On the previous thread there was some argument about what a disaster Trump has been for the world and how it’s unthinkable he can continue. Talking about his deeds rather than words, is it not fair to say his administration has been the least interventionist and warlike President since Carter, and to wear my devils advocate hat, arguably one of the most effective in the foreign policy sphere of recent times?
Moving along the process of normalising relations with North Korea. And now “brokering” the implementation of diplomatic relations between Israel and UAE.
Has his policy in Syria led to an objectively worse outcome than under Obama?
As for his China policy, most sensible people in Asia would consider Trumpism to be a much needed correction from the many years of US negligence and blundering, having failed to realise it was engaged in a Cold War against a ruthless and single minded protagonist.
Black mark for his antagonistic stance on climate change but to be honest I’ve long given up hope that governments will meaningfully move the dial, it’s going to be technology and economics that drive the transition.
Be careful Moonshine, you will be accused of being a Trumpster...
In seriousness, that is an excellent post. When you look at the man's actions in foreign affairs, he has been more successful than Obama but, because it's Trump, its gets ignored. I noticed the Guardian online site has devoted more time on its front page to a reporter calling out Trump over his lies than the UAE deal - if Obama had done it, we would have had gushing columns for days.
Your post is potentially quite a telling one for the sake of the election though isn’t it. It’s become such a social stigma to say anything even vaguely supportive of Trump that the shy voter element might be quite unprecedented. But the truth is that in terms of outcome, the Trump years have for a lot of people been pretty good. Say what you want about the death of fundamental analysis but the stock market will make a lot of people pretty happy.
I still think it’s more likely than not that Biden wins at a canter but I thought the same about Clinton. Hindsight’s jury seems to now say it was always obvious Trump would win because despite the polls, Clinton was such an uncompelling candidate. Hmmm...
It is social poison in many circles to admit Trump has done anything positive.
France are threatening reciprocal quarantine measures.
Presumably that means if you go to France on holiday for 2 weeks, you need to spend them in quarantine, before returning home for another 2 weeks isolation.
Why would anyone go to France especially now the French have declared Paris and Marseilles red zones for covid
What a silly question.
Why would anyone go on a walking holiday in Wales when the UK has Covid hotspots in Leicester, Bradford and Oldham?
Amazing how you seem to think travelling to France against foreign office advice is the similar to Brits holidaying in Wales
Hang on, that's just not the point you were making.
I can totally see why someone would say "I'm going to not be like Dominic Cummings, and shall instead follow the advice to the letter". I am doing the same and salute those people.
But your comment was, "Why would anyone go to France especially now the French have declared Paris and Marseilles red zones for covid". Ian, myself and others have pointed out the simple fact that high infection rates in two locations doesn't at all mean that there is a high infection rate across France, and indeed there isn't, just as Leicester and Oldham aren't reflective of the whole UK.
France are threatening reciprocal quarantine measures.
Presumably that means if you go to France on holiday for 2 weeks, you need to spend them in quarantine, before returning home for another 2 weeks isolation.
Why would anyone go to France especially now the French have declared Paris and Marseilles red zones for covid
What a silly question.
Why would anyone go on a walking holiday in Wales when the UK has Covid hotspots in Leicester, Bradford and Oldham?
Amazing how you seem to think travelling to France against foreign office advice is the similar to Brits holidaying in Wales
If you drive to get there, the risks of a walking holiday in rural locations in both countries are negligible in both cases.
I don"t see why they wouldn't be? Protects funded by the EU and the Scottish Government are.
Which made such an impact in the EU referendum...
In Scotland?
Projects invariably include a plaque or similar detailing their funding, and this invariably includes the flag or emblem of those organisations. When the UK was in the EU, our subs (correct me if I'm wrong) came from the UK Govt., and then the EU kindly gave us some of or money back with projects emblazoned with their flag - quite a few in Scotland. That situation was a convenient one for the SNP. Not suggesting it won them elections, but it was a nice arrangement. Do they now expect the UK Government to disguise it's involvement in funding projects because...reasons?
Because the arses are just using our money , and trying to make out it is largesse and that we are paupers. They can stick their UK union plaques and projects up their arses.
Well yes, but that's the case with the Scottish Government, and all the quangos like HIE. Spending our money and expecting to be thanked for it is pretty much what Governments do.
Well I doubt they get that many thanks, more brickbats. This will backfire big time on Bozo the clown , he is hated already and thinking he can pretend that he can take credit for spending our money will make us want to stay a colony is barking. He can F*** right off, the plaques will go in the bin.
It's non news Malc. All those projects carry the same type of plaques. There's absolutely no reason why the UK Government should deliberately hide its involvement, other than for the SNP's political convenience
Lucky, it will go down like a bucket of sick. Uptick in Yes support guaranteed. These thick goons just don't get that rubbing people's noses in it does not win friends.
Malc. If the UK government offers £50 million in conjunction with another £50 million from the Scots government on a project, as recently mentioned in Northern Scotland, than it is correct for it to be jointly badged just as it would now if it was the EU
The amount of fury coming from the Nationalists indicates just how much they do not like it
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
France are threatening reciprocal quarantine measures.
Presumably that means if you go to France on holiday for 2 weeks, you need to spend them in quarantine, before returning home for another 2 weeks isolation.
Why would anyone go to France especially now the French have declared Paris and Marseilles red zones for covid
What a silly question.
Why would anyone go on a walking holiday in Wales when the UK has Covid hotspots in Leicester, Bradford and Oldham?
Amazing how you seem to think travelling to France against foreign office advice is the similar to Brits holidaying in Wales
At least the French let you in and do not turn you back 5 miles from the border
Wales is open if you did not know, just as Scotland is
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
On topic, yes I believe that there may be a fair few shy Trumpers. The lack of foreign wars or incidents, pre Covid economy, and current stock market bubble allow folk like @Charles to ignore the bull in the constitutional china shop. They will vote with their wallets.
I am less convinced that blue collar americans will though. Biden is no threat to them and the hanging and flogging Kamala too. Indeed the attacks on her lock em up record as AG may well enhance her in their eyes.
Everyone needs to play to the whistle, but I think the Trump sheen has worn off. People want normality, and Biden does Main St schmaltz Americana very well.
France are threatening reciprocal quarantine measures.
Presumably that means if you go to France on holiday for 2 weeks, you need to spend them in quarantine, before returning home for another 2 weeks isolation.
Why would anyone go to France especially now the French have declared Paris and Marseilles red zones for covid
What difference does that make if you're spending two weeks in a villa?
Travel against foreign office advise is irresponsible and just because you are in a villa that does not provide protection in high risk areas
I apologise, I assumed you were querying people taking actions in defiance of their personal safety and showing zero regard for or assessment of risk.
You might as well ask why on earth anyone smokes when the Government advises against it.
France are threatening reciprocal quarantine measures.
Presumably that means if you go to France on holiday for 2 weeks, you need to spend them in quarantine, before returning home for another 2 weeks isolation.
Why would anyone go to France especially now the French have declared Paris and Marseilles red zones for covid
What a silly question.
Why would anyone go on a walking holiday in Wales when the UK has Covid hotspots in Leicester, Bradford and Oldham?
Amazing how you seem to think travelling to France against foreign office advice is the similar to Brits holidaying in Wales
Hang on, that's just not the point you were making.
I can totally see why someone would say "I'm going to not be like Dominic Cummings, and shall instead follow the advice to the letter". I am doing the same and salute those people.
But your comment was, "Why would anyone go to France especially now the French have declared Paris and Marseilles red zones for covid". Ian, myself and others have pointed out the simple fact that high infection rates in two locations doesn't at all mean that there is a high infection rate across France, and indeed there isn't, just as Leicester and Oldham aren't reflective of the whole UK.
I understand France as a Country has high infection rates, just the French declared Paris and Marseilles red for covid overnight
France are threatening reciprocal quarantine measures.
Presumably that means if you go to France on holiday for 2 weeks, you need to spend them in quarantine, before returning home for another 2 weeks isolation.
Why would anyone go to France especially now the French have declared Paris and Marseilles red zones for covid
What difference does that make if you're spending two weeks in a villa?
Travel against foreign office advise is irresponsible and just because you are in a villa that does not provide protection in high risk areas
I apologise, I assumed you were querying people taking actions in defiance of their personal safety and showing zero regard for or assessment of risk.
You might as well ask why on earth anyone smokes when the Government advises against it.
He's switched the grounds of his argument given that avoiding the whole of France because of a hotspot in Paris was patently nonsense.
France are threatening reciprocal quarantine measures.
Presumably that means if you go to France on holiday for 2 weeks, you need to spend them in quarantine, before returning home for another 2 weeks isolation.
Why would anyone go to France especially now the French have declared Paris and Marseilles red zones for covid
What difference does that make if you're spending two weeks in a villa?
Travel against foreign office advise is irresponsible and just because you are in a villa that does not provide protection in high risk areas
I apologise, I assumed you were querying people taking actions in defiance of their personal safety and showing zero regard for or assessment of risk.
You might as well ask why on earth anyone smokes when the Government advises against it.
And I assume you are aware that invalidation of travel insurance, whilst the EHI scheme still exists, does not mean you are devoid of medical cover.
On topic, it was found that the neighbour question was a more accurate predictor of the vote in 2016.
When researchers find that something turned out to be a better predictor in hindsight, then it is very likely to be numerical cherry picking*. It's similar to saying "MCI were the most accurate pollster in GE 2019"
*In my experience actual cheries taste better than numerical cherries!
This a slightly disconcerting poll - but I take great comfort from the fact that come 3/11 the vote of each American will be taken to be what they marked on the paper not what their next door neighbour thought they were going to do.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
Look, Sean was talking rubbish about the 2 million deaths. As he usually does when he’s had a few.
But if we hadn’t had a lockdown, given how infectious this disease is and how brutal its impact can be 500,000 deaths does not seem impossible or ridiculous. Or to put it another way, even with strongly tightened health protocols the real death rate in this country probably stands at north of sixty thousand, which would make it the worst public health disaster since 1919.
Admittedly, we could have kept it lower but for the care homes scandal, which will end with people in court and hopefully in prison. But that is a separate question.
The key point is, we cannot know for certain what would have happened without a lockdown, because we had one. In our case, it certainly did start suppressing this disease. In Sweden, Norway and Finland, it was probably less urgent for them to lock down as they don’t live in each others’ pockets.
On topic, I am pretty sceptical about the value of this poll.
A lot of people, myself included, got a lot of egg on their face predicting Clinton would win (and reasonably well) in 2016. One can fully see why people don't want to do so again, and indeed social media is chock-full of centre-left people saying "mark my words, Trump will do it again".
But that does seem to me to be an over-correction and slight misremembering of 2016. At times, Clinton's lead in the poll averages was as high as Biden's is now, but Trump also led at times (albeit much less often), and polls ranged fairly widely (as there was no incumbent and views are always a little less settled in such cases). By election day, the lead was low single figures, very much in line with the actual result. Conventional wisdom assumed the "pussy grabbing" tape would harm Trump more than it did, and that Clinton would get a late swing - but the polls didn't say that and it didn't happen.
My conclusion is there isn't too much wrong with conventional US polls. Regardless of what this index says, if Biden maintains an average lead of 7 or 8% (which is around where we are depending on the tracker), he will win the popular vote by probably in the range 6-9% and that will win the election for him - it's just not close enough to realistically be susceptible to the vagaries of the electoral college.
He might not maintain that polling lead, of course - it could shrink or could grow. But I see "I'm voting Biden but expect Trump to win" as a reaction to 2016, nothing more (and indeed the twin brother is the overconfident MAGA-fan "I'm voting Trump and expect him to win as the polls were fake news last time too!")
It's similar to 2019 and Trump and Corbyn are very similar in general. Trump is the American Corbyn and in 2019 people were more sceptical about the polls because of 2017. But the polls were right the second time around.
Indeed. People have short memories. They readily remember 2016, but forget that in 2012 it was the Democrat who won rather more comfortably than most polls and pundits had predicted and whose vote was distributed somewhat efficiently compared with his GOP rival (albeit you could spin that as "incumbents do well... so Trump will" if you insisted).
It's true that history has a tendancy to repeat itself... but that slightly ignores the fact that there's a lot of history, and the history that repeats itself very often isn't the RECENT history.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
Apparently there are calls for a judicial review of the exams fiasco.
Good job BoZo and chums want to stamp out that sort if thing.
A judicial review of teachers grade predictions would certainly be interesting.
One aspect which is curious by its absence is the criticism by those teachers who do predict grades honestly of those who don't.
After all its the pupils of the teacher who predict grades honestly who would lose out.
Do teachers take a vow of omerta or something ?
Are you saying that there are teachers who knowingly produce dishonest grades? That's quite a proposition in the first place, virtually impossible to prove. Expecting teachers to run with it is for the faeries.
I'm sure that there are members of the BJ kakocracy who might give it a go though.
As was pointed out, if a teacher has, say, 10 pupils of equal ability and work ethic they will logically predict them the same grades. How could they do any different? They will also know that events on the day and with specific papers will cause a variation for a few candidates. So if expecting and predicting, say, 10Bs, they might very well expect in reality 1A, 6Bs, 2Cs and and (something going ridiculous wrong) one E. But they won't know which ones. But it will look under the "formula" as if they have predicted very favorably when they had no other option.
A very simple point which you’d think both government and a few posters here might have considered. It’s entirely natural that a number of students will underperform their predictions. For government therefore to disadvantage particular students at random via an algorithm is neither natural nor fair.
On topic, it was found that the neighbour question was a more accurate predictor of the vote in 2016.
When researchers find that something turned out to be a better predictor in hindsight, then it is very likely to be numerical cherry picking*. It's similar to saying "MCI were the most accurate pollster in GE 2019"
*In my experience actual cheries taste better than numerical cherries!
Numerical cherries are probably better for the old waistline though.
Apparently there are calls for a judicial review of the exams fiasco.
Good job BoZo and chums want to stamp out that sort if thing.
A judicial review of teachers grade predictions would certainly be interesting.
One aspect which is curious by its absence is the criticism by those teachers who do predict grades honestly of those who don't.
After all its the pupils of the teacher who predict grades honestly who would lose out.
Do teachers take a vow of omerta or something ?
Are you saying that there are teachers who knowingly produce dishonest grades? That's quite a proposition in the first place, virtually impossible to prove. Expecting teachers to run with it is for the faeries.
I'm sure that there are members of the BJ kakocracy who might give it a go though.
As was pointed out, if a teacher has, say, 10 pupils of equal ability and work ethic they will logically predict them the same grades. How could they do any different? They will also know that events on the day and with specific papers will cause a variation for a few candidates. So if expecting and predicting, say, 10Bs, they might very well expect in reality 1A, 6Bs, 2Cs and and (something going ridiculous wrong) one E. But they won't know which ones. But it will look under the "formula" as if they have predicted very favorably when they had no other option.
A very simple point which you’d think both government and a few posters here might have considered. It’s entirely natural that a number of students will underperform their predictions. For government therefore to disadvantage particular students at random via an algorithm is neither natural nor fair.
I don"t see why they wouldn't be? Protects funded by the EU and the Scottish Government are.
Which made such an impact in the EU referendum...
In Scotland?
Projects invariably include a plaque or similar detailing their funding, and this invariably includes the flag or emblem of those organisations. When the UK was in the EU, our subs (correct me if I'm wrong) came from the UK Govt., and then the EU kindly gave us some of or money back with projects emblazoned with their flag - quite a few in Scotland. That situation was a convenient one for the SNP. Not suggesting it won them elections, but it was a nice arrangement. Do they now expect the UK Government to disguise it's involvement in funding projects because...reasons?
Because the arses are just using our money , and trying to make out it is largesse and that we are paupers. They can stick their UK union plaques and projects up their arses.
Well yes, but that's the case with the Scottish Government, and all the quangos like HIE. Spending our money and expecting to be thanked for it is pretty much what Governments do.
Well I doubt they get that many thanks, more brickbats. This will backfire big time on Bozo the clown , he is hated already and thinking he can pretend that he can take credit for spending our money will make us want to stay a colony is barking. He can F*** right off, the plaques will go in the bin.
It's non news Malc. All those projects carry the same type of plaques. There's absolutely no reason why the UK Government should deliberately hide its involvement, other than for the SNP's political convenience
Lucky, it will go down like a bucket of sick. Uptick in Yes support guaranteed. These thick goons just don't get that rubbing people's noses in it does not win friends.
Malc. If the UK government offers £50 million in conjunction with another £50 million from the Scots government on a project, as recently mentioned in Northern Scotland, than it is correct for it to be jointly badged just as it would now if it was the EU
The amount of fury coming from the Nationalists indicates just how much they do not like it
G, them trying to take credit for giving us back some of our own money is pathetic, bit like having a whole wall of their new Governor General's HQ in Edinburgh as a union jack. These people are morons of the first order.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
I see the poll as showing that a lot of Americans are very worried that Trump may be re-elected and do not want to take anything for granted. If it's 39/32, there are a hell of a lot of Don't Knows.
So Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize (for what exactly?) despite blowing up half the Middle East. Who thinks Trump will get one for not starting wars and brokering a major peace deal?
First up this essentially assumes 100% turnout, many neighbours won't vote - nevertheless the question begs an answer, is your neighbour a Trumper or a Bidenite….
Given in the US a random pair of neighbours are more likely than not to vote the same way given urban-rural polarisation of the vote and so forth, this is either
i. Projection
or
ii. People disliking/not knowing their neighbours.
Was a similar question ever asked in the midterms, or in 2016 ?
As I understand it the question is designed to measure projection. The dominant effect is not how much you know about your neighbour's voting habits, but by an opportunity to air your leanings without the opinion being attached to you.
I don"t see why they wouldn't be? Protects funded by the EU and the Scottish Government are.
Which made such an impact in the EU referendum...
In Scotland?
Projects invariably include a plaque or similar detailing their funding, and this invariably includes the flag or emblem of those organisations. When the UK was in the EU, our subs (correct me if I'm wrong) came from the UK Govt., and then the EU kindly gave us some of or money back with projects emblazoned with their flag - quite a few in Scotland. That situation was a convenient one for the SNP. Not suggesting it won them elections, but it was a nice arrangement. Do they now expect the UK Government to disguise it's involvement in funding projects because...reasons?
Because the arses are just using our money , and trying to make out it is largesse and that we are paupers. They can stick their UK union plaques and projects up their arses.
Well yes, but that's the case with the Scottish Government, and all the quangos like HIE. Spending our money and expecting to be thanked for it is pretty much what Governments do.
Well I doubt they get that many thanks, more brickbats. This will backfire big time on Bozo the clown , he is hated already and thinking he can pretend that he can take credit for spending our money will make us want to stay a colony is barking. He can F*** right off, the plaques will go in the bin.
It's non news Malc. All those projects carry the same type of plaques. There's absolutely no reason why the UK Government should deliberately hide its involvement, other than for the SNP's political convenience
Lucky, it will go down like a bucket of sick. Uptick in Yes support guaranteed. These thick goons just don't get that rubbing people's noses in it does not win friends.
Malc. If the UK government offers £50 million in conjunction with another £50 million from the Scots government on a project, as recently mentioned in Northern Scotland, than it is correct for it to be jointly badged just as it would now if it was the EU
The amount of fury coming from the Nationalists indicates just how much they do not like it
G, them trying to take credit for giving us back some of our own money is pathetic, bit like having a whole wall of their new Governor General's HQ in Edinburgh as a union jack. These people are morons of the first order.
Malc. You are blinkered if you do not accept the UK government have invested billions in Scotland saving jobs and business support way beyond the ability of a Scots government to undertake and above and beyond the Barnett formula
Has there been much polling on the most important issues for voters in the US? That’s a potential route of seeing through the shy voter fog.
Of course, “coronavirus” could mean people want to open up things faster. “Protecting our democracy” could be the box to tick for Second Amendmenters. So would need to be carefully constructed.
I do wonder when it comes to it how much the integrity of the President matters. One suspects the really relevant question is how many Republicans uncomfortable with Trump’s antics want to risk Biden or Harris appointing most likely two Supreme Court justices.
A very simple point which you’d think both government and a few posters here might have considered. It’s entirely natural that a number of students will underperform their predictions. For government therefore to disadvantage particular students at random via an algorithm is neither natural nor fair.
Going on teachers' forecasts would however have also have disadvantaged particular students at random, and many more of them, through the opposite mechanism of grade inflation. I'm not sure there's any answer to this. In fact it's not even clear what the question is - if it is 'What is the best algorithm for getting a reasonable approximation to what the exams would have produced', then the algorithm is not bad on average (although of course unfair in many individual cases). Some critics of the government, such as Angela Rayner, seem to be arguing that the question should be something different: 'Can we fake up the results to make disadvantaged schools look better than they are?'.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
Anyone who goes on a cruise is likely to be at least in moderate health for their age.
Currently sitting in hospital waiting for surgery. The place is empty, god knows what % of maximum capacity they are running at!
Actually I’m lying on a hospital bed being drip fed various concoctions, will be finished about 2pm, it seems quieter than normal but that could be holidays. Was here yesterday and outpatients looked to be functioning normally. It’s nice and cool so I’ll make the most of it.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
No model said two million. In fact I can't recall a model saying 500,000 I thought it was 250,000 that Ferguson's model said.
Given we're already above 50,000 by excess deaths I believe with a lockdown then more is certainly very, very possible without one.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
Look, Sean was talking rubbish about the 2 million deaths. As he usually does when he’s had a few.
But if we hadn’t had a lockdown, given how infectious this disease is and how brutal its impact can be 500,000 deaths does not seem impossible or ridiculous. Or to put it another way, even with strongly tightened health protocols the real death rate in this country probably stands at north of sixty thousand, which would make it the worst public health disaster since 1919.
Admittedly, we could have kept it lower but for the care homes scandal, which will end with people in court and hopefully in prison. But that is a separate question.
The key point is, we cannot know for certain what would have happened without a lockdown, because we had one. In our case, it certainly did start suppressing this disease. In Sweden, Norway and Finland, it was probably less urgent for them to lock down as they don’t live in each others’ pockets.
Actually, I still think it does. There isn't a single scrap of evidence from anywhere that suggests that UK deaths could have reached anywhere near that level.
It is also worth remembering that in the worst years, regular winter flu has killed up to 30,000.
I don"t see why they wouldn't be? Protects funded by the EU and the Scottish Government are.
Which made such an impact in the EU referendum...
In Scotland?
Projects invariably include a plaque or similar detailing their funding, and this invariably includes the flag or emblem of those organisations. When the UK was in the EU, our subs (correct me if I'm wrong) came from the UK Govt., and then the EU kindly gave us some of or money back with projects emblazoned with their flag - quite a few in Scotland. That situation was a convenient one for the SNP. Not suggesting it won them elections, but it was a nice arrangement. Do they now expect the UK Government to disguise it's involvement in funding projects because...reasons?
Because the arses are just using our money , and trying to make out it is largesse and that we are paupers. They can stick their UK union plaques and projects up their arses.
Well yes, but that's the case with the Scottish Government, and all the quangos like HIE. Spending our money and expecting to be thanked for it is pretty much what Governments do.
Well I doubt they get that many thanks, more brickbats. This will backfire big time on Bozo the clown , he is hated already and thinking he can pretend that he can take credit for spending our money will make us want to stay a colony is barking. He can F*** right off, the plaques will go in the bin.
It's non news Malc. All those projects carry the same type of plaques. There's absolutely no reason why the UK Government should deliberately hide its involvement, other than for the SNP's political convenience
Lucky, it will go down like a bucket of sick. Uptick in Yes support guaranteed. These thick goons just don't get that rubbing people's noses in it does not win friends.
Malc. If the UK government offers £50 million in conjunction with another £50 million from the Scots government on a project, as recently mentioned in Northern Scotland, than it is correct for it to be jointly badged just as it would now if it was the EU
The amount of fury coming from the Nationalists indicates just how much they do not like it
G, them trying to take credit for giving us back some of our own money is pathetic, bit like having a whole wall of their new Governor General's HQ in Edinburgh as a union jack. These people are morons of the first order.
Malc, any chance you could write a header to explain how Scotland’s finances work and how the UK government is robbing Scotland blind, I’m sure others would like to understand where you are coming from.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
Anyone who goes on a cruise is likely to be at least in moderate health for their age.
Here's a fun counterpoint to the idea that the electoral college favours the Republicans.
In 2012, Mitt Romney lost the popular vote by 3.9%. A 2.0% uniform national swing would have won him the popular vote... but not the Presidency. He'd have picked up Florida, Ohio and Virginia but it wouldn't have been enough. He'd have needed a 2.7% swing to add Colorado (and Pennsylvania - margins very similar) - that's a national vote lead for Romney of getting on for two million. Anything less than 1.5 million and Obama would probably still have won.
It's true that the electoral college does on average help the Republicans, but only on average. There's a widespread view, again based on an obsession with the last war, that Biden can't win with a 3% lead and Trump can't lose with a 1% lead. Whilst it's just about true that Biden losing with a 3% lead is marginally more likely than Trump with a 1% lead, it's miles from being true that the first is certain and the latter impossible.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
Look, Sean was talking rubbish about the 2 million deaths. As he usually does when he’s had a few.
But if we hadn’t had a lockdown, given how infectious this disease is and how brutal its impact can be 500,000 deaths does not seem impossible or ridiculous. Or to put it another way, even with strongly tightened health protocols the real death rate in this country probably stands at north of sixty thousand, which would make it the worst public health disaster since 1919.
Admittedly, we could have kept it lower but for the care homes scandal, which will end with people in court and hopefully in prison. But that is a separate question.
The key point is, we cannot know for certain what would have happened without a lockdown, because we had one. In our case, it certainly did start suppressing this disease. In Sweden, Norway and Finland, it was probably less urgent for them to lock down as they don’t live in each others’ pockets.
Actually, I still think it does. There isn't a single scrap of evidence from anywhere that suggests that UK deaths could have reached anywhere near that level.
It is also worth remembering that in the worst years, regular winter flu has killed up to 30,000.
In case you hadn’t noticed, in which case I would like to borrow your air con, we are not in winter.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
Look, Sean was talking rubbish about the 2 million deaths. As he usually does when he’s had a few.
But if we hadn’t had a lockdown, given how infectious this disease is and how brutal its impact can be 500,000 deaths does not seem impossible or ridiculous. Or to put it another way, even with strongly tightened health protocols the real death rate in this country probably stands at north of sixty thousand, which would make it the worst public health disaster since 1919.
Admittedly, we could have kept it lower but for the care homes scandal, which will end with people in court and hopefully in prison. But that is a separate question.
The key point is, we cannot know for certain what would have happened without a lockdown, because we had one. In our case, it certainly did start suppressing this disease. In Sweden, Norway and Finland, it was probably less urgent for them to lock down as they don’t live in each others’ pockets.
Actually, I still think it does. There isn't a single scrap of evidence from anywhere that suggests that UK deaths could have reached anywhere near that level.
It is also worth remembering that in the worst years, regular winter flu has killed up to 30,000.
Yes there is evidence. The UK is evidence. We have over 50k excess deaths with a lockdown, so its entirely plausible we'd have had 250k excess deaths without one.
Malc, any chance you could write a header to explain how Scotland’s finances work and how the UK government is robbing Scotland blind, I’m sure others would like to understand where you are coming from.
Whenever I hear things from the SNP regarding tax and finance I am instantly reminded about this song
I don"t see why they wouldn't be? Protects funded by the EU and the Scottish Government are.
Which made such an impact in the EU referendum...
In Scotland?
Projects invariably include a plaque or similar detailing their funding, and this invariably includes the flag or emblem of those organisations. When the UK was in the EU, our subs (correct me if I'm wrong) came from the UK Govt., and then the EU kindly gave us some of or money back with projects emblazoned with their flag - quite a few in Scotland. That situation was a convenient one for the SNP. Not suggesting it won them elections, but it was a nice arrangement. Do they now expect the UK Government to disguise it's involvement in funding projects because...reasons?
Because the arses are just using our money , and trying to make out it is largesse and that we are paupers. They can stick their UK union plaques and projects up their arses.
Well yes, but that's the case with the Scottish Government, and all the quangos like HIE. Spending our money and expecting to be thanked for it is pretty much what Governments do.
Well I doubt they get that many thanks, more brickbats. This will backfire big time on Bozo the clown , he is hated already and thinking he can pretend that he can take credit for spending our money will make us want to stay a colony is barking. He can F*** right off, the plaques will go in the bin.
It's non news Malc. All those projects carry the same type of plaques. There's absolutely no reason why the UK Government should deliberately hide its involvement, other than for the SNP's political convenience
Lucky, it will go down like a bucket of sick. Uptick in Yes support guaranteed. These thick goons just don't get that rubbing people's noses in it does not win friends.
Malc. If the UK government offers £50 million in conjunction with another £50 million from the Scots government on a project, as recently mentioned in Northern Scotland, than it is correct for it to be jointly badged just as it would now if it was the EU
The amount of fury coming from the Nationalists indicates just how much they do not like it
'The amount of fury coming from the Nationalists'? Lol, I see your Scotch expertise is as ever firing on all cylinders. I'll put that on the big pile of all your pronouncements on the terrible decisions by the SNP and Nicola that are going to play badly with voters.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
Anyone who goes on a cruise is likely to be at least in moderate health for their age.
There’s an uncomfortable possibility that the belated wide scale lockdown didn’t much alter the number of covid deaths, or at least the aggregate number of deaths given how many non covid deaths it contributed to. Meanwhile the panicked policy on hospitals-to-care homes to ensure hospitals were empty at the expense of all else, no doubt had a very deleterious effect.
Essentially we locked down the people who it turns out weren’t ever at risk and lit a match under the beds of those most vulnerable.
This possibility is in fact such an uncomfortable one that airing it seems to induce as much social poison as telling a pollster you plan on voting for Trump. And in the US, the two issues are of course related...
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
No model said two million. In fact I can't recall a model saying 500,000 I thought it was 250,000 that Ferguson's model said.
Given we're already above 50,000 by excess deaths I believe with a lockdown then more is certainly very, very possible without one.
Frankly whether its 50K or 60K or 70k deaths it is just not worth the damage done in jobs, the economy, morale, education (look at the poor kids yesterday re a level results -not had at least a chance to do an exam) and countless other areas. Can the country please stop obsessing about this not very fatal illness that is no worse than a bad flu year - It is frankly ridiculous and shows badly up our twitter based virtue signalling culture.
In this century alone we have gone into war knowing the death toll will be higher than anything covid 19 does on the basis that concepts of freedom are more important . Not sure why the government and a lot of the twitter chattering class and media think different know in that we have turned into a cult that has to preserve end of life (even very low quality end of life) above everything else (be it 18 year old life chances, jobs , travel etc, the warmth of human greeting )
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
Look, Sean was talking rubbish about the 2 million deaths. As he usually does when he’s had a few.
But if we hadn’t had a lockdown, given how infectious this disease is and how brutal its impact can be 500,000 deaths does not seem impossible or ridiculous. Or to put it another way, even with strongly tightened health protocols the real death rate in this country probably stands at north of sixty thousand, which would make it the worst public health disaster since 1919.
Admittedly, we could have kept it lower but for the care homes scandal, which will end with people in court and hopefully in prison. But that is a separate question.
The key point is, we cannot know for certain what would have happened without a lockdown, because we had one. In our case, it certainly did start suppressing this disease. In Sweden, Norway and Finland, it was probably less urgent for them to lock down as they don’t live in each others’ pockets.
Actually, I still think it does. There isn't a single scrap of evidence from anywhere that suggests that UK deaths could have reached anywhere near that level.
It is also worth remembering that in the worst years, regular winter flu has killed up to 30,000.
In case you hadn’t noticed, in which case I would like to borrow your air con, we are not in winter.
Steer clear of air con! Cool damp surfaces, circulating air. Fine in a single occupancy, but a perfect formula for spread in a multi occupancy environment.
In seriousness, that is an excellent post. When you look at the man's actions in foreign affairs, he has been more successful than Obama but, because it's Trump, its gets ignored. I noticed the Guardian online site has devoted more time on its front page to a reporter calling out Trump over his lies than the UAE deal - if Obama had done it, we would have had gushing columns for days.
The UAE and Israel have been discretely cordial for years. The Israeli companies AGT and Logic Industries did all of the border security systems and number plate recognition in Abu Dhabi.
The two axes in the Middle East cold (probably soon to be hot war) are Abu Dhabi - Riyadh - Cairo - Tel Aviv and Doha - Tehran - Ankara.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
No model said two million. In fact I can't recall a model saying 500,000 I thought it was 250,000 that Ferguson's model said.
Given we're already above 50,000 by excess deaths I believe with a lockdown then more is certainly very, very possible without one.
Frankly whether its 50K or 60K or 70k deaths it is just not worth the damage done in jobs, the economy, morale, education (look at the poor kids yesterday re a level results -not had at least a chance to do an exam) and countless other areas. Can the country please stop obsessing about this not very fatal illness that is no worse than a bad flu year - It is frankly ridiculous and shows badly up our twitter based virtue signalling culture.
In this century alone we have gone into war knowing the death toll will be higher than anything covid 19 does on the basis that concepts of freedom are more important . Not sure why the government and a lot of the twitter chattering class and media think different know in that we have turned into a cult that has to preserve end of life (even very low quality end of life) above everything else (be it 18 year old life chances, jobs , travel etc, the warmth of human greeting )
WE now live in an era of governance by blue ticks on twitter seeking likes and retweets. Twenty years ago our politicians danced to the tune of the Sun Editorial. Now it is idiots on twitter. Reacting to rants of morons like Piers Morgan really helps no one.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
Look, Sean was talking rubbish about the 2 million deaths. As he usually does when he’s had a few.
But if we hadn’t had a lockdown, given how infectious this disease is and how brutal its impact can be 500,000 deaths does not seem impossible or ridiculous. Or to put it another way, even with strongly tightened health protocols the real death rate in this country probably stands at north of sixty thousand, which would make it the worst public health disaster since 1919.
Admittedly, we could have kept it lower but for the care homes scandal, which will end with people in court and hopefully in prison. But that is a separate question.
The key point is, we cannot know for certain what would have happened without a lockdown, because we had one. In our case, it certainly did start suppressing this disease. In Sweden, Norway and Finland, it was probably less urgent for them to lock down as they don’t live in each others’ pockets.
Actually, I still think it does. There isn't a single scrap of evidence from anywhere that suggests that UK deaths could have reached anywhere near that level.
It is also worth remembering that in the worst years, regular winter flu has killed up to 30,000.
In case you hadn’t noticed, in which case I would like to borrow your air con, we are not in winter.
Steer clear of air con! Cool damp surfaces, circulating air. Fine in a single occupancy, but a perfect formula for spread in a multi occupancy environment.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
No model said two million. In fact I can't recall a model saying 500,000 I thought it was 250,000 that Ferguson's model said.
Given we're already above 50,000 by excess deaths I believe with a lockdown then more is certainly very, very possible without one.
Frankly whether its 50K or 60K or 70k deaths it is just not worth the damage done in jobs, the economy, morale, education (look at the poor kids yesterday re a level results -not had at least a chance to do an exam) and countless other areas. Can the country please stop obsessing about this not very fatal illness that is no worse than a bad flu year - It is frankly ridiculous and shows badly up our twitter based virtue signalling culture.
In this century alone we have gone into war knowing the death toll will be higher than anything covid 19 does on the basis that concepts of freedom are more important . Not sure why the government and a lot of the twitter chattering class and media think different know in that we have turned into a cult that has to preserve end of life (even very low quality end of life) above everything else (be it 18 year old life chances, jobs , travel etc, the warmth of human greeting )
Malc, any chance you could write a header to explain how Scotland’s finances work and how the UK government is robbing Scotland blind, I’m sure others would like to understand where you are coming from.
Whenever I hear things from the SNP regarding tax and finance I am instantly reminded about this song
The sad truth for the SNP is that all their dreams are based on oil wealth and wealth from oil is a story that has been and is virtually gone.
Surely this is something the SNP would welcome given the by products of oil include plastics, diesel and petrol. Products which cause anxiety to some of the very state funded lobbyists the SNP panders to.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
No model said two million. In fact I can't recall a model saying 500,000 I thought it was 250,000 that Ferguson's model said.
Given we're already above 50,000 by excess deaths I believe with a lockdown then more is certainly very, very possible without one.
Frankly whether its 50K or 60K or 70k deaths it is just not worth the damage done in jobs, the economy, morale, education (look at the poor kids yesterday re a level results -not had at least a chance to do an exam) and countless other areas. Can the country please stop obsessing about this not very fatal illness that is no worse than a bad flu year - It is frankly ridiculous and shows badly up our twitter based virtue signalling culture.
In this century alone we have gone into war knowing the death toll will be higher than anything covid 19 does on the basis that concepts of freedom are more important . Not sure why the government and a lot of the twitter chattering class and media think different know in that we have turned into a cult that has to preserve end of life (even very low quality end of life) above everything else (be it 18 year old life chances, jobs , travel etc, the warmth of human greeting )
We haven't had a "its just the flu" in a while...
The latest loon alert I look out for is anyone who refers to a mask as a 'muzzle'.
I don"t see why they wouldn't be? Protects funded by the EU and the Scottish Government are.
Which made such an impact in the EU referendum...
In Scotland?
Projects invariably include a plaque or similar detailing their funding, and this invariably includes the flag or emblem of those organisations. When the UK was in the EU, our subs (correct me if I'm wrong) came from the UK Govt., and then the EU kindly gave us some of or money back with projects emblazoned with their flag - quite a few in Scotland. That situation was a convenient one for the SNP. Not suggesting it won them elections, but it was a nice arrangement. Do they now expect the UK Government to disguise it's involvement in funding projects because...reasons?
Because the arses are just using our money , and trying to make out it is largesse and that we are paupers. They can stick their UK union plaques and projects up their arses.
Well yes, but that's the case with the Scottish Government, and all the quangos like HIE. Spending our money and expecting to be thanked for it is pretty much what Governments do.
Well I doubt they get that many thanks, more brickbats. This will backfire big time on Bozo the clown , he is hated already and thinking he can pretend that he can take credit for spending our money will make us want to stay a colony is barking. He can F*** right off, the plaques will go in the bin.
It's non news Malc. All those projects carry the same type of plaques. There's absolutely no reason why the UK Government should deliberately hide its involvement, other than for the SNP's political convenience
Lucky, it will go down like a bucket of sick. Uptick in Yes support guaranteed. These thick goons just don't get that rubbing people's noses in it does not win friends.
Malc. If the UK government offers £50 million in conjunction with another £50 million from the Scots government on a project, as recently mentioned in Northern Scotland, than it is correct for it to be jointly badged just as it would now if it was the EU
The amount of fury coming from the Nationalists indicates just how much they do not like it
Quite. It suggests that Johnson is on to something.
The same Nats who are objecting to this have never objected to there being EU flags adorning projects "funded" by the EU, notwithstanding the case for that is much weaker - i.e. the fact that the UK on aggregate gets back only about a 1/3rd of the UK's gross contribution made to the EU's coffers.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
Look, Sean was talking rubbish about the 2 million deaths. As he usually does when he’s had a few.
But if we hadn’t had a lockdown, given how infectious this disease is and how brutal its impact can be 500,000 deaths does not seem impossible or ridiculous. Or to put it another way, even with strongly tightened health protocols the real death rate in this country probably stands at north of sixty thousand, which would make it the worst public health disaster since 1919.
Admittedly, we could have kept it lower but for the care homes scandal, which will end with people in court and hopefully in prison. But that is a separate question.
The key point is, we cannot know for certain what would have happened without a lockdown, because we had one. In our case, it certainly did start suppressing this disease. In Sweden, Norway and Finland, it was probably less urgent for them to lock down as they don’t live in each others’ pockets.
Actually, I still think it does. There isn't a single scrap of evidence from anywhere that suggests that UK deaths could have reached anywhere near that level.
It is also worth remembering that in the worst years, regular winter flu has killed up to 30,000.
My estimate, written on my office wall back in March, is 200,000 to 300,000 UK covid deaths. This back-of-a-fag-packet estimate was based on the vast majority getting it at some point and a 0.5% - 0.75% fatality rate.
We are finding out who of the PB contributors are particularly gullible... claiming the Israel-UAE deal as a consequence of Trump’s involvement somewhat ignores the collaboration between Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan that goes back to 2015 at least... the alliance against Iran is strengthening and the aim most certainly isn’t peace... Trump is playing along and, where he can, actively helping out... this deal, the undermining of the Iran nuclear deal, the recognition of Jerusalem, the acquiescence with the killing of Khashoghi ... join the dots...
We are finding out who of the PB contributors are particularly gullible... claiming the Israel-UAE deal as a consequence of Trump’s involvement somewhat ignores the collaboration between Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan that goes back to 2015 at least... the alliance against Iran is strengthening and the aim most certainly isn’t peace... Trump is playing along and, where he can, actively helping out... this deal, the undermining of the Iran nuclear deal, the recognition of Jerusalem, the acquiescence with the killing of Khashoghi ... join the dots...
Given that the uptick in new cases reported from Spain, France and the rest is relatively recent, it is a little too early to draw definitive conclusions; ICU stats would lag at least two weeks and deaths by three to four weeks.
However the argument that a slice of the "new" cases being detected by current testing may actually be people who had the virus weeks back with few or no symptoms, and simply have the virus still hanging around in their system, is a persuasive one.
The argument in the video does however require that levels of immunity are significantly higher than the community antibody rates currently being found, in order to 'explain' why the original epidemic has subsided. As regulars will know, I have argued this possibility for some months now, but there remains little evidence for it, other than some hypotheses based on possible T-cell-based immunity (or resistance). There is also the difference between Europe and the US to explain - if the significant declines in Europe were due to community immunity being much higher than currently believed, why hasn't the same happened in the US? There the later surge in case rates has been matched by hospital statistics in states like California (which had an earlier wave that subsided), Florida and Texas.
California, Florida and Texas are big, its possible that the places/people which were heavily infected in spring were different to those infected in summer.
20% seems to be the level of infection where it fades out.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
No model said two million. In fact I can't recall a model saying 500,000 I thought it was 250,000 that Ferguson's model said.
Given we're already above 50,000 by excess deaths I believe with a lockdown then more is certainly very, very possible without one.
Frankly whether its 50K or 60K or 70k deaths it is just not worth the damage done in jobs, the economy, morale, education (look at the poor kids yesterday re a level results -not had at least a chance to do an exam) and countless other areas. Can the country please stop obsessing about this not very fatal illness that is no worse than a bad flu year - It is frankly ridiculous and shows badly up our twitter based virtue signalling culture.
In this century alone we have gone into war knowing the death toll will be higher than anything covid 19 does on the basis that concepts of freedom are more important . Not sure why the government and a lot of the twitter chattering class and media think different know in that we have turned into a cult that has to preserve end of life (even very low quality end of life) above everything else (be it 18 year old life chances, jobs , travel etc, the warmth of human greeting )
We haven't had a "its just the flu" in a while...
Stop twisting words - Its clear I did not say it was just flu - just the consequences are the same as a bad flu year
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
Look, Sean was talking rubbish about the 2 million deaths. As he usually does when he’s had a few.
But if we hadn’t had a lockdown, given how infectious this disease is and how brutal its impact can be 500,000 deaths does not seem impossible or ridiculous. Or to put it another way, even with strongly tightened health protocols the real death rate in this country probably stands at north of sixty thousand, which would make it the worst public health disaster since 1919.
Admittedly, we could have kept it lower but for the care homes scandal, which will end with people in court and hopefully in prison. But that is a separate question.
The key point is, we cannot know for certain what would have happened without a lockdown, because we had one. In our case, it certainly did start suppressing this disease. In Sweden, Norway and Finland, it was probably less urgent for them to lock down as they don’t live in each others’ pockets.
Actually, I still think it does. There isn't a single scrap of evidence from anywhere that suggests that UK deaths could have reached anywhere near that level.
It is also worth remembering that in the worst years, regular winter flu has killed up to 30,000.
My estimate, written on my office wall back in March, is 200,000 to 300,000 UK covid deaths. This back-of-a-fag-packet estimate was based on the vast majority getting it at some point and a 0.5% - 0.75% fatality rate.
The recorded case/death CFR is 13.2%, but we had massive underrecording of cases early doors so it'll be much lower. 0.5% is plausible, there's a hard floor if you look at some of the New York boroughs of around 0.1% or so from memory.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
Look, Sean was talking rubbish about the 2 million deaths. As he usually does when he’s had a few.
But if we hadn’t had a lockdown, given how infectious this disease is and how brutal its impact can be 500,000 deaths does not seem impossible or ridiculous. Or to put it another way, even with strongly tightened health protocols the real death rate in this country probably stands at north of sixty thousand, which would make it the worst public health disaster since 1919.
Admittedly, we could have kept it lower but for the care homes scandal, which will end with people in court and hopefully in prison. But that is a separate question.
The key point is, we cannot know for certain what would have happened without a lockdown, because we had one. In our case, it certainly did start suppressing this disease. In Sweden, Norway and Finland, it was probably less urgent for them to lock down as they don’t live in each others’ pockets.
Actually, I still think it does. There isn't a single scrap of evidence from anywhere that suggests that UK deaths could have reached anywhere near that level.
It is also worth remembering that in the worst years, regular winter flu has killed up to 30,000.
My estimate, written on my office wall back in March, is 200,000 to 300,000 UK covid deaths. This back-of-a-fag-packet estimate was based on the vast majority getting it at some point and a 0.5% - 0.75% fatality rate.
The excess deaths in the winter of 99/2000 (a 3 month period) was 48,000 so very similar to what we have seen with Covid. 99% of people were not aware of this at the time, there was no lockdown, everyone just carried on.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
No model said two million. In fact I can't recall a model saying 500,000 I thought it was 250,000 that Ferguson's model said.
Given we're already above 50,000 by excess deaths I believe with a lockdown then more is certainly very, very possible without one.
Frankly whether its 50K or 60K or 70k deaths it is just not worth the damage done in jobs, the economy, morale, education (look at the poor kids yesterday re a level results -not had at least a chance to do an exam) and countless other areas. Can the country please stop obsessing about this not very fatal illness that is no worse than a bad flu year - It is frankly ridiculous and shows badly up our twitter based virtue signalling culture.
In this century alone we have gone into war knowing the death toll will be higher than anything covid 19 does on the basis that concepts of freedom are more important . Not sure why the government and a lot of the twitter chattering class and media think different know in that we have turned into a cult that has to preserve end of life (even very low quality end of life) above everything else (be it 18 year old life chances, jobs , travel etc, the warmth of human greeting )
We haven't had a "its just the flu" in a while...
Stop twisting words - Its clear I did not say it was just flu - just the consequences are the same as a bad flu year
Looking around the world, it is obvious that is vapid bilge. Lockdown or no lockdown, Covid-19 changes social and economic behaviour in ways that flu does not.
It got both the correct winner and was accurate to within 1% (aggregated) last time round.
Maybe. But Florida has only once been the tipping point state since 1960 (i.e. the one providing the 270th electoral college vote).
Since 1980, it's been Illinois, Michigan, Michigan, Tennessee (oddly - but remember Bill was very appealing in the South), Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, Colorado, Wisconsin (maybe Pennsylvania if you make some assumptions about faithless electors doing the same if there had been anything riding on it).
Don't get me wrong - Florida is often close and a good state to win and poor one to lose because it's pretty big. A Biden lead there is very encouraging for him as there are a lot of paths to victory that run through Florida and relatively few paths to defeat - plus Democrats did poorly there in the mid-terms so possibly reversing that bad result on an otherwise good night at that time is particularly positive for them.
But he and Trump can both cheer themselves up by looking at their best polling out of (say) Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and Arizona, and depress themselves by looking at the worst. The point is that either one needs to win a combination of some but not all of those.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
Look, Sean was talking rubbish about the 2 million deaths. As he usually does when he’s had a few.
But if we hadn’t had a lockdown, given how infectious this disease is and how brutal its impact can be 500,000 deaths does not seem impossible or ridiculous. Or to put it another way, even with strongly tightened health protocols the real death rate in this country probably stands at north of sixty thousand, which would make it the worst public health disaster since 1919.
Admittedly, we could have kept it lower but for the care homes scandal, which will end with people in court and hopefully in prison. But that is a separate question.
The key point is, we cannot know for certain what would have happened without a lockdown, because we had one. In our case, it certainly did start suppressing this disease. In Sweden, Norway and Finland, it was probably less urgent for them to lock down as they don’t live in each others’ pockets.
Actually, I still think it does. There isn't a single scrap of evidence from anywhere that suggests that UK deaths could have reached anywhere near that level.
It is also worth remembering that in the worst years, regular winter flu has killed up to 30,000.
My estimate, written on my office wall back in March, is 200,000 to 300,000 UK covid deaths. This back-of-a-fag-packet estimate was based on the vast majority getting it at some point and a 0.5% - 0.75% fatality rate.
The excess deaths in the winter of 99/2000 (a 3 month period) was 48,000 so very similar to what we have seen with Covid. 99% of people were not aware of this at the time, there was no lockdown, everyone just carried on.
I don"t see why they wouldn't be? Protects funded by the EU and the Scottish Government are.
Which made such an impact in the EU referendum...
In Scotland?
Projects invariably include a plaque or similar detailing their funding, and this invariably includes the flag or emblem of those organisations. When the UK was in the EU, our subs (correct me if I'm wrong) came from the UK Govt., and then the EU kindly gave us some of or money back with projects emblazoned with their flag - quite a few in Scotland. That situation was a convenient one for the SNP. Not suggesting it won them elections, but it was a nice arrangement. Do they now expect the UK Government to disguise it's involvement in funding projects because...reasons?
Because the arses are just using our money , and trying to make out it is largesse and that we are paupers. They can stick their UK union plaques and projects up their arses.
Well yes, but that's the case with the Scottish Government, and all the quangos like HIE. Spending our money and expecting to be thanked for it is pretty much what Governments do.
Well I doubt they get that many thanks, more brickbats. This will backfire big time on Bozo the clown , he is hated already and thinking he can pretend that he can take credit for spending our money will make us want to stay a colony is barking. He can F*** right off, the plaques will go in the bin.
It's non news Malc. All those projects carry the same type of plaques. There's absolutely no reason why the UK Government should deliberately hide its involvement, other than for the SNP's political convenience
Lucky, it will go down like a bucket of sick. Uptick in Yes support guaranteed. These thick goons just don't get that rubbing people's noses in it does not win friends.
Malc. If the UK government offers £50 million in conjunction with another £50 million from the Scots government on a project, as recently mentioned in Northern Scotland, than it is correct for it to be jointly badged just as it would now if it was the EU
The amount of fury coming from the Nationalists indicates just how much they do not like it
G, them trying to take credit for giving us back some of our own money is pathetic, bit like having a whole wall of their new Governor General's HQ in Edinburgh as a union jack. These people are morons of the first order.
Malc. You are blinkered if you do not accept the UK government have invested billions in Scotland saving jobs and business support way beyond the ability of a Scots government to undertake and above and beyond the Barnett formula
that is bollox G, we have paid in a surplus over last 50 years and yet they take a fortune in interest for money we did not borrow , but don't apply interest to England as they claim Bank of England is theirs. It is Scottish money being spent.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
No model said two million. In fact I can't recall a model saying 500,000 I thought it was 250,000 that Ferguson's model said.
Given we're already above 50,000 by excess deaths I believe with a lockdown then more is certainly very, very possible without one.
Frankly whether its 50K or 60K or 70k deaths it is just not worth the damage done in jobs, the economy, morale, education (look at the poor kids yesterday re a level results -not had at least a chance to do an exam) and countless other areas. Can the country please stop obsessing about this not very fatal illness that is no worse than a bad flu year - It is frankly ridiculous and shows badly up our twitter based virtue signalling culture.
In this century alone we have gone into war knowing the death toll will be higher than anything covid 19 does on the basis that concepts of freedom are more important . Not sure why the government and a lot of the twitter chattering class and media think different know in that we have turned into a cult that has to preserve end of life (even very low quality end of life) above everything else (be it 18 year old life chances, jobs , travel etc, the warmth of human greeting )
We haven't had a "its just the flu" in a while...
Stop twisting words - Its clear I did not say it was just flu - just the consequences are the same as a bad flu year
Looking around the world, it is obvious that is vapid bilge. Lockdown or no lockdown, Covid-19 changes social and economic behaviour in ways that flu does not.
It sure does egged on by "something must be seen to be done bossy" government , media too afraid to do any plain speaking and an illogical sense of preserving low quality end of life for some. Governments the world over go to war knowing they will kill loads of people (and usually fit and young ones not people who are at the end of life and with dementia or other ailments ) on the concept of preserving freedom (sometimes even if that freedom is abroad) yet cower at the virtue signalling on Twitter etc so make these hugely negative decisions for our way of life for the sake of avoiding some plain debate and speaking . Its cowardly and illogical and storing up misery for years to come
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
Look, Sean was talking rubbish about the 2 million deaths. As he usually does when he’s had a few.
But if we hadn’t had a lockdown, given how infectious this disease is and how brutal its impact can be 500,000 deaths does not seem impossible or ridiculous. Or to put it another way, even with strongly tightened health protocols the real death rate in this country probably stands at north of sixty thousand, which would make it the worst public health disaster since 1919.
Admittedly, we could have kept it lower but for the care homes scandal, which will end with people in court and hopefully in prison. But that is a separate question.
The key point is, we cannot know for certain what would have happened without a lockdown, because we had one. In our case, it certainly did start suppressing this disease. In Sweden, Norway and Finland, it was probably less urgent for them to lock down as they don’t live in each others’ pockets.
Actually, I still think it does. There isn't a single scrap of evidence from anywhere that suggests that UK deaths could have reached anywhere near that level.
It is also worth remembering that in the worst years, regular winter flu has killed up to 30,000.
My estimate, written on my office wall back in March, is 200,000 to 300,000 UK covid deaths. This back-of-a-fag-packet estimate was based on the vast majority getting it at some point and a 0.5% - 0.75% fatality rate.
The recorded case/death CFR is 13.2%, but we had massive underrecording of cases early doors so it'll be much lower. 0.5% is plausible, there's a hard floor if you look at some of the New York boroughs of around 0.1% or so from memory.
I think that the CFR of 1.4% in the early reports from Wuhan has proven fairly accurate. Maybe reduced to circa 1% with medical advances and obviously varying greatly with age.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
No model said two million. In fact I can't recall a model saying 500,000 I thought it was 250,000 that Ferguson's model said.
Given we're already above 50,000 by excess deaths I believe with a lockdown then more is certainly very, very possible without one.
Frankly whether its 50K or 60K or 70k deaths it is just not worth the damage done in jobs, the economy, morale, education (look at the poor kids yesterday re a level results -not had at least a chance to do an exam) and countless other areas. Can the country please stop obsessing about this not very fatal illness that is no worse than a bad flu year - It is frankly ridiculous and shows badly up our twitter based virtue signalling culture.
In this century alone we have gone into war knowing the death toll will be higher than anything covid 19 does on the basis that concepts of freedom are more important . Not sure why the government and a lot of the twitter chattering class and media think different know in that we have turned into a cult that has to preserve end of life (even very low quality end of life) above everything else (be it 18 year old life chances, jobs , travel etc, the warmth of human greeting )
We haven't had a "its just the flu" in a while...
Stop twisting words - Its clear I did not say it was just flu - just the consequences are the same as a bad flu year
That is an "it's just the flu" argument"!
Remember the deaths and hospitalisations have been kept low because of the lockdown. No-one seriously claims that the numbers would have been at "bad flu year" levels had there been no lockdown.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
No model said two million. In fact I can't recall a model saying 500,000 I thought it was 250,000 that Ferguson's model said.
Given we're already above 50,000 by excess deaths I believe with a lockdown then more is certainly very, very possible without one.
Frankly whether its 50K or 60K or 70k deaths it is just not worth the damage done in jobs, the economy, morale, education (look at the poor kids yesterday re a level results -not had at least a chance to do an exam) and countless other areas. Can the country please stop obsessing about this not very fatal illness that is no worse than a bad flu year - It is frankly ridiculous and shows badly up our twitter based virtue signalling culture.
In this century alone we have gone into war knowing the death toll will be higher than anything covid 19 does on the basis that concepts of freedom are more important . Not sure why the government and a lot of the twitter chattering class and media think different know in that we have turned into a cult that has to preserve end of life (even very low quality end of life) above everything else (be it 18 year old life chances, jobs , travel etc, the warmth of human greeting )
We haven't had a "its just the flu" in a while...
Stop twisting words - Its clear I did not say it was just flu - just the consequences are the same as a bad flu year
Looking around the world, it is obvious that is vapid bilge. Lockdown or no lockdown, Covid-19 changes social and economic behaviour in ways that flu does not.
It sure does egged on by "something must be seen to be done bossy" government , media too afraid to do any plain speaking and an illogical sense of preserving low quality end of life for some. Governments the world over go to war knowing they will loads of people (and usually fit and young ones not people who are at th end of like and with dementia or other ailments ) on the concept of preservign freedom (sometimes even if that freedom is abroad) yet cower at the virtue signalling on Twitter etc so make these hugely negative decisions for our way of life for the sake of avoiding some plain debate and speaking . Its cowardly and illogical and storing up misery for years to come
The covid19 experience of countries such as Brazil suggests that ignoring control methods is not a great option.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
Look, Sean was talking rubbish about the 2 million deaths. As he usually does when he’s had a few.
But if we hadn’t had a lockdown, given how infectious this disease is and how brutal its impact can be 500,000 deaths does not seem impossible or ridiculous. Or to put it another way, even with strongly tightened health protocols the real death rate in this country probably stands at north of sixty thousand, which would make it the worst public health disaster since 1919.
Admittedly, we could have kept it lower but for the care homes scandal, which will end with people in court and hopefully in prison. But that is a separate question.
The key point is, we cannot know for certain what would have happened without a lockdown, because we had one. In our case, it certainly did start suppressing this disease. In Sweden, Norway and Finland, it was probably less urgent for them to lock down as they don’t live in each others’ pockets.
Actually, I still think it does. There isn't a single scrap of evidence from anywhere that suggests that UK deaths could have reached anywhere near that level.
It is also worth remembering that in the worst years, regular winter flu has killed up to 30,000.
My estimate, written on my office wall back in March, is 200,000 to 300,000 UK covid deaths. This back-of-a-fag-packet estimate was based on the vast majority getting it at some point and a 0.5% - 0.75% fatality rate.
The excess deaths in the winter of 99/2000 (a 3 month period) was 48,000 so very similar to what we have seen with Covid. 99% of people were not aware of this at the time, there was no lockdown, everyone just carried on.
The massive problem with that argument is that it assumes the Covid death toll would have been similar without a lockdown.
It's very sad that flu has a high death toll in some years, but vaccination and acquired immunity does cap it. There isn't a genuine worry that it will rip through the hospital staff, and lead to agonising choices over who doesn't get a ventilator.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
No model said two million. In fact I can't recall a model saying 500,000 I thought it was 250,000 that Ferguson's model said.
Given we're already above 50,000 by excess deaths I believe with a lockdown then more is certainly very, very possible without one.
Frankly whether its 50K or 60K or 70k deaths it is just not worth the damage done in jobs, the economy, morale, education (look at the poor kids yesterday re a level results -not had at least a chance to do an exam) and countless other areas. Can the country please stop obsessing about this not very fatal illness that is no worse than a bad flu year - It is frankly ridiculous and shows badly up our twitter based virtue signalling culture.
In this century alone we have gone into war knowing the death toll will be higher than anything covid 19 does on the basis that concepts of freedom are more important . Not sure why the government and a lot of the twitter chattering class and media think different know in that we have turned into a cult that has to preserve end of life (even very low quality end of life) above everything else (be it 18 year old life chances, jobs , travel etc, the warmth of human greeting )
We haven't had a "its just the flu" in a while...
Stop twisting words - Its clear I did not say it was just flu - just the consequences are the same as a bad flu year
Looking around the world, it is obvious that is vapid bilge. Lockdown or no lockdown, Covid-19 changes social and economic behaviour in ways that flu does not.
It sure does egged on by "something must be seen to be done bossy" government , media too afraid to do any plain speaking and an illogical sense of preserving low quality end of life for some. Governments the world over go to war knowing they will loads of people (and usually fit and young ones not people who are at th end of like and with dementia or other ailments ) on the concept of preservign freedom (sometimes even if that freedom is abroad) yet cower at the virtue signalling on Twitter etc so make these hugely negative decisions for our way of life for the sake of avoiding some plain debate and speaking . Its cowardly and illogical and storing up misery for years to come
The covid19 experience of countries such as Brazil suggests that ignoring control methods is not a great option.
Covid 19 is not a nice thing obviosuly to have sweeping through a country but Brazil will get herd immunity (like Sweden ) faster than lockdown countries - They will then be better placed in a number of ways next year
It got both the correct winner and was accurate to within 1% (aggregated) last time round.
Maybe. But Florida has only once been the tipping point state since 1960 (i.e. the one providing the 270th electoral college vote).
Since 1980, it's been Illinois, Michigan, Michigan, Tennessee (oddly - but remember Bill was very appealing in the South), Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, Colorado, Wisconsin (maybe Pennsylvania if you make some assumptions about faithless electors doing the same if there had been anything riding on it).
Don't get me wrong - Florida is often close and a good state to win and poor one to lose because it's pretty big. A Biden lead there is very encouraging for him as there are a lot of paths to victory that run through Florida and relatively few paths to defeat - plus Democrats did poorly there in the mid-terms so possibly reversing that bad result on an otherwise good night at that time is particularly positive for them.
But he and Trump can both cheer themselves up by looking at their best polling out of (say) Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and Arizona, and depress themselves by looking at the worst. The point is that either one needs to win a combination of some but not all of those.
If Biden wins Florida, he wins the White House. Not just because of Fl but because it means that enough other states will have moved to the Dems.
If Trump wins Florida, Biden still has a few other realistic combinatins to win, the most famous being Wi-Mi-Pa.
I don"t see why they wouldn't be? Protects funded by the EU and the Scottish Government are.
Which made such an impact in the EU referendum...
In Scotland?
Projects invariably include a plaque or similar detailing their funding, and this invariably includes the flag or emblem of those organisations. When the UK was in the EU, our subs (correct me if I'm wrong) came from the UK Govt., and then the EU kindly gave us some of or money back with projects emblazoned with their flag - quite a few in Scotland. That situation was a convenient one for the SNP. Not suggesting it won them elections, but it was a nice arrangement. Do they now expect the UK Government to disguise it's involvement in funding projects because...reasons?
Because the arses are just using our money , and trying to make out it is largesse and that we are paupers. They can stick their UK union plaques and projects up their arses.
Well yes, but that's the case with the Scottish Government, and all the quangos like HIE. Spending our money and expecting to be thanked for it is pretty much what Governments do.
Well I doubt they get that many thanks, more brickbats. This will backfire big time on Bozo the clown , he is hated already and thinking he can pretend that he can take credit for spending our money will make us want to stay a colony is barking. He can F*** right off, the plaques will go in the bin.
It's non news Malc. All those projects carry the same type of plaques. There's absolutely no reason why the UK Government should deliberately hide its involvement, other than for the SNP's political convenience
Lucky, it will go down like a bucket of sick. Uptick in Yes support guaranteed. These thick goons just don't get that rubbing people's noses in it does not win friends.
Malc. If the UK government offers £50 million in conjunction with another £50 million from the Scots government on a project, as recently mentioned in Northern Scotland, than it is correct for it to be jointly badged just as it would now if it was the EU
The amount of fury coming from the Nationalists indicates just how much they do not like it
Quite. It suggests that Johnson is on to something.
The same Nats who are objecting to this have never objected to there being EU flags adorning projects "funded" by the EU, notwithstanding the case for that is much weaker - i.e. the fact that the UK on aggregate gets back only about a 1/3rd of the UK's gross contribution made to the EU's coffers.
Away you halfwit , only thing he is on to is annoying even more people. I sometimes wonder if some posters on here are really as stupid as they make out or just blind followers of the cult.
Malc, any chance you could write a header to explain how Scotland’s finances work and how the UK government is robbing Scotland blind, I’m sure others would like to understand where you are coming from.
Whenever I hear things from the SNP regarding tax and finance I am instantly reminded about this song
The sad truth for the SNP is that all their dreams are based on oil wealth and wealth from oil is a story that has been and is virtually gone.
Surely this is something the SNP would welcome given the by products of oil include plastics, diesel and petrol. Products which cause anxiety to some of the very state funded lobbyists the SNP panders to.
Ignorance of Scotland on here is breathtaking. Two posts here that are just pathetic and ignorant.
Malc, any chance you could write a header to explain how Scotland’s finances work and how the UK government is robbing Scotland blind, I’m sure others would like to understand where you are coming from.
Whenever I hear things from the SNP regarding tax and finance I am instantly reminded about this song
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
No model said two million. In fact I can't recall a model saying 500,000 I thought it was 250,000 that Ferguson's model said.
Given we're already above 50,000 by excess deaths I believe with a lockdown then more is certainly very, very possible without one.
Frankly whether its 50K or 60K or 70k deaths it is just not worth the damage done in jobs, the economy, morale, education (look at the poor kids yesterday re a level results -not had at least a chance to do an exam) and countless other areas. Can the country please stop obsessing about this not very fatal illness that is no worse than a bad flu year - It is frankly ridiculous and shows badly up our twitter based virtue signalling culture.
In this century alone we have gone into war knowing the death toll will be higher than anything covid 19 does on the basis that concepts of freedom are more important . Not sure why the government and a lot of the twitter chattering class and media think different know in that we have turned into a cult that has to preserve end of life (even very low quality end of life) above everything else (be it 18 year old life chances, jobs , travel etc, the warmth of human greeting )
We haven't had a "its just the flu" in a while...
Stop twisting words - Its clear I did not say it was just flu - just the consequences are the same as a bad flu year
That is an "it's just the flu" argument"!
Remember the deaths and hospitalisations have been kept low because of the lockdown. No-one seriously claims that the numbers would have been at "bad flu year" levels had there been no lockdown.
You may be right but there are a number of scientific voices now being raised regarding the effectiveness of a lockdown. This guy may be completely mad but his views are gaining ground.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
No model said two million. In fact I can't recall a model saying 500,000 I thought it was 250,000 that Ferguson's model said.
Given we're already above 50,000 by excess deaths I believe with a lockdown then more is certainly very, very possible without one.
Frankly whether its 50K or 60K or 70k deaths it is just not worth the damage done in jobs, the economy, morale, education (look at the poor kids yesterday re a level results -not had at least a chance to do an exam) and countless other areas. Can the country please stop obsessing about this not very fatal illness that is no worse than a bad flu year - It is frankly ridiculous and shows badly up our twitter based virtue signalling culture.
In this century alone we have gone into war knowing the death toll will be higher than anything covid 19 does on the basis that concepts of freedom are more important . Not sure why the government and a lot of the twitter chattering class and media think different know in that we have turned into a cult that has to preserve end of life (even very low quality end of life) above everything else (be it 18 year old life chances, jobs , travel etc, the warmth of human greeting )
We haven't had a "its just the flu" in a while...
Stop twisting words - Its clear I did not say it was just flu - just the consequences are the same as a bad flu year
Looking around the world, it is obvious that is vapid bilge. Lockdown or no lockdown, Covid-19 changes social and economic behaviour in ways that flu does not.
It sure does egged on by "something must be seen to be done bossy" government , media too afraid to do any plain speaking and an illogical sense of preserving low quality end of life for some. Governments the world over go to war knowing they will loads of people (and usually fit and young ones not people who are at th end of like and with dementia or other ailments ) on the concept of preservign freedom (sometimes even if that freedom is abroad) yet cower at the virtue signalling on Twitter etc so make these hugely negative decisions for our way of life for the sake of avoiding some plain debate and speaking . Its cowardly and illogical and storing up misery for years to come
The covid19 experience of countries such as Brazil suggests that ignoring control methods is not a great option.
Covid 19 is not a nice thing obviosuly to have sweeping through a country but Brazil will get herd immunity (like Sweden ) faster than lockdown countries - They will then be better placed in a number of ways next year
Are you seriously claiming in terms of Sars-Cov-2 policy you would rather be in Brazil than in the UK?
that is bollox G, we have paid in a surplus over last 50 years and yet they take a fortune in interest for money we did not borrow , but don't apply interest to England as they claim Bank of England is theirs. It is Scottish money being spent.
As all investment adverts state - past performance is no indication of future performance.
Previously Scotland had oil and the world wanted oil. Going forward the world will be using and wanting less oil which means Scotland may no longer have that great source of money that once existed.
So I can see the annoyance but I suspect as with Brexit any future independence won't match the dreams promised.
What seems to have been expunged from the pages of history is that the tories cancelled the Cobham maritime surveillance contract without any replacement on the horizon. It was supposed to be the Hermes 900 UAV but, amazingly, the project is way behind schedule so the tories opted for their usual capability gap.
That's why we are using 70 tons of sub killing fury in the form of the P-8 (RRP 200m quid each) to look for pedalos.
I think there are two different issues with "enforcement" of quarantine.
1) People who break it on a massive scale by going to work/school etc. Would expect employers/schools to send them home if they know about it. And good luck keeping a young child quiet about where they were on holiday a week ago
2) People who break it, period. The actual rules on quarantine are ludicrously strict. You CANNOT leave the house for any virtually any reason, even a walk in the immediate vicinity (except to shops where absolutely essential).
This is absurd to the point of ridiculousness on a relative risk basis compared to what is going on elsewhere in the country. It was designed for people much earlier in the crisis having come into probable proven contact with an infected individual, not a country with allegedly relatively high infection rates. What is even more absurd is that the quarantine doesn't apply to people who live in your house but who weren't on holiday with you. So a person living on their own, coming into contact with nobody, probably uninfected isn't even allowed to go for a walk around the block. A person living with somebody else can however pass it on to somebody they live with, who is free to do whatever they want, spreading it to whoever they wish.
Who designs these rules???
Probably the same modellers who built a model that predicted 500k dead in UK alone.
As a worst case with no action taken to stop the spread.
Considering we have had about 50k deaths with about 7% of the country infected and the NHS never overwhelmed it seems quite plausible that if we had seen the worst case of the NHS overwhelmed and 50% infected then 500k deaths would be quite plausible as a worst case.
What's ridiculous about that?
40k deaths, and no-one really knows how many have been infected. The counter to your challenge is that nothing like it (in terms of death rate) has happened anywhere in the world.
I dont believe there is any possibility that, even had we done nothing at all, we'd be looking at death rates of half to two million.
That's because the worst case scenario is with inaction and there was never going to be inaction. It's like saying if you're driving at 70mph and see a stopped car ahead of you that if you don't break or change lanes the worst case scenario is you hit that car at 70mph and die. If you break then you don't say I avoided an accident so I clearly didn't need to break.
That's an analogy fail along the lines of many such similar offered up during Brexit.
Italy did next to nothing in the early weeks when the virus was spreading through Lombardy - they had a terrible regional crisis with overflowing hospitals, but no sign of a death rate approaching anywhere near those sorts of levels. Similarly in Iran - one of the earliest outbreaks - where the 'action' they were taking included going out and licking shrines and the like. I well remember Eadric linking to Twitter videos of people dropping dead in the street and suggesting Iran may be hiding deaths on a truly epic scale - yet nothing along those lines has emerged since then.
Iran was hiding deaths on an epic scale. Its ‘officially released’ figures were one-third of the official figures, which probably still undercount the number of deaths.
Some way short of the equivalent of two million UK deaths, nevertheless. Indeed, treble Iran's declared deaths and you are still only just above the actual declared rate in the UK
No model said two million deaths. The derided model actually said 250k deaths without a lockdown and we had a lockdown and about 50k deaths.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It's still nonsense, though.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
And given that we'd already had well over 30,000 over-60s die of covid by the end of June, even with the adjusted figures, you're effectively claiming that the overwhelming majority of over-65s have already had it?
I don"t see why they wouldn't be? Protects funded by the EU and the Scottish Government are.
Which made such an impact in the EU referendum...
In Scotland?
Projects invariably include a plaque or similar detailing their funding, and this invariably includes the flag or emblem of those organisations. When the UK was in the EU, our subs (correct me if I'm wrong) came from the UK Govt., and then the EU kindly gave us some of or money back with projects emblazoned with their flag - quite a few in Scotland. That situation was a convenient one for the SNP. Not suggesting it won them elections, but it was a nice arrangement. Do they now expect the UK Government to disguise it's involvement in funding projects because...reasons?
Because the arses are just using our money , and trying to make out it is largesse and that we are paupers. They can stick their UK union plaques and projects up their arses.
Well yes, but that's the case with the Scottish Government, and all the quangos like HIE. Spending our money and expecting to be thanked for it is pretty much what Governments do.
Well I doubt they get that many thanks, more brickbats. This will backfire big time on Bozo the clown , he is hated already and thinking he can pretend that he can take credit for spending our money will make us want to stay a colony is barking. He can F*** right off, the plaques will go in the bin.
It's non news Malc. All those projects carry the same type of plaques. There's absolutely no reason why the UK Government should deliberately hide its involvement, other than for the SNP's political convenience
Lucky, it will go down like a bucket of sick. Uptick in Yes support guaranteed. These thick goons just don't get that rubbing people's noses in it does not win friends.
Malc. If the UK government offers £50 million in conjunction with another £50 million from the Scots government on a project, as recently mentioned in Northern Scotland, than it is correct for it to be jointly badged just as it would now if it was the EU
The amount of fury coming from the Nationalists indicates just how much they do not like it
G, them trying to take credit for giving us back some of our own money is pathetic, bit like having a whole wall of their new Governor General's HQ in Edinburgh as a union jack. These people are morons of the first order.
Malc, any chance you could write a header to explain how Scotland’s finances work and how the UK government is robbing Scotland blind, I’m sure others would like to understand where you are coming from.
What seems to have been expunged from the pages of history is that the tories cancelled the Cobham maritime surveillance contract without any replacement on the horizon. It was supposed to be the Hermes 900 UAV but, amazingly, the project is way behind schedule so the tories opted for their usual capability gap.
That's why we are using 70 tons of sub killing fury in the form of the P-8 (RRP 200m quid each) to look for pedalos.
I initially misread that as 'look for paedos'.
That's probably next on the list of distractions from this skip fire of a government.
We are finding out who of the PB contributors are particularly gullible... claiming the Israel-UAE deal as a consequence of Trump’s involvement somewhat ignores the collaboration between Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan that goes back to 2015 at least... the alliance against Iran is strengthening and the aim most certainly isn’t peace... Trump is playing along and, where he can, actively helping out... this deal, the undermining of the Iran nuclear deal, the recognition of Jerusalem, the acquiescence with the killing of Khashoghi ... join the dots...
If you re-read my post you will see I put “brokered” by Trump in quote marks. Not because his administration was necessarily instrumental in it but because this is how it will be portrayed.
We are however getting into an odd place where we are supposed to judge Trump’s first term by what you are afraid he might do in his second. Like most overseas observers I was something of an Obama cheerleader but his foreign policy scorecard at re-election was demonstrably less dovish and more interventionist than Trump’s.
Covid 19 is not a nice thing obviosuly to have sweeping through a country but Brazil will get herd immunity (like Sweden ) faster than lockdown countries - They will then be better placed in a number of ways next year
That would take about 0.6 to 1.2 million dead Brazilians, and 120 million potentially facing a lifetime of chronic disease, in order to reach herd immunity. That sounds like quite a high price for a slightly better economy if you ask me.
What seems to have been expunged from the pages of history is that the tories cancelled the Cobham maritime surveillance contract without any replacement on the horizon. It was supposed to be the Hermes 900 UAV but, amazingly, the project is way behind schedule so the tories opted for their usual capability gap.
That's why we are using 70 tons of sub killing fury in the form of the P-8 (RRP 200m quid each) to look for pedalos.
As they aren't actually killing subs though - and almost certainly never will - they might as well pay back some of that 200m quid invested in them....
Malc, any chance you could write a header to explain how Scotland’s finances work and how the UK government is robbing Scotland blind, I’m sure others would like to understand where you are coming from.
Whenever I hear things from the SNP regarding tax and finance I am instantly reminded about this song
The sad truth for the SNP is that all their dreams are based on oil wealth and wealth from oil is a story that has been and is virtually gone.
Surely this is something the SNP would welcome given the by products of oil include plastics, diesel and petrol. Products which cause anxiety to some of the very state funded lobbyists the SNP panders to.
Ignorance of Scotland on here is breathtaking. Two posts here that are just pathetic and ignorant.
Are the SNP not fully on board with tackling the twin evils of plastic carrier bags and the combustion Engiine ? HAve they not banned petrol and diesel fuelled cars at some point in the future which will, no doubt, be pulled forward at the behest of their lobbyists ?
Isn't this just the ICM wisdom index poll which proved to be very hit and miss?
I think it is qualitatively different. It certainly gives a chance to uncover "Shy Trump" support. As the question is specifically about what you think you neighbour would vote rather than who you think will win.
In fact there would be a lot of power in asking both questions to see the difference.
It got both the correct winner and was accurate to within 1% (aggregated) last time round.
Maybe. But Florida has only once been the tipping point state since 1960 (i.e. the one providing the 270th electoral college vote).
Since 1980, it's been Illinois, Michigan, Michigan, Tennessee (oddly - but remember Bill was very appealing in the South), Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, Colorado, Wisconsin (maybe Pennsylvania if you make some assumptions about faithless electors doing the same if there had been anything riding on it).
Don't get me wrong - Florida is often close and a good state to win and poor one to lose because it's pretty big. A Biden lead there is very encouraging for him as there are a lot of paths to victory that run through Florida and relatively few paths to defeat - plus Democrats did poorly there in the mid-terms so possibly reversing that bad result on an otherwise good night at that time is particularly positive for them.
But he and Trump can both cheer themselves up by looking at their best polling out of (say) Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and Arizona, and depress themselves by looking at the worst. The point is that either one needs to win a combination of some but not all of those.
If Biden wins Florida, he wins the White House. Not just because of Fl but because it means that enough other states will have moved to the Dems.
If Trump wins Florida, Biden still has a few other realistic combinatins to win, the most famous being Wi-Mi-Pa.
Not sure I agree with that.
It's true I'd be fairly surprised in November if Biden won Florida but picked up no other additional states compared with Clinton last time (and he'd have to pick up one more state as Florida alone isn't enough).
But it's not implausible. The three closer states that Trump won in 2016 were Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Those three have a lot of common as (broadly) rust belt states with an overwhelming white majority.
So you can paint a pretty realistic (not massively likely but far from fanciful) scenario where Trump hangs onto those on the basis of MAGA/screw the Chinese machismo, whilst that has limited appeal to white pensioners in Florida and he suffers for his persistent racist comments among the 30% of hispanic voters in the state.
I tend to agree with the YouGov findings, I just don't think any of this will work.
We need to stop them coming in the first place - and then to massively increase the number of refugees we do take.
i think thats a bit simple (if it was easy it would be solved by now!) but the concept of free movement without borders and giving people a fair go is something I believe in so generally support immigration (warts and all and the warts should be confronted as well and not just hidden )- Its a pity we left the EU as these things are best solved in enlarged geographical blocks
The discussion re 500,000 deaths misses a much bigger point, which SAGE were most concerned with.
At low numbers, they get the best care available. That is true, for example, of the Diamond Princess.
At higher numbers the death rate increases because we would no longer have the resources to cope. In addition excess deaths from other causes would stack up, as "normal" stroke/heart attack patients were unable to access care.
Comments
I can totally see why someone would say "I'm going to not be like Dominic Cummings, and shall instead follow the advice to the letter". I am doing the same and salute those people.
But your comment was, "Why would anyone go to France especially now the French have declared Paris and Marseilles red zones for covid". Ian, myself and others have pointed out the simple fact that high infection rates in two locations doesn't at all mean that there is a high infection rate across France, and indeed there isn't, just as Leicester and Oldham aren't reflective of the whole UK.
The amount of fury coming from the Nationalists indicates just how much they do not like it
I am less convinced that blue collar americans will though. Biden is no threat to them and the hanging and flogging Kamala too. Indeed the attacks on her lock em up record as AG may well enhance her in their eyes.
Everyone needs to play to the whistle, but I think the Trump sheen has worn off. People want normality, and Biden does Main St schmaltz Americana very well.
You might as well ask why on earth anyone smokes when the Government advises against it.
Beware of statements like When researchers find that something turned out to be a better predictor in hindsight, then it is very likely to be numerical cherry picking*. It's similar to saying "MCI were the most accurate pollster in GE 2019"
*In my experience actual cheries taste better than numerical cherries!
But if we hadn’t had a lockdown, given how infectious this disease is and how brutal its impact can be 500,000 deaths does not seem impossible or ridiculous. Or to put it another way, even with strongly tightened health protocols the real death rate in this country probably stands at north of sixty thousand, which would make it the worst public health disaster since 1919.
Admittedly, we could have kept it lower but for the care homes scandal, which will end with people in court and hopefully in prison. But that is a separate question.
The key point is, we cannot know for certain what would have happened without a lockdown, because we had one. In our case, it certainly did start suppressing this disease. In Sweden, Norway and Finland, it was probably less urgent for them to lock down as they don’t live in each others’ pockets.
It's true that history has a tendancy to repeat itself... but that slightly ignores the fact that there's a lot of history, and the history that repeats itself very often isn't the RECENT history.
Iran has a third of our rate of elderly population.
It’s entirely natural that a number of students will underperform their predictions. For government therefore to disadvantage particular students at random via an algorithm is neither natural nor fair.
The Diamond Princess had nearly three thousand mostly elderly passengers confined together for a whole fortnight in the worst possible conditions for virus transmission with no special restrictions for Coronavirus. The death toll finished at fourteen, with NONE of the thousand or so crew dying despite nearly 150 of them catching the virus.
Apply the same proportionate death rate among the passenger base to the elderly population of the UK (say the 16% of so who are over age 65) and you project a death rate in the region of 50,000. Not 500,000 and certainly not 2,000,000.
As I understand it the question is designed to measure projection. The dominant effect is not how much you know about your neighbour's voting habits, but by an opportunity to air your leanings without the opinion being attached to you.
Of course, “coronavirus” could mean people want to open up things faster. “Protecting our democracy” could be the box to tick for Second Amendmenters. So would need to be carefully constructed.
I do wonder when it comes to it how much the integrity of the President matters. One suspects the really relevant question is how many Republicans uncomfortable with Trump’s antics want to risk Biden or Harris appointing most likely two Supreme Court justices.
Given we're already above 50,000 by excess deaths I believe with a lockdown then more is certainly very, very possible without one.
It is also worth remembering that in the worst years, regular winter flu has killed up to 30,000.
In 2012, Mitt Romney lost the popular vote by 3.9%. A 2.0% uniform national swing would have won him the popular vote... but not the Presidency. He'd have picked up Florida, Ohio and Virginia but it wouldn't have been enough. He'd have needed a 2.7% swing to add Colorado (and Pennsylvania - margins very similar) - that's a national vote lead for Romney of getting on for two million. Anything less than 1.5 million and Obama would probably still have won.
It's true that the electoral college does on average help the Republicans, but only on average. There's a widespread view, again based on an obsession with the last war, that Biden can't win with a 3% lead and Trump can't lose with a 1% lead. Whilst it's just about true that Biden losing with a 3% lead is marginally more likely than Trump with a 1% lead, it's miles from being true that the first is certain and the latter impossible.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/fl/florida_trump_vs_clinton-5635.html#polls
It got both the correct winner and was accurate to within 1% (aggregated) last time round.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elzzlgcfNgw
and wonder what drugs they are taking.
The sad truth for the SNP is that all their dreams are based on oil wealth and wealth from oil is a story that has been and is virtually gone.
Essentially we locked down the people who it turns out weren’t ever at risk and lit a match under the beds of those most vulnerable.
This possibility is in fact such an uncomfortable one that airing it seems to induce as much social poison as telling a pollster you plan on voting for Trump. And in the US, the two issues are of course related...
Best of luck!
In this century alone we have gone into war knowing the death toll will be higher than anything covid 19 does on the basis that concepts of freedom are more important . Not sure why the government and a lot of the twitter chattering class and media think different know in that we have turned into a cult that has to preserve end of life (even very low quality end of life) above everything else (be it 18 year old life chances, jobs , travel etc, the warmth of human greeting )
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-air-conditioning-covid-19-office-a9614621.html
Using the less efficient external rather than recirculation mode may help in mitigation.
The two axes in the Middle East cold (probably soon to be hot war) are Abu Dhabi - Riyadh - Cairo - Tel Aviv and Doha - Tehran - Ankara.
Good, bye Leonard
I know that in June hospitals in Hampshire were running 15% occupancy some days.
The same Nats who are objecting to this have never objected to there being EU flags adorning projects "funded" by the EU, notwithstanding the case for that is much weaker - i.e. the fact that the UK on aggregate gets back only about a 1/3rd of the UK's gross contribution made to the EU's coffers.
https://twitter.com/OYCar/status/1293370534017695745/photo/1
The areas that were hardest hit before show exactly the same curve of infection.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/highestnumberofexcesswinterdeathssince19992000/2015-11-25
Since 1980, it's been Illinois, Michigan, Michigan, Tennessee (oddly - but remember Bill was very appealing in the South), Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, Colorado, Wisconsin (maybe Pennsylvania if you make some assumptions about faithless electors doing the same if there had been anything riding on it).
Don't get me wrong - Florida is often close and a good state to win and poor one to lose because it's pretty big. A Biden lead there is very encouraging for him as there are a lot of paths to victory that run through Florida and relatively few paths to defeat - plus Democrats did poorly there in the mid-terms so possibly reversing that bad result on an otherwise good night at that time is particularly positive for them.
But he and Trump can both cheer themselves up by looking at their best polling out of (say) Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and Arizona, and depress themselves by looking at the worst. The point is that either one needs to win a combination of some but not all of those.
Remember the deaths and hospitalisations have been kept low because of the lockdown. No-one seriously claims that the numbers would have been at "bad flu year" levels had there been no lockdown.
It's very sad that flu has a high death toll in some years, but vaccination and acquired immunity does cap it. There isn't a genuine worry that it will rip through the hospital staff, and lead to agonising choices over who doesn't get a ventilator.
If Trump wins Florida, Biden still has a few other realistic combinatins to win, the most famous being Wi-Mi-Pa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RDffMCAujg
Previously Scotland had oil and the world wanted oil. Going forward the world will be using and wanting less oil which means Scotland may no longer have that great source of money that once existed.
So I can see the annoyance but I suspect as with Brexit any future independence won't match the dreams promised.
That's why we are using 70 tons of sub killing fury in the form of the P-8 (RRP 200m quid each) to look for pedalos.
We need to stop them coming in the first place - and then to massively increase the number of refugees we do take.
https://www.businessforscotland.com/scotlands-finances-the-truth/
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-has-scotland-subsidised-the-rest-of-the-uk
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2019/08/21/the-gers-data-is-ludicrous-scotland-does-not-generate-60-of-the-uks-net-fiscal-deficit/
That's probably next on the list of distractions from this skip fire of a government.
We are however getting into an odd place where we are supposed to judge Trump’s first term by what you are afraid he might do in his second. Like most overseas observers I was something of an Obama cheerleader but his foreign policy scorecard at re-election was demonstrably less dovish and more interventionist than Trump’s.
In fact there would be a lot of power in asking both questions to see the difference.
It's true I'd be fairly surprised in November if Biden won Florida but picked up no other additional states compared with Clinton last time (and he'd have to pick up one more state as Florida alone isn't enough).
But it's not implausible. The three closer states that Trump won in 2016 were Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Those three have a lot of common as (broadly) rust belt states with an overwhelming white majority.
So you can paint a pretty realistic (not massively likely but far from fanciful) scenario where Trump hangs onto those on the basis of MAGA/screw the Chinese machismo, whilst that has limited appeal to white pensioners in Florida and he suffers for his persistent racist comments among the 30% of hispanic voters in the state.
At low numbers, they get the best care available. That is true, for example, of the Diamond Princess.
At higher numbers the death rate increases because we would no longer have the resources to cope. In addition excess deaths from other causes would stack up, as "normal" stroke/heart attack patients were unable to access care.