I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
He was badly wrong on swine flu. And he also gets a lot of blame for his upper bound on CJD deaths, but to be fair to him he produced a model with a massive range because there was a lot of uncertainty. The issue is mainly that his analysis is based on a poorly maintained model over a decade old that's not been properly validated and is held together with bits of string.
His main fault this time round, in my view (and as I keep saying) is his evidence to Parliament that "half to two thirds of coronavirus victims may have died this year anyway". This was obviously spectacularly wrong and seems to have stuck in people's minds, making it that much harder to convince healthy people that this is something they should care about and take action over.
My vague memory is that everyone was wrong on swine flu, but I don't recall why. It's something I'd like to look into if I had time.
I don't agree with your criticism of his code, or indeed the assessment that it's held together with bits of string. It's actually not that bad. The age is irrelevant. Academic code is almost never formally verified, and I'm not sure what other validation you'd want. SAGE also received input from LSHTM and probably other groups too, which all pointed in the same direction (in fact one you have the updated hospitalization rates that came out of Italy, it doesn't take a sophisticated model to come to the conclusion that dramatic action was needed) so I don't go along with the story that it was all because of his code that the lockdown happened.
I do agree with your criticism of his comment about victims who would have died this year anyway. He was speaking outside of his expertise (it's an actuarial calculation, not an epidemiological one), he should have known that it was outside of his expertise, and he should have not have offered that opinion.
--AS
Academic code generally gets a free pass because the stakes in academia are so small: if your paper is wrong the worst that can happen is someone gives a paper saying your paper is wrong. That pass is not available when it is known your advice will have real world effects. If his code is any good he should have prioritised putting it into a state where it was immediately available and comprehensible by others in case he was run over by a bus between epidemics.
Look, I understand your point, but how would he do that? There is no earthly chance of getting a grant to refactor old code. It's not like his advice is an official position that comes with research funding. The way it works is that SAGE, through its subcommittees, asks academics: "what do you think". It weighs their collected answers, knowing full well the fallibility of research. It doesn't commission professional-grade code.
Now if the code were written recently, it may have come with funding conditions that require it to be open sourced. And some journals require this for new publications. But 13 years ago this was not done. We can't hold someone to the standards of today for actions taken back then.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
TBF to Ferguson, if the 17% London infection rate and my arithmetic are correct, it works out at an IFR of 0.7% , spot on with Ferguson's model. We can say Gupta is definitely wrong with 0.01% IFR
An odd analysis given that she didn’t submit 0.01% as IFR. Her interviewer proposed that figure and she demurred, offering 0.05%.
Sure, she might be wrong, but at least let her be wrong about what she actually said.
0.05% is utterly preposterous given our existing numbers.
Fine, that’s fair opinion as you are at least criticising her submission rather than that of her interviewer.
Do you think it is at all credible given the number of deaths to date in the hardest hit areas?
If such a basic thing is wrong with her argument why should one pay any attention to the rest of it?
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
He was badly wrong on swine flu. And he also gets a lot of blame for his upper bound on CJD deaths, but to be fair to him he produced a model with a massive range because there was a lot of uncertainty. The issue is mainly that his analysis is based on a poorly maintained model over a decade old that's not been properly validated and is held together with bits of string.
His main fault this time round, in my view (and as I keep saying) is his evidence to Parliament that "half to two thirds of coronavirus victims may have died this year anyway". This was obviously spectacularly wrong and seems to have stuck in people's minds, making it that much harder to convince healthy people that this is something they should care about and take action over.
My vague memory is that everyone was wrong on swine flu, but I don't recall why. It's something I'd like to look into if I had time.
I don't agree with your criticism of his code, or indeed the assessment that it's held together with bits of string. It's actually not that bad. The age is irrelevant. Academic code is almost never formally verified, and I'm not sure what other validation you'd want. SAGE also received input from LSHTM and probably other groups too, which all pointed in the same direction (in fact one you have the updated hospitalization rates that came out of Italy, it doesn't take a sophisticated model to come to the conclusion that dramatic action was needed) so I don't go along with the story that it was all because of his code that the lockdown happened.
I do agree with your criticism of his comment about victims who would have died this year anyway. He was speaking outside of his expertise (it's an actuarial calculation, not an epidemiological one), he should have known that it was outside of his expertise, and he should have not have offered that opinion.
--AS
Academic code generally gets a free pass because the stakes in academia are so small: if your paper is wrong the worst that can happen is someone gives a paper saying your paper is wrong. That pass is not available when it is known your advice will have real world effects. If his code is any good he should have prioritised putting it into a state where it was immediately available and comprehensible by others in case he was run over by a bus between epidemics.
Look, I understand your point, but how would he do that? There is no earthly chance of getting a grant to refactor old code. It's not like his advice is an official position that comes with research funding. The way it works is that SAGE, through its subcommittees, asks academics: "what do you think". It weighs their collected answers, knowing full well the fallibility of research. It doesn't commission professional-grade code.
Now if the code were written recently, it may have come with funding conditions that require it to be open sourced. And some journals require this for new publications. But 13 years ago this was not done. We can't hold someone to the standards of today for actions taken back then.
--AS
Either, the only model of a pandemic available in the UK from academia has not been updated for 13 years and that therefore is a massive scandal.
or, there are other models, which were not considered.
So the current Tory lead is around 13 points, significantly down on even a month ago.
If Starmer can make further inroads and get into the single figures soon, that will surely be a good start.
The great unwashed still don't know who Starmer is. The gap is closing quickly because from a position of competent management through the early stages of the lockdown, the government's message has unraveled into chaos. Johnson's presidential address to the nation was from where it all started to go haywire and it has been like an episode of Dad's Army ever since.
The stratospheric Tory leads of late March/early April were always going to subside. It remains likely though that the 'rally round' factor is still propping up the Tory vote share by a few points.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
He was badly wrong on swine flu. And he also gets a lot of blame for his upper bound on CJD deaths, but to be fair to him he produced a model with a massive range because there was a lot of uncertainty. The issue is mainly that his analysis is based on a poorly maintained model over a decade old that's not been properly validated and is held together with bits of string.
His main fault this time round, in my view (and as I keep saying) is his evidence to Parliament that "half to two thirds of coronavirus victims may have died this year anyway". This was obviously spectacularly wrong and seems to have stuck in people's minds, making it that much harder to convince healthy people that this is something they should care about and take action over.
My vague memory is that everyone was wrong on swine flu, but I don't recall why. It's something I'd like to look into if I had time.
I don't agree with your criticism of his code, or indeed the assessment that it's held together with bits of string. It's actually not that bad. The age is irrelevant. Academic code is almost never formally verified, and I'm not sure what other validation you'd want. SAGE also received input from LSHTM and probably other groups too, which all pointed in the same direction (in fact one you have the updated hospitalization rates that came out of Italy, it doesn't take a sophisticated model to come to the conclusion that dramatic action was needed) so I don't go along with the story that it was all because of his code that the lockdown happened.
I do agree with your criticism of his comment about victims who would have died this year anyway. He was speaking outside of his expertise (it's an actuarial calculation, not an epidemiological one), he should have known that it was outside of his expertise, and he should have not have offered that opinion.
--AS
Academic code generally gets a free pass because the stakes in academia are so small: if your paper is wrong the worst that can happen is someone gives a paper saying your paper is wrong. That pass is not available when it is known your advice will have real world effects. If his code is any good he should have prioritised putting it into a state where it was immediately available and comprehensible by others in case he was run over by a bus between epidemics.
Look, I understand your point, but how would he do that? There is no earthly chance of getting a grant to refactor old code. It's not like his advice is an official position that comes with research funding. The way it works is that SAGE, through its subcommittees, asks academics: "what do you think". It weighs their collected answers, knowing full well the fallibility of research. It doesn't commission professional-grade code.
Now if the code were written recently, it may have come with funding conditions that require it to be open sourced. And some journals require this for new publications. But 13 years ago this was not done. We can't hold someone to the standards of today for actions taken back then.
--AS
Either, the only model of a pandemic available in the UK from academia has not been updated for 13 years and that therefore is a massive scandal.
or, there are other models, which were not considered.
Well there are other models. They were considered. They came to similar conclusions. See interviews with John Edmunds.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
TBF to Ferguson, if the 17% London infection rate and my arithmetic are correct, it works out at an IFR of 0.7% , spot on with Ferguson's model. We can say Gupta is definitely wrong with 0.01% IFR
An odd analysis given that she didn’t submit 0.01% as IFR. Her interviewer proposed that figure and she demurred, offering 0.05%.
Sure, she might be wrong, but at least let her be wrong about what she actually said.
0.05% is utterly preposterous given our existing numbers.
Fine, that’s fair opinion as you are at least criticising her submission rather than that of her interviewer.
Do you think it is at all credible given the number of deaths to date in the hardest hit areas?
If such a basic thing is wrong with her argument why should one pay any attention to the rest of it?
With 35,000 dead at 0.05% wouldn't we have needed more than 70 million to have caught the disease?
Which would be more than 100% to have caught it already?
That anyone could suggest that with a straight face they do not seem like someone to take seriously.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
He was badly wrong on swine flu. And he also gets a lot of blame for his upper bound on CJD deaths, but to be fair to him he produced a model with a massive range because there was a lot of uncertainty. The issue is mainly that his analysis is based on a poorly maintained model over a decade old that's not been properly validated and is held together with bits of string.
His main fault this time round, in my view (and as I keep saying) is his evidence to Parliament that "half to two thirds of coronavirus victims may have died this year anyway". This was obviously spectacularly wrong and seems to have stuck in people's minds, making it that much harder to convince healthy people that this is something they should care about and take action over.
My vague memory is that everyone was wrong on swine flu, but I don't recall why. It's something I'd like to look into if I had time.
I don't agree with your criticism of his code, or indeed the assessment that it's held together with bits of string. It's actually not that bad. The age is irrelevant. Academic code is almost never formally verified, and I'm not sure what other validation you'd want. SAGE also received input from LSHTM and probably other groups too, which all pointed in the same direction (in fact one you have the updated hospitalization rates that came out of Italy, it doesn't take a sophisticated model to come to the conclusion that dramatic action was needed) so I don't go along with the story that it was all because of his code that the lockdown happened.
I do agree with your criticism of his comment about victims who would have died this year anyway. He was speaking outside of his expertise (it's an actuarial calculation, not an epidemiological one), he should have known that it was outside of his expertise, and he should have not have offered that opinion.
--AS
Academic code generally gets a free pass because the stakes in academia are so small: if your paper is wrong the worst that can happen is someone gives a paper saying your paper is wrong. That pass is not available when it is known your advice will have real world effects. If his code is any good he should have prioritised putting it into a state where it was immediately available and comprehensible by others in case he was run over by a bus between epidemics.
This.
If the models I deal with for financial services companies (which, if I'm being honest, affect the square root of sod all) have to be validated to the nth degree, costing even smallish organisations millions of pounds a year, then it's bonkers that we made multi billion pound decisions on the basis of a model that had, as far as I can tell, no independent review whatsoever.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
He was badly wrong on swine flu. And he also gets a lot of blame for his upper bound on CJD deaths, but to be fair to him he produced a model with a massive range because there was a lot of uncertainty. The issue is mainly that his analysis is based on a poorly maintained model over a decade old that's not been properly validated and is held together with bits of string.
His main fault this time round, in my view (and as I keep saying) is his evidence to Parliament that "half to two thirds of coronavirus victims may have died this year anyway". This was obviously spectacularly wrong and seems to have stuck in people's minds, making it that much harder to convince healthy people that this is something they should care about and take action over.
My vague memory is that everyone was wrong on swine flu, but I don't recall why. It's something I'd like to look into if I had time.
I don't agree with your criticism of his code, or indeed the assessment that it's held together with bits of string. It's actually not that bad. The age is irrelevant. Academic code is almost never formally verified, and I'm not sure what other validation you'd want. SAGE also received input from LSHTM and probably other groups too, which all pointed in the same direction (in fact one you have the updated hospitalization rates that came out of Italy, it doesn't take a sophisticated model to come to the conclusion that dramatic action was needed) so I don't go along with the story that it was all because of his code that the lockdown happened.
I do agree with your criticism of his comment about victims who would have died this year anyway. He was speaking outside of his expertise (it's an actuarial calculation, not an epidemiological one), he should have known that it was outside of his expertise, and he should have not have offered that opinion.
--AS
Academic code generally gets a free pass because the stakes in academia are so small: if your paper is wrong the worst that can happen is someone gives a paper saying your paper is wrong. That pass is not available when it is known your advice will have real world effects. If his code is any good he should have prioritised putting it into a state where it was immediately available and comprehensible by others in case he was run over by a bus between epidemics.
Look, I understand your point, but how would he do that? There is no earthly chance of getting a grant to refactor old code. It's not like his advice is an official position that comes with research funding. The way it works is that SAGE, through its subcommittees, asks academics: "what do you think". It weighs their collected answers, knowing full well the fallibility of research. It doesn't commission professional-grade code.
Now if the code were written recently, it may have come with funding conditions that require it to be open sourced. And some journals require this for new publications. But 13 years ago this was not done. We can't hold someone to the standards of today for actions taken back then.
--AS
Either, the only model of a pandemic available in the UK from academia has not been updated for 13 years and that therefore is a massive scandal.
or, there are other models, which were not considered.
Or others were considered too which is public domain information.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
He was badly wrong on swine flu. And he also gets a lot of blame for his upper bound on CJD deaths, but to be fair to him he produced a model with a massive range because there was a lot of uncertainty. The issue is mainly that his analysis is based on a poorly maintained model over a decade old that's not been properly validated and is held together with bits of string.
His main fault this time round, in my view (and as I keep saying) is his evidence to Parliament that "half to two thirds of coronavirus victims may have died this year anyway". This was obviously spectacularly wrong and seems to have stuck in people's minds, making it that much harder to convince healthy people that this is something they should care about and take action over.
My vague memory is that everyone was wrong on swine flu, but I don't recall why. It's something I'd like to look into if I had time.
I don't agree with your criticism of his code, or indeed the assessment that it's held together with bits of string. It's actually not that bad. The age is irrelevant. Academic code is almost never formally verified, and I'm not sure what other validation you'd want. SAGE also received input from LSHTM and probably other groups too, which all pointed in the same direction (in fact one you have the updated hospitalization rates that came out of Italy, it doesn't take a sophisticated model to come to the conclusion that dramatic action was needed) so I don't go along with the story that it was all because of his code that the lockdown happened.
I do agree with your criticism of his comment about victims who would have died this year anyway. He was speaking outside of his expertise (it's an actuarial calculation, not an epidemiological one), he should have known that it was outside of his expertise, and he should have not have offered that opinion.
--AS
Academic code generally gets a free pass because the stakes in academia are so small: if your paper is wrong the worst that can happen is someone gives a paper saying your paper is wrong. That pass is not available when it is known your advice will have real world effects. If his code is any good he should have prioritised putting it into a state where it was immediately available and comprehensible by others in case he was run over by a bus between epidemics.
This.
If the models I deal with for financial services companies (which, if I'm being honest, affect the square root of sod all) have to be validated to the nth degree, costing even smallish organisations millions of pounds a year, then it's bonkers that we made multi billion pound decisions on the basis of a model that had, as far as I can tell, no independent review whatsoever.
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, 'stay alert' is meaningless.
As I have to work (or should that be "work" for a living), I couldn't join this morning's discussion on the LD leadership.
For the first time in 40 years, I don't have, as the Americans put it, "any skin in the game".
Oddly enough, I'm not sure it matters very much who becomes leader. The Party has to find a new post-Brexit positioning relative to (as always) the two main parties. I do think there's room for a fiscally prudent party of the centre or centre-right to act as counterweight to Starmonism (too soon?) or at least to be a counterweight to the two high-borrowing social democratic parties.
The problem with that is, as the 1950s Liberals found, there's little electoral support in economic realism while giving away money remains as popular as ever.
I could imagine the party embracing more green policies in the coming years but not eco-authoritarianism but rather an economic policy based on a journey toward zero carbon and incentives for other areas with a clear environmental benefit - oddly enough, there are those who might argue current change in working practices might have considerable environmental benefits going forward.
If I were advising the Party, I would say "clear your mind" (yes, I know) and then "imagine life in 2030s Liberal Britain" and work backward. While we'd all like to live in such a utopia where the weather is always nice and no one has the wobbles, the practicalities of utopia need to be fleshed out.
I'd start with some basics close to my heart - what will it be like to live and work in that Britain, how will we see or be seen by the rest of the world and what will it be like to grow old in that Britain?
The trouble with the Lib Dems is they are ultimately the Labour Party on holiday. When they move to the right, support ebbs away.
Do you think a fairly moderate right of centre former Conservative member would be welcome in the Lib Dems as it now is? I highly doubt it.
With Labour moderates flocking to rejoin the party, the Lib Dems will struggle to build grass roots support.
When the eggheads said people wouldn't be able to stick to a lockdown for very long....
The British public relaxed its adherence to lockdown restrictions in the weeks before they were officially loosened, according to new data. Across the UK people had already started to make more trips to parks even before Boris Johnson eased restrictions on movement.
On several occasions in recent weeks, people were going to parks at the same rate as they were before the lockdown. The data released by Google compares footfall based on the number of mobile devices detected in settings before and after restrictions were imposed.
So is Johnson supposed to announce another lifting of lockdown next week?
Stage 2 is expected 'not before 1 June' ie announced next week: - non-essential businesses open - schools open (some years only) - POSSIBLY relaxation of certain social distancing eg one household can visit another at their home
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, stay alert is meaningless.
You keep alert my maintaining the 2m distance, not touching things unnecessarily and washing your hands.
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, stay alert is meaningless.
You keep alert my maintaining the 2m distance, not touching things unnecessarily and washing your hands.
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
Well government ministers keep telling me to stay alert by staying at home. That is nothing to do with being alert, it is to do with staying at home, my alert levels should naturally be low when Im at home, not high.
I dont want my life micro managed by the government, I want a slogan that is going to be repeated thousands of times to use words that are relevant.
When the eggheads said people wouldn't be able to stick to a lockdown for very long....
The British public relaxed its adherence to lockdown restrictions in the weeks before they were officially loosened, according to new data. Across the UK people had already started to make more trips to parks even before Boris Johnson eased restrictions on movement.
On several occasions in recent weeks, people were going to parks at the same rate as they were before the lockdown. The data released by Google compares footfall based on the number of mobile devices detected in settings before and after restrictions were imposed.
That is misleading though because there are fewer things to do. So if park usage is now at the same level as before that is not at all inconsistent with the majority of people who would go to the park avoiding going to the park. It is not a return to normal.
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, stay alert is meaningless.
You keep alert my maintaining the 2m distance, not touching things unnecessarily and washing your hands.
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
Yes I may be a complete nincompoop because it makes no sense to me, but believe it or not there are even more stupid people out there to whom it also means nothing.
A clear instruction like 'wash your hands' doesn't mean you have to, you are not being forced to by a micro-managing dictatorship, but the smallprint indicates why it is a good idea to wash your hands, it might prevent you dying horribly from the transmission of Coronavirus.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
His conclusions are much as one would have just guessed at anyway.
Research that states the obvious isn't so helpful. If you've set yourself up as an expert in the crisis and you're stating the obvious then it's probably not the best time to arse about.
Hollywood has all sorts of neglected scientists that come good in a crisis - we, so far as I can tell, have neglected scientists that should have been more neglected.
In defence of Professor Pantsdown, many weeks ago (Feb? Early March?) I was roundly ridiculed on here by the USUAL SUSPECTS when I quoted Ferguson’s “reasonable worst case scenario” of 500,000 deaths in the UK if this disease was left unchecked.
Right now we have maybe 60,000 excess deaths, and about 10% of the population infected.
On this basis, if 50-70% of us got infected, 300,000-450,000 would die. Maybe more due to an inflamed health system.
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, stay alert is meaningless.
You keep alert my maintaining the 2m distance, not touching things unnecessarily and washing your hands.
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
Yes I may be a complete nincompoop because it makes no sense to me, but believe it or not there are even more stupid people out there who it also means nothing too.
A clear instruction like 'wash your hands' doesn't mean you have to, you are not being forced to by a micro-managing dictatorship, but the smallprint indicates why it is a good idea to wash your hands, it might prevent you dying horribly from the transmission of Coronavirus.
Its also a good idea to keep the 2m distance and not to touch things.
And by staying alert to such concepts you are more likely to do them.
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, stay alert is meaningless.
You keep alert my maintaining the 2m distance, not touching things unnecessarily and washing your hands.
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
Yes I may be a complete nincompoop because it makes no sense to me, but believe it or not there are even more stupid people out there who it also means nothing too.
A clear instruction like 'wash your hands' doesn't mean you have to, you are not being forced to by a micro-managing dictatorship, but the smallprint indicates why it is a good idea to wash your hands, it might prevent you dying horribly from the transmission of Coronavirus.
Yes you are a complete nincompoop.
It means think and be sensible. Stay home if you can, if you're going out then don't touch things, don't touch your face, don't join crowds and wash your hands.
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, stay alert is meaningless.
You keep alert my maintaining the 2m distance, not touching things unnecessarily and washing your hands.
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
Well government ministers keep telling me to stay alert by staying at home. That is nothing to do with being alert, it is to do with staying at home, my alert levels should naturally be low when Im at home, not high.
I dont want my life micro managed by the government, I want a slogan that is going to be repeated thousands of times to use words that are relevant.
Staying alert is relevant to me as I go to work.
If you don't find it useful then think of your own slogan.
How soon will we see the Tories below 40% in a GB poll? Possibly later this year - next year almost certainly.
I don't think this government will last the full 5 years. They've made too many mistakes already after just 5 months. Their current 50% poll rating is a bit illusory IMO.
Of course it will, it has a majority of 80, even the Major and Callaghan governments lasted 5 years with barely any majority at all
How will it last 5 years? In less than 4 years time there has to be a general election
5 years from December 2019 ie until late 2024
Thanks for confirming you don't check things even after being called out for posting complete, obvious and easily checkable rubbish - it's Boris's most obvious shortcoming and one that both you and Peter_Thompson also fall for - which makes actually debating with you completely pointless.
Thanks for confirming my original point stands absolutely and you cannot dispute it, the parliament will last 5 years
Although, unbelievably, the OP’s approach is why a fortnight in French is ‘quinze jours’
I remember having that argument with my daughter when she was about five, when counting steps. There is an ambiguity between taking one step between two separate steps, so you have to be clear what type of step you are referring to.
Fence post problem
And the problem of whether you are doing inclusive counting, and at which end(s)
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
I think epidemics tend to burn out after 3-4 months, even without immunity.
Take for example the Spanish Flu. There were 3 waves, but even then it is estimated that 30-40% caught it across all the waves. Avoidance, whether intentional or not, protects quite a few folk. The same is true for cholera outbreaks in Victorian London.
10-15% immunity and the wave being nearly over is not incompatible.
If 15% of colds are coronaviruses, and confer some immunity, how many people are likely to have had one recently enough to gain some immunity?
It would be funny* if the advice to keep washing hands turned out to be counterproductive in the long run, because it weakened average levels of population immunity.
*not really
Well Austraia (late autumn there of course) is having by far its lightest flu season in years.
This seems underrated in the search for why R is dropping. If it is spread (mostly) by coughing then the huge drop we are seeing in other colds and flus seems really important.
Surely we should be tracking and reporting the levels of all cold and flus to better understand the transmission and put us in a better place to avoid a second peak when colds and flus start again in a few months time.
Anyone who is interested in Covid19 (who isn’t?) should read Laura Spinner’s PALE RIDER. It is the best one volume history of the Spanish Flu.
It’s an adept and readable history, full of diverting anecdotes, but today it is more than that: it is absorbingly relevant.
Here’s just one fact: Australia out performed during Spanish flu, as well. It was the biggest major economy to largely if not totally escape the first and second waves. Minimal harm. Strict maritime quarantine.
Their mistake was to reopen too early, and they got caught by the third wave. But they still did better than anyone else of similar importance.
Isolated country with low population density does well in pandemic shocker.
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, stay alert is meaningless.
You keep alert my maintaining the 2m distance, not touching things unnecessarily and washing your hands.
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
Well government ministers keep telling me to stay alert by staying at home. That is nothing to do with being alert, it is to do with staying at home, my alert levels should naturally be low when Im at home, not high.
I dont want my life micro managed by the government, I want a slogan that is going to be repeated thousands of times to use words that are relevant.
Staying alert is relevant to me as I go to work.
If you don't find it useful then think of your own slogan.
And staying at home when you could have gone out IS staying alert.
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, stay alert is meaningless.
You keep alert my maintaining the 2m distance, not touching things unnecessarily and washing your hands.
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
Well government ministers keep telling me to stay alert by staying at home. That is nothing to do with being alert, it is to do with staying at home, my alert levels should naturally be low when Im at home, not high.
I dont want my life micro managed by the government, I want a slogan that is going to be repeated thousands of times to use words that are relevant.
Staying alert is relevant to me as I go to work.
If you don't find it useful then think of your own slogan.
The trouble with the Lib Dems is they are ultimately the Labour Party on holiday. When they move to the right, support ebbs away.
Do you think a fairly moderate right of centre former Conservative member would be welcome in the Lib Dems as it now is? I highly doubt it.
With Labour moderates flocking to rejoin the party, the Lib Dems will struggle to build grass roots support.
That's not a description of the LDs I recognise and I was a member for 40 years !!
The Party has attracted former Conservatives - it did so in the Thatcher and Major years. That was particularly the case in stronger Conservative areas as you might expect.
The Orange Bookers would be interested in your description of the "Labour Party on holiday" - in addition, the LDs were often the port of call for disaffected Conservatives when that party was in Government so more inaccurate piffle.
As for "grass roots support", we'll see. There have always been islands of strength surrounded by oceans of weakness but all parties have stronger and weaker areas. The Party won 700 seats so there must have been some grassroots strength somewhere and while the GE result was undeniably disappointing, the vote share rose across the board and six seats were lost by less than a thousand,.
Had those been held, Johnson would still be PM with a majority of 72 but Swinson would have survived and been the leader of 17 MPs - still poor but not disastrous.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
He was badly wrong on swine flu. And he also gets a lot of blame for his upper bound on CJD deaths, but to be fair to him he produced a model with a massive range because there was a lot of uncertainty. The issue is mainly that his analysis is based on a poorly maintained model over a decade old that's not been properly validated and is held together with bits of string.
His main fault this time round, in my view (and as I keep saying) is his evidence to Parliament that "half to two thirds of coronavirus victims may have died this year anyway". This was obviously spectacularly wrong and seems to have stuck in people's minds, making it that much harder to convince healthy people that this is something they should care about and take action over.
My vague memory is that everyone was wrong on swine flu, but I don't recall why. It's something I'd like to look into if I had time.
I don't agree with your criticism of his code, or indeed the assessment that it's held together with bits of string. It's actually not that bad. The age is irrelevant. Academic code is almost never formally verified, and I'm not sure what other validation you'd want. SAGE also received input from LSHTM and probably other groups too, which all pointed in the same direction (in fact one you have the updated hospitalization rates that came out of Italy, it doesn't take a sophisticated model to come to the conclusion that dramatic action was needed) so I don't go along with the story that it was all because of his code that the lockdown happened.
I do agree with your criticism of his comment about victims who would have died this year anyway. He was speaking outside of his expertise (it's an actuarial calculation, not an epidemiological one), he should have known that it was outside of his expertise, and he should have not have offered that opinion.
--AS
Academic code generally gets a free pass because the stakes in academia are so small: if your paper is wrong the worst that can happen is someone gives a paper saying your paper is wrong. That pass is not available when it is known your advice will have real world effects. If his code is any good he should have prioritised putting it into a state where it was immediately available and comprehensible by others in case he was run over by a bus between epidemics.
There's also a difference between code which is clunky and slow and code which generates flat-out wrong results. If the code isn't representing the model correctly, or the model is wrong, that's a problem. At least some of the criticisms of the Imperial code I've seen have been that it's not very elegant or efficient. Frankly, that is much less of an issue for academic number crunching than a consumer facing web app. The amount of computing power in a dozen connected desktops (for example; I had a colleague once who built a parallel computer by buying a load of PCs and plugging them together) is more than enough for most problems. Making the code more efficient is more trouble than it's worth.
Lockdown really depended on two numbers which can be processed in a back-of-the-envelope way, even if you're not convinced by the big model. If R is a lot more than 1, then you get exponential growth and the case numbers go horrible in a few weeks. If the CFR is anything close to 1 %, you have the potential for lots of dead people before the population is broadly immune. It's just about possible to generate graphs with a lot more infection and a lot less death, but you have to work pretty hard to make the numbers work. And it's a curious infection where stopping people moving about doesn't affect the subsequent rate of infection.
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, stay alert is meaningless.
You keep alert my maintaining the 2m distance, not touching things unnecessarily and washing your hands.
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
Yes I may be a complete nincompoop because it makes no sense to me, but believe it or not there are even more stupid people out there who it also means nothing too.
A clear instruction like 'wash your hands' doesn't mean you have to, you are not being forced to by a micro-managing dictatorship, but the smallprint indicates why it is a good idea to wash your hands, it might prevent you dying horribly from the transmission of Coronavirus.
Yes you are a complete nincompoop.
It means think and be sensible. Stay home if you can, if you're going out then don't touch things, don't touch your face, don't join crowds and wash your hands.
Use your own head. Is that difficult?
You have had to explain what it means to me, because it is a very poor message. As I have demonstrated fools don't understand what it means.
I may be irredeemably stupid, but there are millions of us out there. We need clear instructions that we can understand and act upon or disregard as we see fit.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
I think epidemics tend to burn out after 3-4 months, even without immunity.
Take for example the Spanish Flu. There were 3 waves, but even then it is estimated that 30-40% caught it across all the waves. Avoidance, whether intentional or not, protects quite a few folk. The same is true for cholera outbreaks in Victorian London.
10-15% immunity and the wave being nearly over is not incompatible.
If 15% of colds are coronaviruses, and confer some immunity, how many people are likely to have had one recently enough to gain some immunity?
It would be funny* if the advice to keep washing hands turned out to be counterproductive in the long run, because it weakened average levels of population immunity.
*not really
Well Austraia (late autumn there of course) is having by far its lightest flu season in years.
This seems underrated in the search for why R is dropping. If it is spread (mostly) by coughing then the huge drop we are seeing in other colds and flus seems really important.
Surely we should be tracking and reporting the levels of all cold and flus to better understand the transmission and put us in a better place to avoid a second peak when colds and flus start again in a few months time.
It is possible that social distancing, handwashing etc is having more effect on colds and flu than the coronavirus.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
He was badly wrong on swine flu. And he also gets a lot of blame for his upper bound on CJD deaths, but to be fair to him he produced a model with a massive range because there was a lot of uncertainty. The issue is mainly that his analysis is based on a poorly maintained model over a decade old that's not been properly validated and is held together with bits of string.
His main fault this time round, in my view (and as I keep saying) is his evidence to Parliament that "half to two thirds of coronavirus victims may have died this year anyway". This was obviously spectacularly wrong and seems to have stuck in people's minds, making it that much harder to convince healthy people that this is something they should care about and take action over.
My vague memory is that everyone was wrong on swine flu, but I don't recall why. It's something I'd like to look into if I had time.
I don't agree with your criticism of his code, or indeed the assessment that it's held together with bits of string. It's actually not that bad. The age is irrelevant. Academic code is almost never formally verified, and I'm not sure what other validation you'd want. SAGE also received input from LSHTM and probably other groups too, which all pointed in the same direction (in fact one you have the updated hospitalization rates that came out of Italy, it doesn't take a sophisticated model to come to the conclusion that dramatic action was needed) so I don't go along with the story that it was all because of his code that the lockdown happened.
I do agree with your criticism of his comment about victims who would have died this year anyway. He was speaking outside of his expertise (it's an actuarial calculation, not an epidemiological one), he should have known that it was outside of his expertise, and he should have not have offered that opinion.
--AS
Academic code generally gets a free pass because the stakes in academia are so small: if your paper is wrong the worst that can happen is someone gives a paper saying your paper is wrong. That pass is not available when it is known your advice will have real world effects. If his code is any good he should have prioritised putting it into a state where it was immediately available and comprehensible by others in case he was run over by a bus between epidemics.
I can't see that such housekeeping would score any brownies on the Research Assessment Exercises/Frameworks. Which were put in place by the Government, and whose scores are crucial to academic survival (personal and institutional). But I would be interested to learn otherwise.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
I think epidemics tend to burn out after 3-4 months, even without immunity.
Take for example the Spanish Flu. There were 3 waves, but even then it is estimated that 30-40% caught it across all the waves. Avoidance, whether intentional or not, protects quite a few folk. The same is true for cholera outbreaks in Victorian London.
10-15% immunity and the wave being nearly over is not incompatible.
I don't know about cholera, but in the case of Spanish Flu isn't it just because it isn't that infectious? I recall flu has an R0 of around 1.5-1.8, so 30-40% of the population gets to herd immunity.
I'm really not sold on the idea that epidemics tend to burn out, without there being a mechanism -- herd immunity, the effect of climate and season, eradication, widespread natural or cross-immunity (which is herd immunity by another route) -- that we can point to.
The thing is, I don't object to her claim that there *might* be widespread natural immunity. However there is no evidence, and her argument of parsimony is extremely weak. To advocate policy on the basis of something that is conceivable but unevidenced, and which if wrong will kill people, is really irresponsible in my view.
--AS
I think there is some evidence that herd immunity will be reached before 60% infection.
1. The difference in infection rates in China for people with blood type O and A suggests that the pool of uninfected people will be increasingly O, and therefore slightly harder to infect.
2. There seems to be some evidence that people who had recently had coronavirus variants of the common cold have additional immunity.
Put them together, and it may be that the most infectable (sorry, ugly, unreal word) have seen more incidence.
This would point to herd immunity being 45-50%, mind, not 15%.
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, stay alert is meaningless.
You keep alert my maintaining the 2m distance, not touching things unnecessarily and washing your hands.
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
Yes I may be a complete nincompoop because it makes no sense to me, but believe it or not there are even more stupid people out there who it also means nothing too.
A clear instruction like 'wash your hands' doesn't mean you have to, you are not being forced to by a micro-managing dictatorship, but the smallprint indicates why it is a good idea to wash your hands, it might prevent you dying horribly from the transmission of Coronavirus.
Yes you are a complete nincompoop.
It means think and be sensible. Stay home if you can, if you're going out then don't touch things, don't touch your face, don't join crowds and wash your hands.
Use your own head. Is that difficult?
You have had to explain what it means to me, because it is a very poor message. As I have demonstrated fools don't understand what it means.
I may be irredeemably stupid, but there are millions of us out there. We need clear instructions that we can understand and act upon or disregard as we see fit.
No you don't need clear instructions you need to think. You're an adult. Think.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
He was badly wrong on swine flu. And he also gets a lot of blame for his upper bound on CJD deaths, but to be fair to him he produced a model with a massive range because there was a lot of uncertainty. The issue is mainly that his analysis is based on a poorly maintained model over a decade old that's not been properly validated and is held together with bits of string.
His main fault this time round, in my view (and as I keep saying) is his evidence to Parliament that "half to two thirds of coronavirus victims may have died this year anyway". This was obviously spectacularly wrong and seems to have stuck in people's minds, making it that much harder to convince healthy people that this is something they should care about and take action over.
My vague memory is that everyone was wrong on swine flu, but I don't recall why. It's something I'd like to look into if I had time.
I don't agree with your criticism of his code, or indeed the assessment that it's held together with bits of string. It's actually not that bad. The age is irrelevant. Academic code is almost never formally verified, and I'm not sure what other validation you'd want. SAGE also received input from LSHTM and probably other groups too, which all pointed in the same direction (in fact one you have the updated hospitalization rates that came out of Italy, it doesn't take a sophisticated model to come to the conclusion that dramatic action was needed) so I don't go along with the story that it was all because of his code that the lockdown happened.
I do agree with your criticism of his comment about victims who would have died this year anyway. He was speaking outside of his expertise (it's an actuarial calculation, not an epidemiological one), he should have known that it was outside of his expertise, and he should have not have offered that opinion.
--AS
Academic code generally gets a free pass because the stakes in academia are so small: if your paper is wrong the worst that can happen is someone gives a paper saying your paper is wrong. That pass is not available when it is known your advice will have real world effects. If his code is any good he should have prioritised putting it into a state where it was immediately available and comprehensible by others in case he was run over by a bus between epidemics.
This.
If the models I deal with for financial services companies (which, if I'm being honest, affect the square root of sod all) have to be validated to the nth degree, costing even smallish organisations millions of pounds a year, then it's bonkers that we made multi billion pound decisions on the basis of a model that had, as far as I can tell, no independent review whatsoever.
It wasn't the only code or only model.
So what? I could give you plenty of examples of cases where everyone in the market had the same approach and it turned out to be totally wrong.
One of my themes for this year is whether anyone got remotely close to estimating the effects of a 1 in 100 year pandemic.
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, stay alert is meaningless.
You keep alert my maintaining the 2m distance, not touching things unnecessarily and washing your hands.
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
Yes I may be a complete nincompoop because it makes no sense to me, but believe it or not there are even more stupid people out there who it also means nothing too.
A clear instruction like 'wash your hands' doesn't mean you have to, you are not being forced to by a micro-managing dictatorship, but the smallprint indicates why it is a good idea to wash your hands, it might prevent you dying horribly from the transmission of Coronavirus.
Its also a good idea to keep the 2m distance and not to touch things.
And by staying alert to such concepts you are more likely to do them.
A good message, thanks. From now on I know to 'keep 2 metres apart' and 'not to touch things'. Good advice. I will act upon it,
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
I think epidemics tend to burn out after 3-4 months, even without immunity.
Take for example the Spanish Flu. There were 3 waves, but even then it is estimated that 30-40% caught it across all the waves. Avoidance, whether intentional or not, protects quite a few folk. The same is true for cholera outbreaks in Victorian London.
10-15% immunity and the wave being nearly over is not incompatible.
If 15% of colds are coronaviruses, and confer some immunity, how many people are likely to have had one recently enough to gain some immunity?
It would be funny* if the advice to keep washing hands turned out to be counterproductive in the long run, because it weakened average levels of population immunity.
*not really
Well Austraia (late autumn there of course) is having by far its lightest flu season in years.
This seems underrated in the search for why R is dropping. If it is spread (mostly) by coughing then the huge drop we are seeing in other colds and flus seems really important.
Surely we should be tracking and reporting the levels of all cold and flus to better understand the transmission and put us in a better place to avoid a second peak when colds and flus start again in a few months time.
It is possible that social distancing, handwashing etc is having more effect on colds and flu than the coronavirus.
Which in turn surely impacts coronavirus? Or cant you have a normal cold and covid19 simultaneously?
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
I think epidemics tend to burn out after 3-4 months, even without immunity.
Take for example the Spanish Flu. There were 3 waves, but even then it is estimated that 30-40% caught it across all the waves. Avoidance, whether intentional or not, protects quite a few folk. The same is true for cholera outbreaks in Victorian London.
10-15% immunity and the wave being nearly over is not incompatible.
If 15% of colds are coronaviruses, and confer some immunity, how many people are likely to have had one recently enough to gain some immunity?
It would be funny* if the advice to keep washing hands turned out to be counterproductive in the long run, because it weakened average levels of population immunity.
*not really
Well Austraia (late autumn there of course) is having by far its lightest flu season in years.
This seems underrated in the search for why R is dropping. If it is spread (mostly) by coughing then the huge drop we are seeing in other colds and flus seems really important.
Surely we should be tracking and reporting the levels of all cold and flus to better understand the transmission and put us in a better place to avoid a second peak when colds and flus start again in a few months time.
It is possible that social distancing, handwashing etc is having more effect on colds and flu than the coronavirus.
Isn't part of the reason for colds and flu being less prevalent in the summer being that we, in effect, social-distance? We go outdoors more. When we invite friends round, we have a barbecue in the garden. When we go to a pub or restaurant we sit outside (or go inside and find it's empty). During the school holidays, public transport is noticeably quieter at rush hour and of course the kids aren't at school infecting each other. And we open our windows and get some ventilation.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
I think epidemics tend to burn out after 3-4 months, even without immunity.
Take for example the Spanish Flu. There were 3 waves, but even then it is estimated that 30-40% caught it across all the waves. Avoidance, whether intentional or not, protects quite a few folk. The same is true for cholera outbreaks in Victorian London.
10-15% immunity and the wave being nearly over is not incompatible.
If 15% of colds are coronaviruses, and confer some immunity, how many people are likely to have had one recently enough to gain some immunity?
It would be funny* if the advice to keep washing hands turned out to be counterproductive in the long run, because it weakened average levels of population immunity.
*not really
Well Austraia (late autumn there of course) is having by far its lightest flu season in years.
This seems underrated in the search for why R is dropping. If it is spread (mostly) by coughing then the huge drop we are seeing in other colds and flus seems really important.
Surely we should be tracking and reporting the levels of all cold and flus to better understand the transmission and put us in a better place to avoid a second peak when colds and flus start again in a few months time.
Anyone who is interested in Covid19 (who isn’t?) should read Laura Spinner’s PALE RIDER. It is the best one volume history of the Spanish Flu.
It’s an adept and readable history, full of diverting anecdotes, but today it is more than that: it is absorbingly relevant.
Here’s just one fact: Australia out performed during Spanish flu, as well. It was the biggest major economy to largely if not totally escape the first and second waves. Minimal harm. Strict maritime quarantine.
Their mistake was to reopen too early, and they got caught by the third wave. But they still did better than anyone else of similar importance.
Isolated country with low population density does well in pandemic shocker.
You miss the point. Lots of island nations in Spanish Flu did terriblY. Samoa is a great example: more than a fifth of the population died. Almost Black Death proportions.
Australia has maybe a folk memory of how to react to pandemics. I wish we did.
No Australia is just isolated, low density and massive. If you at any one point have a million or two Britons on holiday then a vast, vast proportion of them will be overseas. In Italy etc
If you have same proportion of Australians on holiday then the overwhelming majority would be holidaying elsewhere in Australia.
As I have to work (or should that be "work" for a living), I couldn't join this morning's discussion on the LD leadership.
For the first time in 40 years, I don't have, as the Americans put it, "any skin in the game".
Oddly enough, I'm not sure it matters very much who becomes leader. The Party has to find a new post-Brexit positioning relative to (as always) the two main parties. I do think there's room for a fiscally prudent party of the centre or centre-right to act as counterweight to Starmonism (too soon?) or at least to be a counterweight to the two high-borrowing social democratic parties.
The problem with that is, as the 1950s Liberals found, there's little electoral support in economic realism while giving away money remains as popular as ever.
I could imagine the party embracing more green policies in the coming years but not eco-authoritarianism but rather an economic policy based on a journey toward zero carbon and incentives for other areas with a clear environmental benefit - oddly enough, there are those who might argue current change in working practices might have considerable environmental benefits going forward.
If I were advising the Party, I would say "clear your mind" (yes, I know) and then "imagine life in 2030s Liberal Britain" and work backward. While we'd all like to live in such a utopia where the weather is always nice and no one has the wobbles, the practicalities of utopia need to be fleshed out.
I'd start with some basics close to my heart - what will it be like to live and work in that Britain, how will we see or be seen by the rest of the world and what will it be like to grow old in that Britain?
The trouble with the Lib Dems is they are ultimately the Labour Party on holiday. When they move to the right, support ebbs away.
Do you think a fairly moderate right of centre former Conservative member would be welcome in the Lib Dems as it now is? I highly doubt it.
With Labour moderates flocking to rejoin the party, the Lib Dems will struggle to build grass roots support.
Not true though. Both in terms of MP defections and also votes, the biggest vote gains in 2019 were disaffected Tory Remainers..
Seems strange London should see one quarter of the deaths of New York City while having nearly twice the infection rate.
Someone's not measuring this right.
That's not necessarily true.
First, viral load matters. It may be that New York has some particular features, say high rise blocks with crowded lifts where people all press the same buttons, and where received viral loads could be very high.
Secondly, demographics matter. London has a median age of 33.8 (apparently), Queens is 39.2. And older Londoners don't tend to live in high rises.
Thirdly, the UK has better public health provision and better social services. Sick people will have tried to go out to work in New York in a way that won't have happened in London.
Now, do all these things add up to a 3x difference? Seems unlikely. But it's certainly possible.
If you want to see why NYC got hit hard, one of the New Statesman issues from mid-March gave a perfect explanation - the magazine ran a series from correspondents across major cities on how people were dealing with CV. The NYC correspondent talked about the "resilience" of New Yorkers who were still crowding into bars and packed theatres even as emergency warnings were issued. Add that to the general population density and - boom.
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, stay alert is meaningless.
You keep alert my maintaining the 2m distance, not touching things unnecessarily and washing your hands.
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
Yes I may be a complete nincompoop because it makes no sense to me, but believe it or not there are even more stupid people out there who it also means nothing too.
A clear instruction like 'wash your hands' doesn't mean you have to, you are not being forced to by a micro-managing dictatorship, but the smallprint indicates why it is a good idea to wash your hands, it might prevent you dying horribly from the transmission of Coronavirus.
Yes you are a complete nincompoop.
It means think and be sensible. Stay home if you can, if you're going out then don't touch things, don't touch your face, don't join crowds and wash your hands.
Use your own head. Is that difficult?
You have had to explain what it means to me, because it is a very poor message. As I have demonstrated fools don't understand what it means.
I may be irredeemably stupid, but there are millions of us out there. We need clear instructions that we can understand and act upon or disregard as we see fit.
No you don't need clear instructions you need to think. You're an adult. Think.
So when I am disorientated in the supermarket because I am staying alert and thinking (as you have suggested) about how to deal with all these hazards, I could inadvertently crash into you and we are both up the creek with Coronavirus!
As I have to work (or should that be "work" for a living), I couldn't join this morning's discussion on the LD leadership.
For the first time in 40 years, I don't have, as the Americans put it, "any skin in the game".
Oddly enough, I'm not sure it matters very much who becomes leader. The Party has to find a new post-Brexit positioning relative to (as always) the two main parties. I do think there's room for a fiscally prudent party of the centre or centre-right to act as counterweight to Starmonism (too soon?) or at least to be a counterweight to the two high-borrowing social democratic parties.
The problem with that is, as the 1950s Liberals found, there's little electoral support in economic realism while giving away money remains as popular as ever.
I could imagine the party embracing more green policies in the coming years but not eco-authoritarianism but rather an economic policy based on a journey toward zero carbon and incentives for other areas with a clear environmental benefit - oddly enough, there are those who might argue current change in working practices might have considerable environmental benefits going forward.
If I were advising the Party, I would say "clear your mind" (yes, I know) and then "imagine life in 2030s Liberal Britain" and work backward. While we'd all like to live in such a utopia where the weather is always nice and no one has the wobbles, the practicalities of utopia need to be fleshed out.
I'd start with some basics close to my heart - what will it be like to live and work in that Britain, how will we see or be seen by the rest of the world and what will it be like to grow old in that Britain?
The trouble with the Lib Dems is they are ultimately the Labour Party on holiday. When they move to the right, support ebbs away.
Do you think a fairly moderate right of centre former Conservative member would be welcome in the Lib Dems as it now is? I highly doubt it.
With Labour moderates flocking to rejoin the party, the Lib Dems will struggle to build grass roots support.
Not true though. Both in terms of MP defections and also votes, the biggest vote gains in 2019 were disaffected Tory Remainers..
In fairness, the majority of vaguely sane floating voters had already abandoned Labour before that, except for a brief flirtation in 2017.
Johnson arrived just nicely in time to push the waverers to the Liberal Democrats.
Or would have done, if the Cupid stunts had stood in every seat, e.g. Cannock Chase.
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, stay alert is meaningless.
You keep alert my maintaining the 2m distance, not touching things unnecessarily and washing your hands.
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
Yes I may be a complete nincompoop because it makes no sense to me, but believe it or not there are even more stupid people out there who it also means nothing too.
A clear instruction like 'wash your hands' doesn't mean you have to, you are not being forced to by a micro-managing dictatorship, but the smallprint indicates why it is a good idea to wash your hands, it might prevent you dying horribly from the transmission of Coronavirus.
Yes you are a complete nincompoop.
It means think and be sensible. Stay home if you can, if you're going out then don't touch things, don't touch your face, don't join crowds and wash your hands.
Use your own head. Is that difficult?
You have had to explain what it means to me, because it is a very poor message. As I have demonstrated fools don't understand what it means.
I may be irredeemably stupid, but there are millions of us out there. We need clear instructions that we can understand and act upon or disregard as we see fit.
No you don't need clear instructions you need to think. You're an adult. Think.
So when I am disorientated in the supermarket because I am staying alert and thinking (as you have suggested) about how to deal with all these hazards, I could inadvertently crash into you and we are both up the creek with Coronavirus!
If you get disorientated from thinking then maybe wear a bicycle helmet when you go out like Kelso from That '70s Show.
Won't help with the Rona but it might help you anyway.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
His conclusions are much as one would have just guessed at anyway.
Research that states the obvious isn't so helpful. If you've set yourself up as an expert in the crisis and you're stating the obvious then it's probably not the best time to arse about.
Hollywood has all sorts of neglected scientists that come good in a crisis - we, so far as I can tell, have neglected scientists that should have been more neglected.
In defence of Professor Pantsdown, many weeks ago (Feb? Early March?) I was roundly ridiculed on here by the USUAL SUSPECTS when I quoted Ferguson’s “reasonable worst case scenario” of 500,000 deaths in the UK if this disease was left unchecked.
Right now we have maybe 60,000 excess deaths, and about 10% of the population infected.
On this basis, if 50-70% of us got infected, 300,000-450,000 would die. Maybe more due to an inflamed health system.
So Ferguson was correct.
You moved it up to 2m.
Tedious.
Go back to my original post where I said this. I can remember it distinctly. It was either Feb or early March when the rest of you were asking me to shut up about this weird bug from China.
I formulated reasonable worst case scenarios, and extreme worst case scenarios, based on the info we then had coming out of Wuhan.
The variable was the CFR. Hubei implied 1%. Wuhan implied 3-4%. R seemed to be 3 to 4.
In an extreme worst case scenario, where the CFR was Wuhan’s 3-4% and 50% or more got infected and no mitigation was done then 2m was possible.
Go find the comment. Knock yerself out.
Not sure how to quote from old threads but this is your "mid range" scenario on 3 March
"The next person to say that to me will get slapped - by a glove on the end of a long stick. If Italy's death rate of 3.1% comes to pass, and 50% of Brits get infected (mid range scenario) that's a million dead Britons."
"FPT for philip T Worst case scenario is 2m dead in the UK, if we get 70% infected and a 4% Wuhan style death rate. These are not my made up numbers, they are the numbers given by every epidemiologist out there. 2m dead as a worst case scenario is somewhere beyond “a bad flu season”"
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
I think epidemics tend to burn out after 3-4 months, even without immunity.
Take for example the Spanish Flu. There were 3 waves, but even then it is estimated that 30-40% caught it across all the waves. Avoidance, whether intentional or not, protects quite a few folk. The same is true for cholera outbreaks in Victorian London.
10-15% immunity and the wave being nearly over is not incompatible.
If 15% of colds are coronaviruses, and confer some immunity, how many people are likely to have had one recently enough to gain some immunity?
It would be funny* if the advice to keep washing hands turned out to be counterproductive in the long run, because it weakened average levels of population immunity.
*not really
Well Austraia (late autumn there of course) is having by far its lightest flu season in years.
This seems underrated in the search for why R is dropping. If it is spread (mostly) by coughing then the huge drop we are seeing in other colds and flus seems really important.
Surely we should be tracking and reporting the levels of all cold and flus to better understand the transmission and put us in a better place to avoid a second peak when colds and flus start again in a few months time.
Anyone who is interested in Covid19 (who isn’t?) should read Laura Spinner’s PALE RIDER. It is the best one volume history of the Spanish Flu.
It’s an adept and readable history, full of diverting anecdotes, but today it is more than that: it is absorbingly relevant.
Here’s just one fact: Australia out performed during Spanish flu, as well. It was the biggest major economy to largely if not totally escape the first and second waves. Minimal harm. Strict maritime quarantine.
Their mistake was to reopen too early, and they got caught by the third wave. But they still did better than anyone else of similar importance.
Isolated country with low population density does well in pandemic shocker.
You miss the point. Lots of island nations in Spanish Flu did terriblY. Samoa is a great example: more than a fifth of the population died. Almost Black Death proportions.
Australia has maybe a folk memory of how to react to pandemics. I wish we did.
No Australia is just isolated, low density and massive. If you at any one point have a million or two Britons on holiday then a vast, vast proportion of them will be overseas. In Italy etc
If you have same proportion of Australians on holiday then the overwhelming majority would be holidaying elsewhere in Australia.
No. Quite quite wrong. Insularity is no guarantee of avoiding a pandemic.
I suggest you read PALE RIDER. Lots of isolated and island communities were devastated by Spanish Flu. Some recorded death rates of 30, 40%.
A strict quarantine seems to be the key. Which is easier if you are a big island, but that is neither necessary nor sufficient in itself.
Can you give examples of isolated, massive and low density ones please?
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, stay alert is meaningless.
You keep alert my maintaining the 2m distance, not touching things unnecessarily and washing your hands.
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
Yes I may be a complete nincompoop because it makes no sense to me, but believe it or not there are even more stupid people out there who it also means nothing too.
A clear instruction like 'wash your hands' doesn't mean you have to, you are not being forced to by a micro-managing dictatorship, but the smallprint indicates why it is a good idea to wash your hands, it might prevent you dying horribly from the transmission of Coronavirus.
Yes you are a complete nincompoop.
It means think and be sensible. Stay home if you can, if you're going out then don't touch things, don't touch your face, don't join crowds and wash your hands.
Use your own head. Is that difficult?
What happened to the suggestion that the Alert in Stay Alert was going to be an acronym until the government changed the advice but kept the slogan?
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
I think epidemics tend to burn out after 3-4 months, even without immunity.
Take for example the Spanish Flu. There were 3 waves, but even then it is estimated that 30-40% caught it across all the waves. Avoidance, whether intentional or not, protects quite a few folk. The same is true for cholera outbreaks in Victorian London.
10-15% immunity and the wave being nearly over is not incompatible.
If 15% of colds are coronaviruses, and confer some immunity, how many people are likely to have had one recently enough to gain some immunity?
It would be funny* if the advice to keep washing hands turned out to be counterproductive in the long run, because it weakened average levels of population immunity.
*not really
Well Austraia (late autumn there of course) is having by far its lightest flu season in years.
This seems underrated in the search for why R is dropping. If it is spread (mostly) by coughing then the huge drop we are seeing in other colds and flus seems really important.
Surely we should be tracking and reporting the levels of all cold and flus to better understand the transmission and put us in a better place to avoid a second peak when colds and flus start again in a few months time.
It is possible that social distancing, handwashing etc is having more effect on colds and flu than the coronavirus.
How about a 2 week lockdown every year to minimise cold and flu? Could the benefits outweigh the costs?
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
His conclusions are much as one would have just guessed at anyway.
Research that states the obvious isn't so helpful. If you've set yourself up as an expert in the crisis and you're stating the obvious then it's probably not the best time to arse about.
Hollywood has all sorts of neglected scientists that come good in a crisis - we, so far as I can tell, have neglected scientists that should have been more neglected.
In defence of Professor Pantsdown, many weeks ago (Feb? Early March?) I was roundly ridiculed on here by the USUAL SUSPECTS when I quoted Ferguson’s “reasonable worst case scenario” of 500,000 deaths in the UK if this disease was left unchecked.
Right now we have maybe 60,000 excess deaths, and about 10% of the population infected.
On this basis, if 50-70% of us got infected, 300,000-450,000 would die. Maybe more due to an inflamed health system.
So Ferguson was correct.
You moved it up to 2m.
Tedious.
Go back to my original post where I said this. I can remember it distinctly. It was either Feb or early March when the rest of you were asking me to shut up about this weird bug from China.
I formulated reasonable worst case scenarios, and extreme worst case scenarios, based on the info we then had coming out of Wuhan.
The variable was the CFR. Hubei implied 1%. Wuhan implied 3-4%. R seemed to be 3 to 4.
In an extreme worst case scenario, where the CFR was Wuhan’s 3-4% and 50% or more got infected and no mitigation was done then 2m was possible.
Go find the comment. Knock yerself out.
Not sure how to quote from old threads but this is your "mid range" scenario on 3 March
"The next person to say that to me will get slapped - by a glove on the end of a long stick. If Italy's death rate of 3.1% comes to pass, and 50% of Brits get infected (mid range scenario) that's a million dead Britons."
"FPT for philip T Worst case scenario is 2m dead in the UK, if we get 70% infected and a 4% Wuhan style death rate. These are not my made up numbers, they are the numbers given by every epidemiologist out there. 2m dead as a worst case scenario is somewhere beyond “a bad flu season”"
One of the long term implications of corona is how people fed up with the terrible mainstream news coverage have turned to alternative news sources.
This is the most interesting thing I've read on the crisis for a while, even though I suppose I am a lockdown sceptic.
Its also interesting that prof Gupta chose Unherd to do this interview. But her analysis is persuasive.
It is a good video, addressing head on the issue I raised here this morning.
The irony is that, if she is right, the government’s initial ‘shield the elderly whilst everyone else carries on’ policy, which lasted only days until the Imperial model blew it out of the water, would have been the correct one.
Absolutely. And why are Oxford going public today? because they are more convinced than ever their analysis is right. They have followed the patterns in every case and they are the same.
The illness runs out of steam very quickly but leaves few with antibodies.
Why? because enormous amounts of people have a natural immunity.
If right, its astonishing stuff.
Isn't it obvious why the infection runs out of steam (hint: millions of people don't leave their home anymore). Don't the rates of illness and death in closed systems like cruise ships tell us that it's unlikely that we've all had it without noticing?
This was put to Gupta in the interview, and she pointed out that the demographics of a cruise ship are unusually vulnerable.
Also remember that in that environment, many of the passengers will have been exposed to the virus over and over. Rather like those people in the ski chalet at the beginning of the outbreak. Yet very many of them walked away unaffected.
I guess the millions of antibody tests the government has ordered will in the end prove Gupta right or wrong.
If she's right then the antibody levels will actually be quite low even as deaths fall and we lift lock down.
Even among the portion of the general population that precisely matches the demographic profile of the people on the cruise ship (relatively well off people over 50), the % exhibiting symptoms is way lower than for the cruise ship passengers (otherwise we would have millions of reported cases) while the % of deaths among symptomatic patients is more or less the same. That suggests that the difference is exposure to the virus not differences in natural immunity. The argument that the people on the cruise ship were exposed to the virus a lot more is precisely the one I am making: the lockdown has slashed exposure and halted the spread. I don't think there is any evidence that contradicts the rather boring but obvious explanation.
Maybe, but perhaps the cruise ship is a tiny sample compared to looking at what has happened the world over. I don;t know, but I agree Gupta was less than convincing on that. Ditto, the US prisons examples. Huge infection rates in enclosed spaces.
Oxford's central argument is that the disease follows almost exactly the same pattern whatever lockdown regime is in place, and however quickly its removed. And that's looking a huge sample compared to yours. That presupposes a large group for whom the disease is 'whatever'.
If you're right then, logically, we should remain in a severe lockdown until there's a vaccine.
Others haven't, and they are not seeing a cruise ship explosion, despite low antibody readings.
Gupta was confident enough to predict the disease is done in Britain. We shall see.
I think that the degree to which countries differ in their lockdowns is exaggerated. Sweden and the UK, for instance, have broadly similar measures in place according to the Oxford University stringency index, despite us having a lockdown and them not having a lockdown, according to the popular narrative. Countries where there is really much less of a lockdown, such as the US, are not seeing the outbreak subsiding (if you strip out NY, NJ and CT from the US data, both deaths and reported cases are not down much from their peaks). I would imagine the R is quite low in much of the US anyway, owing to low population density and not much public transport. It's instructive that the major outbreak was in NYC, which has an unusually high public transport usage and population density by US standards. I think we will have to keep some measures in place for some time, but with proper testing and tracing we can be a lot smarter and more selective, especially now the rates of infection are down so much. In London it's virtually eradicated.
Amusingly as well while the rest of us were talking about the virus just not 100% of the time eadric seemed particularly pissed off when the conversation drifted onto other subjects that matter like care homes. He'd even rant regularly "you guys keep talking about care homes" when we weren't even talking about care homes.
I think hindsight is certainly showing us that care homes are an important subject.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
His conclusions are much as one would have just guessed at anyway.
Research that states the obvious isn't so helpful. If you've set yourself up as an expert in the crisis and you're stating the obvious then it's probably not the best time to arse about.
Hollywood has all sorts of neglected scientists that come good in a crisis - we, so far as I can tell, have neglected scientists that should have been more neglected.
In defence of Professor Pantsdown, many weeks ago (Feb? Early March?) I was roundly ridiculed on here by the USUAL SUSPECTS when I quoted Ferguson’s “reasonable worst case scenario” of 500,000 deaths in the UK if this disease was left unchecked.
Right now we have maybe 60,000 excess deaths, and about 10% of the population infected.
On this basis, if 50-70% of us got infected, 300,000-450,000 would die. Maybe more due to an inflamed health system.
So Ferguson was correct.
You moved it up to 2m.
Tedious.
Go back to my original post where I said this. I can remember it distinctly. It was either Feb or early March when the rest of you were asking me to shut up about this weird bug from China.
I formulated reasonable worst case scenarios, and extreme worst case scenarios, based on the info we then had coming out of Wuhan.
The variable was the CFR. Hubei implied 1%. Wuhan implied 3-4%. R seemed to be 3 to 4.
In an extreme worst case scenario, where the CFR was Wuhan’s 3-4% and 50% or more got infected and no mitigation was done then 2m was possible.
Go find the comment. Knock yerself out.
Not sure how to quote from old threads but this is your "mid range" scenario on 3 March
"The next person to say that to me will get slapped - by a glove on the end of a long stick. If Italy's death rate of 3.1% comes to pass, and 50% of Brits get infected (mid range scenario) that's a million dead Britons."
"FPT for philip T Worst case scenario is 2m dead in the UK, if we get 70% infected and a 4% Wuhan style death rate. These are not my made up numbers, they are the numbers given by every epidemiologist out there. 2m dead as a worst case scenario is somewhere beyond “a bad flu season”"
Apology? Or just deny you made the posts again next week?
If you go back a little bit further (to early Feb) you'll find him calling the virus "kindly". This was a week after even Trump was talking seriously about travel bans.
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, stay alert is meaningless.
You keep alert my maintaining the 2m distance, not touching things unnecessarily and washing your hands.
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
Yes I may be a complete nincompoop because it makes no sense to me, but believe it or not there are even more stupid people out there who it also means nothing too.
A clear instruction like 'wash your hands' doesn't mean you have to, you are not being forced to by a micro-managing dictatorship, but the smallprint indicates why it is a good idea to wash your hands, it might prevent you dying horribly from the transmission of Coronavirus.
Yes you are a complete nincompoop.
It means think and be sensible. Stay home if you can, if you're going out then don't touch things, don't touch your face, don't join crowds and wash your hands.
Use your own head. Is that difficult?
What happened to the suggestion that the Alert in Stay Alert was going to be an acronym until the government changed the advice but kept the slogan?
No idea. Those backronyms are always corny as anything. I think the only good one is Act FAST for strokes.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
I think epidemics tend to burn out after 3-4 months, even without immunity.
Take for example the Spanish Flu. There were 3 waves, but even then it is estimated that 30-40% caught it across all the waves. Avoidance, whether intentional or not, protects quite a few folk. The same is true for cholera outbreaks in Victorian London.
10-15% immunity and the wave being nearly over is not incompatible.
I don't know about cholera, but in the case of Spanish Flu isn't it just because it isn't that infectious? I recall flu has an R0 of around 1.5-1.8, so 30-40% of the population gets to herd immunity.
I'm really not sold on the idea that epidemics tend to burn out, without there being a mechanism -- herd immunity, the effect of climate and season, eradication, widespread natural or cross-immunity (which is herd immunity by another route) -- that we can point to.
The thing is, I don't object to her claim that there *might* be widespread natural immunity. However there is no evidence, and her argument of parsimony is extremely weak. To advocate policy on the basis of something that is conceivable but unevidenced, and which if wrong will kill people, is really irresponsible in my view.
--AS
I think there is some evidence that herd immunity will be reached before 60% infection.
1. The difference in infection rates in China for people with blood type O and A suggests that the pool of uninfected people will be increasingly O, and therefore slightly harder to infect.
2. There seems to be some evidence that people who had recently had coronavirus variants of the common cold have additional immunity.
Put them together, and it may be that the most infectable (sorry, ugly, unreal word) have seen more incidence.
This would point to herd immunity being 45-50%, mind, not 15%.
The difference in susceptibility between blood groups was statistically significant, meaning simply that it was 95% unlikely not to be due to random error. But it wasn’t what anyone would call mathematically significant.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
I think epidemics tend to burn out after 3-4 months, even without immunity.
Take for example the Spanish Flu. There were 3 waves, but even then it is estimated that 30-40% caught it across all the waves. Avoidance, whether intentional or not, protects quite a few folk. The same is true for cholera outbreaks in Victorian London.
10-15% immunity and the wave being nearly over is not incompatible.
If 15% of colds are coronaviruses, and confer some immunity, how many people are likely to have had one recently enough to gain some immunity?
It would be funny* if the advice to keep washing hands turned out to be counterproductive in the long run, because it weakened average levels of population immunity.
*not really
Well Austraia (late autumn there of course) is having by far its lightest flu season in years.
This seems underrated in the search for why R is dropping. If it is spread (mostly) by coughing then the huge drop we are seeing in other colds and flus seems really important.
Surely we should be tracking and reporting the levels of all cold and flus to better understand the transmission and put us in a better place to avoid a second peak when colds and flus start again in a few months time.
It is possible that social distancing, handwashing etc is having more effect on colds and flu than the coronavirus.
How about a 2 week lockdown every year to minimise cold and flu? Could the benefits outweigh the costs?
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
His conclusions are much as one would have just guessed at anyway.
Research that states the obvious isn't so helpful. If you've set yourself up as an expert in the crisis and you're stating the obvious then it's probably not the best time to arse about.
Hollywood has all sorts of neglected scientists that come good in a crisis - we, so far as I can tell, have neglected scientists that should have been more neglected.
In defence of Professor Pantsdown, many weeks ago (Feb? Early March?) I was roundly ridiculed on here by the USUAL SUSPECTS when I quoted Ferguson’s “reasonable worst case scenario” of 500,000 deaths in the UK if this disease was left unchecked.
Right now we have maybe 60,000 excess deaths, and about 10% of the population infected.
On this basis, if 50-70% of us got infected, 300,000-450,000 would die. Maybe more due to an inflamed health system.
So Ferguson was correct.
You moved it up to 2m.
Tedious.
Go back to my original post where I said this. I can remember it distinctly. It was either Feb or early March when the rest of you were asking me to shut up about this weird bug from China.
I formulated reasonable worst case scenarios, and extreme worst case scenarios, based on the info we then had coming out of Wuhan.
The variable was the CFR. Hubei implied 1%. Wuhan implied 3-4%. R seemed to be 3 to 4.
In an extreme worst case scenario, where the CFR was Wuhan’s 3-4% and 50% or more got infected and no mitigation was done then 2m was possible.
Go find the comment. Knock yerself out.
Not sure how to quote from old threads but this is your "mid range" scenario on 3 March
"The next person to say that to me will get slapped - by a glove on the end of a long stick. If Italy's death rate of 3.1% comes to pass, and 50% of Brits get infected (mid range scenario) that's a million dead Britons."
"FPT for philip T Worst case scenario is 2m dead in the UK, if we get 70% infected and a 4% Wuhan style death rate. These are not my made up numbers, they are the numbers given by every epidemiologist out there. 2m dead as a worst case scenario is somewhere beyond “a bad flu season”"
Apology? Or just deny you made the posts again next week?
Apologies? Are you kidding? You just saved me weeks of searching my most prescient posts for the purposes of my self adoring memoir.
Thankyou,
Can we all just pause to look at the dates? March 3. Feb 28. By then, I was entirely aware of the gravity of the situation. The rest of you were wanking on about Lib Dem leadership battles and the scandal of the upcoming Wood Burning Stove Legislation
PB owes me a fucking medal
35k deaths are much closer to a bad flu season than they are to 2 million deaths.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
His conclusions are much as one would have just guessed at anyway.
Research that states the obvious isn't so helpful. If you've set yourself up as an expert in the crisis and you're stating the obvious then it's probably not the best time to arse about.
Hollywood has all sorts of neglected scientists that come good in a crisis - we, so far as I can tell, have neglected scientists that should have been more neglected.
In defence of Professor Pantsdown, many weeks ago (Feb? Early March?) I was roundly ridiculed on here by the USUAL SUSPECTS when I quoted Ferguson’s “reasonable worst case scenario” of 500,000 deaths in the UK if this disease was left unchecked.
Right now we have maybe 60,000 excess deaths, and about 10% of the population infected.
On this basis, if 50-70% of us got infected, 300,000-450,000 would die. Maybe more due to an inflamed health system.
So Ferguson was correct.
You moved it up to 2m.
Tedious.
Go back to my original post where I said this. I can remember it distinctly. It was either Feb or early March when the rest of you were asking me to shut up about this weird bug from China.
I formulated reasonable worst case scenarios, and extreme worst case scenarios, based on the info we then had coming out of Wuhan.
The variable was the CFR. Hubei implied 1%. Wuhan implied 3-4%. R seemed to be 3 to 4.
In an extreme worst case scenario, where the CFR was Wuhan’s 3-4% and 50% or more got infected and no mitigation was done then 2m was possible.
Go find the comment. Knock yerself out.
Not sure how to quote from old threads but this is your "mid range" scenario on 3 March
"The next person to say that to me will get slapped - by a glove on the end of a long stick. If Italy's death rate of 3.1% comes to pass, and 50% of Brits get infected (mid range scenario) that's a million dead Britons."
"FPT for philip T Worst case scenario is 2m dead in the UK, if we get 70% infected and a 4% Wuhan style death rate. These are not my made up numbers, they are the numbers given by every epidemiologist out there. 2m dead as a worst case scenario is somewhere beyond “a bad flu season”"
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
His conclusions are much as one would have just guessed at anyway.
Research that states the obvious isn't so helpful. If you've set yourself up as an expert in the crisis and you're stating the obvious then it's probably not the best time to arse about.
Hollywood has all sorts of neglected scientists that come good in a crisis - we, so far as I can tell, have neglected scientists that should have been more neglected.
In defence of Professor Pantsdown, many weeks ago (Feb? Early March?) I was roundly ridiculed on here by the USUAL SUSPECTS when I quoted Ferguson’s “reasonable worst case scenario” of 500,000 deaths in the UK if this disease was left unchecked.
Right now we have maybe 60,000 excess deaths, and about 10% of the population infected.
On this basis, if 50-70% of us got infected, 300,000-450,000 would die. Maybe more due to an inflamed health system.
So Ferguson was correct.
You moved it up to 2m.
Tedious.
Go back to my original post where I said this. I can remember it distinctly. It was either Feb or early March when the rest of you were asking me to shut up about this weird bug from China.
I formulated reasonable worst case scenarios, and extreme worst case scenarios, based on the info we then had coming out of Wuhan.
The variable was the CFR. Hubei implied 1%. Wuhan implied 3-4%. R seemed to be 3 to 4.
In an extreme worst case scenario, where the CFR was Wuhan’s 3-4% and 50% or more got infected and no mitigation was done then 2m was possible.
Go find the comment. Knock yerself out.
Not sure how to quote from old threads but this is your "mid range" scenario on 3 March
"The next person to say that to me will get slapped - by a glove on the end of a long stick. If Italy's death rate of 3.1% comes to pass, and 50% of Brits get infected (mid range scenario) that's a million dead Britons."
"FPT for philip T Worst case scenario is 2m dead in the UK, if we get 70% infected and a 4% Wuhan style death rate. These are not my made up numbers, they are the numbers given by every epidemiologist out there. 2m dead as a worst case scenario is somewhere beyond “a bad flu season”"
Apology? Or just deny you made the posts again next week?
If you go back a little bit further (to early Feb) you'll find him calling the virus "kindly". This was a week after even Trump was talking seriously about travel bans.
He’s just full of shit, and simply tries to rely on people not remembering the rubbish he has posted up here.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
His conclusions are much as one would have just guessed at anyway.
Research that states the obvious isn't so helpful. If you've set yourself up as an expert in the crisis and you're stating the obvious then it's probably not the best time to arse about.
Hollywood has all sorts of neglected scientists that come good in a crisis - we, so far as I can tell, have neglected scientists that should have been more neglected.
In defence of Professor Pantsdown, many weeks ago (Feb? Early March?) I was roundly ridiculed on here by the USUAL SUSPECTS when I quoted Ferguson’s “reasonable worst case scenario” of 500,000 deaths in the UK if this disease was left unchecked.
Right now we have maybe 60,000 excess deaths, and about 10% of the population infected.
On this basis, if 50-70% of us got infected, 300,000-450,000 would die. Maybe more due to an inflamed health system.
So Ferguson was correct.
You moved it up to 2m.
Tedious.
Go back to my original post where I said this. I can remember it distinctly. It was either Feb or early March when the rest of you were asking me to shut up about this weird bug from China.
I formulated reasonable worst case scenarios, and extreme worst case scenarios, based on the info we then had coming out of Wuhan.
The variable was the CFR. Hubei implied 1%. Wuhan implied 3-4%. R seemed to be 3 to 4.
In an extreme worst case scenario, where the CFR was Wuhan’s 3-4% and 50% or more got infected and no mitigation was done then 2m was possible.
Go find the comment. Knock yerself out.
Not sure how to quote from old threads but this is your "mid range" scenario on 3 March
"The next person to say that to me will get slapped - by a glove on the end of a long stick. If Italy's death rate of 3.1% comes to pass, and 50% of Brits get infected (mid range scenario) that's a million dead Britons."
"FPT for philip T Worst case scenario is 2m dead in the UK, if we get 70% infected and a 4% Wuhan style death rate. These are not my made up numbers, they are the numbers given by every epidemiologist out there. 2m dead as a worst case scenario is somewhere beyond “a bad flu season”"
Apology? Or just deny you made the posts again next week?
Apologies? Are you kidding? You just saved me weeks of searching my most prescient posts for the purposes of my self adoring memoir.
Thankyou,
Can we all just pause to look at the dates? March 3. Feb 28. By then, I was entirely aware of the gravity of the situation. The rest of you were wanking on about Lib Dem leadership battles and the scandal of the upcoming Wood Burning Stove Legislation
PB owes me a fucking medal
Well on the same thread DavidL just as one mainstream example estimated 65k UK deaths which looks pretty prescient now. Which of you is closer?
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
(Hello AlwaysSinging)
Piling on academics is precisely what we should do. If you want to sit in the sun during the good times and tell us that you'll be an expert if problems arise you'd better be pretty damned good when problems actually do arise. Ferguson seems not to have been such.
His private behaviour aside (which does indeed merit criticism), what has Ferguson actually done wrong? Haven't his models been moderately accurate, so far? Was there an error in his science?
I did read his papers and have some understanding of such things, and I didn't see much to criticize. LSHTM, who also have an excellent epidemiology group, came to similar conclusions. I don't care for the Imperial group's taste for publicity, I must admit.
--AS
His conclusions are much as one would have just guessed at anyway.
Research that states the obvious isn't so helpful. If you've set yourself up as an expert in the crisis and you're stating the obvious then it's probably not the best time to arse about.
Hollywood has all sorts of neglected scientists that come good in a crisis - we, so far as I can tell, have neglected scientists that should have been more neglected.
In defence of Professor Pantsdown, many weeks ago (Feb? Early March?) I was roundly ridiculed on here by the USUAL SUSPECTS when I quoted Ferguson’s “reasonable worst case scenario” of 500,000 deaths in the UK if this disease was left unchecked.
Right now we have maybe 60,000 excess deaths, and about 10% of the population infected.
On this basis, if 50-70% of us got infected, 300,000-450,000 would die. Maybe more due to an inflamed health system.
So Ferguson was correct.
You moved it up to 2m.
Tedious.
Go back to my original post where I said this. I can remember it distinctly. It was either Feb or early March when the rest of you were asking me to shut up about this weird bug from China.
I formulated reasonable worst case scenarios, and extreme worst case scenarios, based on the info we then had coming out of Wuhan.
The variable was the CFR. Hubei implied 1%. Wuhan implied 3-4%. R seemed to be 3 to 4.
In an extreme worst case scenario, where the CFR was Wuhan’s 3-4% and 50% or more got infected and no mitigation was done then 2m was possible.
Go find the comment. Knock yerself out.
Not sure how to quote from old threads but this is your "mid range" scenario on 3 March
"The next person to say that to me will get slapped - by a glove on the end of a long stick. If Italy's death rate of 3.1% comes to pass, and 50% of Brits get infected (mid range scenario) that's a million dead Britons."
"FPT for philip T Worst case scenario is 2m dead in the UK, if we get 70% infected and a 4% Wuhan style death rate. These are not my made up numbers, they are the numbers given by every epidemiologist out there. 2m dead as a worst case scenario is somewhere beyond “a bad flu season”"
Apology? Or just deny you made the posts again next week?
Apologies? Are you kidding? You just saved me weeks of searching my most prescient posts for the purposes of my self adoring memoir.
Thankyou,
Can we all just pause to look at the dates? March 3. Feb 28. By then, I was entirely aware of the gravity of the situation. The rest of you were wanking on about Lib Dem leadership battles and the scandal of the upcoming Wood Burning Stove Legislation
PB owes me a fucking medal
Well on the same thread DavidL just as one mainstream example estimated 65k UK deaths which looks pretty prescient now. Which of you is closer?
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
I think epidemics tend to burn out after 3-4 months, even without immunity.
Take for example the Spanish Flu. There were 3 waves, but even then it is estimated that 30-40% caught it across all the waves. Avoidance, whether intentional or not, protects quite a few folk. The same is true for cholera outbreaks in Victorian London.
10-15% immunity and the wave being nearly over is not incompatible.
If 15% of colds are coronaviruses, and confer some immunity, how many people are likely to have had one recently enough to gain some immunity?
It would be funny* if the advice to keep washing hands turned out to be counterproductive in the long run, because it weakened average levels of population immunity.
*not really
Well Austraia (late autumn there of course) is having by far its lightest flu season in years.
This seems underrated in the search for why R is dropping. If it is spread (mostly) by coughing then the huge drop we are seeing in other colds and flus seems really important.
Surely we should be tracking and reporting the levels of all cold and flus to better understand the transmission and put us in a better place to avoid a second peak when colds and flus start again in a few months time.
It is possible that social distancing, handwashing etc is having more effect on colds and flu than the coronavirus.
How about a 2 week lockdown every year to minimise cold and flu? Could the benefits outweigh the costs?
Over Christmas perhaps.
Yes but would definitely allow family bubbles if then. Closing restaurants, non essential shops, sport and offices could be done without anything like the pain of a longer unplanned lockdown.
I posted a while ago (before my account reset for some reason) about Gupta's paper and her interview in the FT. I wasn't impressed, particularly with her interview that drew conclusions way beyond the science.
I'm similarly unimpressed by her intervention today. As Foxy already pointed out, it's a nonsense to claim that the IFR might be as long as 1/10000 unless she thinks that most confirmed coronavirus deaths were misattributed. Futhermore, the abstract of her paper made a big deal of the need for serological studies (the one thing it got right was to show how one could infer a distribution for the date-of-arrival of the virus once we know the cumulative number of infections). But today she says that serological studies are unreliable and shouldn't be used.
I do not like to pile on academics. Their expertise deserves respect. I think much of the criticism of Ferguson was unfair. I don't know whether there's a new paper (if anyone has a link, please send it to me and I will review) justifying today's assertions, but absent some powerful evidence I think Gupta is doing scientists a disservice and should stop with the unfounded policy interventions.
--AS
I think epidemics tend to burn out after 3-4 months, even without immunity.
Take for example the Spanish Flu. There were 3 waves, but even then it is estimated that 30-40% caught it across all the waves. Avoidance, whether intentional or not, protects quite a few folk. The same is true for cholera outbreaks in Victorian London.
10-15% immunity and the wave being nearly over is not incompatible.
If 15% of colds are coronaviruses, and confer some immunity, how many people are likely to have had one recently enough to gain some immunity?
It would be funny* if the advice to keep washing hands turned out to be counterproductive in the long run, because it weakened average levels of population immunity.
*not really
Well Austraia (late autumn there of course) is having by far its lightest flu season in years.
This seems underrated in the search for why R is dropping. If it is spread (mostly) by coughing then the huge drop we are seeing in other colds and flus seems really important.
Surely we should be tracking and reporting the levels of all cold and flus to better understand the transmission and put us in a better place to avoid a second peak when colds and flus start again in a few months time.
It is possible that social distancing, handwashing etc is having more effect on colds and flu than the coronavirus.
How about a 2 week lockdown every year to minimise cold and flu? Could the benefits outweigh the costs?
Over Christmas perhaps.
Yes but would definitely allow family bubbles if then. Closing restaurants, non essential shops, sport and offices could be done without anything like the pain of a longer unplanned lockdown.
You what?
Closing restaurants for 2 weeks in December and won't cause pain?
Following feedback that the 'Stay Alert' message is unclear, the Government has released the following clarifications:
- Stay at home at all times - Go anywhere you want, whenever you want
- It is safe to sit on a beach with 1,000 strangers - It is unsafe to sit in your own garden with a relative
I'm so pleased they've cleared up any confusion.
In reality it is good advice to those who actually leave their homes.
No it's not! It means anything or nothing. What am I to be alert for to keep safe? Speeding buses, erratic cyclists, terrorists, psychopathic killers or maybe those little multi-coloured Coronavirus illustrations as they fly through the air.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, stay alert is meaningless.
You keep alert my maintaining the 2m distance, not touching things unnecessarily and washing your hands.
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
Well government ministers keep telling me to stay alert by staying at home. That is nothing to do with being alert, it is to do with staying at home, my alert levels should naturally be low when Im at home, not high.
I dont want my life micro managed by the government, I want a slogan that is going to be repeated thousands of times to use words that are relevant.
Staying alert is relevant to me as I go to work.
If you don't find it useful then think of your own slogan.
Stay safe.
Which means nothing to me but if you prefer it and it helps you then use it.
Comments
Now if the code were written recently, it may have come with funding conditions that require it to be open sourced. And some journals require this for new publications. But 13 years ago this was not done. We can't hold someone to the standards of today for actions taken back then.
--AS
If such a basic thing is wrong with her argument why should one pay any attention to the rest of it?
or, there are other models, which were not considered.
--AS
Which would be more than 100% to have caught it already?
That anyone could suggest that with a straight face they do not seem like someone to take seriously.
If the models I deal with for financial services companies (which, if I'm being honest, affect the square root of sod all) have to be validated to the nth degree, costing even smallish organisations millions of pounds a year, then it's bonkers that we made multi billion pound decisions on the basis of a model that had, as far as I can tell, no independent review whatsoever.
The 'wash your hands' and the 'stay at home' messaging worked because they were direct instructions, 'stay alert' is meaningless.
He says that he took a coronavirus test today, which came back "positively toward negative".
He said: "I tested very positively in another sense. So this morning, yeah, I tested positively toward negative.
Do you think a fairly moderate right of centre former Conservative member would be welcome in the Lib Dems as it now is? I highly doubt it.
With Labour moderates flocking to rejoin the party, the Lib Dems will struggle to build grass roots support.
Yep, that works.
The British public relaxed its adherence to lockdown restrictions in the weeks before they were officially loosened, according to new data. Across the UK people had already started to make more trips to parks even before Boris Johnson eased restrictions on movement.
On several occasions in recent weeks, people were going to parks at the same rate as they were before the lockdown. The data released by Google compares footfall based on the number of mobile devices detected in settings before and after restrictions were imposed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/21/data-public-uk-relaxed-attitude-lockdown-restrictions
- non-essential businesses open
- schools open (some years only)
- POSSIBLY relaxation of certain social distancing eg one household can visit another at their home
Perhaps that's too complicated and you would prefer to have your life micro-managed by the government.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/21/germany-braced-for-more-protests-against-coronavirus-polices
I dont want my life micro managed by the government, I want a slogan that is going to be repeated thousands of times to use words that are relevant.
A clear instruction like 'wash your hands' doesn't mean you have to, you are not being forced to by a micro-managing dictatorship, but the smallprint indicates why it is a good idea to wash your hands, it might prevent you dying horribly from the transmission of Coronavirus.
And by staying alert to such concepts you are more likely to do them.
It means think and be sensible. Stay home if you can, if you're going out then don't touch things, don't touch your face, don't join crowds and wash your hands.
Use your own head. Is that difficult?
If you don't find it useful then think of your own slogan.
The Party has attracted former Conservatives - it did so in the Thatcher and Major years. That was particularly the case in stronger Conservative areas as you might expect.
The Orange Bookers would be interested in your description of the "Labour Party on holiday" - in addition, the LDs were often the port of call for disaffected Conservatives when that party was in Government so more inaccurate piffle.
As for "grass roots support", we'll see. There have always been islands of strength surrounded by oceans of weakness but all parties have stronger and weaker areas. The Party won 700 seats so there must have been some grassroots strength somewhere and while the GE result was undeniably disappointing, the vote share rose across the board and six seats were lost by less than a thousand,.
Had those been held, Johnson would still be PM with a majority of 72 but Swinson would have survived and been the leader of 17 MPs - still poor but not disastrous.
I wonder what he has in mind for Pete Buttigieg, who was even more accommodating.
Lockdown really depended on two numbers which can be processed in a back-of-the-envelope way, even if you're not convinced by the big model. If R is a lot more than 1, then you get exponential growth and the case numbers go horrible in a few weeks. If the CFR is anything close to 1 %, you have the potential for lots of dead people before the population is broadly immune. It's just about possible to generate graphs with a lot more infection and a lot less death, but you have to work pretty hard to make the numbers work. And it's a curious infection where stopping people moving about doesn't affect the subsequent rate of infection.
I may be irredeemably stupid, but there are millions of us out there. We need clear instructions that we can understand and act upon or disregard as we see fit.
1. The difference in infection rates in China for people with blood type O and A suggests that the pool of uninfected people will be increasingly O, and therefore slightly harder to infect.
2. There seems to be some evidence that people who had recently had coronavirus variants of the common cold have additional immunity.
Put them together, and it may be that the most infectable (sorry, ugly, unreal word) have seen more incidence.
This would point to herd immunity being 45-50%, mind, not 15%.
One of my themes for this year is whether anyone got remotely close to estimating the effects of a 1 in 100 year pandemic.
If you have same proportion of Australians on holiday then the overwhelming majority would be holidaying elsewhere in Australia.
(Youtube doesn’t seem to have a Klobuchar surge KLAXON!)
Johnson arrived just nicely in time to push the waverers to the Liberal Democrats.
Or would have done, if the Cupid stunts had stood in every seat, e.g. Cannock Chase.
Won't help with the Rona but it might help you anyway.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52761228
"The next person to say that to me will get slapped - by a glove on the end of a long stick. If Italy's death rate of 3.1% comes to pass, and 50% of Brits get infected (mid range scenario) that's a million dead Britons."
https://politicalbetting.vanillacommunity.com/discussion/comment/2733537#Comment_2733537
Your worst case scenario form Feb 28th was:
"FPT for philip T
Worst case scenario is 2m dead in the UK, if we get 70% infected and a 4% Wuhan style death rate.
These are not my made up numbers, they are the numbers given by every epidemiologist out there.
2m dead as a worst case scenario is somewhere beyond “a bad flu season”"
https://politicalbetting.vanillacommunity.com/discussion/comment/2727347#Comment_2727347
Apology? Or just deny you made the posts again next week?
After the focus group results were in.
#trumptoast
I think we will have to keep some measures in place for some time, but with proper testing and tracing we can be a lot smarter and more selective, especially now the rates of infection are down so much. In London it's virtually eradicated.
I think hindsight is certainly showing us that care homes are an important subject.
Oh wait ...
* Clue is ends in L not c
He wasn’t Sean of his credibility as a result.
Which is Byronic.
Are those enough puns about one poster?
Good night.
Closing restaurants for 2 weeks in December and won't cause pain?
Have you never been out in December?