented here has helped shape this decision. This suggests that, in countries where children are similarly a main source for the transmission of influenza, childhood vaccination against seasonal influenza may present an opportunity to prevent a higher burden of disease at similar cost to vaccination of the elderly.
Children do now get a form of flu vaccine (nasal spray except for high-risk kids who get an injection which offers them more protection - the other kids are largely being vaccinated with the nasal spray to stop them spreading flu rather than because of the risk it poses them):
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/child-flu-vaccine/
In the autumn/winter of 2019-20, the vaccine will be available free on the NHS for eligible children, including:
* children aged 2 and 3 on 31 August 2019 – that is, children born between 1 September 2015 and 31 August 2017
* all primary school children
* children aged 2 to 17 with long-term health conditions
Not in Northumberland. That would be years 4 and 8. Have sought information about this from Council and DFE.
No response.
Regarding R, a major factor affecting it is the transport to and from places, the 'school run' is given a term for a very good reason, it overwhelms many transport networks. Then school buses, parents/grandparents mixing and so on and you can see the problem.
This press conference is going off the rails now, by the way, it bears so little relation to reality. Embarrassing to watch.
This sense of perspective has been lost with Covid-19. I'm afraid we're going to be stuck with the misery of social distancing until the disease is eradicated, regardless of the fact that we'll end up annihilating whole sectors of the economy and having 25% unemployment as a result.
Either way, the careless burning up of talent and experience is very populist, but potentially disastrous when you need it. Like now.
Williamson's answers to initial questions are absolutely shocking.
He was asked specific questions about differences between regions and going against BMA advice and his answers were just standard boilerplate platitudes.
His answers bore no relation whatsoever to the questions asked. A total and utter embarrassment.
Framing of slides was far too tight - such that stats at edge of slide could not be seen - data for the last four days on one slide could not be seen at all.
So number of tests appeared to be flat / creeping down when in fact last three days were all record highs.
Don't know if same problem on BBC1.
Some countries (not just for the COVID pandemic, I mean in general) use the same school building for both a "morning school" and an "afternoon school" so two schools can share the same facilities. I did wonder if we might end up trying something like that, or for non-priority yeargroups running classes only on alternating days.
The transport issue is an important one for workplaces and other venues too, though it's perhaps most marked for schools. Staggering start-times (one of the government suggestions) e.g. by year-group is only a partial solution as quite frequently two siblings will be in different year groups at the same school. Using grandparents as child transport is also inadvisable at the moment. However, being realistic about the transport issue also suggests there are limits on how overboard you want to go "making schools safe". Can't fit the required number of kids in a room with the seats two metres apart? Well it probably isn't the end of the world, in risk management terms, if you end up with them 1.5 metres apart. Because what's going to happen when they get on the bus and have a chat there?
Almost certainly because last Friday was a Bank Holiday - but even so worth keeping close eye on.
For adults consenting for themselves that may be okay but we are talking about young people who don't have that agency, so who look to those who care for them (parents at home, teachers at school) to look out for their interests. That is what is happening and it's going to be different for schools because isn't really a factor in most other workplaces.
When we know the risk we can mitigate the risk. If we don't, then we can't. All of the above is moot until we get to that point.
Aside from the at-risk groups, it also makes sense to vaccinate kids because of the role they play spreading the disease - the extension of vaccination to fit under-16s was estimated to benefit the elderly by about a third of QALD (quality-adjusted life-day, like a QALY but a bit shorter...) primarily due to reduced risk of death. The young'uns to whom the vaccination was extended to gained about a fifth of a QALD, primarily due to reduced risk of a non-fatal but still unpleasant bout of flu.
For the curious, the NICE threshold of £20-30,000 per QALY comes out roughly to £55-£80 per QALD.
We have to be naturally awesome.
Cabinet Ministers, on the other hand...
Things we learnt from todays Press Conference
Primary school children don't touch each other's lunch boxes.
Gavin Williamson is extremely poor
So we learnt nothing TBF
As an FT columnist she skewered office culture — but, she argues, it is something to treasure"
https://www.ft.com/content/6a84c3a0-9440-11ea-abcd-371e24b679ed
In a lifetime of following politics I have never seen a worse example of someone completely failing to answer questions - literally making lengthy monologues bearing no relation whatsoever to questions asked.
And just about everything he did say consisted entirely of cringeworthy platitudes.
Quite simply a complete embarrassment and totally unacceptable.
Keith Burge
@carryonkeith
·
2m
To be fair to him, Gavin Williamson does a more than passable impersonation of Les Dennis doing an impression of Mavis Riley.
When, er, if, Johnson concedes IndyRef2 I will remind you of this...
https://twitter.com/piersmorgan/status/1261676412131475463?s=20
http://covidtracker.uksouth.cloudapp.azure.com/
I hadn't seen this before but it's a great one stop shop to see most of the UK specific data that you might want to see.
If your Dem candidate takes a break - In *the Hamptons* - for a couple of weeks... WTF?
A Dem candidate who blows off meeting teachers unions - to meet Goldman Sachs?
A Dem candidate who doesn't seem to understand swing states, and hasn't got the electoral college number per state tattooed on the inside of her eyelids?
In a career characterised by a total lack of insight, a fanatical devotion to dogma and a profound ignorance of politics and society, she nevertheless nailed Morgan’s character in a way few have done in their waking moments.
And yet even Piers Morgan can sometimes be correct.
I'm quite happy for you to copy over the post in question so that all can see and judge for themselves.
Uncertainty is part of risk management. The presence of uncertainty does not render risk management impossible. Plenty of risk management professionals would tend to argue that the precautionary principle, despite being many well-meaning people's natural reaction to uncertainty, is not risk management.
From what we do know, we can be reasonably confident the vast majority of the risk from greater school attendance lies with the more vulnerable people kids could transmit COVID to due to increased between-household transmission, rather than with the children themselves (particularly if medically vulnerable children are told to do schoolwork from home). We can also be reasonably confident, based on existing knowledge about the effect of gaps in education, that children are suffering genuine harm from the current school closures, which means "we don't know what to do so let's do nothing" isn't a morally clear winner.
I don't think the attitude of leaving society frozen as it is and waiting for THE SCIENCE to come along and inform us of everything we need to do to started again is a goer. Partly because the research isn't going to work like that -if we wait another fortnight or four months we're not going to get a bunch of journal articles come through saying "kids are fine provided they sit 1.53 metres apart" or "teachers are 13% less likely to contract COVID if school lunch breaks are staggered". We will have the advantage of watching other countries open schools first, which will help judge to a degree what the likely effect on R will be here. But only to a degree because different countries are different in many ways (eg size of classrooms, whether kids stay in the same classes all day, how kids get to school) and the R estimates are a tricky business.
I'm afraid there is going to have to be a lot of learning-by-doing to unwind the lockdown, which is why the approach of bringing in only a few changes at a time and then waiting for a while to see how transmission changes is the only sensible approach.
China locked down so comprehensively and quickly that the virus barely spread outside of Wuhan/Hubei. Almost nobody in China will have had this illness. We know from contained environments like cruise ships that the fatality rate of this illness is somewhere in the region of 1% (yes a relatively old population on cruise ships, but also relatively wealthy and likely in better health than their age cohort in general).
But that's about it.
It will take a generation for a pro single market Tory leader to emerge again
The code, written by Professor Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London, was impossible to read, scientists claim
By Hannah Boland and Ellie Zolfagharifard"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/05/16/coding-led-lockdown-totally-unreliable-buggy-mess-say-experts/
If you do, may I interest you in this bridge?
Just perusing the slides from this afternoon's briefing. It's interesting to note despite all the video evidence from North Acton public transport use remains very low with no real pickup in tube and train passenger numbers.
Car usage has recovered to about 50% of normal while LGV use is about two thirds of normal and HGV about 75% of normal so "baby steps" but no more and you'd think the easing of restrictions isn't going to have an immediate economic impact.
We are a long way from knowing whether the recent easing will have any impact on cases and deaths and the R number. My ball park numbers suggest 5 million cases based on a ratio of 20 unreported cases for each reported case and a fatality rate of 1% (4% in older people but 0.33% for those under 60).
Why don't journalists push harder? It's pathetic. Just interrupt him and say, you are not answering my question.
You may also enjoy https://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/now-casting/ (Cambridge/PHE) and https://mrc-ide.github.io/covid19estimates/#/details/United_Kingdom (Imperial)
https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/07/21/software-exoskeletons/
There’s a major divide between the way scientists and programmers view the software they write.
Scientists see their software as a kind of exoskeleton, an extension of themselves. Think Dr. Octopus. The software may do heavy lifting, but the scientists remain actively involved in its use. The software is a tool, not a self-contained product.
Programmers see their software as something they will hand over to someone else, more like building a robot than an exoskeleton. Programmers believe it’s their job to encapsulate intelligence in software. If users have to depend on programmers after the software is written, the programmers didn’t finish their job.
I work with scientists and programmers, often bridging the gaps between the two cultures. One point of tension is defining when a project is done. To a scientist, the software is done when they get what they want out of it, such as a table of numbers for a paper. Professional programmers give more thought to reproducibility, maintainability, and correctness. Scientists think programmers are anal retentive. Programmers think scientists are cowboys.
Programmers need to understand that sometimes a program really only needs to run once, on one set of input, with expert supervision. Scientists need to understand that prototype code may need a complete rewrite before it can be used in production.
The real tension comes when a piece of research software is suddenly expected to be ready for production. The scientist will say “the code has already been written” and can’t imagine it would take much work, if any, to prepare the software for its new responsibilities. They don’t understand how hard it is for an engineer to turn an exoskeleton into a self-sufficient robot.
Whatever you think, there are definitely issues about whether a multi-billion pound decision should be based so much (albeit not exclusively, other modelling results fed in to the decision-making process) on code that had had such little QA. But also without the model itself (a different thing to its code implementation) being completely specified and reviewable.
Thatcher wasn't toppled because the Party stopped believing in her policies. It was because she stopped being a winner and, crucially, because first Heseltine and then Major looked as thought they could stop Kinnock and Labour.
If we see an anti-Boris vote emerge it will be because people are either tired or bored with him rather than because they don't support his policies. The signs will be in by-elections and the annual round of local contests.
If that dichotomy is evident in polls, would you support the replacement of Johnson by a candidate more likely to preserve the Conservative Party in Govenrment?
Post-lockdown life sounding a lot like lockdown life in China.