The blame for this rests solely on those who wanted it, advocated it, campaigned for it and voted for it.
You won.
SUCK IT UP...
Why?
Soft Brexiteers are to blame yes. So are soft and hardcore remainers for electing Corbyn and failing to work together in parliament (again see Corbyn). And of course hard Brexiteers mostly responsible for a crazy implementation, lies and division.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
You may not like the tone, but is there any evidence that the criticisms of Johnson's personality are factually incorrect? Or that they are massive problems for a PM?
Remember that school report of BoJo that went viral a while back?
See what I mean? We're now digging through his school reports (!) to find fault (he was, by the way, a King's Scholar at Eton). Now, if we were to take the worst page of your school reports out of context, what might we find there? Be honest.
To my mind the serial adultery and child abandonment speaks for itself. When do you ever see a picture of Boris with his children from previous relationships?
Bozo and Brexit are too perfect together. Both are midlife crises being acted out in public.
I'll just quote from this article, since it sets out the abundant historical precedents quite nicely:
'David Lloyd George was a womaniser all his life and in 1943, when he was eighty and to the great disapproval of his daughters, he married Frances Stevenson who had been principal among his bevy of mistresses since 1913.'
'William Gladstone enjoyed the company of London prostitutes – claiming that his aim was their reform – even after he had been made Prime Minister. He had a strange religious temperament which went with a taste for being whipped.'
'Ramsay Macdonald, puritanical, rigorous and austere had a fifteen years’ secret relationship with Lady Margaret Sackville which only a few close friends knew anything about. He wrote her hundreds of intimate letters and what a biographer described as “explicitly romantic poems.”'
'Melbourne also had a long affair with the society beauty Caroline Norton. The husband demanded £1400 which Melbourne refused to pay. The affair continued.'
'The military genius the Duke of Wellington who delivered us from Napoleon was famously described in a contemporary biography as “a cad and a rutting stag.” He married Kitty Pakenham but found her unattractive so he ran a string of mistresses including a princess, many high-born ladies and an ambassador’s wife.'
Etc. etc. etc. But I'm sure their ages were full of tedious, pettifogging moralizers too.
Any of them as spectacularly cuckolded as Shagger has allegedly just been?
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
You may not like the tone, but is there any evidence that the criticisms of Johnson's personality are factually incorrect? Or that they are massive problems for a PM?
Remember that school report of BoJo that went viral a while back?
See what I mean? We're now digging through his school reports (!) to find fault (he was, by the way, a King's Scholar at Eton). Now, if we were to take the worst page of your school reports out of context, what might we find there? Be honest.
To my mind the serial adultery and child abandonment speaks for itself. When do you ever see a picture of Boris with his children from previous relationships?
Bozo and Brexit are too perfect together. Both are midlife crises being acted out in public.
I'll just quote from this article, since it sets out the abundant historical precedents quite nicely:
'David Lloyd George was a womaniser all his life and in 1943, when he was eighty and to the great disapproval of his daughters, he married Frances Stevenson who had been principal among his bevy of mistresses since 1913.'
'William Gladstone enjoyed the company of London prostitutes – claiming that his aim was their reform – even after he had been made Prime Minister. He had a strange religious temperament which went with a taste for being whipped.'
'Ramsay Macdonald, puritanical, rigorous and austere had a fifteen years’ secret relationship with Lady Margaret Sackville which only a few close friends knew anything about. He wrote her hundreds of intimate letters and what a biographer described as “explicitly romantic poems.”'
'Melbourne also had a long affair with the society beauty Caroline Norton. The husband demanded £1400 which Melbourne refused to pay. The affair continued.'
'The military genius the Duke of Wellington who delivered us from Napoleon was famously described in a contemporary biography as “a cad and a rutting stag.” He married Kitty Pakenham but found her unattractive so he ran a string of mistresses including a princess, many high-born ladies and an ambassador’s wife.'
Etc. etc. etc. But I'm sure their ages were full of tedious, pettifogging moralizers too.
Yes. You provide examples of competent leaders who had affairs. Johnson is a fantasist sacked as a journalist for making up stories. Who then got sacked for lying about one of his affairs to his party leader. Comparing him to Wellington just shows how desperate you are.
I read that curiously overloaded and overlong headline, at first glance, as "Johnson a threat to the integrity to the UK". and judging by this week's events I think the first glance was the right one.
We are now hearing that unless we agree to the EU’s terms, the EU will use an extreme interpretation of the Northern Ireland protocol to impose a full-scale trade border down the Irish sea. We are being told that the EU will not only impose tariffs on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, but that they might actually stop the transport of food products from GB to NI.
I have to say that we never seriously believed that the EU would be willing to use a Treaty, negotiated in good faith, to blockade one part of the UK, to cut it off; or that they would actually threaten to destroy the economic and territorial integrity of the UK. This was for the very good reason that any such barrier, any such tariffs or division would be completely contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Good Friday agreement. By actively undermining the Union of our country, such an interpretation would seriously endanger peace and stability in Northern Ireland. This interpretation cannot have been the real intention of those who framed the protocol (it certainly wasn’t ours) – and it is therefore vital that we close that option down.
Of course whether the EU ever do erect a barrier on a border that accounts for 0.2% of their external trade is open to conjecture.....
...And so with Cummings’ record in government. He seems to suffer from a sort of inverse dysmorphia. Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing the reality of the latest clusterfuck staring back, he sees a Steve Jobs or a Warren Buffett, or even a guy who remembers that the label is meant to go on the inside of his pants. As recently as January, Cummings was claiming there are “trillion dollar bills lying on the street” if you just knew how to run government properly. Has he found one yet? I bet you a trillion dollars he never does.
I don’t know. I think it quite possible he’ll pick one up - and we’ll be paying it for the next generation.
I'm extremely uneasy about the idea of having the state make strategic investments in businesses or startups. We have an absolutely amazing VC sector which does that already, we shouldn't make them compete with state funding and we also shouldn't be putting taxpayer money into inherently risky investments.
There's a reason working for a VC company is incredibly stressful, you're always one mistake away from getting the sack. I don't see any way for the state to replicate that kind of environment for employees, and it is a necessary one because of the nature of the investing required.
Finally, I also take issue with the idea that the UK will ever have $1tn tech companies, we don't have the right regulatory or monopoly rules in place for that to happen. If a UK listed company ever got to half that figure MPs would be opening up countless investigations into it and start forcing it to sell divisions or spin it's profitable divisions into separate entities etc... The UK is much more hostile towards megacorps than the US, the EU is as well.
The only thing the taxpayer is going to be left with is a trillion dollar bill that we're all going to pay for.
I agree.. The role of the state should be to facilitate the environment where people are minded to risk their own capital on a venture set up. So they should ensure that adequate internet infrastructure is in place, that the right courses are being taught at Universities and colleges, that the tax system is favourable to attracting that business, that sufficient accommodation is available to build the hubs that these types of businesses thrive on, that the law offers effective protection to IP, etc etc but that is then available to everyone so investing not some select few of chosen favourites.
There’s other stuff, of course. Government has a huge role to play in funding technology development. But it should be noted that some of the more successful programs (DARPA, for example) spend pretty small amounts of money on particular targeted programs.
Cummings is the last person who should have anything to do with any of it.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
You may not like the tone, but is there any evidence that the criticisms of Johnson's personality are factually incorrect? Or that they are massive problems for a PM?
Remember that school report of BoJo that went viral a while back?
See what I mean? We're now digging through his school reports (!) to find fault (he was, by the way, a King's Scholar at Eton). Now, if we were to take the worst page of your school reports out of context, what might we find there? Be honest.
Kings what? I passed my eleven plus, doesn’t make me better than anyone else.
A good lead; the only bit of evidence that jars with its thesis is a few of the ERG claiming they’d only supported the WA on a promise that it would be junked later.
Maybe they were just trying to claim this chaos had been the plan all along, and falling for that human tendency to claim to be on the inside even when you’re not? Or, if true, there is more to this story than simply Johnson not doing his homework?
It’s a very good header, thank you David.
There is some evidence that some MPs believed or were told that the WA could be changed later and voted for it on that basis without really understanding what it said and its implications. Utterly cynical and contemptuous of voters.
But that does not help matters now.
I see very few grounds for optimism.
Johnsons remarks to the Ulster Unionists in the GE campaign that they could chuck the paperwork in the bin shows that even before his "Oven Ready Deal" passed, he wasn't going to implement it. The lack of preparation and recruitment to Irish Sea customs confirms it.
I don't think there was ever any intention to honour it. I cannot see the point in announcing it now though, it could have been done after the Trade talks finished.
I think that forcing the EU to apply customs on a land border was the plan all along, and the WDA was just a way to postpone No Deal for a year, and more importantly an election. An explicit No Deal policy in Autumn 2019 would have been unlikely to have resulted in a Tory majority, and quite possibly would have been the end of Brexit too.
The WDA achieved what it was intended to, to get a Tory majority, and can be discarded now. Johnson never thinks of the consequences of his seducing, and Cummings cares nothing for the Conservative party. He just wants 4 years of revolutionary power so that he can smash as many British institutions as he can. He wants Humpty Dumpty to have a great fall.
Yes - that thesis is more credible than the one set out in the lead, and fits with three known character traits of Johnson - telling different things to different people depending on what they want to hear - saying whatever is needed to get out of the situation in front of him without regard to the future - and not feeling in the slightest bound by anything he has done or said before.
I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times.
He’s the classic public school bully. Utterly self entitled. Other people are simply lesser creatures, occasionally helpful on Boris’ personal path to glory, but always disposable.
How are state school bullies any better than public ones?
And don't all political leaders, or certainly most of them, treat other people as disposable?
State school bullies never ever get to the privileged positions that the public school bullies get to and therefore have much less chance of being so destructive
The blame for this rests solely on those who wanted it, advocated it, campaigned for it and voted for it.
You won.
SUCK IT UP...
Why?
Soft Brexiteers are to blame yes. So are soft and hardcore remainers for electing Corbyn and failing to work together in parliament (again see Corbyn). And of course hard Brexiteers mostly responsible for a crazy implementation, lies and division.
We are all in this together.
I never voted for brexit, or voted tory, so I am proud to say that this binfire has nothing to do with me!
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
The self-contained environment of a cruise ship seems like a reasonable proxy for a challenge test:
'In an outbreak on a closed Argentinian cruise ship, for example, where passengers were provided with surgical masks and staff with N95 masks, the rate of asymptomatic infection was 81% (as compared with 20% in earlier cruise ship outbreaks without universal masking). In two recent outbreaks in U.S. food-processing plants, where all workers were issued masks each day and were required to wear them, the proportion of asymptomatic infections among the more than 500 people who became infected was 95%, with only 5% in each outbreak experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms.3 Case-fatality rates in countries with mandatory or enforced population-wide masking have remained low, even with resurgences of cases after lockdowns were lifted.'
Question - all these new places that voted Tory to deliver Boris's Brexit Bill. Will they continue to support the Tories when said Brexit bill - voted for by them in good faith - has gone in the bin, and none of the economic benefits they hoped to gain arrive as Crash Brexit throws them to the wolves?
Of course we then know that the HYUFDian wing of the party will then start to blame the voters for being workshy or feckless or all the usual bollocks. In the old days that was Labour voters they were besmirching. Now its Tory voters.
In a lot of places Labour is suffering from the consequences of local Labour Governments not having money to spend due to Tory imposed austerity.
The Tory MPs will be judged on pork belly results - create jobs and make things look better and they will be re-elected. Fail and they will be voted out.
I am not sure that is true. Johnson's Tory party have discovered xenophobic scapegoating is the elixir of life. Johnson has tried it again in today's Telegraph. 'The EU is destroying your Union' dog whistle is being blown like fury by Johnson.
I recall a frustrating conversation I had with family members before the referendum. They couldn`t understand why anyone would vote Remain. They completely bought the "project fear" jibe against the remain campaign. My argument that there will be unintended consequences revealed by leaving wasn`t persuasive, I know, but the damage to our union is emerging as number 1 in this regard.
Yes and BBC responding to unionist politicians requests and taking the overtly political decision to take the Scottish government's daily public health broadcast off air is just another nail in the coffin. Proving the BBC is merely a propaganda unit for Westminster and replacing it with Bargain Hunt is going down a treat.
If you add to that a no-deal Brexit in January, the resulting disruption and job losses, and the end of the furlough scheme, you have the ingredients for a financial and economic crisis.
.
No deal is politically very good for Johnson and probably even necessary to provide obfuscation of his Covid 29 fucktastrophe. Everything can be blamed on the EU; one of the few things at which he excels.
You can already see how he is fingering the Red Wall morons and getting them wet for it with phrases straight out of the Putin script like "foreign powers".
Even better it is financially extremely beneficial for him and his cronies, they will make a killing.
Does anyone have data on the number of tests per day for other countries ?
The graphs on France and Spain are pretty revealing so far.
Cases? Up - 10,000 in France
Deaths? flat as a pancake. Flat as a pancake for weeks and weeks.
The authoritarians, of course, need those deaths to go up (and those cases to go down).
Otherwise, the Oxford evidence based medicine people are correct.
Deaths are rising in Spain quite rapidly I believe? The interpretation looks a bit different if you consider the differences in testing. If you consider that estimates of cases at the pandemic height were in the order of 100s of thousands a day. As long as case numbers stay in the low thousands deaths are unlikely to go up significantly. But if they start approaching the "real" numbers of March/April?
So we may currently be looking at an equivalent situation as we were in early March. Where will we/these countries be in a month under the same time frame?
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
The self-contained environment of a cruise ship seems like a reasonable proxy for a challenge test:
'In an outbreak on a closed Argentinian cruise ship, for example, where passengers were provided with surgical masks and staff with N95 masks, the rate of asymptomatic infection was 81% (as compared with 20% in earlier cruise ship outbreaks without universal masking). In two recent outbreaks in U.S. food-processing plants, where all workers were issued masks each day and were required to wear them, the proportion of asymptomatic infections among the more than 500 people who became infected was 95%, with only 5% in each outbreak experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms.3 Case-fatality rates in countries with mandatory or enforced population-wide masking have remained low, even with resurgences of cases after lockdowns were lifted.'
Wow, that is a nail in Nerys's coffin, since it implies that putting a mask on and then being reckless about infection risks is a valid strategy as a proxy for variolation.
A good lead; the only bit of evidence that jars with its thesis is a few of the ERG claiming they’d only supported the WA on a promise that it would be junked later.
Maybe they were just trying to claim this chaos had been the plan all along, and falling for that human tendency to claim to be on the inside even when you’re not? Or, if true, there is more to this story than simply Johnson not doing his homework?
It’s a very good header, thank you David.
There is some evidence that some MPs believed or were told that the WA could be changed later and voted for it on that basis without really understanding what it said and its implications. Utterly cynical and contemptuous of voters.
But that does not help matters now.
I see very few grounds for optimism.
Johnsons remarks to the Ulster Unionists in the GE campaign that they could chuck the paperwork in the bin shows that even before his "Oven Ready Deal" passed, he wasn't going to implement it. The lack of preparation and recruitment to Irish Sea customs confirms it.
I don't think there was ever any intention to honour it. I cannot see the point in announcing it now though, it could have been done after the Trade talks finished.
I think that forcing the EU to apply customs on a land border was the plan all along, and the WDA was just a way to postpone No Deal for a year, and more importantly an election. An explicit No Deal policy in Autumn 2019 would have been unlikely to have resulted in a Tory majority, and quite possibly would have been the end of Brexit too.
The WDA achieved what it was intended to, to get a Tory majority, and can be discarded now. Johnson never thinks of the consequences of his seducing, and Cummings cares nothing for the Conservative party. He just wants 4 years of revolutionary power so that he can smash as many British institutions as he can. He wants Humpty Dumpty to have a great fall.
Yes - that thesis is more credible than the one set out in the lead, and fits with three known character traits of Johnson - telling different things to different people depending on what they want to hear - saying whatever is needed to get out of the situation in front of him without regard to the future - and not feeling in the slightest bound by anything he has done or said before.
I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times.
The man is clearly a sociopath, and sociopathic leadership seldom ends well.
Johnson's utterings in his fanzine today are a dangerous fiction. To play fast and loose with Northern Ireland politics is either malign or stupid. Johnson's behaviour through the pandemic suggests he is probably both. An expensive education does not guarantee common sense.
I would avoid the character trait comparison with Hitler, but it seems we have our very own Idi Amin in the making. So not even a world beating totalitarian, more the pound shop version.
Johnson may have his failings but comparing him to monsters makes you look unbalanced
2) The moonshot idea doesn't strike me as obviously bonkers, and if it works the people involved will look very good. It costs lot of money, but most of it is probably only paid if it's actually going ahead and producing tests, and if it's going ahead and producing tests then it's also saving an ungodly amount of money by solving the virus problem.
[..]
It isn't obviously bonkers but it is a distraction from what they need to do, which is to ramp up testing. This is principally a BAU, operational efficiency project, not a technology project.
Unfortunately this government seems incapable of setting clear objectives and delivering on them.
Similar with the Ventilator Challenge where they made a procurement project (how do you get the most equipment of the required standard as quickly as possible) into a design competition (give us your ideas and we will pick the best).
I think Johnson and Cumming go for the technology and design projects because they are more fun.
Whilst agreeing with the original paragraph, referencing the ventilator challenge seems a bit strange seeing as that is widely seen as one of the best things the government achieved throughout the entire Coronavirus crisis.
The ventilators, thank goodness, weren't needed. Enough equipment was found here and there to cope with the surge in cases. The VC ventilators that were produced came too late for the first wave and being repurposed anaesthesia machines aren't suitable for Covid treatments except as a last resort. They are unlikely to be used even in a second wave.
If you agree me that ventilator procurement could have been managed much better, we need to understand the counterfactual. In this case we have just one metric that we relentlessly focus on: the number of ventilators of a required standard that we can roll out each week.
First of all you try and find equipment that is not being used or not at capacity; then you buy off the shelf. These things were done but it's not enough. At this point, it should be clear, I think, that manufacturing capacity was the constraint not a lack of suitable designs. I would do two things: Identify manufacturing capacity, which doesn't have to be in the UK. Go to ventilator manufacturers, which mostly aren't in the UK, and see if they are willing or able to license their designs. Don't waste time with a design competition.
Would we still have ended up with Penlon and a barely suitable ventilator? Maybe yes. Would we have been able to deliver ventilators more quickly (the metric we are using)? Not necessarily. But we would have created the conditions in which a more useful outcome was possible.
...And so with Cummings’ record in government. He seems to suffer from a sort of inverse dysmorphia. Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing the reality of the latest clusterfuck staring back, he sees a Steve Jobs or a Warren Buffett, or even a guy who remembers that the label is meant to go on the inside of his pants. As recently as January, Cummings was claiming there are “trillion dollar bills lying on the street” if you just knew how to run government properly. Has he found one yet? I bet you a trillion dollars he never does.
I don’t know. I think it quite possible he’ll pick one up - and we’ll be paying it for the next generation.
I'm extremely uneasy about the idea of having the state make strategic investments in businesses or startups. We have an absolutely amazing VC sector which does that already, we shouldn't make them compete with state funding and we also shouldn't be putting taxpayer money into inherently risky investments.
There's a reason working for a VC company is incredibly stressful, you're always one mistake away from getting the sack. I don't see any way for the state to replicate that kind of environment for employees, and it is a necessary one because of the nature of the investing required.
Finally, I also take issue with the idea that the UK will ever have $1tn tech companies, we don't have the right regulatory or monopoly rules in place for that to happen. If a UK listed company ever got to half that figure MPs would be opening up countless investigations into it and start forcing it to sell divisions or spin it's profitable divisions into separate entities etc... The UK is much more hostile towards megacorps than the US, the EU is as well.
The only thing the taxpayer is going to be left with is a trillion dollar bill that we're all going to pay for.
I agree.. The role of the state should be to facilitate the environment where people are minded to risk their own capital on a venture set up. So they should ensure that adequate internet infrastructure is in place, that the right courses are being taught at Universities and colleges, that the tax system is favourable to attracting that business, that sufficient accommodation is available to build the hubs that these types of businesses thrive on, that the law offers effective protection to IP, etc etc but that is then available to everyone so investing not some select few of chosen favourites.
I think the Cummings Russophilia extends to having favoured oligarchs whose relationship with the government is symbiotic.
There are plenty who claim that there is zero evidence of a second wave of hospitalisations and deaths anywhere. Zero.
And some of them are quite eminent doctors, inconveniently.
Yes, I believe the current thinking amongst Covid data wranglers is the below chart for Georgia is a double peaked single wave. Possibly caused by the effect of wind on the surface of the data.
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
The self-contained environment of a cruise ship seems like a reasonable proxy for a challenge test:
'In an outbreak on a closed Argentinian cruise ship, for example, where passengers were provided with surgical masks and staff with N95 masks, the rate of asymptomatic infection was 81% (as compared with 20% in earlier cruise ship outbreaks without universal masking). In two recent outbreaks in U.S. food-processing plants, where all workers were issued masks each day and were required to wear them, the proportion of asymptomatic infections among the more than 500 people who became infected was 95%, with only 5% in each outbreak experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms.3 Case-fatality rates in countries with mandatory or enforced population-wide masking have remained low, even with resurgences of cases after lockdowns were lifted.'
That is not evidence that masks prevent infection. The mask wearers were still infected. Just a-symptomatically as opposed to a bad dose. They still got COVID.
What is does not show is the numbers who did not get the virus at all.
A good lead; the only bit of evidence that jars with its thesis is a few of the ERG claiming they’d only supported the WA on a promise that it would be junked later.
Maybe they were just trying to claim this chaos had been the plan all along, and falling for that human tendency to claim to be on the inside even when you’re not? Or, if true, there is more to this story than simply Johnson not doing his homework?
It’s a very good header, thank you David.
There is some evidence that some MPs believed or were told that the WA could be changed later and voted for it on that basis without really understanding what it said and its implications. Utterly cynical and contemptuous of voters.
But that does not help matters now.
I see very few grounds for optimism.
Johnsons remarks to the Ulster Unionists in the GE campaign that they could chuck the paperwork in the bin shows that even before his "Oven Ready Deal" passed, he wasn't going to implement it. The lack of preparation and recruitment to Irish Sea customs confirms it.
I don't think there was ever any intention to honour it. I cannot see the point in announcing it now though, it could have been done after the Trade talks finished.
I think that forcing the EU to apply customs on a land border was the plan all along, and the WDA was just a way to postpone No Deal for a year, and more importantly an election. An explicit No Deal policy in Autumn 2019 would have been unlikely to have resulted in a Tory majority, and quite possibly would have been the end of Brexit too.
The WDA achieved what it was intended to, to get a Tory majority, and can be discarded now. Johnson never thinks of the consequences of his seducing, and Cummings cares nothing for the Conservative party. He just wants 4 years of revolutionary power so that he can smash as many British institutions as he can. He wants Humpty Dumpty to have a great fall.
Yes - that thesis is more credible than the one set out in the lead, and fits with three known character traits of Johnson - telling different things to different people depending on what they want to hear - saying whatever is needed to get out of the situation in front of him without regard to the future - and not feeling in the slightest bound by anything he has done or said before.
I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times.
The man is clearly a sociopath, and sociopathic leadership seldom ends well.
Johnson's utterings in his fanzine today are a dangerous fiction. To play fast and loose with Northern Ireland politics is either malign or stupid. Johnson's behaviour through the pandemic suggests he is probably both. An expensive education does not guarantee common sense.
I would avoid the character trait comparison with Hitler, but it seems we have our very own Idi Amin in the making. So not even a world beating totalitarian, more the pound shop version.
Johnson may have his failings but comparing him to monsters makes you look unbalanced
"We are now hearing", "We are being told", "they might"
What a flimsy "justification" for breaking a treaty. The only places claiming these things are Brexiteer press, probably briefed by Cummings.
In the extremely unlikely event that the EU is blockading NI, we could repudiate the treaty. There is absolutely no need to do so (or even worse try and rewrite it unilaterally but expect it to stay in place) until then on the basis of "we are hearing" "we are being told" or "they might".
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
The self-contained environment of a cruise ship seems like a reasonable proxy for a challenge test:
'In an outbreak on a closed Argentinian cruise ship, for example, where passengers were provided with surgical masks and staff with N95 masks, the rate of asymptomatic infection was 81% (as compared with 20% in earlier cruise ship outbreaks without universal masking). In two recent outbreaks in U.S. food-processing plants, where all workers were issued masks each day and were required to wear them, the proportion of asymptomatic infections among the more than 500 people who became infected was 95%, with only 5% in each outbreak experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms.3 Case-fatality rates in countries with mandatory or enforced population-wide masking have remained low, even with resurgences of cases after lockdowns were lifted.'
Wow, that is a nail in Nerys's coffin, since it implies that putting a mask on and then being reckless about infection risks is a valid strategy as a proxy for variolation.
Indeed, it's hard to argue with those figures, and they pretty much kill the practical arguments of the anti-maskers stone dead.
I had been wondering about these reports of people in Wales/England/Scotland being sent to test centres in Scotland/Wales/England. I had assumed that each constituent country was responsible for its own testing and therefore Scottish residents should be tested in Scotland, Welsh in Wales and English in England etc.
Is it actually the case that the UK Government are overseeing the whole testing process?
Yes. The Regional Test centres are UK run.
Hence people from Ayrshire being given appointments in NI as they have no clue that the 20 miles or so is ocean, obviously outside M25 is wilderness to these clowns.
There are plenty who claim that there is zero evidence of a second wave of hospitalisations and deaths anywhere. Zero.
And some of them are quite eminent doctors, inconveniently.
Yes, I believe the current thinking amongst Covid data wranglers is the below chart for Georgia is a double peaked single wave. Possibly caused by the effect of wind on the surface of the data.
If you are correct then deaths and admissions in France and Spain should be climbing. Goodness knows where they should be in Sweden.
"We are now hearing", "We are being told", "they might"
What a flimsy "justification" for breaking a treaty. The only places claiming these things are Brexiteer press, probably briefed by Cummings.
In the extremely unlikely event that the EU is blockading NI, we could repudiate the treaty. There is absolutely no need to do so (or even worse try and rewrite it unilaterally but expect it to stay in place) until then on the basis of "we are hearing" "we are being told" or "they might".
From the report screenshotted below it sounds as if it is not about the EU preventing food exports to NI, except to the extent that it is in the Single Market. It is about the EU preventing food imports from GB to the EU period. Because the UK are refusing to provide any details about their future food safety regime that will allow the EU to officially give it a "safe" status as a food exporting country.
But whilst the UK are interpreting/presenting this as a negotiating "threat", in reality it should be a formality - subject to the UK actually providing the relevant details/assurances. Not least because of the impact on the food security of the Republic of Ireland. It is concerning to say the least that they haven't yet done that. And devastating for UK food exporters who may not be fully aware of this. It might not be a case of "onerous bureaucracy" on 1st January. It might be a case of no exporting at all.
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
It strikes me that is this were to become a thing it could transform people`s attitude to mask-wearing. Viral dose (not load) from now on then!
So mask wearing ought to appeal to those pursuing herd immunity every bit as much as those trying to avoid infection ? Not implausible.
"How did we get here? The easy answer would be Brexit, which has given the Tories a bad dose of ideology, but that answer wouldn’t be right – not by itself anyway though it has acted as catalyst... In truth, the problem is more personal and at its core is the PM."
Had it not been for Brexit then I think Johnson would have governed Britain as he governed London - not particularly well, but not particularly badly. It's the ideological fixation on Brexit that has allowed the trampling of so many democratic norms.
But why the ideological fixation? Brexit didn't find a ready audience by accident, or solely on its merits. It's in large part because the steady, conservative, post-Thatcherite consensus of 1990-2016 did not deliver for large numbers of people and a scapegoat for the Great Financial Crash was required.
Until those sections of the political class not deranged by Brexit can find policies and narratives that will deliver, and be seen to deliver, the economic justice that is lacking, there will be no escape from the downward spiral.
It is not enough to harken back to a time Before Boris - what is happening now is, in part, a legacy of the failings of those that led before: May, Cameron, Brown, Blair, etc. This failure too needs to be reckoned with.
There is a lot of magnesium in a Victor so they should just set it on fire.
I always think nostalgia for bombers is a consequence of people separating in their minds the smooth design and engineering from what they actually do (ie kill people ,sometimes civilians in a fieiy death) . As a natural conservationist I often support heritage but never understood the passion for keeping ruthless killing machines
There are plenty who claim that there is zero evidence of a second wave of hospitalisations and deaths anywhere. Zero.
And some of them are quite eminent doctors, inconveniently.
Yes, I believe the current thinking amongst Covid data wranglers is the below chart for Georgia is a double peaked single wave. Possibly caused by the effect of wind on the surface of the data.
If you are correct then deaths and admissions in France and Spain should be climbing. Goodness knows where they should be in Sweden.
But its tumbleweed. So you are wrong.
Me: Show chart of obvious double peak. You: No. Evidence. Of. Second. Wave.
The blame for this rests solely on those who wanted it, advocated it, campaigned for it and voted for it.
You won.
SUCK IT UP...
Why?
Soft Brexiteers are to blame yes. So are soft and hardcore remainers for electing Corbyn and failing to work together in parliament (again see Corbyn). And of course hard Brexiteers mostly responsible for a crazy implementation, lies and division.
We are all in this together.
I never voted for brexit, or voted tory, so I am proud to say that this binfire has nothing to do with me!
Well if you voted LD, they failed to support far better outcomes at the indicative votes. If you voted Labour, see Corbyn. SNP/Plaid probably did their best, but could have made Customs Union pass if they wanted to. DUP need I say more, and Sinn Fein werent even willing to turn up.
Collectively as a country our politicians of all flavours have ballsed this up, and collectively we vote for them.
I am reliably told that November is still a likely date for first Ox-AZN vaccines in British arms. Front line workers only. Gradual roll out to other groups thereafter.
The puzzling thing to me is the government’s messaging. It’s all wrong. You might convince even me that the current wave of authoritarianism is ok if you are defining a near term end date with high probability.
Instead they talk about spending £100bn a year on testing as though the crisis is here forever. They speak only vaguely in highly caveated terms about a vaccine. They keep everyone in a state of constant fear about the “second wave”. An emotive and ill defined term that has entered our lexicon so suddenly that almost no one stops to think what it actually means.
The government have to get better at spelling out the temporary nature of this event, that without doubt we’ve already passed through the abyss and the brighter tomorrow is right around the corner.
Boris Johnson might not have died in that hospital room but the optimistic libertarian in him surely did.
Elsewhere on this thread this government is getting correctly panned over Brexit for either not thinking things through past the next couple of months or just lying about the obvious consequences of things shortly down the road.
I'm an optimistic libertarian as well but I don't see the point in spinning a cheerful message about how the end to the virus is just around the corner when nobody has the faintest idea how long it's going to take to get an end to the virus. People need to make plans for what's actually going to happen, and what's actually going to happen won't necessarily be what we want to happen.
It is a credible hypothesis that the virus seems to burn out when a given population hits a certain percentage of deaths per head, perhaps due to T Cell immunity that we are not testing for, and a bulge in excess mortality that will be largely (but far from entirely) smoothed our when looking at the period 2018-2022.
This hypothesis may of course prove to be entirely wrong. And even if it’s correct, it implies perhaps another equivalent dose of fatality as in 2020 (and possibly longcovid) before the UK as a whole gets to NYC levels.
But nevertheless it is not correct to say “no one has the faintest idea” when it will end. Our Prime Minister’s alma mater is sitting on unpublished data that apparently shows its vaccine has at least passable efficacy and is most likely safe enough for a wider roll out. And that the best informed money thinks such a rollout will begin this side of Xmas. Other vaccine approaches are racing through the process as well.
But instead on Cabinet PowerPoint slide #1 all we get is PUBLIC FEAR and on slide #2 VAPOURWARE £££.
It’s utterly bemusing to me.
Madrid had a higher percentage affected in the first wave than many British cities, yet now is in the throes of a second. That they achieved herd immunity in the first is obviously wrong.
in reality it should be a formality - subject to the UK actually providing the relevant details/assurances. It is concerning to say the least that they haven't yet done that. And devastating for UK food exporters who may not be fully aware of this. It might not be a case of "onerous bureaucracy" on 1st January. It might be a case of no exporting at all.
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
The self-contained environment of a cruise ship seems like a reasonable proxy for a challenge test:
'In an outbreak on a closed Argentinian cruise ship, for example, where passengers were provided with surgical masks and staff with N95 masks, the rate of asymptomatic infection was 81% (as compared with 20% in earlier cruise ship outbreaks without universal masking). In two recent outbreaks in U.S. food-processing plants, where all workers were issued masks each day and were required to wear them, the proportion of asymptomatic infections among the more than 500 people who became infected was 95%, with only 5% in each outbreak experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms.3 Case-fatality rates in countries with mandatory or enforced population-wide masking have remained low, even with resurgences of cases after lockdowns were lifted.'
Wow, that is a nail in Nerys's coffin, since it implies that putting a mask on and then being reckless about infection risks is a valid strategy as a proxy for variolation.
Indeed, it's hard to argue with those figures, and they pretty much kill the practical arguments of the anti-maskers stone dead.
So masks work because they give you a lower dose of corona than not having masks? a sort of vaccine dose. Is that the claim?
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
You may not like the tone, but is there any evidence that the criticisms of Johnson's personality are factually incorrect? Or that they are massive problems for a PM?
Remember that school report of BoJo that went viral a while back?
See what I mean? We're now digging through his school reports (!) to find fault (he was, by the way, a King's Scholar at Eton). Now, if we were to take the worst page of your school reports out of context, what might we find there? Be honest.
To my mind the serial adultery and child abandonment speaks for itself. When do you ever see a picture of Boris with his children from previous relationships?
Bozo and Brexit are too perfect together. Both are midlife crises being acted out in public.
I'll just quote from this article, since it sets out the abundant historical precedents quite nicely:
'David Lloyd George was a womaniser all his life and in 1943, when he was eighty and to the great disapproval of his daughters, he married Frances Stevenson who had been principal among his bevy of mistresses since 1913.'
'William Gladstone enjoyed the company of London prostitutes – claiming that his aim was their reform – even after he had been made Prime Minister. He had a strange religious temperament which went with a taste for being whipped.'
'Ramsay Macdonald, puritanical, rigorous and austere had a fifteen years’ secret relationship with Lady Margaret Sackville which only a few close friends knew anything about. He wrote her hundreds of intimate letters and what a biographer described as “explicitly romantic poems.”'
'Melbourne also had a long affair with the society beauty Caroline Norton. The husband demanded £1400 which Melbourne refused to pay. The affair continued.'
'The military genius the Duke of Wellington who delivered us from Napoleon was famously described in a contemporary biography as “a cad and a rutting stag.” He married Kitty Pakenham but found her unattractive so he ran a string of mistresses including a princess, many high-born ladies and an ambassador’s wife.'
Etc. etc. etc. But I'm sure their ages were full of tedious, pettifogging moralizers too.
John Major's big blue pants.
I do not know the Salisbury Review, but it does sound like the Conservative Party´s answer to the gutter press.
If she was disbarred, would she be forced to resign? The A-G has to be a lawyer?
Lol - doubt that is going to happen.
But yes a non-lawyer cannot be the government’s principal law officer, though with this government who can say?
Our very own @Philip_Thompson could have a go in such a case. He has very strong views on the law without knowing anything about it, which sounds like the perfect combination.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
You may not like the tone, but is there any evidence that the criticisms of Johnson's personality are factually incorrect? Or that they are massive problems for a PM?
Remember that school report of BoJo that went viral a while back?
See what I mean? We're now digging through his school reports (!) to find fault (he was, by the way, a King's Scholar at Eton). Now, if we were to take the worst page of your school reports out of context, what might we find there? Be honest.
“Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.”
Does anyone have data on the number of tests per day for other countries ?
The graphs on France and Spain are pretty revealing so far.
Cases? Up - 10,000 in France
Deaths? flat as a pancake. Flat as a pancake for weeks and weeks.
The authoritarians, of course, need those deaths to go up (and those cases to go down).
Otherwise, the Oxford evidence based medicine people are correct.
Deaths are rising in Spain quite rapidly I believe? The interpretation looks a bit different if you consider the differences in testing. If you consider that estimates of cases at the pandemic height were in the order of 100s of thousands a day. As long as case numbers stay in the low thousands deaths are unlikely to go up significantly. But if they start approaching the "real" numbers of March/April?
So we may currently be looking at an equivalent situation as we were in early March. Where will we/these countries be in a month under the same time frame?
Worldometers say 66/day fatalities 7 day average for Spain, with total testing at 214000:per million
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
The self-contained environment of a cruise ship seems like a reasonable proxy for a challenge test:
'In an outbreak on a closed Argentinian cruise ship, for example, where passengers were provided with surgical masks and staff with N95 masks, the rate of asymptomatic infection was 81% (as compared with 20% in earlier cruise ship outbreaks without universal masking). In two recent outbreaks in U.S. food-processing plants, where all workers were issued masks each day and were required to wear them, the proportion of asymptomatic infections among the more than 500 people who became infected was 95%, with only 5% in each outbreak experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms.3 Case-fatality rates in countries with mandatory or enforced population-wide masking have remained low, even with resurgences of cases after lockdowns were lifted.'
That is not evidence that masks prevent infection. The mask wearers were still infected. Just a-symptomatically as opposed to a bad dose. They still got COVID.
What is does not show is the numbers who did not get the virus at all.
We're not disagreeing that the masks didn't prevent infection for everyone - it would be amazing if that happened after weeks stuck on a cruise ship - but the fact that they reduced the severity of the infection so drastically for those who did get it is a huge win, surely? On the Diamond Princess, this mask procedure was not followed and the asymptomatic rate was only 18%, not 81%, with many more fatalities.
There are plenty who claim that there is zero evidence of a second wave of hospitalisations and deaths anywhere. Zero.
And some of them are quite eminent doctors, inconveniently.
Yes, I believe the current thinking amongst Covid data wranglers is the below chart for Georgia is a double peaked single wave. Possibly caused by the effect of wind on the surface of the data.
If you are correct then deaths and admissions in France and Spain should be climbing. Goodness knows where they should be in Sweden.
But its tumbleweed. So you are wrong.
Me: Show chart of obvious double peak. You: No. Evidence. Of. Second. Wave.
My argument is based on the graphs of Spain, France and Sweden. And I wouldn;t mind betting the UK in a few weeks.
What's your explanation for the flatlining in those graphs?
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
The self-contained environment of a cruise ship seems like a reasonable proxy for a challenge test:
'In an outbreak on a closed Argentinian cruise ship, for example, where passengers were provided with surgical masks and staff with N95 masks, the rate of asymptomatic infection was 81% (as compared with 20% in earlier cruise ship outbreaks without universal masking). In two recent outbreaks in U.S. food-processing plants, where all workers were issued masks each day and were required to wear them, the proportion of asymptomatic infections among the more than 500 people who became infected was 95%, with only 5% in each outbreak experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms.3 Case-fatality rates in countries with mandatory or enforced population-wide masking have remained low, even with resurgences of cases after lockdowns were lifted.'
Wow, that is a nail in Nerys's coffin, since it implies that putting a mask on and then being reckless about infection risks is a valid strategy as a proxy for variolation.
Indeed, it's hard to argue with those figures, and they pretty much kill the practical arguments of the anti-maskers stone dead.
So masks work because they give you a lower dose of corona than not having masks? a sort of vaccine dose. Is that the claim?
It's more that a smaller initial dose gives your immune system more time to ramp up.
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
The self-contained environment of a cruise ship seems like a reasonable proxy for a challenge test:
'In an outbreak on a closed Argentinian cruise ship, for example, where passengers were provided with surgical masks and staff with N95 masks, the rate of asymptomatic infection was 81% (as compared with 20% in earlier cruise ship outbreaks without universal masking). In two recent outbreaks in U.S. food-processing plants, where all workers were issued masks each day and were required to wear them, the proportion of asymptomatic infections among the more than 500 people who became infected was 95%, with only 5% in each outbreak experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms.3 Case-fatality rates in countries with mandatory or enforced population-wide masking have remained low, even with resurgences of cases after lockdowns were lifted.'
That is not evidence that masks prevent infection. The mask wearers were still infected. Just a-symptomatically as opposed to a bad dose. They still got COVID.
What is does not show is the numbers who did not get the virus at all.
The point is that variolation could be the explanation as to why we and some other countries are seeing a rise in infections but no corresponding rise in hospitalisations (even after allowing for a delay). People are just as scared of the virus now as they were in March when evidence suggests that catching the virus is likely to be less serious now than then.
The thinking was that the virus has mutated into a milder form, but evidence to support this is lacking. Variolation offers a different explanation.
If masks are "allowing" people to become infected - and become immune - via a lower dose of virus, because the body`s immune system can cope with this better, then may explain the lack of hospitalisations and could be a game-changer in terms of people`s attitudes to wearing masks.
I believe, though some of you will disagree, that people`s fear of the virus has become less rational than before. If we can temper this fear then it will be much easier to get the economy back to a surer footing and get our freedoms back (albeit whilst wearing a mask) until a vaccine emerges.
Great piece but I disagree about the chances of No Deal. I think it remains unlikely. I think the politics steers towards a deal that prolongs close alignment beyond 1st Jan 2021.
However let’s go with the hardly outrageous proposition that I am wrong and David Herdson is right. In which case there’s a problem. Which is that No Deal Brexit has no domestic mandate. I don’t mean it doesn’t respect the Referendum result. We voted to leave and it is leaving. It’s leaving good and proper. No issue there.
But the most recent national democratic event was the GE in December 2019. Exactly 8 months ago, that was, and it gave Boris Johnson a thumping “Oh yes please!” to the question he asked the British people, which was – “Do you want to get Brexit done and finished on the basis of my oven ready deal with the EU?”
He knew he could not win an election on a No Deal platform. He knew if he’d asked the question - “Do you want to crash out of the EU onto basic WTO terms and get into a serious wrangle about the Irish border with the EU?” – the answer would have been “Are you kidding? Get a grip.”
So, Ok, having won power by nefarious means – by lying to the EU and to the public - he can now use it to do what he wants, which includes pretending that this abuse of the democratic process did not happen. But if he does it will be a bit off and that’s putting it mildly.
If she was disbarred, would she be forced to resign? The A-G has to be a lawyer?
Lol - doubt that is going to happen.
But yes a non-lawyer cannot be the government’s principal law officer, though with this government who can say?
Our very own @Philip_Thompson could have a go in such a case. He has very strong views on the law without knowing anything about it, which sounds like the perfect combination.
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
The self-contained environment of a cruise ship seems like a reasonable proxy for a challenge test:
'In an outbreak on a closed Argentinian cruise ship, for example, where passengers were provided with surgical masks and staff with N95 masks, the rate of asymptomatic infection was 81% (as compared with 20% in earlier cruise ship outbreaks without universal masking). In two recent outbreaks in U.S. food-processing plants, where all workers were issued masks each day and were required to wear them, the proportion of asymptomatic infections among the more than 500 people who became infected was 95%, with only 5% in each outbreak experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms.3 Case-fatality rates in countries with mandatory or enforced population-wide masking have remained low, even with resurgences of cases after lockdowns were lifted.'
That is not evidence that masks prevent infection. The mask wearers were still infected. Just a-symptomatically as opposed to a bad dose. They still got COVID.
What is does not show is the numbers who did not get the virus at all.
We're not disagreeing that the masks didn't prevent infection for everyone - it would be amazing if that happened after weeks stuck on a cruise ship - but the fact that they reduced the severity of the infection so drastically for those who did get it is a huge win, surely? On the Diamond Princess, this mask procedure was not followed and the asymptomatic rate was only 18%, not 81%, with many more fatalities.
Yes but the average age on the Diamond Princess was far higher than a normal population
The blame for this rests solely on those who wanted it, advocated it, campaigned for it and voted for it.
You won.
SUCK IT UP...
Why?
Soft Brexiteers are to blame yes. So are soft and hardcore remainers for electing Corbyn and failing to work together in parliament (again see Corbyn). And of course hard Brexiteers mostly responsible for a crazy implementation, lies and division.
We are all in this together.
I never voted for brexit, or voted tory, so I am proud to say that this binfire has nothing to do with me!
Except that you’re in the bin with the rest of us...
I am reliably told that November is still a likely date for first Ox-AZN vaccines in British arms. Front line workers only. Gradual roll out to other groups thereafter.
The puzzling thing to me is the government’s messaging. It’s all wrong. You might convince even me that the current wave of authoritarianism is ok if you are defining a near term end date with high probability.
Instead they talk about spending £100bn a year on testing as though the crisis is here forever. They speak only vaguely in highly caveated terms about a vaccine. They keep everyone in a state of constant fear about the “second wave”. An emotive and ill defined term that has entered our lexicon so suddenly that almost no one stops to think what it actually means.
The government have to get better at spelling out the temporary nature of this event, that without doubt we’ve already passed through the abyss and the brighter tomorrow is right around the corner.
Boris Johnson might not have died in that hospital room but the optimistic libertarian in him surely did.
Elsewhere on this thread this government is getting correctly panned over Brexit for either not thinking things through past the next couple of months or just lying about the obvious consequences of things shortly down the road.
I'm an optimistic libertarian as well but I don't see the point in spinning a cheerful message about how the end to the virus is just around the corner when nobody has the faintest idea how long it's going to take to get an end to the virus. People need to make plans for what's actually going to happen, and what's actually going to happen won't necessarily be what we want to happen.
It is a credible hypothesis that the virus seems to burn out when a given population hits a certain percentage of deaths per head, perhaps due to T Cell immunity that we are not testing for, and a bulge in excess mortality that will be largely (but far from entirely) smoothed our when looking at the period 2018-2022.
This hypothesis may of course prove to be entirely wrong. And even if it’s correct, it implies perhaps another equivalent dose of fatality as in 2020 (and possibly longcovid) before the UK as a whole gets to NYC levels.
But nevertheless it is not correct to say “no one has the faintest idea” when it will end. Our Prime Minister’s alma mater is sitting on unpublished data that apparently shows its vaccine has at least passable efficacy and is most likely safe enough for a wider roll out. And that the best informed money thinks such a rollout will begin this side of Xmas. Other vaccine approaches are racing through the process as well.
But instead on Cabinet PowerPoint slide #1 all we get is PUBLIC FEAR and on slide #2 VAPOURWARE £££.
It’s utterly bemusing to me.
Madrid had a higher percentage affected in the first wave than many British cities, yet now is in the throes of a second. That they achieved herd immunity in the first is obviously wrong.
Spain had an almost total lockdown though. Maybe more Londoners got small doses while out and about exercising etc. Indeed I'm wondering if the problems in Northern cities is because they were later on the curve - locking down London early was considered (and rejected) maybe the Northern cities should have been unlocked later.
It is possible for both of these things to be true:
- That Johnson is a lazy, dissembling buffoon, not remotely acquainted with the details, let alone on top of them. - That the EU has "weaponised" Ulster as a way of controlling the UK by "making stuff up" about the Belfast Agreement and "protecting the integrity of the single market" of a border which accounts for ±0.2% of the EU's trade in goods (and would rapidly become obvious if this were to increase markedly).
It's a mystery why Remainer Brandon Lewis used such incendiary language in the HoC......
However only the first IS true.
I am not of the "EU is a pony farm" persuasion. They are playing hardball, as I entirely expected them to do, and David Davies and the other Leavers apparently didn't. The EU is weaponising the Single Market just as the Brexiteer government weaponises divergence from the EU. Northern Ireland is the unfortunate collateral in all of this.
The difference between the two parties is that the EU has a much higher sense of responsibility towards Northern Ireland, which is nominally part of the UK, than the UK government does. All of the issues in Johnson's Telegraph article stem from his lack of responsibility towards Northern Ireland.
There are plenty who claim that there is zero evidence of a second wave of hospitalisations and deaths anywhere. Zero.
And some of them are quite eminent doctors, inconveniently.
Yes, I believe the current thinking amongst Covid data wranglers is the below chart for Georgia is a double peaked single wave. Possibly caused by the effect of wind on the surface of the data.
If you are correct then deaths and admissions in France and Spain should be climbing. Goodness knows where they should be in Sweden.
But its tumbleweed. So you are wrong.
Me: Show chart of obvious double peak. You: No. Evidence. Of. Second. Wave.
My argument is based on the graphs of Spain, France and Sweden. And I wouldn;t mind betting the UK in a few weeks.
What's your explanation for the flatlining in those graphs?
Spain, France and Sweden all have many more restriction than Georgia and Texas.
Free Sweden has extended its travel ban until the end of October.
Anyway, hasn't France just reported it's most deaths since the middle of June?
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
The self-contained environment of a cruise ship seems like a reasonable proxy for a challenge test:
'In an outbreak on a closed Argentinian cruise ship, for example, where passengers were provided with surgical masks and staff with N95 masks, the rate of asymptomatic infection was 81% (as compared with 20% in earlier cruise ship outbreaks without universal masking). In two recent outbreaks in U.S. food-processing plants, where all workers were issued masks each day and were required to wear them, the proportion of asymptomatic infections among the more than 500 people who became infected was 95%, with only 5% in each outbreak experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms.3 Case-fatality rates in countries with mandatory or enforced population-wide masking have remained low, even with resurgences of cases after lockdowns were lifted.'
That is not evidence that masks prevent infection. The mask wearers were still infected. Just a-symptomatically as opposed to a bad dose. They still got COVID.
What is does not show is the numbers who did not get the virus at all.
The point is that variolation could be the explanation as to why we and some other countries are seeing a rise in infections but no corresponding rise in hospitalisations (even after allowing for a delay). People are just as scared of the virus now as they were in March when evidence suggests that catching the virus is likely to be less serious now than then.
The thinking was that the virus has mutated into a milder form, but evidence to support this is lacking. Variolation offers a different explanation.
If masks are "allowing" people to become infected - and become immune - via a lower dose of virus, because the body`s immune system can cope with this better, then may explain the lack of hospitalisations and could be a game-changer in terms of people`s attitudes to wearing masks.
I believe, though some of you will disagree, that people`s fear of the virus has become less rational than before. If we can temper this fear then it will be much easier to get the economy back to a surer footing and get our freedoms back (albeit whilst wearing a mask) until a vaccine emerges.
IF we follow the argument, a vaccine may not even be needed?
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
It strikes me that is this were to become a thing it could transform people`s attitude to mask-wearing. Viral dose (not load) from now on then!
So mask wearing ought to appeal to those pursuing herd immunity every bit as much as those trying to avoid infection ? Not implausible.
Yes. That`s why I see this as so significant.
We need to temper people`s fear - which is often largely based on ignorance. I know this from the people I speak to. They are clueless and just believe the scare-mongering negative stuff they read in the media.
Great piece but I disagree about the chances of No Deal. I think it remains unlikely. I think the politics steers towards a deal that prolongs close alignment beyond 1st Jan 2021.
However let’s go with the hardly outrageous proposition that I am wrong and David Herdson is right. In which case there’s a problem. Which is that No Deal Brexit has no domestic mandate. I don’t mean it doesn’t respect the Referendum result. We voted to leave and it is leaving. It’s leaving good and proper. No issue there.
But the most recent national democratic event was the GE in December 2019. Exactly 8 months ago, that was, and it gave Boris Johnson a thumping “Oh yes please!” to the question he asked the British people, which was – “Do you want to get Brexit done and finished on the basis of my oven ready deal with the EU?”
He knew he could not win an election on a No Deal platform. He knew if he’d asked the question - “Do you want to crash out of the EU onto basic WTO terms and get into a serious wrangle about the Irish border with the EU?” – the answer would have been “Are you kidding? Get a grip.”
So, Ok, having won power by nefarious means – by lying to the EU and to the public - he can now use it to do what he wants, which includes pretending that this abuse of the democratic process did not happen. But if he does it will be a bit off and that’s putting it mildly.
Another point to add to this. The Internal Market Bill is highly aggressive to the devolved administrations. This is as big a problem as the illegality.
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
The self-contained environment of a cruise ship seems like a reasonable proxy for a challenge test:
'In an outbreak on a closed Argentinian cruise ship, for example, where passengers were provided with surgical masks and staff with N95 masks, the rate of asymptomatic infection was 81% (as compared with 20% in earlier cruise ship outbreaks without universal masking). In two recent outbreaks in U.S. food-processing plants, where all workers were issued masks each day and were required to wear them, the proportion of asymptomatic infections among the more than 500 people who became infected was 95%, with only 5% in each outbreak experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms.3 Case-fatality rates in countries with mandatory or enforced population-wide masking have remained low, even with resurgences of cases after lockdowns were lifted.'
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
The self-contained environment of a cruise ship seems like a reasonable proxy for a challenge test:
'In an outbreak on a closed Argentinian cruise ship, for example, where passengers were provided with surgical masks and staff with N95 masks, the rate of asymptomatic infection was 81% (as compared with 20% in earlier cruise ship outbreaks without universal masking). In two recent outbreaks in U.S. food-processing plants, where all workers were issued masks each day and were required to wear them, the proportion of asymptomatic infections among the more than 500 people who became infected was 95%, with only 5% in each outbreak experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms.3 Case-fatality rates in countries with mandatory or enforced population-wide masking have remained low, even with resurgences of cases after lockdowns were lifted.'
That is not evidence that masks prevent infection. The mask wearers were still infected. Just a-symptomatically as opposed to a bad dose. They still got COVID.
What is does not show is the numbers who did not get the virus at all.
The point is that variolation could be the explanation as to why we and some other countries are seeing a rise in infections but no corresponding rise in hospitalisations (even after allowing for a delay). People are just as scared of the virus now as they were in March when evidence suggests that catching the virus is likely to be less serious now than then.
The thinking was that the virus has mutated into a milder form, but evidence to support this is lacking. Variolation offers a different explanation.
If masks are "allowing" people to become infected - and become immune - via a lower dose of virus, because the body`s immune system can cope with this better, then may explain the lack of hospitalisations and could be a game-changer in terms of people`s attitudes to wearing masks.
I believe, though some of you will disagree, that people`s fear of the virus has become less rational than before. If we can temper this fear then it will be much easier to get the economy back to a surer footing and get our freedoms back (albeit whilst wearing a mask) until a vaccine emerges.
IF we follow the argument, a vaccine may not even be needed?
That may be a bit too hopeful. I do believe that the virus isn`t going to completely disappear worldwide and, as I`ve argued all along, we have to accept that there is a new risk in life.
One thing is clear - the EU aren't ever going to want us back.
MarqueeMark: what`s your view of Boris at the moment? I`m taken aback by some of the posts this morning. Especially this from Foxy:
"I think that there is a fourth character trait. For all his superficial charm, he cares nothing for other people, not even his own children or their mothers. That is a very dangerous thing in a leader, particularly so in the present times."
I`m no Boris fan but I`d never write something like that.
The vitriol of those suffering from Boris Derangement Syndrome has reached new heights today - he's sent his critics clean round the bend!
You may not like the tone, but is there any evidence that the criticisms of Johnson's personality are factually incorrect? Or that they are massive problems for a PM?
Remember that school report of BoJo that went viral a while back?
See what I mean? We're now digging through his school reports (!) to find fault (he was, by the way, a King's Scholar at Eton). Now, if we were to take the worst page of your school reports out of context, what might we find there? Be honest.
To my mind the serial adultery and child abandonment speaks for itself. When do you ever see a picture of Boris with his children from previous relationships?
Bozo and Brexit are too perfect together. Both are midlife crises being acted out in public.
I'll just quote from this article, since it sets out the abundant historical precedents quite nicely:
'David Lloyd George was a womaniser all his life and in 1943, when he was eighty and to the great disapproval of his daughters, he married Frances Stevenson who had been principal among his bevy of mistresses since 1913.'
'William Gladstone enjoyed the company of London prostitutes – claiming that his aim was their reform – even after he had been made Prime Minister. He had a strange religious temperament which went with a taste for being whipped.'
'Ramsay Macdonald, puritanical, rigorous and austere had a fifteen years’ secret relationship with Lady Margaret Sackville which only a few close friends knew anything about. He wrote her hundreds of intimate letters and what a biographer described as “explicitly romantic poems.”'
'Melbourne also had a long affair with the society beauty Caroline Norton. The husband demanded £1400 which Melbourne refused to pay. The affair continued.'
'The military genius the Duke of Wellington who delivered us from Napoleon was famously described in a contemporary biography as “a cad and a rutting stag.” He married Kitty Pakenham but found her unattractive so he ran a string of mistresses including a princess, many high-born ladies and an ambassador’s wife.'
Etc. etc. etc. But I'm sure their ages were full of tedious, pettifogging moralizers too.
Sure, particularly if you go back a century or more there are plenty of adulterous PMs. How many serially abandoned their children though?
I am old enough to remember when this sort of thing used to be considered a bad thing by Conservatives.
1. This is in the US which is very different to here 2. People who are working at a workplace are far more likely to visit restaurants so you would expect more transmission amongst that group even if restaurants caused zero spread. 3. Clearly restaurants will cause some additional spread, everyone knows that and did when the policy was introduced and when people chose to go to restaurants.
Risk is not absolute, eat out to help out was a good scheme.
As I discovered when my new MP was trying to get me to vote for him, they think details aren't important.
The most worrying thing was that he was a lawyer who had set up and sold a large legal practice (which has since been closed down in the 8 months since he sold it for being dodgy).
Great piece but I disagree about the chances of No Deal. I think it remains unlikely. I think the politics steers towards a deal that prolongs close alignment beyond 1st Jan 2021.
However let’s go with the hardly outrageous proposition that I am wrong and David Herdson is right. In which case there’s a problem. Which is that No Deal Brexit has no domestic mandate. I don’t mean it doesn’t respect the Referendum result. We voted to leave and it is leaving. It’s leaving good and proper. No issue there.
But the most recent national democratic event was the GE in December 2019. Exactly 8 months ago, that was, and it gave Boris Johnson a thumping “Oh yes please!” to the question he asked the British people, which was – “Do you want to get Brexit done and finished on the basis of my oven ready deal with the EU?”
He knew he could not win an election on a No Deal platform. He knew if he’d asked the question - “Do you want to crash out of the EU onto basic WTO terms and get into a serious wrangle about the Irish border with the EU?” – the answer would have been “Are you kidding? Get a grip.”
So, Ok, having won power by nefarious means – by lying to the EU and to the public - he can now use it to do what he wants, which includes pretending that this abuse of the democratic process did not happen. But if he does it will be a bit off and that’s putting it mildly.
The referendum mandate was to leave the EU. That was delivered in full on 31st January. The referendum is literally over and complete. What instead we should be talking about when it comes to a mandate is what we do now that we have successfully left the EU.
The only mandate is for Boris Johnson's Withdrawal Agreement. The one he is now ripping up. So when we get into a Commons vs Lords battle the Lords will be able to put the Parliament Acts and conventions into reverse - it is they who are acting to defend the democratic mandate of a government trying to reverse it.
If she was disbarred, would she be forced to resign? The A-G has to be a lawyer?
Lol - doubt that is going to happen.
But yes a non-lawyer cannot be the government’s principal law officer, though with this government who can say?
Our very own @Philip_Thompson could have a go in such a case. He has very strong views on the law without knowing anything about it, which sounds like the perfect combination.
Stop poking the tiger
Yes - making digs against posters not even present suggests an underlying nastiness the site could do without.
Nigelb: as our chief science poster, what did you make of the "variolation" hypothesis forwarded by Foxy yesterday? I`m struggling to find out much about it but it may become a big thing and bring viral load back into the frame.
I’m a little disturbed that I should be though our ‘chief science poster‘ - most obsessive non expert might be more accurate. But I’ll have a go.
It’s a plausible hypothesis (but, DOSE, not load). We just don’t know if it’s true, though. Without running challenge tests, where you deliberately expose subjects and which obviously aren’t going to happen, there’s no way of demonstrating it directly. We should run animal experiments, but this is expensive, and constrained by lab capacity which is probably prioritised to stuff like vaccine studies - and while it might demonstrate the effect, wouldn’t give us any detail on what the human numbers might be. Population studies have massive confounding factors (the recent skew towards younger people making up a larger proportion of those infected is an example), so they are not going to give any answers any time soon.
Yes, that's my view too. What the non-scientists perhaps don't realize is how much we don't know, and aren't going to know any time soon. (Case in point: how is coronavirus spread between humans? Evidence is accumulating, but anyone who claims to know for sure is exaggerating.)
I feel that there's way too much certainty expressed in the world, perhaps because the news cycle amplifies people expressing certainty over judicious uncertainty. I also notice how the fad for big data encourages the idea that solutions to complex problems can be found by analysis. We should be more realistic about how little we see the foggy landscape through which we are blundering, and what cannot be determined -- soon or ever.
If she was disbarred, would she be forced to resign? The A-G has to be a lawyer?
Lol - doubt that is going to happen.
But yes a non-lawyer cannot be the government’s principal law officer, though with this government who can say?
Our very own @Philip_Thompson could have a go in such a case. He has very strong views on the law without knowing anything about it, which sounds like the perfect combination.
Stop poking the tiger
Yes - making digs against posters not even present suggests an underlying nastiness the site could do without.
As I discovered when my new MP was trying to get me to vote for him, they think details aren't important.
The most worrying thing was that he was a lawyer who had set up and sold a large legal practice (which has since been closed down in the 8 months since he sold it for being dodgy).
Sounds like a future cabinet minister in the making!
There are plenty who claim that there is zero evidence of a second wave of hospitalisations and deaths anywhere. Zero.
And some of them are quite eminent doctors, inconveniently.
Yes, I believe the current thinking amongst Covid data wranglers is the below chart for Georgia is a double peaked single wave. Possibly caused by the effect of wind on the surface of the data.
If you are correct then deaths and admissions in France and Spain should be climbing. Goodness knows where they should be in Sweden.
But its tumbleweed. So you are wrong.
Sweden effectively had an informal lockdown. Its GDP figures show that. People stopped going out, worked from home etc. It is also much less densely populated than most other countries, even Stockholm is less dense than say London (which itself has approximately the population of Sweden). It's clearly not a good comparator.
In France the 7-day average number of deaths yesterday was 18. In mid-August it was 12. Of course with such low numbers it's impossible to say whether that's statistical fluff or a real rise of 50%. Spain has gone from 16 to 66 in the same period. The problem is that a lot of low-risk people know high-risk people or (in Wetherspoons for example) even socialise in the same places. While Covid would have picked off a lot of the low-hanging fruit in March, and we are getting better at treating it, there are still a lot of high-risk people about. In addition the costs of long covid need to be thought about, some people may be permanently disabled by it and I have seen reports that this is the case even in younger people, even though they are less likely to actually die. A 30 year old so disabled that they cannot work is a significant eonomic and social cost.
I am reliably told that November is still a likely date for first Ox-AZN vaccines in British arms. Front line workers only. Gradual roll out to other groups thereafter.
The puzzling thing to me is the government’s messaging. It’s all wrong. You might convince even me that the current wave of authoritarianism is ok if you are defining a near term end date with high probability.
Instead they talk about spending £100bn a year on testing as though the crisis is here forever. They speak only vaguely in highly caveated terms about a vaccine. They keep everyone in a state of constant fear about the “second wave”. An emotive and ill defined term that has entered our lexicon so suddenly that almost no one stops to think what it actually means.
The government have to get better at spelling out the temporary nature of this event, that without doubt we’ve already passed through the abyss and the brighter tomorrow is right around the corner.
Boris Johnson might not have died in that hospital room but the optimistic libertarian in him surely did.
Elsewhere on this thread this government is getting correctly panned over Brexit for either not thinking things through past the next couple of months or just lying about the obvious consequences of things shortly down the road.
I'm an optimistic libertarian as well but I don't see the point in spinning a cheerful message about how the end to the virus is just around the corner when nobody has the faintest idea how long it's going to take to get an end to the virus. People need to make plans for what's actually going to happen, and what's actually going to happen won't necessarily be what we want to happen.
It is a credible hypothesis that the virus seems to burn out when a given population hits a certain percentage of deaths per head, perhaps due to T Cell immunity that we are not testing for, and a bulge in excess mortality that will be largely (but far from entirely) smoothed our when looking at the period 2018-2022.
This hypothesis may of course prove to be entirely wrong. And even if it’s correct, it implies perhaps another equivalent dose of fatality as in 2020 (and possibly longcovid) before the UK as a whole gets to NYC levels.
But nevertheless it is not correct to say “no one has the faintest idea” when it will end. Our Prime Minister’s alma mater is sitting on unpublished data that apparently shows its vaccine has at least passable efficacy and is most likely safe enough for a wider roll out. And that the best informed money thinks such a rollout will begin this side of Xmas. Other vaccine approaches are racing through the process as well.
But instead on Cabinet PowerPoint slide #1 all we get is PUBLIC FEAR and on slide #2 VAPOURWARE £££.
It’s utterly bemusing to me.
Madrid had a higher percentage affected in the first wave than many British cities, yet now is in the throes of a second. That they achieved herd immunity in the first is obviously wrong.
Well the answer to that is that Madrid's deaths per capita are still well below those of NYC (depending upon how you record a covid death of course). Which means no, they did not quite get there whereas NYC did. It's not about "cases" because it's clear given how many asymptomatic cases are now being found when we look, that we missed most of them the first time around. Hence the focus on deaths/capita (which will also vary place to place for a variety of reasons.
I am aware that this is but one hypothesis. But there is more than one vaccine coming fast down the track which will soon render the discussion academic anyway.
I was not so optimistic on a quick vaccine earlier this year but seems I was wrong. The Medical Gandalf with his Rohan Cavalry is about to ride over the horizon and smite the army of darkness into the hillside.
Underpromise and overdeliver and all that seems to be the mantra. But for my taste, they've gone a bit far, given how much despair and in some cases clinical mental illness I see developing around my social group in real time due to the government's messaging.
If she was disbarred, would she be forced to resign? The A-G has to be a lawyer?
Lol - doubt that is going to happen.
But yes a non-lawyer cannot be the government’s principal law officer, though with this government who can say?
Our very own @Philip_Thompson could have a go in such a case. He has very strong views on the law without knowing anything about it, which sounds like the perfect combination.
Stop poking the tiger
Yes - making digs against posters not even present suggests an underlying nastiness the site could do without.
Cyclefree was just being mischievous.
It's getting quite common these days though, from a number of people. IMO PB is a better place when we are discussing the issues, not the people commenting on them.
There are plenty who claim that there is zero evidence of a second wave of hospitalisations and deaths anywhere. Zero.
And some of them are quite eminent doctors, inconveniently.
Yes, I believe the current thinking amongst Covid data wranglers is the below chart for Georgia is a double peaked single wave. Possibly caused by the effect of wind on the surface of the data.
If you are correct then deaths and admissions in France and Spain should be climbing. Goodness knows where they should be in Sweden.
But its tumbleweed. So you are wrong.
Me: Show chart of obvious double peak. You: No. Evidence. Of. Second. Wave.
My argument is based on the graphs of Spain, France and Sweden. And I wouldn;t mind betting the UK in a few weeks.
What's your explanation for the flatlining in those graphs?
Spain, France and Sweden all have many more restriction than Georgia and Texas.
Free Sweden has extended its travel ban until the end of October.
Anyway, hasn't France just reported it's most deaths since the middle of June?
Can’t comment on this as don’t know the restrictions in US states, restrictions across Spain are not universal just like the UK with devolved administrations. There are about 35 local lockdowns across the country varying from 4 streets to towns with 100,000 people. Only two have gone back to total stay at home restrictions The rest vary considerably but all leave bars and restaurants open (I think).
Comments
Soft Brexiteers are to blame yes. So are soft and hardcore remainers for electing Corbyn and failing to work together in parliament (again see Corbyn). And of course hard Brexiteers mostly responsible for a crazy implementation, lies and division.
We are all in this together.
I marketed it to my parents as two thirds favourable.
We are now hearing that unless we agree to the EU’s terms, the EU will use an extreme interpretation of the Northern Ireland protocol to impose a full-scale trade border down the Irish sea. We are being told that the EU will not only impose tariffs on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, but that they might actually stop the transport of food products from GB to NI.
I have to say that we never seriously believed that the EU would be willing to use a Treaty, negotiated in good faith, to blockade one part of the UK, to cut it off; or that they would actually threaten to destroy the economic and territorial integrity of the UK. This was for the very good reason that any such barrier, any such tariffs or division would be completely contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Good Friday agreement. By actively undermining the Union of our country, such an interpretation would seriously endanger peace and stability in Northern Ireland. This interpretation cannot have been the real intention of those who framed the protocol (it certainly wasn’t ours) – and it is therefore vital that we close that option down.
Of course whether the EU ever do erect a barrier on a border that accounts for 0.2% of their external trade is open to conjecture.....
But it should be noted that some of the more successful programs (DARPA, for example) spend pretty small amounts of money on particular targeted programs.
Cummings is the last person who should have anything to do with any of it.
Question 4 assumes there are only 2 genders. Bold
I'd forgotten about this - priceless.
https://twitter.com/sonicstout/status/1304474841119154177?s=20
Cases? Up - 10,000 in France
Deaths? flat as a pancake. Flat as a pancake for weeks and weeks.
The authoritarians, of course, need those deaths to go up (and those cases to go down).
Otherwise, the Oxford evidence based medicine people are correct.
https://twitter.com/alexmassie/status/1304696860033126401?s=20
And some of them are quite eminent doctors, inconveniently.
'In an outbreak on a closed Argentinian cruise ship, for example, where passengers were provided with surgical masks and staff with N95 masks, the rate of asymptomatic infection was 81% (as compared with 20% in earlier cruise ship outbreaks without universal masking). In two recent outbreaks in U.S. food-processing plants, where all workers were issued masks each day and were required to wear them, the proportion of asymptomatic infections among the more than 500 people who became infected was 95%, with only 5% in each outbreak experiencing mild-to-moderate symptoms.3 Case-fatality rates in countries with mandatory or enforced population-wide masking have remained low, even with resurgences of cases after lockdowns were lifted.'
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2026913
https://twitter.com/LJ_Skipper/status/1304560689021947904?s=20
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1304707090225803266?s=20
So we may currently be looking at an equivalent situation as we were in early March. Where will we/these countries be in a month under the same time frame?
https://twitter.com/john_lichfield/status/1304706522828734466?s=20
If you agree me that ventilator procurement could have been managed much better, we need to understand the counterfactual. In this case we have just one metric that we relentlessly focus on: the number of ventilators of a required standard that we can roll out each week.
First of all you try and find equipment that is not being used or not at capacity; then you buy off the shelf. These things were done but it's not enough. At this point, it should be clear, I think, that manufacturing capacity was the constraint not a lack of suitable designs. I would do two things: Identify manufacturing capacity, which doesn't have to be in the UK. Go to ventilator manufacturers, which mostly aren't in the UK, and see if they are willing or able to license their designs. Don't waste time with a design competition.
Would we still have ended up with Penlon and a barely suitable ventilator? Maybe yes. Would we have been able to deliver ventilators more quickly (the metric we are using)? Not necessarily. But we would have created the conditions in which a more useful outcome was possible.
What is does not show is the numbers who did not get the virus at all.
What a flimsy "justification" for breaking a treaty. The only places claiming these things are Brexiteer press, probably briefed by Cummings.
In the extremely unlikely event that the EU is blockading NI, we could repudiate the treaty. There is absolutely no need to do so (or even worse try and rewrite it unilaterally but expect it to stay in place) until then on the basis of "we are hearing" "we are being told" or "they might".
But its tumbleweed. So you are wrong.
But whilst the UK are interpreting/presenting this as a negotiating "threat", in reality it should be a formality - subject to the UK actually providing the relevant details/assurances. Not least because of the impact on the food security of the Republic of Ireland. It is concerning to say the least that they haven't yet done that. And devastating for UK food exporters who may not be fully aware of this. It might not be a case of "onerous bureaucracy" on 1st January. It might be a case of no exporting at all.
Not implausible.
In truth, the problem is more personal and at its core is the PM."
Had it not been for Brexit then I think Johnson would have governed Britain as he governed London - not particularly well, but not particularly badly. It's the ideological fixation on Brexit that has allowed the trampling of so many democratic norms.
But why the ideological fixation? Brexit didn't find a ready audience by accident, or solely on its merits. It's in large part because the steady, conservative, post-Thatcherite consensus of 1990-2016 did not deliver for large numbers of people and a scapegoat for the Great Financial Crash was required.
Until those sections of the political class not deranged by Brexit can find policies and narratives that will deliver, and be seen to deliver, the economic justice that is lacking, there will be no escape from the downward spiral.
It is not enough to harken back to a time Before Boris - what is happening now is, in part, a legacy of the failings of those that led before: May, Cameron, Brown, Blair, etc. This failure too needs to be reckoned with.
As a natural conservationist I often support heritage but never understood the passion for keeping ruthless killing machines
You: No. Evidence. Of. Second. Wave.
Collectively as a country our politicians of all flavours have ballsed this up, and collectively we vote for them.
https://twitter.com/kieran_walshe/status/1304709371956473856
New York, still has heavy Covid restrictions. No second wave.
Arizona, Texas, Georgia - rapid lifting of locking down. Massive and obvious second waves.
But yes a non-lawyer cannot be the government’s principal law officer, though with this government who can say?
Our very own @Philip_Thompson could have a go in such a case. He has very strong views on the law without knowing anything about it, which sounds like the perfect combination.
“Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.”
What's your explanation for the flatlining in those graphs?
The thinking was that the virus has mutated into a milder form, but evidence to support this is lacking. Variolation offers a different explanation.
If masks are "allowing" people to become infected - and become immune - via a lower dose of virus, because the body`s immune system can cope with this better, then may explain the lack of hospitalisations and could be a game-changer in terms of people`s attitudes to wearing masks.
I believe, though some of you will disagree, that people`s fear of the virus has become less rational than before. If we can temper this fear then it will be much easier to get the economy back to a surer footing and get our freedoms back (albeit whilst wearing a mask) until a vaccine emerges.
However let’s go with the hardly outrageous proposition that I am wrong and David Herdson is right. In which case there’s a problem. Which is that No Deal Brexit has no domestic mandate. I don’t mean it doesn’t respect the Referendum result. We voted to leave and it is leaving. It’s leaving good and proper. No issue there.
But the most recent national democratic event was the GE in December 2019. Exactly 8 months ago, that was, and it gave Boris Johnson a thumping “Oh yes please!” to the question he asked the British people, which was – “Do you want to get Brexit done and finished on the basis of my oven ready deal with the EU?”
He knew he could not win an election on a No Deal platform. He knew if he’d asked the question - “Do you want to crash out of the EU onto basic WTO terms and get into a serious wrangle about the Irish border with the EU?” – the answer would have been “Are you kidding? Get a grip.”
So, Ok, having won power by nefarious means – by lying to the EU and to the public - he can now use it to do what he wants, which includes pretending that this abuse of the democratic process did not happen. But if he does it will be a bit off and that’s putting it mildly.
https://twitter.com/NickBoles/status/1304715468473806849
Second wave?
I am not of the "EU is a pony farm" persuasion. They are playing hardball, as I entirely expected them to do, and David Davies and the other Leavers apparently didn't. The EU is weaponising the Single Market just as the Brexiteer government weaponises divergence from the EU. Northern Ireland is the unfortunate collateral in all of this.
The difference between the two parties is that the EU has a much higher sense of responsibility towards Northern Ireland, which is nominally part of the UK, than the UK government does. All of the issues in Johnson's Telegraph article stem from his lack of responsibility towards Northern Ireland.
Free Sweden has extended its travel ban until the end of October.
Anyway, hasn't France just reported it's most deaths since the middle of June?
We need to temper people`s fear - which is often largely based on ignorance. I know this from the people I speak to. They are clueless and just believe the scare-mongering negative stuff they read in the media.
Ideally, though, you’d have had half the passengers not wearing masks.
I am old enough to remember when this sort of thing used to be considered a bad thing by Conservatives.
2. People who are working at a workplace are far more likely to visit restaurants so you would expect more transmission amongst that group even if restaurants caused zero spread.
3. Clearly restaurants will cause some additional spread, everyone knows that and did when the policy was introduced and when people chose to go to restaurants.
Risk is not absolute, eat out to help out was a good scheme.
The most worrying thing was that he was a lawyer who had set up and sold a large legal practice (which has since been closed down in the 8 months since he sold it for being dodgy).
The only mandate is for Boris Johnson's Withdrawal Agreement. The one he is now ripping up. So when we get into a Commons vs Lords battle the Lords will be able to put the Parliament Acts and conventions into reverse - it is they who are acting to defend the democratic mandate of a government trying to reverse it.
I feel that there's way too much certainty expressed in the world, perhaps because the news cycle amplifies people expressing certainty over judicious uncertainty. I also notice how the fad for big data encourages the idea that solutions to complex problems can be found by analysis. We should be more realistic about how little we see the foggy landscape through which we are blundering, and what cannot be determined -- soon or ever.
--AS
In France the 7-day average number of deaths yesterday was 18. In mid-August it was 12. Of course with such low numbers it's impossible to say whether that's statistical fluff or a real rise of 50%. Spain has gone from 16 to 66 in the same period. The problem is that a lot of low-risk people know high-risk people or (in Wetherspoons for example) even socialise in the same places. While Covid would have picked off a lot of the low-hanging fruit in March, and we are getting better at treating it, there are still a lot of high-risk people about. In addition the costs of long covid need to be thought about, some people may be permanently disabled by it and I have seen reports that this is the case even in younger people, even though they are less likely to actually die. A 30 year old so disabled that they cannot work is a significant eonomic and social cost.
Worldwide stats are here if you prefer raw data rather than pretty pictures https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/download-todays-data-geographic-distribution-covid-19-cases-worldwide
I am aware that this is but one hypothesis. But there is more than one vaccine coming fast down the track which will soon render the discussion academic anyway.
I was not so optimistic on a quick vaccine earlier this year but seems I was wrong. The Medical Gandalf with his Rohan Cavalry is about to ride over the horizon and smite the army of darkness into the hillside.
Underpromise and overdeliver and all that seems to be the mantra. But for my taste, they've gone a bit far, given how much despair and in some cases clinical mental illness I see developing around my social group in real time due to the government's messaging.
https://twitter.com/thehowie/status/1304123045708091393?s=09