As I said I can't be the only one who really resents government by Chris Whitty.
The government has probably learned by now that if they put politicians front and centre then all they'll get are toddler-grade questions about Perugia.
The replies to which would lead the One and the Six, and completely lose the message.
They should have the scientists do the daily briefings, and only use the politicians when there’s changes to restrictions or legislation. No problem if the media want to send people who understand the science to ask intelligent and probing questions either.
There were some interesting take aways from the presentation. Witty and Valance don't seem to be convinced by the idea of T-Cell immunity, they don't believe having had COVID and produced antibodies means you are actually immune for all that long they don't think the virus has become less dangerous.
if you can get reinfected then we have a major problems on our hands as no vaccine will work long term...
Yep. When you read up on some of the long term scenarios* it gets very depressing. We potentially are going to have something much worse than influenza to deal with indefinitely.
What point is he trying to make here? If Covid was going to kill 20k people a year without significant suppression, we wouldnt implement significant suppression. The problem is it would kill something around 100k-500k people a year if we did nothing, not 20k - this is fairly obvious from the numbers with suppression which are already much more than 20k.
Is he just thick or does randomly spouting facts that are not relevant count for argument these days.
Both he and Hannan are in the intersection of "I don't want this to be a thing" and "I don't understand exponentials or what has actually happened"
What point is he trying to make here? If Covid was going to kill 20k people a year without significant suppression, we wouldnt implement significant suppression. The problem is it would kill something around 100k-500k people a year if we did nothing, not 20k - this is fairly obvious from the numbers with suppression which are already much more than 20k.
Is he just thick or does randomly spouting facts that are not relevant count for argument these days.
So by far the biggest rise in cases amongst those in their 20s followed by those in their 30s, it is young people who are most ignoring the rules therefore
That is unfair. To take obvious points:
Young people are disproportionately employed in public facing industries and are far more exposed to the risk of infection than older people. Younger people inevitably took disproportionate advantage of EOTHO and other relaxations. This does not mean that they broke the rules (though some no doubt did), they simply took more risks within the rules. Younger people are now being encouraged to return to their studies in huge "bubbles" which are frankly not much short of nonsensical.
The flaw in your reasoning is that compliance with the rules is sufficient to avoid infection. It isn't.
Young people are also the ones most likely to have been holding house parties, congregating in groups beyond 6 etc.
However given they have a death rate of less than 0.5% even if they get Covid that is hardly surprising, many young people are now deciding it is a miniscule risk for them so the rules can be ignored, older people however are still being much more cautious and rightly so as they at much greater risk if they do catch Covid.
So open up universities and bars if young people want to go but make nursing homes into fortresses and ensure if they want to go out they cannot then see Grandma beyond Zoom as a result
I agree segmentation is the way ahead. Some of the house parties were an inevitable consequence of restrictions on pubs etc. So in Scotland, at least, pubs were not allowed to play music as we didn't want people shouting over it with heads in close proximity. The result was a lack of atmosphere (or actually an improvement for people like me with dodgy hearing) and people drinking in flats with music to be shouted over etc.
Agreed – @HYUFD gets a lot of stick on here (not least from me), but he is right on this point.
* An extension to the furlough scheme; * restrictions on University accommodation, possibly to foreign students only; *another tranche of grants for the lower earning self employed. *The cancellation of Christmas
Point 2. How could that work? Halls are open and occupied. Where will they go at short notice?
As I said I can't be the only one who really resents government by Chris Whitty.
The government has probably learned by now that if they put politicians front and centre then all they'll get are toddler-grade questions about Perugia.
The replies to which would lead the One and the Six, and completely lose the message.
They should have the scientists do the daily briefings, and only use the politicians when there’s changes to restrictions or legislation. No problem if the media want to send people who understand the science to ask intelligent and probing questions either.
It was perfectly feasible to say "This is a boffin briefing, send your boffin correspondents to ask boffin questions. The PM will be announcing more soon." It is a bit concerning that didn't happen. But the gap between announcing the problem and the actions being taken is more concerning.
It's going to be pretty grim. Social distancing and avoiding indoors contact aren't too bad, for many people, in summer, especially as we have had a warm and dry summer. Queuing up outside shops in sleet and rain is a different kettle of fish altogether, and picnics in the park in December are no-one's idea of fun.
The supermarkets (Tesco & Sainsbury's at least) have trialled a queuing system that allows you to remain in your car until it your turn to go into the shop.
Obviously this system is reliant on people having a mobile phone and car.
My nearest Tesco hasn’t bothered with a queue for months. I haven’t been since the NE lockdown so will be interesting to see if its reintroduced.
My nearest Tesco also doesn't have a queue. I avoid lunch time and go off peak, but I haven't tried 3am yet (it is open 24 hours).
What point is he trying to make here? If Covid was going to kill 20k people a year without significant suppression, we wouldnt implement significant suppression. The problem is it would kill something around 100k-500k people a year if we did nothing, not 20k - this is fairly obvious from the numbers with suppression which are already much more than 20k.
Is he just thick or does randomly spouting facts that are not relevant count for argument these days.
Both he and Hannan are in the intersection of "I don't want this to be a thing" and "I don't understand exponentials or what has actually happened"
The "I don't want this to be a thing" constituency is very large. Much bigger than the "I don't believe this is a thing." Which was part of the point of this morning I reckon.
2016 gold standard Midwest and rustbelt swing state pollster Trafalgar group has Biden 2% ahead in Pennsylvania, confirming whatever happens in November Trump will win by a smaller margin than he did against Hillary even if he is re elected and also that Biden has a better chance of EC victory than Hillary did.
Trafalgar still have Trump ahead in Wisconsin and Michigan in their last polls however (though they did have Biden ahead in one earlier Michigan poll)
Gold standard Trafalgar can't get Trump ahead in PA you say ?
Pennsylvania is where Biden was born and raised, I have said before I think Biden will pick it up and probably now Michigan too so the election will come down in all likelihood to 3 key swing states, Wisconsin (where Trafalgar still has Trump narrowly ahead), Florida and Arizona.
Trump needs to win all those 3 to be re elected, Biden just needs to win 1 of them.
The map is now looking much more like 2004 in the rustbelt swing states than 2016 with Biden picking up the Kerry states of Michigan and Pennsylvania and Trump holding the Bush states of Ohio and Iowa, Kerry also only won Wisconsin by 0.38% in 2004 as opposed to the 2.5% he won Pennsylvania by and 3.4% he won Michigan by.
In 2016 Trump also won Wisconsin by a slightly bigger margin than Pennsylvania and Michigan
* An extension to the furlough scheme; * restrictions on University accommodation, possibly to foreign students only; *another tranche of grants for the lower earning self employed. *The cancellation of Christmas
Definitely not #2. Not students in accommodation will bust unis and also won't allow really for unis to remain open. Also, what do you do about students in housing? Are we sending all first years home and allowing 2nd/3rd years to stay.
From what I know about some unis, they have put in place rules where each flat is basically considered a home and they are saying you must stick to your household i.e. not having people from other households around. And any evidence of breaking this, quite serious punishments.
There were some interesting take aways from the presentation. Witty and Valance don't seem to be convinced by the idea of T-Cell immunity, they don't believe having had COVID and produced antibodies means you are actually immune for all that long and they don't think the virus has become less dangerous.
If correct, all quite sobering...that basically come Christmas everybody could well be "in-play" for catching it and although improvements in treatment, still risk across the whole population.
Valance said there could be other sources of innate immunity as well as antibodies, but you're right, he did play down its significance.
They said the immunity "fades" over time but the slide they showed didn't support that (or refute it either).
What point is he trying to make here? If Covid was going to kill 20k people a year without significant suppression, we wouldnt implement significant suppression. The problem is it would kill something around 100k-500k people a year if we did nothing, not 20k - this is fairly obvious from the numbers with suppression which are already much more than 20k.
Is he just thick or does randomly spouting facts that are not relevant count for argument these days.
Both he and Hannan are in the intersection of "I don't want this to be a thing" and "I don't understand exponentials or what has actually happened"
There is absolutely no chance of us reaching 50k cases a day by mid October. As the number of cases increase there are a series of factors which slow down the exponential element. People get more cautious and scared, there are fewer targets of opportunity for the virus, certain particularly vulnerable areas (such as care homes) will have special measures brought into effect etc.
None of this means that we won't have a significant figure by then, quite probably at least half that figure and even 100 deaths a day a month later is something to be taken very seriously indeed. I just find it disappointing that the basic statistical models we had at the start of this (in terms of which the only people not to have had the virus by now would be anyone stuck on a space station) are still being used instead of laughed at.
It seems that even stripping out the hyperbole this was a call to further action and that we will be hearing that from Boris tomorrow.
I don't see a problem here. They are telling us that it WILL be 50K cases unless we change our behaviour. Their aim is to get us to change our behaviour.
The problem is that it is not true. And therefore we are inevitably going to over react in the same way that we did with the original lockdown. If we are looking at a much more realistic, nuanced model we can also have a more realistic, nuanced response.
We need to reinforce hand, face, space. We need to stop idiots going on foreign holidays and coming back here to spread infection by mandatory, enforced quarantine. We need to think hard about risk vectors such as public transport. We will have to accept more sport without spectators, disappointing as that is. We do need to move to more risk segmentation where some vulnerable groups are much more restricted than others.
But we don't need to shut down all the restaurants and pubs again, we don't need to stop people going to University or school (although the former will be our biggest challenge), we don't want to close down the parts of our economy we have got moving.
I am favour of a nuanced response. However from the figures I would have a gloomier take than your analysis.
Firstly, I wouldn't say the initial lockdown was an overreaction. It was late being applied and we only got got somewhat below R=1, even in maximum lockdown. The UK had the sixth worst death rate in the world. Even so, the lockdown saved many, many lives lives.
Because R under lockdown is only slightly less than one, we don't have a lot of headroom before we get to exponential curve territory, which we are now in again. Our choices are about how quickly we let the epidemic grow again. We do have individual and collective choices and we should be aware what they are and what the risks are. Then we need to apply those choices.
We had slightly more than 4 months of almost continually falling figures from mid April to mid August. That suggests to me that throughout that period R was <1, whatever the government was saying. If you add in the massive increase in testing that occurred over that period which should have found more cases it is possible that the rate was significantly less than 1, at least for parts of it.
What did I say 6+ months ago, the only way to do proper contact tracing is essentially state spying on its citizens, and no Western country would go for it and thus we really wouldn't be able to do it.
All this decentralized anonymized bluetooth only based approaches are already trying to solve a nearly impossible problem with one hand tied behind their back, and that is before the government get involved with then trying to organize what info they do get.
* An extension to the furlough scheme; * restrictions on University accommodation, possibly to foreign students only; *another tranche of grants for the lower earning self employed. *The cancellation of Christmas
I think he will focus on household indoor mingling and outlaw indoor meetings of different households.
What point is he trying to make here? If Covid was going to kill 20k people a year without significant suppression, we wouldnt implement significant suppression. The problem is it would kill something around 100k-500k people a year if we did nothing, not 20k - this is fairly obvious from the numbers with suppression which are already much more than 20k.
Is he just thick or does randomly spouting facts that are not relevant count for argument these days.
Both he and Hannan are in the intersection of "I don't want this to be a thing" and "I don't understand exponentials or what has actually happened"
France, September 19
13,500 cases
26 deaths
According to Whitty this will be 54 deaths a day in a month's time. That, if anything, looks a little optimistic to me.
As I said I can't be the only one who really resents government by Chris Whitty.
Whitty and Vallance didn;t even take questions. No politician there.
I mean, come on
They didn't announce any change in policies and made it clear that there are difficult trade offs. I don't see what the problem is.
The problem is the leading scientists who categorically dispute their data, their predictions and their policy. Heneghan, Gupta, Sikoria, others.
Exactly. One thing that is quite interesting is the reaction of some from a non-science background to hard numbers. Unlike much of economics or sociology, where it rapidly becomes philosophical...
I still remember an incident from university. We were putting on a stage play of the "Cold Equations". The reaction to "the numbers" was so visceral, from some of the participants in the production. If the numbers said x then the numbers were *morally* wrong. And hence should be different.
There must be conservatives on the supreme court who are worried that the majority of americans lose all faith in the supreme court as an institution who must be against pushing through a nomination.
There is one - Roberts. Thomas and Alito ? You’re joking. Kavanaugh clearly doesn’t give much of a damn about public opinion; Gorsuch, unlikely, but time will tell.
If the Republicans seat another Justice after what they pulled with Garland, because it’s ‘within their rights’, I think it almost certain a Democratic Senate majority will expand the court, since that is equally ‘within their rights’.
Doubt Dems would get 50 senators lined up on that.
I think it's a pretty simple decision for a man with no scruples. Mitch is going to make sure there's a conservative majority.
Why do you doubt that? Seems to be an increasingly mainstream view in the Democratic Party. The GOP has been trampling on conventions for years, now its time for the Dems to play dirty otherwise their legislative agenda will just be picked apart by the court for years to come.
Oh I agree that the democrats *should* wake up and realize they are playing by rules the other side have been ignoring for years. But they aren't going to.
Biden said he wouldn't try it last year. Even if he changes his mind, they would need to win the Senate AND have basically all Democratic senators on board. The likes of Joe Manchin are just not going to go along with it.
The conservative minority in america effectively has a blocking majority in the Senate, it's effectively the same as the 19th Century conservative blocking majority in the House of Lords, which only (mostly) ended when the Liberals won general elections fought on the issue of reducing the power of the HoL in 1910, and passed the subsequent 1911 Parliament Act.
It's hard to see how the US can become a democracy though.
Hardly, the Democrats had a huge Senate majority of 57 to just 41 for the Republicans as recently as 2008.
The fact West Virginia is a socially conservative state that only elects socially conservative Democrats, a similar situation to most border and southern states, does not mean the Democrats cannot get a big majority there however it simply reflects the fact that most Americans are not social liberals, that is not a problem of democracy however
Totally wrong. And: try reading the article. "Because there are a lot of largely rural, low-population states, the average state — which reflects the composition of the Senate — has 35 percent of its population in rural areas and only 14 percent in urban core areas, even though the country as a whole — including dense, high-population states like New York, Texas and California — has about 25 percent of the population in each group. That’s a pretty serious skew. It means that the Senate, de facto, has two or three times as much rural representation as urban core representation … even though there are actually about an equal number of voters in each bucket nationwide.
And of course, this has all sorts of other downstream consequences. Since rural areas tend to be whiter, it means the Senate represents a whiter population, too. In the U.S. as a whole, 60 percent of the population is non-Hispanic white and 40 percent of the population is nonwhite.1 But in the average state, 68 percent of people are white and 32 percent are nonwhite."
"the Senate is effectively 6 to 7 percentage points redder than the country as a whole, which means that Democrats are likely to win it only in the event of a near-landslide in their favor nationally. That’s likely to make the Republican majority on the Supreme Court pretty durable."
not only is the Senate anti-democratic, it is also anti-democratic in a racist way.
So what, the House seats are allocated on the basis of population and had a Republican majority from 2010 to 2018 including from 2010 to 2014 when the Senate had a Democratic majority. So the idea the Democrats can never win the Senate is absurd.
All you are posting is left liberal whining, totally ignoring the balance of power the founding fathers put into the US constitution to ensure no state was ignored and all states gained equal representation in the Senate and contributed, even if the House seats were determined by population, with the EC being a halfway house, with EC votes awarded by population but every state getting a minimal representation of electors.
California for example has 53 US Representatives, Wyoming just 1.
I know you worship the "founding fathers" as god-like beings, but I don't, and your account of their motivation is just stupid propaganda.
The House also has a pro-Republican bias due to gerrymandering and Democrat voter inefficiency, it does not have PR, or even remotely reasonable boundaries in many cases. So your "point" about the House is moronic.
Are you disputing the facts in the 538 article about the Senate? And if so which ones? I'd love to hear your expertise.
It doesn't matter. The system is the system what is whinging about it going to achieve?
To change the system can't be done with a majority of the House as happened in the UK with the Parliament Actin the Commons. To change the system requires the consent of two-thirds of the States and those States are never under any circumstances going to agree to that.
The Democrats need to find a way of appealing more to the other States - they did when they won a massive majority of the Senate only a few years ago. Whinging about the system won't achieve change.
What on earth makes you think that me pointing out certain facts on this forum is going to "achieve change"? Like I said, it's hard to see how the US becomes a democracy.
Obviously these facts are uncomfortable for certain posters on here, but they remain facts.
Anyone who uses the word "whinging" to describe facts or opinions they don't like obviously has nothing useful to say.
I apologise for the intemperate language, but the point behind it remains.
I want the Democrats to win - or more importantly I want Trump's GOP to be smashed. But many who support the Democrats seem to think that saying that it is "so unfair" like a Harry Enfield Kevin and Perry sketch is more productive than the Democrats actually figuring out how to win in the States they need to win in.
The USA is a Democracy, it is a Federal Democracy of States though. The Democrats need to figure out how to win across the Federation and not just in the high populace States.
OK, but I am not in the US, nor posting on a US forum, so whatever I write is hardly likely to be productive nor unproductive. My opinion remains that the US is a highly flawed democracy, certainly compared to the least-flawed democracies (eg Scandinavian countries), and that the way an increasingly small minority can keep a majority in the Senate is part of the problem. This does not constitute advice to the Dems on how to win the next election!
The whole of the population of Scandinavia combined is smaller than the population of the US states of California, Texas or Florida.
Sweden is the same size as Michigan, Denmark or Norway are the same size as Maryland or Wisconsin so it is not a like for like comparison.
The EU is more the equivalent of the US than Scandinavia is
OK I wonder what is going on here. I posted a link to a sort-of on topic article showing how favourable the Senate is for the Republicans, and the responses are:
1. "Whinging "it's unfair" won't help the democrats win an election." ??? I never suggested pointing out how much the senate currently favours the Republicans would help the Democrats.
2. "Posting on PB about how unfair it is won't change the US constitution." ??? Do people think that posting on here about China arresting dissidents is going to stop China arresting dissidents? Not much point posting anything (which is no doubt true, yet you can say that about practically every post!)
3. "The Democrats had a majority as recently as 2014." Sure, but that was based partly on Democrats having Senators from quite Republican states - a thing which is disappearing. And demographics are probably going to continue to make the Senate even less favourable to Democrats.
4. "You can't expect the US to have the democratic standards of smaller democracies." This is an interesting argument, and perhaps has some merit. It would seem to support the idea of Scottish independence, for example, if smaller democracies are better democracies. Certainly, the US is more democratic than India "the largest democracy in the world" where Modi can arrest people who disagree with him with impunity. But not sure how relevant it is to the Senate being very favourable to the Republicans compared to their support.
5. "The founding fathers intended it to be like this." - like a weird appeal to the authority of scripture.
6. "It is good like this so the small states don't get overwhelmed by the big states" At least a relevant argument, although the "states" look like particularly artificial constructions to me, so I don't agree.
7. "The US is like the EU" especially weird from people who love the US and hate the EU. Plus it really, really isn't.
This kind of thing doesn't happen with criticism of other countries, it's as if people are identified with the US and are willing to make all kinds of twisted arguments to defend the indefensible - maybe some are indeed Americans, in which case it's understandable. But still, a bit weird.
* An extension to the furlough scheme; * restrictions on University accommodation, possibly to foreign students only; *another tranche of grants for the lower earning self employed. *The cancellation of Christmas
Definitely not #2. Not students in accommodation will bust unis and also won't allow really for unis to remain open. Also, what do you do about students in housing? Are we sending all first years home and allowing 2nd/3rd years to stay.
From what I know about some unis, they have put in place rules where each flat is basically considered a home and they are saying you must stick to your household i.e. not having people from other households around. And any evidence of breaking this, quite serious punishments.
What point is he trying to make here? If Covid was going to kill 20k people a year without significant suppression, we wouldnt implement significant suppression. The problem is it would kill something around 100k-500k people a year if we did nothing, not 20k - this is fairly obvious from the numbers with suppression which are already much more than 20k.
Is he just thick or does randomly spouting facts that are not relevant count for argument these days.
Both he and Hannan are in the intersection of "I don't want this to be a thing" and "I don't understand exponentials or what has actually happened"
France, September 19
13,500 cases
26 deaths
According to Whitty this will be 54 deaths a day in a month's time. That, if anything, looks a little optimistic to me.
We don't know there will would have been 500k dead if we had done nothing. We only know that Ferguson's model predicted that. The Swedes dispute the inputs to his model. They have mitigated but nothing like our levels and they have had nowhere near the proportional 500k figure.
As I said I can't be the only one who really resents government by Chris Whitty.
The government has probably learned by now that if they put politicians front and centre then all they'll get are toddler-grade questions about Perugia.
Yes, he's the Prime Minister with an 80 seat majority. He is also a proven liar and philanderer who has left behind a string of disregarded women and children. If considering another alleged example of the man doing what he's already done is "toddle grade" then sobeit.
As I said I can't be the only one who really resents government by Chris Whitty.
The government has probably learned by now that if they put politicians front and centre then all they'll get are toddler-grade questions about Perugia.
Yes, he's the Prime Minister with an 80 seat majority. He is also a proven liar and philanderer who has left behind a string of disregarded women and children. If considering another alleged example of the man doing what he's already done is "toddle grade" then sobeit.
Given this one is so easy to disprove, why would any self-respecting journalist ask about it?
My university seems to be handling this very well, at least with postgraduate students. We have 3 hours contact per week on campus, but we don't have to attend. We can either attend the in person lectures in person, virtually, or not at all and access recordings.
It also means as the year progresses you can change your mind depending on personal circumstances and/or risk tolerance. Seems very sensible to me.
So essentially this app will be a combination of the ZOE self remoting app that is already out there and the website that already exists to book a test. What morons have they got coding this? It sounds like the sort of thing that some undergrads would produce from a 24hr hackathon.
What point is he trying to make here? If Covid was going to kill 20k people a year without significant suppression, we wouldnt implement significant suppression. The problem is it would kill something around 100k-500k people a year if we did nothing, not 20k - this is fairly obvious from the numbers with suppression which are already much more than 20k.
Is he just thick or does randomly spouting facts that are not relevant count for argument these days.
Both he and Hannan are in the intersection of "I don't want this to be a thing" and "I don't understand exponentials or what has actually happened"
The "I don't want this to be a thing" constituency is very large. Much bigger than the "I don't believe this is a thing." Which was part of the point of this morning I reckon.
Not to mention the even smaller 'I don't believe this is a thing and I am going to provide convincing and substantial evidence to prove it' and the infinitesimally tiny 'I was previously wrong about this not being a thing and would like to publicly state this' constituencies.
What point is he trying to make here? If Covid was going to kill 20k people a year without significant suppression, we wouldnt implement significant suppression. The problem is it would kill something around 100k-500k people a year if we did nothing, not 20k - this is fairly obvious from the numbers with suppression which are already much more than 20k.
Is he just thick or does randomly spouting facts that are not relevant count for argument these days.
Both he and Hannan are in the intersection of "I don't want this to be a thing" and "I don't understand exponentials or what has actually happened"
France, September 19
13,500 cases
26 deaths
According to Whitty this will be 54 deaths a day in a month's time. That, if anything, looks a little optimistic to me.
So essentially this app will be a combination of the ZOE self remoting app that is already out there and the website that already exists to book a test. What morons have they got coding this? It sounds like the sort of thing that some undergrads would produce from a 24hr hackathon.
I just can't believe the reports, especially considering what was given as evidence to the science and technology select committee where they went on about the bluetooth functionality.
There must be conservatives on the supreme court who are worried that the majority of americans lose all faith in the supreme court as an institution who must be against pushing through a nomination.
There is one - Roberts. Thomas and Alito ? You’re joking. Kavanaugh clearly doesn’t give much of a damn about public opinion; Gorsuch, unlikely, but time will tell.
If the Republicans seat another Justice after what they pulled with Garland, because it’s ‘within their rights’, I think it almost certain a Democratic Senate majority will expand the court, since that is equally ‘within their rights’.
Doubt Dems would get 50 senators lined up on that.
I think it's a pretty simple decision for a man with no scruples. Mitch is going to make sure there's a conservative majority.
Why do you doubt that? Seems to be an increasingly mainstream view in the Democratic Party. The GOP has been trampling on conventions for years, now its time for the Dems to play dirty otherwise their legislative agenda will just be picked apart by the court for years to come.
Oh I agree that the democrats *should* wake up and realize they are playing by rules the other side have been ignoring for years. But they aren't going to.
Biden said he wouldn't try it last year. Even if he changes his mind, they would need to win the Senate AND have basically all Democratic senators on board. The likes of Joe Manchin are just not going to go along with it.
The conservative minority in america effectively has a blocking majority in the Senate, it's effectively the same as the 19th Century conservative blocking majority in the House of Lords, which only (mostly) ended when the Liberals won general elections fought on the issue of reducing the power of the HoL in 1910, and passed the subsequent 1911 Parliament Act.
It's hard to see how the US can become a democracy though.
Hardly, the Democrats had a huge Senate majority of 57 to just 41 for the Republicans as recently as 2008.
The fact West Virginia is a socially conservative state that only elects socially conservative Democrats, a similar situation to most border and southern states, does not mean the Democrats cannot get a big majority there however it simply reflects the fact that most Americans are not social liberals, that is not a problem of democracy however
Totally wrong. And: try reading the article. "Because there are a lot of largely rural, low-population states, the average state — which reflects the composition of the Senate — has 35 percent of its population in rural areas and only 14 percent in urban core areas, even though the country as a whole — including dense, high-population states like New York, Texas and California — has about 25 percent of the population in each group. That’s a pretty serious skew. It means that the Senate, de facto, has two or three times as much rural representation as urban core representation … even though there are actually about an equal number of voters in each bucket nationwide.
And of course, this has all sorts of other downstream consequences. Since rural areas tend to be whiter, it means the Senate represents a whiter population, too. In the U.S. as a whole, 60 percent of the population is non-Hispanic white and 40 percent of the population is nonwhite.1 But in the average state, 68 percent of people are white and 32 percent are nonwhite."
"the Senate is effectively 6 to 7 percentage points redder than the country as a whole, which means that Democrats are likely to win it only in the event of a near-landslide in their favor nationally. That’s likely to make the Republican majority on the Supreme Court pretty durable."
not only is the Senate anti-democratic, it is also anti-democratic in a racist way.
So what, the House seats are allocated on the basis of population and had a Republican majority from 2010 to 2018 including from 2010 to 2014 when the Senate had a Democratic majority. So the idea the Democrats can never win the Senate is absurd.
All you are posting is left liberal whining, totally ignoring the balance of power the founding fathers put into the US constitution to ensure no state was ignored and all states gained equal representation in the Senate and contributed, even if the House seats were determined by population, with the EC being a halfway house, with EC votes awarded by population but every state getting a minimal representation of electors.
California for example has 53 US Representatives, Wyoming just 1.
I know you worship the "founding fathers" as god-like beings, but I don't, and your account of their motivation is just stupid propaganda.
The House also has a pro-Republican bias due to gerrymandering and Democrat voter inefficiency, it does not have PR, or even remotely reasonable boundaries in many cases. So your "point" about the House is moronic.
Are you disputing the facts in the 538 article about the Senate? And if so which ones? I'd love to hear your expertise.
It doesn't matter. The system is the system what is whinging about it going to achieve?
To change the system can't be done with a majority of the House as happened in the UK with the Parliament Actin the Commons. To change the system requires the consent of two-thirds of the States and those States are never under any circumstances going to agree to that.
The Democrats need to find a way of appealing more to the other States - they did when they won a massive majority of the Senate only a few years ago. Whinging about the system won't achieve change.
What on earth makes you think that me pointing out certain facts on this forum is going to "achieve change"? Like I said, it's hard to see how the US becomes a democracy.
Obviously these facts are uncomfortable for certain posters on here, but they remain facts.
Anyone who uses the word "whinging" to describe facts or opinions they don't like obviously has nothing useful to say.
I apologise for the intemperate language, but the point behind it remains.
I want the Democrats to win - or more importantly I want Trump's GOP to be smashed. But many who support the Democrats seem to think that saying that it is "so unfair" like a Harry Enfield Kevin and Perry sketch is more productive than the Democrats actually figuring out how to win in the States they need to win in.
The USA is a Democracy, it is a Federal Democracy of States though. The Democrats need to figure out how to win across the Federation and not just in the high populace States.
OK, but I am not in the US, nor posting on a US forum, so whatever I write is hardly likely to be productive nor unproductive. My opinion remains that the US is a highly flawed democracy, certainly compared to the least-flawed democracies (eg Scandinavian countries), and that the way an increasingly small minority can keep a majority in the Senate is part of the problem. This does not constitute advice to the Dems on how to win the next election!
The whole of the population of Scandinavia combined is smaller than the population of the US states of California, Texas or Florida.
Sweden is the same size as Michigan, Denmark or Norway are the same size as Maryland or Wisconsin so it is not a like for like comparison.
The EU is more the equivalent of the US than Scandinavia is
OK I wonder what is going on here. I posted a link to a sort-of on topic article showing how favourable the Senate is for the Republicans, and the responses are:
1. "Whinging "it's unfair" won't help the democrats win an election." ??? I never suggested pointing out how much the senate currently favours the Republicans would help the Democrats.
2. "Posting on PB about how unfair it is won't change the US constitution." ??? Do people think that posting on here about China arresting dissidents is going to stop China arresting dissidents? Not much point posting anything (which is no doubt true, yet you can say that about practically every post!)
3. "The Democrats had a majority as recently as 2014." Sure, but that was based partly on Democrats having Senators from quite Republican states - a thing which is disappearing. And demographics are probably going to continue to make the Senate even less favourable to Democrats.
4. "You can't expect the US to have the democratic standards of smaller democracies." This is an interesting argument, and perhaps has some merit. It would seem to support the idea of Scottish independence, for example, if smaller democracies are better democracies. Certainly, the US is more democratic than India "the largest democracy in the world" where Modi can arrest people who disagree with him with impunity. But not sure how relevant it is to the Senate being very favourable to the Republicans compared to their support.
5. "The founding fathers intended it to be like this." - like a weird appeal to the authority of scripture.
6. "It is good like this so the small states don't get overwhelmed by the big states" At least a relevant argument, although the "states" look like particularly artificial constructions to me, so I don't agree.
7. "The US is like the EU" especially weird from people who love the US and hate the EU. Plus it really, really isn't.
This kind of thing doesn't happen with criticism of other countries, it's as if people are identified with the US and are willing to make all kinds of twisted arguments to defend the indefensible - maybe some are indeed Americans, in which case it's understandable. But still, a bit weird.
It maybe an argument for Scotland to be independent of both the UK and the EU, it is not an argument for Scotland to leave the UK to become a mere state of the even larger EU, note of the Scandinavian nations Norway never joined the EU and Sweden and Denmark never joined the Euro
The problem with Hodges raising the numbers who die of flu is that when covid has done with us we could well find that there is pressure from the experts to do the same kind of mitigation and lockdown every winter.
I hope I am wrong and I hope parliamentarians will be stamping on the faintest suggestion that this would be a good idea in future winters. Yes some public information about more handwashing would be good idea. But other than that - no thanks.
What point is he trying to make here? If Covid was going to kill 20k people a year without significant suppression, we wouldnt implement significant suppression. The problem is it would kill something around 100k-500k people a year if we did nothing, not 20k - this is fairly obvious from the numbers with suppression which are already much more than 20k.
Is he just thick or does randomly spouting facts that are not relevant count for argument these days.
Both he and Hannan are in the intersection of "I don't want this to be a thing" and "I don't understand exponentials or what has actually happened"
France, September 19
13,500 cases
26 deaths
According to Whitty this will be 54 deaths a day in a month's time. That, if anything, looks a little optimistic to me.
We don't know there will would have been 500k dead if we had done nothing. We only know that Ferguson's model predicted that. The Swedes dispute the inputs to his model. They have mitigated but nothing like our levels and they have had nowhere near the proportional 500k figure.
Ferguson predicted more than 80,000 deaths for Sweden. Titanically out, even with their less stringent procedures.
* An extension to the furlough scheme; * restrictions on University accommodation, possibly to foreign students only; *another tranche of grants for the lower earning self employed. *The cancellation of Christmas
I think he will focus on household indoor mingling and outlaw indoor meetings of different households.
What point is he trying to make here? If Covid was going to kill 20k people a year without significant suppression, we wouldnt implement significant suppression. The problem is it would kill something around 100k-500k people a year if we did nothing, not 20k - this is fairly obvious from the numbers with suppression which are already much more than 20k.
Is he just thick or does randomly spouting facts that are not relevant count for argument these days.
Both he and Hannan are in the intersection of "I don't want this to be a thing" and "I don't understand exponentials or what has actually happened"
France, September 19
13,500 cases
26 deaths
According to Whitty this will be 54 deaths a day in a month's time. That, if anything, looks a little optimistic to me.
Is there alarm in France at their soaring cases?
Just savage anger at the way Boris Johnson is personally running the Western Europe. And India.
What point is he trying to make here? If Covid was going to kill 20k people a year without significant suppression, we wouldnt implement significant suppression. The problem is it would kill something around 100k-500k people a year if we did nothing, not 20k - this is fairly obvious from the numbers with suppression which are already much more than 20k.
Is he just thick or does randomly spouting facts that are not relevant count for argument these days.
Both he and Hannan are in the intersection of "I don't want this to be a thing" and "I don't understand exponentials or what has actually happened"
France, September 19
13,500 cases
26 deaths
According to Whitty this will be 54 deaths a day in a month's time. That, if anything, looks a little optimistic to me.
We don't know there will would have been 500k dead if we had done nothing. We only know that Ferguson's model predicted that. The Swedes dispute the inputs to his model. They have mitigated but nothing like our levels and they have had nowhere near the proportional 500k figure.
Ferguson predicted more than 80,000 deaths for Sweden. Titanically out, even with their less stringent procedures.
Yep. The model doesn't fit real world data. Why isn't this being more widely discussed?
So essentially this app will be a combination of the ZOE self remoting app that is already out there and the website that already exists to book a test. What morons have they got coding this? It sounds like the sort of thing that some undergrads would produce from a 24hr hackathon.
I hear the coding was done by someone who puts pineapple on their pizzas.
What point is he trying to make here? If Covid was going to kill 20k people a year without significant suppression, we wouldnt implement significant suppression. The problem is it would kill something around 100k-500k people a year if we did nothing, not 20k - this is fairly obvious from the numbers with suppression which are already much more than 20k.
Is he just thick or does randomly spouting facts that are not relevant count for argument these days.
Both he and Hannan are in the intersection of "I don't want this to be a thing" and "I don't understand exponentials or what has actually happened"
France, September 19
13,500 cases
26 deaths
According to Whitty this will be 54 deaths a day in a month's time. That, if anything, looks a little optimistic to me.
Is there alarm in France at their soaring cases?
Just savage anger at the way Boris Johnson is personally running the Western Europe. And India.
Explains what he was doing in Italy, meeting his global cabinet.
As I said I can't be the only one who really resents government by Chris Whitty.
The government has probably learned by now that if they put politicians front and centre then all they'll get are toddler-grade questions about Perugia.
Yes, he's the Prime Minister with an 80 seat majority. He is also a proven liar and philanderer who has left behind a string of disregarded women and children. If considering another alleged example of the man doing what he's already done is "toddle grade" then sobeit.
Given this one is so easy to disprove, why would any self-respecting journalist ask about it?
Because having done the exact thing thats been alleged all of 2 years ago its entirely believable. And they can't ask the super-injunction question so why not have a poke at this instead of about who he is poking.
The problem with Hodges raising the numbers who die of flu is that when covid has done with us we could well find that there is pressure from the experts to do the same kind of mitigation and lockdown every winter.
I hope I am wrong and I hope parliamentarians will be stamping on the faintest suggestion that this would be a good idea in future winters. Yes some public information about more handwashing would be good idea. But other than that - no thanks.
Do you really think Whitty and Vallance are going to give up the vast and unaccountable power they have been arbitrarily and suddenly given easily?
Deaths in England (daily numbers and seven-day average). Bear in mind that this is a significantly lagged indicator and reflects the case levels seen three weeks earlier and hospitalisations seen two weeks earlier.
As I said I can't be the only one who really resents government by Chris Whitty.
The government has probably learned by now that if they put politicians front and centre then all they'll get are toddler-grade questions about Perugia.
Yes, he's the Prime Minister with an 80 seat majority. He is also a proven liar and philanderer who has left behind a string of disregarded women and children. If considering another alleged example of the man doing what he's already done is "toddle grade" then sobeit.
Given this one is so easy to disprove, why would any self-respecting journalist ask about it?
Because having done the exact thing thats been alleged all of 2 years ago its entirely believable. And they can't ask the super-injunction question so why not have a poke at this instead of about who he is poking.
But it's so easy to disprove. There's literally a picture of him in No 10 at the time he should have been in Italy. Why any journalist would go down that route is beyond me. Unless they were just a partisan hack, of course.
As I said I can't be the only one who really resents government by Chris Whitty.
The government has probably learned by now that if they put politicians front and centre then all they'll get are toddler-grade questions about Perugia.
Yes, he's the Prime Minister with an 80 seat majority. He is also a proven liar and philanderer who has left behind a string of disregarded women and children. If considering another alleged example of the man doing what he's already done is "toddle grade" then sobeit.
Moaning about inconsequentialities is indeed toddler-grade. Meanwhile you can enjoy the tangible benefits of Conservative government by selling your house for full price in four days thanks to the suspension of stamp duty. It was Boris The Liar and Rishi His Puppet wot done that
As I said I can't be the only one who really resents government by Chris Whitty.
The government has probably learned by now that if they put politicians front and centre then all they'll get are toddler-grade questions about Perugia.
Yes, he's the Prime Minister with an 80 seat majority. He is also a proven liar and philanderer who has left behind a string of disregarded women and children. If considering another alleged example of the man doing what he's already done is "toddle grade" then sobeit.
Given this one is so easy to disprove, why would any self-respecting journalist ask about it?
Because having done the exact thing thats been alleged all of 2 years ago its entirely believable. And they can't ask the super-injunction question so why not have a poke at this instead of about who he is poking.
But it's so easy to disprove. There's literally a picture of him in No 10 at the time he should have been in Italy. Why any journalist would go down that route is beyond me. Unless they were just a partisan hack, of course.
Partisan? The most savage attacks on him are being made by the Tory press.
There were some interesting take aways from the presentation. Witty and Valance don't seem to be convinced by the idea of T-Cell immunity, they don't believe having had COVID and produced antibodies means you are actually immune for all that long they don't think the virus has become less dangerous.
if you can get reinfected then we have a major problems on our hands as no vaccine will work long term...
Yep. When you read up on some of the long term scenarios* it gets very depressing. We potentially are going to have something much worse than influenza to deal with indefinitely.
* Admittedly right now they are guesswork.
All our pets get annual boosters for their vacs, no reason we can't get an annual corona jab (Likely a nasal inhalation vaccine after the first year anyway). Blood samples at the hospital were rapidly and efficiently done last time I required one too. I don't bother for the flu since I'm not in an at risk group, seeing the effects of coronavirus on very healthy friends though, I'm definitely getting the jab even if it means I need to pay Boots due to not being in an at risk group.
Strictly, the statement that No 10 says was “wrong” is the one that said he landed at the airport at 2 pm. Easy to see how that could support a Clinton-denial.
Though is either of the parents RC? Mixing up the Abbey and Cathedral feels like the sort of mistake made by someone who doesn't frequent either. (Though the idea that Boris's exhaustion is due to diligent preparation for reception into the Holy Mother Church is a cheering one.)
LOL.
Don't Churches of England (etc) keep a record of baptisms any more.
Recently found a very interesting, and informative, one which has solved an ancestral mystery for two families..
Strictly, the statement that No 10 says was “wrong” is the one that said he landed at the airport at 2 pm. Easy to see how that could support a Clinton-denial.
Though is either of the parents RC? Mixing up the Abbey and Cathedral feels like the sort of mistake made by someone who doesn't frequent either. (Though the idea that Boris's exhaustion is due to diligent preparation for reception into the Holy Mother Church is a cheering one.)
LOL.
Don't Churches of England (etc) keep a record of baptisms any more.
Recently found a very interesting, and informative, one which has solved an ancestral mystery for two families..
Strictly, the statement that No 10 says was “wrong” is the one that said he landed at the airport at 2 pm. Easy to see how that could support a Clinton-denial.
Though is either of the parents RC? Mixing up the Abbey and Cathedral feels like the sort of mistake made by someone who doesn't frequent either. (Though the idea that Boris's exhaustion is due to diligent preparation for reception into the Holy Mother Church is a cheering one.)
LOL.
Don't Churches of England (etc) keep a record of baptisms any more.
Recently found a very interesting, and informative, one which has solved an ancestral mystery for two families..
Not something I have ever agreed with, but I am aware that some vicars are disinclined to baptise infants born out of wedlock.
As I said I can't be the only one who really resents government by Chris Whitty.
The government has probably learned by now that if they put politicians front and centre then all they'll get are toddler-grade questions about Perugia.
Yes, he's the Prime Minister with an 80 seat majority. He is also a proven liar and philanderer who has left behind a string of disregarded women and children. If considering another alleged example of the man doing what he's already done is "toddle grade" then sobeit.
Given this one is so easy to disprove, why would any self-respecting journalist ask about it?
Because having done the exact thing thats been alleged all of 2 years ago its entirely believable. And they can't ask the super-injunction question so why not have a poke at this instead of about who he is poking.
10 mins of checking, and you can find photos of Boris in the UK at the times he is suppose to be in Italy. MPs have photos on their twitter feed of him doing the Zoom conference and the Evening Standard had a photo of him on their front page during the period he was supposed away.
Plus, it can't be hard for a journalist with even half decent sources to ask them was he in the cabinet office at 5pm on Friday and find somebody who was supposed at the church on the Saturday.
As I said I can't be the only one who really resents government by Chris Whitty.
The government has probably learned by now that if they put politicians front and centre then all they'll get are toddler-grade questions about Perugia.
Yes, he's the Prime Minister with an 80 seat majority. He is also a proven liar and philanderer who has left behind a string of disregarded women and children. If considering another alleged example of the man doing what he's already done is "toddle grade" then sobeit.
Given this one is so easy to disprove, why would any self-respecting journalist ask about it?
Because having done the exact thing thats been alleged all of 2 years ago its entirely believable. And they can't ask the super-injunction question so why not have a poke at this instead of about who he is poking.
But it's so easy to disprove. There's literally a picture of him in No 10 at the time he should have been in Italy. Why any journalist would go down that route is beyond me. Unless they were just a partisan hack, of course.
Fact checking which causes a story to be dropped as not true used to be called "Fucking the story" in the CNN newsroom. As in "Why did you fuck my story?".
As I said I can't be the only one who really resents government by Chris Whitty.
The government has probably learned by now that if they put politicians front and centre then all they'll get are toddler-grade questions about Perugia.
Yes, he's the Prime Minister with an 80 seat majority. He is also a proven liar and philanderer who has left behind a string of disregarded women and children. If considering another alleged example of the man doing what he's already done is "toddle grade" then sobeit.
Given this one is so easy to disprove, why would any self-respecting journalist ask about it?
Because having done the exact thing thats been alleged all of 2 years ago its entirely believable. And they can't ask the super-injunction question so why not have a poke at this instead of about who he is poking.
But it's so easy to disprove. There's literally a picture of him in No 10 at the time he should have been in Italy. Why any journalist would go down that route is beyond me. Unless they were just a partisan hack, of course.
Partisan? The most savage attacks on him are being made by the Tory press.
I'm talking about this particular story, which hasn't been picked up by the more reputable sources.
What point is he trying to make here? If Covid was going to kill 20k people a year without significant suppression, we wouldnt implement significant suppression. The problem is it would kill something around 100k-500k people a year if we did nothing, not 20k - this is fairly obvious from the numbers with suppression which are already much more than 20k.
Is he just thick or does randomly spouting facts that are not relevant count for argument these days.
Both he and Hannan are in the intersection of "I don't want this to be a thing" and "I don't understand exponentials or what has actually happened"
The "I don't want this to be a thing" constituency is very large. Much bigger than the "I don't believe this is a thing." Which was part of the point of this morning I reckon.
I would sincerely hope that the "I don't want this to be a thing" constituency is equal to 100% of the population – although given the enthusiasm some on here express for the wanton destruction of civil liberties, one can never be absolutely certain.
Deaths in England (daily numbers and seven-day average). Bear in mind that this is a significantly lagged indicator and reflects the case levels seen three weeks earlier and hospitalisations seen two weeks earlier.
As I said I can't be the only one who really resents government by Chris Whitty.
The government has probably learned by now that if they put politicians front and centre then all they'll get are toddler-grade questions about Perugia.
Yes, he's the Prime Minister with an 80 seat majority. He is also a proven liar and philanderer who has left behind a string of disregarded women and children. If considering another alleged example of the man doing what he's already done is "toddle grade" then sobeit.
Given this one is so easy to disprove, why would any self-respecting journalist ask about it?
Because having done the exact thing thats been alleged all of 2 years ago its entirely believable. And they can't ask the super-injunction question so why not have a poke at this instead of about who he is poking.
10 mins of checking, and you can find photos of Boris in the UK at the times he is suppose to be in Italy. MPs have photos on their twitter feed of him doing the Zoom conference and the Evening Standard had a photo of him on their front page during the period he was supposed away.
Plus, it can't be hard for a journalist with even half decent sources to ask them was he in the cabinet office at 5pm on Friday and find somebody who was supposed at the church on the Saturday.
Whatever happened to checking sources?
Na, it's all about getting the clicks/likes these days. Who cares if the story has any basis in reality?
What point is he trying to make here? If Covid was going to kill 20k people a year without significant suppression, we wouldnt implement significant suppression. The problem is it would kill something around 100k-500k people a year if we did nothing, not 20k - this is fairly obvious from the numbers with suppression which are already much more than 20k.
Is he just thick or does randomly spouting facts that are not relevant count for argument these days.
Both he and Hannan are in the intersection of "I don't want this to be a thing" and "I don't understand exponentials or what has actually happened"
France, September 19
13,500 cases
26 deaths
According to Whitty this will be 54 deaths a day in a month's time. That, if anything, looks a little optimistic to me.
As I said I can't be the only one who really resents government by Chris Whitty.
The government has probably learned by now that if they put politicians front and centre then all they'll get are toddler-grade questions about Perugia.
Yes, he's the Prime Minister with an 80 seat majority. He is also a proven liar and philanderer who has left behind a string of disregarded women and children. If considering another alleged example of the man doing what he's already done is "toddle grade" then sobeit.
Given this one is so easy to disprove, why would any self-respecting journalist ask about it?
Because having done the exact thing thats been alleged all of 2 years ago its entirely believable. And they can't ask the super-injunction question so why not have a poke at this instead of about who he is poking.
10 mins of checking, and you can find photos of Boris in the UK at the times he is suppose to be in Italy. MPs have photos on their twitter feed of him doing the Zoom conference and the Evening Standard had a photo of him on their front page during the period he was supposed away.
Plus, it can't be hard for a journalist with even half decent sources to ask them was he in the cabinet office at 5pm on Friday and find somebody who was supposed at the church on the Saturday.
Whatever happened to checking sources?
As I said, perhaps they are willing to suspend disbelief as they can't report the story they have allegedly been blocked from reporting. Easy to piss the press pack off
Seems a OK idea to me. Renaming Arsenal to 'Emirates Arsenal' for example - as long as the names aren't silly (and as long as the sponsorship package is worked out with what is going to happen after it expires). Isn't solving the funding crisis for TFL a priority for London?
That's a date. Meet you outside Finger Lickin' Bargain Bucket for an unbelievable just £9.99 Tube station at 6.
Deaths in England (daily numbers and seven-day average). Bear in mind that this is a significantly lagged indicator and reflects the case levels seen three weeks earlier and hospitalisations seen two weeks earlier.
The highest is 35 FFS. 35.
Cancer?
Note the date range. It was up to a thousand a day at the peak.
As I said I can't be the only one who really resents government by Chris Whitty.
The government has probably learned by now that if they put politicians front and centre then all they'll get are toddler-grade questions about Perugia.
Yes, he's the Prime Minister with an 80 seat majority. He is also a proven liar and philanderer who has left behind a string of disregarded women and children. If considering another alleged example of the man doing what he's already done is "toddle grade" then sobeit.
Given this one is so easy to disprove, why would any self-respecting journalist ask about it?
Because having done the exact thing thats been alleged all of 2 years ago its entirely believable. And they can't ask the super-injunction question so why not have a poke at this instead of about who he is poking.
But it's so easy to disprove. There's literally a picture of him in No 10 at the time he should have been in Italy. Why any journalist would go down that route is beyond me. Unless they were just a partisan hack, of course.
Partisan? The most savage attacks on him are being made by the Tory press.
I'm talking about this particular story, which hasn't been picked up by the more reputable sources.
Agreed. The Daily Mail has gone seriously downhill
Deaths in England (daily numbers and seven-day average). Bear in mind that this is a significantly lagged indicator and reflects the case levels seen three weeks earlier and hospitalisations seen two weeks earlier.
The highest is 35 FFS. 35.
Cancer?
Note the date range. It was up to a thousand a day at the peak.
Its a pandemic. The pattern is, they come, they peak, they fade. Exactly as Dr Gupta predicted.
As I said I can't be the only one who really resents government by Chris Whitty.
The government has probably learned by now that if they put politicians front and centre then all they'll get are toddler-grade questions about Perugia.
Yes, he's the Prime Minister with an 80 seat majority. He is also a proven liar and philanderer who has left behind a string of disregarded women and children. If considering another alleged example of the man doing what he's already done is "toddle grade" then sobeit.
Given this one is so easy to disprove, why would any self-respecting journalist ask about it?
Because having done the exact thing thats been alleged all of 2 years ago its entirely believable. And they can't ask the super-injunction question so why not have a poke at this instead of about who he is poking.
But it's so easy to disprove. There's literally a picture of him in No 10 at the time he should have been in Italy. Why any journalist would go down that route is beyond me. Unless they were just a partisan hack, of course.
Partisan? The most savage attacks on him are being made by the Tory press.
I'm talking about this particular story, which hasn't been picked up by the more reputable sources.
Agreed. The Daily Mail has gone seriously downhill
I did caveat my statement with "self-respecting journalist", didn't I?
Deaths in England (daily numbers and seven-day average). Bear in mind that this is a significantly lagged indicator and reflects the case levels seen three weeks earlier and hospitalisations seen two weeks earlier.
The highest is 35 FFS. 35.
Cancer?
Note the date range. It was up to a thousand a day at the peak.
Its a pandemic. The pattern is, they come, they peak, they fade. Exactly as Dr Gupta predicted.
This one seems to be on its way back up again. Not exactly going as planned.
There must be conservatives on the supreme court who are worried that the majority of americans lose all faith in the supreme court as an institution who must be against pushing through a nomination.
There is one - Roberts. Thomas and Alito ? You’re joking. Kavanaugh clearly doesn’t give much of a damn about public opinion; Gorsuch, unlikely, but time will tell.
If the Republicans seat another Justice after what they pulled with Garland, because it’s ‘within their rights’, I think it almost certain a Democratic Senate majority will expand the court, since that is equally ‘within their rights’.
Doubt Dems would get 50 senators lined up on that.
I think it's a pretty simple decision for a man with no scruples. Mitch is going to make sure there's a conservative majority.
Why do you doubt that? Seems to be an increasingly mainstream view in the Democratic Party. The GOP has been trampling on conventions for years, now its time for the Dems to play dirty otherwise their legislative agenda will just be picked apart by the court for years to come.
Oh I agree that the democrats *should* wake up and realize they are playing by rules the other side have been ignoring for years. But they aren't going to.
Biden said he wouldn't try it last year. Even if he changes his mind, they would need to win the Senate AND have basically all Democratic senators on board. The likes of Joe Manchin are just not going to go along with it.
The conservative minority in america effectively has a blocking majority in the Senate, it's effectively the same as the 19th Century conservative blocking majority in the House of Lords, which only (mostly) ended when the Liberals won general elections fought on the issue of reducing the power of the HoL in 1910, and passed the subsequent 1911 Parliament Act.
It's hard to see how the US can become a democracy though.
Hardly, the Democrats had a huge Senate majority of 57 to just 41 for the Republicans as recently as 2008.
The fact West Virginia is a socially conservative state that only elects socially conservative Democrats, a similar situation to most border and southern states, does not mean the Democrats cannot get a big majority there however it simply reflects the fact that most Americans are not social liberals, that is not a problem of democracy however
Totally wrong. And: try reading the article. "Because there are a lot of largely rural, low-population states, the average state — which reflects the composition of the Senate — has 35 percent of its population in rural areas and only 14 percent in urban core areas, even though the country as a whole — including dense, high-population states like New York, Texas and California — has about 25 percent of the population in each group. That’s a pretty serious skew. It means that the Senate, de facto, has two or three times as much rural representation as urban core representation … even though there are actually about an equal number of voters in each bucket nationwide.
And of course, this has all sorts of other downstream consequences. Since rural areas tend to be whiter, it means the Senate represents a whiter population, too. In the U.S. as a whole, 60 percent of the population is non-Hispanic white and 40 percent of the population is nonwhite.1 But in the average state, 68 percent of people are white and 32 percent are nonwhite."
"the Senate is effectively 6 to 7 percentage points redder than the country as a whole, which means that Democrats are likely to win it only in the event of a near-landslide in their favor nationally. That’s likely to make the Republican majority on the Supreme Court pretty durable."
not only is the Senate anti-democratic, it is also anti-democratic in a racist way.
So what, the House seats are allocated on the basis of population and had a Republican majority from 2010 to 2018 including from 2010 to 2014 when the Senate had a Democratic majority. So the idea the Democrats can never win the Senate is absurd.
All you are posting is left liberal whining, totally ignoring the balance of power the founding fathers put into the US constitution to ensure no state was ignored and all states gained equal representation in the Senate and contributed, even if the House seats were determined by population, with the EC being a halfway house, with EC votes awarded by population but every state getting a minimal representation of electors.
California for example has 53 US Representatives, Wyoming just 1.
I know you worship the "founding fathers" as god-like beings, but I don't, and your account of their motivation is just stupid propaganda.
The House also has a pro-Republican bias due to gerrymandering and Democrat voter inefficiency, it does not have PR, or even remotely reasonable boundaries in many cases. So your "point" about the House is moronic.
Are you disputing the facts in the 538 article about the Senate? And if so which ones? I'd love to hear your expertise.
It doesn't matter. The system is the system what is whinging about it going to achieve?
To change the system can't be done with a majority of the House as happened in the UK with the Parliament Actin the Commons. To change the system requires the consent of two-thirds of the States and those States are never under any circumstances going to agree to that.
The Democrats need to find a way of appealing more to the other States - they did when they won a massive majority of the Senate only a few years ago. Whinging about the system won't achieve change.
What on earth makes you think that me pointing out certain facts on this forum is going to "achieve change"? Like I said, it's hard to see how the US becomes a democracy.
Obviously these facts are uncomfortable for certain posters on here, but they remain facts.
Anyone who uses the word "whinging" to describe facts or opinions they don't like obviously has nothing useful to say.
I apologise for the intemperate language, but the point behind it remains.
I want the Democrats to win - or more importantly I want Trump's GOP to be smashed. But many who support the Democrats seem to think that saying that it is "so unfair" like a Harry Enfield Kevin and Perry sketch is more productive than the Democrats actually figuring out how to win in the States they need to win in.
The USA is a Democracy, it is a Federal Democracy of States though. The Democrats need to figure out how to win across the Federation and not just in the high populace States.
OK, but I am not in the US, nor posting on a US forum, so whatever I write is hardly likely to be productive nor unproductive. My opinion remains that the US is a highly flawed democracy, certainly compared to the least-flawed democracies (eg Scandinavian countries), and that the way an increasingly small minority can keep a majority in the Senate is part of the problem. This does not constitute advice to the Dems on how to win the next election!
The whole of the population of Scandinavia combined is smaller than the population of the US states of California, Texas or Florida.
Sweden is the same size as Michigan, Denmark or Norway are the same size as Maryland or Wisconsin so it is not a like for like comparison.
The EU is more the equivalent of the US than Scandinavia is
OK I wonder what is going on here. I posted a link to a sort-of on topic article showing how favourable the Senate is for the Republicans, and the responses are:
1. "Whinging "it's unfair" won't help the democrats win an election." ??? I never suggested pointing out how much the senate currently favours the Republicans would help the Democrats.
2. "Posting on PB about how unfair it is won't change the US constitution." ??? Do people think that posting on here about China arresting dissidents is going to stop China arresting dissidents? Not much point posting anything (which is no doubt true, yet you can say that about practically every post!)
3. "The Democrats had a majority as recently as 2014." Sure, but that was based partly on Democrats having Senators from quite Republican states - a thing which is disappearing. And demographics are probably going to continue to make the Senate even less favourable to Democrats.
4. "You can't expect the US to have the democratic standards of smaller democracies." This is an interesting argument, and perhaps has some merit. It would seem to support the idea of Scottish independence, for example, if smaller democracies are better democracies. Certainly, the US is more democratic than India "the largest democracy in the world" where Modi can arrest people who disagree with him with impunity. But not sure how relevant it is to the Senate being very favourable to the Republicans compared to their support.
5. "The founding fathers intended it to be like this." - like a weird appeal to the authority of scripture.
6. "It is good like this so the small states don't get overwhelmed by the big states" At least a relevant argument, although the "states" look like particularly artificial constructions to me, so I don't agree.
7. "The US is like the EU" especially weird from people who love the US and hate the EU. Plus it really, really isn't.
This kind of thing doesn't happen with criticism of other countries, it's as if people are identified with the US and are willing to make all kinds of twisted arguments to defend the indefensible - maybe some are indeed Americans, in which case it's understandable. But still, a bit weird.
It maybe an argument for Scotland to be independent of both the UK and the EU, it is not an argument for Scotland to leave the UK to become a mere state of the even larger EU, note of the Scandinavian nations Norway never joined the EU and Sweden and Denmark never joined the Euro
You seem to have destroyed your own argument there.
Yup, firstly you shouldn't be sending a boffin out to explain things when it's ministers who make the decisions, and secondly if you are going with a boffin, best not to go with the one whose initial response was a world-class failure.
Thirded. We need someone who takes a more holistic view. New Zealand is a very salutary lesson for anyone who thinks a zero covid approach is the way forward.
Deaths in England (daily numbers and seven-day average). Bear in mind that this is a significantly lagged indicator and reflects the case levels seen three weeks earlier and hospitalisations seen two weeks earlier.
The highest is 35 FFS. 35.
Cancer?
Note the date range. It was up to a thousand a day at the peak.
Its a pandemic. The pattern is, they come, they peak, they fade. Exactly as Dr Gupta predicted.
This one seems to be on its way back up again. Not exactly going as planned.
Cases are up but its been widely discussed about how many are false. France has 13,5000 cases yesterday and has had 3000 plus for weeks.
The only thing I can see in relation to Warwick on twitter is horse racing results.
More twitter bollocks then.
It does seem this morning as if people on the tw@tterverse are getting rather excitable. According to tw@tter Boris has secretly been away, faked the baptism of his kid, the government have lied about the tracking app to the parliamentary select committee and now I presume somebody is claiming that Boris personally buried a load of COVID victims under Warwick Racecourse.
Deaths in England (daily numbers and seven-day average). Bear in mind that this is a significantly lagged indicator and reflects the case levels seen three weeks earlier and hospitalisations seen two weeks earlier.
The highest is 35 FFS. 35.
Cancer?
Note the date range. It was up to a thousand a day at the peak.
Its a pandemic. The pattern is, they come, they peak, they fade. Exactly as Dr Gupta predicted.
This one seems to be on its way back up again. Not exactly going as planned.
Cases are up but its been widely discussed about how many are false. France has 13,5000 cases yesterday and has had 3000 plus for weeks.
Deaths in England (daily numbers and seven-day average). Bear in mind that this is a significantly lagged indicator and reflects the case levels seen three weeks earlier and hospitalisations seen two weeks earlier.
The highest is 35 FFS. 35.
Cancer?
There are roughly 164k cancer deaths in the UK per annum or 449 a day. It does put it into perspective a bit.
Another useful figure is that the world population, blighted by Covid has increased by a net 59m this year according to Worldometer. If this is Gaia's attempt to control the human population its pathetic.
Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick KG (22 November 1428 – 14 April 1471), known as Warwick the Kingmaker, was an English nobleman, administrator, and military commander. The eldest son of Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, he became Earl of Warwick through marriage, and was the wealthiest and most powerful English peer of his age, with political connections that went beyond the country's borders. One of the leaders in the Wars of the Roses, originally on the Yorkist side but later switching to the Lancastrian side, he was instrumental in the deposition of two kings, which led to his epithet of "Kingmaker".
I mean I'm happy to educate you all on history, I mean I did it for Morris Dancer, and if we're going into another lockdown, then I'll do 'History Today for PBers.'
* An extension to the furlough scheme; * restrictions on University accommodation, possibly to foreign students only; *another tranche of grants for the lower earning self employed. *The cancellation of Christmas
Definitely not #2. Not students in accommodation will bust unis and also won't allow really for unis to remain open. Also, what do you do about students in housing? Are we sending all first years home and allowing 2nd/3rd years to stay.
From what I know about some unis, they have put in place rules where each flat is basically considered a home and they are saying you must stick to your household i.e. not having people from other households around. And any evidence of breaking this, quite serious punishments.
Yes, that's what I've heard: lots of bubbles in halls of residence. Many universities don't have the resources to enforce this though. Enforcement may well depend on bubbles of students snitching on one another. Which will make for some interesting dynamics......
There is absolutely no chance of us reaching 50k cases a day by mid October. As the number of cases increase there are a series of factors which slow down the exponential element. People get more cautious and scared, there are fewer targets of opportunity for the virus, certain particularly vulnerable areas (such as care homes) will have special measures brought into effect etc.
None of this means that we won't have a significant figure by then, quite probably at least half that figure and even 100 deaths a day a month later is something to be taken very seriously indeed. I just find it disappointing that the basic statistical models we had at the start of this (in terms of which the only people not to have had the virus by now would be anyone stuck on a space station) are still being used instead of laughed at.
It seems that even stripping out the hyperbole this was a call to further action and that we will be hearing that from Boris tomorrow.
I don't see a problem here. They are telling us that it WILL be 50K cases unless we change our behaviour. Their aim is to get us to change our behaviour.
The problem is that it is not true. And therefore we are inevitably going to over react in the same way that we did with the original lockdown. If we are looking at a much more realistic, nuanced model we can also have a more realistic, nuanced response.
We need to reinforce hand, face, space. We need to stop idiots going on foreign holidays and coming back here to spread infection by mandatory, enforced quarantine. We need to think hard about risk vectors such as public transport. We will have to accept more sport without spectators, disappointing as that is. We do need to move to more risk segmentation where some vulnerable groups are much more restricted than others.
But we don't need to shut down all the restaurants and pubs again, we don't need to stop people going to University or school (although the former will be our biggest challenge), we don't want to close down the parts of our economy we have got moving.
I am favour of a nuanced response. However from the figures I would have a gloomier take than your analysis.
Firstly, I wouldn't say the initial lockdown was an overreaction. It was late being applied and we only got got somewhat below R=1, even in maximum lockdown. The UK had the sixth worst death rate in the world. Even so, the lockdown saved many, many lives lives.
Because R under lockdown is only slightly less than one, we don't have a lot of headroom before we get to exponential curve territory, which we are now in again. Our choices are about how quickly we let the epidemic grow again. We do have individual and collective choices and we should be aware what they are and what the risks are. Then we need to apply those choices.
We had slightly more than 4 months of almost continually falling figures from mid April to mid August. That suggests to me that throughout that period R was <1, whatever the government was saying. If you add in the massive increase in testing that occurred over that period which should have found more cases it is possible that the rate was significantly less than 1, at least for parts of it. </p>
R was between 0.6 and 0.9 under core lockdown as I recall. It is unnecessary for R to be less than 1 once you have the cases suppressed. Unfortunately R is well of excess of 1 now. We need to get better at hygiene and testing and reduce our activities if we want to avoid the epidemic going out of control again. Those are our choices. We should be making them.
Comments
They should have the scientists do the daily briefings, and only use the politicians when there’s changes to restrictions or legislation. No problem if the media want to send people who understand the science to ask intelligent and probing questions either.
* Admittedly right now they are guesswork.
This government, Dido Harding in particular, couldn't organise a farting contest in a baked beans factory.
Much bigger than the "I don't believe this is a thing."
Which was part of the point of this morning I reckon.
Trump needs to win all those 3 to be re elected, Biden just needs to win 1 of them.
The map is now looking much more like 2004 in the rustbelt swing states than 2016 with Biden picking up the Kerry states of Michigan and Pennsylvania and Trump holding the Bush states of Ohio and Iowa, Kerry also only won Wisconsin by 0.38% in 2004 as opposed to the 2.5% he won Pennsylvania by and 3.4% he won Michigan by.
In 2016 Trump also won Wisconsin by a slightly bigger margin than Pennsylvania and Michigan
From what I know about some unis, they have put in place rules where each flat is basically considered a home and they are saying you must stick to your household i.e. not having people from other households around. And any evidence of breaking this, quite serious punishments.
They said the immunity "fades" over time but the slide they showed didn't support that (or refute it either).
13,500 cases
26 deaths
All this decentralized anonymized bluetooth only based approaches are already trying to solve a nearly impossible problem with one hand tied behind their back, and that is before the government get involved with then trying to organize what info they do get.
I still remember an incident from university. We were putting on a stage play of the "Cold Equations". The reaction to "the numbers" was so visceral, from some of the participants in the production. If the numbers said x then the numbers were *morally* wrong. And hence should be different.
1. "Whinging "it's unfair" won't help the democrats win an election." ??? I never suggested pointing out how much the senate currently favours the Republicans would help the Democrats.
2. "Posting on PB about how unfair it is won't change the US constitution." ??? Do people think that posting on here about China arresting dissidents is going to stop China arresting dissidents? Not much point posting anything (which is no doubt true, yet you can say that about practically every post!)
3. "The Democrats had a majority as recently as 2014." Sure, but that was based partly on Democrats having Senators from quite Republican states - a thing which is disappearing. And demographics are probably going to continue to make the Senate even less favourable to Democrats.
4. "You can't expect the US to have the democratic standards of smaller democracies." This is an interesting argument, and perhaps has some merit. It would seem to support the idea of Scottish independence, for example, if smaller democracies are better democracies. Certainly, the US is more democratic than India "the largest democracy in the world" where Modi can arrest people who disagree with him with impunity. But not sure how relevant it is to the Senate being very favourable to the Republicans compared to their support.
5. "The founding fathers intended it to be like this." - like a weird appeal to the authority of scripture.
6. "It is good like this so the small states don't get overwhelmed by the big states" At least a relevant argument, although the "states" look like particularly artificial constructions to me, so I don't agree.
7. "The US is like the EU" especially weird from people who love the US and hate the EU. Plus it really, really isn't.
This kind of thing doesn't happen with criticism of other countries, it's as if people are identified with the US and are willing to make all kinds of twisted arguments to defend the indefensible - maybe some are indeed Americans, in which case it's understandable. But still, a bit weird.
Nor has he ever lied about "affairs of the heart" (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1476560/Howard-sacks-devastated-Boris-Johnson-over-affair.html).
Or when The Times sacked him for making up stories. Or when the Telegraph editor regretted not sacking him (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/24/boris-johnson-prime-minister-tory-party-britain)
Yes, he's the Prime Minister with an 80 seat majority. He is also a proven liar and philanderer who has left behind a string of disregarded women and children. If considering another alleged example of the man doing what he's already done is "toddle grade" then sobeit.
It also means as the year progresses you can change your mind depending on personal circumstances and/or risk tolerance. Seems very sensible to me.
I hope I am wrong and I hope parliamentarians will be stamping on the faintest suggestion that this would be a good idea in future winters. Yes some public information about more handwashing would be good idea. But other than that - no thanks.
Bear in mind that this is a significantly lagged indicator and reflects the case levels seen three weeks earlier and hospitalisations seen two weeks earlier.
Moaning about inconsequentialities is indeed toddler-grade. Meanwhile you can enjoy the tangible benefits of Conservative government by selling your house for full price in four days thanks to the suspension of stamp duty. It was Boris The Liar and Rishi His Puppet wot done that
Edit: how pathetic that pro-Labour partisans like the Daily Mail are reporting the story https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8753857/Downing-Street-forced-deny-Italian-newspapers-claims-Boris-Johnson-enjoyed-jaunt-Perugia.html
I don't bother for the flu since I'm not in an at risk group, seeing the effects of coronavirus on very healthy friends though, I'm definitely getting the jab even if it means I need to pay Boots due to not being in an at risk group.
That said, most of us attending this wedding have kids...
Plus, it can't be hard for a journalist with even half decent sources to ask them was he in the cabinet office at 5pm on Friday and find somebody who was supposed at the church on the Saturday.
Whatever happened to checking sources?
Facts can be bad.
Cancer?
Those evil Germans, blaming their own people rather than their own failures..
Deaths? yesterday there were 26.
I mean FFS
It's a reference to the pig dog traitor, the Mark Reckless of the War of the Roses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Neville,_16th_Earl_of_Warwick
Another useful figure is that the world population, blighted by Covid has increased by a net 59m this year according to Worldometer. If this is Gaia's attempt to control the human population its pathetic.
I mean I'm happy to educate you all on history, I mean I did it for Morris Dancer, and if we're going into another lockdown, then I'll do 'History Today for PBers.'
https://order-order.com/2020/09/21/new-fully-featured-contact-tracing-app-launching-thursday/
Again, can journalists perhaps not first check with somebody has actually trialled the app. Double sourcing and all that.
to get better at hygiene and testing and reduce our activities if we want to avoid the epidemic going out of control again. Those are our choices. We should be making them.