And a surprise new favourite! One of the problems with Betfair is this market is thin, and illiquid markets can show sudden movements if just one layer withdraws funds or a backer overreacts to a news report or simply presses the wrong button.
My own, uninformed view is that it will be Susan Rice but so far I've not got round to adjusting my betting position which is green on all likely candidates (not including the former First Lady!) but most profitable on Tammy Duckworth.
Oh, and in the time it has taken to compose this meagre post, Michelle Obama has moved out to 22. As you were!
I know this is really our reserves team but still, playing against Ireland and only a single wicket for the bowlers so far?
When getting beaten , England love to roll out excuses. Can you not just accept you are being beaten by a better team.
Yes, no one else has ever used excuses after being beaten, definitely something that only happens with England. As true in sport as in politics no doubt.
Sir Andrew Murray, that great Scottish tennis player with three grand slams and a spell as World No. 1.
Or Andy Murray, that useless British numpty who can't land the ball in the service box.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
The spread of coronavirus in the UK could have been slowed with earlier quarantine restrictions on arrivals, a group of MPs has said.
The Home Affairs committee said a lack of border measures earlier in the pandemic was a "serious mistake".
It added ministers had underestimated the threat of importing the virus from Europe as opposed to Asia.
Well duh. So bloody obvious.
Some at least of that is the wisdom of hindsight of course.
In early March I posted here my surprise that the woman in front of me at the till in M&S had the previous day flown back from a Spanish resort which had been locked down. Britain took no precautions -- no restrictions on flights; no screening on arrival; no requests for self-isolation. You did not have to be Nostradamus to predict what might go wrong.
Plus all the Tesla Model 3s in the UK come from San Francisco.
The average gross margin on Tesla Model 3s are unusually high for the sticker price, predominantly because of the software packages (but also because of carbon credits that can be sold to European producers of ICE vehicles).
It’s therefore still been possible to carry the expense of intercontinental delivery fees and the higher capital cost from having inventory spending so long between factory gate and customer.
Even so Tesla is furiously building in Berlin to serve the european market from local production. And rumours abound of a Tesla plant in the West Country for the Uk market.
Car production is generally a low margin game, or in a lot of cases negative margin. You don’t go blowing margin on intercontinental delivery if your volumes are big enough to avoid it.
Tesla have the upper hand at the moment. Volume (of EV production), the wow factor, a superb charging network. However, the more cars they sell the less advantage their propriety charging network has simply because there will be so many cars chasing so few charging points / locations. The non-Tesla network is so much larger and whilst it needs some upgrading the locations and installs are already there in a lot more places than Tesla.
As EVs expand both via popularity and via government policy, the need to install chargers becomes a national priority which I expect governments and councils will assist with. Will they also do so for Tesla only chargers...? In Europe, now that CCS is the Tesla standard, they would be better working with other networks on fast CCS installs off their own network.
I see Prof Ferguson has returned to haunt us all with his dismal forecasts. Is he still using the 'model' that predicted 500K deaths in the UK?
Wasn't it a worst case of 500k deaths if we didn't lockdown?
Considering we did lockdown and have had about 50k deaths that doesn't seem completely unreasonable.
Depends what the infection fatality rate turns out to really be. At 0.1% it would need the UK to have a population of 500m by my blurry eyed calcs this morning, to fit the model.
The spread of coronavirus in the UK could have been slowed with earlier quarantine restrictions on arrivals, a group of MPs has said.
The Home Affairs committee said a lack of border measures earlier in the pandemic was a "serious mistake".
It added ministers had underestimated the threat of importing the virus from Europe as opposed to Asia.
Well duh. So bloody obvious.
Some at least of that is the wisdom of hindsight of course.
No. Guernsey imposed mandatory 14 day self quarantine from March 19. It’s still in place - no new COVID cases in over 3 months. Other countries were doing the same or more (banning foreigners arrivals absolutely - still In place in Singapore & NZ). It’s not remotely a guarantee- some will inevitably get through (which is why “Zero COVID” is epidemiologically illiterate) but it would have made a difference. The fatal assumption the government relied upon was that only symptomatic cases were infectious - so “self isolation of symptomatic” was adequate - we now know that not to be the case.
The spread of coronavirus in the UK could have been slowed with earlier quarantine restrictions on arrivals, a group of MPs has said.
The Home Affairs committee said a lack of border measures earlier in the pandemic was a "serious mistake".
It added ministers had underestimated the threat of importing the virus from Europe as opposed to Asia.
Well duh. So bloody obvious.
Some at least of that is the wisdom of hindsight of course.
Except some of us were moaning about the stupidity of allowing such free movement in February and March. It was the major reason that phase 1 collapsed within days. There were just too many sources of infection.
That was obvious then yet 5 months later we are still mucking about with unrestricted air travel with a non existent quarantine. I have genuinely tried to understand a rationale behind this other than not wanting to interfere with wealthy peoples' ski holidays. All I can come up with was the original view that the spread of this virus throughout the population was thought to be so inevitable and unstoppable that it wasn't worth trying. Even on those terms, however, this made little sense as it came closer to overloading our precious NHS than anything else.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
I don't agree.
Hypothetically if my wife and I both tested positive then I could tell contact tracers whom I have been in contact with but they would need to call my wife to find out whom she has been in contact with.
Cost/efficiency shouldn't be a factor here quite frankly. The damage the virus is doing to the economy, cutting corners and trying to be cheap on this would be an entirely false economy.
And what's the worst that happens. If they get a sixth call and say "piss off" then great, that's a five second phone call - so what harm is done? If on the other hand you get even just one more name to trace from that call, that's one more potential chain of transmission broken.
Plus who calls households in the year 2020 anyway? My house hasn't even got a landline (we do for broadband but no phone is connected to it). All six calls will surely each be a first call to that person's mobile phone.
I know this is really our reserves team but still, playing against Ireland and only a single wicket for the bowlers so far?
When getting beaten , England love to roll out excuses. Can you not just accept you are being beaten by a better team.
Yes, no one else has ever used excuses after being beaten, definitely something that only happens with England. As true in sport as in politics no doubt.
Sir Andrew Murray, that great Scottish tennis player with three grand slams and a spell as World No. 1.
Or Andy Murray, that useless British numpty who can't land the ball in the service box.
Weirdly, I remember the meme on here being the other way around with comments that Andy was becoming increasingly Scottish as the sets went against him.
I see Prof Ferguson has returned to haunt us all with his dismal forecasts. Is he still using the 'model' that predicted 500K deaths in the UK?
Wasn't it a worst case of 500k deaths if we didn't lockdown?
Considering we did lockdown and have had about 50k deaths that doesn't seem completely unreasonable.
Depends what the infection fatality rate turns out to really be. At 0.1% it would need the UK to have a population of 500m by my blurry eyed calcs this morning, to fit the model.
And at 2% it would need 25 million to be infected.
I see no evidence it is anywhere near 0.1% - given our existing death tolls it would require 50 million to have been infected in the UK already which means we'd already have full herd immunity.
Anecdotal report from the "Eat Out to Help Out" front line. Man goes into KFC and orders a bargain bucket, 20 wings and 6 mini-burgers along with 8 regular fries. Counter staff remind him he has to sit in and eat to get the 50% off.
Man says he will, gets his order, collects the 50% off and sits down at a corner table. He eats a wing then produces a bag, puts all the rest of the food in the bag and leaves.
KFC are now serving all meals open on a tray to prevent that trick.
McDonalds are still offering the food in bags so people are over-ordering, claiming they will eat in, pocketing the discount and then leaving.
Always going to happen. As an accountant, I was thinking of ways that people would scam the system as soon as it was announced. I imagine its also working the other way for less reputable vendors. Someone comes in for a takeaway coffee (and there is a small seating area). Asks for take out, pays full price, but vendor rings it through as 'sit down' and claims 50% more from government next week.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
How does Blackburn do it in that sort of situation? And I don't want to be awkward, but like many other older people, I don't answer unknown numbers. I'm fed up with being told my Amazon Prime account needs renewing, especially as I haven't got one. Do the tracers ring back?
As the father of a middle class kid who has been done out of what he would have achieved with no recourse or appeal I am not really seeing that. The system was crap because it simply refused to look at evidence of what the kids had achieved either in their prelims (nearly all done pre lockdown), course work or tests. And then, unlike England, it shut the door on giving an alternative of actually sitting an exam to boot.
A bureaucratic solution that keeps the kids at the maximum possible distance. You can see the attraction.
I know this is really our reserves team but still, playing against Ireland and only a single wicket for the bowlers so far?
When getting beaten , England love to roll out excuses. Can you not just accept you are being beaten by a better team.
Yes, no one else has ever used excuses after being beaten, definitely something that only happens with England. As true in sport as in politics no doubt.
Sir Andrew Murray, that great Scottish tennis player with three grand slams and a spell as World No. 1.
Or Andy Murray, that useless British numpty who can't land the ball in the service box.
Weirdly, I remember the meme on here being the other way around with comments that Andy was becoming increasingly Scottish as the sets went against him.
Very probably, but I thought this was more likely to annoy Malcolm!
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
I don't agree.
Hypothetically if my wife and I both tested positive then I could tell contact tracers whom I have been in contact with but they would need to call my wife to find out whom she has been in contact with.
Cost/efficiency shouldn't be a factor here quite frankly. The damage the virus is doing to the economy, cutting corners and trying to be cheap on this would be an entirely false economy.
And what's the worst that happens. If they get a sixth call and say "piss off" then great, that's a five second phone call - so what harm is done? If on the other hand you get even just one more name to trace from that call, that's one more potential chain of transmission broken.
Plus who calls households in the year 2020 anyway? My house hasn't even got a landline (we do for broadband but no phone is connected to it). All six calls will surely each be a first call to that person's mobile phone.
You are not capable of passing the phone to your wife?
You say nothing has been lost by them saying piss off. Well it has and it has big time. You have just lost the tracking of all that persons contacts. And it won't happen on the 6th call, it will happen of the 2nd or 3rd when the response will be 'why didn't you ask me this on the 1st call'. So you will have lost the tracking of lots of contacts.
True it might still take multiple calls, but if they are all sitting around the TV why do 6 calls when one will knock them all off in one go.
Why allocate the calling to 6 different people? Why not give to one?
First call get info for say 4 of the family, 2nd and 3rd call to knock off the final 2.
Efficiency is not important you say? How on earth can you say that? This is not cutting corners it is trying to contact people quicker. And while I agree cost is not the prime issue, why waste it for the sake of it? You might as well argue for the burning of £10 notes.
As the father of a middle class kid who has been done out of what he would have achieved with no recourse or appeal I am not really seeing that. The system was crap because it simply refused to look at evidence of what the kids had achieved either in their prelims (nearly all done pre lockdown), course work or tests. And then, unlike England, it shut the door on giving an alternative of actually sitting an exam to boot.
A bureaucratic solution that keeps the kids at the maximum possible distance. You can see the attraction.
Looking at the trouble brewing within the SNP itself over this, I am wondering if the solution will be that the government will back down and run resits in November.
It would not be easy, but it would be somewhat better for Holyrood than trying to explain this fiasco for the next nine months.
For your son's sake, I hope they do come to that conclusion.
I see Prof Ferguson has returned to haunt us all with his dismal forecasts. Is he still using the 'model' that predicted 500K deaths in the UK?
Wasn't it a worst case of 500k deaths if we didn't lockdown?
Considering we did lockdown and have had about 50k deaths that doesn't seem completely unreasonable.
Depends what the infection fatality rate turns out to really be. At 0.1% it would need the UK to have a population of 500m by my blurry eyed calcs this morning, to fit the model.
And at 2% it would need 25 million to be infected.
I see no evidence it is anywhere near 0.1% - given our existing death tolls it would require 50 million to have been infected in the UK already which means we'd already have full herd immunity.
Worldwide deaths make up 6% of recorded cases in a sample size of 12,5m now. I am willing to accept that unrecorded cases may well be several times the recorded figure but 60x? I really don't think so. Actual fatality is somewhere over 1% I reckon but probably not 2%.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
I don't agree.
Hypothetically if my wife and I both tested positive then I could tell contact tracers whom I have been in contact with but they would need to call my wife to find out whom she has been in contact with.
Cost/efficiency shouldn't be a factor here quite frankly. The damage the virus is doing to the economy, cutting corners and trying to be cheap on this would be an entirely false economy.
And what's the worst that happens. If they get a sixth call and say "piss off" then great, that's a five second phone call - so what harm is done? If on the other hand you get even just one more name to trace from that call, that's one more potential chain of transmission broken.
Plus who calls households in the year 2020 anyway? My house hasn't even got a landline (we do for broadband but no phone is connected to it). All six calls will surely each be a first call to that person's mobile phone.
You are not capable of passing the phone to your wife?
You say nothing has been lost by them saying piss off. Well it has and it has big time. You have just lost the tracking of all that persons contacts. And it won't happen on the 6th call, it will happen of the 2nd or 3rd when the response will be 'why didn't you ask me this on the 1st call'. So you will have lost the tracking of lots of contacts.
True it might still take multiple calls, but if they are all sitting around the TV why do 6 calls when one will knock them all off in one go.
Why allocate the calling to 6 different people? Why not give to one?
First call get info for say 4 of the family, 2nd and 3rd call to knock off the final 2.
Efficiency is not important you say? How on earth can you say that? This is not cutting corners it is trying to contact people quicker. And while I agree cost is not the prime issue, why waste it for the sake of it? You might as well argue for the burning of £10 notes.
So do it quicker, better and cheaper.
And of course with 6 calls you a duplicating an awful lot of the questions
As the father of a middle class kid who has been done out of what he would have achieved with no recourse or appeal I am not really seeing that. The system was crap because it simply refused to look at evidence of what the kids had achieved either in their prelims (nearly all done pre lockdown), course work or tests. And then, unlike England, it shut the door on giving an alternative of actually sitting an exam to boot.
A bureaucratic solution that keeps the kids at the maximum possible distance. You can see the attraction.
Looking at the trouble brewing within the SNP itself over this, I am wondering if the solution will be that the government will back down and run resits in November.
It would not be easy, but it would be somewhat better for Holyrood than trying to explain this fiasco for the next nine months.
For your son's sake, I hope they do come to that conclusion.
I don't think that they will. My son's school, for example, moved onto their final year timetable for the last term of remote teaching and he has a pretty full timetable. He would not be able to sit a higher in computing in November even if he was given the option. He has too much else to do, not least the entrance exam for Oxford that month.
They should have offered that option but it would have had to have been in the next couple of weeks before term starts again.
The Lords grew up as the Crown’s representatives in Parliament. The Commons as they “people’s”.
Quite an antiquated arrangement most would agree, especially given the ennoblement process. If you will allow me to go all Rory Stewart for a moment.
What about instead keeping the Commons as is, according to FPTP. But make the Lords truly the people’s chamber. With representatives chosen at random akin to a form of long term jury duty. A year’s posting at a time perhaps, with the new cadre rotating in once per quarter.
Stops the cronyism. Implements a form of direct democracy in the constitutional structure. And means over time the public become better engaged and educated about the processes under which we’re governed.
Dont people hate jury duty? Enforced service in the Lords for long periods sounds like it would go down poorly. Is direct democracy all its cracked up to be?
Politicians are unpopular as well. People might be more receptive to Lords duty if they were to also receive the £305 per diem (plus expenses) that the lords currently get.
Anecdotal report from the "Eat Out to Help Out" front line. Man goes into KFC and orders a bargain bucket, 20 wings and 6 mini-burgers along with 8 regular fries. Counter staff remind him he has to sit in and eat to get the 50% off.
Man says he will, gets his order, collects the 50% off and sits down at a corner table. He eats a wing then produces a bag, puts all the rest of the food in the bag and leaves.
KFC are now serving all meals open on a tray to prevent that trick.
McDonalds are still offering the food in bags so people are over-ordering, claiming they will eat in, pocketing the discount and then leaving.
Always going to happen. As an accountant, I was thinking of ways that people would scam the system as soon as it was announced. I imagine its also working the other way for less reputable vendors. Someone comes in for a takeaway coffee (and there is a small seating area). Asks for take out, pays full price, but vendor rings it through as 'sit down' and claims 50% more from government next week.
Even simpler, move 10% of Thursday/Friday's sales to Monday/Tuesday. After all, you're bound to have been busier then as a result of the scheme, aren't you? How is this sort of thing policed?
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
How does Blackburn do it in that sort of situation? And I don't want to be awkward, but like many other older people, I don't answer unknown numbers. I'm fed up with being told my Amazon Prime account needs renewing, especially as I haven't got one. Do the tracers ring back?
Don't understand he question OKC? Same applies in both scenarios.
if you are saying it should be done locally I don't disagree. It seems that several areas are finding it better to do this. Just saying if they are doing it centrally it appears they are being very inefficient.
The Lords grew up as the Crown’s representatives in Parliament. The Commons as they “people’s”.
Quite an antiquated arrangement most would agree, especially given the ennoblement process. If you will allow me to go all Rory Stewart for a moment.
What about instead keeping the Commons as is, according to FPTP. But make the Lords truly the people’s chamber. With representatives chosen at random akin to a form of long term jury duty. A year’s posting at a time perhaps, with the new cadre rotating in once per quarter.
Stops the cronyism. Implements a form of direct democracy in the constitutional structure. And means over time the public become better engaged and educated about the processes under which we’re governed.
Dont people hate jury duty? Enforced service in the Lords for long periods sounds like it would go down poorly. Is direct democracy all its cracked up to be?
Politicians are unpopular as well. People might be more receptive to Lords duty if they were to also receive the £305 per diem (plus expenses) that the lords currently get.
Wasn't there a scheme at one point for people to be elected to the 'Lords' for long, but finite, periods..... 15 years IIRC. The downside was that they could only serve one term. Elections were to be every five years, so there were new people arriving every so often. Can't remember if there was a constituency component but it would be sensible for there to be a a regional element.
Plus all the Tesla Model 3s in the UK come from San Francisco.
The average gross margin on Tesla Model 3s are unusually high for the sticker price, predominantly because of the software packages (but also because of carbon credits that can be sold to European producers of ICE vehicles).
It’s therefore still been possible to carry the expense of intercontinental delivery fees and the higher capital cost from having inventory spending so long between factory gate and customer.
Even so Tesla is furiously building in Berlin to serve the european market from local production. And rumours abound of a Tesla plant in the West Country for the Uk market.
Car production is generally a low margin game, or in a lot of cases negative margin. You don’t go blowing margin on intercontinental delivery if your volumes are big enough to avoid it.
Tesla have the upper hand at the moment. Volume (of EV production), the wow factor, a superb charging network. However, the more cars they sell the less advantage their propriety charging network has simply because there will be so many cars chasing so few charging points / locations. The non-Tesla network is so much larger and whilst it needs some upgrading the locations and installs are already there in a lot more places than Tesla.
As EVs expand both via popularity and via government policy, the need to install chargers becomes a national priority which I expect governments and councils will assist with. Will they also do so for Tesla only chargers...? In Europe, now that CCS is the Tesla standard, they would be better working with other networks on fast CCS installs off their own network.
It’s finally being acknowledged by the market just how far ahead Tesla is with their battery tech, drive train efficiency, aerodynamic efficiency and cost of production. More to come later in the year in cell chemistry. They’ve been building out the proprietary charging system with the growth of sales for high coverage and capacity and there’s little reason to suppose this will stop, especially now it’s self funding from an opex perspective.
The real revolution in EVs in this country is awaiting a diesel-EV scrappage scheme. And I assume we await volume production in the UK for such a scheme to be announced.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
How does Blackburn do it in that sort of situation? And I don't want to be awkward, but like many other older people, I don't answer unknown numbers. I'm fed up with being told my Amazon Prime account needs renewing, especially as I haven't got one. Do the tracers ring back?
Don't understand he question OKC? Same applies in both scenarios.
if you are saying it should be done locally I don't disagree. It seems that several areas are finding it better to do this. Just saying if they are doing it centrally it appears they are being very inefficient.
I was wondering if, once a Blackburn positive was identified, six different people phone the home to speak to each of the adult residents there.
So to come back to Beirut, this is a summary of what I have gleaned from various sites this morning.
1) Everyone believes it was an accident. Both Israel and Hezbollah have denied responsibility and added they don’t think the other is responsible either. So while there were rumours of an Israeli air strike, they seem to be without foundation.
2) The port has been destroyed, and is unusable.
3) Beirut’s airport is operational, but on a very much reduced level. It would appear from checking their departures and arrivals they have cancelled all flights using aircraft above a certain size. That may mean the runways are blocked with debris, and as soon as a couple of bulldozers and some guys with broomsticks arrive, it will be reopened, or it may be a sign of something more serious.
4) A large part of Beirut has been completely destroyed. This includes many foreign embassies, business premises and political organisations’ headquarters. It also includes thousands of homes, particularly among the Christian community.
5) The death toll will be horrendous and the injury count even worse.
6) The medical service can not cope and needs urgent reinforcement. It was in a shambles before due to Covid-19.
That’s all pretty bleak. This is going to be really, really bad.
Lebanon is probably the most resilient civil society in the world, they've had it all - civil wars, invasions, massive refugee influxes from Syria/Palestine, economic crisis, murder of PM all in recent decades...it'll be hard for a few months but it will recover. I have absolutely no doubt.
The Lords grew up as the Crown’s representatives in Parliament. The Commons as they “people’s”.
Quite an antiquated arrangement most would agree, especially given the ennoblement process. If you will allow me to go all Rory Stewart for a moment.
What about instead keeping the Commons as is, according to FPTP. But make the Lords truly the people’s chamber. With representatives chosen at random akin to a form of long term jury duty. A year’s posting at a time perhaps, with the new cadre rotating in once per quarter.
Stops the cronyism. Implements a form of direct democracy in the constitutional structure. And means over time the public become better engaged and educated about the processes under which we’re governed.
Dont people hate jury duty? Enforced service in the Lords for long periods sounds like it would go down poorly. Is direct democracy all its cracked up to be?
Politicians are unpopular as well. People might be more receptive to Lords duty if they were to also receive the £305 per diem (plus expenses) that the lords currently get.
Wasn't there a scheme at one point for people to be elected to the 'Lords' for long, but finite, periods..... 15 years IIRC. The downside was that they could only serve one term. Elections were to be every five years, so there were new people arriving every so often. Can't remember if there was a constituency component but it would be sensible for there to be a a regional element.
The problem with all of these schemes is that they are trying to fix the House of Lords rather than ask what it is for. Abolition combined with a ramping up of resources and procedures to the committees involved in revising legislation is for me the way to go.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
I don't agree.
Hypothetically if my wife and I both tested positive then I could tell contact tracers whom I have been in contact with but they would need to call my wife to find out whom she has been in contact with.
Cost/efficiency shouldn't be a factor here quite frankly. The damage the virus is doing to the economy, cutting corners and trying to be cheap on this would be an entirely false economy.
And what's the worst that happens. If they get a sixth call and say "piss off" then great, that's a five second phone call - so what harm is done? If on the other hand you get even just one more name to trace from that call, that's one more potential chain of transmission broken.
Plus who calls households in the year 2020 anyway? My house hasn't even got a landline (we do for broadband but no phone is connected to it). All six calls will surely each be a first call to that person's mobile phone.
You are not capable of passing the phone to your wife?
You say nothing has been lost by them saying piss off. Well it has and it has big time. You have just lost the tracking of all that persons contacts. And it won't happen on the 6th call, it will happen of the 2nd or 3rd when the response will be 'why didn't you ask me this on the 1st call'. So you will have lost the tracking of lots of contacts.
True it might still take multiple calls, but if they are all sitting around the TV why do 6 calls when one will knock them all off in one go.
Why allocate the calling to 6 different people? Why not give to one?
First call get info for say 4 of the family, 2nd and 3rd call to knock off the final 2.
Efficiency is not important you say? How on earth can you say that? This is not cutting corners it is trying to contact people quicker. And while I agree cost is not the prime issue, why waste it for the sake of it? You might as well argue for the burning of £10 notes.
So do it quicker, better and cheaper.
The obvious problem with handing the phone to one's wife is that she might might not want to say in front of her husband that she spend 2 hours in the Royal Hotel with Prof. Brian Cox last week.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
How does Blackburn do it in that sort of situation? And I don't want to be awkward, but like many other older people, I don't answer unknown numbers. I'm fed up with being told my Amazon Prime account needs renewing, especially as I haven't got one. Do the tracers ring back?
Don't understand he question OKC? Same applies in both scenarios.
if you are saying it should be done locally I don't disagree. It seems that several areas are finding it better to do this. Just saying if they are doing it centrally it appears they are being very inefficient.
I was wondering if, once a Blackburn positive was identified, six different people phone the home to speak to each of the adult residents there.
I'm still struggling at what you are getting at OKC.
Currently (I believe) if a household of 6 needs calling, 6 different people will phone the home number or individual mobiles and deal with the individuals involved and go thru the same basic questions and in many cases create a list of identical contacts to be followed up.
If 1 person is given the 6 names they can knock off most of this info in the first call. Where necessary they can follow up the people missed and add to the list of new contacts any new names that need adding.
I suspect in most families the vast majority of contacts will be duplicates that you get in the first hit and can act on immediately. You then just need to do the follow ups to get the additional ones.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
I don't agree.
Hypothetically if my wife and I both tested positive then I could tell contact tracers whom I have been in contact with but they would need to call my wife to find out whom she has been in contact with.
Cost/efficiency shouldn't be a factor here quite frankly. The damage the virus is doing to the economy, cutting corners and trying to be cheap on this would be an entirely false economy.
And what's the worst that happens. If they get a sixth call and say "piss off" then great, that's a five second phone call - so what harm is done? If on the other hand you get even just one more name to trace from that call, that's one more potential chain of transmission broken.
Plus who calls households in the year 2020 anyway? My house hasn't even got a landline (we do for broadband but no phone is connected to it). All six calls will surely each be a first call to that person's mobile phone.
You are not capable of passing the phone to your wife?
You say nothing has been lost by them saying piss off. Well it has and it has big time. You have just lost the tracking of all that persons contacts. And it won't happen on the 6th call, it will happen of the 2nd or 3rd when the response will be 'why didn't you ask me this on the 1st call'. So you will have lost the tracking of lots of contacts.
True it might still take multiple calls, but if they are all sitting around the TV why do 6 calls when one will knock them all off in one go.
Why allocate the calling to 6 different people? Why not give to one?
First call get info for say 4 of the family, 2nd and 3rd call to knock off the final 2.
Efficiency is not important you say? How on earth can you say that? This is not cutting corners it is trying to contact people quicker. And while I agree cost is not the prime issue, why waste it for the sake of it? You might as well argue for the burning of £10 notes.
So do it quicker, better and cheaper.
The obvious problem with handing the phone to one's wife is that she might might not want to say in front of her husband that she spend 2 hours in the Royal Hotel with Prof. Brian Cox last week.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
I don't agree.
Hypothetically if my wife and I both tested positive then I could tell contact tracers whom I have been in contact with but they would need to call my wife to find out whom she has been in contact with.
Cost/efficiency shouldn't be a factor here quite frankly. The damage the virus is doing to the economy, cutting corners and trying to be cheap on this would be an entirely false economy.
And what's the worst that happens. If they get a sixth call and say "piss off" then great, that's a five second phone call - so what harm is done? If on the other hand you get even just one more name to trace from that call, that's one more potential chain of transmission broken.
Plus who calls households in the year 2020 anyway? My house hasn't even got a landline (we do for broadband but no phone is connected to it). All six calls will surely each be a first call to that person's mobile phone.
You are not capable of passing the phone to your wife?
You say nothing has been lost by them saying piss off. Well it has and it has big time. You have just lost the tracking of all that persons contacts. And it won't happen on the 6th call, it will happen of the 2nd or 3rd when the response will be 'why didn't you ask me this on the 1st call'. So you will have lost the tracking of lots of contacts.
True it might still take multiple calls, but if they are all sitting around the TV why do 6 calls when one will knock them all off in one go.
Why allocate the calling to 6 different people? Why not give to one?
First call get info for say 4 of the family, 2nd and 3rd call to knock off the final 2.
Efficiency is not important you say? How on earth can you say that? This is not cutting corners it is trying to contact people quicker. And while I agree cost is not the prime issue, why waste it for the sake of it? You might as well argue for the burning of £10 notes.
So do it quicker, better and cheaper.
I'm not by my wife's side 24/7 so no I'm not necessarily able to pass the phone over. Its not right to view households as one person, they're not.
As for your follow-up remark that "And of course with 6 calls you a duplicating an awful lot of the questions - surely that is the point and a good thing. What makes you think all six people will answer the questions the same? If they do then fine, but if they give different answers then that is more and valuable information gained.
Furthermore if one person was assigned to call everyone in the household they might cut corners thinking "I've already got this question answered" and miss what someone else might have said.
Hive minds don't exist in the real world. Everyone should be answering their own questions and answering them fully and honestly.
Always going to happen. As an accountant, I was thinking of ways that people would scam the system as soon as it was announced. I imagine its also working the other way for less reputable vendors. Someone comes in for a takeaway coffee (and there is a small seating area). Asks for take out, pays full price, but vendor rings it through as 'sit down' and claims 50% more from government next week.
Even simpler, move 10% of Thursday/Friday's sales to Monday/Tuesday. After all, you're bound to have been busier then as a result of the scheme, aren't you? How is this sort of thing policed?
The government probably don't care. They're already in so much debt its untrue, and it's not their debt anyway. It's our debt. In fact, its my non-existant grandchildren's debt.
HMRC will investigate the worst claims. The rest will just be waved through, much like the massive fraud going on with furlough claims (of which I've seen Chartered Accountants.... Chartered Accountants(!) actively engaging in, and complicit in).
I see Prof Ferguson has returned to haunt us all with his dismal forecasts. Is he still using the 'model' that predicted 500K deaths in the UK?
Wasn't it a worst case of 500k deaths if we didn't lockdown?
Considering we did lockdown and have had about 50k deaths that doesn't seem completely unreasonable.
Depends what the infection fatality rate turns out to really be. At 0.1% it would need the UK to have a population of 500m by my blurry eyed calcs this morning, to fit the model.
Almost impossible for the IFR to be as small as 0.1% thought, as 45,000 already dead from a population of 67,000,000. 1% is certainly possible, and its clearly heavily skewed to the very old and the already unwell.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
I don't agree.
Hypothetically if my wife and I both tested positive then I could tell contact tracers whom I have been in contact with but they would need to call my wife to find out whom she has been in contact with.
Cost/efficiency shouldn't be a factor here quite frankly. The damage the virus is doing to the economy, cutting corners and trying to be cheap on this would be an entirely false economy.
And what's the worst that happens. If they get a sixth call and say "piss off" then great, that's a five second phone call - so what harm is done? If on the other hand you get even just one more name to trace from that call, that's one more potential chain of transmission broken.
Plus who calls households in the year 2020 anyway? My house hasn't even got a landline (we do for broadband but no phone is connected to it). All six calls will surely each be a first call to that person's mobile phone.
I'm wondering about call screening at the moment. If the contact tracers number is 0300 (as I think I've seen) how many people are ignoring as 'junk' calls etc. Lots of people routinely screen calls etc.
The Lords grew up as the Crown’s representatives in Parliament. The Commons as they “people’s”.
Quite an antiquated arrangement most would agree, especially given the ennoblement process. If you will allow me to go all Rory Stewart for a moment.
What about instead keeping the Commons as is, according to FPTP. But make the Lords truly the people’s chamber. With representatives chosen at random akin to a form of long term jury duty. A year’s posting at a time perhaps, with the new cadre rotating in once per quarter.
Stops the cronyism. Implements a form of direct democracy in the constitutional structure. And means over time the public become better engaged and educated about the processes under which we’re governed.
Dont people hate jury duty? Enforced service in the Lords for long periods sounds like it would go down poorly. Is direct democracy all its cracked up to be?
Politicians are unpopular as well. People might be more receptive to Lords duty if they were to also receive the £305 per diem (plus expenses) that the lords currently get.
Wasn't there a scheme at one point for people to be elected to the 'Lords' for long, but finite, periods..... 15 years IIRC. The downside was that they could only serve one term. Elections were to be every five years, so there were new people arriving every so often. Can't remember if there was a constituency component but it would be sensible for there to be a a regional element.
The problem with all of these schemes is that they are trying to fix the House of Lords rather than ask what it is for. Abolition combined with a ramping up of resources and procedures to the committees involved in revising legislation is for me the way to go.
The same could be said of all the commons tinkering schemes though. Whether its reduction in mp numbers or switching vote systems. The way are government works was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel. A lot of why governments of any colours are so bad is down to it. It is a problem to my mind much more seriously in need of root and branch revision than the house of lords
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
I don't agree.
Hypothetically if my wife and I both tested positive then I could tell contact tracers whom I have been in contact with but they would need to call my wife to find out whom she has been in contact with.
Cost/efficiency shouldn't be a factor here quite frankly. The damage the virus is doing to the economy, cutting corners and trying to be cheap on this would be an entirely false economy.
And what's the worst that happens. If they get a sixth call and say "piss off" then great, that's a five second phone call - so what harm is done? If on the other hand you get even just one more name to trace from that call, that's one more potential chain of transmission broken.
Plus who calls households in the year 2020 anyway? My house hasn't even got a landline (we do for broadband but no phone is connected to it). All six calls will surely each be a first call to that person's mobile phone.
You are not capable of passing the phone to your wife?
You say nothing has been lost by them saying piss off. Well it has and it has big time. You have just lost the tracking of all that persons contacts. And it won't happen on the 6th call, it will happen of the 2nd or 3rd when the response will be 'why didn't you ask me this on the 1st call'. So you will have lost the tracking of lots of contacts.
True it might still take multiple calls, but if they are all sitting around the TV why do 6 calls when one will knock them all off in one go.
Why allocate the calling to 6 different people? Why not give to one?
First call get info for say 4 of the family, 2nd and 3rd call to knock off the final 2.
Efficiency is not important you say? How on earth can you say that? This is not cutting corners it is trying to contact people quicker. And while I agree cost is not the prime issue, why waste it for the sake of it? You might as well argue for the burning of £10 notes.
So do it quicker, better and cheaper.
I'm not by my wife's side 24/7 so no I'm not necessarily able to pass the phone over. Its not right to view households as one person, they're not.
As for your follow-up remark that "And of course with 6 calls you a duplicating an awful lot of the questions - surely that is the point and a good thing. What makes you think all six people will answer the questions the same? If they do then fine, but if they give different answers then that is more and valuable information gained.
Furthermore if one person was assigned to call everyone in the household they might cut corners thinking "I've already got this question answered" and miss what someone else might have said.
Hive minds don't exist in the real world. Everyone should be answering their own questions and answering them fully and honestly.
And there should be no crime or poverty.
Just think how irritated you get when you are through to one of your utility/phone companies and the automated system ("to speed up your call") asks you to input your details (account, home phone number, post code, whatever) and then someone comes on the phone and asks you the same things you have just answered.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
How does Blackburn do it in that sort of situation? And I don't want to be awkward, but like many other older people, I don't answer unknown numbers. I'm fed up with being told my Amazon Prime account needs renewing, especially as I haven't got one. Do the tracers ring back?
Don't understand he question OKC? Same applies in both scenarios.
if you are saying it should be done locally I don't disagree. It seems that several areas are finding it better to do this. Just saying if they are doing it centrally it appears they are being very inefficient.
I was wondering if, once a Blackburn positive was identified, six different people phone the home to speak to each of the adult residents there.
I'm still struggling at what you are getting at OKC.
Currently (I believe) if a household of 6 needs calling, 6 different people will phone the home number or individual mobiles and deal with the individuals involved and go thru the same basic questions and in many cases create a list of identical contacts to be followed up.
If 1 person is given the 6 names they can knock off most of this info in the first call. Where necessary they can follow up the people missed and add to the list of new contacts any new names that need adding.
I suspect in most families the vast majority of contacts will be duplicates that you get in the first hit and can act on immediately. You then just need to do the follow ups to get the additional ones.
If follow up calls get duplicates then wouldn't the system flag them up as a duplicate that was already called earlier today? Be odd if it doesn't.
But what household is getting six calls? I'm assuming parents speak for the children - I certainly wouldn't pass the phone to my toddler - so if you're talking a household of six adults then why on earth would six adults all have the same contacts? Six adults will have six different sets of contacts - and some in those sets will intersect but so will some from whomever they traced before the household too. That's the whole point of this process.
The Lords grew up as the Crown’s representatives in Parliament. The Commons as they “people’s”.
Quite an antiquated arrangement most would agree, especially given the ennoblement process. If you will allow me to go all Rory Stewart for a moment.
What about instead keeping the Commons as is, according to FPTP. But make the Lords truly the people’s chamber. With representatives chosen at random akin to a form of long term jury duty. A year’s posting at a time perhaps, with the new cadre rotating in once per quarter.
Stops the cronyism. Implements a form of direct democracy in the constitutional structure. And means over time the public become better engaged and educated about the processes under which we’re governed.
Dont people hate jury duty? Enforced service in the Lords for long periods sounds like it would go down poorly. Is direct democracy all its cracked up to be?
Politicians are unpopular as well. People might be more receptive to Lords duty if they were to also receive the £305 per diem (plus expenses) that the lords currently get.
Wasn't there a scheme at one point for people to be elected to the 'Lords' for long, but finite, periods..... 15 years IIRC. The downside was that they could only serve one term. Elections were to be every five years, so there were new people arriving every so often. Can't remember if there was a constituency component but it would be sensible for there to be a a regional element.
The problem with all of these schemes is that they are trying to fix the House of Lords rather than ask what it is for. Abolition combined with a ramping up of resources and procedures to the committees involved in revising legislation is for me the way to go.
The same could be said of all the commons tinkering schemes though. Whether its reduction in mp numbers or switching vote systems. The way are government works was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel. A lot of why governments of any colours are so bad is down to it. It is a problem to my mind much more seriously in need of root and branch revision than the house of lords
Don't necessarily disagree with that but getting rid of the Lords would be a good start (after more than 100 years). If we wait until we can do everything we end up doing nothing.
I see Prof Ferguson has returned to haunt us all with his dismal forecasts. Is he still using the 'model' that predicted 500K deaths in the UK?
Wasn't it a worst case of 500k deaths if we didn't lockdown?
Considering we did lockdown and have had about 50k deaths that doesn't seem completely unreasonable.
Depends what the infection fatality rate turns out to really be. At 0.1% it would need the UK to have a population of 500m by my blurry eyed calcs this morning, to fit the model.
Almost impossible for the IFR to be as small as 0.1% thought, as 45,000 already dead from a population of 67,000,000. 1% is certainly possible, and its clearly heavily skewed to the very old and the already unwell.
That assumes everyone gets it.
It also assumes that the IFR is not responsive to the number of cases - a big part of the 500k deaths is because they would massively overwhelm our resources.
I see Prof Ferguson has returned to haunt us all with his dismal forecasts. Is he still using the 'model' that predicted 500K deaths in the UK?
Wasn't it a worst case of 500k deaths if we didn't lockdown?
Considering we did lockdown and have had about 50k deaths that doesn't seem completely unreasonable.
Depends what the infection fatality rate turns out to really be. At 0.1% it would need the UK to have a population of 500m by my blurry eyed calcs this morning, to fit the model.
Where on earth are you getting a 0.1% fatality rate. Globally it's a 3.7% death rate right now. No way there are 37 non fatal cases for every detected case.
The Lords grew up as the Crown’s representatives in Parliament. The Commons as they “people’s”.
Quite an antiquated arrangement most would agree, especially given the ennoblement process. If you will allow me to go all Rory Stewart for a moment.
What about instead keeping the Commons as is, according to FPTP. But make the Lords truly the people’s chamber. With representatives chosen at random akin to a form of long term jury duty. A year’s posting at a time perhaps, with the new cadre rotating in once per quarter.
Stops the cronyism. Implements a form of direct democracy in the constitutional structure. And means over time the public become better engaged and educated about the processes under which we’re governed.
Dont people hate jury duty? Enforced service in the Lords for long periods sounds like it would go down poorly. Is direct democracy all its cracked up to be?
Politicians are unpopular as well. People might be more receptive to Lords duty if they were to also receive the £305 per diem (plus expenses) that the lords currently get.
Wasn't there a scheme at one point for people to be elected to the 'Lords' for long, but finite, periods..... 15 years IIRC. The downside was that they could only serve one term. Elections were to be every five years, so there were new people arriving every so often. Can't remember if there was a constituency component but it would be sensible for there to be a a regional element.
The problem with all of these schemes is that they are trying to fix the House of Lords rather than ask what it is for. Abolition combined with a ramping up of resources and procedures to the committees involved in revising legislation is for me the way to go.
The same could be said of all the commons tinkering schemes though. Whether its reduction in mp numbers or switching vote systems. The way are government works was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel. A lot of why governments of any colours are so bad is down to it. It is a problem to my mind much more seriously in need of root and branch revision than the house of lords
Don't necessarily disagree with that but getting rid of the Lords would be a good start (after more than 100 years). If we wait until we can do everything we end up doing nothing.
To a large extent though what we do with the Lords depends on what we do with the commons, it is pointless to change the lords, then change the commons and find that now the lords is not fit for purpose anymore. It would be like building an extension to a house then demolishing the rest of the house and building a completely new design of house. The extension may still be good and fit the new house but probably not.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
I don't agree.
Hypothetically if my wife and I both tested positive then I could tell contact tracers whom I have been in contact with but they would need to call my wife to find out whom she has been in contact with.
Cost/efficiency shouldn't be a factor here quite frankly. The damage the virus is doing to the economy, cutting corners and trying to be cheap on this would be an entirely false economy.
And what's the worst that happens. If they get a sixth call and say "piss off" then great, that's a five second phone call - so what harm is done? If on the other hand you get even just one more name to trace from that call, that's one more potential chain of transmission broken.
Plus who calls households in the year 2020 anyway? My house hasn't even got a landline (we do for broadband but no phone is connected to it). All six calls will surely each be a first call to that person's mobile phone.
You are not capable of passing the phone to your wife?
You say nothing has been lost by them saying piss off. Well it has and it has big time. You have just lost the tracking of all that persons contacts. And it won't happen on the 6th call, it will happen of the 2nd or 3rd when the response will be 'why didn't you ask me this on the 1st call'. So you will have lost the tracking of lots of contacts.
True it might still take multiple calls, but if they are all sitting around the TV why do 6 calls when one will knock them all off in one go.
Why allocate the calling to 6 different people? Why not give to one?
First call get info for say 4 of the family, 2nd and 3rd call to knock off the final 2.
Efficiency is not important you say? How on earth can you say that? This is not cutting corners it is trying to contact people quicker. And while I agree cost is not the prime issue, why waste it for the sake of it? You might as well argue for the burning of £10 notes.
So do it quicker, better and cheaper.
I'm not by my wife's side 24/7 so no I'm not necessarily able to pass the phone over. Its not right to view households as one person, they're not.
As for your follow-up remark that "And of course with 6 calls you a duplicating an awful lot of the questions - surely that is the point and a good thing. What makes you think all six people will answer the questions the same? If they do then fine, but if they give different answers then that is more and valuable information gained.
Furthermore if one person was assigned to call everyone in the household they might cut corners thinking "I've already got this question answered" and miss what someone else might have said.
Hive minds don't exist in the real world. Everyone should be answering their own questions and answering them fully and honestly.
Well of course you are not by your wife's side all the time, but if you are why waste time?
And I didn't say everyonme shouldn't be spoken to - they should
I don't think all will answer the questions the same, but the admin questions don't need duplicating and although you need to ask each person who they have contacted after you have got Aunt Vera on the list you don't have to write her down a further 5 times and of course if 6 separate people have made the call to the house then you will have done so, so either those 6 separate records have to be reconciled (wasting time and creating errors) or Aunt Vera will get 6 calls from track and trace.
The Lords grew up as the Crown’s representatives in Parliament. The Commons as they “people’s”.
Quite an antiquated arrangement most would agree, especially given the ennoblement process. If you will allow me to go all Rory Stewart for a moment.
What about instead keeping the Commons as is, according to FPTP. But make the Lords truly the people’s chamber. With representatives chosen at random akin to a form of long term jury duty. A year’s posting at a time perhaps, with the new cadre rotating in once per quarter.
Stops the cronyism. Implements a form of direct democracy in the constitutional structure. And means over time the public become better engaged and educated about the processes under which we’re governed.
"Jury Duty" for the House of Lords sounds like a good idea but is not practical. If someone is going to do the job properly, they have to be prepared to read and comprehend long boring documents*, and be able to comment and debate on those documents effectively. If someone doesn't do their job properly then it defeats the point of chosing the "Lords" at random.
It would be theoretically possible to do it by invitation. A random selection of citizens are invited to sit in the upper house for 12 months. The responsibilities are made clear to the invitee, and they can choose to accept or reject. I reckon that there will be a high number of rejections; most people able to do the job would not want to take 12 months out to do such a beurocratic job with poor renumeration. The obvious exception would be pensioners living in London or the Home Counties.
*Yes I know that a certain ex-leader of the Conservative party got called out on this yesterday, but it is part of the job.
I feel insulted by the idea that many of us aren't really working if we're working from home.
I've been working flat out since March on a major project, I'm doing more work than I did in the office and more important work too. I know a lot of people have been furloughed but a lot of us have been hard at work too.
Just skimming that piece there is very much a conflation of the two issues. Whether Treasury or Home Office civil servants are in Whitehall or working from home doesn't really matter. But quite how passports and driving licences aren't being processed, I don't know. That implies workers not going to the non-London offices/factories is an issue.
The BBC reporting is very pessimistic, e.g. with regard to the UCL study. Whitehall is "expecting" a massive spike in virus cases in the winter, after schools reopen. We shall see if this happens, but I suspect not. There will be increased unemployment by the start of 2021, and I think the real pressure on staff to go back to the office will begin from then. It could still take until 2023 before most people are working from the office again, but I have no doubt that this will eventually happen.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
How does Blackburn do it in that sort of situation? And I don't want to be awkward, but like many other older people, I don't answer unknown numbers. I'm fed up with being told my Amazon Prime account needs renewing, especially as I haven't got one. Do the tracers ring back?
Don't understand he question OKC? Same applies in both scenarios.
if you are saying it should be done locally I don't disagree. It seems that several areas are finding it better to do this. Just saying if they are doing it centrally it appears they are being very inefficient.
I was wondering if, once a Blackburn positive was identified, six different people phone the home to speak to each of the adult residents there.
I'm still struggling at what you are getting at OKC.
Currently (I believe) if a household of 6 needs calling, 6 different people will phone the home number or individual mobiles and deal with the individuals involved and go thru the same basic questions and in many cases create a list of identical contacts to be followed up.
If 1 person is given the 6 names they can knock off most of this info in the first call. Where necessary they can follow up the people missed and add to the list of new contacts any new names that need adding.
I suspect in most families the vast majority of contacts will be duplicates that you get in the first hit and can act on immediately. You then just need to do the follow ups to get the additional ones.
If follow up calls get duplicates then wouldn't the system flag them up as a duplicate that was already called earlier today? Be odd if it doesn't.
But what household is getting six calls? I'm assuming parents speak for the children - I certainly wouldn't pass the phone to my toddler - so if you're talking a household of six adults then why on earth would six adults all have the same contacts? Six adults will have six different sets of contacts - and some in those sets will intersect but so will some from whomever they traced before the household too. That's the whole point of this process.
I picked 6 because that was what Newsnight was reporting.
Just appalling that our kids education has been so badly messed up because looking at actual evidence was thought to be hard.
It seems like a really crass instrument has been chosen, just whacking down some pupils grades to get the average close - but there's nothing remotely fair to the individuals in that. I feel awful for anyone affected.
Not sure what happened to your son's grades, I'm sorry for him if he was one affected.
Can someone explain why Scotland isn't letting the kids sit the exams? Surely that's the solution, I know that in England a November sitting is being prepared, why doesn't Scotland do the same?
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
How does Blackburn do it in that sort of situation? And I don't want to be awkward, but like many other older people, I don't answer unknown numbers. I'm fed up with being told my Amazon Prime account needs renewing, especially as I haven't got one. Do the tracers ring back?
Don't understand he question OKC? Same applies in both scenarios.
if you are saying it should be done locally I don't disagree. It seems that several areas are finding it better to do this. Just saying if they are doing it centrally it appears they are being very inefficient.
I was wondering if, once a Blackburn positive was identified, six different people phone the home to speak to each of the adult residents there.
I'm still struggling at what you are getting at OKC.
Currently (I believe) if a household of 6 needs calling, 6 different people will phone the home number or individual mobiles and deal with the individuals involved and go thru the same basic questions and in many cases create a list of identical contacts to be followed up.
If 1 person is given the 6 names they can knock off most of this info in the first call. Where necessary they can follow up the people missed and add to the list of new contacts any new names that need adding.
I suspect in most families the vast majority of contacts will be duplicates that you get in the first hit and can act on immediately. You then just need to do the follow ups to get the additional ones.
If follow up calls get duplicates then wouldn't the system flag them up as a duplicate that was already called earlier today? Be odd if it doesn't.
But what household is getting six calls? I'm assuming parents speak for the children - I certainly wouldn't pass the phone to my toddler - so if you're talking a household of six adults then why on earth would six adults all have the same contacts? Six adults will have six different sets of contacts - and some in those sets will intersect but so will some from whomever they traced before the household too. That's the whole point of this process.
I picked 6 because that was what Newsnight was reporting.
Yes the media love to run with seemingly illogical edge cases but quite frankly if there are six adults living in a household that have tested positive then you can't be too careful calling them. There's going to be a lot of potential cases that household could have infected and the idea in one phone call, one "head of household" could deal with that is not right.
I feel insulted by the idea that many of us aren't really working if we're working from home.
I've been working flat out since March on a major project, I'm doing more work than I did in the office and more important work too. I know a lot of people have been furloughed but a lot of us have been hard at work too.
Just skimming that piece there is very much a conflation of the two issues. Whether Treasury or Home Office civil servants are in Whitehall or working from home doesn't really matter. But quite how passports and driving licences aren't being processed, I don't know. That implies workers not going to the non-London offices/factories is an issue.
The BBC reporting is very pessimistic, e.g. with regard to the UCL study. Whitehall is "expecting" a massive spike in virus cases in the winter, after schools reopen. We shall see if this happens, but I suspect not. There will be increased unemployment by the start of 2021, and I think the real pressure on staff to go back to the office will begin from then. It could still take until 2023 before most people are working from the office again, but I have no doubt that this will eventually happen.
I am expecting our company to severely downsize their office holdings when the lease runs out next year. Indeed our ceo seems to think working from home is a great idea for those that can.
I will try and find it but saw a recent survey where it was something like 80% did not wish to return to the old 5 days a week presenteeism model and it was a fairly even split between those that wanted a day or two in per week and those that wanted full work from home
The Lords grew up as the Crown’s representatives in Parliament. The Commons as they “people’s”.
Quite an antiquated arrangement most would agree, especially given the ennoblement process. If you will allow me to go all Rory Stewart for a moment.
What about instead keeping the Commons as is, according to FPTP. But make the Lords truly the people’s chamber. With representatives chosen at random akin to a form of long term jury duty. A year’s posting at a time perhaps, with the new cadre rotating in once per quarter.
Stops the cronyism. Implements a form of direct democracy in the constitutional structure. And means over time the public become better engaged and educated about the processes under which we’re governed.
Dont people hate jury duty? Enforced service in the Lords for long periods sounds like it would go down poorly. Is direct democracy all its cracked up to be?
Politicians are unpopular as well. People might be more receptive to Lords duty if they were to also receive the £305 per diem (plus expenses) that the lords currently get.
Wasn't there a scheme at one point for people to be elected to the 'Lords' for long, but finite, periods..... 15 years IIRC. The downside was that they could only serve one term. Elections were to be every five years, so there were new people arriving every so often. Can't remember if there was a constituency component but it would be sensible for there to be a a regional element.
The problem with all of these schemes is that they are trying to fix the House of Lords rather than ask what it is for. Abolition combined with a ramping up of resources and procedures to the committees involved in revising legislation is for me the way to go.
The same could be said of all the commons tinkering schemes though. Whether its reduction in mp numbers or switching vote systems. The way are government works was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel. A lot of why governments of any colours are so bad is down to it. It is a problem to my mind much more seriously in need of root and branch revision than the house of lords
An even more extreme example of "was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel." is with the US electoral college. In the 18C there was a good reason why each state sent a handful of representatives to washington to vote the way their state voted. Now it is an absurd situation, especially as EC delegates are allowed to be "unfaithful".
Can someone explain why Scotland isn't letting the kids sit the exams? Surely that's the solution, I know that in England a November sitting is being prepared, why doesn't Scotland do the same?
Because in Scotland the major exams for most, the Highers, are sat in year 5. Many will have left school this summer and will have gone on to University or College by then. Others will be doing 6th year in different subjects and would struggle to revisit a subject that they have not looked at for months.
The reality is that most State schools in Scotland had an entirely token "remote learning" experience with the odd bit of homework being set but no classes, little marking and little help. Those kids have not had any teaching in their subject since February. Having exams in November would really highlight how much better the Private schools handled remote learning and that would be embarrassing.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
I don't agree.
Hypothetically if my wife and I both tested positive then I could tell contact tracers whom I have been in contact with but they would need to call my wife to find out whom she has been in contact with.
Cost/efficiency shouldn't be a factor here quite frankly. The damage the virus is doing to the economy, cutting corners and trying to be cheap on this would be an entirely false economy.
And what's the worst that happens. If they get a sixth call and say "piss off" then great, that's a five second phone call - so what harm is done? If on the other hand you get even just one more name to trace from that call, that's one more potential chain of transmission broken.
Plus who calls households in the year 2020 anyway? My house hasn't even got a landline (we do for broadband but no phone is connected to it). All six calls will surely each be a first call to that person's mobile phone.
You are not capable of passing the phone to your wife?
You say nothing has been lost by them saying piss off. Well it has and it has big time. You have just lost the tracking of all that persons contacts. And it won't happen on the 6th call, it will happen of the 2nd or 3rd when the response will be 'why didn't you ask me this on the 1st call'. So you will have lost the tracking of lots of contacts.
True it might still take multiple calls, but if they are all sitting around the TV why do 6 calls when one will knock them all off in one go.
Why allocate the calling to 6 different people? Why not give to one?
First call get info for say 4 of the family, 2nd and 3rd call to knock off the final 2.
Efficiency is not important you say? How on earth can you say that? This is not cutting corners it is trying to contact people quicker. And while I agree cost is not the prime issue, why waste it for the sake of it? You might as well argue for the burning of £10 notes.
So do it quicker, better and cheaper.
The obvious problem with handing the phone to one's wife is that she might might not want to say in front of her husband that she spend 2 hours in the Royal Hotel with Prof. Brian Cox last week.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
How does Blackburn do it in that sort of situation? And I don't want to be awkward, but like many other older people, I don't answer unknown numbers. I'm fed up with being told my Amazon Prime account needs renewing, especially as I haven't got one. Do the tracers ring back?
Don't understand he question OKC? Same applies in both scenarios.
if you are saying it should be done locally I don't disagree. It seems that several areas are finding it better to do this. Just saying if they are doing it centrally it appears they are being very inefficient.
I was wondering if, once a Blackburn positive was identified, six different people phone the home to speak to each of the adult residents there.
I'm still struggling at what you are getting at OKC.
Currently (I believe) if a household of 6 needs calling, 6 different people will phone the home number or individual mobiles and deal with the individuals involved and go thru the same basic questions and in many cases create a list of identical contacts to be followed up.
If 1 person is given the 6 names they can knock off most of this info in the first call. Where necessary they can follow up the people missed and add to the list of new contacts any new names that need adding.
I suspect in most families the vast majority of contacts will be duplicates that you get in the first hit and can act on immediately. You then just need to do the follow ups to get the additional ones.
If follow up calls get duplicates then wouldn't the system flag them up as a duplicate that was already called earlier today? Be odd if it doesn't.
But what household is getting six calls? I'm assuming parents speak for the children - I certainly wouldn't pass the phone to my toddler - so if you're talking a household of six adults then why on earth would six adults all have the same contacts? Six adults will have six different sets of contacts - and some in those sets will intersect but so will some from whomever they traced before the household too. That's the whole point of this process.
I picked 6 because that was what Newsnight was reporting.
Yes the media love to run with seemingly illogical edge cases but quite frankly if there are six adults living in a household that have tested positive then you can't be too careful calling them. There's going to be a lot of potential cases that household could have infected and the idea in one phone call, one "head of household" could deal with that is not right.
Presumably we are not talking about them being tested positive but as a result of track and trace. I agree 6 seems extreme, but presumably in multi generation household it isn't ridiculous. Also I assume it was given to make the point. After all taking it to its logical extreme there isn't any issue in a household of 1 and not much in a household of 2 and then gets more of an issue as it increases. As I was only half listening I don't know whether it was hypothetical or real.
I see Prof Ferguson has returned to haunt us all with his dismal forecasts. Is he still using the 'model' that predicted 500K deaths in the UK?
Wasn't it a worst case of 500k deaths if we didn't lockdown?
Considering we did lockdown and have had about 50k deaths that doesn't seem completely unreasonable.
Depends what the infection fatality rate turns out to really be. At 0.1% it would need the UK to have a population of 500m by my blurry eyed calcs this morning, to fit the model.
And at 2% it would need 25 million to be infected.
I see no evidence it is anywhere near 0.1% - given our existing death tolls it would require 50 million to have been infected in the UK already which means we'd already have full herd immunity.
Worldwide deaths make up 6% of recorded cases in a sample size of 12,5m now. I am willing to accept that unrecorded cases may well be several times the recorded figure but 60x? I really don't think so. Actual fatality is somewhere over 1% I reckon but probably not 2%.
The other consequence of not testing enough is that you don't provide the best treatment to patients early enough - so you likely then end up with a higher death rate than is achievable.
I think there are reasonable estimates of an infection fatality rate of ~6% with no healthcare to ~0.4% with the current best combination of drugs, oxygen, etc.
So you certainly could have an infection fatality rate above 1% in a country that, say, didn't test enough and advised people to stay at home rather than go to hospital when ill, so that people were too sick to treat by the time they arrived in hospital.
But are you interested in the infection rate when the disease is mismanaged, or what you can reasonably hope for with competent people in charge?
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
I don't agree.
Hypothetically if my wife and I both tested positive then I could tell contact tracers whom I have been in contact with but they would need to call my wife to find out whom she has been in contact with.
Cost/efficiency shouldn't be a factor here quite frankly. The damage the virus is doing to the economy, cutting corners and trying to be cheap on this would be an entirely false economy.
And what's the worst that happens. If they get a sixth call and say "piss off" then great, that's a five second phone call - so what harm is done? If on the other hand you get even just one more name to trace from that call, that's one more potential chain of transmission broken.
Plus who calls households in the year 2020 anyway? My house hasn't even got a landline (we do for broadband but no phone is connected to it). All six calls will surely each be a first call to that person's mobile phone.
You are not capable of passing the phone to your wife?
You say nothing has been lost by them saying piss off. Well it has and it has big time. You have just lost the tracking of all that persons contacts. And it won't happen on the 6th call, it will happen of the 2nd or 3rd when the response will be 'why didn't you ask me this on the 1st call'. So you will have lost the tracking of lots of contacts.
True it might still take multiple calls, but if they are all sitting around the TV why do 6 calls when one will knock them all off in one go.
Why allocate the calling to 6 different people? Why not give to one?
First call get info for say 4 of the family, 2nd and 3rd call to knock off the final 2.
Efficiency is not important you say? How on earth can you say that? This is not cutting corners it is trying to contact people quicker. And while I agree cost is not the prime issue, why waste it for the sake of it? You might as well argue for the burning of £10 notes.
So do it quicker, better and cheaper.
I'm not by my wife's side 24/7 so no I'm not necessarily able to pass the phone over. Its not right to view households as one person, they're not.
As for your follow-up remark that "And of course with 6 calls you a duplicating an awful lot of the questions - surely that is the point and a good thing. What makes you think all six people will answer the questions the same? If they do then fine, but if they give different answers then that is more and valuable information gained.
Furthermore if one person was assigned to call everyone in the household they might cut corners thinking "I've already got this question answered" and miss what someone else might have said.
Hive minds don't exist in the real world. Everyone should be answering their own questions and answering them fully and honestly.
Well of course you are not by your wife's side all the time, but if you are why waste time?
And I didn't say everyonme shouldn't be spoken to - they should
I don't think all will answer the questions the same, but the admin questions don't need duplicating and although you need to ask each person who they have contacted after you have got Aunt Vera on the list you don't have to write her down a further 5 times and of course if 6 separate people have made the call to the house then you will have done so, so either those 6 separate records have to be reconciled (wasting time and creating errors) or Aunt Vera will get 6 calls from track and trace.
What's the difference between six household members naming Aunt Vera and six adult siblings or cousins who live in different homes all naming Aunt Vera?
What if there's more than one Aunt Vera and the fourth contact was actually naming a different Aunt Vera with totally different contact details but the contact tracer incorrectly assumed it was the same Vera so dioesn't bother to take the record? That's entirely possible, more than one person can have the same name.
I see Prof Ferguson has returned to haunt us all with his dismal forecasts. Is he still using the 'model' that predicted 500K deaths in the UK?
Wasn't it a worst case of 500k deaths if we didn't lockdown?
Considering we did lockdown and have had about 50k deaths that doesn't seem completely unreasonable.
Depends what the infection fatality rate turns out to really be. At 0.1% it would need the UK to have a population of 500m by my blurry eyed calcs this morning, to fit the model.
And at 2% it would need 25 million to be infected.
I see no evidence it is anywhere near 0.1% - given our existing death tolls it would require 50 million to have been infected in the UK already which means we'd already have full herd immunity.
Worldwide deaths make up 6% of recorded cases in a sample size of 12,5m now. I am willing to accept that unrecorded cases may well be several times the recorded figure but 60x? I really don't think so. Actual fatality is somewhere over 1% I reckon but probably not 2%.
The other consequence of not testing enough is that you don't provide the best treatment to patients early enough - so you likely then end up with a higher death rate than is achievable.
I think there are reasonable estimates of an infection fatality rate of ~6% with no healthcare to ~0.4% with the current best combination of drugs, oxygen, etc.
So you certainly could have an infection fatality rate above 1% in a country that, say, didn't test enough and advised people to stay at home rather than go to hospital when ill, so that people were too sick to treat by the time they arrived in hospital.
But are you interested in the infection rate when the disease is mismanaged, or what you can reasonably hope for with competent people in charge?
I fear that the first option is the one that is most relevant.
Staggering IFR from Mexico, 6148 +ve tests, 857 deaths ! 13.9%. Actually ours is worse right now - 46299 deaths/306293 cases = 15.1%. But at least we're not that bad today
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
How does Blackburn do it in that sort of situation? And I don't want to be awkward, but like many other older people, I don't answer unknown numbers. I'm fed up with being told my Amazon Prime account needs renewing, especially as I haven't got one. Do the tracers ring back?
Don't understand he question OKC? Same applies in both scenarios.
if you are saying it should be done locally I don't disagree. It seems that several areas are finding it better to do this. Just saying if they are doing it centrally it appears they are being very inefficient.
I was wondering if, once a Blackburn positive was identified, six different people phone the home to speak to each of the adult residents there.
I'm still struggling at what you are getting at OKC.
Currently (I believe) if a household of 6 needs calling, 6 different people will phone the home number or individual mobiles and deal with the individuals involved and go thru the same basic questions and in many cases create a list of identical contacts to be followed up.
If 1 person is given the 6 names they can knock off most of this info in the first call. Where necessary they can follow up the people missed and add to the list of new contacts any new names that need adding.
I suspect in most families the vast majority of contacts will be duplicates that you get in the first hit and can act on immediately. You then just need to do the follow ups to get the additional ones.
If follow up calls get duplicates then wouldn't the system flag them up as a duplicate that was already called earlier today? Be odd if it doesn't.
But what household is getting six calls? I'm assuming parents speak for the children - I certainly wouldn't pass the phone to my toddler - so if you're talking a household of six adults then why on earth would six adults all have the same contacts? Six adults will have six different sets of contacts - and some in those sets will intersect but so will some from whomever they traced before the household too. That's the whole point of this process.
I picked 6 because that was what Newsnight was reporting.
Thinking through some examples, could be: - shared house with six adults, an infected person visited the house and gave names of all residents - multi-generational house, two parents, two grown up children, two grandparents
In either case, you need to speak to all the people to check contacts. The shared housemates won't know each others contacts. May be more likely in the family, but probably won't know the grown up kids contacts (and they might keep some secret). Hell, wife/husband may be having an affair/have recently seen an ex that they wouldn't want to tell partner about but might still disclose to the tracer (not the affair, but having been in contact with the person). If you've got to speak to everyone then it might be possible on one call, but only if everyone is in. There are theoretical efficiencies in linking the household together, but maybe not so much in practice.
There are also data protection issues - you should always gather and store the minimum data necessary. Do you need to know the people on the contact list are in the same house? Not essential. You can also imagine people being up in arms about the government collecting data about who is in which household (I know this is theoretically already on electoral roll, but logic does not necessarily apply). Or the data may be wrong (infected person says they visited the Selebians last week and lists them as a household, but doesn't know Mr Selebian is currently moved out following an affair and not living in the house but in another flat nearby - they all played happy families for the visit)
TLDR: There may be theoretical efficiencies in linking households, but much reduced in reality and you have to collect and store more data, some of which may be wrong.
The Lords grew up as the Crown’s representatives in Parliament. The Commons as they “people’s”.
Quite an antiquated arrangement most would agree, especially given the ennoblement process. If you will allow me to go all Rory Stewart for a moment.
What about instead keeping the Commons as is, according to FPTP. But make the Lords truly the people’s chamber. With representatives chosen at random akin to a form of long term jury duty. A year’s posting at a time perhaps, with the new cadre rotating in once per quarter.
Stops the cronyism. Implements a form of direct democracy in the constitutional structure. And means over time the public become better engaged and educated about the processes under which we’re governed.
Dont people hate jury duty? Enforced service in the Lords for long periods sounds like it would go down poorly. Is direct democracy all its cracked up to be?
Politicians are unpopular as well. People might be more receptive to Lords duty if they were to also receive the £305 per diem (plus expenses) that the lords currently get.
Wasn't there a scheme at one point for people to be elected to the 'Lords' for long, but finite, periods..... 15 years IIRC. The downside was that they could only serve one term. Elections were to be every five years, so there were new people arriving every so often. Can't remember if there was a constituency component but it would be sensible for there to be a a regional element.
The problem with all of these schemes is that they are trying to fix the House of Lords rather than ask what it is for. Abolition combined with a ramping up of resources and procedures to the committees involved in revising legislation is for me the way to go.
The same could be said of all the commons tinkering schemes though. Whether its reduction in mp numbers or switching vote systems. The way are government works was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel. A lot of why governments of any colours are so bad is down to it. It is a problem to my mind much more seriously in need of root and branch revision than the house of lords
An even more extreme example of "was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel." is with the US electoral college. In the 18C there was a good reason why each state sent a handful of representatives to washington to vote the way their state voted. Now it is an absurd situation, especially as EC delegates are allowed to be "unfaithful".
I think that they changed the law as regards unfaithful electors but the whole college system is an absurd anachronism.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
How does Blackburn do it in that sort of situation? And I don't want to be awkward, but like many other older people, I don't answer unknown numbers. I'm fed up with being told my Amazon Prime account needs renewing, especially as I haven't got one. Do the tracers ring back?
Don't understand he question OKC? Same applies in both scenarios.
if you are saying it should be done locally I don't disagree. It seems that several areas are finding it better to do this. Just saying if they are doing it centrally it appears they are being very inefficient.
I was wondering if, once a Blackburn positive was identified, six different people phone the home to speak to each of the adult residents there.
I'm still struggling at what you are getting at OKC.
Currently (I believe) if a household of 6 needs calling, 6 different people will phone the home number or individual mobiles and deal with the individuals involved and go thru the same basic questions and in many cases create a list of identical contacts to be followed up.
If 1 person is given the 6 names they can knock off most of this info in the first call. Where necessary they can follow up the people missed and add to the list of new contacts any new names that need adding.
I suspect in most families the vast majority of contacts will be duplicates that you get in the first hit and can act on immediately. You then just need to do the follow ups to get the additional ones.
I agree. That's the sensible system, but AIUI, it's not what the 'Official Scheme; does. Blackburn has it's own system and I suspect that's what it does.
To be fair, we don't now, but in the mid 80's we had five working adults in the same house. Self, Wife and three adult children. Elder two 'children' had many of the same friends, Wife and I similarly, obviously, although different work colleagues.
The Lords grew up as the Crown’s representatives in Parliament. The Commons as they “people’s”.
Quite an antiquated arrangement most would agree, especially given the ennoblement process. If you will allow me to go all Rory Stewart for a moment.
What about instead keeping the Commons as is, according to FPTP. But make the Lords truly the people’s chamber. With representatives chosen at random akin to a form of long term jury duty. A year’s posting at a time perhaps, with the new cadre rotating in once per quarter.
Stops the cronyism. Implements a form of direct democracy in the constitutional structure. And means over time the public become better engaged and educated about the processes under which we’re governed.
Dont people hate jury duty? Enforced service in the Lords for long periods sounds like it would go down poorly. Is direct democracy all its cracked up to be?
Politicians are unpopular as well. People might be more receptive to Lords duty if they were to also receive the £305 per diem (plus expenses) that the lords currently get.
Wasn't there a scheme at one point for people to be elected to the 'Lords' for long, but finite, periods..... 15 years IIRC. The downside was that they could only serve one term. Elections were to be every five years, so there were new people arriving every so often. Can't remember if there was a constituency component but it would be sensible for there to be a a regional element.
The problem with all of these schemes is that they are trying to fix the House of Lords rather than ask what it is for. Abolition combined with a ramping up of resources and procedures to the committees involved in revising legislation is for me the way to go.
The same could be said of all the commons tinkering schemes though. Whether its reduction in mp numbers or switching vote systems. The way are government works was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel. A lot of why governments of any colours are so bad is down to it. It is a problem to my mind much more seriously in need of root and branch revision than the house of lords
An even more extreme example of "was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel." is with the US electoral college. In the 18C there was a good reason why each state sent a handful of representatives to washington to vote the way their state voted. Now it is an absurd situation, especially as EC delegates are allowed to be "unfaithful".
I think that they changed the law as regards unfaithful electors but the whole college system is an absurd anachronism.
If so, then it was after 2016 when a few were unfaithful, but thanks for the correction.
The Lords grew up as the Crown’s representatives in Parliament. The Commons as they “people’s”.
Quite an antiquated arrangement most would agree, especially given the ennoblement process. If you will allow me to go all Rory Stewart for a moment.
What about instead keeping the Commons as is, according to FPTP. But make the Lords truly the people’s chamber. With representatives chosen at random akin to a form of long term jury duty. A year’s posting at a time perhaps, with the new cadre rotating in once per quarter.
Stops the cronyism. Implements a form of direct democracy in the constitutional structure. And means over time the public become better engaged and educated about the processes under which we’re governed.
Dont people hate jury duty? Enforced service in the Lords for long periods sounds like it would go down poorly. Is direct democracy all its cracked up to be?
Politicians are unpopular as well. People might be more receptive to Lords duty if they were to also receive the £305 per diem (plus expenses) that the lords currently get.
Wasn't there a scheme at one point for people to be elected to the 'Lords' for long, but finite, periods..... 15 years IIRC. The downside was that they could only serve one term. Elections were to be every five years, so there were new people arriving every so often. Can't remember if there was a constituency component but it would be sensible for there to be a a regional element.
The problem with all of these schemes is that they are trying to fix the House of Lords rather than ask what it is for. Abolition combined with a ramping up of resources and procedures to the committees involved in revising legislation is for me the way to go.
The same could be said of all the commons tinkering schemes though. Whether its reduction in mp numbers or switching vote systems. The way are government works was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel. A lot of why governments of any colours are so bad is down to it. It is a problem to my mind much more seriously in need of root and branch revision than the house of lords
An even more extreme example of "was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel." is with the US electoral college. In the 18C there was a good reason why each state sent a handful of representatives to washington to vote the way their state voted. Now it is an absurd situation, especially as EC delegates are allowed to be "unfaithful".
I think that they changed the law as regards unfaithful electors but the whole college system is an absurd anachronism.
It does what it set out to do, though; stop someone popular in two or three big states but unpopular in ten small ones get elected.
As the father of a middle class kid who has been done out of what he would have achieved with no recourse or appeal I am not really seeing that. The system was crap because it simply refused to look at evidence of what the kids had achieved either in their prelims (nearly all done pre lockdown), course work or tests. And then, unlike England, it shut the door on giving an alternative of actually sitting an exam to boot.
A bureaucratic solution that keeps the kids at the maximum possible distance. You can see the attraction.
Looking at the trouble brewing within the SNP itself over this, I am wondering if the solution will be that the government will back down and run resits in November.
It would not be easy, but it would be somewhat better for Holyrood than trying to explain this fiasco for the next nine months.
For your son's sake, I hope they do come to that conclusion.
I don't think that they will. My son's school, for example, moved onto their final year timetable for the last term of remote teaching and he has a pretty full timetable. He would not be able to sit a higher in computing in November even if he was given the option. He has too much else to do, not least the entrance exam for Oxford that month.
They should have offered that option but it would have had to have been in the next couple of weeks before term starts again.
Has he decided which college to apply to, yet?
I saw your message of a day or two ago about his higher band. I wouldn't be too concerned about it affecting his chances: a lot of allowances are going to be made this year.
The Lords grew up as the Crown’s representatives in Parliament. The Commons as they “people’s”.
Quite an antiquated arrangement most would agree, especially given the ennoblement process. If you will allow me to go all Rory Stewart for a moment.
What about instead keeping the Commons as is, according to FPTP. But make the Lords truly the people’s chamber. With representatives chosen at random akin to a form of long term jury duty. A year’s posting at a time perhaps, with the new cadre rotating in once per quarter.
Stops the cronyism. Implements a form of direct democracy in the constitutional structure. And means over time the public become better engaged and educated about the processes under which we’re governed.
Dont people hate jury duty? Enforced service in the Lords for long periods sounds like it would go down poorly. Is direct democracy all its cracked up to be?
Politicians are unpopular as well. People might be more receptive to Lords duty if they were to also receive the £305 per diem (plus expenses) that the lords currently get.
Wasn't there a scheme at one point for people to be elected to the 'Lords' for long, but finite, periods..... 15 years IIRC. The downside was that they could only serve one term. Elections were to be every five years, so there were new people arriving every so often. Can't remember if there was a constituency component but it would be sensible for there to be a a regional element.
The problem with all of these schemes is that they are trying to fix the House of Lords rather than ask what it is for. Abolition combined with a ramping up of resources and procedures to the committees involved in revising legislation is for me the way to go.
The same could be said of all the commons tinkering schemes though. Whether its reduction in mp numbers or switching vote systems. The way are government works was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel. A lot of why governments of any colours are so bad is down to it. It is a problem to my mind much more seriously in need of root and branch revision than the house of lords
An even more extreme example of "was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel." is with the US electoral college. In the 18C there was a good reason why each state sent a handful of representatives to washington to vote the way their state voted. Now it is an absurd situation, especially as EC delegates are allowed to be "unfaithful".
I think that they changed the law as regards unfaithful electors but the whole college system is an absurd anachronism.
It does what it set out to do, though; stop someone popular in two or three big states but unpopular in ten small ones get elected.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
I don't agree.
Hypothetically if my wife and I both tested positive then I could tell contact tracers whom I have been in contact with but they would need to call my wife to find out whom she has been in contact with.
Cost/efficiency shouldn't be a factor here quite frankly. The damage the virus is doing to the economy, cutting corners and trying to be cheap on this would be an entirely false economy.
And what's the worst that happens. If they get a sixth call and say "piss off" then great, that's a five second phone call - so what harm is done? If on the other hand you get even just one more name to trace from that call, that's one more potential chain of transmission broken.
Plus who calls households in the year 2020 anyway? My house hasn't even got a landline (we do for broadband but no phone is connected to it). All six calls will surely each be a first call to that person's mobile phone.
You are not capable of passing the phone to your wife?
You say nothing has been lost by them saying piss off. Well it has and it has big time. You have just lost the tracking of all that persons contacts. And it won't happen on the 6th call, it will happen of the 2nd or 3rd when the response will be 'why didn't you ask me this on the 1st call'. So you will have lost the tracking of lots of contacts.
True it might still take multiple calls, but if they are all sitting around the TV why do 6 calls when one will knock them all off in one go.
Why allocate the calling to 6 different people? Why not give to one?
First call get info for say 4 of the family, 2nd and 3rd call to knock off the final 2.
Efficiency is not important you say? How on earth can you say that? This is not cutting corners it is trying to contact people quicker. And while I agree cost is not the prime issue, why waste it for the sake of it? You might as well argue for the burning of £10 notes.
So do it quicker, better and cheaper.
I'm not by my wife's side 24/7 so no I'm not necessarily able to pass the phone over. Its not right to view households as one person, they're not.
As for your follow-up remark that "And of course with 6 calls you a duplicating an awful lot of the questions - surely that is the point and a good thing. What makes you think all six people will answer the questions the same? If they do then fine, but if they give different answers then that is more and valuable information gained.
Furthermore if one person was assigned to call everyone in the household they might cut corners thinking "I've already got this question answered" and miss what someone else might have said.
Hive minds don't exist in the real world. Everyone should be answering their own questions and answering them fully and honestly.
Well of course you are not by your wife's side all the time, but if you are why waste time?
And I didn't say everyonme shouldn't be spoken to - they should
I don't think all will answer the questions the same, but the admin questions don't need duplicating and although you need to ask each person who they have contacted after you have got Aunt Vera on the list you don't have to write her down a further 5 times and of course if 6 separate people have made the call to the house then you will have done so, so either those 6 separate records have to be reconciled (wasting time and creating errors) or Aunt Vera will get 6 calls from track and trace.
What's the difference between six household members naming Aunt Vera and six adult siblings or cousins who live in different homes all naming Aunt Vera?
What if there's more than one Aunt Vera and the fourth contact was actually naming a different Aunt Vera with totally different contact details but the contact tracer incorrectly assumed it was the same Vera so dioesn't bother to take the record? That's entirely possible, more than one person can have the same name.
Oh for goodness sake. If they live in different home of course they will all have to name her, but if they are all in the same home why waste time. Name her each time but record her once. It is like your comment about not being next to your wife all the time. Of course you are not, but if you happen to be why waste the time of a second call.
And of course they don't just say Aunt Vera! That would be impossible to check. Presumably the person calling actually asks sensible useful questions like surname, address, phone number, and is this the same person, etc.
I'm sure the name John comes up a few times. I hope there isn't a poor sod out there getting thousands of calls!
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
How does Blackburn do it in that sort of situation? And I don't want to be awkward, but like many other older people, I don't answer unknown numbers. I'm fed up with being told my Amazon Prime account needs renewing, especially as I haven't got one. Do the tracers ring back?
Don't understand he question OKC? Same applies in both scenarios.
if you are saying it should be done locally I don't disagree. It seems that several areas are finding it better to do this. Just saying if they are doing it centrally it appears they are being very inefficient.
I was wondering if, once a Blackburn positive was identified, six different people phone the home to speak to each of the adult residents there.
I'm still struggling at what you are getting at OKC.
Currently (I believe) if a household of 6 needs calling, 6 different people will phone the home number or individual mobiles and deal with the individuals involved and go thru the same basic questions and in many cases create a list of identical contacts to be followed up.
If 1 person is given the 6 names they can knock off most of this info in the first call. Where necessary they can follow up the people missed and add to the list of new contacts any new names that need adding.
I suspect in most families the vast majority of contacts will be duplicates that you get in the first hit and can act on immediately. You then just need to do the follow ups to get the additional ones.
I agree. That's the sensible system, but AIUI, it's not what the 'Official Scheme; does. Blackburn has it's own system and I suspect that's what it does.
To be fair, we don't now, but in the mid 80's we had five working adults in the same house. Self, Wife and three adult children. Elder two 'children' had many of the same friends, Wife and I similarly, obviously, although different work colleagues.
Yes I have heard of several local schemes who are fed up with the central track and trace and are doing there own thing. It also means knocking on doors is easier which gets over the not answering the phone problem.
The Lords grew up as the Crown’s representatives in Parliament. The Commons as they “people’s”.
Quite an antiquated arrangement most would agree, especially given the ennoblement process. If you will allow me to go all Rory Stewart for a moment.
What about instead keeping the Commons as is, according to FPTP. But make the Lords truly the people’s chamber. With representatives chosen at random akin to a form of long term jury duty. A year’s posting at a time perhaps, with the new cadre rotating in once per quarter.
Stops the cronyism. Implements a form of direct democracy in the constitutional structure. And means over time the public become better engaged and educated about the processes under which we’re governed.
Dont people hate jury duty? Enforced service in the Lords for long periods sounds like it would go down poorly. Is direct democracy all its cracked up to be?
Politicians are unpopular as well. People might be more receptive to Lords duty if they were to also receive the £305 per diem (plus expenses) that the lords currently get.
Wasn't there a scheme at one point for people to be elected to the 'Lords' for long, but finite, periods..... 15 years IIRC. The downside was that they could only serve one term. Elections were to be every five years, so there were new people arriving every so often. Can't remember if there was a constituency component but it would be sensible for there to be a a regional element.
The problem with all of these schemes is that they are trying to fix the House of Lords rather than ask what it is for. Abolition combined with a ramping up of resources and procedures to the committees involved in revising legislation is for me the way to go.
The same could be said of all the commons tinkering schemes though. Whether its reduction in mp numbers or switching vote systems. The way are government works was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel. A lot of why governments of any colours are so bad is down to it. It is a problem to my mind much more seriously in need of root and branch revision than the house of lords
An even more extreme example of "was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel." is with the US electoral college. In the 18C there was a good reason why each state sent a handful of representatives to washington to vote the way their state voted. Now it is an absurd situation, especially as EC delegates are allowed to be "unfaithful".
I think that they changed the law as regards unfaithful electors but the whole college system is an absurd anachronism.
It does what it set out to do, though; stop someone popular in two or three big states but unpopular in ten small ones get elected.
You can win by winning 11 of the states
Spread across the country, though. You can't win by just piling up votes in the North East. Or could you?
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
I don't agree.
Hypothetically if my wife and I both tested positive then I could tell contact tracers whom I have been in contact with but they would need to call my wife to find out whom she has been in contact with.
Cost/efficiency shouldn't be a factor here quite frankly. The damage the virus is doing to the economy, cutting corners and trying to be cheap on this would be an entirely false economy.
And what's the worst that happens. If they get a sixth call and say "piss off" then great, that's a five second phone call - so what harm is done? If on the other hand you get even just one more name to trace from that call, that's one more potential chain of transmission broken.
Plus who calls households in the year 2020 anyway? My house hasn't even got a landline (we do for broadband but no phone is connected to it). All six calls will surely each be a first call to that person's mobile phone.
You are not capable of passing the phone to your wife?
You say nothing has been lost by them saying piss off. Well it has and it has big time. You have just lost the tracking of all that persons contacts. And it won't happen on the 6th call, it will happen of the 2nd or 3rd when the response will be 'why didn't you ask me this on the 1st call'. So you will have lost the tracking of lots of contacts.
True it might still take multiple calls, but if they are all sitting around the TV why do 6 calls when one will knock them all off in one go.
Why allocate the calling to 6 different people? Why not give to one?
First call get info for say 4 of the family, 2nd and 3rd call to knock off the final 2.
Efficiency is not important you say? How on earth can you say that? This is not cutting corners it is trying to contact people quicker. And while I agree cost is not the prime issue, why waste it for the sake of it? You might as well argue for the burning of £10 notes.
So do it quicker, better and cheaper.
I'm not by my wife's side 24/7 so no I'm not necessarily able to pass the phone over. Its not right to view households as one person, they're not.
As for your follow-up remark that "And of course with 6 calls you a duplicating an awful lot of the questions - surely that is the point and a good thing. What makes you think all six people will answer the questions the same? If they do then fine, but if they give different answers then that is more and valuable information gained.
Furthermore if one person was assigned to call everyone in the household they might cut corners thinking "I've already got this question answered" and miss what someone else might have said.
Hive minds don't exist in the real world. Everyone should be answering their own questions and answering them fully and honestly.
Well of course you are not by your wife's side all the time, but if you are why waste time?
And I didn't say everyonme shouldn't be spoken to - they should
I don't think all will answer the questions the same, but the admin questions don't need duplicating and although you need to ask each person who they have contacted after you have got Aunt Vera on the list you don't have to write her down a further 5 times and of course if 6 separate people have made the call to the house then you will have done so, so either those 6 separate records have to be reconciled (wasting time and creating errors) or Aunt Vera will get 6 calls from track and trace.
What's the difference between six household members naming Aunt Vera and six adult siblings or cousins who live in different homes all naming Aunt Vera?
What if there's more than one Aunt Vera and the fourth contact was actually naming a different Aunt Vera with totally different contact details but the contact tracer incorrectly assumed it was the same Vera so dioesn't bother to take the record? That's entirely possible, more than one person can have the same name.
Oh for goodness sake. If they live in different home of course they will all have to name her, but if they are all in the same home why waste time. Name her each time but record her once. It is like your comment about not being next to your wife all the time. Of course you are not, but if you happen to be why waste the time of a second call.
And of course they don't just say Aunt Vera! That would be impossible to check. Presumably the person calling actually asks sensible useful questions like surname, address, phone number, and is this the same person, etc.
I'm sure the name John comes up a few times. I hope there isn't a poor sod out there getting thousands of calls!
Well precisely you need to answer those questions, but once you've answered those questions you've filled in the record for Aunt Vera. So it makes no difference if one person takes the call or six people take six calls, either way every person needs to give Aunt Vera's full details because if they don't then there's no way to know its the same Aunt Vera. Afterall even two people living in the same address can have the same name and surname (think how often children share the name of one of their parents).
I'm assuming that people on the end of the phone aren't jotting this down on pen and paper then going back onto the computer and filling it in, they will be filling it in directly. So when person one starts to give Vera's details it will presumably go directly onto the system. When person six does the same thing, then presumably it goes directly into the system too. So unless you're going to cut corners there is no "time saved" by recording her once since you've already recorded her once you took the details - and if you didn't take the details you don't know its not the same person.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
I don't agree.
Hypothetically if my wife and I both tested positive then I could tell contact tracers whom I have been in contact with but they would need to call my wife to find out whom she has been in contact with.
Cost/efficiency shouldn't be a factor here quite frankly. The damage the virus is doing to the economy, cutting corners and trying to be cheap on this would be an entirely false economy.
And what's the worst that happens. If they get a sixth call and say "piss off" then great, that's a five second phone call - so what harm is done? If on the other hand you get even just one more name to trace from that call, that's one more potential chain of transmission broken.
Plus who calls households in the year 2020 anyway? My house hasn't even got a landline (we do for broadband but no phone is connected to it). All six calls will surely each be a first call to that person's mobile phone.
You are not capable of passing the phone to your wife?
You say nothing has been lost by them saying piss off. Well it has and it has big time. You have just lost the tracking of all that persons contacts. And it won't happen on the 6th call, it will happen of the 2nd or 3rd when the response will be 'why didn't you ask me this on the 1st call'. So you will have lost the tracking of lots of contacts.
True it might still take multiple calls, but if they are all sitting around the TV why do 6 calls when one will knock them all off in one go.
Why allocate the calling to 6 different people? Why not give to one?
First call get info for say 4 of the family, 2nd and 3rd call to knock off the final 2.
Efficiency is not important you say? How on earth can you say that? This is not cutting corners it is trying to contact people quicker. And while I agree cost is not the prime issue, why waste it for the sake of it? You might as well argue for the burning of £10 notes.
So do it quicker, better and cheaper.
I'm not by my wife's side 24/7 so no I'm not necessarily able to pass the phone over. Its not right to view households as one person, they're not.
As for your follow-up remark that "And of course with 6 calls you a duplicating an awful lot of the questions - surely that is the point and a good thing. What makes you think all six people will answer the questions the same? If they do then fine, but if they give different answers then that is more and valuable information gained.
Furthermore if one person was assigned to call everyone in the household they might cut corners thinking "I've already got this question answered" and miss what someone else might have said.
Hive minds don't exist in the real world. Everyone should be answering their own questions and answering them fully and honestly.
Well of course you are not by your wife's side all the time, but if you are why waste time?
And I didn't say everyonme shouldn't be spoken to - they should
I don't think all will answer the questions the same, but the admin questions don't need duplicating and although you need to ask each person who they have contacted after you have got Aunt Vera on the list you don't have to write her down a further 5 times and of course if 6 separate people have made the call to the house then you will have done so, so either those 6 separate records have to be reconciled (wasting time and creating errors) or Aunt Vera will get 6 calls from track and trace.
What's the difference between six household members naming Aunt Vera and six adult siblings or cousins who live in different homes all naming Aunt Vera?
What if there's more than one Aunt Vera and the fourth contact was actually naming a different Aunt Vera with totally different contact details but the contact tracer incorrectly assumed it was the same Vera so dioesn't bother to take the record? That's entirely possible, more than one person can have the same name.
Oh for goodness sake. If they live in different home of course they will all have to name her, but if they are all in the same home why waste time. Name her each time but record her once. It is like your comment about not being next to your wife all the time. Of course you are not, but if you happen to be why waste the time of a second call.
And of course they don't just say Aunt Vera! That would be impossible to check. Presumably the person calling actually asks sensible useful questions like surname, address, phone number, and is this the same person, etc.
I'm sure the name John comes up a few times. I hope there isn't a poor sod out there getting thousands of calls!
Well precisely you need to answer those questions, but once you've answered those questions you've filled in the record for Aunt Vera. So it makes no difference if one person takes the call or six people take six calls, either way every person needs to give Aunt Vera's full details because if they don't then there's no way to know its the same Aunt Vera. Afterall even two people living in the same address can have the same name and surname (think how often children share the name of one of their parents).
I'm assuming that people on the end of the phone aren't jotting this down on pen and paper then going back onto the computer and filling it in, they will be filling it in directly. So when person one starts to give Vera's details it will presumably go directly onto the system. When person six does the same thing, then presumably it goes directly into the system too. So unless you're going to cut corners there is no "time saved" by recording her once since you've already recorded her once you took the details - and if you didn't take the details you don't know its not the same person.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
How does Blackburn do it in that sort of situation? And I don't want to be awkward, but like many other older people, I don't answer unknown numbers. I'm fed up with being told my Amazon Prime account needs renewing, especially as I haven't got one. Do the tracers ring back?
Don't understand he question OKC? Same applies in both scenarios.
if you are saying it should be done locally I don't disagree. It seems that several areas are finding it better to do this. Just saying if they are doing it centrally it appears they are being very inefficient.
I was wondering if, once a Blackburn positive was identified, six different people phone the home to speak to each of the adult residents there.
I'm still struggling at what you are getting at OKC.
Currently (I believe) if a household of 6 needs calling, 6 different people will phone the home number or individual mobiles and deal with the individuals involved and go thru the same basic questions and in many cases create a list of identical contacts to be followed up.
If 1 person is given the 6 names they can knock off most of this info in the first call. Where necessary they can follow up the people missed and add to the list of new contacts any new names that need adding.
I suspect in most families the vast majority of contacts will be duplicates that you get in the first hit and can act on immediately. You then just need to do the follow ups to get the additional ones.
If follow up calls get duplicates then wouldn't the system flag them up as a duplicate that was already called earlier today? Be odd if it doesn't.
But what household is getting six calls? I'm assuming parents speak for the children - I certainly wouldn't pass the phone to my toddler - so if you're talking a household of six adults then why on earth would six adults all have the same contacts? Six adults will have six different sets of contacts - and some in those sets will intersect but so will some from whomever they traced before the household too. That's the whole point of this process.
I picked 6 because that was what Newsnight was reporting.
Thinking through some examples, could be: - shared house with six adults, an infected person visited the house and gave names of all residents - multi-generational house, two parents, two grown up children, two grandparents
In either case, you need to speak to all the people to check contacts. The shared housemates won't know each others contacts. May be more likely in the family, but probably won't know the grown up kids contacts (and they might keep some secret). Hell, wife/husband may be having an affair/have recently seen an ex that they wouldn't want to tell partner about but might still disclose to the tracer (not the affair, but having been in contact with the person). If you've got to speak to everyone then it might be possible on one call, but only if everyone is in. There are theoretical efficiencies in linking the household together, but maybe not so much in practice.
There are also data protection issues - you should always gather and store the minimum data necessary. Do you need to know the people on the contact list are in the same house? Not essential. You can also imagine people being up in arms about the government collecting data about who is in which household (I know this is theoretically already on electoral roll, but logic does not necessarily apply). Or the data may be wrong (infected person says they visited the Selebians last week and lists them as a household, but doesn't know Mr Selebian is currently moved out following an affair and not living in the house but in another flat nearby - they all played happy families for the visit)
TLDR: There may be theoretical efficiencies in linking households, but much reduced in reality and you have to collect and store more data, some of which may be wrong.
Hi S.
At no point did I say you did not need to speak to all 6 people. I said don't allocate to 6 separate track and trace people.
Re affairs, yes an issue and there will be other issues re secrets. The same arises in separate calls though if you are together at the time. What can I say; people are just going to lie and it is something that has to be accepted.
Re data protection. Same issue. I do wonder what is happening about this though. It seems data protection has just about gone out of the window in the current climate.
Staggering IFR from Mexico, 6148 +ve tests, 857 deaths ! 13.9%. Actually ours is worse right now - 46299 deaths/306293 cases = 15.1%. But at least we're not that bad today
Pedantry - you are quoting case fatality rates (CFR) not the infection fatality rate (IFR).
The IFR is what we want to know, but the CFR is what we've managed to measure.
The Lords grew up as the Crown’s representatives in Parliament. The Commons as they “people’s”.
Quite an antiquated arrangement most would agree, especially given the ennoblement process. If you will allow me to go all Rory Stewart for a moment.
What about instead keeping the Commons as is, according to FPTP. But make the Lords truly the people’s chamber. With representatives chosen at random akin to a form of long term jury duty. A year’s posting at a time perhaps, with the new cadre rotating in once per quarter.
Stops the cronyism. Implements a form of direct democracy in the constitutional structure. And means over time the public become better engaged and educated about the processes under which we’re governed.
Dont people hate jury duty? Enforced service in the Lords for long periods sounds like it would go down poorly. Is direct democracy all its cracked up to be?
Politicians are unpopular as well. People might be more receptive to Lords duty if they were to also receive the £305 per diem (plus expenses) that the lords currently get.
Wasn't there a scheme at one point for people to be elected to the 'Lords' for long, but finite, periods..... 15 years IIRC. The downside was that they could only serve one term. Elections were to be every five years, so there were new people arriving every so often. Can't remember if there was a constituency component but it would be sensible for there to be a a regional element.
The problem with all of these schemes is that they are trying to fix the House of Lords rather than ask what it is for. Abolition combined with a ramping up of resources and procedures to the committees involved in revising legislation is for me the way to go.
The same could be said of all the commons tinkering schemes though. Whether its reduction in mp numbers or switching vote systems. The way are government works was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel. A lot of why governments of any colours are so bad is down to it. It is a problem to my mind much more seriously in need of root and branch revision than the house of lords
An even more extreme example of "was designed to get around the problems of an 18th century society of poor communication and slow travel." is with the US electoral college. In the 18C there was a good reason why each state sent a handful of representatives to washington to vote the way their state voted. Now it is an absurd situation, especially as EC delegates are allowed to be "unfaithful".
I think that they changed the law as regards unfaithful electors but the whole college system is an absurd anachronism.
It does what it set out to do, though; stop someone popular in two or three big states but unpopular in ten small ones get elected.
You can win by winning 11 of the states
Spread across the country, though. You can't win by just piling up votes in the North East. Or could you?
Northeastern United states is only 112 electoral votes.
Did anyone watch Newsnight last night re track and trace? Would be interested in feedback from it. I had it on in the background and suddenly woke up when I heard a particular item which I would like confirmation on. If I got this right if 6 people in the same family need to be contacted the names are passed to 6 different track and trace people, so the family gets 6 different identical calls. Other than being a huge waste of time the family gets cheesed off and stops cooperating. Have I got this right and if so what the hell is going on?
6 cases so 6 sets of people to chase up which does mean 6 different work streams.
Yes, on one level it doesn't make much sense but on another level it does - chances are all 6 people have contacted different sets of friends.
Yes but 1 person should be making the initial call to the household. It might need more to do the follow ups to the different groups of friends.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
I don't agree.
Hypothetically if my wife and I both tested positive then I could tell contact tracers whom I have been in contact with but they would need to call my wife to find out whom she has been in contact with.
Cost/efficiency shouldn't be a factor here quite frankly. The damage the virus is doing to the economy, cutting corners and trying to be cheap on this would be an entirely false economy.
And what's the worst that happens. If they get a sixth call and say "piss off" then great, that's a five second phone call - so what harm is done? If on the other hand you get even just one more name to trace from that call, that's one more potential chain of transmission broken.
Plus who calls households in the year 2020 anyway? My house hasn't even got a landline (we do for broadband but no phone is connected to it). All six calls will surely each be a first call to that person's mobile phone.
You are not capable of passing the phone to your wife?
You say nothing has been lost by them saying piss off. Well it has and it has big time. You have just lost the tracking of all that persons contacts. And it won't happen on the 6th call, it will happen of the 2nd or 3rd when the response will be 'why didn't you ask me this on the 1st call'. So you will have lost the tracking of lots of contacts.
True it might still take multiple calls, but if they are all sitting around the TV why do 6 calls when one will knock them all off in one go.
Why allocate the calling to 6 different people? Why not give to one?
First call get info for say 4 of the family, 2nd and 3rd call to knock off the final 2.
Efficiency is not important you say? How on earth can you say that? This is not cutting corners it is trying to contact people quicker. And while I agree cost is not the prime issue, why waste it for the sake of it? You might as well argue for the burning of £10 notes.
So do it quicker, better and cheaper.
I'm not by my wife's side 24/7 so no I'm not necessarily able to pass the phone over. Its not right to view households as one person, they're not.
As for your follow-up remark that "And of course with 6 calls you a duplicating an awful lot of the questions - surely that is the point and a good thing. What makes you think all six people will answer the questions the same? If they do then fine, but if they give different answers then that is more and valuable information gained.
Furthermore if one person was assigned to call everyone in the household they might cut corners thinking "I've already got this question answered" and miss what someone else might have said.
Hive minds don't exist in the real world. Everyone should be answering their own questions and answering them fully and honestly.
Well of course you are not by your wife's side all the time, but if you are why waste time?
And I didn't say everyonme shouldn't be spoken to - they should
I don't think all will answer the questions the same, but the admin questions don't need duplicating and although you need to ask each person who they have contacted after you have got Aunt Vera on the list you don't have to write her down a further 5 times and of course if 6 separate people have made the call to the house then you will have done so, so either those 6 separate records have to be reconciled (wasting time and creating errors) or Aunt Vera will get 6 calls from track and trace.
What's the difference between six household members naming Aunt Vera and six adult siblings or cousins who live in different homes all naming Aunt Vera?
What if there's more than one Aunt Vera and the fourth contact was actually naming a different Aunt Vera with totally different contact details but the contact tracer incorrectly assumed it was the same Vera so dioesn't bother to take the record? That's entirely possible, more than one person can have the same name.
Oh for goodness sake. If they live in different home of course they will all have to name her, but if they are all in the same home why waste time. Name her each time but record her once. It is like your comment about not being next to your wife all the time. Of course you are not, but if you happen to be why waste the time of a second call.
And of course they don't just say Aunt Vera! That would be impossible to check. Presumably the person calling actually asks sensible useful questions like surname, address, phone number, and is this the same person, etc.
I'm sure the name John comes up a few times. I hope there isn't a poor sod out there getting thousands of calls!
Well precisely you need to answer those questions, but once you've answered those questions you've filled in the record for Aunt Vera. So it makes no difference if one person takes the call or six people take six calls, either way every person needs to give Aunt Vera's full details because if they don't then there's no way to know its the same Aunt Vera. Afterall even two people living in the same address can have the same name and surname (think how often children share the name of one of their parents).
I'm assuming that people on the end of the phone aren't jotting this down on pen and paper then going back onto the computer and filling it in, they will be filling it in directly. So when person one starts to give Vera's details it will presumably go directly onto the system. When person six does the same thing, then presumably it goes directly into the system too. So unless you're going to cut corners there is no "time saved" by recording her once since you've already recorded her once you took the details - and if you didn't take the details you don't know its not the same person.
Track and trace has been done with pen and paper is I guess the first point. Whether it is now I don't know.
And it takes much more time to make multiple calls and go through the admin/security etc and people not answering the phone, etc, etc.
And you haven't dealt with the point of people just getting fed up with multiple identical calls and just refusing to give the information and therefore people being missed unnecessarily from being tracked which is the whole point of the exercise.
I know this is really our reserves team but still, playing against Ireland and only a single wicket for the bowlers so far?
When getting beaten , England love to roll out excuses. Can you not just accept you are being beaten by a better team.
Yes, no one else has ever used excuses after being beaten, definitely something that only happens with England. As true in sport as in politics no doubt.
Sir Andrew Murray, that great Scottish tennis player with three grand slams and a spell as World No. 1.
Or Andy Murray, that useless British numpty who can't land the ball in the service box.
Weirdly, I remember the meme on here being the other way around with comments that Andy was becoming increasingly Scottish as the sets went against him.
Very probably, but I thought this was more likely to annoy Malcolm!
Comments
And a surprise new favourite! One of the problems with Betfair is this market is thin, and illiquid markets can show sudden movements if just one layer withdraws funds or a backer overreacts to a news report or simply presses the wrong button.
Michelle Obama: 2.02
Kamala Harris: 2.1
Susan Rice: 4.4
Tammy Duckworth: 12
Elizabeth Warren: 16
Val Demings: 16
Karen Bass: 24
Gretchen Whitmer: 44
Keisha Lance Bottoms: 50
Gina Raimondo: 70
Michelle Lujan Grisham: 70
Hillary Clinton: 100
Barack Obama: 200
My own, uninformed view is that it will be Susan Rice but so far I've not got round to adjusting my betting position which is green on all likely candidates (not including the former First Lady!) but most profitable on Tammy Duckworth.
Oh, and in the time it has taken to compose this meagre post, Michelle Obama has moved out to 22. As you were!
Kamala Harris: 2.06
Susan Rice: 4.5
Tammy Duckworth: 12
Elizabeth Warren: 16
Val Demings: 16
Michelle Obama: 22
Karen Bass: 24
Gretchen Whitmer: 44
Keisha Lance Bottoms: 50
Gina Raimondo: 70
Michelle Lujan Grisham: 70
Hillary Clinton: 100
Barack Obama: 200
Or Andy Murray, that useless British numpty who can't land the ball in the service box.
I think this was one of the arguments for local track and trace which would do it by household, but there is no reason why that could not happen centrally.
As I said cost/efficiency plus by you get to the 6th call to the house they are just going to tell you to piss off.
As EVs expand both via popularity and via government policy, the need to install chargers becomes a national priority which I expect governments and councils will assist with. Will they also do so for Tesla only chargers...? In Europe, now that CCS is the Tesla standard, they would be better working with other networks on fast CCS installs off their own network.
That was obvious then yet 5 months later we are still mucking about with unrestricted air travel with a non existent quarantine. I have genuinely tried to understand a rationale behind this other than not wanting to interfere with wealthy peoples' ski holidays. All I can come up with was the original view that the spread of this virus throughout the population was thought to be so inevitable and unstoppable that it wasn't worth trying. Even on those terms, however, this made little sense as it came closer to overloading our precious NHS than anything else.
Hypothetically if my wife and I both tested positive then I could tell contact tracers whom I have been in contact with but they would need to call my wife to find out whom she has been in contact with.
Cost/efficiency shouldn't be a factor here quite frankly. The damage the virus is doing to the economy, cutting corners and trying to be cheap on this would be an entirely false economy.
And what's the worst that happens. If they get a sixth call and say "piss off" then great, that's a five second phone call - so what harm is done? If on the other hand you get even just one more name to trace from that call, that's one more potential chain of transmission broken.
Plus who calls households in the year 2020 anyway? My house hasn't even got a landline (we do for broadband but no phone is connected to it). All six calls will surely each be a first call to that person's mobile phone.
I see no evidence it is anywhere near 0.1% - given our existing death tolls it would require 50 million to have been infected in the UK already which means we'd already have full herd immunity.
As an accountant, I was thinking of ways that people would scam the system as soon as it was announced.
I imagine its also working the other way for less reputable vendors. Someone comes in for a takeaway coffee (and there is a small seating area). Asks for take out, pays full price, but vendor rings it through as 'sit down' and claims 50% more from government next week.
A bureaucratic solution that keeps the kids at the maximum possible distance. You can see the attraction.
You say nothing has been lost by them saying piss off. Well it has and it has big time. You have just lost the tracking of all that persons contacts. And it won't happen on the 6th call, it will happen of the 2nd or 3rd when the response will be 'why didn't you ask me this on the 1st call'. So you will have lost the tracking of lots of contacts.
True it might still take multiple calls, but if they are all sitting around the TV why do 6 calls when one will knock them all off in one go.
Why allocate the calling to 6 different people? Why not give to one?
First call get info for say 4 of the family, 2nd and 3rd call to knock off the final 2.
Efficiency is not important you say? How on earth can you say that? This is not cutting corners it is trying to contact people quicker. And while I agree cost is not the prime issue, why waste it for the sake of it? You might as well argue for the burning of £10 notes.
So do it quicker, better and cheaper.
It would not be easy, but it would be somewhat better for Holyrood than trying to explain this fiasco for the next nine months.
For your son's sake, I hope they do come to that conclusion.
https://twitter.com/AlexInAir/status/1290923515110199301?s=20
They should have offered that option but it would have had to have been in the next couple of weeks before term starts again.
How is this sort of thing policed?
if you are saying it should be done locally I don't disagree. It seems that several areas are finding it better to do this. Just saying if they are doing it centrally it appears they are being very inefficient.
The real revolution in EVs in this country is awaiting a diesel-EV scrappage scheme. And I assume we await volume production in the UK for such a scheme to be announced.
Currently (I believe) if a household of 6 needs calling, 6 different people will phone the home number or individual mobiles and deal with the individuals involved and go thru the same basic questions and in many cases create a list of identical contacts to be followed up.
If 1 person is given the 6 names they can knock off most of this info in the first call. Where necessary they can follow up the people missed and add to the list of new contacts any new names that need adding.
I suspect in most families the vast majority of contacts will be duplicates that you get in the first hit and can act on immediately. You then just need to do the follow ups to get the additional ones.
As for your follow-up remark that "And of course with 6 calls you a duplicating an awful lot of the questions - surely that is the point and a good thing. What makes you think all six people will answer the questions the same? If they do then fine, but if they give different answers then that is more and valuable information gained.
Furthermore if one person was assigned to call everyone in the household they might cut corners thinking "I've already got this question answered" and miss what someone else might have said.
Hive minds don't exist in the real world. Everyone should be answering their own questions and answering them fully and honestly.
They're already in so much debt its untrue, and it's not their debt anyway. It's our debt. In fact, its my non-existant grandchildren's debt.
HMRC will investigate the worst claims. The rest will just be waved through, much like the massive fraud going on with furlough claims (of which I've seen Chartered Accountants.... Chartered Accountants(!) actively engaging in, and complicit in).
Just appalling that our kids education has been so badly messed up because looking at actual evidence was thought to be hard.
Just think how irritated you get when you are through to one of your utility/phone companies and the automated system ("to speed up your call") asks you to input your details (account, home phone number, post code, whatever) and then someone comes on the phone and asks you the same things you have just answered.
But what household is getting six calls? I'm assuming parents speak for the children - I certainly wouldn't pass the phone to my toddler - so if you're talking a household of six adults then why on earth would six adults all have the same contacts? Six adults will have six different sets of contacts - and some in those sets will intersect but so will some from whomever they traced before the household too. That's the whole point of this process.
It also assumes that the IFR is not responsive to the number of cases - a big part of the 500k deaths is because they would massively overwhelm our resources.
And I didn't say everyonme shouldn't be spoken to - they should
I don't think all will answer the questions the same, but the admin questions don't need duplicating and although you need to ask each person who they have contacted after you have got Aunt Vera on the list you don't have to write her down a further 5 times and of course if 6 separate people have made the call to the house then you will have done so, so either those 6 separate records have to be reconciled (wasting time and creating errors) or Aunt Vera will get 6 calls from track and trace.
It would be theoretically possible to do it by invitation. A random selection of citizens are invited to sit in the upper house for 12 months. The responsibilities are made clear to the invitee, and they can choose to accept or reject. I reckon that there will be a high number of rejections; most people able to do the job would not want to take 12 months out to do such a beurocratic job with poor renumeration. The obvious exception would be pensioners living in London or the Home Counties.
*Yes I know that a certain ex-leader of the Conservative party got called out on this yesterday, but it is part of the job.
Not sure what happened to your son's grades, I'm sorry for him if he was one affected.
I will try and find it but saw a recent survey where it was something like 80% did not wish to return to the old 5 days a week presenteeism model and it was a fairly even split between those that wanted a day or two in per week and those that wanted full work from home
The reality is that most State schools in Scotland had an entirely token "remote learning" experience with the odd bit of homework being set but no classes, little marking and little help. Those kids have not had any teaching in their subject since February. Having exams in November would really highlight how much better the Private schools handled remote learning and that would be embarrassing.
I think there are reasonable estimates of an infection fatality rate of ~6% with no healthcare to ~0.4% with the current best combination of drugs, oxygen, etc.
So you certainly could have an infection fatality rate above 1% in a country that, say, didn't test enough and advised people to stay at home rather than go to hospital when ill, so that people were too sick to treat by the time they arrived in hospital.
But are you interested in the infection rate when the disease is mismanaged, or what you can reasonably hope for with competent people in charge?
What if there's more than one Aunt Vera and the fourth contact was actually naming a different Aunt Vera with totally different contact details but the contact tracer incorrectly assumed it was the same Vera so dioesn't bother to take the record? That's entirely possible, more than one person can have the same name.
13.9%.
Actually ours is worse right now - 46299 deaths/306293 cases = 15.1%. But at least we're not that bad today
- shared house with six adults, an infected person visited the house and gave names of all residents
- multi-generational house, two parents, two grown up children, two grandparents
In either case, you need to speak to all the people to check contacts. The shared housemates won't know each others contacts. May be more likely in the family, but probably won't know the grown up kids contacts (and they might keep some secret). Hell, wife/husband may be having an affair/have recently seen an ex that they wouldn't want to tell partner about but might still disclose to the tracer (not the affair, but having been in contact with the person). If you've got to speak to everyone then it might be possible on one call, but only if everyone is in. There are theoretical efficiencies in linking the household together, but maybe not so much in practice.
There are also data protection issues - you should always gather and store the minimum data necessary. Do you need to know the people on the contact list are in the same house? Not essential. You can also imagine people being up in arms about the government collecting data about who is in which household (I know this is theoretically already on electoral roll, but logic does not necessarily apply). Or the data may be wrong (infected person says they visited the Selebians last week and lists them as a household, but doesn't know Mr Selebian is currently moved out following an affair and not living in the house but in another flat nearby - they all played happy families for the visit)
TLDR: There may be theoretical efficiencies in linking households, but much reduced in reality and you have to collect and store more data, some of which may be wrong.
To be fair, we don't now, but in the mid 80's we had five working adults in the same house. Self, Wife and three adult children. Elder two 'children' had many of the same friends, Wife and I similarly, obviously, although different work colleagues.
I saw your message of a day or two ago about his higher band. I wouldn't be too concerned about it affecting his chances: a lot of allowances are going to be made this year.
Best of luck to him.
--AS
And of course they don't just say Aunt Vera! That would be impossible to check. Presumably the person calling actually asks sensible useful questions like surname, address, phone number, and is this the same person, etc.
I'm sure the name John comes up a few times. I hope there isn't a poor sod out there getting thousands of calls!
I'm assuming that people on the end of the phone aren't jotting this down on pen and paper then going back onto the computer and filling it in, they will be filling it in directly. So when person one starts to give Vera's details it will presumably go directly onto the system. When person six does the same thing, then presumably it goes directly into the system too. So unless you're going to cut corners there is no "time saved" by recording her once since you've already recorded her once you took the details - and if you didn't take the details you don't know its not the same person.
At no point did I say you did not need to speak to all 6 people. I said don't allocate to 6 separate track and trace people.
Re affairs, yes an issue and there will be other issues re secrets. The same arises in separate calls though if you are together at the time. What can I say; people are just going to lie and it is something that has to be accepted.
Re data protection. Same issue. I do wonder what is happening about this though. It seems data protection has just about gone out of the window in the current climate.
The IFR is what we want to know, but the CFR is what we've managed to measure.
And it takes much more time to make multiple calls and go through the admin/security etc and people not answering the phone, etc, etc.
And you haven't dealt with the point of people just getting fed up with multiple identical calls and just refusing to give the information and therefore people being missed unnecessarily from being tracked which is the whole point of the exercise.
https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/510317-poll-82-percent-of-voters-support-a-national-mask-mandate