According to the government website daily testing processed is now at 227,465. This is admittedly significantly below the theoretical capacity of 374k and there are clearly logjams in the system, particularly at the labs, but I am very doubtful about these claims unless they are backed up by a similar level of data.
Last time I checked pillar 1 and 2 testing had a capacity of just over 200,000.
The total theoretical capacity includes the capacity for antibody tests which of course aren't counted in pillar 1 or 2 test figures.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
David our testing regime may be better than some others but it’s still sh*te. If you’ve tried to use it in the last week you’d know.
Its under stress. My only experience is the test that my wife got before her operation 3 weeks ago. She got phoned on the Thursday, tested on the Friday in Dundee and operated on on the Monday having got the all clear. I fully accept that not everyone's experience will have been as efficient. My wife told me that the testing centre was clearly operating well below capacity. Don't know why.
I have been thinking about the polling a little more and what intrigues me most is not continuing Red Wall support for the Tories, which I would expect given that once you have convinced yourself to make the leap you are not going to change your mind without very good reason, but the ongoing backing the party gets from a portion of Remainers. I am genuinely interested in knowing what is keeping them onside right now. Surely, it is more than tribalism.
Back in the day voting Conservative used to be seen as a mark of personal success by certain types of people. It was a theme running through the Margot Leadbeater character in The Good Life, she was posh so she voted Conservative and voting Conservative confirmed she was posh. Not voting Conservative might be seen in these circles as an admission of failure.
The reality these days however is that the Conservative Party under McMillan or Heath shares very little with Johnson's party except for the name.
I think it is interesting that people like Richard Nabavi, David Herdson and TSE - who were very loyal, ideologically-driven Tories that accepted the Brexit result and were convinced that it had to be honoured - have walked away from the party under Johnson, but that they do not seem to represent a movement, as such. It's notable that so many very talented individual Tories have deserted the party, but that this has not had much of an impact on its overall vote. That said, these are early days in this Parliament and the consequences of the undeliverable Brexit that Johnson and co have promised are yet to be felt, so maybe the old-style PB Tories are just the vanguard who have spent more time thinking about it than others have up to now.
Let's hope so.
I was disturbed by your assertion last evening that Johnson will at some point in the future call a referendum to restore capital punishment, in order to bolster his flagging popularity. I may be naive, but I am hoping this is a step too far even for Johnson.
I think it would take a serious war, for the restoration of capital punishment to become a reality. In a WWII situation, no one would object to the execution of traitors or war criminals.
According to the government website daily testing processed is now at 227,465. This is admittedly significantly below the theoretical capacity of 374k and there are clearly logjams in the system, particularly at the labs, but I am very doubtful about these claims unless they are backed up by a similar level of data.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
Not bought your copy of the Times this morning?
Not yet, no. Heading to Tescos shortly and will get it then. But local failings do not change the overall picture which is that our testing regime is now amongst the best in the world, even if we want it to be better still (particularly faster).
What a ridiculous statement to make on the available evidence.
The available evidence is that our testing system is one of the best in the world and that we would like it to be better. More than one thing can be true.
I presume your last sentence is a joke - after a lag of several weeks deaths are well up in Spain as the infections have speread beyond the young in fected first.
I presume your last sentence is a joke - after a lag of several weeks deaths are well up in Spain as the infections have speread beyond the young in fected first.
48 people died of coronavirus in Spain yesterday.
There were more than 12,000 cases.
Cases have been running at 3000 or more for a month now.....
Is the bet based on the ECs implied by how each state/district votes, or on how ECs are actually awarded? If the latter then a 269-269 result seems highly unlikely. In 2016 there were 7 faithless electors.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
200k effective tests a day would be great - but for a disease where the infectious period is on average 5 days it is pointless giving results 48 hours after a test, there is no value including those, we are just deceiving ourselves.
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Book a test Day 3 - Take Test Day 6 - Receive test result Day 6 - Also stop being infectious
A post on here said only 25% of tests were being turned around in 24 hours, I dont know how accurate or reflective that is, but based on that I would be counting effective tests as those done in 24 hours or less, so 25% x 200k = 50k at the moment.
In reality it is thus:
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 3 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 4 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 5 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 6 - Start to feel better, “oh it’s probably not COVID” Day 7 - Infect others
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
Not bought your copy of the Times this morning?
Not yet, no. Heading to Tescos shortly and will get it then. But local failings do not change the overall picture which is that our testing regime is now amongst the best in the world, even if we want it to be better still (particularly faster).
David, the Government appears to have prioritised ramping up capacity without making any (coherent) attempt to limit or match it to demand. Even if you believe the claimed figures on capacity, which today's leaks are suggesting are extremely misleading, it is worthless if demand/testing strategy is not aligned to match it. If capacity is 200,000 but demand is 300,000 then the system will collapse. Even worse the actual tests carried out will not be used as efficiently as possible (or even close). Outside of the purely precautionary tests unlinked to suspicions that the subject may actually be a carrier we need to be finding far greater numbers of positive results if the system is to function efficiently.
There are many countries testing at much lower levels than the UK. But they are not routinely experiencing the same problems because they are better targeting their tests where they are most useful to inform national strategy and protect the population.
While the polls show a 14% lead for the death penalty on the straight question, on the question "If you could choose between the following two approaches, which do you think is the better penalty for murder -- [ROTATED: the death penalty (or) life imprisonment, with absolutely no possibility of parole]?", the death penalty loses by 24 points (although 6 years ago it won by 5 points).
However they could make it more likely to pass by restricting it to murders of police officers and children.
I don’t know these polls mean too much. It’s an entirely hypothetical question unless we leave the ECHR. It’s not a topic that’s really been at all aired in public life. And most people haven’t thought too hard about. Except that they know what the “wrong” answer to say out loud is.
Personally I cannot see there being a vote on this for decades if ever, as it’s not clear what would trigger a mainstream party to call one. As amusing as it is to see people here get worked up imagining it’s in the Boris / Cummings game plan for 2022. I think we’ll hear more about it in the coming years that said.
If there was a vote, I suspect Capital Punishment would win, if it was limited in scope. But whether it would be worth the drama of ever implementing the result I have to doubt. Years to draft and pass the legislation, potentially years before a crime fitting of the punishment. Years of appeals and deathrow. In which time any PM that fancied to could cross out the law.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
Not bought your copy of the Times this morning?
Not yet, no. Heading to Tescos shortly and will get it then. But local failings do not change the overall picture which is that our testing regime is now amongst the best in the world, even if we want it to be better still (particularly faster).
What a ridiculous statement to make on the available evidence.
The available evidence is that our testing system is one of the best in the world and that we would like it to be better. More than one thing can be true.
I bet you, and David, know very little about other country’s testing regimes. Me included.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
200k effective tests a day would be great - but for a disease where the infectious period is on average 5 days it is pointless giving results 48 hours after a test, there is no value including those, we are just deceiving ourselves.
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Book a test Day 3 - Take Test Day 6 - Receive test result Day 6 - Also stop being infectious
A post on here said only 25% of tests were being turned around in 24 hours, I dont know how accurate or reflective that is, but based on that I would be counting effective tests as those done in 24 hours or less, so 25% x 200k = 50k at the moment.
In reality it is thus:
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 3 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 4 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 5 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 6 - Start to feel better, “oh it’s probably not COVID” Day 7 - Infect others
By day 7 most are not infectious, but I take your point. To count as an effective test it should be returned within 48 hours of the first patient request.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
David our testing regime may be better than some others but it’s still sh*te. If you’ve tried to use it in the last week you’d know.
Its under stress. My only experience is the test that my wife got before her operation 3 weeks ago. She got phoned on the Thursday, tested on the Friday in Dundee and operated on on the Monday having got the all clear. I fully accept that not everyone's experience will have been as efficient. My wife told me that the testing centre was clearly operating well below capacity. Don't know why.
Was that done through the hospital though? In my experience testing done through the NHS is fine. However testing done through the Government’s system is not.
Besides how the system copes under the strain of a pandemic is quite literally the measure of how good it is.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
200k effective tests a day would be great - but for a disease where the infectious period is on average 5 days it is pointless giving results 48 hours after a test, there is no value including those, we are just deceiving ourselves.
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Book a test Day 3 - Take Test Day 6 - Receive test result Day 6 - Also stop being infectious
A post on here said only 25% of tests were being turned around in 24 hours, I dont know how accurate or reflective that is, but based on that I would be counting effective tests as those done in 24 hours or less, so 25% x 200k = 50k at the moment.
I absolutely agree that time is of the essence if we are to stop further spread (although people waiting for a test result really ought to be self isolating). I don't agree, however, that the other tests are "wasted". They tell us of the incidence of the disease, allow the identification of hot spots and the need for local lockdowns, give a belated basis for test and trace etc. Also we can still be reasonably confident that those who have had it are immune going forward which is very useful information.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
200k effective tests a day would be great - but for a disease where the infectious period is on average 5 days it is pointless giving results 48 hours after a test, there is no value including those, we are just deceiving ourselves.
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Book a test Day 3 - Take Test Day 6 - Receive test result Day 6 - Also stop being infectious
A post on here said only 25% of tests were being turned around in 24 hours, I dont know how accurate or reflective that is, but based on that I would be counting effective tests as those done in 24 hours or less, so 25% x 200k = 50k at the moment.
To be fair under the guidance you should be self isolating from day 1.
I have been thinking about the polling a little more and what intrigues me most is not continuing Red Wall support for the Tories, which I would expect given that once you have convinced yourself to make the leap you are not going to change your mind without very good reason, but the ongoing backing the party gets from a portion of Remainers. I am genuinely interested in knowing what is keeping them onside right now. Surely, it is more than tribalism.
Back in the day voting Conservative used to be seen as a mark of personal success by certain types of people. It was a theme running through the Margot Leadbeater character in The Good Life, she was posh so she voted Conservative and voting Conservative confirmed she was posh. Not voting Conservative might be seen in these circles as an admission of failure.
The reality these days however is that the Conservative Party under McMillan or Heath shares very little with Johnson's party except for the name.
True enough, but then the party of Macmillan and Heath had little in common with the party of Salisbury and Balfour. The agenda moves on.
A section of upper middle class former Conservatives turned very hostile to the party under Thatcher, resulting in the loss of historic Conservative seats, even as gaining working class voters turned other seats blue.
Whereas I don't disagree with your assertion that agendas move on. The Labour Party of Blair retained the notion of social justice. For its embrace of market economics it retained the ideals of the Fabians. Some may argue that was a failing.
Johnson seems to have jettisoned anything to do with one nation conservatism. The notion of the pastoral feudal Tory has been hurled from the party. Mrs Thatcher couldn't abide the 'wets' but she allowed them to stay within her broad church.
On economics Boris is more one nation than Thatcher, hence the Tories now represent a lot of northern and midlands seats even Thatcher never won, from Stoke to Grimsby to West Bromwich and Sedgefield. He is only not one nation if you define being one nation as being pro EU, which is why strong Remain seats Thatcher won like Richmond Park, Oxford West and Abingdon, Bath, Kingston Upon Thames and St Albans now have LD MPs.
Surely a big part of being One Nation, is not dividing the country up into rival camps and making decisions on narrow short term electoral advantage in favour of a particular group, but you know, governing, for the whole "One Nation"?
:HYUFD seems to be using "One Nation" as a synonym for left wing. Hence "not as one nation as Corbyn because he hasn't nationalised anything".
Not as a strand of Conservatism going make centuries.
One Nation was originally coined for the pro Empire Tory party by Disraeli that was protectionist in contrast to the free market Gladstone but also believed in improving working conditions in factories for the working classes and getting more people going to school.
It is not as leftwing as socialism no but not pure free market liberalism either.
Indeed it is often argued Thatcher was more a free market liberal in the Gladstone mould than a traditional Tory, Boris is more in touch with Disraeli style old school Toryism than Thatcher ever was
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
David our testing regime may be better than some others but it’s still sh*te. If you’ve tried to use it in the last week you’d know.
Its under stress. My only experience is the test that my wife got before her operation 3 weeks ago. She got phoned on the Thursday, tested on the Friday in Dundee and operated on on the Monday having got the all clear. I fully accept that not everyone's experience will have been as efficient. My wife told me that the testing centre was clearly operating well below capacity. Don't know why.
Last Monday, on the first day back at school, my youngest grandson developed a cough and was sent home. No other symptoms. His older brother, in the same school, was called out of his form and sent home also. He had no symptoms at all. My daughter could not book a test for them anywhere. She received a home testing kit on Thursday and returned it straight away. She is waiting for the result. They have already lost a week schooling. She has no idea when she'll get the result of the home tests.
I presume your last sentence is a joke - after a lag of several weeks deaths are well up in Spain as the infections have speread beyond the young in fected first.
48 people died of coronavirus in Spain yesterday.
There were more than 12,000 cases.
Cases have been running at 3000 or more for a month now.....
So......
In July weekly deaths in Spain had fallen below 10, in August that rose to around 50/60, so far in September we are typically 240 to 250. Hospitalisations and death rates do lag below infections but the trend is clear and concerning. Once it hits the care homes many still do die.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
David our testing regime may be better than some others but it’s still sh*te. If you’ve tried to use it in the last week you’d know.
Its under stress. My only experience is the test that my wife got before her operation 3 weeks ago. She got phoned on the Thursday, tested on the Friday in Dundee and operated on on the Monday having got the all clear. I fully accept that not everyone's experience will have been as efficient. My wife told me that the testing centre was clearly operating well below capacity. Don't know why.
Was that done through the hospital though? In my experience testing done through the NHS is fine. However testing done through the Government’s system is not.
Besides how the system copes under the strain of a pandemic is quite literally the measure of how good it is.
No she was directed to a local drive through testing centre as anyone phoning up for a test would have been. But inevitably the experience of this is going to be granular (your own experience about trying to get a test was awful) and there will be points where the local area will be beyond capacity. That is inevitable, all we can do is seek to mitigate it as much as possible.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
200k effective tests a day would be great - but for a disease where the infectious period is on average 5 days it is pointless giving results 48 hours after a test, there is no value including those, we are just deceiving ourselves.
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Book a test Day 3 - Take Test Day 6 - Receive test result Day 6 - Also stop being infectious
A post on here said only 25% of tests were being turned around in 24 hours, I dont know how accurate or reflective that is, but based on that I would be counting effective tests as those done in 24 hours or less, so 25% x 200k = 50k at the moment.
To be fair under the guidance you should be self isolating from day 1.
But we know that many people who have no savings or access to credit will continue working in such a scenario, regardless of "should".
I have been thinking about the polling a little more and what intrigues me most is not continuing Red Wall support for the Tories, which I would expect given that once you have convinced yourself to make the leap you are not going to change your mind without very good reason, but the ongoing backing the party gets from a portion of Remainers. I am genuinely interested in knowing what is keeping them onside right now. Surely, it is more than tribalism.
Back in the day voting Conservative used to be seen as a mark of personal success by certain types of people. It was a theme running through the Margot Leadbeater character in The Good Life, she was posh so she voted Conservative and voting Conservative confirmed she was posh. Not voting Conservative might be seen in these circles as an admission of failure.
The reality these days however is that the Conservative Party under McMillan or Heath shares very little with Johnson's party except for the name.
I think it is interesting that people like Richard Nabavi, David Herdson and TSE - who were very loyal, ideologically-driven Tories that accepted the Brexit result and were convinced that it had to be honoured - have walked away from the party under Johnson, but that they do not seem to represent a movement, as such. It's notable that so many very talented individual Tories have deserted the party, but that this has not had much of an impact on its overall vote. That said, these are early days in this Parliament and the consequences of the undeliverable Brexit that Johnson and co have promised are yet to be felt, so maybe the old-style PB Tories are just the vanguard who have spent more time thinking about it than others have up to now.
Let's hope so.
I was disturbed by your assertion last evening that Johnson will at some point in the future call a referendum to restore capital punishment, in order to bolster his flagging popularity. I may be naive, but I am hoping this is a step too far even for Johnson.
I think it would take a serious war, for the restoration of capital punishment to become a reality. In a WWII situation, no one would object to the execution of traitors or war criminals.
So, next year then, if HYUFD has any insight?
I'm sure he's already drawn up a little list, with N***** S******* at the top of it.
Could explain why we're seeing a huge rise in cases but not a very big rise in hospitalisations. If it's true then the government should have tougher mask rules and more scenarios where they should be worn.
Or that the disease is not that serious enough to warrant extreme measures like mask wearing in the first place
Or you could actually read the article and see why wearing one is a good thing and may lead to a faster end of the crisis and herd immunity without as many fatalities.
The article is paywalled in the Telegraph, but the case is made in this open access piece in the NEJM, Americas leading medical journal.
You could just as easily argue that cases have increased during the enforced mask wearing period (which they have) and reach a conclusion they are at best ineffective and at worst contributing to it
The obvious answer is that we’re detecting a far higher proportion of cases compared with April. It’s funny to read the mask fascists moving from “wear a mask to protect others” to “wear a mask to catch COVID a little bit”. As you say, the original line means that you shouldn’t be catching it in an environment where everyone is wearing a mask.
Nobody has ever said that masks prevent all transmission, which is partially why the WHO didn't recommend them from the start.
Perhaps not, but that Telegraph article is talking about masks helping the wearer.
And another thing. The evidence is that the virus is spreading in household settings, where people are not wearing masks.
I wonder if it`s possible that if one receives a low dose of the virus (perhaps via a mask) and then passes it on to someone whilst not wearing a mask (i.e. in the home) then does that person also receives a low dose?
This may be shite - just asking.
So, how does the mask become a source of the virus? Presumably it has to stop you breathing the virus in, so it saved you then. The virus I believe lasts longest on hard surfaces and would die quicker on cloth. So you'd have to be really unlucky to get the virus from a mask and would have got it worse or sooner without one.
What? The hypothesis is that it is an imperfect filter, so it doesn't stop you breathing the virus in, it stops you breathing say 90% of the virus in. "Via" does not mean "from."
If the mask lets 10% through it's not a great mask is it.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
200k effective tests a day would be great - but for a disease where the infectious period is on average 5 days it is pointless giving results 48 hours after a test, there is no value including those, we are just deceiving ourselves.
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Book a test Day 3 - Take Test Day 6 - Receive test result Day 6 - Also stop being infectious
A post on here said only 25% of tests were being turned around in 24 hours, I dont know how accurate or reflective that is, but based on that I would be counting effective tests as those done in 24 hours or less, so 25% x 200k = 50k at the moment.
In reality it is thus:
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell Day 2 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 3 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 4 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 5 - Try to book a test, are unable Day 6 - Start to feel better, “oh it’s probably not COVID” Day 7 - Infect others
By day 7 most are not infectious, but I take your point. To count as an effective test it should be returned within 48 hours of the first patient request.
In reality its:
Day 1: Friend you’ve seen lately has COVID symptoms. I should probably isolate too and take a test. Day 2: Neither party can get a test. Day 3: Neither party can get a test. Day 4: F*ck it, its probably not COVID, I’ll carry on with my life.
If there was a vote, I suspect Capital Punishment would win, if it was limited in scope. But whether it would be worth the drama of ever implementing the result I have to doubt. Years to draft and pass the legislation, potentially years before a crime fitting of the punishment. Years of appeals and deathrow. In which time any PM that fancied to could cross out the law.
I agree that hypothetical polls don't mean much. I'm not so sure your last point is right though. Once you have a direct mandate in a referendum, it is incredibly difficult for any PM to do the opposite. See what happened to the Lib Dems last December.
I presume your last sentence is a joke - after a lag of several weeks deaths are well up in Spain as the infections have speread beyond the young in fected first.
48 people died of coronavirus in Spain yesterday.
There were more than 12,000 cases.
Cases have been running at 3000 or more for a month now.....
So......
There weren't 12,000 cases. You are confusing with their simultaneously reported antibody testing. But the general issue is that testing now is up by a factor of 10 or more since the height of the pandemic. So comparisons with the height of the outbreak are tricky. The raw case numbers imply we're at a similar place in the curve to the worst period - hence the question "why now no deaths?" - but what if we're just at the foothills again? The situation on hospitalisations and deaths might look very different in 2-3 weeks.
Although hopefully we have learned a lot of lessons and treatment will be better.
And there aren't significant numbers of elderly patients in hospitals to decamp to Care homes.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
David our testing regime may be better than some others but it’s still sh*te. If you’ve tried to use it in the last week you’d know.
Its under stress. My only experience is the test that my wife got before her operation 3 weeks ago. She got phoned on the Thursday, tested on the Friday in Dundee and operated on on the Monday having got the all clear. I fully accept that not everyone's experience will have been as efficient. My wife told me that the testing centre was clearly operating well below capacity. Don't know why.
Was that done through the hospital though? In my experience testing done through the NHS is fine. However testing done through the Government’s system is not.
Besides how the system copes under the strain of a pandemic is quite literally the measure of how good it is.
No she was directed to a local drive through testing centre as anyone phoning up for a test would have been. But inevitably the experience of this is going to be granular (your own experience about trying to get a test was awful) and there will be points where the local area will be beyond capacity. That is inevitable, all we can do is seek to mitigate it as much as possible.
It’s not just my local area though. Its the same in Greater Manchester too. Huge population centres.
So I take it that the shish-kebabing of ministers on the Sundays was over breaking the law (breaking the law) as opposed to the new Rule of Six law. Which miraculously comes into effect at Midnight despite its provisions not being published in detail or legislation being enacted?
Will people be breaking the law (breaking the law) if they infringe the rule of six provisions not published or legislated at 00:01 hours on Monday? Because Shagger said we would get fined if we did...
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
Not bought your copy of the Times this morning?
Not yet, no. Heading to Tescos shortly and will get it then. But local failings do not change the overall picture which is that our testing regime is now amongst the best in the world, even if we want it to be better still (particularly faster).
What a ridiculous statement to make on the available evidence.
The available evidence is that our testing system is one of the best in the world and that we would like it to be better. More than one thing can be true.
I bet you, and David, know very little about other country’s testing regimes. Me included.
That's fair, my comments are based on the very crude tests per million on the Worldometer site. I have no idea how quick other countries are other than anecdata which points in every direction. What we do know is that we have moved rapidly from a country that was carrying out much less than typical testing in western Europe to the highest level of testing on the continent.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
I presume your last sentence is a joke - after a lag of several weeks deaths are well up in Spain as the infections have speread beyond the young in fected first.
48 people died of coronavirus in Spain yesterday.
There were more than 12,000 cases.
Cases have been running at 3000 or more for a month now.....
So......
There weren't 12,000 cases. You are confusing with their simultaneously reported antibody testing. But the general issue is that testing now is up by a factor of 10 or more since the height of the pandemic. So comparisons with the height of the outbreak are tricky. The raw case numbers imply we're at a similar place in the curve to the worst period - hence the question "why now no deaths?" - but what if we're just at the foothills again? The situation on hospitalisations and deaths might look very different in 2-3 weeks.
Although hopefully we have learned a lot of lessons and treatment will be better.
And there aren't significant numbers of elderly patients in hospitals to decamp to Care homes.
Surely the way to handle this is to ring fence the elderly and vulnerable much more smartly and let everyone else get back to their lives....
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
Just catching up on earlier discussion, and I think the WHO view on mask-wearing has been misrepresented. What the WHO actually said back in March is that mask-wearing is not important unless there is evidence of widespread community transmission, in which case it would be recommended. I can't be bothered to find the reference, but this was posted back in March. So the WHO has not changed its mind.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
As a pro-EU, Scottish, Unionist Conservative which way would you vote in any forthcoming SIndyref2 bearing in mind the route Johnson is taking the UK down?
As a supporter of the Union, English by birth,but living in Wales, in the unlikely event of a Welsh independence referendum, despite Wales being an economic desert, if it meant returning to the EU I would give it a whirl.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
Not bought your copy of the Times this morning?
Not yet, no. Heading to Tescos shortly and will get it then. But local failings do not change the overall picture which is that our testing regime is now amongst the best in the world, even if we want it to be better still (particularly faster).
What a ridiculous statement to make on the available evidence.
The available evidence is that our testing system is one of the best in the world and that we would like it to be better. More than one thing can be true.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
Have the govt said they are breaking the law or rejecting the rule of law, I have only heard the former (and in a limited and specific way of course).
They are wrong to do so but they havent said they reject the rule of law afaik.
Could explain why we're seeing a huge rise in cases but not a very big rise in hospitalisations. If it's true then the government should have tougher mask rules and more scenarios where they should be worn.
Or that the disease is not that serious enough to warrant extreme measures like mask wearing in the first place
Or you could actually read the article and see why wearing one is a good thing and may lead to a faster end of the crisis and herd immunity without as many fatalities.
The article is paywalled in the Telegraph, but the case is made in this open access piece in the NEJM, Americas leading medical journal.
You could just as easily argue that cases have increased during the enforced mask wearing period (which they have) and reach a conclusion they are at best ineffective and at worst contributing to it
The obvious answer is that we’re detecting a far higher proportion of cases compared with April. It’s funny to read the mask fascists moving from “wear a mask to protect others” to “wear a mask to catch COVID a little bit”. As you say, the original line means that you shouldn’t be catching it in an environment where everyone is wearing a mask.
Nobody has ever said that masks prevent all transmission, which is partially why the WHO didn't recommend them from the start.
Perhaps not, but that Telegraph article is talking about masks helping the wearer.
And another thing. The evidence is that the virus is spreading in household settings, where people are not wearing masks.
I wonder if it`s possible that if one receives a low dose of the virus (perhaps via a mask) and then passes it on to someone whilst not wearing a mask (i.e. in the home) then does that person also receives a low dose?
This may be shite - just asking.
So, how does the mask become a source of the virus? Presumably it has to stop you breathing the virus in, so it saved you then. The virus I believe lasts longest on hard surfaces and would die quicker on cloth. So you'd have to be really unlucky to get the virus from a mask and would have got it worse or sooner without one.
What? The hypothesis is that it is an imperfect filter, so it doesn't stop you breathing the virus in, it stops you breathing say 90% of the virus in. "Via" does not mean "from."
If the mask lets 10% through it's not a great mask is it.
Yes it is. That's the difference between the cloth masks we are being asked to wear and the surgical masks that are required for medical professionals.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If there was a vote, I suspect Capital Punishment would win, if it was limited in scope. But whether it would be worth the drama of ever implementing the result I have to doubt. Years to draft and pass the legislation, potentially years before a crime fitting of the punishment. Years of appeals and deathrow. In which time any PM that fancied to could cross out the law.
I agree that hypothetical polls don't mean much. I'm not so sure your last point is right though. Once you have a direct mandate in a referendum, it is incredibly difficult for any PM to do the opposite. See what happened to the Lib Dems last December.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
But this is much closer to welshing on a deal than breaking the criminal law. The former is always despicable, the latter - it all depends on the circs.
I presume your last sentence is a joke - after a lag of several weeks deaths are well up in Spain as the infections have speread beyond the young in fected first.
48 people died of coronavirus in Spain yesterday.
There were more than 12,000 cases.
Cases have been running at 3000 or more for a month now.....
So......
There weren't 12,000 cases. You are confusing with their simultaneously reported antibody testing. But the general issue is that testing now is up by a factor of 10 or more since the height of the pandemic. So comparisons with the height of the outbreak are tricky. The raw case numbers imply we're at a similar place in the curve to the worst period - hence the question "why now no deaths?" - but what if we're just at the foothills again? The situation on hospitalisations and deaths might look very different in 2-3 weeks.
Although hopefully we have learned a lot of lessons and treatment will be better.
And there aren't significant numbers of elderly patients in hospitals to decamp to Care homes.
Surely the way to handle this is to ring fence the elderly and vulnerable much more smartly and let everyone else get back to their lives....
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
David our testing regime may be better than some others but it’s still sh*te. If you’ve tried to use it in the last week you’d know.
Its under stress. My only experience is the test that my wife got before her operation 3 weeks ago. She got phoned on the Thursday, tested on the Friday in Dundee and operated on on the Monday having got the all clear. I fully accept that not everyone's experience will have been as efficient. My wife told me that the testing centre was clearly operating well below capacity. Don't know why.
Last Monday, on the first day back at school, my youngest grandson developed a cough and was sent home. No other symptoms. His older brother, in the same school, was called out of his form and sent home also. He had no symptoms at all. My daughter could not book a test for them anywhere. She received a home testing kit on Thursday and returned it straight away. She is waiting for the result. They have already lost a week schooling. She has no idea when she'll get the result of the home tests.
This is why the government is so keen on their "moonshot" idea. A test that you get the result of in 20 minutes would have had both of your grandchildren back in class for the next period (or isolated if the test was +ve). It would be transformative, if it works.
I presume your last sentence is a joke - after a lag of several weeks deaths are well up in Spain as the infections have speread beyond the young in fected first.
48 people died of coronavirus in Spain yesterday.
There were more than 12,000 cases.
Cases have been running at 3000 or more for a month now.....
So......
There weren't 12,000 cases. You are confusing with their simultaneously reported antibody testing. But the general issue is that testing now is up by a factor of 10 or more since the height of the pandemic. So comparisons with the height of the outbreak are tricky. The raw case numbers imply we're at a similar place in the curve to the worst period - hence the question "why now no deaths?" - but what if we're just at the foothills again? The situation on hospitalisations and deaths might look very different in 2-3 weeks.
Although hopefully we have learned a lot of lessons and treatment will be better.
And there aren't significant numbers of elderly patients in hospitals to decamp to Care homes.
Surely the way to handle this is to ring fence the elderly and vulnerable much more smartly and let everyone else get back to their lives....
As Prof Carl Heneghan suggests in the Spectator.
Well doh! The trouble is that is something which virtually every country so far is significantly failing to do for the simple reason is that it is extremely difficult. There is no getting back to normal for any of us until a vaccine/treatment solution is in place.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
Indeed.
The Liberal government in Canada deliberately chose to break international law in legalising cannabis. They decided to do that in full knowledge they were breaking past treaties knowing both that they couldn't get all parties signed up to the treaties to agree to change them and that they thought they were doing the wrong thing.
Funny how when that happened the talk was by and large whether it was sensible to legalise cannabis or not ... And not the fact that in doing so Canada was throwing away the rule of law.
As a pro-EU, Scottish, Unionist Conservative which way would you vote in any forthcoming SIndyref2 bearing in mind the route Johnson is taking the UK down?
As a supporter of the Union, English by birth,but living in Wales, in the unlikely event of a Welsh independence referendum, despite Wales being an economic desert, if it meant returning to the EU I would give it a whirl.
Given that Brexit and all of the resulting damage is the result of voting for and with the petty Nationalists, I am not of the view that voting for a different set of petty Nationalists in deeper smaller hole is a solution.
I think the result of SundyRef2 depends very much on the timing.
If it happens in the next year or so I expect the Zoomers to prevail
If BoZo has been ousted, because Brexit is shit, or everything else Cummings has touched is shit, then a resurgent Labour Party with a different Scottish leader could in theory beat them.
I presume your last sentence is a joke - after a lag of several weeks deaths are well up in Spain as the infections have speread beyond the young in fected first.
48 people died of coronavirus in Spain yesterday.
There were more than 12,000 cases.
Cases have been running at 3000 or more for a month now.....
So......
There weren't 12,000 cases. You are confusing with their simultaneously reported antibody testing. But the general issue is that testing now is up by a factor of 10 or more since the height of the pandemic. So comparisons with the height of the outbreak are tricky. The raw case numbers imply we're at a similar place in the curve to the worst period - hence the question "why now no deaths?" - but what if we're just at the foothills again? The situation on hospitalisations and deaths might look very different in 2-3 weeks.
Although hopefully we have learned a lot of lessons and treatment will be better.
And there aren't significant numbers of elderly patients in hospitals to decamp to Care homes.
Surely the way to handle this is to ring fence the elderly and vulnerable much more smartly and let everyone else get back to their lives....
As Prof Carl Heneghan suggests in the Spectator.
What material for the fences?
And they really going to be locked away from society and family until they die of misery? It's not the answer.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Nope, in a democracy the rule of law exists independent of the government. Governments dictate the rule of law in dictatorships. In democracies, the courts are the ultimate arbiters.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
Have the govt said they are breaking the law or rejecting the rule of law, I have only heard the former (and in a limited and specific way of course).
They are wrong to do so but they havent said they reject the rule of law afaik.
The Lord Chancellor has said that he will resign if the rul eof law is broken in a way that he finds unacceptable. The clear implicaiotn of that is that he believes there are acceptable ways to break the rule of law.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Surely this is evidence of how important it is for Germany's trade relationship with the UK to get back to "normal" as soon as possible. Losing £70bn of exports in a year? That's gotta hurt. Tens of thousands of jobs. Minimum.
Could explain why we're seeing a huge rise in cases but not a very big rise in hospitalisations. If it's true then the government should have tougher mask rules and more scenarios where they should be worn.
Or that the disease is not that serious enough to warrant extreme measures like mask wearing in the first place
Or you could actually read the article and see why wearing one is a good thing and may lead to a faster end of the crisis and herd immunity without as many fatalities.
The article is paywalled in the Telegraph, but the case is made in this open access piece in the NEJM, Americas leading medical journal.
You could just as easily argue that cases have increased during the enforced mask wearing period (which they have) and reach a conclusion they are at best ineffective and at worst contributing to it
The obvious answer is that we’re detecting a far higher proportion of cases compared with April. It’s funny to read the mask fascists moving from “wear a mask to protect others” to “wear a mask to catch COVID a little bit”. As you say, the original line means that you shouldn’t be catching it in an environment where everyone is wearing a mask.
Nobody has ever said that masks prevent all transmission, which is partially why the WHO didn't recommend them from the start.
Perhaps not, but that Telegraph article is talking about masks helping the wearer.
And another thing. The evidence is that the virus is spreading in household settings, where people are not wearing masks.
I wonder if it`s possible that if one receives a low dose of the virus (perhaps via a mask) and then passes it on to someone whilst not wearing a mask (i.e. in the home) then does that person also receives a low dose?
This may be shite - just asking.
So, how does the mask become a source of the virus? Presumably it has to stop you breathing the virus in, so it saved you then. The virus I believe lasts longest on hard surfaces and would die quicker on cloth. So you'd have to be really unlucky to get the virus from a mask and would have got it worse or sooner without one.
What? The hypothesis is that it is an imperfect filter, so it doesn't stop you breathing the virus in, it stops you breathing say 90% of the virus in. "Via" does not mean "from."
If the mask lets 10% through it's not a great mask is it.
Holy fuck.
Does that not depend on quantitative questions about the differential danger of 10% of the thing and 100% of the thing we are masking against, and the cost/benefit of closing the remaining 10% gap, given the law of diminishing returns and the desirability of the mask being permeable to stuff like air? Do you realise that the 95 in N95 (the Rolls Royce, state of the art, front line only gold standard mask) means 95%, for how many particles it is guaranteed to block? Why not write to the BMJ|pointing out that it's not a great mask? And we should all wrap our heads in tesco shopping bags.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
David our testing regime may be better than some others but it’s still sh*te. If you’ve tried to use it in the last week you’d know.
Its under stress. My only experience is the test that my wife got before her operation 3 weeks ago. She got phoned on the Thursday, tested on the Friday in Dundee and operated on on the Monday having got the all clear. I fully accept that not everyone's experience will have been as efficient. My wife told me that the testing centre was clearly operating well below capacity. Don't know why.
Last Monday, on the first day back at school, my youngest grandson developed a cough and was sent home. No other symptoms. His older brother, in the same school, was called out of his form and sent home also. He had no symptoms at all. My daughter could not book a test for them anywhere. She received a home testing kit on Thursday and returned it straight away. She is waiting for the result. They have already lost a week schooling. She has no idea when she'll get the result of the home tests.
This is why the government is so keen on their "moonshot" idea. A test that you get the result of in 20 minutes would have had both of your grandchildren back in class for the next period (or isolated if the test was +ve). It would be transformative, if it works.
I was under the impression that "moonshot" meant a "hit and hope" idea. Is that what we are reduced to now?
Surely this is evidence of how important it is for Germany's trade relationship with the UK to get back to "normal" as soon as possible. Losing £70bn of exports in a year? That's gotta hurt. Tens of thousands of jobs. Minimum.
We’ll see if that translates into Merkel “instructing” the EU to capitulate to our every demand.
Surely this is evidence of how important it is for Germany's trade relationship with the UK to get back to "normal" as soon as possible. Losing £70bn of exports in a year? That's gotta hurt. Tens of thousands of jobs. Minimum.
The numbers are affected by COVID 19. One effect of the worldwide recession induced by the illness has been a massive improvement of the UK's balance of payments.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
Have the govt said they are breaking the law or rejecting the rule of law, I have only heard the former (and in a limited and specific way of course).
They are wrong to do so but they havent said they reject the rule of law afaik.
The Lord Chancellor has said that he will resign if the rul eof law is broken in a way that he finds unacceptable. The clear implicaiotn of that is that he believes there are acceptable ways to break the rule of law.
Back to square one. I think everyone should agree with that particular statement! There are clearly acceptable ways to break the law such as breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital.
But its not an effective justification of breaking a law that your own government recently passed and was the key part of your manifesto.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Nope, in a democracy the rule of law exists independent of the government. Governments dictate the rule of law in dictatorships. In democracies, the courts are the ultimate arbiters.
So which international court will arbiter whether we have breached international law or not?
The domestic courts will still arbiter the law, they will do so using the laws passed by Parliament.
Surely this is evidence of how important it is for Germany's trade relationship with the UK to get back to "normal" as soon as possible. Losing £70bn of exports in a year? That's gotta hurt. Tens of thousands of jobs. Minimum.
We’ll see if that translates into Merkel “instructing” the EU to capitulate to our every demand.
Of course it won't but they will want a deal, just like we do.
I presume your last sentence is a joke - after a lag of several weeks deaths are well up in Spain as the infections have speread beyond the young in fected first.
48 people died of coronavirus in Spain yesterday.
There were more than 12,000 cases.
Cases have been running at 3000 or more for a month now.....
So......
There weren't 12,000 cases. You are confusing with their simultaneously reported antibody testing. But the general issue is that testing now is up by a factor of 10 or more since the height of the pandemic. So comparisons with the height of the outbreak are tricky. The raw case numbers imply we're at a similar place in the curve to the worst period - hence the question "why now no deaths?" - but what if we're just at the foothills again? The situation on hospitalisations and deaths might look very different in 2-3 weeks.
Although hopefully we have learned a lot of lessons and treatment will be better.
And there aren't significant numbers of elderly patients in hospitals to decamp to Care homes.
Surely the way to handle this is to ring fence the elderly and vulnerable much more smartly and let everyone else get back to their lives....
As Prof Carl Heneghan suggests in the Spectator.
What material for the fences?
And they really going to be locked away from society and family until they die of misery? It's not the answer.
It's the solution implemented by "no lockdown at all" Sweden. Care home visits are banned.
I presume your last sentence is a joke - after a lag of several weeks deaths are well up in Spain as the infections have speread beyond the young in fected first.
48 people died of coronavirus in Spain yesterday.
There were more than 12,000 cases.
Cases have been running at 3000 or more for a month now.....
So......
There weren't 12,000 cases. You are confusing with their simultaneously reported antibody testing. But the general issue is that testing now is up by a factor of 10 or more since the height of the pandemic. So comparisons with the height of the outbreak are tricky. The raw case numbers imply we're at a similar place in the curve to the worst period - hence the question "why now no deaths?" - but what if we're just at the foothills again? The situation on hospitalisations and deaths might look very different in 2-3 weeks.
Although hopefully we have learned a lot of lessons and treatment will be better.
And there aren't significant numbers of elderly patients in hospitals to decamp to Care homes.
Surely the way to handle this is to ring fence the elderly and vulnerable much more smartly and let everyone else get back to their lives....
As Prof Carl Heneghan suggests in the Spectator.
What material for the fences?
L7A2 GPMG. You can't fence the buggers in indefinitely, just funnel them into the Killing Zone.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
Indeed.
The Liberal government in Canada deliberately chose to break international law in legalising cannabis. They decided to do that in full knowledge they were breaking past treaties knowing both that they couldn't get all parties signed up to the treaties to agree to change them and that they thought they were doing the wrong thing.
Funny how when that happened the talk was by and large whether it was sensible to legalise cannabis or not ... And not the fact that in doing so Canada was throwing away the rule of law.
Based on some of the commentary, you'd think that the government had decided to reintroduce torture.
Arguably, we were breaking international law when Parliament reaffirmed its refusal to give votes to prisoners, following the ECHR ruling, although ultimately, the issue was resolved by negotiation.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Surely this is evidence of how important it is for Germany's trade relationship with the UK to get back to "normal" as soon as possible. Losing £70bn of exports in a year? That's gotta hurt. Tens of thousands of jobs. Minimum.
The numbers are affected by COVID 19. One effect of the worldwide recession induced by the illness has been a massive improvement of the UK's balance of payments.
I was genuinely astonished to find we were in surplus the other day. The figures are hugely distorted of course and we have a long, long way to go to address the structural deficit we accrued through membership of the SM.
As a pro-EU, Scottish, Unionist Conservative which way would you vote in any forthcoming SIndyref2 bearing in mind the route Johnson is taking the UK down?
As a supporter of the Union, English by birth,but living in Wales, in the unlikely event of a Welsh independence referendum, despite Wales being an economic desert, if it meant returning to the EU I would give it a whirl.
Given that Brexit and all of the resulting damage is the result of voting for and with the petty Nationalists, I am not of the view that voting for a different set of petty Nationalists in deeper smaller hole is a solution.
I think the result of SundyRef2 depends very much on the timing.
If it happens in the next year or so I expect the Zoomers to prevail
If BoZo has been ousted, because Brexit is shit, or everything else Cummings has touched is shit, then a resurgent Labour Party with a different Scottish leader could in theory beat them.
It won't happen in the next year or so as Boris will block it
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
David our testing regime may be better than some others but it’s still sh*te. If you’ve tried to use it in the last week you’d know.
Its under stress. My only experience is the test that my wife got before her operation 3 weeks ago. She got phoned on the Thursday, tested on the Friday in Dundee and operated on on the Monday having got the all clear. I fully accept that not everyone's experience will have been as efficient. My wife told me that the testing centre was clearly operating well below capacity. Don't know why.
Last Monday, on the first day back at school, my youngest grandson developed a cough and was sent home. No other symptoms. His older brother, in the same school, was called out of his form and sent home also. He had no symptoms at all. My daughter could not book a test for them anywhere. She received a home testing kit on Thursday and returned it straight away. She is waiting for the result. They have already lost a week schooling. She has no idea when she'll get the result of the home tests.
This is why the government is so keen on their "moonshot" idea. A test that you get the result of in 20 minutes would have had both of your grandchildren back in class for the next period (or isolated if the test was +ve). It would be transformative, if it works.
I was under the impression that "moonshot" meant a "hit and hope" idea. Is that what we are reduced to now?
It's a reference to Kennedy's vow to get a man on the moon before the end of the decade (1960s) whatever it takes to do it.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
Indeed.
The Liberal government in Canada deliberately chose to break international law in legalising cannabis. They decided to do that in full knowledge they were breaking past treaties knowing both that they couldn't get all parties signed up to the treaties to agree to change them and that they thought they were doing the wrong thing.
Funny how when that happened the talk was by and large whether it was sensible to legalise cannabis or not ... And not the fact that in doing so Canada was throwing away the rule of law.
Which treaties out of interest, and did any of the co-signatories to the treaties object?
If you can't see a fundamental difference between that and repealing the central and fundamental element (not an "absurd interpretation", as the Government are, absurdly, claiming) of a treaty signed in good faith just six months earlier, to which the counterparty strongly objects and with whom we are trying to negotiate a further treaty in which we are arguing for many aspects to be included best on an assumption of "trust" in future UK Government actions... well.
At least the honest approach would have been to repudiate the treaty in total, which would have been legal, if showing extreme bad faith.
Of course in the Canadian example, i assume the issue represented a minor issue for whatever treaties were involved, so repudiation wasn't really an issue, and seeking a derogation would be sufficient.
I should note that by refusing to repudiate the WA in total, the UK are, in effect, cherry picking the bits of the treaty that they like (such as single market access for Northern Ireland) whilst getting rid of the bad bits and responsibilities involved in protecting the border of the single market (ie. GB). At the very least it will be reasonable for the EU to insist that the UK now make further payments to reflect their level of single market access previously given away for free.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
We’ve already has this discussion Phillip. The rule of law includes compliance with international law and Parliament cannot unilaterally change international law.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
Fully functioning democracies have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law. The UK's judiciary does not have the ability to do that unless the government allows it. The government will not allow it.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Yes. I think it's theatrics and will be resolved, but if not it means we leave the group of nations which believe in an international rules based order. That would be the wrong path to take. I do not remember "Let's Go Rogue!" on the side of any buses.
Surely this is evidence of how important it is for Germany's trade relationship with the UK to get back to "normal" as soon as possible. Losing £70bn of exports in a year? That's gotta hurt. Tens of thousands of jobs. Minimum.
The numbers are affected by COVID 19. One effect of the worldwide recession induced by the illness has been a massive improvement of the UK's balance of payments.
A hard Brexit and corresponding fall in Sterling will probably sustain that improvement.
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
David our testing regime may be better than some others but it’s still sh*te. If you’ve tried to use it in the last week you’d know.
Its under stress. My only experience is the test that my wife got before her operation 3 weeks ago. She got phoned on the Thursday, tested on the Friday in Dundee and operated on on the Monday having got the all clear. I fully accept that not everyone's experience will have been as efficient. My wife told me that the testing centre was clearly operating well below capacity. Don't know why.
Last Monday, on the first day back at school, my youngest grandson developed a cough and was sent home. No other symptoms. His older brother, in the same school, was called out of his form and sent home also. He had no symptoms at all. My daughter could not book a test for them anywhere. She received a home testing kit on Thursday and returned it straight away. She is waiting for the result. They have already lost a week schooling. She has no idea when she'll get the result of the home tests.
This is why the government is so keen on their "moonshot" idea. A test that you get the result of in 20 minutes would have had both of your grandchildren back in class for the next period (or isolated if the test was +ve). It would be transformative, if it works.
I was under the impression that "moonshot" meant a "hit and hope" idea. Is that what we are reduced to now?
Not reduced to but it is obvious that even 48 hour turnaround is going to be significantly disruptive to education, employment, sport and hospitality. We need something faster.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
As a pro-EU, Scottish, Unionist Conservative which way would you vote in any forthcoming SIndyref2 bearing in mind the route Johnson is taking the UK down?
As a supporter of the Union, English by birth,but living in Wales, in the unlikely event of a Welsh independence referendum, despite Wales being an economic desert, if it meant returning to the EU I would give it a whirl.
Wales voted Leave just like England so that is not the same scenario as Scotland which voted Remain.
However if Scotland was allowed an indyref2 after a no trade deal Brexit and rejoined the EU after a Yes vote there would then be tariffs on Scottish exports to England and vice versa
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Nope, in a democracy the rule of law exists independent of the government. Governments dictate the rule of law in dictatorships. In democracies, the courts are the ultimate arbiters.
So which international court will arbiter whether we have breached international law or not?
The domestic courts will still arbiter the law, they will do so using the laws passed by Parliament.
The courts are only able to act in ways the government allows.
Surely this is evidence of how important it is for Germany's trade relationship with the UK to get back to "normal" as soon as possible. Losing £70bn of exports in a year? That's gotta hurt. Tens of thousands of jobs. Minimum.
I think you're misreading the graph. Exports down from 90 to c. 70 = reduction of 20b.
Surely this is evidence of how important it is for Germany's trade relationship with the UK to get back to "normal" as soon as possible. Losing £70bn of exports in a year? That's gotta hurt. Tens of thousands of jobs. Minimum.
The numbers are affected by COVID 19. One effect of the worldwide recession induced by the illness has been a massive improvement of the UK's balance of payments.
I was genuinely astonished to find we were in surplus the other day. The figures are hugely distorted of course and we have a long, long way to go to address the structural deficit we accrued through membership of the SM.
The BoP is the difference between two large numbers, and UK GDP (hence also imports) fell more than our export partners' GDP (hence also our exports).
It won't happen in the next year or so as Boris will block it
He can't.
Nippy can call a referendum that is illegal only in specific and limited ways, and BoZo can sit and spin...
Boris can, as Madrid showed when the Catalan government held an illegal independence referendum, illegal referendums can be ignored. Just as in the Catalan referendum Unionists would be told to boycott it as well
Given where we were a few months ago this is a remarkable logistical achievement and our testing per million people is, according to Worldometer, second only to Israel in the world for medium to large countries.
I am driven to conclude that the good doctor has an agenda which may not have a lot to do with health.
David our testing regime may be better than some others but it’s still sh*te. If you’ve tried to use it in the last week you’d know.
Its under stress. My only experience is the test that my wife got before her operation 3 weeks ago. She got phoned on the Thursday, tested on the Friday in Dundee and operated on on the Monday having got the all clear. I fully accept that not everyone's experience will have been as efficient. My wife told me that the testing centre was clearly operating well below capacity. Don't know why.
Last Monday, on the first day back at school, my youngest grandson developed a cough and was sent home. No other symptoms. His older brother, in the same school, was called out of his form and sent home also. He had no symptoms at all. My daughter could not book a test for them anywhere. She received a home testing kit on Thursday and returned it straight away. She is waiting for the result. They have already lost a week schooling. She has no idea when she'll get the result of the home tests.
This is why the government is so keen on their "moonshot" idea. A test that you get the result of in 20 minutes would have had both of your grandchildren back in class for the next period (or isolated if the test was +ve). It would be transformative, if it works.
If it works and is delivered fairly soon. It would be brilliant.
But the technology doesn't exist yet. It allegedly will cost £100 billion. The government track record in introducing technology solutions is woeful. No wonder that Hancock was laughed at in the Commons when he spoke about it. Moonshot is a good name for it.
So you're right. It would be transformative, if it works. But I'm not holding my breath. We'll have a vaccine before then. Let's hope not too much of the £100 billion is spent and wasted. We've spent £0.5 billion on it so far.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
Indeed.
The Liberal government in Canada deliberately chose to break international law in legalising cannabis. They decided to do that in full knowledge they were breaking past treaties knowing both that they couldn't get all parties signed up to the treaties to agree to change them and that they thought they were doing the wrong thing.
Funny how when that happened the talk was by and large whether it was sensible to legalise cannabis or not ... And not the fact that in doing so Canada was throwing away the rule of law.
Which treaties out of interest, and did any of the co-signatories to the treaties object?
If you can't see a fundamental difference between that and repealing the central and fundamental element (not an "absurd interpretation", as the Government are, absurdly, claiming) of a treaty signed in good faith just six months earlier, to which the counterparty strongly objects and with whom we are trying to negotiate a further treaty in which we are arguing for many aspects to be included best on an assumption of "trust" in future UK Government actions... well.
At least the honest approach would have been to repudiate the treaty in total, which would have been legal, if showing extreme bad faith.
Of course in the Canadian example, i assume the issue represented a minor issue for whatever treaties were involved, so repudiation wasn't really an issue, and seeking a derogation would be sufficient.
Surely you believe that (there are acceptable ways to break the law) to be correct?
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
There are no acceptable ways to break the rule of law, in my view. Once a government rejects the rule of law, it sets the country on a very dangerous road.
Breaking the speed limit on empty roads to take someone dying to hospital?
That is breaking the law, not rejecting the rule of law.
If the government changes the law then the rule of law has been preserved.
Nope, in a democracy the rule of law exists independent of the government. Governments dictate the rule of law in dictatorships. In democracies, the courts are the ultimate arbiters.
So which international court will arbiter whether we have breached international law or not?
The domestic courts will still arbiter the law, they will do so using the laws passed by Parliament.
The courts are only able to act in ways the government allows.
The courts are only able to act in ways the law allows.
Comments
The total theoretical capacity includes the capacity for antibody tests which of course aren't counted in pillar 1 or 2 test figures.
https://twitter.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1305047753983225858
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/germany
UK rolling 7 day daily infection rate is currently 3,001
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk
Somebody has got their numbers all wrong.
There were more than 12,000 cases.
Cases have been running at 3000 or more for a month now.....
So......
Day 1 - Start to feel unwell
Day 2 - Try to book a test, are unable
Day 3 - Try to book a test, are unable
Day 4 - Try to book a test, are unable
Day 5 - Try to book a test, are unable
Day 6 - Start to feel better, “oh it’s probably not COVID”
Day 7 - Infect others
There are many countries testing at much lower levels than the UK. But they are not routinely experiencing the same problems because they are better targeting their tests where they are most useful to inform national strategy and protect the population.
Personally I cannot see there being a vote on this for decades if ever, as it’s not clear what would trigger a mainstream party to call one. As amusing as it is to see people here get worked up imagining it’s in the Boris / Cummings game plan for 2022. I think we’ll hear more about it in the coming years that said.
If there was a vote, I suspect Capital Punishment would win, if it was limited in scope. But whether it would be worth the drama of ever implementing the result I have to doubt. Years to draft and pass the legislation, potentially years before a crime fitting of the punishment. Years of appeals and deathrow. In which time any PM that fancied to could cross out the law.
Besides how the system copes under the strain of a pandemic is quite literally the measure of how good it is.
It is not as leftwing as socialism no but not pure free market liberalism either.
Indeed it is often argued Thatcher was more a free market liberal in the Gladstone mould than a traditional Tory, Boris is more in touch with Disraeli style old school Toryism than Thatcher ever was
The thing that is extremely odd and unusual, is that this is a law that was recently put in place by the same government and was the headline of their manifesto.
Getting your head around that is much harder.
https://www.rtve.es/noticias/20200913/mapa-del-coronavirus-espana/2004681.shtml
Day 1: Friend you’ve seen lately has COVID symptoms. I should probably isolate too and take a test.
Day 2: Neither party can get a test.
Day 3: Neither party can get a test.
Day 4: F*ck it, its probably not COVID, I’ll carry on with my life.
Although hopefully we have learned a lot of lessons and treatment will be better.
And there aren't significant numbers of elderly patients in hospitals to decamp to Care homes.
Will people be breaking the law (breaking the law) if they infringe the rule of six provisions not published or legislated at 00:01 hours on Monday? Because Shagger said we would get fined if we did...
England Prevails !!
As Prof Carl Heneghan suggests in the Spectator.
https://twitter.com/Schuldensuehner/status/1305038605065256961
So the WHO has not changed its mind.
As a pro-EU, Scottish, Unionist Conservative which way would you vote in any forthcoming SIndyref2 bearing in mind the route Johnson is taking the UK down?
As a supporter of the Union, English by birth,but living in Wales, in the unlikely event of a Welsh independence referendum, despite Wales being an economic desert, if it meant returning to the EU I would give it a whirl.
They are wrong to do so but they havent said they reject the rule of law afaik.
The Liberal government in Canada deliberately chose to break international law in legalising cannabis. They decided to do that in full knowledge they were breaking past treaties knowing both that they couldn't get all parties signed up to the treaties to agree to change them and that they thought they were doing the wrong thing.
Funny how when that happened the talk was by and large whether it was sensible to legalise cannabis or not ... And not the fact that in doing so Canada was throwing away the rule of law.
I think the result of SundyRef2 depends very much on the timing.
If it happens in the next year or so I expect the Zoomers to prevail
If BoZo has been ousted, because Brexit is shit, or everything else Cummings has touched is shit, then a resurgent Labour Party with a different Scottish leader could in theory beat them.
Does that not depend on quantitative questions about the differential danger of 10% of the thing and 100% of the thing we are masking against, and the cost/benefit of closing the remaining 10% gap, given the law of diminishing returns and the desirability of the mask being permeable to stuff like air? Do you realise that the 95 in N95 (the Rolls Royce, state of the art, front line only gold standard mask) means 95%, for how many particles it is guaranteed to block? Why not write to the BMJ|pointing out that it's not a great mask? And we should all wrap our heads in tesco shopping bags.
But its not an effective justification of breaking a law that your own government recently passed and was the key part of your manifesto.
The domestic courts will still arbiter the law, they will do so using the laws passed by Parliament.
had decided to reintroduce torture.
Arguably, we were breaking international law when Parliament reaffirmed its refusal to give votes to prisoners, following the ECHR ruling, although ultimately, the issue was resolved by negotiation.
Has a court ever ruled on whether Parliament can within rule of law operate this way?
https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0911/1164694-tony-connelly-brexit-update/
If you can't see a fundamental difference between that and repealing the central and fundamental element (not an "absurd interpretation", as the Government are, absurdly, claiming) of a treaty signed in good faith just six months earlier, to which the counterparty strongly objects and with whom we are trying to negotiate a further treaty in which we are arguing for many aspects to be included best on an assumption of "trust" in future UK Government actions... well.
At least the honest approach would have been to repudiate the treaty in total, which would have been legal, if showing extreme bad faith.
Of course in the Canadian example, i assume the issue represented a minor issue for whatever treaties were involved, so repudiation wasn't really an issue, and seeking a derogation would be sufficient.
I should note that by refusing to repudiate the WA in total, the UK are, in effect, cherry picking the bits of the treaty that they like (such as single market access for Northern Ireland) whilst getting rid of the bad bits and responsibilities involved in protecting the border of the single market (ie. GB). At the very least it will be reasonable for the EU to insist that the UK now make further payments to reflect their level of single market access previously given away for free.
However if Scotland was allowed an indyref2 after a no trade deal Brexit and rejoined the EU after a Yes vote there would then be tariffs on Scottish exports to England and vice versa
Nippy can call a referendum that is illegal only in specific and limited ways, and BoZo can sit and spin...
But the technology doesn't exist yet. It allegedly will cost £100 billion. The government track record in introducing technology solutions is woeful. No wonder that Hancock was laughed at in the Commons when he spoke about it. Moonshot is a good name for it.
So you're right. It would be transformative, if it works. But I'm not holding my breath. We'll have a vaccine before then. Let's hope not too much of the £100 billion is spent and wasted. We've spent £0.5 billion on it so far.
https://twitter.com/iainmartin1/status/1305066526718996482
So on that basis if Nippy calls a referendum the only person likely to resign over it is Boris.