In Houston there is mixed news. Covid hospital occupancy increase has slowed right down and they aren't at risk of running out of beds for the foreseeable future but the overall hospitalisation death rate is going up. At the start of the month it was 6.5%, now it is 6.9% and it has been steadily ticking up through July.
Given improvements in treatment you'd expect that to be going down not up.
From what I understand the treatment improvements are not what they are made out to be by the headlines. I've heard the word "marginal" used a lot wrt to remdesivir at least.
There is bound to be some politics involved here. Trump's many enemies have a vested interest in preventing a return to 'normal'
So you're suggesting a conspiracy by doctors in Texas to allow patients to die so that Trump looks bad? Think about what you're saying before you blurt out more rubbish.
That is really not so very different from what I hear from my Trump-supporting friend in Florida. I kid you not.
Surely the plan is that this commission has no credibility with anybody, so that whatever half-arsed recommendations it comes up with can be quietly shelved, like they always are. From this POV Sewell's appointment is entirely logical.
The Scottish Government pointed that out on the day of the bogus announcement. They had spotted that the Barnett Consequentials were pretty much zero: if Scotland, Wales and NI weren’t getting any new money then the only logical conclusion was that neither was England.
How many massive, blatant lies has this prime minister now told? Must be well over the hundred mark. When will journalists start doing their job? Eg BBC?
Or Scotland, Wales and NI would have had a reduced amount of money due to England's underspending but England spent the underspending on other projects as announced meaning you kept your budget without consequentials.
£5.5billion underspend? Keep taking the tablets Philip.
And please do some homework on the Barnett Formula. That post was stunningly embarrassing even by PB’s astonishingly low standards regarding Jock general knowledge.
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
Two of those six are top political talents.
Can we have some clues? I get David Cameron, but who is the second?
The Scottish Government pointed that out on the day of the bogus announcement. They had spotted that the Barnett Consequentials were pretty much zero: if Scotland, Wales and NI weren’t getting any new money then the only logical conclusion was that neither was England.
How many massive, blatant lies has this prime minister now told? Must be well over the hundred mark. When will journalists start doing their job? Eg BBC?
Or Scotland, Wales and NI would have had a reduced amount of money due to England's underspending but England spent the underspending on other projects as announced meaning you kept your budget without consequentials.
£5.5billion underspend? Keep taking the tablets Philip.
And please do some homework on the Barnett Formula. That post was stunningly embarrassing even by PB’s astonishingly low standards regarding Jock general knowledge.
Watching an independent Scotland join the euro and run into the brick wall of the stability pact really would be the most enormous fun.
In Houston there is mixed news. Covid hospital occupancy increase has slowed right down and they aren't at risk of running out of beds for the foreseeable future but the overall hospitalisation death rate is going up. At the start of the month it was 6.5%, now it is 6.9% and it has been steadily ticking up through July.
Given improvements in treatment you'd expect that to be going down not up.
From what I understand the treatment improvements are not what they are made out to be by the headlines. I've heard the word "marginal" used a lot wrt to remdesivir at least.
There is bound to be some politics involved here. Trump's many enemies have a vested interest in preventing a return to 'normal'
So you're suggesting a conspiracy by doctors in Texas to allow patients to die so that Trump looks bad? Think about what you're saying before you blurt out more rubbish.
Good point.
We have a few flatearthers out today.
The most insane conspiracy theory that I have run across is that the authorities are sending out swabs contaminated with coronavirus, thereby deliberately infecting people. Something to do with profiteering by big pharma. A conspiracy so insanely simple is genius.
So hats off to Johnson I suppose, keeping the death rate down to a mere 60,000 (excess death extrapolation) in the face of conspiratorial adversity.
In Houston there is mixed news. Covid hospital occupancy increase has slowed right down and they aren't at risk of running out of beds for the foreseeable future but the overall hospitalisation death rate is going up. At the start of the month it was 6.5%, now it is 6.9% and it has been steadily ticking up through July.
Given improvements in treatment you'd expect that to be going down not up.
From what I understand the treatment improvements are not what they are made out to be by the headlines. I've heard the word "marginal" used a lot wrt to remdesivir at least.
There is bound to be some politics involved here. Trump's many enemies have a vested interest in preventing a return to 'normal'
So you're suggesting a conspiracy by doctors in Texas to allow patients to die so that Trump looks bad? Think about what you're saying before you blurt out more rubbish.
That is really not so very different from what I hear from my Trump-supporting friend in Florida. I kid you not.
I didn't know you had a Trump supporting friend Peter.
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
I can't allow you Cameron, when the alternative was David Davis.
Or are you suggesting by implication David Davis is indeed "top political talent"!
Nope. Did it not cross your mind that the top political talent might not make the top two? Or the top three? Or even the top ten? Lots and lots of talent is lost along the way. Churchill eventually made his way out of the Wilderness, but it was a near thing, and only due to highly unusual and specific circumstances. Most talents in the Wilderness never have their moment.
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
Two of those six are top political talents.
Can we have some clues? I get David Cameron, but who is the second?
Clue: Both increased their parties seat numbers and were endorsed by the public with a Parliamentary majority at a General Election.
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
Two of those six are top political talents.
Can we have some clues? I get David Cameron, but who is the second?
The sort of talent that stakes the nation in a bid to win the Conservative Party over, and loses. Let me think that one through?
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
I can't allow you Cameron, when the alternative was David Davis.
Or are you suggesting by implication David Davis is indeed "top political talent"!
Nope. Did it not cross your mind that the top political talent might not make the top two? Or the top three? Or even the top ten? Lots and lots of talent is lost along the way. Churchill eventually made his way out of the Wilderness, but it was a near thing, and only due to highly unusual and specific circumstances. Most talents in the Wilderness never have their moment.
Fair point.
Your analysis of Churchill, forms an uncanny parallel to the rise to the top of Boris Johnson! I'm kidding!
Anyway, back in the office today for the first time. It will be the last time I go to Vinters Place, which fills me with joy.
Got all the covid secure stuff in ?
I'll find out, but I doubt it. A few of us have agreed to do one Friday a month so we can go to the pub at market close. We'll probably make that two or maybe even every Friday in the new office.
The US added 73,000 confirmed cases yesterday, of which roughly 14,000 were in Florida, 10,000 in Texas and 9,000 in Cali. Overall the highest daily increase so far. At least 39 states are showing increases; four states are close to running out of hospital beds.
One of the guys in the Moderna vaccine trial appears to have developed some significant side effects.
And on the other hand, the Oxford guys seem confident enough for the riskiest of trials:
Science in Action was great today. Only heard part of it but:
The reason for antibody clearance appears to be that hospitalised patients create a massive amount of antibodies while assymptomatic/mild cases don’t create many. Antibodies then clear at the same rate. If I heard correctly, she (the scientists) said that *all* the patients who didn’t have measurable levels of antibodies at the end of the study were assymptomatic/mild cases. If this is the case - and you can assume that if you are mild on the first infection you will be mild in future - then protection may last longer than the headlines suggest
A separate study has also suggested that memory B cells are created as part of the immune reaction. This is fantastic news. Part of the issue with Covid-19 is that it takes 10-14 days for antibodies to generate in naive patients. If you have memory cells that is massively accelerated meaning that second infections should have a much lower severity peak
Great to see Boris finally finding the £350M / wk he promised.
Shame it’s recycled money and only for a couple of months.
"Recycled" because they had already promised the £350m in full?
I hope you realise during transition we're still paying the EU. Thankfully that ends at the end of this year. The end of this year can not come soon enough it seems.
Perhaps its recycled from the money that schools were promised to make them safe which has now been withdrawn
As Boris has declared schools unequivocally to be safe, they don’t need any money ...
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
Two of those six are top political talents.
Can we have some clues? I get David Cameron, but who is the second?
The sort of talent that stakes the nation in a bid to win the Conservative Party over, and loses. Let me think that one through?
Yes, the more we look at it, the more obvious it gets. The first Cameron government was only successful because of the Lib Dems. The record of Tories in government since is muppet after muppet.
The US added 73,000 confirmed cases yesterday, of which roughly 14,000 were in Florida, 10,000 in Texas and 9,000 in Cali. Overall the highest daily increase so far. At least 39 states are showing increases; four states are close to running out of hospital beds.
One of the guys in the Moderna vaccine trial appears to have developed some significant side effects.
It’s only a few days back that Fauci was ridiculed by the the administration for suggesting there was a real danger of over 100k cases a day.
Hard to describe that as scaremongering now.
Word of caution - both Florida and Texas have said that several health districts may be inflating their CV cases eg San Antonio is including "probable" cases in its tally.
Those probables are non-PCR tested positives, using lesser tests like the Abbott 15 minute one. They probably still are positive though, which is why they are labelled as such.
I'm not a scientist so I am probably wrong but my impression was the Abbott test could come back with a fair few false positives. It looks like the biggest counties population wise in Texas are using their own definition (at least according to that article).
No, it comes back with a lot of false negatives, what's happening is that people who get a negative from the lesser tests but show symptoms are put into the probables column and wait for a PCR test. I'm not sure if it's a good way of doing things, it's definitely not what I would do.
Thanks for that, told you I wasn't a scientist
Max are you sure?
A test that comes back with false negatives is worse than useless - it’s positively dangerous.
False positives are less bad: you get them to self isolate while you run a more accurate PCR test.
If that's the story I heard yesterday calling if a "complete failure" is fucking daft. A flaw was picked up in routine screening of the swabs, and then that batch was written off with instructions issued for disposal, and other batches are put aside until more testing is completed. Completed tests can still be processed.
That's how such things are meant to work, and happens all the time with medical equipment. All that Tweet shows is that some people, like Schneider, are fucking daft.
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
Two of those six are top political talents.
Can we have some clues? I get David Cameron, but who is the second?
I disallow David Cameron due to:
A. nearly losing the first Scottish independence referendum (he turned 28% support for independence into 45% support). He got a very late save due to Gordon Brown, the BBC and extremely hard-working Labour activists knocking doors and scaring the shit out of old ladies.
and B. for causing Brexit, the greatest unforced error in English politics since losing the Thirteen Colonies.
We should be very grateful for @MrEd on this site.
The only regular poster putting the facts of Trump's re-election case on here, and sometimes resisting a bit of snide chipping for it accordingly.
Thank you Casino and Contrarian. It's a thankless task - you even get accused of being a Trumpton
That's absolutely what happens, which is unforgivable on a betting website.
Those that do it should be ashamed of themselves.
They might cost us (and them) a lot of money.
I'm more than open to theories on Trump winning in November, however, suggesting it will be done because virus statistics are being inflated by Trump haters is a stretch. Not that MrEd said that, tbf.
Thanks Max and Casino. On the betting side, my fear is that every negative for Trump is being ramped up because people dislike him (which is fair enough) and that other evidence gets drowned out. To be upfront, I have not bet on the election outcome because too many things can happen between now and then. I fear many people are rushing into bets now.
Max, I certainly am not suggesting deaths are being inflated that's for sure. What I am saying is the CV-19 virus has taken on a political angle and, being political and the US, people will use their own interpretations to push their point. Trump will say it is over and Biden will say BLM riots had nothing to do with the spikes.
Don't know what you're worried about, Ed. You have a view and you put it well. The odds against Trump are only 15/8 implying a 35% chnce of winning, so a fairly level contest even if it started today rather than November.
The odds look about right to me. Things can look a bit skewed from this side of the pond. Try speaking to a few Americans and you get a different picture.
Keep up the good work. PB has had its share of useless flag-wavers in the past. (Do you remember Stuart Truth?) You're not one and I will continue to read your posts even if nobody else does.
The US added 73,000 confirmed cases yesterday, of which roughly 14,000 were in Florida, 10,000 in Texas and 9,000 in Cali. Overall the highest daily increase so far. At least 39 states are showing increases; four states are close to running out of hospital beds.
One of the guys in the Moderna vaccine trial appears to have developed some significant side effects.
And on the other hand, the Oxford guys seem confident enough for the riskiest of trials:
'Trials by the end of the year' seems to rule out completely the talk earlier this week of a vaccine being available as early as September surely?
I'm assuming these challenge trials would need to be completed before the vaccine can be available?
I;m pro-pro-vaccines. For me, there's no debate. Everyone should get them for their kids.
That being said, I'd be pretty hesitant to try something that looks like it's been cobbled together at break-neck speed. I'll be in the rear with the gear.
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
I can't allow you Cameron, when the alternative was David Davis.
Or are you suggesting by implication David Davis is indeed "top political talent"!
Nope. Did it not cross your mind that the top political talent might not make the top two? Or the top three? Or even the top ten? Lots and lots of talent is lost along the way. Churchill eventually made his way out of the Wilderness, but it was a near thing, and only due to highly unusual and specific circumstances. Most talents in the Wilderness never have their moment.
If they cannot work their way through the political quagmire to find their moment I'm not sure someone is a top political talent even if they are undoubtedly talented.
Merely getting the top gig is not a sign of superlative talent, but a failure to even get a moment to be noticed as top talent would show a dearth of political skill.
Great to see Boris finally finding the £350M / wk he promised.
Shame it’s recycled money and only for a couple of months.
"Recycled" because they had already promised the £350m in full?
I hope you realise during transition we're still paying the EU. Thankfully that ends at the end of this year. The end of this year can not come soon enough it seems.
In Houston there is mixed news. Covid hospital occupancy increase has slowed right down and they aren't at risk of running out of beds for the foreseeable future but the overall hospitalisation death rate is going up. At the start of the month it was 6.5%, now it is 6.9% and it has been steadily ticking up through July.
Given improvements in treatment you'd expect that to be going down not up.
From what I understand the treatment improvements are not what they are made out to be by the headlines. I've heard the word "marginal" used a lot wrt to remdesivir at least.
There is bound to be some politics involved here. Trump's many enemies have a vested interest in preventing a return to 'normal'
So you're suggesting a conspiracy by doctors in Texas to allow patients to die so that Trump looks bad? Think about what you're saying before you blurt out more rubbish.
I don't think Contrarian is saying that to be fair. He is saying that the CV reporting has got caught up in politics. Remember when there were the BLM protests and you had doctors tweeting that going out and protesting was justified because systemic racism was more important than CV-19? They didn't really sound like doctors who didn't let politics intrude into their views
You need to believe that doctors all over the US are engaged in inflation of numbers and lesser treatment to allow patients to die. I just don't see it. Also, a lot of these new cases can probably be traced back to those riots so it's definitely not on their interests to inflate the figures. Trump just isn't smart enough to make the link in people's minds.
The debate was about the efficacy of remdesivir. You claimed the benefit was 'marginal. '
No the scientific evidence in peer reviewed papers is that it is marginal.
The NHS have been doing considerable testing and are not recommending remdesivir but with great fanfare did recommend Dexamethasone.
If you think there's a treatment that works but doctors worldwide are conspiring to hide the fact it works then you are suggesting that doctors worldwide are conspiring to kill their patients.
If you are correct then maybe Gilead have a lot to answer for with their claims here.
I’ve not read the full paper (no time to do fun stuff at the moment ☹️ ) but they are stating a reduction in the risk of mortality.
A 62% reduction is a reduction from 5 in every hundred dying to 2 in every hundred dying. (Example numbers)I reckon that’s ok, and better than marginal, but it’s not a silver bullet.
You should also bear in mind that clinical trials are optimised so in a real world setting a drug always performs less well, and these numbers come from the press release which tend to highlight the best bits in a positive way
So no consideration given to the fact that Randox is a world leading diagnostics company and an eminently suitable supplier?
What actually happened was this:
- As part of the contract, a stated reliability rate for various factors was included - When tested, the previous batches had passed the defined reliability numbers. Testing is applied to batches from the manufacturer. Random sample testing of this kind has been around for well over a century* - A test of those factors found that a batch was not passing. - So the batch was pulled, the company not paid, and the company got told to fix the problem.
*See the scandal over the performance of British naval shells at Jutland. Which was directly attributable to the testing methedology.
The US added 73,000 confirmed cases yesterday, of which roughly 14,000 were in Florida, 10,000 in Texas and 9,000 in Cali. Overall the highest daily increase so far. At least 39 states are showing increases; four states are close to running out of hospital beds.
One of the guys in the Moderna vaccine trial appears to have developed some significant side effects.
It’s only a few days back that Fauci was ridiculed by the the administration for suggesting there was a real danger of over 100k cases a day.
Hard to describe that as scaremongering now.
Word of caution - both Florida and Texas have said that several health districts may be inflating their CV cases eg San Antonio is including "probable" cases in its tally.
Those probables are non-PCR tested positives, using lesser tests like the Abbott 15 minute one. They probably still are positive though, which is why they are labelled as such.
I'm not a scientist so I am probably wrong but my impression was the Abbott test could come back with a fair few false positives. It looks like the biggest counties population wise in Texas are using their own definition (at least according to that article).
No, it comes back with a lot of false negatives, what's happening is that people who get a negative from the lesser tests but show symptoms are put into the probables column and wait for a PCR test. I'm not sure if it's a good way of doing things, it's definitely not what I would do.
Thanks for that, told you I wasn't a scientist
Max are you sure?
A test that comes back with false negatives is worse than useless - it’s positively dangerous.
False positives are less bad: you get them to self isolate while you run a more accurate PCR test.
Yes, that's why they get listed as probables rather than positives, not sure what the retesting is like there but they should get a PCR test.
The columns look like this:
Negative - negative PCR test, negative lesser test, no symptoms Probables - negative lesser test, symptoms Positives - positive in either PCR or lesser test
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
Two of those six are top political talents.
Can we have some clues? I get David Cameron, but who is the second?
The sort of talent that stakes the nation in a bid to win the Conservative Party over, and loses. Let me think that one through?
Yes, the more we look at it, the more obvious it gets. The first Cameron government was only successful because of the Lib Dems. The record of Tories in government since is muppet after muppet.
I dont think this occasional attempt to write the tories out of responsibility or reward for a government led by them is very credible. I liked the coalition and think we've been poorer since, and the LDs dont get credit for it that they deserve, but Cameron and his team deserve credit for its success too, a lot of it, particularly as plenty wanted thrm to go minority or confidence and supply
We should be very grateful for @MrEd on this site.
The only regular poster putting the facts of Trump's re-election case on here, and sometimes resisting a bit of snide chipping for it accordingly.
Thank you Casino and Contrarian. It's a thankless task - you even get accused of being a Trumpton
That's absolutely what happens, which is unforgivable on a betting website.
Those that do it should be ashamed of themselves.
They might cost us (and them) a lot of money.
I'm more than open to theories on Trump winning in November, however, suggesting it will be done because virus statistics are being inflated by Trump haters is a stretch. Not that MrEd said that, tbf.
Thanks Max and Casino. On the betting side, my fear is that every negative for Trump is being ramped up because people dislike him (which is fair enough) and that other evidence gets drowned out. To be upfront, I have not bet on the election outcome because too many things can happen between now and then. I fear many people are rushing into bets now.
Max, I certainly am not suggesting deaths are being inflated that's for sure. What I am saying is the CV-19 virus has taken on a political angle and, being political and the US, people will use their own interpretations to push their point. Trump will say it is over and Biden will say BLM riots had nothing to do with the spikes.
Don't know what you're worried about, Ed. You have a view and you put it well. The odds against Trump are only 15/8 implying a 35% chnce of winning, so a fairly level contest even if it started today rather than November.
The odds look about right to me. Things can look a bit skewed from this side of the pond. Try speaking to a few Americans and you get a different picture.
Keep up the good work. PB has had its share of useless flag-wavers in the past. (Do you remember Stuart Truth?) You're not one and I will continue to read your posts even if nobody else does.
My favourite was still Phil "Us Blues" Roberts. Not sure whether he was a Labour plant or a tim alt he used to wind everyone up.
Anecdata. I let my son go to Thorpe park with friends.
They’re wiping down the rides and checking temperatures on entry, but same massive queues with no masks or social distancing. The way the queues snake past each other seem designed to systematically transmit bugs to dozens of people.
Would not be surprised if we saw some blips in a couple of weeks. Enjoy the freedoms whilst they last.
My hunch would be that a second lockdown would really be seen as a political failure in a way that the first was not.
I hope a second national lockdown is less likely though given that we have now have much more testing capacity. We should be able to detect spread before it really takes off.
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
Two of those six are top political talents.
Can we have some clues? I get David Cameron, but who is the second?
I disallow David Cameron due to:
A. nearly losing the first Scottish independence referendum (he turned 28% support for independence into 45% support). He got a very late save due to Gordon Brown, the BBC and extremely hard-working Labour activists knocking doors and scaring the shit out of old ladies.
and B. for causing Brexit, the greatest unforced error in English politics since losing the Thirteen Colonies.
I am not sure how we fit all that onto Cameron's headstone (hopefully not for a long while yet) but when the time comes it needs to be there.
The US added 73,000 confirmed cases yesterday, of which roughly 14,000 were in Florida, 10,000 in Texas and 9,000 in Cali. Overall the highest daily increase so far. At least 39 states are showing increases; four states are close to running out of hospital beds.
One of the guys in the Moderna vaccine trial appears to have developed some significant side effects.
It’s only a few days back that Fauci was ridiculed by the the administration for suggesting there was a real danger of over 100k cases a day.
Hard to describe that as scaremongering now.
Word of caution - both Florida and Texas have said that several health districts may be inflating their CV cases eg San Antonio is including "probable" cases in its tally.
Those probables are non-PCR tested positives, using lesser tests like the Abbott 15 minute one. They probably still are positive though, which is why they are labelled as such.
I'm not a scientist so I am probably wrong but my impression was the Abbott test could come back with a fair few false positives. It looks like the biggest counties population wise in Texas are using their own definition (at least according to that article).
No, it comes back with a lot of false negatives, what's happening is that people who get a negative from the lesser tests but show symptoms are put into the probables column and wait for a PCR test. I'm not sure if it's a good way of doing things, it's definitely not what I would do.
Thanks for that, told you I wasn't a scientist
Max are you sure?
A test that comes back with false negatives is worse than useless - it’s positively dangerous.
False positives are less bad: you get them to self isolate while you run a more accurate PCR test.
Yes, that's why they get listed as probables rather than positives, not sure what the retesting is like there but they should get a PCR test.
The columns look like this:
Negative - negative PCR test, negative lesser test, no symptoms Probables - negative lesser test, symptoms Positives - positive in either PCR or lesser test
One would hope they are retesting the probables.
Yes - as we are doing in the UK. I believe I heard that some people have been tested 5 times, due to doctors being sure that they had COVID, getting negatives, asking for re-tests....
Anecdata. I let my son go to Thorpe park with friends.
They’re wiping down the rides and checking temperatures on entry, but same massive queues with no masks or social distancing. The way the queues snake past each other seem designed to systematically transmit bugs to dozens of people.
Would not be surprised if we saw some blips in a couple of weeks. Enjoy the freedoms whilst they last.
My hunch would be that a second lockdown would really be seen as a political failure in a way that the first was not.
I hope a second national lockdown is less likely though given that we have now have much more testing capacity. We should be able to detect spread before it really takes off.
It won't be a national lockdown, just 10,000 local ones...
In Houston there is mixed news. Covid hospital occupancy increase has slowed right down and they aren't at risk of running out of beds for the foreseeable future but the overall hospitalisation death rate is going up. At the start of the month it was 6.5%, now it is 6.9% and it has been steadily ticking up through July.
Given improvements in treatment you'd expect that to be going down not up.
From what I understand the treatment improvements are not what they are made out to be by the headlines. I've heard the word "marginal" used a lot wrt to remdesivir at least.
There is bound to be some politics involved here. Trump's many enemies have a vested interest in preventing a return to 'normal'
So you're suggesting a conspiracy by doctors in Texas to allow patients to die so that Trump looks bad? Think about what you're saying before you blurt out more rubbish.
I don't think Contrarian is saying that to be fair. He is saying that the CV reporting has got caught up in politics. Remember when there were the BLM protests and you had doctors tweeting that going out and protesting was justified because systemic racism was more important than CV-19? They didn't really sound like doctors who didn't let politics intrude into their views
You need to believe that doctors all over the US are engaged in inflation of numbers and lesser treatment to allow patients to die. I just don't see it. Also, a lot of these new cases can probably be traced back to those riots so it's definitely not on their interests to inflate the figures. Trump just isn't smart enough to make the link in people's minds.
The debate was about the efficacy of remdesivir. You claimed the benefit was 'marginal.' I simply questioned whether some have a vested interest in it being seen as such.
Yes and the peer reviewed papers suggest a marginal improvement in outcomes for the most severe cases. It's a win, for sure, but it's not going to hold back the tide in the US which is why the case fatality rate is rising again.
If you are correct then Gilead appears to making some outrageous claims on behalf of their product in the release I cited.
Or you don't understand the trial process.
Gilead is a reputable company. The trial will have been conducted in an ethical manner and the results will have been scrubbed by their internal data review team. While that’s not the same as peer review it’s pretty darn close. Usually peer review is about the formal presentation of the results not the data per se.
Of course they will have cherry picked and spun what they wanted to highlight in the press release but they won’t have made an incorrect claim
In Houston there is mixed news. Covid hospital occupancy increase has slowed right down and they aren't at risk of running out of beds for the foreseeable future but the overall hospitalisation death rate is going up. At the start of the month it was 6.5%, now it is 6.9% and it has been steadily ticking up through July.
Given improvements in treatment you'd expect that to be going down not up.
From what I understand the treatment improvements are not what they are made out to be by the headlines. I've heard the word "marginal" used a lot wrt to remdesivir at least.
There is bound to be some politics involved here. Trump's many enemies have a vested interest in preventing a return to 'normal'
So you're suggesting a conspiracy by doctors in Texas to allow patients to die so that Trump looks bad? Think about what you're saying before you blurt out more rubbish.
That is really not so very different from what I hear from my Trump-supporting friend in Florida. I kid you not.
I didn't know you had a Trump supporting friend Peter.
He's invaluable, Mike. He told me of Trump supporters queuing round the block at the last election. Like many punters on here I was heavily on Clinton but managed to reverse in time and finished up winning about £1k. It felt like a lot more considering how bad it could have been.
You really need friends like that if you are betting on politics.
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
Two of those six are top political talents.
And Howard was a very solid premier league talent even if not a “top political talent”
In Houston there is mixed news. Covid hospital occupancy increase has slowed right down and they aren't at risk of running out of beds for the foreseeable future but the overall hospitalisation death rate is going up. At the start of the month it was 6.5%, now it is 6.9% and it has been steadily ticking up through July.
Given improvements in treatment you'd expect that to be going down not up.
From what I understand the treatment improvements are not what they are made out to be by the headlines. I've heard the word "marginal" used a lot wrt to remdesivir at least.
There is bound to be some politics involved here. Trump's many enemies have a vested interest in preventing a return to 'normal'
So you're suggesting a conspiracy by doctors in Texas to allow patients to die so that Trump looks bad? Think about what you're saying before you blurt out more rubbish.
That is really not so very different from what I hear from my Trump-supporting friend in Florida. I kid you not.
I didn't know you had a Trump supporting friend Peter.
He's invaluable, Mike. He told me of Trump supporters queuing round the block at the last election. Like many punters on here I was heavily on Clinton but managed to reverse in time and finished up winning about £1k. It felt like a lot more considering how bad it could have been.
You really need friends like that if you are betting on politics.
You do, one of my best mates is an old school lefty Labour type. He was tempted to vote Tory for the first time in his life in 2019. That's when I bet on the big Boris victory.
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
Two of those six are top political talents.
Can we have some clues? I get David Cameron, but who is the second?
The sort of talent that stakes the nation in a bid to win the Conservative Party over, and loses. Let me think that one through?
Yes, the more we look at it, the more obvious it gets. The first Cameron government was only successful because of the Lib Dems. The record of Tories in government since is muppet after muppet.
Fortunately for them their Trojan horse LOTO worked a dream.
In Houston there is mixed news. Covid hospital occupancy increase has slowed right down and they aren't at risk of running out of beds for the foreseeable future but the overall hospitalisation death rate is going up. At the start of the month it was 6.5%, now it is 6.9% and it has been steadily ticking up through July.
Given improvements in treatment you'd expect that to be going down not up.
From what I understand the treatment improvements are not what they are made out to be by the headlines. I've heard the word "marginal" used a lot wrt to remdesivir at least.
There is bound to be some politics involved here. Trump's many enemies have a vested interest in preventing a return to 'normal'
So people are infecting people deliberately to hurt Trump? So doctors are causing increasing numbers of people to die to hurt Trump?
Do you have any idea how bonkers you sound?
Bear in mind that his username is close to analogous for “Troll”
He’s being very honest there.
Shouldn't you be obsessing about the R number about now?
The US added 73,000 confirmed cases yesterday, of which roughly 14,000 were in Florida, 10,000 in Texas and 9,000 in Cali. Overall the highest daily increase so far. At least 39 states are showing increases; four states are close to running out of hospital beds.
One of the guys in the Moderna vaccine trial appears to have developed some significant side effects.
And on the other hand, the Oxford guys seem confident enough for the riskiest of trials:
'Trials by the end of the year' seems to rule out completely the talk earlier this week of a vaccine being available as early as September surely?
I'm assuming these challenge trials would need to be completed before the vaccine can be available?
Challenge trials are quick.
You give someone the bug and the vaccine and see what happens. You usually do them before the phase 3 to avoid the cost of the p3 if it doesn’t work. This is actually accelerating things vs normal practice
I don't think it's just dishonesty when it comes to Johnson and numbers. I think he just has no real conception that numbers refer to real things because he is completely innumerate.
Thats probably fair. Other politicians are highly intelligent and manipulative. Johnson is neither of these. In other news Mrs RP tells me from her school governors meeting yesterday that the DfE "spend money to make your school Corona-safe and we'll give it you back" guidance has been replaced with "we aren't giving you a penny"...
That is both depressing and entirely predictable. The strategy for schools is just to pretend that Covid doesn't exist. If there's a second wave in the Autumn term it's going to get incredibly messy. Anyone with kids, and teachers, should just assume they are going to get it.
Surely better to get in autumn than winter?
And there we have it: Tory Covid19 strategy in all its glory.
I’m not a Tory and I have nothing to do with the government’s “strategy” such as it is.
I was making a personal observation. I’m in the group @OnlyLivingBoy was referring to so I have a personal interest
Anecdata. I let my son go to Thorpe park with friends.
They’re wiping down the rides and checking temperatures on entry, but same massive queues with no masks or social distancing. The way the queues snake past each other seem designed to systematically transmit bugs to dozens of people.
Would not be surprised if we saw some blips in a couple of weeks. Enjoy the freedoms whilst they last.
My hunch would be that a second lockdown would really be seen as a political failure in a way that the first was not.
I hope a second national lockdown is less likely though given that we have now have much more testing capacity. We should be able to detect spread before it really takes off.
It won't be a national lockdown, just 10,000 local ones...
I think people are under estimating the *political* push back against a second lockdown. And not just from the loony-there-is-no-problem types. See Leicester.
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
Two of those six are top political talents.
And Howard was a very solid premier league talent even if not a “top political talent”
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
Two of those six are top political talents.
Can we have some clues? I get David Cameron, but who is the second?
The sort of talent that stakes the nation in a bid to win the Conservative Party over, and loses. Let me think that one through?
Yes, the more we look at it, the more obvious it gets. The first Cameron government was only successful because of the Lib Dems. The record of Tories in government since is muppet after muppet.
One advantage I think the coalition had is that because of the delicate balance of power, it was tricky for the quad to keep changing ministers too often. Ministers had the time to get on top of their brief.
The first Cameron govt wasn't actually successful though. It just looks better better than what followed.
The US added 73,000 confirmed cases yesterday, of which roughly 14,000 were in Florida, 10,000 in Texas and 9,000 in Cali. Overall the highest daily increase so far. At least 39 states are showing increases; four states are close to running out of hospital beds.
One of the guys in the Moderna vaccine trial appears to have developed some significant side effects.
It’s only a few days back that Fauci was ridiculed by the the administration for suggesting there was a real danger of over 100k cases a day.
Hard to describe that as scaremongering now.
Word of caution - both Florida and Texas have said that several health districts may be inflating their CV cases eg San Antonio is including "probable" cases in its tally.
Those probables are non-PCR tested positives, using lesser tests like the Abbott 15 minute one. They probably still are positive though, which is why they are labelled as such.
I'm not a scientist so I am probably wrong but my impression was the Abbott test could come back with a fair few false positives. It looks like the biggest counties population wise in Texas are using their own definition (at least according to that article).
No, it comes back with a lot of false negatives, what's happening is that people who get a negative from the lesser tests but show symptoms are put into the probables column and wait for a PCR test. I'm not sure if it's a good way of doing things, it's definitely not what I would do.
Thanks for that, told you I wasn't a scientist
Max are you sure?
A test that comes back with false negatives is worse than useless - it’s positively dangerous.
False positives are less bad: you get them to self isolate while you run a more accurate PCR test.
Actually there’s been quite a lot of work done to demonstrate that rapid tests which are somewhat inaccurate are if for more utility in tackling virus spread than extremely accurate tests if the results aren’t available for three or four days. Which is currently the case in the US.
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
Two of those six are top political talents.
Can we have some clues? I get David Cameron, but who is the second?
The sort of talent that stakes the nation in a bid to win the Conservative Party over, and loses. Let me think that one through?
Yes, the more we look at it, the more obvious it gets. The first Cameron government was only successful because of the Lib Dems. The record of Tories in government since is muppet after muppet.
One advantage I think the coalition had is that because of the delicate balance of power, it was tricky for the quad to keep changing ministers too often. Ministers had the time to get on top of their brief.
The first Cameron govt wasn't actually successful though. It just looks better better than what followed.
Johnson is doing a good job like Cameron in keeping his Ministers so they can get on top of their brief rather than dropping them at the first hint of trouble.
Anecdata. I let my son go to Thorpe park with friends.
They’re wiping down the rides and checking temperatures on entry, but same massive queues with no masks or social distancing. The way the queues snake past each other seem designed to systematically transmit bugs to dozens of people.
Would not be surprised if we saw some blips in a couple of weeks. Enjoy the freedoms whilst they last.
My hunch would be that a second lockdown would really be seen as a political failure in a way that the first was not.
I hope a second national lockdown is less likely though given that we have now have much more testing capacity. We should be able to detect spread before it really takes off.
It won't be a national lockdown, just 10,000 local ones...
I think people are under estimating the *political* push back against a second lockdown. And not just from the loony-there-is-no-problem types. See Leicester.
Undoubtedly true. Set against that, exponential growth means that if there is a spike, the powers that be have no choice but to lock down. And if you are going to lock down, the best time to do it is before now.
(Though working testing, and proper use of soft measures will definitely take the edge off things.)
Good thing we have a government with a philosophy of doing the right thing, even if it annoys its supporters... Oh.
The US added 73,000 confirmed cases yesterday, of which roughly 14,000 were in Florida, 10,000 in Texas and 9,000 in Cali. Overall the highest daily increase so far. At least 39 states are showing increases; four states are close to running out of hospital beds.
One of the guys in the Moderna vaccine trial appears to have developed some significant side effects.
It’s only a few days back that Fauci was ridiculed by the the administration for suggesting there was a real danger of over 100k cases a day.
Hard to describe that as scaremongering now.
Word of caution - both Florida and Texas have said that several health districts may be inflating their CV cases eg San Antonio is including "probable" cases in its tally.
Those probables are non-PCR tested positives, using lesser tests like the Abbott 15 minute one. They probably still are positive though, which is why they are labelled as such.
I'm not a scientist so I am probably wrong but my impression was the Abbott test could come back with a fair few false positives. It looks like the biggest counties population wise in Texas are using their own definition (at least according to that article).
No, it comes back with a lot of false negatives, what's happening is that people who get a negative from the lesser tests but show symptoms are put into the probables column and wait for a PCR test. I'm not sure if it's a good way of doing things, it's definitely not what I would do.
Thanks for that, told you I wasn't a scientist
Max are you sure?
A test that comes back with false negatives is worse than useless - it’s positively dangerous.
False positives are less bad: you get them to self isolate while you run a more accurate PCR test.
Yes, and I'm afraid Mrs PtP was an extreme example of this.
Common sense told us she had had the virus but we didn't get the test kit until she had been sick nearly a week by which time the symptoms were easing. Thirty six hours after administering the test the result came back negative. We didn't believe it and when we discussed it with a friend who was a front-line health worker at the Royal Free in London she advised a visit and request for further tests. They were pretty sure it was the virus, but crucially they also diagnosed bacterial infections in the lungs and urinary tract.
As you probably know there is really no treatment for the virus, but they were able to whack the bacterial infections with antibiotics and pretty soon she was on the road to recovery. Best guess is that the virus had weakened the immune system so much that the infections had been able to pile in and attack a singularly fit middle-aged woman in a serious way. Like much else about the virus, you can never be sure but the important point here is that if we hadn't shown some initiative based on our medical friend's advice and asked for a second opinion it is likely the bacterial infections would have advanced unchecked with consequences that are unknowable but would undoubtedly have been serious and potentially fatal.
It has all ended happily enough, although full recovery did take a while. You can see though how a false negative test can easily be worse than no test at all. I am sure a lot of people in our position would have taken it at face value.
A false positive seems unlikely to do much harm, but a false negative is a real danger. Not blaming anybody, but the more that know this the better.
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
Two of those six are top political talents.
And Howard was a very solid premier league talent even if not a “top political talent”
Norwich City springs readily to mind.
In that case Spurs = George Osborne
Try really hard and never quite makes the grade. But it’s never their fault and everyone hates them anyway
Anecdata. I let my son go to Thorpe park with friends.
They’re wiping down the rides and checking temperatures on entry, but same massive queues with no masks or social distancing. The way the queues snake past each other seem designed to systematically transmit bugs to dozens of people.
Would not be surprised if we saw some blips in a couple of weeks. Enjoy the freedoms whilst they last.
My hunch would be that a second lockdown would really be seen as a political failure in a way that the first was not.
I hope a second national lockdown is less likely though given that we have now have much more testing capacity. We should be able to detect spread before it really takes off.
It won't be a national lockdown, just 10,000 local ones...
I think people are under estimating the *political* push back against a second lockdown. And not just from the loony-there-is-no-problem types. See Leicester.
The continuing lockdown has not gone down well in Leicester. Communication from government has been poor, the Mayor and Council are against it, and businesses and jobs are going to the wall as there is no additional support for the businesses forcibly closed. The Mayor proposed a much more viable plan. If this is a model of how further local lockdowns are going to be done, there will be widespread ignoring of them in the future.
The US added 73,000 confirmed cases yesterday, of which roughly 14,000 were in Florida, 10,000 in Texas and 9,000 in Cali. Overall the highest daily increase so far. At least 39 states are showing increases; four states are close to running out of hospital beds.
One of the guys in the Moderna vaccine trial appears to have developed some significant side effects.
It’s only a few days back that Fauci was ridiculed by the the administration for suggesting there was a real danger of over 100k cases a day.
Hard to describe that as scaremongering now.
Word of caution - both Florida and Texas have said that several health districts may be inflating their CV cases eg San Antonio is including "probable" cases in its tally.
Those probables are non-PCR tested positives, using lesser tests like the Abbott 15 minute one. They probably still are positive though, which is why they are labelled as such.
I'm not a scientist so I am probably wrong but my impression was the Abbott test could come back with a fair few false positives. It looks like the biggest counties population wise in Texas are using their own definition (at least according to that article).
No, it comes back with a lot of false negatives, what's happening is that people who get a negative from the lesser tests but show symptoms are put into the probables column and wait for a PCR test. I'm not sure if it's a good way of doing things, it's definitely not what I would do.
Thanks for that, told you I wasn't a scientist
Max are you sure?
A test that comes back with false negatives is worse than useless - it’s positively dangerous.
False positives are less bad: you get them to self isolate while you run a more accurate PCR test.
Actually there’s been quite a lot of work done to demonstrate that rapid tests which are somewhat inaccurate are if for more utility in tackling virus spread than extremely accurate tests if the results aren’t available for three or four days. Which is currently the case in the US.
False positives are ok.
But if you incorrectly tell someone they are clear that’s problematic
Anecdata. I let my son go to Thorpe park with friends.
They’re wiping down the rides and checking temperatures on entry, but same massive queues with no masks or social distancing. The way the queues snake past each other seem designed to systematically transmit bugs to dozens of people.
Would not be surprised if we saw some blips in a couple of weeks. Enjoy the freedoms whilst they last.
My hunch would be that a second lockdown would really be seen as a political failure in a way that the first was not.
I hope a second national lockdown is less likely though given that we have now have much more testing capacity. We should be able to detect spread before it really takes off.
It won't be a national lockdown, just 10,000 local ones...
I think people are under estimating the *political* push back against a second lockdown. And not just from the loony-there-is-no-problem types. See Leicester.
Is there not a self-selecting bias there? In that by definition there is more likely to be push back in an area that needs to go back into lockdown because they've been behaving in a very anti-lockdown way?
The US added 73,000 confirmed cases yesterday, of which roughly 14,000 were in Florida, 10,000 in Texas and 9,000 in Cali. Overall the highest daily increase so far. At least 39 states are showing increases; four states are close to running out of hospital beds.
One of the guys in the Moderna vaccine trial appears to have developed some significant side effects.
It’s only a few days back that Fauci was ridiculed by the the administration for suggesting there was a real danger of over 100k cases a day.
Hard to describe that as scaremongering now.
Word of caution - both Florida and Texas have said that several health districts may be inflating their CV cases eg San Antonio is including "probable" cases in its tally.
Those probables are non-PCR tested positives, using lesser tests like the Abbott 15 minute one. They probably still are positive though, which is why they are labelled as such.
I'm not a scientist so I am probably wrong but my impression was the Abbott test could come back with a fair few false positives. It looks like the biggest counties population wise in Texas are using their own definition (at least according to that article).
No, it comes back with a lot of false negatives, what's happening is that people who get a negative from the lesser tests but show symptoms are put into the probables column and wait for a PCR test. I'm not sure if it's a good way of doing things, it's definitely not what I would do.
Thanks for that, told you I wasn't a scientist
Max are you sure?
A test that comes back with false negatives is worse than useless - it’s positively dangerous.
False positives are less bad: you get them to self isolate while you run a more accurate PCR test.
Actually there’s been quite a lot of work done to demonstrate that rapid tests which are somewhat inaccurate are if for more utility in tackling virus spread than extremely accurate tests if the results aren’t available for three or four days. Which is currently the case in the US.
And that's where the "probable" category comes into play. You can get those people isolate until a good test can be done. Not sure if they are doing a PCR follow up though.
Anecdata. I let my son go to Thorpe park with friends.
They’re wiping down the rides and checking temperatures on entry, but same massive queues with no masks or social distancing. The way the queues snake past each other seem designed to systematically transmit bugs to dozens of people.
Would not be surprised if we saw some blips in a couple of weeks. Enjoy the freedoms whilst they last.
My hunch would be that a second lockdown would really be seen as a political failure in a way that the first was not.
I hope a second national lockdown is less likely though given that we have now have much more testing capacity. We should be able to detect spread before it really takes off.
It won't be a national lockdown, just 10,000 local ones...
I think people are under estimating the *political* push back against a second lockdown. And not just from the loony-there-is-no-problem types. See Leicester.
Undoubtedly true. Set against that, exponential growth means that if there is a spike, the powers that be have no choice but to lock down. And if you are going to lock down, the best time to do it is before now.
(Though working testing, and proper use of soft measures will definitely take the edge off things.)
Good thing we have a government with a philosophy of doing the right thing, even if it annoys its supporters... Oh.
They went in early and heavily in Leicester.
As ever, it is important to read the actual data, rather than what you expect to see.
I’d be careful with comments like that. I think it’s very close to the sort of thing that could get OGH a few very firm letters
Apologies. If I have said anything of that nature then I withdraw it. I guess I should avoid even the impression of impropriety. Perhaps a thought for the government.
Yet head to head against Starmer Tory voters still prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer and more Labour voters prefer Boris to Starmer than prefer Sunak to Starmer.
Only LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer
The US added 73,000 confirmed cases yesterday, of which roughly 14,000 were in Florida, 10,000 in Texas and 9,000 in Cali. Overall the highest daily increase so far. At least 39 states are showing increases; four states are close to running out of hospital beds.
One of the guys in the Moderna vaccine trial appears to have developed some significant side effects.
It’s only a few days back that Fauci was ridiculed by the the administration for suggesting there was a real danger of over 100k cases a day.
Hard to describe that as scaremongering now.
Word of caution - both Florida and Texas have said that several health districts may be inflating their CV cases eg San Antonio is including "probable" cases in its tally.
Those probables are non-PCR tested positives, using lesser tests like the Abbott 15 minute one. They probably still are positive though, which is why they are labelled as such.
I'm not a scientist so I am probably wrong but my impression was the Abbott test could come back with a fair few false positives. It looks like the biggest counties population wise in Texas are using their own definition (at least according to that article).
No, it comes back with a lot of false negatives, what's happening is that people who get a negative from the lesser tests but show symptoms are put into the probables column and wait for a PCR test. I'm not sure if it's a good way of doing things, it's definitely not what I would do.
Thanks for that, told you I wasn't a scientist
Max are you sure?
A test that comes back with false negatives is worse than useless - it’s positively dangerous.
False positives are less bad: you get them to self isolate while you run a more accurate PCR test.
Yes, and I'm afraid Mrs PtP was an extreme example of this.
Common sense told us she had had the virus but we didn't get the test kit until she had been sick nearly a week by which time the symptoms were easing. Thirty six hours after administering the test the result came back negative. We didn't believe it and when we discussed it with a friend who was a front-line health worker at the Royal Free in London she advised a visit and request for further tests. They were pretty sure it was the virus, but crucially they also diagnosed bacterial infections in the lungs and urinary tract.
As you probably know there is really no treatment for the virus, but they were able to whack the bacterial infections with antibiotics and pretty soon she was on the road to recovery. Best guess is that the virus had weakened the immune system so much that the infections had been able to pile in and attack a singularly fit middle-aged woman in a serious way. Like much else about the virus, you can never be sure but the important point here is that if we hadn't shown some initiative based on our medical friend's advice and asked for a second opinion it is likely the bacterial infections would have advanced unchecked with consequences that are unknowable but would undoubtedly have been serious and potentially fatal.
It has all ended happily enough, although full recovery did take a while. You can see though how a false negative test can easily be worse than no test at all. I am sure a lot of people in our position would have taken it at face value.
A false positive seems unlikely to do much harm, but a false negative is a real danger. Not blaming anybody, but the more that know this the better.
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
Two of those six are top political talents.
Can we have some clues? I get David Cameron, but who is the second?
The sort of talent that stakes the nation in a bid to win the Conservative Party over, and loses. Let me think that one through?
Yes, the more we look at it, the more obvious it gets. The first Cameron government was only successful because of the Lib Dems. The record of Tories in government since is muppet after muppet.
One advantage I think the coalition had is that because of the delicate balance of power, it was tricky for the quad to keep changing ministers too often. Ministers had the time to get on top of their brief.
The first Cameron govt wasn't actually successful though. It just looks better better than what followed.
Johnson is doing a good job like Cameron in keeping his Ministers so they can get on top of their brief rather than dropping them at the first hint of trouble.
Julian Smith, Theresa Villiers, Andrea Leadsom, Esther McVey and Sajid Javid (all put in new jobs last July and dumped in February, mostly for no particular reason) say "hello" from the back benches.
BoJo hasn't kept ministers in place so they can get on top of their briefs. He's kept nonentities in place when they stuff up because he's a gang leader more than a Prime Minister.
The US added 73,000 confirmed cases yesterday, of which roughly 14,000 were in Florida, 10,000 in Texas and 9,000 in Cali. Overall the highest daily increase so far. At least 39 states are showing increases; four states are close to running out of hospital beds.
One of the guys in the Moderna vaccine trial appears to have developed some significant side effects.
It’s only a few days back that Fauci was ridiculed by the the administration for suggesting there was a real danger of over 100k cases a day.
Hard to describe that as scaremongering now.
Word of caution - both Florida and Texas have said that several health districts may be inflating their CV cases eg San Antonio is including "probable" cases in its tally.
Those probables are non-PCR tested positives, using lesser tests like the Abbott 15 minute one. They probably still are positive though, which is why they are labelled as such.
I'm not a scientist so I am probably wrong but my impression was the Abbott test could come back with a fair few false positives. It looks like the biggest counties population wise in Texas are using their own definition (at least according to that article).
No, it comes back with a lot of false negatives, what's happening is that people who get a negative from the lesser tests but show symptoms are put into the probables column and wait for a PCR test. I'm not sure if it's a good way of doing things, it's definitely not what I would do.
Thanks for that, told you I wasn't a scientist
Max are you sure?
A test that comes back with false negatives is worse than useless - it’s positively dangerous.
False positives are less bad: you get them to self isolate while you run a more accurate PCR test.
Actually there’s been quite a lot of work done to demonstrate that rapid tests which are somewhat inaccurate are if for more utility in tackling virus spread than extremely accurate tests if the results aren’t available for three or four days. Which is currently the case in the US.
I dont understand how more attention has not been brought to the speed of the test. People seem to be infectious for about a week, most probably wont arrange to get tested on day one, so a 3 or4 day wait for results is only going to stop an average of 1 or 2 days infection period. Many people who test positive will be finding out after their infection period has ended!
A test should only count if it is returned within a day.
The US added 73,000 confirmed cases yesterday, of which roughly 14,000 were in Florida, 10,000 in Texas and 9,000 in Cali. Overall the highest daily increase so far. At least 39 states are showing increases; four states are close to running out of hospital beds.
One of the guys in the Moderna vaccine trial appears to have developed some significant side effects.
It’s only a few days back that Fauci was ridiculed by the the administration for suggesting there was a real danger of over 100k cases a day.
Hard to describe that as scaremongering now.
Word of caution - both Florida and Texas have said that several health districts may be inflating their CV cases eg San Antonio is including "probable" cases in its tally.
Those probables are non-PCR tested positives, using lesser tests like the Abbott 15 minute one. They probably still are positive though, which is why they are labelled as such.
I'm not a scientist so I am probably wrong but my impression was the Abbott test could come back with a fair few false positives. It looks like the biggest counties population wise in Texas are using their own definition (at least according to that article).
No, it comes back with a lot of false negatives, what's happening is that people who get a negative from the lesser tests but show symptoms are put into the probables column and wait for a PCR test. I'm not sure if it's a good way of doing things, it's definitely not what I would do.
Thanks for that, told you I wasn't a scientist
Max are you sure?
A test that comes back with false negatives is worse than useless - it’s positively dangerous.
False positives are less bad: you get them to self isolate while you run a more accurate PCR test.
Actually there’s been quite a lot of work done to demonstrate that rapid tests which are somewhat inaccurate are if for more utility in tackling virus spread than extremely accurate tests if the results aren’t available for three or four days. Which is currently the case in the US.
False positives are ok.
But if you incorrectly tell someone they are clear that’s problematic
Liked, and with a Gold Star. Glad, too, that Mrs P is on the way to recovery. Can, I'm told, be quite a long one.
In Houston there is mixed news. Covid hospital occupancy increase has slowed right down and they aren't at risk of running out of beds for the foreseeable future but the overall hospitalisation death rate is going up. At the start of the month it was 6.5%, now it is 6.9% and it has been steadily ticking up through July.
Given improvements in treatment you'd expect that to be going down not up.
From what I understand the treatment improvements are not what they are made out to be by the headlines. I've heard the word "marginal" used a lot wrt to remdesivir at least.
There is bound to be some politics involved here. Trump's many enemies have a vested interest in preventing a return to 'normal'
So you're suggesting a conspiracy by doctors in Texas to allow patients to die so that Trump looks bad? Think about what you're saying before you blurt out more rubbish.
I don't think Contrarian is saying that to be fair. He is saying that the CV reporting has got caught up in politics. Remember when there were the BLM protests and you had doctors tweeting that going out and protesting was justified because systemic racism was more important than CV-19? They didn't really sound like doctors who didn't let politics intrude into their views
You need to believe that doctors all over the US are engaged in inflation of numbers and lesser treatment to allow patients to die. I just don't see it. Also, a lot of these new cases can probably be traced back to those riots so it's definitely not on their interests to inflate the figures. Trump just isn't smart enough to make the link in people's minds.
The debate was about the efficacy of remdesivir. You claimed the benefit was 'marginal.' I simply questioned whether some have a vested interest in it being seen as such.
Yes and the peer reviewed papers suggest a marginal improvement in outcomes for the most severe cases. It's a win, for sure, but it's not going to hold back the tide in the US which is why the case fatality rate is rising again.
If you are correct then Gilead appears to making some outrageous claims on behalf of their product in the release I cited.
Or you don't understand the trial process.
Gilead is a reputable company. The trial will have been conducted in an ethical manner and the results will have been scrubbed by their internal data review team. While that’s not the same as peer review it’s pretty darn close. Usually peer review is about the formal presentation of the results not the data per se.
Of course they will have cherry picked and spun what they wanted to highlight in the press release but they won’t have made an incorrect claim
(Unless you are fuckwits like Biogen 😂😂😂)
Indeed but my point was that even one successful trial doesn't mean its a silver bullet though and there's other bits of the trial process to go through to see how it works in a real world setting. Which is just like what you said in another post.
We should be very grateful for @MrEd on this site.
The only regular poster putting the facts of Trump's re-election case on here, and sometimes resisting a bit of snide chipping for it accordingly.
Thank you Casino and Contrarian. It's a thankless task - you even get accused of being a Trumpton
That's absolutely what happens, which is unforgivable on a betting website.
Those that do it should be ashamed of themselves.
They might cost us (and them) a lot of money.
I'm more than open to theories on Trump winning in November, however, suggesting it will be done because virus statistics are being inflated by Trump haters is a stretch. Not that MrEd said that, tbf.
Thanks Max and Casino. On the betting side, my fear is that every negative for Trump is being ramped up because people dislike him (which is fair enough) and that other evidence gets drowned out. To be upfront, I have not bet on the election outcome because too many things can happen between now and then. I fear many people are rushing into bets now.
Max, I certainly am not suggesting deaths are being inflated that's for sure. What I am saying is the CV-19 virus has taken on a political angle and, being political and the US, people will use their own interpretations to push their point. Trump will say it is over and Biden will say BLM riots had nothing to do with the spikes.
One advantage I think the coalition had is that because of the delicate balance of power, it was tricky for the quad to keep changing ministers too often. Ministers had the time to get on top of their brief.
The first Cameron govt wasn't actually successful though. It just looks better better than what followed.
Johnson is doing a good job like Cameron in keeping his Ministers so they can get on top of their brief rather than dropping them at the first hint of trouble.
Erm… when he became PM he cleared out the old lot. Fair enough.
But *since* he became PM he's swapped his Chancellor, Attorney General, SoS for Defra, Business, Northern Ireland, DFID, Culture, Minister for Housing, Treasury Secretary.
No. It is new money for those projects, there has been underspending elsewhere . . . as there has been in much of the economy as projects up and down the country are suspended . . . so its being funded via underspending elsewhere but that doesn't stop it being new to those projects.
To be honest I'd be quite reassured if it wasn't.
It would reassure me that there were still some real fiscal conservatives in the party - those who take the public finances seriously and recognise money doesn't grow on trees.
I think funding needed new projects via underspending elsewhere rather than via new money is a real fiscal conservative thing to do?
The problem is the muppets in the media and here who think all spending should be "new" money - so if there's underspending elsewhere it shouldn't be banked and should have still be spent.
I think we're saying the same thing.
I don't think spending more and more money (particularly money you don't have) is a virtuous act in and of itself.
There's a time and place for it but it always has to be paid back at some point.
I vote Conservative because sensibility with the public finances and public administration is its USP (or should be).
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
I can't allow you Cameron, when the alternative was David Davis.
Or are you suggesting by implication David Davis is indeed "top political talent"!
Nope. Did it not cross your mind that the top political talent might not make the top two? Or the top three? Or even the top ten? Lots and lots of talent is lost along the way. Churchill eventually made his way out of the Wilderness, but it was a near thing, and only due to highly unusual and specific circumstances. Most talents in the Wilderness never have their moment.
"Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest/Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.'
Grays Elegy. Had to learn it for O level, and for some reason it stuck. Don't agree with his views about Cromwell, by the way. In England, Scotland and Wales at least, more sinned against than sinning. Or at least no worse than anyone else
No. It is new money for those projects, there has been underspending elsewhere . . . as there has been in much of the economy as projects up and down the country are suspended . . . so its being funded via underspending elsewhere but that doesn't stop it being new to those projects.
To be honest I'd be quite reassured if it wasn't.
It would reassure me that there were still some real fiscal conservatives in the party - those who take the public finances seriously and recognise money doesn't grow on trees.
I think funding needed new projects via underspending elsewhere rather than via new money is a real fiscal conservative thing to do?
The problem is the muppets in the media and here who think all spending should be "new" money - so if there's underspending elsewhere it shouldn't be banked and should have still be spent.
I think we're saying the same thing.
I don't think spending more and more money (particularly money you don't have) is a virtuous act in and of itself.
There's a time and place for it but it always has to be paid back at some point.
I vote Conservative because sensibility with the public finances and public administration is its USP (or should be).
Best way to count deaths is the net excess deaths since the first diagnosed Covid death. And yes it's correct to count negative excess deaths as minuses because these can represent those who have death 'hastened' by Covid rather than caused. The dead can't come back to life, but that's the best metric in my view.
How many Tory shire local councillors are going to be happy with this?
I won't be. Given that East Hampshire District Council is extremely good but Hampshire County Council a one-party fiefdom, and decidedly average (and not particularly conservative either).
I’d be careful with comments like that. I think it’s very close to the sort of thing that could get OGH a few very firm letters
Owen Paterson earns £8,333 a month for 16 hours a week as a consultant for Randox (Register of Members' Interests). That's £100k a year for c. 4 hours a week. He has other paid work as well. Oh, and he's paid to be an MP.
Do you not see any potential conflict of interest here? Presumably not.
The Scottish Government pointed that out on the day of the bogus announcement. They had spotted that the Barnett Consequentials were pretty much zero: if Scotland, Wales and NI weren’t getting any new money then the only logical conclusion was that neither was England.
How many massive, blatant lies has this prime minister now told? Must be well over the hundred mark. When will journalists start doing their job? Eg BBC?
Or Scotland, Wales and NI would have had a reduced amount of money due to England's underspending but England spent the underspending on other projects as announced meaning you kept your budget without consequentials.
£5.5billion underspend? Keep taking the tablets Philip.
And please do some homework on the Barnett Formula. That post was stunningly embarrassing even by PB’s astonishingly low standards regarding Jock general knowledge.
Watching an independent Scotland join the euro and run into the brick wall of the stability pact really would be the most enormous fun.
Sunak's problem is that the most likely scenario that would create a vacancy at the top - a collapse in Tory support thanks to the economy tanking as government support is withdrawn - is also a scenario that would trash his personal brand. The fiscal reckoning will be very tough too, his window to take the top job before he starts making himself very unpopular is narrowing. He is clearly the Tories' top political talent, but I am far from convinced he will get the job.
The “top political talent” almost never does.
William Hague Iain Duncan Smith Michael Howard David Cameron Theresa May The Great Charlatan
Two of those six are top political talents.
Can we have some clues? I get David Cameron, but who is the second?
I disallow David Cameron due to:
A. nearly losing the first Scottish independence referendum (he turned 28% support for independence into 45% support). He got a very late save due to Gordon Brown, the BBC and extremely hard-working Labour activists knocking doors and scaring the shit out of old ladies.
and B. for causing Brexit, the greatest unforced error in English politics since losing the Thirteen Colonies.
Whatever you think of Brexit, not holding Nazi Germany to the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles in the mid-1930s was far worse.
6 per day if that is occurring could approximate to 42 per week which could potentially be the majority of all deaths now being recorded. It also means they'll never get down to saying 0 deaths unless this is fixed even if the virus were eliminated.
I’d be careful with comments like that. I think it’s very close to the sort of thing that could get OGH a few very firm letters
Owen Paterson earns £8,333 a month for 16 hours a week as a consultant for Randox (Register of Members' Interests). That's £100k a year for c. 4 hours a week. He has other paid work as well. Oh, and he's paid to be an MP.
Do you not see any potential conflict of interest here? Presumably not.
We should be very grateful for @MrEd on this site.
The only regular poster putting the facts of Trump's re-election case on here, and sometimes resisting a bit of snide chipping for it accordingly.
Thank you Casino and Contrarian. It's a thankless task - you even get accused of being a Trumpton
That's absolutely what happens, which is unforgivable on a betting website.
Those that do it should be ashamed of themselves.
They might cost us (and them) a lot of money.
I'm more than open to theories on Trump winning in November, however, suggesting it will be done because virus statistics are being inflated by Trump haters is a stretch. Not that MrEd said that, tbf.
Thanks Max and Casino. On the betting side, my fear is that every negative for Trump is being ramped up because people dislike him (which is fair enough) and that other evidence gets drowned out. To be upfront, I have not bet on the election outcome because too many things can happen between now and then. I fear many people are rushing into bets now.
Max, I certainly am not suggesting deaths are being inflated that's for sure. What I am saying is the CV-19 virus has taken on a political angle and, being political and the US, people will use their own interpretations to push their point. Trump will say it is over and Biden will say BLM riots had nothing to do with the spikes.
Don't know what you're worried about, Ed. You have a view and you put it well. The odds against Trump are only 15/8 implying a 35% chnce of winning, so a fairly level contest even if it started today rather than November.
The odds look about right to me. Things can look a bit skewed from this side of the pond. Try speaking to a few Americans and you get a different picture.
Keep up the good work. PB has had its share of useless flag-wavers in the past. (Do you remember Stuart Truth?) You're not one and I will continue to read your posts even if nobody else does.
Thanks to both you and @NigelB for the kind comments
The Scottish Government pointed that out on the day of the bogus announcement. They had spotted that the Barnett Consequentials were pretty much zero: if Scotland, Wales and NI weren’t getting any new money then the only logical conclusion was that neither was England.
How many massive, blatant lies has this prime minister now told? Must be well over the hundred mark. When will journalists start doing their job? Eg BBC?
Or Scotland, Wales and NI would have had a reduced amount of money due to England's underspending but England spent the underspending on other projects as announced meaning you kept your budget without consequentials.
£5.5billion underspend? Keep taking the tablets Philip.
And please do some homework on the Barnett Formula. That post was stunningly embarrassing even by PB’s astonishingly low standards regarding Jock general knowledge.
Watching an independent Scotland join the euro and run into the brick wall of the stability pact really would be the most enormous fun.
Feel the love Scots. Feel the love.
Why should you be loved by the general public?
Why shouldn't there be banter?
I'm sure the English can "feel the love" from Scots so what's sauce for the goose is good for the gander.
They won't be in the ONS figures though, so should be easy to run a query on.
We are seeing a fair amount of vascular disease in the recovery phase due to coronavirus endotheliopathy, so be careful. A stroke or heart attack a month after covid may well be related rather than incidental.
In Houston there is mixed news. Covid hospital occupancy increase has slowed right down and they aren't at risk of running out of beds for the foreseeable future but the overall hospitalisation death rate is going up. At the start of the month it was 6.5%, now it is 6.9% and it has been steadily ticking up through July.
Given improvements in treatment you'd expect that to be going down not up.
From what I understand the treatment improvements are not what they are made out to be by the headlines. I've heard the word "marginal" used a lot wrt to remdesivir at least.
There is bound to be some politics involved here. Trump's many enemies have a vested interest in preventing a return to 'normal'
So you're suggesting a conspiracy by doctors in Texas to allow patients to die so that Trump looks bad? Think about what you're saying before you blurt out more rubbish.
That is really not so very different from what I hear from my Trump-supporting friend in Florida. I kid you not.
I didn't know you had a Trump supporting friend Peter.
He's invaluable, Mike. He told me of Trump supporters queuing round the block at the last election. Like many punters on here I was heavily on Clinton but managed to reverse in time and finished up winning about £1k. It felt like a lot more considering how bad it could have been.
You really need friends like that if you are betting on politics.
Even if you aren't betting, it is invaluable to expose yourself to the other side's opinion from time to time, no matter how repulsive it is. It's almost as valuable as exposing your own opinions to people who won't let you get away with factual errors. That's why this site is pretty good - a real diversity of opinions and lots of knowledgable pedants on here.
The US added 73,000 confirmed cases yesterday, of which roughly 14,000 were in Florida, 10,000 in Texas and 9,000 in Cali. Overall the highest daily increase so far. At least 39 states are showing increases; four states are close to running out of hospital beds.
One of the guys in the Moderna vaccine trial appears to have developed some significant side effects.
These numbers would seem likely to make it very difficult for Trump to win in Florida, where the Democrats are best-priced at 8/13. If he loses FLA, he probably loses the election.
I have a friend in Florida who seems convinced the virus is a conspiracy to bring Trump down. He reckons Florida is carrying on pretty much as normal.
Wasn't there a pastor who said similar and then died of it? Or the Covid party where someone had it and they all got it and "I thought it was a hoax" was the last words of one victim? How stupid are some Americans?
I think the Covid party thing is a hoax. They couldn't name the person nor was there any trace of him being admitted to the hospital. The retraction got a lot less publicity than the original story though.....
One advantage I think the coalition had is that because of the delicate balance of power, it was tricky for the quad to keep changing ministers too often. Ministers had the time to get on top of their brief.
The first Cameron govt wasn't actually successful though. It just looks better better than what followed.
Johnson is doing a good job like Cameron in keeping his Ministers so they can get on top of their brief rather than dropping them at the first hint of trouble.
Erm… when he became PM he cleared out the old lot. Fair enough.
But *since* he became PM he's swapped his Chancellor, Attorney General, SoS for Defra, Business, Northern Ireland, DFID, Culture, Minister for Housing, Treasury Secretary.
That's all in less than a year!
He's had one reshuffle since the General Election when he won a majority. I don't think its reasonable to insist upon the same Cabinet for a minority government as for a majority one . . . but even then he stuck with his minority one until he was ready in the new year to present his majority cabinet.
The US added 73,000 confirmed cases yesterday, of which roughly 14,000 were in Florida, 10,000 in Texas and 9,000 in Cali. Overall the highest daily increase so far. At least 39 states are showing increases; four states are close to running out of hospital beds.
One of the guys in the Moderna vaccine trial appears to have developed some significant side effects.
It’s only a few days back that Fauci was ridiculed by the the administration for suggesting there was a real danger of over 100k cases a day.
Hard to describe that as scaremongering now.
Word of caution - both Florida and Texas have said that several health districts may be inflating their CV cases eg San Antonio is including "probable" cases in its tally.
Those probables are non-PCR tested positives, using lesser tests like the Abbott 15 minute one. They probably still are positive though, which is why they are labelled as such.
I'm not a scientist so I am probably wrong but my impression was the Abbott test could come back with a fair few false positives. It looks like the biggest counties population wise in Texas are using their own definition (at least according to that article).
No, it comes back with a lot of false negatives, what's happening is that people who get a negative from the lesser tests but show symptoms are put into the probables column and wait for a PCR test. I'm not sure if it's a good way of doing things, it's definitely not what I would do.
Thanks for that, told you I wasn't a scientist
Max are you sure?
A test that comes back with false negatives is worse than useless - it’s positively dangerous.
False positives are less bad: you get them to self isolate while you run a more accurate PCR test.
Yes, that's why they get listed as probables rather than positives, not sure what the retesting is like there but they should get a PCR test.
The columns look like this:
Negative - negative PCR test, negative lesser test, no symptoms Probables - negative lesser test, symptoms Positives - positive in either PCR or lesser test
One would hope they are retesting the probables.
Yes - as we are doing in the UK. I believe I heard that some people have been tested 5 times, due to doctors being sure that they had COVID, getting negatives, asking for re-tests....
Even a 100% accurate test will come back with false negatives, since you can be infected and not begin to shed virus for a few days.
If Sunak is so popular, it rather blunts the "Starmer is boring" meme, because you don't get much more boring than Sunak. He has to be one of the dullest men ever to have held high office, or have I missed something?
6 per day if that is occurring could approximate to 42 per week which could potentially be the majority of all deaths now being recorded. It also means they'll never get down to saying 0 deaths unless this is fixed even if the virus were eliminated.
I was following this last night.
Basically, some people were saying that the methodology used for counting deaths was thus -
1) If you are tested for COVID and get a positive, you go on a list 2) If you die at any time in the future, PHE says you died of COVID.
So in the extreme case, you get the sniffles. Get a test. Positive. Recover. 6 months later you die in a car crash. COVID victim.....
The reason they seem to be doing this, is to be extremely aggressive in counting cases *in*. Avoiding under counting.
Consider the following case - COVID, recovers, long terms effects. These long term effects include massively reduced lung function. Dies of a heart attack 6 months later - probably caused by the stress on the cardiovascular system from the reduced lung function. What do you call that?
I’d be careful with comments like that. I think it’s very close to the sort of thing that could get OGH a few very firm letters
Owen Paterson earns £8,333 a month for 16 hours a week as a consultant for Randox (Register of Members' Interests). That's £100k a year for c. 4 hours a week. He has other paid work as well. Oh, and he's paid to be an MP.
Do you not see any potential conflict of interest here? Presumably not.
Yes we discussed this earlier this week. The lockdown began 16 March. Hancock went straight to Parliament on 16 March to advise against non-essential travel and say to work from home which was then repeated at the daily press conference.
By 18 March it was announced that schools were closing.
By 20 March schools were closed and pubs were ordered to close.
To say the lockdown began 23 March is utterly fallacious. That was the final step of implementing lockdown.
Comments
And please do some homework on the Barnett Formula. That post was stunningly embarrassing even by PB’s astonishingly low standards regarding Jock general knowledge.
Mask rage. Coming to a shop near you!
Your analysis of Churchill, forms an uncanny parallel to the rise to the top of Boris Johnson! I'm kidding!
Encouraging also that they are still detecting T cells in the original SARS patients As Boris has declared schools unequivocally to be safe, they don’t need any money ...
A test that comes back with false negatives is worse than useless - it’s positively dangerous.
False positives are less bad: you get them to self isolate while you run a more accurate PCR test.
That's how such things are meant to work, and happens all the time with medical equipment. All that Tweet shows is that some people, like Schneider, are fucking daft.
A. nearly losing the first Scottish independence referendum (he turned 28% support for independence into 45% support). He got a very late save due to Gordon Brown, the BBC and extremely hard-working Labour activists knocking doors and scaring the shit out of old ladies.
and B. for causing Brexit, the greatest unforced error in English politics since losing the Thirteen Colonies.
The odds look about right to me. Things can look a bit skewed from this side of the pond. Try speaking to a few Americans and you get a different picture.
Keep up the good work. PB has had its share of useless flag-wavers in the past. (Do you remember Stuart Truth?) You're not one and I will continue to read your posts even if nobody else does.
That being said, I'd be pretty hesitant to try something that looks like it's been cobbled together at break-neck speed. I'll be in the rear with the gear.
Merely getting the top gig is not a sign of superlative talent, but a failure to even get a moment to be noticed as top talent would show a dearth of political skill.
A 62% reduction is a reduction from 5 in every hundred dying to 2 in every hundred dying. (Example numbers)I reckon that’s ok, and better than marginal, but it’s not a silver bullet.
You should also bear in mind that clinical trials are optimised so in a real world setting a drug always performs less well, and these numbers come from the press release which tend to highlight the best bits in a positive way
I’d add he’s perfectly courteous and open to discussion.
- As part of the contract, a stated reliability rate for various factors was included
- When tested, the previous batches had passed the defined reliability numbers. Testing is applied to batches from the manufacturer. Random sample testing of this kind has been around for well over a century*
- A test of those factors found that a batch was not passing.
- So the batch was pulled, the company not paid, and the company got told to fix the problem.
*See the scandal over the performance of British naval shells at Jutland. Which was directly attributable to the testing methedology.
The columns look like this:
Negative - negative PCR test, negative lesser test, no symptoms
Probables - negative lesser test, symptoms
Positives - positive in either PCR or lesser test
One would hope they are retesting the probables.
https://www.gov.uk/drug-device-alerts
I hope a second national lockdown is less likely though given that we have now have much more testing capacity. We should be able to detect spread before it really takes off.
Of course they will have cherry picked and spun what they wanted to highlight in the press release but they won’t have made an incorrect claim
(Unless you are fuckwits like Biogen 😂😂😂)
You really need friends like that if you are betting on politics.
You give someone the bug and the vaccine and see what happens. You usually do them before the phase 3 to avoid the cost of the p3 if it doesn’t work. This is actually accelerating things vs normal practice
I was making a personal observation. I’m in the group @OnlyLivingBoy was referring to so I have a personal interest
The first Cameron govt wasn't actually successful though. It just looks better better than what followed.
Which is currently the case in the US.
(Though working testing, and proper use of soft measures will definitely take the edge off things.)
Good thing we have a government with a philosophy of doing the right thing, even if it annoys its supporters... Oh.
Common sense told us she had had the virus but we didn't get the test kit until she had been sick nearly a week by which time the symptoms were easing. Thirty six hours after administering the test the result came back negative. We didn't believe it and when we discussed it with a friend who was a front-line health worker at the Royal Free in London she advised a visit and request for further tests. They were pretty sure it was the virus, but crucially they also diagnosed bacterial infections in the lungs and urinary tract.
As you probably know there is really no treatment for the virus, but they were able to whack the bacterial infections with antibiotics and pretty soon she was on the road to recovery. Best guess is that the virus had weakened the immune system so much that the infections had been able to pile in and attack a singularly fit middle-aged woman in a serious way. Like much else about the virus, you can never be sure but the important point here is that if we hadn't shown some initiative based on our medical friend's advice and asked for a second opinion it is likely the bacterial infections would have advanced unchecked with consequences that are unknowable but would undoubtedly have been serious and potentially fatal.
It has all ended happily enough, although full recovery did take a while. You can see though how a false negative test can easily be worse than no test at all. I am sure a lot of people in our position would have taken it at face value.
A false positive seems unlikely to do much harm, but a false negative is a real danger. Not blaming anybody, but the more that know this the better.
Try really hard and never quite makes the grade. But it’s never their fault and everyone hates them anyway
But if you incorrectly tell someone they are clear that’s problematic
As ever, it is important to read the actual data, rather than what you expect to see.
I guess I should avoid even the impression of impropriety. Perhaps a thought for the government.
Only LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-uk-voting-intention-8-july/
BoJo hasn't kept ministers in place so they can get on top of their briefs. He's kept nonentities in place when they stuff up because he's a gang leader more than a Prime Minister.
A test should only count if it is returned within a day.
Glad, too, that Mrs P is on the way to recovery. Can, I'm told, be quite a long one.
https://twitter.com/jonwalker121/status/1284042642163150848
https://twitter.com/jonwalker121/status/1284042945189031937
How many Tory shire local councillors are going to be happy with this?
On death stats:
https://twitter.com/benatipsosmori/status/1284041561832030208
But *since* he became PM he's swapped his Chancellor, Attorney General, SoS for Defra, Business, Northern Ireland, DFID, Culture, Minister for Housing, Treasury Secretary.
That's all in less than a year!
I don't think spending more and more money (particularly money you don't have) is a virtuous act in and of itself.
There's a time and place for it but it always has to be paid back at some point.
I vote Conservative because sensibility with the public finances and public administration is its USP (or should be).
https://twitter.com/benatipsosmori/status/1284043826190061569
https://twitter.com/JoeMurphyLondon/status/1284039715415613440?s=09
Grays Elegy. Had to learn it for O level, and for some reason it stuck.
Don't agree with his views about Cromwell, by the way. In England, Scotland and Wales at least, more sinned against than sinning. Or at least no worse than anyone else
The dead can't come back to life, but that's the best metric in my view.
Do you not see any potential conflict of interest here? Presumably not.
https://twitter.com/AlastairMeeks/status/1284043545901510657
6 per day if that is occurring could approximate to 42 per week which could potentially be the majority of all deaths now being recorded. It also means they'll never get down to saying 0 deaths unless this is fixed even if the virus were eliminated.
Why shouldn't there be banter?
I'm sure the English can "feel the love" from Scots so what's sauce for the goose is good for the gander.
We are seeing a fair amount of vascular disease in the recovery phase due to coronavirus endotheliopathy, so be careful. A stroke or heart attack a month after covid may well be related rather than incidental.
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-sage-urged-govt-to-lockdown-a-week-earlier-uks-chief-scientific-adviser-says-12029956
Basically, some people were saying that the methodology used for counting deaths was thus -
1) If you are tested for COVID and get a positive, you go on a list
2) If you die at any time in the future, PHE says you died of COVID.
So in the extreme case, you get the sniffles. Get a test. Positive. Recover. 6 months later you die in a car crash. COVID victim.....
The reason they seem to be doing this, is to be extremely aggressive in counting cases *in*. Avoiding under counting.
Consider the following case - COVID, recovers, long terms effects. These long term effects include massively reduced lung function. Dies of a heart attack 6 months later - probably caused by the stress on the cardiovascular system from the reduced lung function. What do you call that?
By 18 March it was announced that schools were closing.
By 20 March schools were closed and pubs were ordered to close.
To say the lockdown began 23 March is utterly fallacious. That was the final step of implementing lockdown.